Garden of Lies (17 page)

Valerie appeared from a cluster of palms. Her face was flushed and her eyes were fever-bright. She had fistfuls of her skirts in both hands, hoisting the heavy fabric of her gown above her knees so that she could move more quickly.

The light glinted briefly on a small object attached to her petticoats. A button or some other bit of decoration, Ursula thought. Most women used lace and ribbons to add a whimsical touch to their underclothes.

“There you are,” Valerie said. She let her skirts fall back into place. “Do come with me and don't dawdle.”

Ursula obediently fell into step beside her. “May I inquire why you are letting me go?”

“It is none of your affair but as it happens I have just received word that a houseguest from America will be arriving the day after tomorrow. I—we—were not expecting him until next month.”

“I understand.”

“There is so much to be done. He will be staying with us, of course.” Valerie gave a laugh that was very nearly a giggle. “My husband will not be pleased. He does not care for the company of Americans. He finds them lacking in the social graces. But Mr. Cobb is a business associate. He must be treated with the proper degree of respect.”

“Perhaps your husband will suggest that Mr. Cobb book a room in a hotel.”

“A hotel is out of the question. Mr. Cobb entertained us quite lavishly in his mansion when we visited New York a few months ago so we must repay the favor. My husband will have to take comfort in knowing that our houseguest will not be staying very long—only a few days, in fact.”

“A remarkably brief visit considering how far Mr. Cobb will have traveled.”

“Mr. Cobb is a very busy man,” Valerie said. “As I was saying, I will no longer require your stenography services, Mrs. Kern.”

“Would you like a typed copy of your latest poem sent to you?”

“That won't be necessary.”

The housekeeper hovered just outside the entrance of the glasshouse. Her middle-aged features were stamped with the impassive expression of a woman who had long ago learned that the secret to keeping her post was to keep her employers' secrets.

“Show Mrs. Kern to the door,” Valerie instructed.

G
riffith was lounging against the trunk of a tree in the small park across the street from the Fulbrook mansion. When he spotted Ursula he straightened and moved to open the door of the carriage.

He glanced at the house with a speculative expression. “You're finished early, Mrs. Kern. Everything all right? I know Mr. Roxton was concerned about your plans to come here today.”

“Lady Fulbrook just let me go.” Ursula collected her skirts and went up the steps into the carriage. She sat down and looked at Griffith. “With no notice and without a reference, mind you.”

“Not that you need one from her.”

“No, thank goodness. But I have some news, Griffith. I persuaded Lady Fulbrook to take me into the conservatory again and I saw a great quantity of the ambrosia plant growing in a special chamber.”

Griffith's eyes tightened. “You're certain?”

“As certain as I can be without a closer examination.”

“So Fulbrook is growing the plant?”

Ursula shook her head. “I don't think so. Evidently Fulbrook cannot tolerate the atmosphere of the greenhouse. It gives him all the symptoms of a bad cold. I believe that Lady Fulbrook is the one cultivating the plant for him. I must get word to Slater immediately.”

“After I take you to your office I'll track him down and give him the information,” Griffith said.

“Please take me home, instead. There is something I want to do there.”

“Aye, ma'am.” Griffith started to close the door.

Ursula put out a hand to stop him. “Speaking of Slater, where is he today, do you know?”

“He went to see his father's botanist friend.”

Griffith closed the door, vaulted up onto the box and loosened the reins. Ursula watched the front of the Fulbrook mansion until it disappeared from sight.

Lady Fulbrook had been more than flustered about the prospect of the visitor from America. She had looked thrilled. Evidently she had no problem tolerating the rude American manners of her husband's business associate.

—

M
RS.
D
UNSTAN OPENED
the door of the town house with an air of concern.

“You're home early today, Mrs. Kern. Is everything all right? Still feeling a bit rattled by your dreadful experience yesterday? Perfectly natural, if you ask me. I told you that you ought not to go to work today.”

“I appreciate your concern, Mrs. Dunstan, but I am quite fit, thank you.” Ursula removed her hat and stripped off her gloves. “I'm home early because my client let me go. She got word that a houseguest from America is arriving the day after tomorrow. She was in quite a flap over the whole thing. I would have had Griffith take me to the office but I remembered some business that I want to take care of here.”

“I see.” Mrs. Dunstan waved farewell to Griffith and closed the door. “A note arrived for you while you were out. I set it on your desk in your study.”

“A note?” Ursula dropped the hat and gloves into Mrs. Dunstan's capable hands and hurried down the hall to the study. “From Mr. Roxton, perhaps?”

“If it is from him, he neglected to put his name on the outside of the envelope,” Mrs. Dunstan called after her.

Ursula swept through the door of the study. She had returned to her house to take a closer look at Anne's private correspondence with Paladin, the editor of the literary quarterly. But when she saw the note on her desk she recognized the handwriting at once. Her insides went cold. She forgot about the correspondence.

She opened the envelope slowly, dreading what she knew she would find inside. She reminded herself that she had a plan. Her hand steadied.

She scanned the contents of the note. The blackmailer had, indeed, named his price.

. . . As you can see, a trivial amount. An excellent bargain. Leave the money in the weeping angel crypt in the cemetery in Wickford Lane. Make sure the payment is there by four o'clock today or the press will be notified of your true identity.

—

I
T WAS NOT
THE AMOUNT
of money involved that caused rage to splash through her veins. The price of the extortionist's silence was not nearly as high as she had expected. It was the knowledge that the payment was destined to be the first of an endless string of demands that infuriated her.

She refolded the note.

She had a plan. It was time to implement it.

She went to the gilded floor safe in the corner, crouched and opened the combination lock. She pushed aside a handful of mementos from her other life—a photograph of her parents, the last letters her father had written to her before perishing of a fever in South America, and her mother's wedding ring.

Storing the latest message from the blackmailer alongside the small velvet pouch that contained Anne's few pieces of jewelry and the Paladin correspondence, she took out the small, dainty pistol her father had given her. He had taught her how to use the gun before he set out on his last trip abroad.
“A lady never knows when she might have to defend herself.”
She had been eighteen at the time.

She made certain the pistol was loaded and then she closed and relocked the safe.

Rising to her feet, she put the gun inside her satchel and searched the room, looking for something suitable to use as fake bank notes. A copy of yesterday's edition of the newspaper was on the table. She tore it into several sheets, stuffed them into an envelope and dropped the envelope into the satchel.

Hoisting the bag, she hurried out into the front hall. She was taking her gray cloak off the peg when Mrs. Dunstan appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Going out again, madam?” she asked. She peered through the sidelight window. “The fog is coming in.”

“I just remembered that I have an appointment with a new client this afternoon. I almost forgot.”

“Bit late for a meeting with a client, isn't it?”

“Clients can be very demanding.”

Mrs. Dunstan opened the door with obvious reluctance. “Shall I summon a cab?”

“That won't be necessary. It will be faster if I walk through the park.”

“Where does this client live?” Mrs. Dunstan asked, increasingly uneasy. “After what happened yesterday—”

“Don't worry about me, Mrs. Dunstan. The client resides in a very quiet neighborhood. Wickford Lane.”

T
he old church and the cemetery on Wickford Lane were both in a state of deep neglect. The small chapel was locked and shuttered. The nearby graveyard was overgrown with weeds. The gates stood open, sagging on their hinges. There were no fresh flowers on the graves. The monuments and crypts looming in the fog were badly weathered and, in many cases, cracked and broken.

Ursula made her way slowly through the stone garden of grave markers, searching for a weeping angel. She gripped her satchel in one hand. The pistol was in her other hand, concealed beneath the folds of her gray cloak. The mist was thickening rapidly. She could no longer see the iron fencing that surrounded the cemetery.

The fog was a good thing, she told herself. It gave her ample cover for what she intended to do.

For a few unnerving minutes she worried that she might not be able to locate the weeping angel. In the end, she nearly collided with one broken wing.

She stepped back quickly and looked at the figure guarding the entrance to a crypt. It was a large, stone angel in a weeping pose.

The wrought-iron gate that had once secured the opening to the burial vault stood open.

The muffled sound of a footstep somewhere in the fog sent a shock of icy fear through her. The blackmailer was somewhere nearby, watching her. She resisted the temptation to turn around and search for him. She told herself she must give no indication that she was aware that she had heard him.

She moved through the doorway of the crypt. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low light. Between the windowless interior and the gray glow from the entrance she could barely make out the stone bench that had been designed as a place to sit and contemplate mortality.

She took the envelope out of her satchel and set it on the bench.

The task accomplished, she moved out of the crypt and walked steadily toward the front gates. She listened closely and thought she heard the soft thud of footsteps in the fog. They seemed to be moving toward the burial vault but she could not be certain.

She hurried out of the cemetery trusting that, with her gray cloak, she would soon vanish into the mist. She made certain her footsteps echoed on the pavement for a time, hoping to give the impression that she had left the scene. Then, walking as quietly as possible, she ducked into the arched doorway of the church.

From where she stood, she could just barely make out the posts of the iron gates at the entrance to the fogbound graveyard. As far as she had been able to discern, it was the only exit from the cemetery.

She waited, her heart pounding at the prospect of what she intended to do.

For a time nothing moved in the mist. She began to fear that her plan had gone awry, that the blackmailer had eluded her. Perhaps she had been wrong about the footsteps in the cemetery. But surely he had been waiting and watching for her, she thought. He would want to seize his payment quickly before some vagrant searching for shelter happened upon it by accident.

She was in the middle of trying to concoct a new plan in the event the first one failed when she saw a shadowy figure moving in the dense fog that pooled inside the cemetery. She stilled, hardly daring to hope that her scheme had worked and not wanting to consider too closely what she intended to do next. She had made up her mind. She must not lose her nerve.

The figure in the mist proved to be a man in a shabby greatcoat. The collar was pulled up around his neck and a low-crowned hat concealed his features. He paused at the gate, searching the vicinity. Ursula knew he could see very little in the fog.

The time had come to implement her plan. The goal was to trap him inside the cemetery. If she waited until he exited, he might take off running. It was highly unlikely that she would be able to outrun him—not burdened as she was with several pounds of clothing—and the small pistol was not accurate at any great distance. It was meant for the close confines of a gaming hell or a carriage or a bedroom.

She gripped both her nerve and the handle of the gun very tightly, steeling herself, and then she stepped out of the vestibule and went swiftly toward the cemetery gates. The blackmailer did not see her at first.

When he heard her light, rapid footsteps he swung around, alarmed. But by then she was only steps away.

“Stop or I will shoot,” she said.

Her fierce anger and determination must have been evident in her tone because the blackmailer let out a startled squeak of fear and retreated deeper into the cemetery. He ducked behind a nearby stone marker.

“Don't shoot,” he yelled in a voice freighted with panic.

It was not the response she had anticipated. She had just assumed that when confronted by a dangerous weapon, the blackmailer would freeze and obey her every command. It was certainly what she had done when Rosemont had held her at gunpoint. Evidently not everyone behaved the same in a crisis.

It dawned on her that her only option was to stalk the blackmailer through the fogbound cemetery. She moved uneasily through the entrance, heading toward the gravestone that shielded the villain.

“Come out,” she ordered. “I won't shoot unless you make it necessary.”

“No, please, it's all a terrible mistake.”

The blackmailer leaped to his feet like a startled rabbit and dashed deeper into the cemetery.

“Bloody hell,” Ursula whispered.

Monuments and grave markers loomed everywhere. She began a methodical search. There was more scurrying and harsh breathing. She knew her target had changed positions yet again.

It occurred to her that the mad game of hide-and-seek could go on indefinitely.

The plan was not working as intended. Perhaps the best option was to retreat to the entrance and outwait the extortionist. He could not remain inside the cemetery grounds indefinitely.

She was edging cautiously toward the gates when she heard pounding footsteps in the fog—not hers and not the blackmailer's, she realized. At least two more people had arrived on the scene.

“Damn,” Slater said. He came up behind Ursula and seized her forearm, yanking her to a halt. “What the devil?” He broke off, glancing down at the pistol. “You've got a gun?”

He snapped the weapon out of her fingers before she realized his intent.

“Give that back to me,” she said. A fierce desperation surged through her. “He'll get away.”

“No,” Slater said. He raised his voice a little to call out into the fog. “Griffith?”

“I've got him,” Griffith shouted.

He appeared from behind a crypt holding the blackmailer by the collar of the greatcoat. The extortionist's feet kicked wildly a few inches above the ground.

“Among his many tasks with the traveling theatrical group, Griffith was the one who guarded the day's receipts and made certain no one got in to see the performance without paying the price of admission,” Slater explained.

“Put me down,” the blackmailer yelped. “I'm an innocent citizen. The crazy woman pulled a gun on me. What else could I do but run?”

Griffith looked at Slater. “What do you want me to do with him, Mr. Roxton?”

“Bring him here, Griffith. We're all going to have a short chat and sort this out.”

Griffith plopped the extortionist down on both feet.

“Who are you?” Slater asked.

But for the first time Ursula got a good look at the blackmailer. Fresh outrage slammed through her.

“His name is Otford,” she announced. “Gilbert Otford. He works for that gutter rag,
The Flying Intelligencer
.”