Inside the kitchen, she paused. The table held Antonia’s schoolbook, splayed facedown. A flickering light leaked down the hallway. She heard a light footstep, then two, the clatter of something hitting the floor. Inez stifled a sigh. Apparently, Antonia’s curiosity about Jamie’s trunk had gotten the better of her. Inez could picture how it happened: Antonia, spending the day wandering down to the music store and back, staring out the window, working on her recitations and numbers. Eventually, getting restless, she thinks of the off-limits trunk and grabs her hairpin lockpicks…
Inez walked toward the storage room. “Antonia? I’ve told you not to go back there. Come, it’s time for dinner. We will go to the Palace Hotel. Perhaps Mr. de Bruijn will join us.”
She walked through the doorway and saw a lamp turned low on the floor by Monroe’s trunk. Her mind tried to take in the chaos she was seeing. Close by, her wardrobe trunk was open, with her stockings, shoes, fine dresses, and underthings strewn around. Jamie’s trunk also yawned, its contents tossed about the floor: shoes, shirts, trousers, papers, the box that had held cuff links and letters, framed photographs—
The door slammed shut behind her and she jumped. She whirled around, just in time to see Nico struggling to pull a revolver from his jacket pocket. Her hand automatically went to her empty skirt pocket and she cursed herself. Her gun was in her coat, downstairs. Nico finally yanked his gun out, dislodging a small object from his pocket as well. Small, circular, gold, brilliant, it pinged on the wood planks and rolled toward Inez. She captured it with a foot and swooped it up.
A gold ring.
Engraved inside were words just barely visible in the lamplight: Two but one heart till death us part.
Chapter Forty-three
Inez held up the ring Jamie Monroe had bought to give Carmella. The ring that belonged in the jewelry box Inez had found on the hay wharf. The ring that Inez had found the receipt for in Jamie’s trunk. She held it up toward Nico as if it was a talisman against the revolver in his shaking hand.
“Ah, Signora Stannert, why could you not leave well enough alone?” said Nico, sounding close to despair.
“You are a murderer.” Her words were flat, cold. “That is not something ‘well enough,’ to be ignored and left alone.”
She stepped toward him, closing the ring in her fist. “Where is Antonia? What have you done with her?”
“I would not hurt the girl. She is not here. Gone to dinner, to the boardinghouse, I expect, which is where you also should have been.”
Thank God she’s not here.
Relief calmed sharp fear and shaped it into resolve.
“You would not hurt her, but you threaten me, her guardian and the only one standing between her and a life in the streets, with a gun.” She took another step, approaching him at an angle, hoping he would perhaps back away from her accusations, away from the door.
She had never seen him with a gun, so she was taking a chance. Perhaps he didn’t know how to use one. He certainly acted as if he had never held one before.
That could be to her advantage, or disadvantage. He could shoot intentionally and miss, or inadvertently pull the trigger and hit her by accident. She continued, “Do you mean to kill me too, then?”
He retreated a step. “No! That is, I do not want to. I am not that kind of man.”
“Ah, but you are. You killed Jamie Monroe. Do you know his real name was Robert Gallagher? Harry Gallagher’s son, and you killed him. My God, Nico. What a mess you are in.”
He flared. “I only wanted to talk to him. He sent me a note, asking to meet. We met on the wharf, after his work, after my business at the warehouse. He asked for Carmella’s hand in marriage. I told him he would marry her over my dead body. He said,” he licked his lips, “other things. It got…out of hand. And then, when it was over, I thought if I could make him disappear, eventually Carmella and everyone else would believe he left, moved away. But the tide didn’t take him away, not like—” He stopped.
“Not like the previous time,” Inez finished.
His eyes widened.
“And Jamie found out, didn’t he?” she said. “All your good fortune happened after the last union failed, but it wasn’t luck, was it? You killed Eli Greer, the treasurer who was distributing the union funds back to the members. You killed him after he visited Stephen Abbott, and then you kept the money that belonged to the others. You stole from your friends, your colleagues. You built a life with wealth that wasn’t yours and claimed it was talent and luck. But the acclaim came later, after you built your life on a lie.” She took another step toward him, hoping to force him farther away from the door so she could throw it open, slam it into him, and escape.
This time, he didn’t retreat.
Instead, he stepped forward and whipped the gun barrel at her face.
She blocked the blow, crying out as the barrel cracked into her forearm. Pain shot like lightning up her arm. The ring flew from her grasp, bouncing and rolling out of sight.
Nico grabbed her shoulder, pivoting her, and smashed her face-first into the door panel. Stars exploded in her vision. His voice seemed distant.
“Do you know what his last words were? ‘Not my hands.’ He
