CHAPTER

31

The fire in Hazel’s library crackled and popped, the only sound in the room after I finished telling what I’d learned at the Langton’s. The clock on the mantel chimed two a.m., but none of us were tired, or moved to retire to bed. I’d charted a path through the library and paced, trying to keep my body working at the same speed as my mind.

“Would you take off that beard?” Kindle said.

I waved my hand in dismissal. “Not yet.”

“This Kline fellow was your friend?” Henry said.

“Yes. My oldest and dearest. So I thought.” I didn’t look at Kindle, who knew my relationship with James had at one time been intimate. “He told me about Langton’s death, and the accusation against me.”

“And encouraged you to leave town,” Hazel said.

“Yes.”

“Do you think he killed Langton?” Henry asked.

“Because he was in love with Beatrice?” I shrugged. “Maybe. But my friendship with James was known to George Langton. I would think if George knew James was having an affair with his wife, he wouldn’t have conversed so complacently with me the night he died.”

“You think he would have asked you about it?” Hazel said.

“No. But he didn’t seem upset until the end of the conversation, when we spoke of medical school. We never spoke of Beatrice or James during the entirety of our relationship.”

“Kline kills Langton and covers it up by blaming you so he can marry Beatrice Langton. Is that our working theory?” Kindle said.

I threw my hands in the air. “I cannot imagine James killing someone.”

“We know everyone has it in them,” Kindle said.

“But James was not in love with Beatrice.”

“He wouldn’t have told you if he was,” Kindle said with maddening certainty.

“You don’t know anything about him,” I snapped.

The silence was almost complete. Kindle appraised me. “No, but I know men, and there’s not a one alive who would tell a former lover he was in love with another woman.”

Hazel’s and Henry’s eyes widened. “You and Kline?” Hazel said.

I turned and waved my hand in dismissal again. “Once, years ago. It was meaningless.”

“He asked you to marry him,” Kindle said.

I turned on him again. “What does this have to do with George Langton? Nothing.”

Henry said, “It would explain why he framed you for the murder.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “You think James framed me for Langton’s murder because I turned down his marriage proposal? Seven years ago. He’s felt slighted for seven years? Thank you, Henry, for thinking I am so enchanting that a man will spend nearly a decade pining for me, but it’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Laura,” Hazel said, “what is more upsetting to you? The thought that James killed George or that he framed you for it?”

I covered my mouth, surprised to feel the fake beard, and closed my eyes. “We don’t know he killed George.”

“But we do know he framed you,” Hazel replied. I opened my eyes to Hazel’s compassion-filled face. The eccentric spinster was gone, replaced by a woman I suspected understood betrayal all too well.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Kindle came to me and pulled me into his arms. I cried silently into his shoulder, trying to come to terms with the biggest betrayal of my life. How could James have done it to me? How could he have risked my life like that? His actions led to Maureen’s death, my capture and abuse at the hands of the Comanche, and the deaths of all the men who had chased after us. Lorcan Reed. Cora Bayle. Dunk. The loss of Kindle’s eye. For a year, I’d blamed it all on myself, my impetuous decision to leave instead of staying and fighting. Now I knew I’d been expertly manipulated by a man whom I trusted, whom I loved like a brother, and whom I thought loved me the same.

I pulled away from Kindle, looked up at him. His head jerked back. “The beard,” he explained.

“If Kline killed Langton, where was the judge?” Henry asked.

“What?” Hazel, Kindle, and I said in unison.

“The judge is the one who interrupted your conversation with George the night of his murder, right?”

“Yes.”

“He wanted George to return to his guests?”

“I think so.”

“But he didn’t.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know few details of the night, other than what I experienced.”

“According to the papers, he went to his library from the billiard room and never returned,” Hazel said.

“I was treating George and Beatrice’s daughter. She was recovering from chicken pox. I’d wanted to get to their house earlier in the day but had a childbirth that took longer than I expected. George wanted to talk to me when I was done, to see how Elizabeth fared.”

“Beatrice didn’t?” Hazel asked.

I shrugged. “I assumed George would tell her.”

“Could Judge Sheridan have killed him?” Henry asked.

“Why?” Kindle said.

“George told him he wasn’t going into politics. That he was going to medical school instead,” I said.

“Seems a thin motivation,” Kindle said.

“It’s not,” Hazel said. “You forget, Beatrice was originally engaged to George’s brother, and he and George were two very different people. As fond as I was of George, I would imagine having him for a son-in-law would be a tax on a man like Stuyvesant Sheridan.”

“Enough to make his daughter a widow?” Kindle said.

“If his daughter didn’t love her husband? Yes,” Hazel said, her eyes brightening with the possibility. “Think of it, killing George frees Beatrice of a weak husband, but she retains the money. George and Beatrice had a son, who will inherit. Bertram Senior isn’t going to turn out his heir.”

“Or his heir’s mother,” Henry said.

“The judge kills George and gets Kline to help cover it up,” Kindle said.

“He tells Kline he’ll further his law career,” Henry said.

“Kline asks for a partnership, and Beatrice,” Hazel said.

“No,” I said. “James would further his career, I have no doubt. But I think his feelings for Beatrice are real.” They looked at me in astonishment. “I’ve seen that expression on James’s face before.” My face flamed with embarrassment. Henry and Hazel looked away.

“We can’t prove any of this,” Kindle said.

“Judge Sheridan isn’t going to confess,” Hazel said.

“Kline has everything he’s ever wanted. He’s not going to turn on Sheridan,” Henry said.

“You’re right. All of you,” I said. “But I know who will.”

“That’s Langton’s,” Hazel said to me, nodding to a carriage that had turned the corner and was pulling up alongside the Langtons’ house.

“For someone who doesn’t socialize with them much, you sure do know their habits and equipage.”

“I’ve lived across the square from them for thirty-five years.”

“Wish me luck,” I said, and crossed the street two houses up from the Langtons’. I smoothed down my beard, adjusted my glasses, and walked with a masculine purpose toward the carriage. Langton came down the steps sooner than I anticipated, throwing off my plan to accidentally run into him. The footman opened the carriage door.

“Mr. Langton,” I called. He looked the other way, then mine, startled. I raised my hand in greeting and increased my pace. “Samuel Glover,” I said, when I reached him. I held out my hand.

“Of course, how do you do?” He gripped it with less strength than I expected.

“Very well, thank you. Going home today.”

“Oh,” Langton said. “You were visiting Hazel Dockery, correct?”

“Yes. She’s funding my hospital for indigent women in Buffalo.”

Langton nodded appreciatively. “Excellent. We need more of those.”

“Yes, we do,” I said, somewhat surprised at Langton’s comment. Businessmen such as he were usually more interested in increasing profits than in helping the poor. Charity was the purview of their wives. I remembered that George’s mother had died not long after his older brother had been killed in the war, presumably of grief, though I had my doubts. I’d learned firsthand that grief wasn’t fatal, unless you wanted it to be.

“Would you like a lift somewhere?” Langton asked.

“Oh, I would hate to impose.”

“No imposition. Please.” He motioned for me to enter the carriage before him, and I did so, placing my carpetbag on the seat next to me.

“Grand Central Depot?” Langton asked.

“Yes. Thank you.”

I knew I had roughly ten minutes to make my case to Langton, but now that I was in the carriage with him, the ideas I’d had on how to start the conversation escaped me. My life was trickling through my hands like grains through an hourglass. I opened my mouth to brazen it out when Langton spoke. “You travel light, I see.” He nodded to my carpetbag. “I tend to do the same, much to my valet’s distress.”

I placed my hand on the carpetbag. “This isn’t my carpetbag.” Langton nodded politely, thinking we were making boring, polite conversation. For a moment, I pitied him. “It belonged to a woman named Cora Bayle. She was killed, needlessly. One in a long line of senseless murders.”

Langton looked alarmed. “My word. I hope the police are involved.”

“They were looking for the wrong person. A woman named Catherine Bennett.”

Langton’s expression was blank for a moment, before turning a mottled red. “What’s the meaning of this? What do you mean?”

“You were on the verge of telling me something last night at the dinner party. What was it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t think Catherine Bennett killed your son. Why?”

“Of course she did. Who else could have done it?”

“Your son wasn’t having an affair with Dr. Bennett. You and I know it.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

I removed my glasses, folded them, and placed them on the carpetbag. With great care, I peeled the beard and mustache from my face. I ran my fingers through my hair to loosen it from its slicked-back style, though it was still short. Richard Graves had dismissed the possibility of me wearing a wig, which meant I was saddled with short hair for the foreseeable future.

Langton gasped. “You!”

He moved to tap on the ceiling with his cane to alert his driver. I pulled my gun from the carpetbag and aimed it at him. “Please don’t. Too many people have died already. Including your son.”

Langton settled back into his seat, his hands resting on the cane between his legs. “You have five minutes until we get to the depot, at which time I will call the nearest policeman and you will be arrested.”

“If I thought you believed I killed your son, I would be worried.”

“If not you, then who?”

“I have a theory, but it is so far-fetched I have a hard time believing it myself.”

“Four minutes.”

“The night George died, we were in his study talking medicine. We did that occasionally. You know he wanted to be a doctor.”

Langton nodded.

“That night, I was hoping to get him to intercede on my behalf with the local medical schools. I made a comment about how I would have considered myself a failure if I didn’t try to achieve my dream. It struck a chord with George. I didn’t think anything of it until I learned recently why he didn’t become a doctor.”

Langton’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t interrupt.

“Judge Sheridan interrupted us and I left. I went to a resurrection man. Jonasz Golik. Have you heard of him?”

“Yes.

“I was there all night. Dissecting a fresh cadaver.” Langton winced. “I’m not proud of it, but being blocked from using the labs in the medical schools pushed me to use Golik. I don’t regret it in the least. Those dissections are the reason I was able to save the life of a man in Texas, whom I fell in love with and married.”

“That was true?”

“Yes. I didn’t know of George’s death until James Kline found me early the next morning. He told me I was the suspect and he encouraged me to hide until he could figure out what was going on. I did, and he sent word about the reward and told me to run. So I did.”

“Why? If you didn’t kill him?”

“I knew you and Judge Sheridan had the money and power to convict me, regardless of my innocence.”

Langton looked down at the floor of the carriage.

“Mr. Langton.” He looked up at me. “I liked your son very much. He respected me. Treated me as someone worth admiring instead of someone worth derision. So many men hate me on sight, for what they believe I am, or out of jealousy or fear—I don’t know. Your son was different.” I laughed softly. “I had too few allies such as him to go around killing them.”

The carriage stopped. Through the window I saw the entrance for Grand Central Depot. “There’s a policeman,” I said. “If you think I killed your son, call him over. Please. For the last year, I’ve lived in fear of being found out. I’ve had people use the bounty against me, manipulate me into doing their bidding under threat of arrest. Innocent people have died, as have the guilty. My husband lost an eye because someone decided blaming me for George’s death was a better option than being discovered as a murderer.” I took a deep breath. “I’m tired of running, of lying, of death. I want it to end. If that means I have to swing, then so be it.”

Bertram Langton studied me for so long, I wondered if he’d heard me at all.

“Do you know who killed my son?”

“I have my suspicions, but I need your help to discover the truth. Will you help me?”

Langton turned his head and looked out the window at the policeman. I held my breath, sure this was the end of me. That all of this had been for naught. The policeman noticed our carriage and started walking toward us. Langton tapped on the ceiling. The driver opened the trapdoor. “Sir?”

“Drive on.”