Page 25 of The Secret of the Three Fates
“You have a point.”
He leaned forward, taking my arm and leaving a dark smudge on my lavender sleeve. “You must take this seriously, Miss Vaughn. Someone killed Lucy Campbell, and whoever it is fully intended to frame my uncle for it.”
The words struck me in the stomach. “You cannot think they’d suspect him? He’s eighty years old!”
“What else am I to think when I found his revolver beside her?”
“Unless whoever did it wanted you to find it. Perhaps as a warning?” I gnawed on the inside of my cheek before shaking my head. No, that didn’t make sense either. The killer could not have known that Andrew Lennox would be the first to see the body—he wasn’t even supposed to be on the estate at all.
It’s just as well that Andrew took the gun from the scene—of course doing so meant that the inspector found only my things there. I blew out a breath and swore loudly. Considering how badly the inspector wanted me to be guilty of the crime, it was only a matter of time before he manufactured enough evidence to arrest me.
Which meant that I needed to figure out who killed Lucy Campbell. And I had to do it fast.
CHAPTERTWELVESetting the Scene… or Perhaps Unsetting It
INthe dozen years since my exile from New York, I had lived freely, without a care for polite society or the repercussions of my actions—and here at long last they had caught up with me in the manner I least expected. I suppose if one breaks the rules long enough, people begin to expect the worst of one.It wasn’t fair—but the world has never cared a whit about fairness. And I could either allow that fact to dictate my actions, give up and allow my past to land me in prison for a murder I did not commit, or I could take the necessary steps to save myself.
I chose the latter.
And the latter led me back up to Lucy Campbell’s room to see if she’d left any clues for me that I’d missed when I’d come up here the night she died. It had only been what? Not even a full day and yet the room, which had been neat as a pin earlier, now looked as if someone had thrown three alley cats in a wet sack, set them loose, and locked the door.
Jars were broken and books lay splayed open-faced on the ground. The contents of the packed carpetbag were now spilling out of the open top. Chemises and blouses pulled from the drawers of the nearby wardrobe. Dresses lying in heaps on theground. Whoever had been here was in a hurry, and hadn’t been particularly careful in their search. I gingerly stepped around the debris, holding my breath as I took in the disarray. A broken vase lay in pieces on the dressing table, water dripping from the surface onto what appeared to be glass plate negatives lying scattered on the rug. Two of the negatives had broken and I stooped down, gathering up the bits of glass, trying to piece them back together.
Once again I had been too slow. Just as I’d been the night she died. Whoever it was remained two steps ahead of me.
I picked up the negatives, hastily riffling through the plates one by one—pausing now and then to be certain no one was coming—whoever I’d interrupted must have taken off when they heard me coming down the hall. Odds were, they wouldn’t return, at least not for a while—and if they did… well, then at least I’d know who or what I was dealing with.
Probably not the wisest course of action, but it was the one I was taking nonetheless.
I shuffled through the plates, quickly trying to make sense of what I’d found. At first blush, one might have thought I’d stumbled upon a stash of Victorian pornography, but upon closer inspection the images weren’t particularly lurid—though the subject matter was decidedly carnal—there was an almost clinical or scientific feel to the images.
While the faces of the figures on these images remained obscured, the photographs left little else to the imagination. I was no novice to cabinet cards—goodness knew I’d acquired them for Mr. Owen’s more adventurous customers—but these were more than simple pornography. I moved to the window, examining them in the waning light of day. A sexual ritual, perhaps? The indifference with which I studied them shocked even me. But I’d seen my fair share of this sort of ephemera since taking on my position working with Mr. Owen.
I was about halfway through the set when one particularimage gave me pause. Something wasn’t quite right about it and I couldn’t put my finger on it. The images were voyeuristic, and gauging from the fact that several were missing from the sequence—these were what the killer was after. They had to be. I counted them—a dozen in total—before stuffing them into my pocket for safekeeping.
A rustle of fabric froze me in my tracks, my left hand rested protectively over the pocket where the negatives were nestled against my belly. My right reached for the revolver that I realized was sitting in the drawer of my dresser on the floor below.
A creak came from outside the door.
Then nothing.
One.
Two.
I began to count my breaths, slow and steady.
Silence.
I waited several more heartbeats before I moved at last. Finally, satisfied that whoever—or whatever—had been outside the door had gone, I crept out of the room, shutting the door behind me, and hurried to my own chamber. The lamp was still burning in my room when I returned, as it had been when I left. However, the door connecting mine to Mr. Owen’s room was open. He must be feeling better, that or trying to keep an eye on me. One could never tell with him.
Regardless, he was precisely the person I needed to talk to as the old man was in possession of the most extraordinary collection of early wet plate photographs and photographic equipment that I’d ever seen. Perhaps he’d have an idea as to the age of the images. Not that I’d ever seen him handle a camera in his life. It was yet another collection he kept under lock and key in the private library, housed with his most precious books and artifacts.
“You’re back.” Mr. Owen looked over the top of his gold-rimmed reading glasses and set down his most recent serial novel.His color had vastly improved from this morning. Perhaps whatever tincture Ruan brought him had helped. I spied a large chunk of what appeared to be a lovely Wensleydale sitting on the table before him. I reached over, taking his silver knife and cut a piece of the wheel, plopping it onto my tongue. Yes. Most certainly Wensleydale.
“Where’d you find that?” I mumbled, licking a softened crumb from my thumb.
“A man must have his secrets.”
