Page 17 of Miss Delightful
The bench she’d chosen was in a square of taller privet hedges that offered protection from the vicarage’s curious eyes. A birdbath sat in the center of the square, the bowl filled with more dirty ice.
“I come here to think,” Miss Delancey said as Alasdhair took the place beside her, “but I don’t know what to think of Melanie’s death. Papa says we must trust in the Lord, but what sort of God… What sort of Christian turns a blind eye to a new mother in desperate straits?”
“What sort of king musters up his farm boys and apprentices and makes killers of them? What sort of emperor marches a half million men to Moscow with winter coming on, only to lose them by the hundreds of thousands to disease, starvation, battle, and cold?”
The bitter breeze pushed dead leaves along the walkway, and a lone raven landed on the edge of the birdbath. It cocked its head at Alasdhair, bright dark eyes suggesting otherworldly intelligence. Alasdhair expected the bird to speak—some ravens did—but the creature instead flapped away into the leaden sky.
Miss Delancey shivered. “You are not cheering me up, Mr. MacKay.”
He turned on the bench to rearrange her scarf, which she’d tossed about her neck as an adornment. Alasdhair unwrapped the wool, then wound it over her ears and hair and about her neck and chin so her face and head were mostly swaddled, and her cheeks and mouth were covered.
“You are very presuming, sir.”
“You are welcome. How soon can you find a place for John? Another night like last night… I am nearly dead on my feet. I’d just doze off, and he’d start up again, which I can assure you is worse than simply keeping watch all night.”
“John is where he should be. He is where Melanie wanted him to be, and if you think to cheer me up by offering me a good scrap, please choose another topic.”
He’d thought to do exactly that. “Very well. Explain to me, Miss Delancey, why a woman intent on ending her life by jumping from a bridge wears her best slippers and bonnet?”
“Because she wants to be a pretty corpse?”
“Think, Dorcas. Think about walking the distance to the Strand Bridge, in bitter weather, at night. Think about the wind on the river, colder than charity in hell. You walk everywhere, because you are poor, and you know the feel of London’s cobbles through the thin soles of your only decent pair of boots.Think.”
She sat up, brows knit. “I would for no amount of coin subject myself to that march wearing only my good slippers. I could not. My feet would freeze, and even were I in the pit of despair, I would need for my feet to get me to the bridge. I would not wear my good bonnet on a walk after dark for which I’d want few witnesses. I would wear whatever was cheap and warm and hope my bonnet was sold to provide for my son. And yet, the only evidence we have of Melanie’s passing is her best pair of slippers and her good bonnet. She was seen making her way to the bridge, but nobody saw her jump, did they?”
Alasdhair had walked half the length of London before he’d been able to connect what few facts he had with any logical conclusions.
“The mud larks told me they almost never find both shoes at the same time,” Alasdhair said, recalling earnest, grimy little faces. “They find only one or one at a time, but the shoes and bonnet were barely damp and all in a heap in the tidal mud.” Manna from heaven to those little scavengers, and it had been one of them—a wraith of a girl—who’d pointed out the strangeness of tromping to the bridge in slippers despite streets abundantly cursed with ice and mud.
Alasdhair had rewarded her and her cohorts with every coin in his pockets.
“We must find somebody who saw Melanie jump, Mr. MacKay.”
No,wemust not. “Melanie might not have jumped, or she might have simply waited for a moment when the bridge was deserted. Suicides commit both a crime and a sin when they end their lives. Who wants witnesses to those transgressions when death by misadventure is possible if the death is simply unexplained?”
Miss Delancey got to her feet with considerably more energy than she’d shown thus far. “I can understand, far more than you know, why a fallen woman would want a fresh start. Why she’d want a clean break with the past. This theory makes sense, given Melanie’s situation. If she’s alive, then she pawned everything of value, made a trustworthy plan for John, and put period to an existence that didn’t work out. I cannot approve of her abandoning her baby, but I can understand her motives.”
Alasdhair rose as well. “And she might well be dead, Miss Delancey.”
“We will find somebody who saw her jump, then. I knew something was amiss with this whole situation. I knew it.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Come along.” She took a firm hold of Alasdhair’s sleeve. “If Melanie’s everyday boots and bonnet are not among her effects, then we will have further evidence that your theory has merit, because she’s likely wearing them.”
“It’s not my theory.” Though Miss Delancey’s suggestion made sense.
“I could hug you, Mr. MacKay. I could just throw my arms about you and squeeze the stuffing out of you.”
Interesting, and somewhat alarming, notion. “Stop,” Alasdhair said. “Please stop for one moment.”
She paused on the path. “Do not lecture me about misplaced hope, or the Lord’s will, or—what are you doing?”
He gently unwound the scarf so her face was once again revealed.
“Mr. MacKay?”
“Never mind.” Her eyes had been so full of joy, so luminous, but no smile curved her lips. He wrapped her up in the scarf again, taking extra care to tuck the ends beneath her chin. “Wouldn’t want you to take a chill.”
