CHAPTER TWENTY

“Didn’t I tell you not to intrude into my library?” Edmund demands. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

I glance at Theresa and once more see strength. I find my own courage and say, “We heard her scream, Lord Edmund.”

“What? Heard who scream?”

“Sarah. We heard her. We heard her screaming from her bonds.”

"Sarah… what?" He throws his hands up in the air and looks out at the ocean as though praying to the sea for guidance. "The women in this house have all gone mad," he says. "How in God's name did you hear her? What, did she call your name? Did she shout, 'Hello, it's the maid, Sarah. I’m trapped underground, please come rescue me?’”

“She cried for help,” Theresa says. “When you have all of us hearing it, including Master Oliver, it’s not madness, my lord.”

Lord Edmund takes a step toward us, causing us both to backpedal. “Don’t you dare bring my nephew into your madness! It’s bad enough that he’s trapped in that bloody hospital bed for God knows how long. I won’t have his mind poisoned as well.”

I am keenly aware of the drop five feet behind me. We may need to fight to escape him, but even two against one, I'm not sure that we can overcome Lord Edmund.

I try to talk him down first. “Think of Oliver, my lord. He needs you. He needs Lady Cordelia. He needs both of us. Think before you do something you’ll regret.”

Lord Edmund laughs bitterly and sneers at me. “Oh yes, he needs you, all right. I looked you up, Mary Wilcox. I learned all about your history. You were in a madhouse for three months. Drove your sister off so you could keep her inheritance and then took advantage of your sick mother to keep her house and all of her money as well. Then you’ve made a career out of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and driving families to ruin. If I’d had the sense, I would have insisted on vetting you before Lady Cordelia hired you. Well, I’m going to rectify that mistake right now.”

I steel myself for the fight, but Theresa moves first. She shrieks and rushes Lord Edmund, barreling into him with all of her strength, scratching and clawing. Lord Edmund cries out and stumbles backward, shielding his face from the attack. I am so stunned by her ferocity that I don't react at first. It's only when he grabs hold of her shoulders that I join her.

Lord Edmund cries out again when I kick at his legs. I swipe for his face, nails extended, but he catches my wrists and twists viciously. I cry out and fall to my knees, crying out again when they slam onto the hard stone floor. Theresa puts her head down and pushes him back, her bullish strength driving him to the wall.

But my earlier fear proves true. Lord Edmund is older than us, but he is stronger than us as well. With a growl, he shoves Theresa to the ground. She lands beside me, and we both stare in horror as Lord Edmund snarls at us, his eyes wild with insanity.

"What the devil has got into both of you?" he shouts. "You've both gone bloomin' mad. Bloody march, bloody hares, the both of you!"

“If you kill us,” Theresa warns, “There will be people asking questions. You’re already suspected of three murders, and you won’t get away with two more.”

He stares at us in amazement. “Kill you? What the bloody hell are you on about? You’ve just tried to attack me. ”

I feel a kernel of doubt, but how can we be wrong? The evidence is all around us. “You threatened us,” I remind him. “You said you would never have let me work here, but now you’re going to fix your mistake.”

“Yes! You stupid old bat! I’m going to fire you. I’m not going to kill you.” He blinks. “Did you really think I meant to push both of you into the ocean?”

Theresa and I share an uncertain look, and Lord Edmund sighs and once more lifts his hands and looks out at the ocean. “Good God. Good. God.”

“Then what’s that chamber in there?” Theresa asks. “With the shackles and the blood? What’s this little execution spot that opens out to a cliff?”

“I have no idea,” Lord Edmund replies. “I came to the library because I heard Mary snooping around in there again. I was going to warn her that if I caught her in the room again, it’d be the end of her job. Instead of finding her, I find the bloody shelf moved out of the way and a dungeon underneath. I could hear you two talking, so I came down to investigate. Nearly got myself killed for my trouble.”

He stares at us for a moment. In a softer voice, he says, “You really thought I lured Sarah down here, tortured her and then threw her off of the cliff?”

We share another uncertain look. Then Theresa asks, “Well, if not you, then who?”

Heat climbs my cheeks as I realize that the entirety of my case against Lord Edmund is based on that reasoning. If not him, then who?

But the evidence is so strong! These chambers open up to his library, a private room in an otherwise unused portion of the castle. The blood in the room with the manacles is not brand-new, but it’s not ancient either. Blood has been shed there recently, and who else could have found it but Lord Edmund? How could he not know that this place was down here?

No, I don’t believe it. Even if he didn’t know at first, he couldn’t have used this library for years without accidentally moving the shelf the way I almost did. He would have discovered this place eventually, and when he did, he would have known he could do whatever he liked here without ever being found out.

Clearly, that’s not true either, as Theresa and I have found him out, but murders have been taking place here for years. And there’s the financial evidence Sean has.

I meet his eyes and say, “There’s more evidence, Edmund.” He notices that I don’t address him by his title and frowns at me. I don’t care. “I hired a private investigator to look into your finances. I know that you received a life insurance policy when your wife died. I know that you received your sister’s inheritance when she died. Lady Cordelia has money too. Do you plan to kill her and take that money as well?”

Theresa gasps when I reveal what I’ve learned about Lady Evelyn and Lady Alivia. Lord Edmund is white as a sheet. He stares blankly at me, breathing slowly and deeply as he tries to keep his emotions under control.

When he finally speaks, some of his lordly bearing is returned. “Miss Wilcox, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve glanced at a few pages and believe you understand the entire story. I remind you that you’ve been here for barely more than a week. You can’t possibly know enough about me to claim that I’m a murderer. You can’t possibly know enough about my family to claim they were innocent. As for the financial difficulties to which you’ve alluded, they are none of your business, and as you’ve implied, the money I received from my wife’s insurance policy and the meager portion of my sister’s inheritance that remained was not so much as a drop in the bucket.

“I am well within my rights to have you both arrested and dragged from my house. It is out of respect for Mrs. Pemberton, who up until your arrival was an excellent servant and one of the few bright spots of life in this castle, that I tell you the truth.”

He takes a breath and looks out over the ocean. I am not yet convinced that he isn’t the killer the evidence suggests him to be, but there is real pain in his eyes, real grief.

“My wife, Lady Evelyn, was a fragile woman. She was beautiful, breathtaking even. She was also kind and pure and gentle as a sea breeze. I loved her. But she wasn’t well, and…” His lower lip trembles. “And I am not an easy man to love. I was raised by a very strict father and a cruel mother. It’s made me very hard and very strict myself. I did my best, but… it wasn’t enough. Lady Evelyn was worn down and eventually, she chose to leave. She walked to the edge of White Cliff and jumped.

"Lady Cordelia, I'm afraid, is much the same. Utterly beautiful, kind, pure and far more loving than I deserve. But she is fragile, and Sarah's death has sent her spiraling into insanity. I fear Dr. Thornton is right and that I will have to commit her to save her life."

He takes a shaky breath, and I’m surprised to see tears welling in his eyes. “Well, I suppose I have a type,” he says thickly.

“As for my sister, she was a drug addict.” His face changes, losing its grief and adopting an ugly sneer. “She preferred heroin and fentanyl to caring for her son. She used when she was pregnant, constantly. I warned her she would kill her baby, and she told me, and I quote, ‘Bugger the baby.’ Well, bugger her. I hope Hell exists, and I hope she’s there burning an eternity for all the suffering she’s caused Oliver.

“When she had Oliver—and by the way, no one knows who the father is. I don’t know if you heard that or not. When she had him, she said she was going to get sober. She came to me begging for help. I wanted to have her thrown in jail and keep Oliver for myself, but Lady Cordelia was a bleeding heart, and I’d just married her, so I would have done anything she said if she only kept smiling at me the way she did.

"She was sober. For eight days. Then she began using it again. I began legal proceedings to adopt Oliver and take custody from her. When I won, she threw herself off of the same cliff where Lady Evelyn jumped. I'll be honest, I don't miss her. Were it not for Oliver, I might have killed her. But I didn't."

He meets our eyes and smiles thinly. “And now you know the truth. Bugger both of you if you don’t believe it. But I’ll tell you what. Let’s all go upstairs, and we can tell the Inspector whatever we’d like. Then we’ll let him decide. And Mary, you’re still fired. I want you out of my house before sunrise.”

Before I can respond, a wailing noise carries through the stone passages. “Please.” Then another, much louder and rising in pitch to a shriek. “PleeAAASE!!”

For the third time, the color drains from Lord Edmund’s face. He mouths one word, “Cordelia.”

Then he turns and runs back the way he came.