CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The first sensation I’m aware of is a coppery scent. It’s tangy and unpleasantly sweet, and it sticks to the roof of my mouth, leaving a metallic residue that curdles my stomach.

I turn my head, and my next sensation is a cold and hard object pressed against the back of my head. Or rather, my head is pressed against something hard and cold. More touch comes to me, and I feel something equally cold and hard gripping my wrist. My shoulders ache, and there’s an unpleasant stretch in my side, almost as though I’m hanging from a—

My eyes fly open, and alertness returns to me in the worst possible way. I look around wildly, willing myself to see anything other than what I’m seeing. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, hoping to drive this nightmare away.

But I don’t drive it away. The nightmare is still here. And it’s no dream.

I’m shackled to the wall in Lord Edmund’s torture room. There’s a dim light from the platform across the way, just enough to confirm to me that my worst fears have come true. Only it wasn’t Lord Edmund’s room after all, was it?

Fear slithers up my spine and overwhelms my will. I take a deep breath and shriek, “Help! Help me! Someone help me! Oh God. Help!”

I hear a low rumble and fall silent. A moment after that, I hear footsteps and realize that the low rumble I’ve heard is the sound of the bookcase in Lord Edmund’s library opening.

The footsteps approach and panic takes hold of me again. “Help! Help me! Please!”

I struggle to pull myself free. It’s a useless thing, I know, but fear has overridden my sanity. “Help!”

A shadow falls over the door, and I shriek when my murderer walks in a moment later.

“Won’t do you no good to scream, Mary,” Theresa says. “There’s no one left to hear you but me.”

“You… you… you’re…”

She grins. “Me.”

She chuckles and pulls a cigarette from her pocket. I stare at her in shock, and she says, “A bit hypocritical, I suppose, given me speech about drugs and alcohol, but I’ve never gotten on my knees for a pack of cigarettes, and I’ve never driven drunk and killed an innocent person. So”—she takes a drag—“can’t really say it’s the same thing, can you? Oh.” She offers me one. “Want one? Don’t worry, I’ll help you smoke it. No need for me to be especially rude, is there?”

She laughs, and that laugh sends a wave of anger through me. I try to kick her, only to find that my feet are chained to massive steel balls.

"Cannonballs," she informs me. "Sixty-four-pounders. Not common to find, but with the troubles with the French, some English lords opted to defend their keeps with the biggest guns they could have. Lord Michael Blackwood was one of them." Her brow furrows. "Or was it Lord Henry?" She shrugs. "Point is, I figured you'd try to fight me. You've got spirit in you."

“So you killed them,” I say. “All of them.”

“All of them,” she confirms. “Someone had to. Don’t mean to be rude, but they were all deserving of it. Weak, pathetic little creatures.”

I can’t believe the creature I’m staring at. How could I have missed this? How could I have so easily been taken in by her wholesomeness? I fancy myself a good judge of people, but I don’t see anything in Theresa to warn me that she is so evil.

Yet here I am, utterly at her mercy. Utterly under the control of a serial killer.

My stomach turns. In the past, I’ve dealt with crimes of passion, single murders by people who have allowed their selfishness to overcome them in one brief moment of rage. This is the first time I’ve dealt with someone who kills as a pastime.

That’s why she so easily fools me. She’s shrewd. She’s learned how to protect herself. She realized I was a threat, and she kept her distance from me while at the same time keeping me close. I’ve been made a fool of.

I still don’t understand, though. “Why?” I ask her. “Why did you kill all of them? What do you gain from it?”

She takes a drag from her cigarette and shrugs. “Well, the world gains from it, doesn’t it? That sod from Tarly won’t be dealing more drugs to hook kids on and ruin them, will he?” She notices my shock and laughs. “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know about that one. Yeah, that was my first. My first here, anyway. Didn’t do it here, though. I followed him back to his place in Tarly and beat him to death with a truncheon.”

I am sick to my stomach. She speaks of killing a man as flippantly as I would speak of changing my coat.

“As for the others. Let’s see. Evelyn was a whore. We talked about that. Couldn’t understand how the wife of a lord would sell herself out like that.”

“She could have gotten help,” I tell her. “She could have found a doctor to help her get clean.”

She frowns. “What? Oh!” She throws her head back and laughs. “Oh, that bit about the drugs wasn’t true. That was just Lady Alivia. No, Evelyn wasn’t an addict. Just a whore.” She chuckles. “Why’d I come up with that, anyway? Must have been in me cups a little more than I thought. Now, Alivia, though. She was absolutely an addict.” She shakes her head. “Poor Oliver. Never stood a chance with a mother like that. And to take advantage of Lord Edmund’s generosity the way she did.” She shook her head. “Despicable.”

“But Sarah? Why her?”

"Ah, yes. Sarah. That stupid little cow-faced thief. You wouldn't notice because you haven't been here long, but Lady Cordelia’s missing a fair bit of her jewelry. I caught Sarah wearing it in her room. She begged me not to tell and said she’d put it right back. I told her that she shouldn’t give it right back or Lady Cordelia would notice. I’d show her where to hide it, then put it back when I was able. And I wouldn’t tell a soul that she took it. I kept that promise.”

She meets my eyes. “And now we come to you. Little Miss Hero. Mary Wilcox, the superhero governess who just has to be the detective. How does a woman get to be your age without knowing to mind their own business?”

As frightened as I am, I still feel angry. I can’t stand thinking that Theresa will get away with all of this.

It’s that emotion that informs my response. “How does a woman get to be your age without knowing that murdering people is wrong?”

She wags a finger at me. “You see. That’s where you’ve got it wrong, Mary. I didn’t get to be this age. I’ve just always been like this. I’m really not all that special. Started with animals when I was a lass, just like so many do. Never really knew why I liked hurting them. Just found it fascinating, I guess, how hard they fight for life even when there’s no chance. They can’t understand that it’s over the moment I have them in the trap.”

She finishes her cigarette and lights another one. “Sure you don’t want one, Mary? I really will help you smoke it. You’ve got a hard few days coming, and this might be your last chance to take the edge off.”

I shiver at the implication she makes, but I refuse the cigarette. She shrugs and continues with her horrible life story.

“I’m not a monster. I’m really not. I grew up, realized what I was doing was wrong, and decided I wouldn’t do it anymore. And I didn’t. I got a job in service with Baron Harcourt in Devonshire, and I stayed clean. When I had urges, I just found another way to take the edge off.” She grins and lifts her cigarette. “That’s how I got into these.”

She sighs. “But it wasn’t enough. Of course it isn’t. Once you’ve felt a life struggle for itself in your hands, felt it fight with everything it has, you know that you’ll never feel anything like it again. There’s nothing beats that rush, Mary: not drugs, not sex, not alcohol, not money, nothing. And when the inevitable happens, and you take that life regardless of its wish not to die… well, that makes you a god, doesn’t it? At least to those few.”

She stares at the wall with a faraway look in her eyes. I look at her face and marvel at how human it looks. How normal. I spent so much time with this woman and could never tell what she was.

After a minute or two, she starts and grins at me. "Where was I? Oh yes. So I knew I couldn't just go around killing everything I saw. I mean, aside from the fact that I'd make it, what, a week or two before I got shot, there's the fact that people aren't animals. They're people with hopes, dreams, and thoughts like you and me. I can't just kill them because I like killing them. So I picked my targets. I picked people who deserved it. Druggies, drunks, violent men, sometimes violent women: people who used their lives to abuse themselves or others.

“Took me a while to figure it out. Had a couple of close calls in Devonshire. One of them came too close. So I took a step back. I figured out that I needed something more than just an opportunity. I needed a plan. I needed a place where no one could see me, a way to dispose of the bodies, and a good cover story so no one would think to suspect me. And wouldn’t you know it, I found all of that here.”

She shakes her head in wonder. “If you could have seen my face when I found this place. It’s as though it were designed for someone like me. Probably it was. Those old lords… they knew they were gods, and they acted like it.

“But I only killed those who deserve it. That’s why I’ve only killed four people since coming here. People here are good folk for the most part. There’s not much to do to clean up. Guess that’s the silver lining to the cloud of losing this place.”

She stands and finishes her cigarette. Then she looks at me curiously. With the care of an artist, she presses the cigarette to the upper portion of my breast where the shirt doesn’t cover.

There’s no chance of holding back the scream. The pain is something utterly sharp and unbelievable. She smiles and nods, satisfied. “Oh yes. I’ll have some fun with you.”

She leaves then, shutting the door behind her. I hang from the wall, trembling and shaking with pain and fear and rage.

“Help!” I shriek. “Please help me!”

The only response is Theresa's laughter as she ascends the stairs. I keep screaming until I hear the low rumble of the bookcase returning to its place. Then I burst into tears and wept.

For the first time, I have met my match. There’s no way out. All that’s left for me is to wait for Theresa to grow bored. Then she’ll toss me onto the cliffs, and all that will be left of me is my ghost.