The Endicott Evil Page 29

  “You were saying, Mr. Pendragon . . . ?” And I could not help but notice the warning in his voice.

  “Yes.” Colin tossed a tight look at Lord Endicott and I could see that he did not mean to be hurried. “I would see a show of hands for those of you who were here that night,” he requested.

  I heard Miss Eugenia tsk her disapproval and yet she raised her hand for the briefest instant, though she did not hold it aloft. Vivian Whit, Mr. Galloway, Clarice Somerall, and Freddie Nettle all held their arms up to varying degrees, and when I glanced behind myself I could see that only the serving maid, Emily Wilton, did as well.

  “Is it your habit to stay the night?” Colin asked her, obviously struck, as I was, to learn that she would be required to do so.

  “It was at my request.” Miss Eugenia spoke up before Emily Wilton could. “I had kept her late into the evening because of an afternoon tea that Addie and I had hosted, and I did not want her walking home on her own at the dead of night. With Mr. Fischer having been released hours before, there was no one else who could drive her.” Her tone was clipped and irritated, so I was not surprised when she swiftly turned on her brother and added, “Really, Thomas, must I explain myself as though I am guilty of having done something wrong?”

  Lord Endicott glanced at Colin. “Mr. Pendragon . . . ?”

  Colin stopped him with an upturned palm. “You mustn’t persist in interrupting me after every question. We have an agreement and I will abide by it if you and your sister will. Otherwise Mr. Pruitt and I will leave now and make a full report to the Yard exonerating Mr. Nettle here.”

  “Your cheek is impertinent,” Eugenia Endicott fired back.

  “We are talking about your sister’s murder,” Colin reminded her harshly. “I do not see how any greater offense can be taken or given.” The frown on her face hardened, but she said nothing further as Colin turned his attentions away from her. “Can you tell me please, Nurse Bromley, how were Miss Adelaide’s spirits that particular day?”

  “No different than they had been lately.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  I could sense Philippa Bromley hesitating from behind me and stole a peek over my left shoulder in time to see her eyes dart from Vivian Whit to Miss Eugenia. “I believe she had been suffering from bouts of hysteria over the last six months or so and the spells were getting worse.”

  “This is outrageous,” Miss Eugenia started up again. “This woman is not a physician and has no right speaking of such things. Come now, Thomas, I must insist you stop this travesty this instant.”

  I was certain Colin had reached the end of the tether Lord Endicott was willing to give him, so I was surprised when the man reached over and patted the back of his sister’s hand in an almost conciliatory way. “The young lady is speaking the truth. She is a nurse, Genie, and she knows well what she witnessed. If this helps us determine who harmed our Addie, then we will be thankful for it. Let us give Mr. Pendragon his moment and see what comes of it.”

  “Thank you,” Colin said swiftly, though his voice sounded neither grateful nor contented. “Tell us, Miss Bromley, what sorts of spells had you been witness to?”

  “Me . . . ?!” Her large round eyes looked ready to pop from her head as if Colin had accused her of some impropriety herself. “I never saw anything of the sort. What she suffered happened to her in the evenings or at night. I would hear about it the next day. She would tell me what she had seen or heard and I was left to try and calm her down. If she was agitated enough I was authorized to give her a tincture of laudanum.”

  “And what sorts of things did she tell you that she saw and heard?”

  For the third time the young lady’s gaze roamed around the room before she seemed willing to settle on her answer. “It was always the same thing,” she said, her voice dropping to a delicate timbre and making it clear that the memory of it still caused her discomfort. “She said it was a little girl who was lost and crying. That she was looking for someone. I don’t know who she was supposed to be. I never asked. It wasn’t my place.”

  “Not your place,” Eugenia Endicott repeated with a sneer. “Nothing that concerns this family is the business of any one of you. This is utterly unseemly. And it is that charlatan who is to blame for the ravages that cost my poor sister her faculties.” Her arm shot out with one bony finger pointing squarely at Lady Stuart.

  “Ah . . .” Colin’s gaze followed that finger just as it was meant to do, yet the whisper of a smile on his face belied the outrage that Miss Eugenia had intended to impart. “And so, Lady Stuart, your reputation has been called into question. What say you in return?”

  Since she was sitting beside me I did not want to simply turn and stare, though the rest of the room’s occupants were free to do so, yet I could sense a wisp of amusement in her posture and took note that she seemed neither surprised nor taken aback by Colin’s question. “It would seem I must tolerate the injury to my reputation for I fear I can take no umbrage. I mean only to soothe those whose lives are suffering from some manner of discontent and, while I will not deny that mine is a profession rife with fraud and deceit, I seek to practice neither.”

  “Then what of Miss Adelaide?” Colin pushed ahead, clearly determined not to give Miss Eugenia any further opportunity to press her contention. “We all know that she came to see you regularly. What sort of discontent did you seek to alleviate for her?”

  “Thomas!” Miss Eugenia demanded almost before Colin’s question was fully formed. “You cannot mean to allow Addie’s privacy to be disgorged in so public and humiliating a way. In front of the staff . . .”

  “If I may . . . ?” Colin turned to Lord Endicott before he could respond. “I should like to remind you that Mr. Nettle here stands accused by you, Miss Eugenia, of your sister’s murder. And while that has yet to be proven, it is the people in this room, the household staff, who must also stand accused. For there is no one else who had the means to harm Miss Adelaide that last night, save for the people in this room. So I should think it their right to hear the fragments that led one of them to hound Miss Adelaide to her death.”

  Lord Endicott remained quiet for a moment before reaching over and pressing a hand onto his sister’s tightly clasped fingers again. “Let it be, Genie. I suspect everyone here already knows the fears that drove our Addie. Let us have this be done with.”

  “Lady Stuart . . .” Colin turned back to her with nary a breath taken at the end of His Lordship’s decree. “Tell us what you spoke with Miss Adelaide about. What brought her to your parlor?”

  Lady Stuart shifted slightly on the sofa, and I felt her body stiffen the tiniest bit, though it seemed out of sorrow or regret rather than any sort of fear. “She was a kind and sensitive woman who was much aggrieved by an event that happened when she was herself young. She spoke to me of it often, and I sought only to convince her that she had no reason to carry such guilt. That she was free of blame.”

  “And did this incident involve a young girl?”

  “Not as such, but that seemed how it manifested for Miss Adelaide.”

  “Curious . . .” Colin said as his eyes drifted across the room, noting, I was certain, who was looking back at him and who was not. “Can you explain yourself?”

  Lady Stuart released a silent sigh and I felt her body sag with the pressure of whatever words she was struggling to say. “There was a young unwed woman who worked for the Endicott family and became with child when Miss Adelaide was herself barely in her adult years. It threatened to cause a blight on the Endicott name, so both the woman and her unborn child were sent away, but not before the woman suffered a terrible beating that Miss Adelaide herself felt responsible for.”

  “However so?” Colin asked, and I noticed in the faces I could see that not one of the people was looking at Lady Stuart. All eyes seemed haphazardly arrayed about the room as though to make contact with another person might somehow sully the lot of them.

  “She did not stop the beating against the
young woman, and it cost the poor thing her life at the birth of her baby. A daughter. And it was that daughter who Miss Adelaide believed was seeking vengeance against her.” Lady Stuart hesitated for a moment, and to my surprise Colin did not fill the silence with another peppered question, and that was when I realized that Lady Stuart knew more. “Miss Adelaide had tried to keep track of the little girl. . . .”

  “She what . . . ?!” Lord Endicott sputtered, flicking a quick gaze at his sister as though trying to gauge whether she knew this to be true or not.

  “That is preposterous,” Eugenia Endicott howled, her scowl filled with malice and accusation. “My sister would never have done any such thing. It is simply too foolish to believe.” Yet again she swung round on her brother and I almost felt sorry for him. “Really now, I insist you call an end to this.”

  “Margaret,” Lady Stuart said in a voice so soft I almost did not catch it myself.

  “What?” Eugenia Endicott turned her glare on Lady Stuart. “What did you say?”

  “The child’s name was Margaret Helen Hardiston,” Lady Stuart answered. “She told me she had learned that much after the baby’s birth but had been unable to find her thereafter and feared she had not lived past childhood.”

  Eugenia Endicott bolted to her feet and looked ready to strike Lady Stuart. I thought that I should do something, say something, but found myself at a loss for words, and when I allowed a quick glance at Colin I saw that he had not even moved from his leisurely position in front of the fireplace.

  “I suspect this is all nothing more than your mystical contrivance to lure my sister in,” Eugenia Endicott sneered viciously. “To make her fear your trickery while you . . . what? . . . stole her inheritance? Forced her to pay to tame the nonsense you had created? I will not have these people in my home another minute, Thomas.” She stared down at her brother. “You clear this lot out or I will.”

  “Now, now . . .” Colin started to say.

  “No.” Lord Endicott pushed himself off the sofa looking wearied and resigned. “Eugenia is right, Mr. Pendragon. You are sliding down a slope without a foothold, and I will not subject my sister or myself to it a moment longer. You promised to reveal our sister’s killer and you have failed to do so. I can only presume you are grasping at straws, sir, and it is an affront.” He started to walk around the sofa, though where he was headed or what he meant to do I could not say, but Colin stopped him, moving right up to the older man before he could make his way to either of the hall doors.

  “You are mistaken, sir,” Colin answered him back, staring directly into His Lordship’s eyes in a fashion that broached insult. “I know precisely the two people responsible for driving your sister to her death. Or, if you wish to be more exacting, the five people. But I shall not proceed unless you and your sister sit back down and allow me to finish this my way, which is something I should think Miss Adelaide deserves.” Colin took a step back and tipped the slightest shrug of one shoulder.

  “Five people . . . ?!” Lord Endicott paled and stumbled back a step.

  “How dare you,” his sister snarled. “Mr. Nettle—”

  “Is an innocent man,” Colin cut her off. “I am quite tired of repeating that to you, madam, so if you will allow me, I shall explain how I know that to be true.”

  Lord Endicott shook his head as if he was about to refuse, but then fell back onto the sofa without a word, though I could see that he was quite unsettled. This was clearly true for his sister, who continued to glare at Colin with something edging toward revulsion before suddenly tossing her brother a look that I could not decipher, though it was far from warm. After a moment she too lowered herself back onto the sofa, her spine and demeanor remaining stiff and unyielding.

  “Lady Stuart . . .” Colin stepped back to the fireplace and called over to her. “Did you tell Miss Adelaide the name of the child?”

  “No. It was she who told it to me.”

  “Would you deny that there is chicanery used in your line of work?”

  She allowed the ghost of a smile as she shook her head. “I cannot. As I said before, mine is a field filled with such wiles.”

  “Such as . . . ?” he prodded.

  “Small scraps of wood bound to the knees of the medium to simulate knocking by the ethereal, although the Fox sisters have admitted to achieving this ruse by cracking the knuckles of their toes. Photographs from magazines and dolls have been hung in darkly lit rooms to symbolize a loved one, manipulated on a thin string by the medium from behind a gauze or other such fabric. And the supposedly paranormal substance left by the deceased, ectoplasm, is usually nothing more than butter, petroleum jelly, and cheesecloth.” She heaved a sigh that assured me she found the whole of it embarrassing. “Tables can be manipulated, appearing to move or rise by simple mechanics placed at the medium’s feet like the pedals on a piano—”

  “And did you employ any of these deceits on Miss Adelaide?” Colin interrupted her.

  “Never. I do not perform séances. I do not purport to be able to raise the dead to the earthly plane.”

  “Then what is it, exactly, that you do?”

  Lady Stuart lifted her chin and her lovely face caught the electric lighting just so, accentuating both the warm-honey tone of her skin and the angular beauty of her Romanian features. And along with those attributes I could see a wellspring of honor and pride. “I listen. People come to me for a reason. They have suffered a loss or grievance that they cannot rectify themselves, and I try to give them the peace they seek by helping them unearth the answers they have carried within them all along.”

  “You make it all sound so very noble,” Colin remarked with an arch of his brow. “As if you should be permitted to hang some sort of license outside your door.”

  Lady Stuart gave a soft laugh that sounded almost jarring in the harsh quiet of the room. “Would that it should be so. But there is one deception I do often employ to ensure my clients that I speak with authority on their travails.”

  “And what would that be?” Colin asked with the assurance of one who knows precisely what is coming next.

  Lady Stuart leaned down to the satchel she had brought and pulled out a small bottle of oil and a little canister. “Phosphorous,” she said. She unstoppered the bottle and sluiced some of the oil onto the fingers of her left hand. “When used at just the right time, as I profess to consult with their loved one or speak about things I should have no right to know, it gives me credibility.” And without a moment’s hesitation she plunged her hand into one of the candles and lit it up with flames of brightly colored hues that leapt over a foot in height. She moved her fiery hand back in front of herself, her fingers clutched tightly together and pointed skyward, and then just as suddenly snuffed out the flame with a cloth she pulled from the satchel with her other hand. “The oil burns off long before the skin begins to singe,” she explained to the astonished faces of everyone around her, including me.

  “And the powder . . . ?” Colin prodded.

  “I rarely use it,” she said as she opened the little canister and dipped one of the Endicotts’ teaspoons into it. “It won’t hurt the spoon,” she assured Eugenia Endicott, but the older woman had paled slightly and looked unable to say anything. Lady Stuart drew the spoon up to the same candle and tilted it ever so slightly. As the contents began sputtering like miniature fireworks she swung her arm wide, leaving a burning rainbow of color raining through the air like an otherworldly trail. “It is much more effective with a greater volume,” she added unnecessarily.

  “And that, Mr. Nettle,” Colin announced with noticeable satisfaction, “is what you witnessed on the night you raced into Adelaide Endicott’s room.”

  “Oh . . . !” he murmured, and I could see that his face had gone a ghastly shade of white and his shoulders had crept up as though he was chilled or trying to sink into himself.

  “You were no more out of your senses than Adelaide Endicott was,” Colin continued. “Instead you were both the victims of par
lor tricks, the tools of which came from the pantry of Lady Stuart.”

  “I did not know,” Lady Stuart spoke up before Colin could continue, staring at Eugenia Endicott with a shame I knew she did not deserve. “You must believe me when I tell you that I had no idea.”

  Whether Miss Eugenia gave even the whisper of credence to what Lady Stuart was saying I could not tell. She had turned her gaze to her brother, and if I thought she had looked poorly a moment ago, she appeared even more so now. It occurred to me that she had almost assuredly been unkind to her sister, refusing her access to Lady Stuart in their own home and dismissing Miss Adelaide’s haunted visions and disembodied voices as though they were the ravings of a lunatic. But here, now, for the first time, she was seeing that there was something sinister at work against her sister. That someone had indeed worked very hard to unhinge the poor woman’s mind.

  “How were these things brought to Layton Manor?” Lord Endicott asked, maintaining his decorum in spite of the fact that it was obvious he too had also lost much of his bluster.

  “Ah!” Colin held one finger up as he paced around behind me and Lady Stuart. “Other than Miss Adelaide, the only other person who was a regular visitor to Lady Stuart’s home was Mr. Nettle. We know that he was invited in and spent his time in the kitchen with Lady Stuart’s houseman in the event that he was needed by Miss Adelaide.”

  “Then it seems we always come back to Mr. Nettle,” Lord Endicott stated, but with far less determination than he had shown before Lady Stuart’s demonstration.

  “And so it would seem you are right.” Colin nodded once, his blue eyes hard and dark. “But that would be to ignore both the key element of motive, Your Lordship, and the fact that there was also someone else who was regularly at Lady Stuart’s home.” He turned away from me and Lady Stuart and settled his eyes on Mr. McPherson and Mr. Fischer. “You drove Miss Adelaide and Mr. Nettle, did you not, Mr. Fischer?”