The Scent of Murder (34 page)

‘He’s lost consciousness,’ Dody said.

Hopefully the man would give Dody no more grief this night. Pike looked at the woman he loved by the wavering light of his match. White-knuckled fingers pinched together the edges of Montague’s throat wound to muffle and stem the hideous dissonance of sound and blood that threatened to pour forth. Dody was deathly pale and her coat was torn, but somehow, despite all that had gone on, she managed to retain her quiet, thoughtful beauty.

Would Montague live? Pike didn’t particularly care, but he knew he had to get help for Dody’s sake. She would never forgive herself if Montague died. Pike fought the urge to wrap her in his arms, tell her how proud he was of her, how much he cherished her, but such words of endearment — if ever he found the means to articulate them — would have to wait.

Dody pointed out the key to the ice-house door in Montague’s waistcoat pocket. He slipped it into his hand, gave the gobsmacked girl (whom Dody introduced as Edie) a reassuring pat on the shoulder and made his way into the tunnel. Pike found Montague’s horse tethered to a tree and he heaved himself into the saddle, his numbed legs so heavy with weariness he barely felt the horse’s flanks. He’d lost his bowler somewhere in the wood and rain dripped from his nose. An icy wind sliced through his wet clothes and he was forced to clamp his jaw tight to control the chattering of his teeth.

Foxhounds swarmed about the horse as he pushed his way along the path back to the Hall. He glimpsed a black shape bounding among the white-and-brown coats. Must be his imagination; he’d left Fitzgibbon’s dog securely tied. How deceptive moonlight could be.

He took a slight detour via the river. Despite the rain, darkness seemed to have hung a blanket of calm over the water. It made him wonder how Fitzgibbon could have been torn away by such seemingly placid arms. The man might still be alive, he speculated, as he made to turn the horse for the Hall. Fitzgibbon was no longer his concern; he had other priorities now.

A sudden bark sounded above the noise of the hounds and he dismounted. Fitzgibbon’s dog greeted him like a long-lost friend, stretching the braces to breaking point in its eagerness to lick and jump. Untied, it bounced off to join the pack. The dogs yipped and yelped with playful excitement as they bounded alongside Pike through the woods.

Montague was brought back first by stretcher through the woods, then by cart to Fitzgibbon Hall. Dody accompanied him for the entirety of the journey, her desire to save his life as strong as her desire to protect Edie from him had been. By the time they reached the warm comfort of the Hall, her fingers were all but frozen in place around his wound. He had not regained consciousness, his pulse was weak, but he was alive.

They undressed him and lay him on a bed in one of the spare bedrooms. There, Dody punctured a small opening in his trachea beneath the tear she had made with the scissors. Into the neat surgical hole she inserted a thin metal pipe through which he could temporarily breathe while the wound above it healed. She fixed the tube in place with dressmakers’ tape and tied it around his neck.

She was sewing together the jagged edges of the wound when Pike slid into the room, a warmed blanket in his arms. Without a word he gently wrapped it around her shoulders, perched himself on the edge of Montague’s bed and watched her work. She tied off the final stitch and held out the thread for him to cut with the scissors he took from her medical bag.

Scissors. She shuddered and tried not to think how very close she had come to killing Montague with that very pair, which she’d kept in her coat pocket since Sir Desmond had picked her up from the station. If she’d had the strength to push with more force, it might well have been Montague’s corpse she’d be examining now. She applied a dressing to his neck and straightened the blankets around his still form.

Pike took hold of her cold hands and rubbed them between his own. Someone had lent him some dry clothes: a gentleman’s shooting suit that fitted him remarkably well. Annie had laid out some of Lady Airlie’s clothes for Dody, but she had been so busy with Montague she had not found the opportunity to change. Damp tweed chafed against the tender areas of her skin — her neck and the backs of her legs.

Pike broke the silence. ‘A search party has been sent to the river to look for Fitzgibbon.’

‘Do you think they’ll find him alive?’ Dody asked, her voice husky with weariness.

‘I doubt it.’

She sensed Pike wanted to say more. Instead he let go of her hands, slipped off the bed and crouched at her feet. He undid the buttons of her mud-crusted boots, prised them off and placed them side by side on the flickering hearth to dry.

‘May I?’ he said, indicating her leg.

She nodded. Gently he moved his hand beneath her skirt and up her stockinged leg, where it lingered on her suspender. When his thumb slid across the small belt of satin that encircled her upper thigh he met her eyes and raised his brows. She nodded, giving him her permission to continue.

Confident fingers unhooked her suspender and slowly eased the stocking down her leg. A tingle, the sort she had feared she would never feel again, coursed through her chilled body and finally she began to feel truly warm again.

Pike made himself comfortable on the carpeted floor and rested her swollen ankle upon his knee, his actions as intimate and as natural as their lovemaking. His cool palm grazed the hot, swollen flesh of her foot. His fingers ran up to her ankle and rested there for a moment, making her skin sing in their wake.

‘I tried my best to save Fitzgibbon,’ he said, selecting a bandage from her medical bag before looking up at her with troubled blue eyes. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do. Why would I question it?’ Almost a whisper.

He anchored the bandage and shrugged. The gesture said it all; he was telling Dody that he knew only too well what had happened in the tack room. She was glad now that he knew, without the need for words.

‘I disliked the man,’ he said, eyes focused on the job in hand. Applying the right degree of pressure, he wound the bandage in a neat figure of eight down the length of her foot and back up again, knotting the ends.

‘I can’t say I’m particularly attached to Mr Montague either,’ she said, dragging her mind reluctantly back from Pike’s gentle ministrations to focus on her patient. ‘But I hope to make him well enough to endure a lengthy prison term.’

Pike pulled himself to his feet, bent down, and kissed her tenderly on the lips.

Alerted by a noise outside the closed door, he stepped back from the bed. Lady Fitzgibbon entered the room, followed by Mrs Hutton.

‘Mr Pike was just bandaging my ankle,’ Dody said, readjusting her skirts, her face burning. ‘What news of your husband, Lady Fitzgibbon?’

Lady Fitzgibbon’s gaze passed well above Dody’s discarded stocking to the rain beating on the window beyond. She took a breath and collected herself. ‘None yet, my dear. Tell me,’ she faltered, looking from one to the other of them, ‘is it as cold outside as it looks?’

As if answering her question, a sudden gust of wind drove the lashing rain against the window with even greater ferocity. Mrs Hutton moved over to draw the curtains.

No, Dody said to herself, it is even worse now than it was a few hours ago. Without adequate shelter the icy temperature would almost certainly have frozen Sir Desmond’s blood by now.

‘Until we find a body, M’Lady, there is always hope,’ Pike answered for them both.

Her Ladyship’s features lifted. All too aware of his failings, the woman must still have feelings for her husband, Dody thought with incredulity.

‘May I suggest, ladies, that we continue this conversation downstairs by the fire?’ Pike added.

Feeling fit to drop, Dody welcomed Pike’s suggestion.

‘I think Montague can spare me for a while. I’ll call Annie to sit with him,’ she said.

‘Annie is still busy tending to Edie, Doctor,’ Mrs Hutton said. ‘Understandably, the poor child cannot bear to be left alone and the sedative you prescribed does not seem to have taken effect yet. I am more than happy to sit with Mr Montague.’

Dody examined the housekeeper’s features. She appeared to be not at all squeamish despite the nature of Montague’s wound. Dody told her to listen carefully to his breathing and to summon her immediately if his condition began to deteriorate. Relieved to have a break from the sickroom, she quickly changed into Lady Airlie’s dry clothes — a bath would have to wait — and joined the others downstairs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Dressed in Lady Airlie’s gown and warm cashmere shawl, her foot propped on a stool by the fire, Dody felt her strength beginning to return. Pike stood next to her with his back to the flames while they listened to Lady Fitzgibbon’s account of Mr Montague’s long stewardship at the workhouse. Dody was sick to death of hearing about Montague’s perceived exemplary behaviour, but she forced herself to be patient, hearing Her Ladyship out without so much as casting her eyes aloft, even though at times it sounded as if Lady Fitzgibbon were reading a script from which certain information had been edited.

Pike rubbed the back of his neck. He glanced at Dody in a way that told her he was not satisfied either with what Lady Fitzgibbon had told them thus far.

‘And please believe me, Chief Inspector,’ Her Ladyship concluded, ‘although there was something about Mr Montague that always made me uneasy, I knew nothing about his barbaric activities with the girls.’

Dody did not doubt this. Lady Fitzgibbon had proved herself to be a woman of heightened intuition, at the very least. Intense dislike must have been the emotion Dody had read in the older woman’s face when they had met Montague in the hallway all those days ago, though at the time Dody had failed to recognise it.

‘How are the children with scarlet fever, Lady Fitzgibbon?’ Dody asked, to give both parties a break from the uncomfortable topic of Montague’s deviant behaviour.

‘No new deaths since Alice Spurge,’ Lady Fitzgibbon answered. ‘The other children are as well as may be hoped, thanks to your prompt actions, Doctor McCleland. I shudder to think how the disease might have progressed if we had believed Matron’s diagnosis.’

The butler opened the door and began to lay the makings of a late afternoon tea on a small table: sandwiches, fruit cake, a silver tea set and floral-patterned china cups. Dody declined the refreshment, thinking it was about time she returned to her patient.

Pike helped her from the room. They were halfway up the staircase to the first-floor bedrooms when a terrible screaming and caterwauling reached their ears. Pike left Dody clinging to the banisters and sprang up the remainder of the steps two at a time.

Seconds later Dody joined him in Montague’s bedroom. It was a scene of bedlam, with Annie screaming ‘Killer!’ at the top of her lungs and Mrs Hutton shrieking something incomprehensible back at her. The housekeeper lunged at Annie and might have scratched her eyes out if Pike had not intervened, clamping the housekeeper’s hands behind her back. Dody’s attempts at hushing the women and making some sense of what was going on proved useless.

‘Silence, both of you!’ Pike roared at last. This was the first time Dody had heard Pike raise his voice in anger and it shocked the other women as much as it did her. They stared at him, stunned. Annie’s cap hung from her head by a single clip. Dark-brown hair streamed across Mrs Hutton’s forehead. Both women were red-faced and panting.

‘Downstairs. Now,’ Pike ordered.

After Dody had assured herself that Montague’s condition was stable enough to leave him briefly — he was still unconscious but breathing steadily — she followed Pike and the women downstairs, where they joined Lady Fitzgibbon in the drawing room. Florence had left Tristram’s mother’s bedside and was sitting by the fire when Pike ushered the dishevelled women in. Dody brought up the rear, half-expecting Mrs Hutton to make a sudden dash for freedom.

Florence jumped up from her chair, unaware of the tension between the group. ‘Dody, thank heavens. I’ve just come down from Mrs Slater’s room. Can you please call in on her and give her a sedative? She has not had a decent night’s sleep since she heard of Tristram’s fall.’

Lady Fitzgibbon broke in before Dody could answer. ‘I agree with you, Florence, my dear, but I don’t think my sister will mind waiting a few moments longer.’ She nodded towards the two servants. ‘It looks as if some of us have some explaining to do.’

‘Yes —
you
certainly do.’ Dody could not help herself. All along Dody had felt that Her Ladyship knew more than she had revealed.

Pike shot Dody a frown as if to say this was
his
investigation and she should at least try to curb her tongue. Suitably chastened, she took the seat Florence offered her closest to the fire.

Annie’s eyes were huge and wide. ‘She tried to kill ’im. I saw it with my very own eyes!’

‘What?’ Florence exclaimed, at last realising that something was severely amiss.

‘I caught her — pressing a pillow to his face, she was,’ Annie said.

Florence’s jaw almost unhinged itself.

The housekeeper said nothing. She attempted to tidy her hair, pulling it harshly back behind her ears and fixing it with a sharp wooden pin.

‘Mrs Hutton?’ Lady Fitzgibbon prompted her. The distraught woman nodded, then wiped her eyes with a handkerchief from her sleeve.

Lady Fitzgibbon rose to her feet and poured her servant a cup of tea. Mrs Hutton took a sip.

Dody found herself tapping the floor with her toe. For goodness’ sake, she thought, the woman has just attempted to murder a man, and here she is, sipping—

‘He promised me his playing games with the girls was over, ancient history!’ Mrs Hutton burst out, her cup rattling in its saucer. ‘I was all he ever wanted, he said. But then, when I found out he was still playing his games — and on poor little Edie, too — I knew he had to be punished. His type should not be allowed to live. He betrayed me. He betrayed all of us.’

There was a moment of stunned silence.

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ Her Ladyship asked softly.