Sonnet to a Dead Contessa (23 page)

“Why, yes, he is. Come in, Sergeant.”

Kenzie came in and removed his hat, and Dylan got up from the table. “What is it, Kenzie?” he asked. “Has there been a new development?”

“I’m afraid there has been another murder.”

“Oh no,” Dylan groaned. “Who was it?”

“The Lady Reis.”

Dylan shook his head sadly. “This madman must be caught.”

Kenzie cleared his throat. “That’s not exactly all, sir. You see, Lady Trent figured out, somehow, by reading the poem left at the last murder scene that the marchioness was going to be the victim. I don’t know exactly how that worked.”

“She’s got a brain, that woman has. What did she do?”

“Well, sorry to tell you, she rushed right over to the Reis mansion, and she was attacked by the killer who had just murdered the marchioness.”

Instantly Dylan demanded, “Is she badly hurt? Is she all right, Kenzie?”

“A minor wound, sir, but the superintendent asked me to bring you there. He knew you would want to see her.”

Dylan said, “Yes. Come, man, let’s go at once.” He left through the door, and Kenzie rushed after him. Meredith moved to watch them go. “He didn’t even say good-bye,” she muttered. Then she thought of her new career, and a slow smile came to her. “I’ll be a star someday. I will!”

Serafina heard Dylan’s voice, and from the sound of his feet in the hall, she knew he was running. The door burst open, and he came in at once. His face was pale, and she cried out, “Why, Dylan—”

Dylan did not speak. He was, indeed, pale. The ride had seemed interminable, and he rushed over to her at once and seized both of her hands. “Are you all right, Serafina? Are you badly hurt?”

Serafina’s hands were hurt by his iron grip, but his touch made her feel secure. Actually she was shocked at the show of concern in Dylan’s face.
He must think more of me than I suspected.
The thought flitted through her mind and was pleasing. But quickly she said, “It was very minor.”

“He slashed you with a knife?”

Serafina freed her hand and touched the pins. “I could barely see, it was so dark. I did see the flash of the knife, and I was falling backward. If I hadn’t been, I think it would have been a very deadly wound. Here, sit down, Dylan.” She looked up and said, “Vincent, bring some tea, please.”

“It’s already made, ma’am.”

Serafina drew him over to the couch and pulled him down. She sat down beside him and was pleased when he reached over, took her right hand, and held it tightly between his own. She noted that his hands were unsteady, something she had never seen in him before. She waited until Vincent had brought the tea in, and she poured and then told him the same story that she had told the superintendent.

“What did he look like?” Dylan demanded.

“I couldn’t see. It was very dark.”

“Well, how big was he?”

“It all happened so quickly. He was not big, not as big as you. He was wearing some sort of very dark clothing and a hood over his face.”

Dylan had calmed down, and some colour had come into his cheeks. He listened as she told of their findings in the murder room upstairs, but he seemed preoccupied. Finally she said, “We have a poem that sounds meaningless. We have a group of clues. One of them is a page of a script with your writing on it.”

“I’m a suspect again.”

“Oh no. Matthew knows that these things are meaningless, for the most part.”

She sat there studying
him, not so much because of his good looks. She was accustomed to that, but she was interested in the man beneath all of this. Studying him, she saw in his eyes a shine of hard simplicity.
In fortune or in trouble he would never be much different. He could not be different,
she thought. His life had tempered him, fashioned a private world with its images and its long thoughts and its hope of what might be. She was well aware of this. She saw a tiny scar on his temple she had never noticed, and suddenly she thought,
Why, I know him so well. There is in him a loneliness and a hunger for life, and for something I thought would take its form in a woman.

For the first time since her marriage had ended, as she studied Dylan carefully, she gave serious thought to what it would be like to be a wife. She felt as if she had never been a wife, for there had been none of the tenderness that she had longed for from Charles. As this thought came to her, Dylan reached over and took her hand, and a warmth came to her in a sense of goodness and a sense of security. She suddenly realised that these were the kind of thoughts she had had when she was a young girl and then a young woman before she married. It was what she had always longed for, and now she was seeing it in a man who was so different from who she was. But it gave her a feeling of completeness and somehow of goodness to know that this man who was good could feel such concern for her.

When he spoke, his voice was almost rough, and he gripped her upper arms so hard that she almost winced. “You will not put yourself in a situation like this again, Serafina. Do you hear me?”

“Ye—yes, I hear you,” she stammered. She was very aware of the power that came out of him, of the strength of his hands on her arms and of his eyes that seemed to devour her.

“That’s what you have a man like me for.”

Serafina had always argued she did not need a man, but now that he held her so tightly as if she would run away and he would not permit it, she was aware that there was something in what he was saying that appealed to the very deepest part of her spirit, and she found herself saying, “Yes, Dylan, I’ll do as you say.”

He was pleased with her and expelled his breath. Suddenly he reached out, put his arms around her, and said, “You’ll never know what a terrible thing it was when I thought you were hurt!”

His embrace almost crushed the breath from her body, but Lady Serafina Trent found herself like a mariner who had left a stormy sea and come into a safe harbor. A sense of peace and joy and happiness that she had longed for, at least for a moment, was there and was all she wanted.

FOURTEEN

A
s usual, the cheerful atmosphere of the breakfast table was broken by the presence of Aunt Bertha. Lady Bertha Mulvane had the ability to cast a pall of misery on any gathering that she chose to honour with her presence. The other members of the family, including Septimus, his wife, Alberta Rose, Clive, Dora, David, and Serafina, ate almost silently while Lady Bertha dominated the conversation.

Septimus spoke up, making an attempt to cut through the gloom by reading items from the newspaper. “Serafina, here’s an article about Elizabeth Blackwell,” he said. “It talks about her work in directing that new infirmary for women and children in New York.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of her,” Serafina said at once. “She’s the first woman to graduate with a medical degree.”

“The woman should stay home where she belongs. Imagine a woman probing around on the body of a man. Disgusting!” Bertha said.

“What about a man probing around on the body of a woman, Aunt Bertha?” David piped up.

“You keep out of this, young man,” Aunt Bertha warned sternly. “Young people should be seen and not heard!”

Septimus shook his head and then tried again. “You’ll be interested in this, Serafina. That French chemist Louis Pasteur, who’s been working on researching fermentation . . . he’s just taken a new post in Paris.”

“Really, Septimus, who do you think would be interested in a thing like that?” Lady Bertha snorted with disgust.

“I think the whole world will be interested in what Mr. Pasteur is doing,” Septimus answered. “It’s very important scientific work.” Quickly, before Bertha could speak, he shook his head. “We no sooner get a war finished in the Crimea, and then we have another one breaking out.”

“Another war, dear? Where in the world is it?” Alberta spoke up.

“Well, there’s a mutiny in India. Been a massacre over there. Two hundred and eleven British women and children were killed.”

Again Bertha proclaimed her views on the subject. “Those who did it should be caught and hung.”

Septimus gave up, seeing that whatever he read in the paper would not be accepted.

“I see the newspapers are screaming for Scotland Yard to catch the Slasher,” Clive said. He looked over at his sister. “What does Grant say about this, Dora Lynn?”

But Dora was not able to answer, for Bertha once more issued a proclamation. “It’s vulgar for our family to be involved with such things.” She opened her mouth to say more, but then suddenly caught a glimpse of Serafina’s face. Lady Bertha at once shut her own mouth, for she remembered the stern warning that Serafina had given her.

David waited for his aunt to speak, and when she did not, he turned to his mother and smiled. “I think it was noble of you to try to save the woman’s life, Mother.”

“I wish I had been successful.”

Dora picked up the paper and read what it had to say about the Slasher case. “Why, they’re blaming Matthew for these murders. It’s not fair!”

“It isn’t fair, but very few things in this world are,” Serafina remarked. She was surprised when Dora suddenly rose and walked out of the breakfast room. She disappeared without saying a word, and Bertha said, “There’s manners for you! You really should speak to her, Septimus.”

Septimus, who rarely spoke to any of his children about their misbehaviour, buried himself in the newspaper. Serafina watched out the window and saw Dora get into one of the carriages and drive off.
I wonder where she’s going,
she thought.

Matthew Grant was talking to the marquis when suddenly he thought,
I’m getting to be quite a connoisseur of the nobility of England. All the murder victims have titles, and their husbands also.
He studied the Marquis Reis and remembered what Kenzie had gleaned in his study of the man. Kenzie had reported that the Marquis Reis had come to England as a poor boy, had worked himself up in a factory, and finally had become wealthy through the manufacture of arms. He was a small man, very inoffensive, and what seemed to be profound grief scored deep lines in his face. Matthew cleared his throat and said quietly, “I am terribly sorry to have to question you at this time, sir, but you understand that we need to catch this murderer as quickly as possible.”

“Of course, Superintendent. You may go ahead and ask me any questions you wish.”

“Thank you, sir. The obvious question is, did the marchioness have any enemies that might have wished to harm her?”

“She was a very . . . outspoken woman, and her remarks sometimes irritated people. They irritated me at times, but I was accustomed to them. I knew that beneath her rough manner there was a kind heart, but others did not see that. So she did have those who were not admirers, shall we say.”

“Yes, sir, but I’m not talking about minor things. I mean did she have any altercation or quarrel with anyone who might have taken this extreme form of revenge?”

The marquis stared at him blankly. “Why, no, Superintendent, nothing like that. I assume that this maniac just hunts up titled women at random and murders them. Is that not so?”

“We don’t know, sir. We do know that the murderer scatters meaningless clues to throw us off the track. What about the servants?”

“Oh, they’re absolutely incapable of such a thing. We research them very carefully.”

The marquis answered every question that Matthew could think to ask, and finally when Matthew left the mansion, he was aware of a frustration that went to the bone.
It’s impossible to think that man would kill his wife. He’s just not the type.
He called out to the driver an address, and within half an hour he was in the drawing room of Gerhard Von Ritter. “Ah, we meet again, Inspector,” Ritter said. He smiled amiably, but there was something almost sharklike in his attitude. He was wearing expensive clothing, a suit cut especially to fit his athletic figure. He was half smiling as he studied Matthew Grant and asked at once, “I assume that this has something to do with the latest murder by the Slasher.”

“I’m afraid it does, sir. Do you recognise this knife?”

Matthew had taken an envelope from his pocket and handed it over to Von Ritter. Von Ritter opened the envelope and pulled out a knife. “Why, of course I recognise it. It’s my knife. Now, don’t tell me it was found at the murder scene.”