Face Down among the Winchester Geese (26 page)

"But you let him blame the Spaniard. And you let me believe Robert might have committed those terrible crimes."

"It was necessary,” Sir Walter stated.

Lady Mary heard the quiet desperation beneath the insistent words. He had used Lady Appleton's quest for justice to further his own ends. The gentlewoman's investigation had complicated Sir Robert's plans and Sir Walter had hoped that fact would make him act in haste, make him vulnerable. Lady Mary could not fault his logic, but she felt sorry for her friend, and fortunate indeed that Sir Walter had come to Lady Appleton when Sir Robert finally made his move.

Lady Mary cleared her throat and addressed Sir Walter. “You will give out that Sir Robert died abroad, in the service of the Crown. His widow will inherit everything."

"But I am not a widow,” Lady Appleton objected.

"We found the boat, the brooch caught in the planks. We did not find a body, or any other evidence."

"Even if he is not dead,” Sir Walter said, “he cannot risk returning to England. To avoid charges of treason, he must leave the country, and no doubt already has. You will never see him again. Better to believe him drowned, Susanna, for even if he lives, he is dead in all the ways that matter."

Swept out to sea, Lady Mary thought. No doubt of
that
. Perhaps, one day, Lady Appleton would be able to accept the truth. In the meantime, there was no reason why she should not call herself a widow.

"I must travel to Greenwich,” she said abruptly. “Sir Walter, you will escort me. By water, I do think."

"As you wish, my lady.” He turned back to Lady Appleton. “Will you go to Leigh Abbey?” He did not ask her to travel with them, but Lady Mary sensed he wanted to.

"Soon,” Lady Appleton said. She waved a vague hand, indicating the disarray in her house. She had been packing for the journey when Lady Mary's letter arrived. “I have a few matters to attend to first."

Susanna studied the note Petronella had left for her with mixed emotions. She must be glad, she told herself, that the other woman had found happiness. According to what was written here, she was going to marry Diego Cordoba and start a new life with him. In Spain, Susanna supposed.

"She left London two days ago,” a voice said behind her. Vincent. Petronella's doorkeeper. Her friend. And now, apparently, the new owner of the Sign of the Smock.

"I am happy for her,” Susanna told him, “and relieved to have proof now that neither Diego Cordoba nor my husband is the murderer we sought."

"Someone was watching her. Following her."

"Following?” Susanna had thought Sir Walter's men accounted for Petronella's unease, but they'd only have followed Cordoba. It seemed they'd even failed to do that, losing track of him during Sir Walter's absence in Hampshire.

"Aye,” Vincent said. “The killer."

Susanna drew in a deep breath. She had to finish this. She could not retire to her “widowhood” in Kent leaving this undone. She was relieved Petronella was safe, but if she did not uncover the murderer's identity, come April another woman would die. She had thought and thought, if only to take her mind off Robert's perfidy, and it seemed to her that, unless Peregrine Marsdon was accustomed to make an annual journey in from Essex for the express purpose of killing, the most likely candidates were Francis Elliott and his father.

"Petronella told me that Master Elliott visits another bankside brothel with some regularity,” she said to Vincent. “Is it possible to find out which girl he favors? Talk to her?"

Vincent gave her a long, hard look, then said, “Elliott keeps lodgings near the Castle-on-the-Hoop.

"Is that unusual?” Her heart began to beat faster. It sounded suspicious to her, but she did not know the customs of Southwark.

"He has a room at court, does he not? And his father's house in Bermondsey to go to? Why a third place? And no one has ever seen a woman visit him there. I asked."

So, he shared her suspicions. “I think, Vincent, that you must take me there. Now."

A short time later, accompanied by the escort she had brought from Catte Street, consisting of Jennet, Fulke, and Lionel, Vincent led Susanna through the dank and dirty streets of Southwark to a tenement more foul than anything her nightmares could have conjured. Elliott's rooms were situated on the top floor.

No one answered her knock. For a fleeting moment, Susanna contemplated turning away, fleeing into Kent and forgetting all about murder, all about treason. Then Vincent lifted one ham-handed fist and broke down the door. Her heart full of trepidation, she went in.

The proof she'd sought was not difficult to find. In a chest, carefully preserved, were seven triangles of cloth. Susanna recognized one of them, black brocade, as coming from Diane's sleeve.

A supply of feathers, exactly like the one she'd found by Diane's body, was kept in a separate box.

The most damning evidence sat on the table next to the bedstead. It was undoubtedly the miniature Elliott had spoken of. Jerome had not destroyed it. And the woman in the portrait was dark haired, not blond.

"Helen,” she murmured, picking it up to study more closely.

The name provoked a startled look from Vincent. “Who is she?” he asked.

"Francis Elliott's mother. She deserted the family when he was thirteen. Ran away to the north. Or so he told me. Is it possible he killed her? A boy."

"At thirteen? Old enough, but—"

Before he could finish the thought, a sound at the door diverted their attention. Francis Elliott stood there, shock blanking his handsome features for a moment when he realized he had been found out.

Then he flashed the same charming smile he'd displayed in prior meetings. “Lady Appleton. I am honored."

Ignoring his broken door, he advanced into the room and came right up to her. With Vincent at her side, Susanna did not feel unduly alarmed. Lionel and Fulke stood near the room's one tiny window, alert and watchful. And she heard the rustle of Jennet's skirt as she moved to stand just behind her mistress.

"Your mother?” she asked, holding the miniature toward Master Elliott.

"Aye.” He took it without glancing at it.

"You lied to me, Master Elliott.” Odd, Susanna thought. Damning as the evidence seemed, she clung to a small hope that she was wrong. Could Francis Elliott provide another explanation besides the obvious? Had he lied to protect someone else? His father?

Then she looked directly into his eyes and saw there that she was not mistaken. They were as cold as death and filled with hatred.

"Time to finish what I've started,” he muttered.

He made no attempt to harm Susanna. Instead, hugging the small painting to his breast, he turned and dashed through the open doorway, catching them all by surprise.

"Stop him!” Jennet cried, the first to recover her wits.

Fulke and Lionel sprinted after the escaping villain, but Vincent went to the window. “I know where he is going,” he said.

The view encompassed little more than the decrepit house across the road. A sign swung, creaking, above the door, marking it as the Castle-on-the-Hoop.

"He did not kill his mother,” Vincent said. “Not yet."

"Helen Elliott is the gentlewoman Petronella told me of?” Jennet's voice rose in astonishment. “The one who went to work in a whorehouse for fun!"

"Aye. I do think so. Transformed herself from Helen into Heloise. ‘Twas Heloise I went to in search of names of victims, and thought nothing of it that she had so many questions of her own. But Elliott's a regular visitor there, and she'd have told him of my Molly's interest. I put her in danger by saying too much."

Molly? Petronella's real name surprised Susanna. It seemed so ... ordinary. She touched Vincent's arm. “Molly's safe now. Safe and far away. But we must do what we can to keep Francis Elliott from claiming another life. He is mad, surely, killing women who resemble his mother when she is the one he's wanted to murder all along."

She would have hastened to the woman's aid, but Vincent held her back. “No need to fear for Heloise, madam. Her son's the one who deserves our pity now."

"I must see for myself."

Over everyone's protests, Susanna insisted on entering the Castle-on-the-Hoop. It was a far different sort of establishment than the one Petronella had run, but Susanna did not allow herself to think about what she saw. Not then. She stored fleeting impressions away to contemplate later.

At the sounds of shouts and cries of pain, they rushed up the stairs to the rooms Heloise occupied. They found there an immense woman, her once-black hair turned gray, her formerly tiny body grown gross and bloated, her flabby throat marred by fresh red marks. As she shrieked orders to her henchmen, the two burly guards wrestled Francis Elliott to the rush-covered floor. One of them began to stab him repeatedly.

Horrified, Susanna tried to intervene, but Vincent prevented her. He held her arms until Elliott lay limp and bloody and his murderers had fled, ordered by their mistress to hie themselves to safety.

Slowly, Susanna turned to face the woman who had given birth to Francis Elliott, abandoned him and his father, and now chose to let the men who'd killed him go free. “He was your son,” she said. “How could you—"

Bitter laughter cut short the question. “I have no son,” Heloise declared. “Not anymore."

"You are the gentlewoman who has been conspiring with Petronella,” Heloise said with a derisive twist of her lips. “Lady Appleton. You should have stayed at home and tended to your own concerns."

"As you did, Helen?"

Again the woman laughed, but this time there might have been grudging admiration in the sound.

"I like you,” she declared. “And in the end you have rid me of a most annoying problem. I always knew he'd try to kill me one of these days."

Aware she must tread warily, that Heloise might well be as mad as her son, yet Susanna felt an overwhelming need for answers. This terrifying woman was the only one who had them.

"Why did he kill them?” she asked. “Why did he want to kill you?"

"Because I was not already dead.” Her tone was almost conversational as she sank into the cushioned recesses of a large, padded chair and reached for the container of ale on a nearby table. She drank deeply, smacking her lips, then belched. “He thought I was dead until some eight years past. Then, one night after a visit to the Sign of the Smock, he came here. Recognized me.” She drank again. Burped once more. “He was never the same after that."

"What do you mean?” Susanna asked.

"Francis became impotent.” She gave a nasty chuckle. “My girls think I must have been responsible for that. The whores at the Sign of the Smock found him lusty enough ... until he discovered who I was. What I was."

Fighting a shudder of revulsion, Susanna took a step closer to Heloise. This unnatural mother had taunted her son with his loss of manly prowess. Heloise appeared to have reveled in Francis's failures.

"Was Lora Tylney the first he killed?"

"Aye."

"Why?"

Again that horrid laugh. “A madness overtook him, or so he said. She was the first woman he met following our tender reunion who looked like me. He came here the day after he killed her and told me what he'd done.” Her grin was ugly, a ribald sneer.

"Why did he leave a feather by Lora's body?"

"You know the answer to that. He thought it appropriate. His private message that the girl was no better than she should be. The first kill excited him,” Heloise bragged, “and he knew his action had impressed me.''

"And St. Mark's Day?” Susanna asked. That, too, had become part of Francis Elliott's ritual after Lora's death.

Heloise's face lit with another ghastly smile. “The feather was a random thing, plucked from a pageant wagon on impulse, meant to show everyone Lora Tylney was no better than a Winchester goose. Killing her on St. Mark's Day was also by chance. Only afterward did Francis realize how appropriate that had been. ‘Tis my birthday.” Her expression widened into a grotesque parody of pleasure. “After that, each dead girl became his annual present to me. A trophy. Proof of his manhood.” She shrugged, not caring why he'd killed, only that he'd done so because of her.

Her son's murders had given her a sense of power, Susanna thought, sickened by the idea.

"He searched out women who were small and dark. He'd keep careful watch over the chosen one until April, that he might find her easily and kill her when my special day came around again."

By implication, mother and son had maintained regular contact after their reunion. Had simply learning what she had become driven Francis Elliott mad? Or had it been her taunts? There was no doubt in Susanna's mind that he had run mad. No sane person could have behaved as he had, enacting what he longed to do to Heloise with others who only looked as she had when she was young.

Susanna was sure now that Francis Elliott had intended to kill Petronella. Perhaps he had mistaken Diane for her. Or he had chosen to make the substitution at the last moment. Diane must have sensed something threatening about him when he took her to the inn. That would explain why she'd seemed so fearful when she came to Catte Street.

But Heloise's role in the murders, the way she'd encouraged her son to commit them, was more chilling than anything Francis Elliott had done. And her henchmen would not have slain her son, Susanna realized, a man who must have been well known to them, unless she'd ordered them to kill.

Concern for her own safety and that of her retainers urged Susanna to end the interview quickly. This woman was evil, and she had the advantage here in her own house.

"You will want to see to your son.” Susanna felt a moment's pity for Jerome Elliott, though she thought he'd been more fortunate than he knew when his wife left him.

"Aye. We'll dispose of him,” Heloise said.

Susanna did not like the sound of that, but she did not argue. Only when they were outside, walking briskly along Maiden Lane, did she turn to Vincent and speak of her concern. “Is it not our duty to call the constable and the coroner?"

The incredulous look he gave her spoke volumes.