“I feel a complete fool,” Ivy said. “I never doubted you. You are quite an actress.” There was a twinge of admiration in her voice.
“How did you arrange it?” I asked.
“I hired actors. We staged the kidnapping—it was rather exciting, I must say—and holed up in a lodge I knew to be vacant. A few days of that, though, and I started to get bored. My husband wasn’t responding to any of the ransom instructions—”
“I don’t think he received any,” I said.
“He did. My spies saw him read them. He just didn’t want to deal with me.” Tears flashed in her eyes. Part of me felt sorry for her, but the rest knew she was probably acting. “I tried to increase the stakes by having my men drop my sleeve in the park, but that didn’t light a fire under him, either. The whole experience was thoroughly depressing. In the end, I got tired of it and decided to go home. After making a stop here, first.”
“Why would you do such a thing?” Ivy asked. “I, for one, have been worried sick about you.”
“I guess I can’t get the stage fully out of my blood,” she said.
“That’s not a valid reason,” I said.
“My husband used to dote on me,” she said. “But lately I’d come to realize he didn’t care anymore. I wanted to know if that was the truth. And I found out, didn’t I?”
“What about the letters?” I asked. “Did you invent those as well?”
“No, I swear to you I didn’t,” she said. “And I got one more before my abduction.” She pulled it out of her décolletage and handed it to me:
“That’s it,” I said. “I’m going to fetch Colin. And we must send for your husband. Ivy will look after you.
I took the carriage to the Harrises’ house, but before I’d reached my destination, I saw Colin walking away from it. I called for the driver to stop and waved for my husband’s attention.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
I told him about Lady Glover. “She wasn’t kidnapped any more than I was,” I said. “It looked liked she’d rolled around in the mud to lend herself an air of authenticity. I’ll tell you the rest later. But when I read the last letter she said she’d received from our painter, I wanted to find you at once.”
“What is it?”
“We need to revisit those notebooks I found in Mr. Dillman’s house. As quickly as possible. The letter made reference to a vile politician, and the notebooks had all those records of bills before Parliament. I want to study them again.”
“They’re at Scotland Yard,” he said.
“You can tell me about Mrs. Harris on the way,” I said.
“That’s a mess of phenomenal proportion,” he said. “Mr. Harris will be fine, although he’ll have a headache for the foreseeable future. His wife has ledgers full of the most horrific gossip. And she’d made large red
“Was every single victim of the paint on her list?” I asked.
“All but Mr. Dillman,” he said. “But he was the first, and it’s entirely possible she didn’t start her book until after she was finished with him. And now she’s proven herself capable of violence. There’s one other thing you might find interesting. She kept a record of her correspondence in one of her journals, and was writing to Foster on a regular basis for the past year. The frequency of her letters to him increased, however, about two weeks before Dillman’s death.”
“Do you think there’s a connection between them?” I asked.
“It’s possible,” he said. “We’ll have to question Foster before we can reach any firm conclusions. Regardless, she looks to be the guilty party.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Please, take me to Scotland Yard.”
“We’ll go, first thing in the morning,” he said. “Right now, we need to deal with Lady Glover, who may be facing some very serious charges.”
“Can we at least pick up the notebooks and bring them home?”
“You’re relentless, my dear.”
“Implacable.”
“I might as well give in?” he asked, leaning in for a kiss.
“It would be futile to do otherwise.” He kissed me again, this time more thoroughly.
And then he did as I asked, insisting that I remain in the carriage while he ran inside to fetch the notebooks. I did not object, having found the ride to Scotland Yard some of the most pleasant time I’d spent all season.
36
Back at Park Lane, it was difficult to reconcile the wrathful, seething man giving Lady Glover a most severe dressing down with the passionate and attentive gentleman who had escorted me home from Scotland Yard. A shiver of excitement charged through me as I watched him. It was bad of me, no doubt, to admire this side of him, but how could I not? He was a master of his work, and within a quarter of an hour he’d got Lady Glover to confess every detail of what she’d done, down to the names of the men she’d hired to “guard” her.
“They were actors?” Colin asked.
“I needed them to be convincing,” she said. “Darling, I’m terribly sorry, you must forgive me.”
“You will not tell me what I must do,” he said. “Sit up. I’ll not speak to you while you’re making such a terrible attempt to mimic Cabanel’s portrait of Ophelia.”
I expected a witty reply from her, but she said nothing. She sat up, pulling my dressing gown close around her shoulders.
“Your husband will be here momentarily,” Colin said. “I suggest you go upstairs and put your own clothes back on. It’s reprehensible that you’re in public rooms in such a state.”
“My clothes are all wet,” she said.
“Because you chose to make them that way.”
“Colin, I could lend her a dress so that she doesn’t—”
He interrupted me. “She doesn’t need comfort right now, Emily. Lord Glover will take her home in short order and she can wear what she likes once she’s there.” He rang for a maid and directed her to take Lady Glover back upstairs. “I’ve no tolerance for what you’ve done. Not only have we wasted time and resources searching for you, you put my wife and the Duke of Bainbridge in danger when you set your thugs on them.”
“I told them not to hit either of them too hard,” she said. “You must see I couldn’t let them rescue me all the way. I just wanted them to be able to make a good-sounding report.”
“What you’ve done is outrageous and despicable,” he said. “Your antics have made it more difficult to find the savage who killed Cordelia Dalton.”
She nodded, chastened, and followed the maid from the room.
“I don’t ever want you mad at me,” Ivy said to him. “You’re very fierce.”
“She’s behaved most appallingly,” Colin said. “Two people are dead, and she’s staged this farce to get attention? It’s outrageous. She’s fortunate I wasn’t harder on her.”
“Fortunate indeed,” I said. “Now tell Ivy what you learned at the Harrises’.”
“Mr. Harris is going to be all right. She was rough with him, and he’s banged up, but the doctor felt there’s no need for serious concern.”
“I imagine he’ll approach marital fidelity with a different view moving forward,” I said.
