The Deathly Portent (43 page)

Time dragged, and Ottilia tried not to fret. If it were all in vain, she dreaded the uncomfortable drop from tension. Not to mention the hideous realisation that she could have made a mistake.

Then a whisper at her ear alerted her.

“Listen!”

Ottilia strained to hear beyond the sudden thumping in her own chest. A footfall? If so, it was stealthily taken. Like a cat slinking through the night.

Ottilia shivered and felt Francis’s hand slide about her from behind.

“Courage!”

His breath caressed her ear as he murmured the word, and Ottilia willed her fast beating heart to silence.

The footsteps were nearer at hand, abruptly sounding stronger on the gravel outside the front of the smithy. Ottilia listened as they padded lightly over the stone flags in the darkened part beyond the moonlit scene.

They came to a stop. Ottilia held her breath. An audible gasp sounded, followed by a grunting curse. Then something fell to the floor with a loud clunk.

“Now!” whispered Francis behind her.

Ottilia stepped around the ruined smithy wall and walked quietly into the gloomy interior.

A figure was standing just inside the roofless smithy, its shocked features, ghostly but visible in the rays of the moon, staring up at the improvised body hanging from the remains of the rafter, its full skirts half concealing a pair of legs—mere stuffed sacking—with shoes on their ends.

Ottilia thrust down upon the wild beating at her heart and spoke as coolly as she could.

“Good evening, Miss Beeleigh.”

T
he woman jumped, and her head came down, sending her face back into shadow. For a moment she neither moved nor spoke, and Ottilia could only surmise that she was staring directly at her. She shifted a little farther into the smithy, the better to confront the creature.

“You are too late, you know. Poor Bertha.”

At that a snort escaped the other woman’s lips, and she walked quickly forward into the light, her glance flying up to the suspended figure.

“Do you take me for a fool? You tricked me!”

“Yes,” agreed Ottilia coolly. “It was the only way to catch you.”

The almond eyes narrowed. “You think you have me? We’ll see about that!”

Swiftly she turned and made to speed back the way she had come, but she had taken only two steps when Ryde moved into the aperture behind her, blocking her way. She stopped dead.

“A pox on you!”

Turning again, she looked past Ottilia, who realised at once that Francis had shown himself, his pistol held loosely in his hand.

“A pox on you all!” uttered Miss Beeleigh fiercely. Once more she glanced up at the hanging figure. “What
is
that?”

Ottilia went to the hook and untied the rope, letting the dummy fall. It crashed between them, and Miss Beeleigh gazed down at the stuffed sacking with its ludicrous legs and petticoats.

“Where is Bertha, then?”

“Safely in her home, with Sam Hawes to guard her. We could not be sure, you see, that you would not go there first. Although I expected you to make your preparations here before fetching her upon whatever excuse you had dreamed up.”

“What has she brought with her, Ryde?” asked Francis, nodding towards the indistinguishable pile that had evidently fallen from Miss Beeleigh’s hands when she saw the body. He moved forward a few paces. “Don’t fear to leave your post. I have her covered.”

Ryde glanced at the gleam of metal protruding from Francis’s hand and bent to examination, holding up the items as he identified them.

“Rope, hammer, nails, cloth. Probably meant to cover her head once she’d delivered the killing blow.”

“And then fulfil Cassie’s vision by hanging the poor woman’s body just as we made it appear,” finished Francis.

“Just so,” said Ottilia, her gaze fixed on Miss Beeleigh.

The woman’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Hence this subterfuge,” Ottilia agreed. “I hardly think it will take much to convince a jury. Besides, we do have some evidence.”

“What evidence?” spat the woman.

“Well, since you have failed to silence Bertha, we know
for a start that you persuaded her to fetch Molly out of the Cock. You told her, did you not, that Molly had killed her husband? And that you planned to prove it.”

Miss Beeleigh’s features remained frozen, and she did not speak. Ottilia sighed inwardly. The woman was not going to admit a single thing.

“Bertha believed it to begin with. But after she had done the deed and went home, she started to think. She knew Molly very well, you see, their husbands being friends for so long. Belatedly, she began to disbelieve what you had said. Then she began to wonder why you, Miss Beeleigh, should take it into your head to play investigator when I was known to be looking into her husband’s death. Why had you not spoken to me of your suspicions? Bertha grew afraid. And in the morning, when she heard the news, she knew she had lured the poor woman to her death.”

“Pah! A fairy tale,” snapped the other. “Why did she not carry this story to you?”

“She was afraid. And with reason. She was an accessory to a murder, for one thing. For another, I don’t doubt she feared for her life. If you had slain Molly, you must also have slain Duggleby. What should stop you from killing her, too?”

Miss Beeleigh drew in a sharp breath through her nose. “You’ve yet to prove I had any hand in either killing.”

“It was not only the killings, Miss Beeleigh,” said Ottilia, unable to keep a note of reprimand from out of her voice. “What of the work you put in to incite the villagers to turn against Cassie Dale? Once I had entered the picture, you saw it was insufficient to use the visions. You took care to breed violence in the Cock with your warnings, issued in such a way as to ensure rebellion. Just as you did when Will set up his stake and you saw an opportunity to drive me away.”

“That was her fault, too?” uttered Francis on an edge of rage.

“Oh yes. She had primed them well. Tabitha Hawes had the full story from Alice.”

“You will pay for that,” Francis told the woman vengefully, and the gun in his hand lifted a trifle.

Ottilia threw up a hand to enjoin his silence, for she had not finished. Miss Beeleigh’s commanding countenance gave nothing away, but a telltale muscle twitched briefly in her cheek, and the moon’s rays showed a glitter at those almond-shaped eyes.

“When you found I had discovered Molly was not killed in the coffee room, you sought to make use of the accusations against Hannah. You took up her tray, did you not, whilst everyone was on the green, including Pilton?”

“The devil!” Francis swore. “That was when she planted the knife in Hannah’s commode?”

“The very knife she had used, yes, and perhaps wondered how best to dispose of it.” Ottilia drew a shaky breath. “It would not have mattered to you, would it, Miss Beeleigh, if poor Hannah had expired in that lock-up? Lord Henbury would have been satisfied of her guilt.”

At last Miss Beeleigh spoke, thrusting up her chin in her peculiarly superior manner. “And how was it I got into the Blue Pig after Pakefield had locked up.”

Ottilia was betrayed into a laugh. “Oh, come, Miss Beeleigh, do you take me for a simpleton? The back door key was missing. You gave yourself ample opportunity to slip it back, leaving it on the stair when you chose to supervise the kitchen staff in a brave show of help.”

Miss Beeleigh snorted. “Highly inventive, Lady Francis. You have proved nothing to say I committed these deeds. Nor yet why I am held to have done so.”

Ottilia tutted. “Dear me, Miss Beeleigh, you must think me remarkably naïve. Pardon me if I speak with candour.”

“Say what you like. Makes no difference to me. Poppycock, the whole thing.”

“Is it? You are a woman of iron, Miss Beeleigh, but there is one chink in your armour. I saw it from the first, and it has betrayed you.”

The woman’s face stiffened, and her eyes dared Ottilia to go on, despite her words. “Don’t know what you’re talking of.”

“I think you do. Poor Evelina and her dog.”

Francis, who had been watching the swift give-and-take of words, intervened again at this point. “What the devil do you mean, Tillie?”

Ottilia glanced at him. “I daresay you will not credit it, but I’m afraid Miss Beeleigh cherishes a fondness for Evelina Radlett which goes far beyond mere friendship.”

“What, you mean—”

He stopped, and Ottilia knew he would not give voice to a possibility that must revolt him. Ottilia did not suffer a like revulsion. Rather, she pitied the woman.

Before she could say more, a new voice entered the fray, quavering a little.

“Don’t say you did it for me, Alethea?”

“Mrs. Radlett!”

Ottilia peered into the gloom as Miss Beeleigh turned sharply. She could just make out the shorter and stouter outline, standing a little behind where Ryde still remained, ready to leap should Miss Beeleigh attempt to escape by that route.

“Evelina! What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Radlett, her person enveloped in a dark cloak, moved into the forge, her eyes riveted on her friend. “I followed you.”

Miss Beeleigh started towards her, but the widow flinched back, and Miss Beeleigh halted abruptly, pain just visible in her ghostly features.

“You should be asleep.”

The widow Radlett’s eyes were large in a countenance pale as the silver sheen above. Ottilia could not tell whether it was a trick of the moonlight, but indeed there was matter enough here to dismay the poor creature.

“So I would have been, had I drunk the tisane you made up for me.”

“Laudanum?” Ottilia guessed. “Just as she gave you the
night before Duggleby’s death, so you would not know she had gone out to make her preparations.”

Mrs. Radlett’s eyes remained on her friend. “You gave it to me again on the night Molly died. But I spilled it. I saw you from the window, Alethea, making for the smithy. And after, I saw you coming back from the direction of the Blue Pig.”

Francis gave a grunt. “You saw her? And said nothing of it?”

“How could I? She is my friend.”

“A pretty friend, to be doing away with the blacksmith merely for a dog,” snapped Francis.

Little rivulets gleamed upon the widow’s cheeks, and Ottilia realised she was weeping.

“Was it that, Alethea? Was it Toby?”

At last Miss Beeleigh’s rigid pose relaxed a little, and she put out an unsteady hand. A sighing breath left her lips, and her voice was hoarse.

“You were so very unhappy, my dearest. I could not forgive him.”

For a moment no one said a word. Despite all, Ottilia was moved by the note of unutterable tenderness in the woman’s voice. So deeply did the two of them seem to hold each other’s gaze that Ottilia believed they were in that moment oblivious of the rest of the company.

Then one of Mrs. Radlett’s hands came out from beneath her cloak, and she held it towards her friend, a silent invitation. Miss Beeleigh hesitated, and then took the few stumbling steps that brought her close to the other, and Mrs. Radlett sank into the woman’s embrace.

The pose held for the space of several seconds. Then a deafening report shattered the silence.

Shock held Ottilia in thrall. In seeming slow motion she saw Miss Beeleigh recoil. Her eyes registered a species of horror. Then they rolled up into her head as she swayed and then crashed to the smithy floor.

Ottilia came out of her stupor to discover the gun in
Mrs. Radlett’s hand, its ball spent. She was looking down at the wreck of her friend, her shoulders heaving with silent sobs.

Miss Beeleigh lay crookedly on the ground, her eyes still open, blood streaming from the wound just below her bosom. Evelina Radlett had shot her through the heart.

F
or the space of several agonising seconds no one moved or spoke. Mesmerised, Francis gazed upon the tableau set before him, unable to think beyond the appalling occurrence.

His eyes lifted from the bleeding corpse to the metal protrusion held in the other woman’s hand, which now extended from its former deathly concealment beneath her cloak. The sight dictated action.

“Dear Lord! Ryde, get that thing off her!”

His groom moved to extract the pistol from Mrs. Radlett’s nerveless hand.

“It won’t go off again, m’lord.”

“I know that,” Francis said, shock lending impatience to his tone. Without reloading, the gun could not fire again, but he could not endure to see it in the widow’s hands.

What the devil were they to do now? Were all Tillie’s efforts blasted? With the murderer killed would anyone believe the truth? And how in the world were they to explain away a third corpse to the irascible Lord Henbury?

He glanced at Tillie and found her gaze fixed upon the weapon now in Ryde’s possession. As if she felt his regard, her head turned, and in the pale gleam of moonlight he saw the tautness in her face. She spoke before he could formulate a question.

“Francis, we must act! I’ll wager few will not have been awakened by that shot. We will have half the village about us in a trice.”

Francis’s mind leapt, encompassing the myriad complications about to engulf them all. “Lord, yes!”