Tasha Alexander - A Crimson Warning

“I could help you better if you gave me some details.”

“Not possible,” he said. “But you know that I’ll call you in as soon as I can. What would you like to do this afternoon? I’ve a few hours free from work.”

“I rather fancy a stroll through the Royal Academy,” I said, knowing I could trust him to include me in the investigation when it was appropriate. “We’ve not yet seen the Summer Exhibition.”

Davis entered the room with a single letter on a small silver tray. I picked it up and noticed immediately bright yellow wax sealed it. I opened it in a swift motion, eager to identify the sender.

“Apparently I’ve greatly angered Mrs. Harris,” I said. “She must have written this the moment she reached home. It’s a scathing attack on the many flaws of my character.” I passed the note to Colin, my hand shaking slightly. Her vitriol upset me, and I could not help but wonder if she was capable of more than just nasty words.

*   *   *

“I grant you it’s an interesting coincidence, but she’s hardly the only person in London to use yellow sealing wax,” Colin said. He’d bustled me off to the Royal Academy almost as soon as I’d put down Mrs. Harris’s note. He didn’t like to dwell on petty nastiness.

“I’ve never seen anyone else use it.”

“If you were a crazed murderer, would you not be more careful?” he asked. “I should reserve a separate color wax for my personal correspondence and keep back another for anything related to my crimes.”

“I’d use the same because even the Crown’s best agent would think it was too obvious and remove me from his list of suspects.”

“You’re good, Emily.” He stopped in front of a large canvas. “What do you think of this?”

I stepped closer to the painting, a stunning portrait of Lady Glover by John Singer Sargent. She wore a red velvet dress, cut dramatically low, three long strands of pearls draped around her neck and hanging down to below her tiny waist. A sheer white shawl dangled from one elbow, and she leaned with the other on an elaborate marble mantelpiece.

“She certainly has motivation,” I said. “Society’s been cruel to her. She’s plenty of motive to lash out against the ton.”

“I wanted to know your opinion of the painting, not of the lady.” He took a step back. “Sargent is bloody good, isn’t he?”

“He is.” I nodded. “You don’t think Lady Glover could be our culprit?”

“As you said, she’s plenty of motive. But I’d need to find a connection with Dillman.”

“There’s something about this correspondence of hers,” I said. “It doesn’t ring quite true.”

“You think she’s invented it?”

“No, I suppose that wouldn’t make sense,” I said. “I can’t identify what it is that troubles me, but it doesn’t seem right. She tried to suggest Mr. Barnes might be behind it.”

Colin laughed. “Barnes wouldn’t need so flimsy an excuse to start writing to her. She’s not exactly fierce with her suitors.”

“Should you call them suitors?” I asked, my eyes wide. “She’s a married woman.”

“Yes, well, the hypocrisy does make things difficult, doesn’t it?” Colin asked. “But what else is one to call the blokes vying for her attention?”

We continued to make our way through the galleries. The skylights in the ceilings, above the elaborate plasterwork on the tops of the walls, bathed the rooms in brightness. The crowds were so thick we nearly had to push our way through the enormous wooden doorways between rooms, and we soon decided to explore some of the less popular sections of Burlington House.

It was a strategy that proved extremely pleasant until we reached a door blocked by two policemen.

“What’s going on here?” Colin asked, pulling out his identification.

“Vandalism last night, Mr. Hargreaves,” one of the guards said. “Thugs have destroyed a painting.”

“Thugs?” Colin asked. “Let me see.”

With no hesitation, they opened the door and took us inside.

“Why wasn’t I notified of this at once?” Colin said.

Before us hung a canvas bathed almost entirely in all-too-familiar red. Splatters of paint had hit the wall around the work and dribbled down to the floor, where it puddled in a sticky mess. It had been applied in such quantity it was difficult to determine what the original picture had depicted. I moved forward, careful to lift my skirts to keep them clean, and read the card on the wall.

“William Handler, Portrait of Mrs. Samuel Tubney.”

“Which one of them is the target?” Colin asked.

“Or is it both?” I turned to the police. “Was anything else damaged in the attack?”

“No, Lady Emily,” the taller one said. “Just this. They came in through a window on the ground floor and didn’t touch anything else. Scotland Yard were here this morning, Mr. Hargreaves. They can give you a full update, but I’m afraid there won’t be much to it.”

“We’ll look around a bit more, if you don’t mind. Can you direct me to the window?” Colin asked.

19 June 1893

Belgrave Square, London

I called on Cordelia this afternoon. She remains most distressed over the loss of her fiancé, so distressed I fear for her very sanity. She’s barely coherent and utterly on edge. It’s not surprising; what she’s suffered is intolerable. But I found, as we spoke, that I was becoming increasingly upset by the villain in all this. Mr. Dillman is dead. His house had been painted. Yet we’ve no hint as to what merited this treatment. What did he do? The paint has proven to be a precursor to the revelation of a ruinous secret. Or has it?

Lord Musgrave took his own life before anyone breathed a word of what his scandal was. Now that he’s gone, we still know nothing. Has the culprit lost interest in smearing Lord Musgrave’s name? Was his death enough to satisfy the cruelty of this man? The Riddingtons are still waiting, wondering when some sordid detail of their life will be exposed. Is their nemesis hoping one of them, too, will choose suicide over shame?

But what of Mr. Dillman? Who killed him? Surely not the same person who’s responsible for the paint? Why would he have bothered with the paint at all if he were planning to kill the man? My mind reels trying to figure it out. Emily’s so quick when it comes to these things. I’m glad no one has to rely on me for finding the answers.

Except this answer. Are some sins so great they merit execution rather than exposure? Is that why Mr. Dillman died? And if so, what makes a sin that heinous? Could mine be considered so?

I fear even to write these words in my happy home, where my daughter, so innocent, plays. I don’t want to bring such ugliness to her world. How I wish I could hide forever from what I’ve done.

Once Colin was satisfied we’d gathered everything useful we could from the Royal Academy, he headed for Scotland Yard while I set off on an errand of my own. I was worried about Cordelia Dalton and had made a point of calling on her every few days since her fiancé’s death. The Daltons’ house was quiet and dark when I arrived—too many closed velvet curtains—and a servant set off to fetch Cordelia from her bedroom. The poor girl was like a prisoner. When she entered the gloomy sitting room, I hardly recognized her. Her dress hung on her—she must have lost a stone in the past weeks—and her face, gaunt and dull, looked ten years older than when I’d seen her last.

“Cordelia!” I could not help leaping up and embracing her. “How are you managing?”

She didn’t say anything, but twisted and twisted her black-hemmed handkerchief.

“Has something happened?”

“No. No. Not a thing.” She twisted harder. “Would you like tea? Ivy was just here, but she didn’t want any. She’d be sorry to have missed you.”

“I don’t require any tea, thank you,” I said. I could see she was biting the inside of her cheek. “Are you quite sure nothing else has happened? Please, Cordelia, my husband and I can’t help you if you don’t keep us au courant of the situation.”

She burst into tears and collapsed onto a settee. I sat next to her and put a hand on her back, rubbing softly.

“Have you received another letter?” I asked.

“Three,” she managed to gasp between sobs.

“Three?” I did my best to hide the chagrin I was feeling. Making her feel worse wouldn’t help at all.

“I wanted to tell you. I did. Truly,” she said, keeping her head buried in her hands. “But he insisted I couldn’t. Said if I informed anyone he’d kill my mother.”

Now I was angry, but not at Cordelia. How dare this person torment her so?

“What else did he say?”

“In the first, he chastised me for not coming to the meeting he’d demanded. Do you remember?”

“Yes,” I said. Colin and I had told her in no uncertain terms not to even consider going to the park in such circumstances.

“In the second, he said how important it was that I do what he tells me and that I not share any of what he wrote with anyone else or the consequences, as I explained, would be dire. The third came yesterday. He’s insisting upon meeting me tonight, and says that if I don’t succumb to his wishes untold evil will befall me.”

“It sounds as if his imagination has failed him,” I said. “Where does he want you to go?”

“The same place. Achilles.”

“You’re not to go,” I said.

“But he’ll—”

“Stop, Cordelia. Think carefully. This man has already killed once. He believes you to be in possession of something that could harm him, some evidence that he wants you to return to him, correct?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know what it is?”

“No.” Her voice was small.

“So what would you do if you met him? Give him nothing? What would he do to you then?”

“We could invent something … something I could give him to satisfy his wishes.”

“We have not even the vaguest notion of what that would be. Unless you’re hiding something from me?”

“No, I swear I’m not.” She started to cry again. “I’ve already told you everything and now he’ll—”

“He won’t do a thing. Mr. Hargreaves wouldn’t allow it.” We did have to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. “So long as this man believes you are in possession of this information, he won’t harm you. If he did, he’d have lost his way to recover it.”

“But if I do nothing—”

“You cannot go. Don’t even consider it. How would you even get out of the house? Your father would never allow it.”

“He would if he thought my mother was in danger.”

“I’ll go in your place,” I said. “And I’ll take Colin with me. We’ll confront whoever is there—I doubt it will be the man himself—and do whatever it takes to stop you from suffering further torment.”

“Do you really think it would work?” she asked.

“I’m absolutely confident.”

She seemed to believe me.

If only I could convince myself.

*   *   *

Colin was less put off by my scheme than I’d expected. He read the letters—Cordelia had let me take them—and agreed we had few other viable options. The meeting was scheduled for ten o’clock, a time when almost no one would be in the park. Thankfully, it would still be light out, but nonetheless, I felt slightly nervous about the undertaking. With Meg’s help, I put on one of the mourning dresses I’d stored away years ago and fixed a black veiled bonnet to my head. It was unlikely anyone who knew Cordelia would mistake me for her, but if our villain had sent someone in his stead, it was possible I could pull off the deceit.

Colin left the house well ahead of me, dining at the Reform Club instead of at home, to confuse anyone who might be watching us. He would make his way to the park early, and set himself up in a hiding place well before I—or our adversary—would arrive. Cordelia would have taken a carriage from her house, so though it was somewhat ridiculous to drive so short a distance, I did it nonetheless, taking two footmen with me. One of them I brought with me to the sculpture while the other waited at the gate to the park. There was no one else in sight.

“That’s fine, leave me here and go back to the gate,” I said to my loyal servant. “This miscreant can’t expect a lady to come out at night completely unescorted.”

He did as he was told and I stood, alone, at the base of the hulking statue George III had installed to honor the Duke of Wellington’s numerous victories in the Napoleonic Wars. It had caused a furor when first erected earlier in the century, a furor that stopped only when a strategically placed fig leaf was added to the piece, giving the Greek hero—I use the term loosely—a more socially acceptable appearance. Not even Achilles was above the vexation of society.