By the time Sebastian reached the Strand, his bad leg was on fire, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He could hear the bells of St. Clement’s tolling the hour, the slow, mournful dongs of the church bells nearly drowned out by the boom and crackle of the fireworks exploding overhead and the roar of the crowds. With the sulfurous smoke swirling around him, he forced himself to slow to a walk, his nostrils flaring and his chest heaving as he scanned the looming ruins of the old palace and the deserted arches of the unfinished bridge that stretched out over the dark river.
And then he saw them—or rather, he saw Salinger and Arabella, two stark silhouettes balanced perilously atop one of the stone balustrades edging the bridge. The wind rising off the river below flapped the tails of Salinger’s coat and billowed the skirts of Arabella’s muslin walking dress around them. The girl wore a black velvet spencer over her mourning gown, but her hat was gone, her hair a wind-whipped mess that hid her face. Beside her, her father was also bareheaded, his darker hair tumbled across his forehead. As Sebastian watched, another skyrocket exploded above them, its flickering light casting a ghostly blue hue across Salinger’s sweat-slicked face and glinting on the naked blade he held pressed to his daughter’s throat.
There was no sign of Percy.
His stomach again twisting into a painful knot, Sebastian stepped onto the bridge’s unfinished roadway, his hands held out at his sides. “You don’t need to do this, Miles,” he said softly but clearly.
Salinger whipped around to stare at him, father and daughter wavering precariously on the narrow granite railing high above the rushing river. “Devlin? What are you doing here?”
“I came to stop you from doing . . . this.”
Salinger sucked in a deep breath, his features contorting in a spasm of grief and horror as he shook his head. “He admitted it to me, you know. Percy, I mean. He was proud of it! Said I didn’t need to worry about them ever getting caught because he’d been too clever.” His body shuddered with a dry, silent sob. “My God. He’d been too clever. Planned it all so carefully. Just to show that he could.”
“Let Arabella go,” Sebastian said quietly.
“I didn’t do anything!” she screamed, held fast by her father’s grip on her arm, the wind blowing her tangled hair across her tear-streaked, terrified face. “Percy’s the one who planned it all after talking to that old thatcher out at Richmond to find out exactly how he’d killed those other women. Percy’s the one who shot Aunt Laura and Emma. He used Jacob to help him steal Major Finch’s gun, and then Jacob helped him sneak back out to Richmond again so he could make sure the thatcher wouldn’t tell on him. He killed Cassy, too, for the same reason, because he was afraid she might tell someone we made up the bit about being attacked in the park.”
“But why?” said Salinger, staring at her with horror. “Bella, how could you?”
“Let her go,” said Sebastian when Arabella simply looked up at her father and mutely shook her head. “Percy’s right. He has been clever. Too clever for either of the children to ever be remanded into custody, let alone convicted of anything.”
“I didn’t do anything!” screamed Arabella again, pulling desperately against her father’s hold. “I didn’t! Why won’t you believe me?”
Salinger tightened his grip on her arm when she would have sunk, crying, to her knees beside him, but he kept his gaze on Sebastian. “You think I should let her go? So she can spend the rest of her life in an asylum like her mother?”
“I didn’t kill anyone!” sobbed Arabella, her face contorted with terror. “It was Percy’s idea from the very beginning. I swear. All I said was that I’d like to kill Emma—her and Aunt Laura, too, because I was so mad at them. But then Percy, he said, ‘Why don’t we?’ I didn’t think he was serious. I thought it was like a game to him, figuring out how to do it—how we could do it and not get caught. I didn’t think he was actually going to do it. But he did. He did!”
Salinger was looking at her with a wild mixture of hope and disbelief. “It didn’t occur to you to tell me?”
Arabella stared up at him with wide, innocent-seeming eyes, her chest heaving with her gasping sobs. “Percy said he’d kill me if I even thought of it!”
For a moment, Salinger hesitated, desperate to believe her, desperate to salvage something good and decent from the ruins of his life.
“Let her go,” said Sebastian again. He could see Salinger wavering, hear the Thames rushing swift and cold far below as a trio of fireworks exploded against the black sky above to rain down a glorious fountain of multicolored sparks that drew a roar of delight from the distant crowd. Then, before Sebastian realized what he was about, Salinger shoved his daughter away and turned the knife to plunge the blade deep into his own chest.
“No!” shouted Sebastian, lunging forward to grab Arabella as she half fell from the parapet in a scrambling rush.
For one haunting instant, Salinger’s pain-filled, anguished eyes locked with Sebastian’s. Then Salinger toppled backward to plummet silently toward the swirling waters of the river far below.
“Papa!” screamed Arabella as Salinger’s body hit the water with a splash and was swept away. “Oh, God. Papa,” she cried, sinking down beside the balustrade, her head bowed, her hands fisting in her wind-tangled hair as ragged sobs shuddered through her body.
“Where’s Percy?” shouted Sebastian, grabbing her by her shoulders and shaking her. “Where is he?”
“Oh, God, oh, God.”
“Damn it, Arabella! Where is Percy?”
Her head fell back as she looked up at Sebastian, her wet face now blank with shock. “He’s dead. Percy’s dead. Papa killed him.”