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Marianne was only slightly tipsy when she got back to Woodfurlong. First she checked on her father. Mrs Crouch assured her that he had slept well, and was relatively lucid in his waking moments. She peeped in on him, and could not see anything but a huge pile of blankets, slowly rising and falling in time with gentle snores. She retreated quietly.
Then she went to find Phoebe.
She found her cousin in the drawing room, taking tea with the local vicar’s wife, and agreeing to help out at all manner of upcoming events and charity drives. Mrs Forster was a force of nature in the unswaying service of the Lord, and tended not to hear the word “no.” Phoebe looked relieved when Marianne entered, and she sprang to her feet.
“Ah! Marianne! How is Gertie?”
Gertrude was perfectly fine, as far as Marianne knew. She raised her eyebrows. “Er – do you want me to go and check on her?”
“I thought that you had been in the nursery. You know, what with her fever and everything this morning. I ought to go and see myself, but as I have company...”
“Oh!” cried Mrs Forster. “The poor lamb. You should have said. Might we say a little prayer for the innocent mite?”
The three of them bowed their heads and Mrs Forster kept it mercifully short before apologising again and retreating from the room.
“Why didn’t you use that excuse at the start?” Marianne said as Phoebe flung herself back into the chair with a sigh.
“I didn’t think of it until I saw you. Your face reminded me of séances and fake mediums and lies, and it just came to me. Huh. Maybe you are a bad moral influence after all.”
“I am not! Who says that?”
“Oh, no one, no one. Don’t worry about it. If anyone did say it, which they don’t, they would be wrong, but of course it doesn’t matter, because no one does say it. What’s that in your hands?”
“Letters.” Marianne collapsed into the other armchair.
“You smell of gin.”
“Yes. I have been drinking gin. So would you, if you had had the morning that I have had.”
“What, worse than conversation with Mrs Forster? I am to do the flowers for the third Sunday next month. I can’t think why I agreed to that. You must help me.”
“Unless Mrs Forster has taken to waving a gun at you, I have decidedly had the worst morning.” Marianne told her cousin everything, and Phoebe grew more and more alarmed.
“I have a feeling that I want some gin myself,” she said. “Oh my goodness. She will come back for you, you know, this Anna. She sounds unhinged. She will soon discover where you live. This is what Price was so worried about, you know.”
“I beg your pardon? He was worried about random foreign women attempting to shoot me?”
“No, I mean, he thought that once your business became known, people might come to the house. We had a discussion about it. I took your side, of course, but he was not happy. I hate to say it, but perhaps you ought to think of taking premises in London?”
“My finances hardly run to that. Not yet.”
“But George Bartholomew gave you a great deal of money, didn’t he?” Phoebe said. “I know that you chafe being here – don’t deny it to spare my feelings! You insult me to suggest that I don’t notice. You will leave, one day. I am surprised that you haven’t already. I’ll miss you, of course. And don’t you have more money to come once you give that evidence to his solicitor? When do you plan on doing that? Why have you not done so already? I should love to come along when you do it.”
“Tomorrow, I think.” It was always tomorrow. She’d promised herself that for a few days now, but circumstances kept intervening. “I want to get it over with, it is true. I fear I will be mocked and disbelieved, though.” She wanted to sidestep the question of where all her money had gone. It was only a loan to Price, but she wondered, now, if she would ever see it again.
To further distract Phoebe, she fanned the half-dozen letters out. “Anyway,” she went on, “Look here. These are all for you.”
“Oh! When did they come?”
“They have been appearing, by first and second post, over the past few days. But not here at Woodfurlong. They are actually addressed to the famous and talented medium, Mrs Algernon Carter, and have been delivered to the rented rooms where we performed the séance. The landlord passed them to Simeon, and so I convey them to you. I can guess who sent them even without psychic powers.”
Phoebe took the thick folded envelopes and looked at them. “I can also guess. The man calling himself Edgar Bartholomew.”
“Wade Walker himself, I am sure of it. Open them.”
Every letter was a variation of the same – a plea to Mrs Carter to afford him a private sitting. He heaped praises upon her, calling her an inestimable talent of unique skill. Her privileged position with the spirits, he said, must not be wasted or ignored.
Phoebe read them in growing horror. “Oh the man is obsessed, Marianne! What do we do?”
Marianne smiled. “The thing about gin is this: a certain amount of it can lead to some marvellous ideas. Simeon and I have a plan, Phoebe.”
“Oh ... let me guess. We will hold another séance?”
“Exactly right!”
“And I didn’t even need gin to think it up,” Phoebe said. She bit at her lip. “Excited as I am by the prospect of a little more adventure, what exactly is the aim of this?”
“We will work on the assumption that he is Wade Walker, who has killed Edgar Bartholomew and taken his place. And so, by careful revelations, we intend to force him to confess.”
“But will this confession have any weight in law? You will have to make him say it all before a policeman or magistrate.”
“Ah, as to that, we have not yet worked out the final details,” Marianne said airily. “We thought maybe you could do some spirit writing that he could sign, perhaps. We need as much evidence as possible for the police. I am starting to think we need to take out a newspaper advertisement just to make them listen to me. The most important thing at the moment is that you agree. Do you?”
After a fractional hesitation, Phoebe said yes.
“Then you must reply to him, and we will set a date.” Marianne clapped her hands. “At once!”
***
THERE FOLLOWED A FLURRY of activity over the next few days. Marianne spent her time shuttling between Simeon’s workshop and Woodfurlong, all the time looking over her shoulder, expecting Jack Monahan to appear out of one direction and Anna Jones to descend upon her, fully armed, from another.
She considered – and immediately dismissed – the idea of going to the police about Anna. She wouldn’t be believed, of course, and she was concerned that she would get a reputation as a delusional woman. If that happened, they would not believe her when they absolutely had to.
But she was also still concerned for Anna. She wanted to help her, as much as she wanted to avoid being shot by her. She didn’t know enough about her past in Prussia, but she was a clever woman in a new city and she clearly wanted to start a new life.
Marianne had to put Anna out of her mind. She was unlikely to ever see her again.
Russell was awake and active once more, and spending much of his time in town, visiting old friends. He had revived some acquaintances when he was engaged in the quests on her behalf to find out about Monahan and Wade Walker, and now he was accepting invitations again. She wondered how long it would last – invariably he would say something to upset someone influential, and there would be a public spat, and he would retreat to lick his wounds.
But while he was up and about, she took the chance wherever possible to travel with him, minimising the time that she was alone, just in case Anna did reappear. At other times, she was accompanied by Emilia, who welcomed the excursions into London. One day, she took Mr Dry, who was the valet to Mr Claverdon but as part of his usual duties he tended to escort Phoebe on her shopping trips if she were heading into London alone. He was a silent and watchful man, and she wondered how much the servants knew about what was going on. Probably more than she or Phoebe realised.
She wanted to ask what they knew about Price Claverdon and Anna, but she didn’t dare, in case she put ideas into their heads and started rumours she would not be able to quash.
Marianne had spent most of the few days before the planned escapade away from Woodfurlong. It reminded her a little of her time away up at the college. All her life she’d longed to be somewhere else, away from her father and the fading childhood memories of her mother; away from her glamorous and beautiful cousin; away from the tedious and predictable run of everyday life.
Phoebe, being older, had had her season while Marianne was only just starting college, and was then caught up in a whirl of balls and parties. She had, for a time, forgotten Marianne, and their letters to one another had dwindled. And why not? Marianne would not have such a coming-out, and nor did she want one, or so she assured her father when, from time to time, it occurred to him to ask.
She wanted, she had told him, only a good education and the chance to make her own way in life.
She was not quite of the same class as Phoebe, although it seemed to be more a matter of presentation than blood and birth these days. Marianne went away, into a world of small rooms and gossip and heady excitement and plans for the remaking of society. She went to lectures and talks, to secret meetings and public ones, and thought that perhaps the world with women in it could be different.
Until she had come back to London, and to her shabby childhood home, and hit reality with a thump. Her father was ill. He’d not bothered to hide it from her – what would be the point? He was not one for unnecessary drama. “I shall die,” he told her. “Slowly, and in agony. But you know enough now to ease my passing, and I expect you to honour that.”
It was a grim request but she promised that she would. She would not watch him suffer.
“Anyway,” he had added, “it won’t be for a while. And what shall we do while we wait for my death, my learned daughter?”
“Well,” she had replied, looking around the room, “we can’t stay here.”
Her childhood home had fallen into disrepair and neglect while she had been away. Most of the staff had run off, or been dismissed. The old building was too close to the rookeries in London which had all been pulled down. Only a few twisted filthy streets remained, and their family home was not far from the planned redevelopments. It made sense to sell up and get gone.
Phoebe, by this time, had had her whirlwind romance, and fallen in love with Price Claverdon – a much older man, a sedate man, a respectable man of business.
Marianne laughed at the memory. So he had seemed to her – back then!
And now what was he to do? He was all tied up with Anna and the blackmail, and respectable no more – at least under the surface. Marianne thought that there was one consolation in that Anna would not be demanding any more money from him. That was a comfort.
A chill ran down Marianne’s spine, then.
She had missed something very obvious. She was sure of it.
She stood in the centre of her day room at Woodfurlong, and it seemed to darken all around her. She had come back late in the evening, and it was the day before the planned escapade. She had intended to have a quiet night, skipping the evening meal in public, and spending it instead privately in her room. She’d already spoken with Mrs Cogwell who promised her “an internal picnic.”
Anna wanted to harm Marianne. Maybe she would stop her mission, and flee London – that would be the sensible option, especially now that she had revealed her intentions to Marianne. She must know, Marianne thought, that now Anna had shown her hand, Marianne would be on guard. Marianne had ensured she had taken precautions by not being alone, and always being armed, and surely Anna would expect that. A second attempt on her life would be difficult, if not impossible. It would certainly be ill-advised.
There was another thing that was only just occurring to her. Anna’s source of income was through Price. Perhaps it was an affair and perhaps it was blackmail. Marianne could see that it was likely to be a mixture of both. So what would Anna do now?
She might go back to Price for one last meeting.
And then?
She could try to tell Price about Marianne but there was nothing there that could be used as a threat. She could demand more money. She could threaten to expose Price, of course.
And that would be the act of a spiteful woman who was leaving London. She could expose Price, and so ruin Phoebe, and by association Marianne and her father. The scandal would see him dismissed. He had debts, run up from small and shady banks – he had told her so. What would happen to Woodfurlong? It would be sold. Where would they go? They would be broken up.
If Marianne had no one to look after but herself, she knew that she would survive. She could turn her hand, she thought, to anything. But she had been in this house for so long, that it wasn’t just her father that she felt a responsibility for. What about Phoebe’s children? Gertie had been promised a pony. Charlie would be ready for school soon. And the staff, too – dear, honest, lively Emilia, where would she go? Mrs Cogwell and many of the others would find good positions, but they had been together for years.
Marianne clenched her fists. Anna Jones was out there, and she was planning something.
She wished she could ask Jack Monahan for help. He was rough, rude and immoral. Someone like him would know exactly what to do.