The following morning, Ursula met with Alistair Fenway and Gerard Anderson at the offices of Anderson & Stowe Ltd. in Threadneedle Street. Both men seemed reluctant to accept Ursula’s proposal that she involve herself in her father’s business affairs. Fenway’s suggestion was that Lord Wrotham, as trustee, oversee the sale of her father’s mills and factories and invest the proceeds on her behalf. Ursula refused and it took two hours of exhaustive argument before both men came to realize the strength of her resolve. Finally, capitulating to her demands, Anderson drew out a massive account ledger and started to lead Ursula through all the various enterprises that provided the foundation of her father’s empire. She ran her finger down the list of Bristish suppliers—all familiar names she’d heard over the years—when a brief notation regarding payment to a German chemical company caught Ursula’s eye.
“What’s this?” she asked.
Anderson and Fenway exchanged glances.
“I didn’t know my father had contacts in Germany. Is it somehow related to the Lambeth factory?”
Anderson rubbed his nose. “Not exactly.”
“What is it then?” Ursula demanded.
Anderson turned to Fenway, who, after a hesitation, replied. “Boehrmeyer is a pharmaceutical company. They investigate chemical compounds to see if they have any medicinal use.”
“But why should my father be interested in that?”
Anderson sighed. “We were hoping you need never see this….” He pulled out a file from a drawer in his desk. “Read for yourself.”
Ursula reached over and took the file. She started to read the correspondence with growing horror. One of the first letters she read was addressed to her father and written in English.
Trials to date indicate that the substance is associated with an 80 percent sterilization rate. The asylum reports, however, that two of the twenty women involved in the trial suffered severe internal hemorrhage and subsequently died. We request your instructions as to whether you wish to proceed with further trials. As we say, the sterilization rate is extremely promising; the question is whether the associated morality rate is sufficiently of concern to halt further commercial development of this substance.
Sufficiently of concern?! Ursula was horrified. So this was the substance discovered on the Radcliffe expedition. Was this what Bates had been talking about all along? It seemed almost impossible to believe that her father had ever considered such an abhorrent plan. She found it hard to reconcile all his contradictions. How could the loving and indulgent father she knew be a man who was responsible for the deaths of two women? Maybe more?
Ursula looked up at Anderson. He refused to meet her eyes and merely gestured for her to continue reading. Fenway got up from his chair and went over to the window. From his profile Ursula could see he was discomfited.
Ursula pored over the remaining correspondence until she found the reply she was looking for. It was in her father’s rough handwriting.
Cease all trials immediately. It was my hope that the substance we discovered would provide a means of preventing further degradation of our race but it was never intended to be an instrument of death. I cannot in all conscience allow testing to continue.
Ursula hands were trembling as she set the letter down.
“Who else knew of this?” she asked quietly.
Fenway remained by the window.
“We all did. But while Abbott and I agreed with your father, Dobbs wanted to continue further investigations outside Europe—that was the South American enterprise he wanted your father to continue funding.”
“Did you or Lord Wrotham know about this?” Ursula directed her question to Fenway. He turned to face her, silhouetted by the light streaming in through the window.
“Neither of us knew anything until your father’s death. Obviously, as trustee Lord Wrotham had to be told.”
Ursula’s mind was awhirl. At least her faith in her father’s humanity hadn’t been totally destroyed. He certainly wasn’t the monster Bates portrayed him to be. Although she had always disagreed with his views on eugenics, she knew his intentions were honorable. He had, after all, been raised in poverty, surrounded by families with too many mouths to feed. But still Ursula’s heart sank when she thought of those poor women and the danger posed by such a substance in the hands of unscrupulous men.
“I need some time to absorb all that you have told me,” she announced abruptly and rose from her seat. Anderson hastened to grab her coat and hat from the stand in the foyer to his office. Neither he nor Fenway could think of anything to say. They stood by awkwardly as she took her leave.
By the time Samuels had driven Ursula home it was nearly four o’clock. She retired to her room early, sat down at her dressing table, and washed her face with some warm water from the basin. Her reflection in the mirror looked strained and pale. Ursula ran her fingers through her hair. It had grown out a little and now hung in loose curls just below her ears, making her look rather like a medieval pageboy. She reached out and opened the lid of her mother’s jewelry box, hoping to find comfort in her mother’s memories.
She removed the enamel locket and opened it to look at her father’s photograph. In the box she had also placed some of the photographs of her mother she found in the attic and she gazed at each of these, seeking solace in a connection with her mother’s past. She carefully replaced these alongside the strand of pearls her father had given her on her fourteenth birthday.
She then lifed out the vermeil rose pendant she had found in the attic, running her fingers along the edge thoughtfully.
There was a knock on the bedroom door which startled her—she dropped the pendant and it slid across the floor, under the bed.
“Come in,” she said.
Julia’s face appeared in the doorway. “Sorry to disturb you, miss, but Biggs is off visiting his sick mum, and Mrs. Stewart just wondered if you were coming downstairs for dinner. I can bring you up something if you’d rather…?” Julia let the question hang in the air for a moment.
Ursula shook her head. “No need. Tell Mrs. Stewart I’ll have dinner in the dining room—but just tea and a little toast will do. I haven’t got the appetite at the moment for anything more.”
“Right you are, miss.”
Julia turned to leave.
“I was thinking I might visit Freddie tomorrow morning,” Ursula called after her. “So perhaps you could get my day suit with the fur collar ready.”
“Of course, and may I suggest your sable hat and gloves? They will go nicely.”
Ursula murmured her assent as she hitched up her skirt and got down on her hands and knees to try to locate her mother’s pendant under the bed. It had rolled about halfway under the mattress, just out of reach.
“Oh, miss, please allow me,” Julia protested as she rushed to the other side of the bed and knelt down on the floor to retrieve the pendant. She stood up and held it out in her hand. “I didn’t know this opened,” she said curiously.
“No, nor did I,” Ursula said, rushing to her side to find that, to both their surprise, the dainty vermeil pendant had sprung open with the fall, revealing a hidden compartment that contained a photograph.
“Well, you must’ve—you’ve a picture of your Mr. Cumberland in there.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Ursula as she took the pendant over to the light—and found herself looking at the photograph of a man who was most certainly not Tom Cumberland and not her father, but an incredibly handsome youth, with light-colored hair swept back from his forehead, languid dark eyes, and a mocking smile. Ursula placed the pendant down on the narrow window ledge, her breathing shallow and fast. There was no mistaking it. The man whose photograph had been hidden in her mother’s pendant was a much younger, much handsomer Ronald Henry Bates—and without the scars and ruddy beard, he looked exactly like the man who, until yesterday, had been her fiancé.
“Well, if it isn’t him, he’s the spitting image of Mr. Cumberland, then, ain’t he?” said Julia defiantly.
Ursula could barely speak. “It cannot be.”
Ursula ran down to her father’s study, and rang urgently for Harrison, who was nowhere to be found at this late hour. Lord Wrotham was en route to Ireland and couldn’t be reached. And so she sat alone in her father’s study, trying to find a sample of Tom’s handwriting that she might compare to the tin of letters she’d given to the authorities. She tore through the office files and began laboriously going through the reports and ledgers.
The heat from the fire was starting to dissipate, and a cold draft snuck across the room from the window. Ursula reached over and rang the bell. She waited, but there was no response.
“Biggs has one day off and the whole household falls apart,” she muttered as she rose to her feet. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and then made her way out of the study and along the hallway toward the stairs that led to the kitchen.
“Moira!” Ursula called out. “Moira?” But again there was no response.
“Blast!” she said under her breath.
She opened the door to the servants’ staircase and called down once more. “Mrs. Stewart!” But still no response. No doubt Mrs. Stewart was asleep in her rocking chair by the stove, a copy of the Daily Telegraph in her lap. Cook would probably be sitting up in her bed studying her Methodist Book of Discipline.
The stairwell was gloomy with only the kitchen light to illuminate it. Ursula’s stomach rumbled. She had hardly touched her lunch or dinner, and now she was desperate for a nice cup of tea and a slice of Cook’s currant cake.
“Mrs. Stewart?” she called out as she came down the stairs. “Mrs. Stewart?”
The kitchen was deserted. The standard lamp in the corner by the fire cast only a dim light, in which Ursula could see the long table set for tea with Mrs. Stewart’s brown teapot, three teacups, and plates, and cake crumbs still scattered on the white lace tablecloth. “Mrs. Stewart?” she called out again.
Ursula could just make out the profile of Mrs. Stewart sitting in her rocking chair beside the fire, her back to her. There was no sign that she had even heard her calling out.
Ursula smiled. Mrs. Stewart really was getting quite deaf these days. She took a couple of steps toward the figure apparently slumbering in her chair before halting. Something was clearly wrong. Ursula suddenly smelled the distinctive pungent scent of his tobacco. It was a scent that was oddly familiar. It took her but a moment to place where she had smelled it before. In Chester Square that night with Winifred. Ursula’s skin prickled at the recollection, and she stopped in midstride. She spun around and saw Tom standing in the corner, silent and watchful. Curls of blue-white smoke filtered through the semidarkness.
“I assume you’re responsible for this?” Ursula asked, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Don’t worry, they are safe. I merely drugged them. It will be a few hours, but Mrs. Stewart here will wake with no recollection of what happened.”
“What about everyone else?”
“Julia, Moira, and Bridget are safely asleep in their beds. Your cook unfortunately would not oblige me, so I had to bind and gag her in her room. She was most put out.”
Ursula took a slow step backward. Samuels would hear her if she cried out. He normally spent his evenings assembling his stamp collection in his room above the garage behind the main house.
As if reading her mind, Tom said, “I’m afraid the bottle of gin I brought Samuels this evening was a little different—a bit stronger than he is used to. He will have quite a headache in the morning.”
Ursula bit her lip.
“I was going to wait until after we were married.” He flicked a cake crumb off the table and smiled.
The fire in the grate hissed.
“But then yesterday afternoon, when you informed me we were no longer betrothed, I had to alter my arrangements.”
“That is why you killed my father instead of me. You didn’t miss when you shot at me—you wanted me alive, you wanted his fortune for yourself. Your father—”
“My father is DEAD!” His dark eyes met hers. “But you knew that already.”
Ursula’s mind was racing. How could she make it up the stairs and out of the house? How could she raise the alarm?
He was getting close to her now. Ursula stepped back slowly toward the stairwell. She tried to maintain an appearance of calm, all the while trying to plan her escape.
“You’ll never get away with it.”
“Won’t I? They think I’m dead anyway. Found me washed up on the banks of the Thames. Who’s to say any different? You? You’ll be dead.”
“How did you do it?”
“Easy. It’s always easy to bribe men who are desperate and don’t know any better. The man they found had syphillis and was dying anyway. I merely offered him money and passage to India on the proviso that he pretended to be me. Wasn’t too difficult to then stage an accidental drowning.”
Ursula’s mouth went dry. “But why did you kill them all? Why did you want revenge for your father?”
“You stupid girl. Radcliffe and your father made fortunes off my father’s discoveries and then left him for dead. The substance used to drug Laura was only a fraction of what my father found. And yet they left me and my brother and mother to rot from disease. They destroyed my father’s life, and they destroyed mine. The others knew it, too. Abbott. Anderson. Even Dobbs. A conspiracy of silence that has lasted all these years. They should all of them hang for their greed.”
Ursula’s throat tightened, but she shook her head. “My father would never….” She couldn’t finish. She choked and tried to speak again. “Your father was mad. And then he poisoned your mind to think that killing these innocent girls would change everything. He never told you that you’d still be angry—you’ll still be alone.”
Tom came closer, leaned in, and whispered in her ear. “Your father wanted mine dead, and he gave Radcliffe the order to leave him there.”
“No, you’re wrong. Your father ruined his own life. He was going to leave you and your mother and your brother. He was in love with my mother. He would have abandoned you no matter what they did.”
Tom recoiled, then shook his head as if to rid his brain of all logic.
“It’s just as it says in the Bible. As punishment for his sin, his child must die—”
At that moment the telephone rang upstairs. Tom startled as if out of a trance. He stepped away, and Ursula caught sight of the silver edge of a knife blade.
“It will be suspicious if nobody answers that,” she said. “You know that.”
Tom pointed the knife at her and gestured for her to answer it.
Ursula turned and walked up the stairs. The shrill peal of the telephone continued. She reached the hallway table and picked up the black ceramic receiver. She could feel the point of the knife between her shoulder blades.
“Miss Ursula Marlow’s residence,” she answered primly.
“Miss Marlow, is that you?” It was Harrison’s voice. Ursula was torn between relief and crestfallen that as a policeman he was hardly likely to appreciate the breach in etiquette and realize that something was wrong.
The knife edge nudged sharply in her back.
“Yes,” Ursula replied calmly.
“I received a message that you were urgently trying to reach me…. What can I help you with?”
Ursula swallowed hard. “Really, it was nothing…” She tried to sound unconcerned.
There was a pause before Harrison asked, “Miss Marlow, is everything all right?”
Tom, sensing that Ursula had signaled something was amiss, grabbed the receiver from her grasp and slammed it against the table. It broke into pieces. Ursula held her breath. Tom drew her close to him, his arm curled around her waist, the knife now poised against her throat. “Who was that?” he asked, moving the knife blade closer. A small bead of blood trickled down her neck and onto the collar of her shirt.
“Inspector Harrison,” Ursula answered hoarsely.
Tom turned her around to face him. He stroked her cheek with the tip of the knife. “I would have liked to have taken my time.”
He drew the knife away, and Ursula seized the opportunity. She gave him a swift knee kick to his groin. Tom doubled over in pain and dropped the knife to the ground. Ursula took her chance and started to run down the hallway toward the front door. Tom flung himself against her from behind, and she stumbled to the floor. The Moorcroft vase on the side table came crashing down. Tom’s broad hands were around her throat, his body pinning hers to the floorboards. The weight of his body on Ursula’s chest momentarily winded her.
“Shall I strangle you like I did Cecilia?” he whispered in her ear. “She gave no struggle. Like a little bird, she was—one snap to the neck and she was dead.”
Ursula struggled against his weight, trying to get free. His grip tightened, and she started to gasp for breath.
“Laura was easy, too. I got great satisfaction from seeing her whore get blamed for it.”
“Yes, well, you’ll get no satisfaction from me,” Ursula spluttered before reaching for a shard of pottery on the floor. She swung it across his face with as much force as she could muster.
Tom screamed out and swore loudly, and his fingers released their grip slightly. Ursula grabbed his hands and tried to pull them away from her throat. As she did so, Tom shifted to regain his grip, and she quickly rolled over, catching him off balance. She scrambled to her feet and hurled herself across the hallway and into her father’s study. She tried to close the door quickly, but Tom was close behind her. He leaned in, using his body weight to inch the door open. First he placed his foot in the gap, then his torso. Ursula hadn’t the strength to hold him back—the door burst open, and she dashed toward the window. As she did, she caught sight of her father’s ivory-handled letter opener still lying on his desk and grabbed it.
They were face-to-face, with only the desk between them. Ursula held the letter opener in her hand. Tom had the knife in his. He smiled before advancing a couple of steps.
“You fight hard,” he said. “It is most amusing.”
The shrill siren of a Metropolitan Police van could be heard coming closer. Tom’s eyes darted to the window. Ursula shoved the desk as hard as she could. It toppled and caught him in the shins. Undeterred, he merely struggled to his feet once more. Just as he was doing so, Ursula seized a leather-bound volume of the King James Bible off the bookshelf and swung it across his face. Tom cried out in surprise before he crumpled to the floor.
Just then the front door burst open, and Harrison and two police constables came running inside.
“Miss Marlow!” Harrison was out of breath and bent over slightly as he stared at her in amazement.
“It seems my previous clashes with the police taught me a thing or two about defending myself,” Ursula commented dryly before her knees gave way and she collapsed to the floor.