The Connicle Curse Page 23

  Colin gave a patient smile as he gathered the loose gems and returned them to the pouch. “I shall have to take your word for it, as I don’t have a precise accounting for what was taken. I suspect even Mr. Guitnu would be hard-pressed to make an accurate report.”

  “That’s all of it,” Sunny reiterated.

  “And just how were you able to take it?” Colin asked as he returned the items to the pack.

  “I watched my mother open the safe one afternoon. That’s how I got the idea.”

  Colin stood up with his tea and wandered back to the fireplace, setting the cup on the mantel in exchange for a small knife whose blade he began to absently buff with a cloth. “And from there it was only a matter of secreting the things to Cillian until you decided you had enough, is that it?” He shook his head again.

  “You needn’t be so disapproving!” Cillian snarled as he stood up.

  Sunny gripped his nearer sleeve and coaxed him back down with a look that was as adoring as it was controlled. I knew if she stayed with this boy she would spend her lifetime gripping him by that sleeve.

  “I meant no offense,” Colin muttered offhandedly, his attentions seemingly on rejuvenating the blade of his little knife. “What I really wonder is why you’ve brought all these things to us?” He looked at the two of them, one eyebrow arched skyward, as he finally set the blade down.

  The two of them stared mutely back at him, their faces awash with trepidation and distress. As I watched them, I noted their hesitation to even look at one another and knew it hinted at something that suddenly struck me with the certainty of a coming storm. And when I glanced back over at Colin and spied the thinnest shadow of a smirk on his lips, I realized that he knew as well.

  “I listened to what you said the other night,” Cillian spoke up, his voice thin and tight. “I told Sunny everything. About being shunned . . . the color of our babies . . . not having much money.” He slid his eyes toward Sunny, but she still did not look back. “We talked about all of it. . . .” His voice trailed off, though he had not yet managed to utter the very thing he had come to say.

  It seemed a full minute passed, Colin idling before the fireplace and me nervously sipping at my tea, before Cillian finally sucked in a breath and said, “We want you to give everything back.”

  “Me?” Colin said simply.

  “And you must speak to my father,” Sunny added in a rush as she folded a hand into one of Cillian’s. “You are a man. He might listen to you.”

  “Speak to him?” Colin’s brow folded in tandem with my own. “About what?”

  “Us,” Cillian answered. “You must tell him that we are to be married. You must tell him we are in love.”

  Colin opened his mouth and then immediately shut it, turning his gaze to me with a confusion that would otherwise have made me laugh. “I should think,” I spoke up, “if there is a conversation to be had with Mr. Guitnu, that you should be the one to have it, Cillian. It is the suitor’s duty. It is the custom—” But as soon as I said that word I understood how wrong I was.

  “The custom . . .” Cillian instantly pounced on the flaw of my words, “. . . is for Sunny’s parents to decree who she will marry. A match bound by greed and obligation, not love.” He looked over at Colin. “You know that, Mr. Pendragon. You lived in India. I haven’t a chance.”

  Colin flopped into his seat with a heavy sigh. “The two of you have already made such a muck of this situation. If you ever had any chance I doubt one would remain in spite of your returning these things.”

  “You must try, Mr. Pendragon,” Sunny pleaded, her voice shaking with desperation. “I love Cillian. I cannot turn away from him to marry another. It would be a lie of my soul and I could not bear that.”

  “You told me you understood,” Cillian charged ahead. “The other day you said you thought you would lose your mind if you couldn’t be with the woman you fell in love with when you were twenty-four.”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly what I said—”

  “It is what you said,” Cillian insisted. “Is she here?” He screwed up his face. “Is she the woman downstairs?”

  “No. No!” Colin shook his head and rubbed his brow. “The person I . . . It’s complicated, Cillian. And your life will be too. Not just now but every day going forward.”

  “Are you divorced?!” Cillian’s face went white.

  “No!” Colin leapt up and paced back to the fireplace. “But we live forever on the edge.” He snatched up the poker and stabbed at one of the sputtering logs, splitting it in a shower of sparks. “Look . . .” He turned around, the poker still wielded in his hand. “I’ll take these things back to your father, Sundha, and I will do my best to convince him about the two of you, but you must prepare yourself for the very real possibility that I will fail.”

  “He cannot stop us.” Cillian glowered.

  “But he can,” Colin answered. “In this he can.”

  The two of them stared back at Colin with defiance, their hands clutched together so tightly that their fingers were coloring with the effort. Even so, I knew it would never be enough to keep them from being severed.

  CHAPTER 36

  The message, delivered mid-morning by Mrs. Connicle’s young, awkward part-time maid, Letty Hollings, was unexpected and distressing. It felt ever more so given that the dawn had revealed itself to be another of brooding, steely clouds that had yawed wide to let loose a torrent of rain before we’d even had our breakfast. By the time Miss Hollings arrived, Colin had already stripped and cleaned two guns, re-buffed the blade on the small knife he’d been fretting over since the start of this case, flung his weights about, and finally retreated to the bathroom to ice his still tender left thigh. I, however, was hard-pressed to think of any reason to pull myself from the newspaper or the blazing fire he had built.

  So I was alone in the study when Mrs. Behmoth, after ascertaining my availability by hollering up at me, sent Letty upstairs. I tossed the newspaper aside and went to the landing, intent on scowling at Mrs. Behmoth, until I caught sight of the young woman. Her face was pale and worn, and even from the top of the stairs I could see that her eyes were swollen and rimmed in red.

  I kept quiet as I ushered her to the fireplace to warm up, wanting her to settle in while I rousted Colin, but she was far too agitated. Instead, in a single barrage, she told me that Randolph was downstairs waiting for her and that Miss Porter had only given her leave to be gone long enough to inform us of what had occurred. And then she had burst into tears.

  “They’ve taken me mistress ta Needham ’Ills and moved ’er in,” she said through a bray of sobs and sniffling. “They’re closin’ down the ’ouse and lettin’ the staff go.”

  “What? Who took her there?”

  “ ’Er doctor. ’E sent a man round with a note ta tell us.”

  “A note?”

  “Ya.” She swiped at her nose with her sleeve. “It were from that man what works for Mr. Connicle. ’E says they ’ave ta shut the ’ouse and sell it.” She covered her face with her hands and wept, her whole body shaking.

  I moved to her to offer what comfort I could, but she stepped away from me and I knew she was uncomfortable being alone with me. No matter that I was desperate to get more information, I knew none would be forthcoming. Not only had she become quite inconsolable, but also no one in the household would have taken her into their confidence. So with little other recourse I walked her back downstairs and delivered her to Randolph’s care. I noticed the dazed expression coloring his face and knew what Colin was going to say about all of this. Which was why, not twenty minutes after they left, Colin and I were on our way to see Mrs. Connicle at Needham Hills.

  The place sits like a long-forgotten dowager in Waltham Forest on the northeast side of the city between Leyton and Walthamstow. It was once the Wentworth estate, the noble home of the preeminent carriage-manufacturing family of two centuries before. Which is why it had a carriage house larger than most London homes, capable of hou
sing more than three dozen coaches with room to spare. The stables were equally enormous, providing shelter for enough horses to convey nearly all of those carriages simultaneously. Yet all of it was overshadowed by the main home, a fortress-like façade of dark native stone that seemed to be reaching toward the sky at its two front corner turrets. The bevy of arched windows were all crenellated as if to keep invaders out, and the whole of the structure rose a height of four stories and covered a width of some five times greater than that. One would not be faulted for thinking it could hold a small village. Indeed, the early Wentworth families had been quite large, with staffs well in excess of a hundred. However, the modern age had been unkind to both the Wentworth business and family.

  First an issue had developed with the axle assembly on several of their finest coaches almost fifty years ago. There had been rumors of sabotage, but nothing had borne out of it other than the mortal blow to their reputation. The eldest brother had committed suicide, leaving only a sister and sickly brother behind. The brother succumbed to his disease within that same year, leaving the sister to try to repair the damage done. She shuttered the business five years later, in 1853.

  The sister never married but stayed within the confines of the house, if a home that size can be said to have confines, until her death eighteen years later. As she had left no heirs, the estate transferred to the county, where, due to the crenellations fronting the windows of the main house, it was determined to be an ideal place to house those of unsound mind.

  I could not stop the shiver that slithered down my spine as we turned down the macadam path that led to Needham Hills. True to its name, there were small knolls that rolled off on both sides of the heavily wooded road. The main structure, the original house, could be seen peeking through the trees as we drew closer until, as though an invisible hand had been placed against the brooding woods, the trees abruptly fell back to reveal the cold, stone building looming under the steely gray sky.

  I had not been back to this place in fourteen years. Not since I had shaken the clutch of opium. Rail-thin, hallucinatory, terrified, and running out of options, I had allowed my unexpected benefactor to convince me to sign my care over to him. He was a beautiful man who looked at me with wounded eyes the color of azure, and I wondered why he cared. I could not remember him paying me any heed during our mutual years at the Easling and Temple Senior Academy, and yet there he had suddenly been, affecting my heart and mind, and making me consider that there might be worth to me after all. So I had placed my shattered life in his hands. And he had brought me here.

  As the carriage drew closer Colin’s hand settled over mine as if he had read my thoughts, and I rather suppose he did. He twined his fingers with mine and squeezed, but neither of us spoke. There was nothing to say.

  I had remained at Needham Hills for three months, enduring tortures designed to rid me of the weaknesses that had purportedly drawn me to opium. I had been confined naked in a small, makeshift room of the former stable for the first two weeks and pelted with buckets of icy water at all hours until I fully lost track of time and feared for the last threads of my sanity. Any infraction on my part was rewarded by a bucketful of frigid water: if I did not rise when a keeper entered, if I did not eat the sparse food brought me, if I dared refuse any question fired through the slot in the door. There was no bed or bedding of any sort, no furniture, and no visitors. I had nothing but my own rage and hatred.

  One afternoon, when I was sure I had been abandoned by anything that was good, they threw a pair of muslin pants and a shirt at me. I had slowly dressed, the movements feeling stiff and unfamiliar, and they had taken me to the main building. How I had scowled at the afternoon sun that felt so harsh and foreign to my eyes.

  I’d been delivered to a tiny room with two chairs and a table in what had once been the servants’ quarters and told to wait without moving. And that is exactly what I had done, having become the well-trained creature they had made me. Several minutes later Colin had been shown in. I still remember the sight of him as clearly as if it had been an hour ago. He wore a navy-blue suit with a pale blue shirt beneath, his gold watch fob glittering from a pocket in his checked vest. His tawny hair had been combed yet still somehow managed to look tousled, and when his eyes met mine I found the same notch of pain that I had seen there before, and in that instant I had burst out in sobs. He reached me so quickly that I jumped at his touch, but even so, he pulled me to him while I wept like a madman. We stayed that way until the attendant knocked at the door again.

  Colin bade me be brave as he left that tiny room, the grief in his eyes as tactile as the solidity of his arms. So I stayed.

  They took me to a room in the main house after that. It was sparsely furnished with a cot, a chair, and a small, round table tucked up by the partially covered window, obstructed by its crenellation. I remained in the muslin uniform that had been provided me, and while I cannot say that the subsequent ten weeks were easier, at least the water dousing ceased. I was properly fed thereafter, but the best thing of all was that I was given pen and paper.

  I spent countless hours at that tiny table pouring out my heartbreak, torment, and fear. Colin was allowed to visit me weekly, then every other day for the last two weeks. And he never failed to come. We talked as long as they allowed us to, and when I was alone I purged my demons onto that paper. Colin wanted to read it, but in the end I couldn’t let him. I burned it instead.

  “You all right?” Colin asked as the coach pulled alongside the stern, imposing façade of the main building.

  I gave him a thin smile. “It’s not me you need to worry about, but Mrs. Connicle.”

  “Yes,” he answered vaguely as he hopped out of the carriage.

  We located the medical superintendent’s office only to find that he was out. His secretary was on the verge of refusing us entry when Colin threatened to bring the whole of Scotland Yard into her office within the hour if we were not granted an immediate interview with Mrs. Connicle. The poor woman in her late middle years went ghostly white, but she acquiesced. She had an attendant escort us to the fourth floor, where a series of small rooms were lined up like tiny soldiers, one after the other. He slid open the slot on a door about three-quarters of the way down the second hallway and announced us.

  “I will be back in fifteen minutes,” he warned as he unbolted the door and heaved it open.

  Colin waved him off without the slightest care as we stepped in, the door closing and locking behind us. The room was small, though larger than the one I had been held in. There were two chairs, a table, and a half dresser, and the bed was an actual bed, not a cot. Two small arched windows looked out onto the front drive, allowing a modicum of light, but that was impeded by the severely gabled roofline that angled harshly down from about the halfway point to the tops of the windows.

  “Mr. Pendragon.” Mrs. Connicle’s voice was thick and leaden, and she did not rise from the edge of the bed where she was sitting. “Mr. Pruitt. How shameful that you should see me like this. I fear you are viewing the very end of me.” She spoke not with malice or sorrow, but with a resignation that seemed wholly embraced. I could tell she was under the thrall of some drug. Her hair was down and had been cut exceedingly short, barely reaching the bottom of her ears, and she was dressed in the white muslin clothing that was still obviously the uniform of the facility. I don’t think I will ever forget the rough feel of it on my skin.

  “Mrs. Connicle,” Colin said softly as we both sat in the chairs by the little table. “You must tell us how you’ve come to be here.”

  “It is the death of my husband that sees me confined to this place,” she answered wistfully. “I have lost him twice and I could bear neither.”

  “But I should think you’d be best served in your home,” Colin pressed gently. “Surrounded by those who care for you. How is it that you are here?”

  She turned her gaze to him, and though her eyes were swollen and red, she did not cry. “I am ordered here on my husband’s b
ehalf,” she said. “I am under the care of Dr. Renholme and Mr. Tolliver now.” She sagged as her eyes dropped to the floor.

  “Mr. Tolliver?!” Colin repeated with astonishment. “Noah Tolliver?”

  “Yes,” she exhaled. “He and the doctor will see to me now.”

  Colin’s scowl said what he did not need to. With Noah Tolliver incapable of such a thing, who had given the order to confine this shattered woman to this horrid place, and why had it been done?

  CHAPTER 37

  “You will calm down, Mr. Pendragon, or I will not continue this conversation.” Wynn Tessler glowered, his eyes rife with warning as his lips pinched themselves into fine, thin lines.

  “Forgive my agitation, Mr. Tessler, but you can imagine my shock at learning that you are the person who has sentenced Mrs. Connicle to live in that godforsaken place.”

  “It is a place of comfort and health,” he protested.

  “Only if you are a bedbug,” Colin shot back as he pushed himself out of his chair and began pacing the length of Mr. Tessler’s office.

  “If I may . . .” I spoke with all the serenity I could muster, eager to diffuse the conversation before Mr. Tessler could decide to eject us from his office. “There is no denying that Mrs. Connicle is a brittle and sensitive woman, but in a time of distress such as this, don’t you think she might not be better served at home with the people who have tended to her for so long?”

  “Those people”—Mr. Tessler stared at me as though I had lost my mind—“are servants. They know nothing of caring for a woman who has succumbed to hysteria. And may I remind you that one of them is already under suspicion for complicity in this whole affair. I consulted with her doctor and did what needed to be done. Edmond would thank me for it.”

  “She has suffered the loss of her husband twice,” I reminded. “To see her initial hopes dashed with such cruel certainty—does she not deserve our deepest sympathy and understanding?”

  “Of course she has my sympathy,” he punched back defensively. “But she is not served by such sentiments, is she? Pity will not see to her care and well-being, will it?”