| |
––––––––
DAWN WAS BREAKING WHEN Klugg closed his notebook to massage his eyelids with thick fingers and yawn. He blinked a couple of times before leaning to rest his elbows on his knees and look at Joe.
“For what it’s worth,” he said. “I’m sorry.” At Joe’s raised eyebrow, he continued, “You warned me about Barrister. Though to be fair, Odelia was pulling his strings.”
Joe nodded. They’d all underestimated the twins, in particular Odelia, who’d apparently conceived of the plan to first chase Joe and Margaret out and, when that failed, to eliminate them permanently.
Klugg yawned as he hauled his bulk out of the chair to retrieve his hat from the desk. When Joe remained seated, he nodded.
“I’ll see myself out. Thank Miss Alma for the refreshments. She makes the best peach pie I ever tasted. Oh, and tell Mrs. Sweeney I’m sorry I didn’t take her concern about the cottage more seriously, too.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.” Margaret stood in the open door of the study. “Thank you for everything.” She glided in to clasp Klugg’s meaty paw in her small hands and offer him a warm smile. “You saved Joe’s life. You saved all our lives. We owe you.”
A tide of red swept up Klugg’s short neck.
“You don’t owe me anything, Mrs. Sweeney,” he said. “I was just doing my job. Besides, you had a bead on Barrister. I’m sure if I hadn’t shown up, you’d have done what needed doing to protect yourself and everyone else.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “But I am glad you spared me from having to take such...drastic measures. I don’t envy you your job, Sheriff. It’s a terrible matter to hold another person’s life in your hands, and to know that they balance yours in theirs. I can’t imagine facing what I faced last night as an expected part of my chosen profession.”
Klugg nodded, and cleared his throat.
“Thank you for your kind words, ma’am. I’m only grateful I was able to help.” He cleared his throat again and cast a quick look at Joe before nodding to Margaret. “I’d best get on to my office. I’m sure Barrister and Miss Odelia already lawyered up and won’t answer my questions, but with what their accomplice told me, I may be able to make some charges stick. Attempted murder at minimum, I hope, as I was witness to Odelia’s demand for her brother to shoot you all.”
“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” she said softly. “I know it wasn’t easy for you to have to arrest your friend and Miss Odelia. And I appreciate everything you’re doing to try and make things right. Especially in this time of war and political strife, when we need more men of integrity than ever before. I’m grateful to know Quellentown has that in you.”
Klugg’s beefy cheek and neck flared crimson.
“Er, thank you, ma’am. G’day.” He left without looking at Joe, his back and gait oddly stiff. Joe couldn’t blame him.
He wasn’t the recipient of Margaret’s compassion and empathy and his throat ached, a discomfort exacerbated when she closed the door to scowl at him.
“He helped us, Joe. The least you could have done was thank him.”
He arched his brows. “For doing his job?”
Her frown deepened, and then her expression softened as she moved towards him. “Maisie’s asleep. Lisette’s with her, and I told everyone else to go to bed and get some sleep, too.” Her eyes filled, and Joe lurched up to gather her in his arms.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all going to be all right.”
“What a mess,” she whispered. “What a dreadful, dreadful, mess. I can’t imagine what this will do to Esther and Orva once it gets out. Thank goodness for that child. At least she had the good sense to speak up and share what she knew with the sheriff. If she hadn’t...” She buried her face in his shirt.
He gritted his teeth to contain his thoughts on Esther Sweeney-Griffiths.
The woman had helped create the mad, entitled monsters Barrister and Odelia had become, and he didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her. But Miss Orva... For her, and what news of her sister and brother’s mad conspiracy would do to her reputation, he could feel a smidge of compassion. To a much lesser degree, he felt regret for the man Barrister and Odelia had coerced into aiding them, Vincent Champagne. He was Magnus’s equivalent on the Griffiths’s estate.
Seated in the study with him, his parents, Mrs. Sweeney, and Klugg, while Miss Alma and Miss Lisette tended to Maisie and Barrister and Odelia were kept under guard in separate rooms by Klugg’s deputies, Champagne had told a tale about Miss Odelia’s visits to the stables to play with a litter of kittens born in the loft.
“She’d climb up an’ play with those kittens. I told her it wasn’t safe, an’ she told me to mind my own beeswax. So I did. One day, I was out back fixing a broken wheel on the freight wagon when I heard a cry and then a thump. I ran inside and found Miss Odelia at the bottom of the ladder. She said she’d missed the last step on her way down and fell. Her ankle hurt, and she couldn’t walk. I was helping her back to the house when Mr. Griffiths come out and tol’ me to get my hands off her. He took her away inside the house, and I went back to work. The next day...” He met Joe’s hard stare with a beleaguered gaze.
“He tol’ me if I didn’t get rid of you and Miss Maisie, he’d see me hanged for messin’ with his sister. I gotta wife and two boys.” Tears filled his eyes. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you or that sweet child. So I waited until you was in town, and Miss Maisie was at her friend’s, and I set the cottage on fire. I left Mr. Barrister’s lighter there. He’d forgotten it on a fence rail when he come out to tell me what to do, an’ I’d hoped you’d find it and know it was him that wanted you gone, and you’d make him stop. Or leave town, so I wouldn’t have to do nuttin’ wrong. But that didn’t work. You didn’t go, an’ then Mr. Griffiths figured out I took the lighter...They both come out to the stables. Said I’d be hung for thievin’ and for touching Miss Odelia unless I got rid of Miss Maisie permanently. They said there was going to be a party here later in the week, and that there’d be lots o’ people coming and going, an’ so I could sneak in and get Miss Maisie. They tol’ me to bury her in the swamp an’ they’d wait for me at the old mill to drive me home once it was done. When I said I wouldn’t know where to find Miss Maisie in that big house, Miss Odelia said she’d take care of it. I guess she did, ’cause she’s the one that led me in through the woods to the crypt and then tol’ me how to get in the house and where to look for Miss Maisie. She tol’ me to strangle the dog if it made any noise, but I couldn’t do that. So I just gave the dog some of the food I had in my pocket for Miss Maisie, and I asked her to keep her dog quiet an’ I’d let her keep it with her and I wouldn’t hurt her or anyone else. She’s a good girl, Mr. Banner. She done what I asked, and I did what I promised. I didn’t hurt her, an’ put her in the shack with her dog to keep her company, an’ some food and water so she wouldn’t be hungry or thirsty, an’ then I went back through the woods an’ come out the other side where Mr. and Miss Griffiths was waiting, an’ I tol’ them what they wanted to hear. If you hadn’t found Miss Maisie by this morning, m-my wife—she can read and write—we...we was gonna take our boys an’ run away an’ she was going to send an anonymous note about where to look. I’m so sorry, Mr. Banner,” he whispered, shaking his big head, tears spilling down his broad cheeks. “Jus’ so sorry.”
“Do you believe him?” Margaret’s voice was soft, and Joe marvelled at her ability to read his thoughts.
“Yes. Barrister and Odelia held the cards. Champagne would be dead now, instead of a witness, if Klugg and Magnus and Big Ray hadn’t shown up when they did. Because I have no doubt she’d have done as she planned—kill us all—and pin it on Champagne, claiming herself and Barrister the heroes for shooting their renegade servant.”
She looked up. “You really think so?”
“I do. Champagne would have been a loose end. And though Barrister might have let him go, Odelia...” He shook his head. “There’s more going on behind that pretty face than any of us guessed. And none of it is good. She’s the one we need to watch now. Barrister’s arrogant, but she’s clever. Scary clever. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t find a way to lay it all at her brother’s feet now that Champagne’s shared his version of events.”
Margaret bowed her forehead to his chest. “I can’t believe she used poor Miss Alma and Mr. Rufus to gain access to this house to find out where Maisie was sleeping. What an awful, awful girl.” She looked up. “Do you think Miss Orva’s in on it?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “If she were, she wouldn’t have run out to tell Klugg what she’d overheard. She’d have pretended not to know anything. I think Odelia duped her into believing they were doing a kind service by coming over and trying to mend family fences.”
“Unless she’s the real scary clever one.” She arched an eyebrow. “What if Orva’s the mastermind, pulling everyone’s strings?”
“Well, if she is, we’ll find out. The two conspirators we know of are being questioned as we speak. Even if she was, and even if not a one of them get jail time, they’ll all be under close watch. Klugg is loyal to his friends, but he’s more loyal to his oath and his badge. As long as he’s sheriff, Barrister and Odelia for certain will have to watch every step they take. While you...” He smiled at her. “I believe you have another devotee in Sheriff Klugg.”
“Another?”
He cupped her chin. “You have a way of getting straight to the heart of people, Margaret Anne Millicent Sweeney. And once in there...” He shook his head. “There’s no getting you out.” He kissed her tenderly, and as he drew away, she offered him a coy smile.
Easing from his arms, she locked the study door before drawing the drapes. Back in his arms, she gazed up at him.
“Your father,” she said.
He blinked, and then frowned. “What about him?”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just his accent is—”
“Irish?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Yes.” She nodded. “But your last name is—”
“Scottish,” he said.
“Yes” She frowned.
He smiled. “My father bribed an official to change his name on his immigration paperwork. He sailed out of Glasgow, instead of Queenstown, as Tomás Daniel O’Bannon, and made his life here in America as Daniel Banner.”
Her eyes widened. “He lied about his name? But why?”
“Because at the time he emigrated,” Joe said, “Irish people, and especially Irish-Catholics, were less welcome here than even the Scots. And if you’ve met my father, which you have, you know he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. So rather than waste his days and nights fighting—literally—in defence of his religion and his roots, he modified his name.”
“And no one here questioned it?” she asked. “His accent, I mean.”
He shook his head. “Few people outside of Britain can tell a Scot from an Irishman solely on speech. Names, however, are easier for many to place, especially a name like O’Bannon. My father did what he felt he had to do to make living here, easier.”
She gazed at him a moment, and then her surprised expression sobered.
“Yes, well,” she said. “We all must do what we can to make living where we live, easier. Heaven knows starting over, even in a country in which you’re born and know well, is hard enough without the added burden of prejudice. But in a country—or even a county—where you’re not known...” She sighed, and then the gravity in her expression softened as her mouth curved in an expectant smile. “I believe there was something you wanted to ask me.”
“There was?” He scrolled through his memory, but with all the adrenaline he’d swum in the last week, there were holes in his memory large enough for a whale to swim through. “I don’t remember,” he said honestly.
“To marry you.”
He frowned. “Marry me?”
“Yes.” Raising on tiptoe, she brushed her lips over his. “Yes, Joe Banner, I will marry you.”
He leaned back to frown at her. “Didn’t we already agree you would?”
She dropped to her heels, folded her arms, and gave him a prim look. “We did, and we didn’t. You asked me what I needed, and then Maisie asked me to marry you both. But you never actually asked me—” Her eyes widened when he dropped to one knee.
Grasping her left hand, he planted a soft kiss on her palm before looking up. “Margaret Anne Millicent Sweeney,” he murmured, “my heart, my one true love. Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife and my sweet Maisie’s mother?”
Tears flooded her eyes, and she fell to her knees to clasp his face in her warm hands. “Yes, Joseph Tomásou Banner,” she whispered. “I will. I will marry you. Because there is nothing more in this world I want than to be your wife, and your—and my—sweet Maisie Marie’s mother.”
And, closing her eyes, she leaned in and kissed him.