AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mr. Herriard was still frowning when he entered the ground floor office. His senior clerk, Gleever, looked up at him with some concern. "I do hope the pies weren't overcooked again, sir," he said.
Mr. Herriard explained that the pies had been satisfactory, but seeing a ratcatcher was not. "I do hope our neighbors aren't experiencing problems again," he said. "If one becomes infested, we all soon do, and it makes a singularly poor impression upon clients—as I've told my colleagues repeatedly."
"No danger of infestation, sir, I promise you. The fellow did come here, but it was a mistake, as it turns out. He'd got the wrong street altogether, you see. We'd been in the cellar but a few minutes before he realized his error. He did apologize, sir. And took the trouble—since he was here, as he said—to look at the places we'd closed up after the last time. Said they were nice and tight."
"I'm relieved to hear it."
"Said we might get a mouse now and again, but no worse."
"I'd rather no vermin of any kind,” said Mr. Herriard. "Let us go down and see what may be done."
Half an hour later, Mr. Herriard stood at his office window, gazing down at the street below, and chillingly aware that something had already been done. The small, dusty jar of prussic acid his landlord kept in the cellar was gone.
The lawyer told himself it might have disappeared weeks ago. The landlord might have removed it, convinced the rat problem was solved.
Mr. Herriard returned to his desk, signed the papers Gleever had prepared for him, ticked those items off his schedule, and left the office to attend to the next.
His errand took him to Great-Knight-Rider Street, to the south of St. Paul's. It was there, in Doctors' Commons, that he received the second shock.
"I am sorry, Mr. Herriard," said the clerk. "I did promise to have the documents ready for you, but we've been at sixes and sevens. Lord Quentin was here with the Comte d'Esmond, and it took nearly an hour to find what they wanted. And we were fortunate indeed it was only an hour—for a will ten years old and misfiled in the bargain."
"How very odd," said Mr. Herriard.
"I didn't see why they must come pester us about it," the clerk said. "But then, they should have pestered you instead, I don't doubt. I hope we spared you that inconvenience at least."
"One of my clients' wills, I take it," said Mr. Herriard. "Of ten years ago, you said."
"Bridgeburton was the name, sir. I haven't put it back yet. Perhaps you'd like to look at it, refresh your memory—for they may bother you all the same."
"That won't be necessary," said Mr. Herriard. "I remember."
After he left Doctors' Commons, Mr. Herriard walked through the busy streets of the City, and on westward. He walked steadily, shoulders straight, his face its customary mask of quiet amiability.
He walked to a burial ground, and through its gates, and made his way along the narrow paths until he reached a three-month-old grave.
He stood a long while studying the simple monument Leila Beaumont had ordered. No cherubs or weeping willows. No poetic inscriptions. No mention of beloved spouse of anybody. Just the simplest bare facts of name, date of birth, date of death: 13 January 1829.
"You bastard," he said.
Then he bowed his head and wept.
The afternoon waned, and the shadows about him lengthened. He remained in the same rigid pose, weeping still, oblivious to the law officers scattered about the graveyard, blocking all escape routes. He didn't notice that their leader stood with a man and a woman not many yards away.
"They're all in place," Quentin said. "Best take him while there's still light. Mrs. Beaumont, I think you ought to return to the carriage. If he won't come quietly, matters could become unpleasant."
"Matters are unpleasant," she said. "I want to speak to him." She started to move away.
Ismal clasped her arm. "Do not be foolish," he said. "Even villains weep. He cries for what he has lost, not remorse."
"I need to understand," she said. "And he won't tell me with the lot of you about."
"He stole from you," Ismal said. "He taught you to mistrust yourself, so that he could control you. What more is there to understand?"
"I don't know—but if there is, he deserves a chance to explain. As Sherburne did. As David and Fiona did. As you did," she added in lower tones.
Ismal let go of her. "I shall be but a few feet away," he whispered. "If he raises a hand to you, I shall cut out his heart."
"I should hope so," she said, and briskly walked on down the path to Andrew.
Even when she stood beside him, he didn't so much as turn his head. "Andrew," she said.
He stiffened, and looked about, then hastily drew out a handkerchief and wiped his face. "Have they come for me?" he asked.
Perhaps she was a gullible fool, but her heart went out to him. She had to clench her fists to keep from taking his hand. "Yes," she said.
"I'm sorry," he said. "A nasty murder trial. Just what nobody wants, I'm sure. I thought of hanging myself. A bullet through the brain. A dose of prussic acid would be easiest—and appropriate. But Esmond took it, didn't he? And I never thought to stop at the chemist's first. I just...walked...here." He put the handkerchief away. "Beaumont was insane, you know. I hadn't any choice."
"Francis was mad and desperate and he was forced to leave England," she said. "He must have needed money. He must have threatened to expose you unless you helped him. Is that it?"
"I didn't know what he'd been up to until he told me. About Langford and the letters. Sherburne and his wife. Lettice Woodleigh. Avory. I had no idea. I didn't even know about that filthy brothel of his until he told me. He was waiting outside the office the morning after they gave him what he deserved. I didn't want to be seen talking to him. I took him down to the cellar. And I listened to him raving, and wanted to throttle him. Then I spotted the bottle of prussic acid. I wasn't sure then how I would do it, but I knew I must. I hadn't any choice. They poison mad dogs, you know. That's what he was."
"You had no idea what your partner had been up to all these years?" she asked. "Am I to believe you two only came together to kill my father and steal my dowry? Then you went your separate ways?"
"We did what we had to ten years ago," he said. "Your father ruined us. I invested in good faith. It wasn't until he'd lost all my money that I found out the kinds of criminal enterprises he'd put my funds into. The authorities were closing in on him, and I'd be dragged down with him. There wasn't any choice. We had to get rid of him and destroy everything that could link us to him."
"You didn't have to steal my dowry," she said.
"It wasn't stolen. Your dowry went to your husband."
"I see. And he gave half to you—for services rendered, I collect."
He winced. "I tried to make it right," he said stiffly. "I told Francis at the start that we couldn't take your money unless one of us married you. I told him we couldn't abandon a seventeen-year-old girl—leave her fatherless, with a paltry thousand pounds and no one to take care of her." He met her gaze. "Even after Beaumont ruined you, I would have married you, Leila. I would not have abandoned you. Perhaps I should have wed you, regardless. As it is, I shall never forgive myself for not watching you more carefully—or him, rather."
"You let me believe it was my fault he seduced me," she said. "All these years I've believed I was...a whore. By nature. Weak-willed and inclined to wickedness, like Papa. All these years I've felt ashamed of who I was and what I was."
He inhaled sharply, as though she'd struck him. "Dear God—
I—my dear, I never meant that."
"That's what I believed," she said.
His shoulders sagged. "I just wanted to make you strong. You were so naive. You hadn't an inkling of your effect on men. I was afraid Beaumont would neglect you, leaving you prey to others like him. I wanted to put you on your guard, that was all—so that no one else would use and hurt you and destroy your self-respect. The last thing I would have wanted was to destroy it myself. I think the world of you, Leila. Always have."
As she looked up into Andrew's pale, tautly composed countenance, her conscience urged her to put herself in his place—a thirty-two-year-old bachelor confronting a despoiled adolescent girl—and ask whether she could have dealt with it any better than he had.
And looking into her own heart, she had to admit that she had been abominably naive, even in adulthood—about men, about love, about normal human desire, as Ismal had taught her. Perhaps she would have soon put Andrew's long-ago lecture into more rational perspective if Francis hadn't made her believe something was wrong with her. Just as he'd made David believe something was irreparably wrong with him.
"I believe you," she said gently. "I should have realized. It's not your nature to be cruel or manipulative. That was Francis' talent. Just because you had the misfortune to be tangled with him doesn't mean you were like him."
"I didn't know what he was like," he said. "If I had...well, there's no point in 'if onlys.' I didn't know. Not a fraction."
She brushed a twig from the tombstone. "I didn't realize more than a fraction either, until very recently."
"With Esmond's help, apparently." He glanced back. "There he is, like some damned nemesis. And Quentin with him." With a weary shrug, he turned back to her. "I had a feeling something was wrong when I heard Lady Brentmor had taken you up. I knew that her son, Jason, had been in Venice ten years ago, on your father's trail. Then there was Esmond, in Paris a year ago. And within a month, it appears, Beaumont's disgusting empire fell to pieces. I suppose Esmond saw to that."
