An Improper Death (Dr. Alexandra Gladstone Mysteries Book 2) Page 21

  Annie spoke to her from behind Alexandra. “Dr. Gladstone is here to see you, madam. She says it’s urgent.”

  Jane stiffened. “Is it John? Is something wrong?”

  Alexandra hesitated, then said, “I must speak to you in private, Jane.”

  “No,” Jane said, shaking her head. “Annie will remain with me. I know what you are about to say. Annie has told me everything.”

  “Everything?” Alexandra felt uncertain.

  “I know that she wounded John, but I also know that it was an accident.”

  “It is hardly an accident when the firearm is aimed directly at a person and then discharged,” Alexandra said.

  “But I didn’t aim it at him!” Annie spoke in a voice far more plaintive than Alexandra ever imagined she could. “I only meant to frighten him. I meant for the bullet to go through the room. I never meant to hit the boy, I swear.”

  Alexandra felt a flare of anger. “Surely you know how dangerous it is to fire into a room full of people. You could have killed any one of us. You certainly frightened us all. But why? Why did you want to do that to John?”

  Alexandra saw that Annie was now near tears. The woman glanced quickly at Jane and then back to Alexandra, then she tried to speak. “I…”

  “Perhaps it’s best you leave us after all,” Jane said before Annie could say more.

  Annie said nothing, but she was reluctant to leave. Finally, though, she put both hands to her face and left the room sobbing. Jane stood and went to a table and lit a lamp before she turned back to Alexandra.

  “Sit down, please,” she said, indicating a chair. When Alexandra was seated, Jane sat down across from her. “What Annie did was foolish, perhaps even a little insane, but she told me everything. She was afraid of what John would say.”

  “I see.”

  “Annie did not kill my husband.” Jane’s voice shook slightly.

  “I know.”

  There was a long silence while Jane’s gaze held Alexandra. “How long have you known?”

  “An hour. Less, perhaps.”

  Jane nodded. She sat very straight in her chair with her hands folded casually in her lap. Her eyes were two luminous dark orbs in her pale face. She seemed unable to speak at first, and then she said, “I suppose I should ask how you knew.”

  “Just before she died, Mary Prodder told me she killed the admiral.”

  “Mary? Dead?” The word sounded almost like a gasp as Jane brought one of her hands up to cover her mouth.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I know how fond of you she was, and you of her.” Alexandra’s voice shook as she continued. “I never believed her, of course. She made the confession in the hopes that no one would find out the truth. She wasn’t lucid all of the time before she died, but she said something while she was rambling. She said, ‘You mustn’t blame her. ’Twas me told her about the heels.’ She kept going on. She said, ‘We tried to grab Papa’s heels, but he was too quick.’ She’d told me about her father, how brutal he was, how he beat her. I thought it was just the agony of her past flooding her mind. That happens when one is dying. But then I kept thinking about grabbing someone by the heels. I couldn’t think what she meant by that until my maid made mention of a bathtub, and that got me thinking about the fact that you said the admiral had a bath the night he died. If he was drunk enough not to resist, a person could take him by the heels and pull his head under.”

  Jane stood and walked to the window, pulling her dark shawl closer around her as Alexandra had seen her do before. “He was drunk, I told you that much,” she said, her back to Alexandra as she stared out the window again.

  “And Mary told you how to do it,” Alexandra said.

  There was no response from Jane. She kept her back to Alexandra and continued to stare out the window.

  “And she must have helped you get him in the boat. You could not have done it alone,” Alexandra said after a long silence.

  Jane turned suddenly to face her. “How did you know about the boat?”

  “There was sealant on the…the garment the admiral was wearing, and there were fibers from your black shawl in the boat.”

  Jane’s eyes were bright, almost feverish. “But how did you find the boat? It was supposed to be…” Jane turned away again. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Did Mary and Annie both help you, Jane? You’re too small to have done it alone.”

  “No one helped, I did it myself.”

  “No she didn’t.” The voice startled Alexandra and she turned to see Annie entering the room. She had obviously been listening at the door. “We both helped her. Mary and I, and I hid the boat.”

  “Don’t try to take the blame,” Jane said.

  Annie ignored her and turned to Alexandra. “He was brutal to her. You see how she rubs her shoulder. Pulled it from her socket, he did, but she was too ashamed to seek your help. I forced her shoulder back into it socket myself, as best I could. And that’s not all. He hit her once, so hard she—”

  “Annie!” Jane took a step toward her as if to warn her, but Annie continued.

  “She lost consciousness. He deserved to die. So when I saw him in the tub—”

  “Don’t try to take the blame, Annie,” Jane said. “She knows the truth.” She turned back to Alexandra. “I didn’t plan anything, you know. It just…happened.” She put her hand to her shoulder and massaged it as Alexandra had seen her do before. “Thank God John ran away before he could hurt him. But Will… One day he…” She looked down at her hands. “I couldn’t let him hurt Will again. I could put up with his brutality because I had to. I tried to divorce him, just as you guessed. But the barrister I hired told me that if the divorce was granted my husband would have custody of Will.” She put her head in her hands again for a few seconds, then looked at Alexandra again, shaking her head. “I couldn’t divorce him and lose Will. But when he hit Will, I knew I couldn’t…I couldn’t let it go on…”

  Alexandra saw the desperation in Jane’s face as she tried to continue, and she remembered Nancy’s words that a mother will sacrifice anything for her children.

  “Will’s broken arm?” Alexandra asked.

  Jane looked at her. “It wasn’t a fall. I lied to you about that. Will would never tell you the truth either, because his father told him not to. Will was afraid of him. Not just for what he’d done to him, but because of the way he treated Annie as well, although, thank God, I don’t think Will ever knew that he…that he hurt me. Annie is right. He was brutal.”

  “Jane, I—”

  “No,” Jane said, interrupting her. “I must tell you what happened. I have to tell someone. He asked Annie to prepare a bath for him in his room. I could hear him in there, splashing the water and singing in his awful drunken voice. I started thinking about what Mary had told me just a little while earlier while she was fitting my dress. She was here when George came home drunk, and she had long ago guessed the truth about my husband and what he had done to me. She had told me before about her father, how he hit her. But this time, with my husband up in his room bathing, she told me how she and her mother tried pulling her father’s heels while he bathed. It would have worked, she said, if he’d been drunk or unconscious. Dearest Mary. I knew the reason she was telling me about her father was to help me.”

  Annie went to Jane and put an arm around her shoulder, but Jane winced and moved away from her, agitated.

  “I opened the door to his room, slowly. He didn’t know I was there, but when I saw him there in the tub, it was as if Mary was standing next to me encouraging me, telling me it was wrong to have to live that way.” She stopped, twisting her handkerchief around her fingers.

  “I dressed him then,” she continued. “In the undergarment. I ran back to my room and it was lying on my bed because Annie had just laundered it. It was all I could find in my haste. I know it sounds silly, but I wanted the body out of the house and it seemed so indecent, so…improper to take him naked through the garden to the boat.”

 
“You had planned ahead about the boat, then,” Alexandra said.

  Jane shook her head. “No, no, I…” She stopped, looked at Annie, confused, and tried to go on, but Annie interrupted her.

  “She came downstairs and Mary and I could see on her face that something was wrong,” Annie said. “She couldn’t speak, but we went upstairs, and we found him. I knew we had to do something, so I told her I’d take him out to sea. She couldn’t do it by herself, don’t you see? We had to help, Mary and I. We tied a rope under his arms and dragged him outside.”

  “Alexandra, please understand, I knew what I had done was wrong.” Jane’s voice shook. “But it was too late, and all I could do was worry what would happen to Will if anyone found out.” For the first time tears escaped her eyes and ran down her face. “The storm was already making the waves high. I wouldn’t let Annie and Mary take the boat. I knew I had to be the one to… It was difficult for me to row back after I pushed him into the water, but I didn’t think it would wash his body… Oh my god! What have I done to Will? What will happen to him now?”

  Alexandra could not speak for a moment, knowing the agony Jane was experiencing. “All those times you refused to allow me to examine your own body was not due to modesty, but because you didn’t want me to see what he had done to you.” Alexandra’s voice was soft, filled with horror.

  Jane didn’t answer. She collapsed into her chair, old tears drying on her face, too weary and demoralized to cry more.

  “It was what he did to Will, though, that drove you to it,” Alexandra said. “That must have been what John meant when he said it must have been Will. He meant it was what happened to Will that made you do it.”

  Jane shook her head sadly. “My poor John, he ran away and became a criminal out of defiance. I see that now. I saw him once after he escaped, you know. He came here to see me. I couldn’t keep anything from John. He knew how brutal his stepfather was, knew how he beat me. He came back to kill him, but I had already… I told him what I had done, and he was terrified that I would be found out and hanged or sent to prison. I tried to assure him that people would only think he’d drowned. That was why I gave you permission to do the autopsy. I thought you would prove he had drowned, and no one would talk.” She looked away again, lost in her own thoughts for a moment before she continued.

  “It was what I dressed the admiral in, of course, that made people talk. I should have thought, should have taken the time to…” She shook her head slowly. “It all happened so quickly, I…” She looked at Alexandra, her face pale. “Don’t blame Annie for what she did. It’s true, she was only trying to frighten John into leaving. She was afraid he would talk. We were all so upset, we all did foolish things. I only hope that Will can forgive me one day.”

  “Don’t let them take her!” Annie’s voice was desperate. “It was me that killed him.”

  “Sit down.” Alexandra spoke quietly, but with a firmness that startled Annie. She sat in the chair Alexandra had occupied, trembling. “Everyone loves you, Jane. They’re all trying to take the blame for you.”

  “But they mustn’t,” Jane said. “I killed my husband. I must take the consequences.”

  Alexandra ignored her. She paced the floor for a few seconds more, thinking. She turned to Annie. “You must know there are several in Newton who suspect her. You must help her leave here. All three of you must leave.” Alexandra heard her own voice trembling. “Nancy and I will help you. We will say you’ve gone to London because it was too painful for you to stay here, but you won’t go to London, of course. You’ll go to Edinburgh, and you will change your name. There is a friend of my father’s there who will help you.”

  Jane seemed unable to speak for a moment. Finally, she said, “Why are you doing this?” Her face was still pale, but there was a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  Alexandra held her gaze for a moment before she spoke. “I should think, Jane, that you wouldn’t have to ask.”

  It was three days before Alexandra and Nancy could complete all the arrangements to send Jane, her son, and her housemaid away secretly. Alexandra found it impossible to tell even Nicholas the truth or ask him to help her. She feared it would compromise his position as a member of the bar. She thought it a stroke of luck that duty called him to London before the arrangements were complete and he realized what she was doing. He felt it necessary to accompany Constable Snow, who was returning John Killborn to prison.

  Nicholas was preoccupied before he left and hardly had time to speak to Alexandra. He knew, and she knew as well, that the court was not likely to be lenient for John because of his two escapes. Alexandra had found it difficult to tell Jane the truth—that John would most likely hang. But it seemed the best thing to do.

  Because Nicholas and Constable Snow were to have left that morning, Alexandra was startled when, as she was out for a walk with Zack, she saw the constable riding his gelding toward his cottage.

  He seemed disconcerted to see Alexandra at first, but he quickly put aside his discomfort and spoke to her cordially.

  “Good evening, Dr. Gladstone.”

  “Good evening, Constable. I must say I’m surprised to see you. Did you send Mr. Forsythe to London alone with the prisoner?”

  “I’m afraid there was no prisoner to return to London,” Snow said. “Mr. Forsythe has returned to London alone.”

  “No prisoner? I don’t understand.”

  “I regret to say, he has escaped again.”

  “Then you must search for him, of course” There was dread in Alexandra’s voice.

  “Both Mr. Forsythe and I agree that, unfortunately, that won’t be possible. Mr. Forsythe seems to think there’s some evidence he has gone to Scotland. That’s out of my territory, I’m afraid.”

  Alexandra found she could not speak.

  The constable tipped his hat and was about to ride away again, when he turned back to her. “I almost forgot. Forsythe said to tell you he’s having a telephone device installed and he invites you to come to London to see it at your earliest convenience.”

  He turned away once again, and she called after him. “You knew! Why didn’t you tell me? You knew!” The cold February wind caught her words and scattered them across the dale.

  Paula Paul is a former journalist who now spends her time writing novels. She is the winner of a Readers’ Favorite Gold Medal, Texas Institute of Letters Award, a Women Writing the West Award, a New Mexico Book Award, the Zia Award, and a National Press Women’s Award for Fiction. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband and a dog named Smokey.