Page 11 of The Devil in Oxford
CHAPTERSIXA Mourning Caller
EARLYthe next morning, Mrs. Penrose burst into my darkened attic bedroom, shaking me hard from my sleep. “Up, maid. Up with you!”
I slowly opened my eyes, the last whispers of sleep rattling from my head. It had been my first solid night of the stuff in weeks too. My nightmares had been growing increasingly worse over the last year—to the point I now rarely slept more than a few hours at a time. Sometimes it would be a recurring dream—over and over—warning me of some impending cataclysm. Though lately those had taken a more sinister turn. I no longersawthings but felt them instead. An unending, suffocating stillness I could not escape.
My nightmares were half the reason I met Leona at dawn for fencing each morning. First it was the dreams. Then the imposter. Now Julius Harker’s dead body. It was no wonder I couldn’t sleep. It was still dark, not nearly time for me to go to the club. I grumbled, struggling to focus on my housekeeper’s face as I swung my feet to the cold wooden floor. “What time is it?”
“Too early, maid. Too early, but there’s someone here for you.”
“Here?Now?”My eyes darted to the darkened window, sleep vanishing at once. “What’s wrong?” I snatched an embroideredblack and red silk dressing gown and pulled it over my short white nightdress, tying it at the waist. “It’s Hari, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Penrose let out a martyred sigh at the mention of my solicitor, the same one she’d helped me evade for the past week. He must have been desperate indeed if he’d showed up here before dawn to catch me. “No. Not him.”
I ran a rough hand over my face.
“Though you should see the poor man before he takes a fancy to breaking down the door at this hour too.” Her gaze narrowed at me for a half second before her expression shifted back to concern. She brushed a gray strand of hair back into her low braid. “But no, ’tis a maid this time. She said it was urgent, or I’d have sent her away to come back at a more Christian hour. She looks a fright.”
Fear prickled at my throat.Leona.It had to be her.
“Right frantic she is.”
This did not sound good. Not good at all. I left Mrs. Penrose in my room and ran down the narrow townhouse stairs into the kitchen, the silk of the dressing gown rustling in the quiet of the cozy house.
Leona sat on the same bench I’d occupied earlier, alongside the low kitchen worktable. She was dressed as she had been when I last saw her. Her green skirt was covered in dust, with a peculiar dark stain at the hem and a tear near her pocket. Her waistcoat had been similarly ripped, and her ink-stained skin was now smeared with dirt.
“Darling, what’s happened? Where have you been? I was searching for you at the museum after Reaver grabbed you.”
Pale tear streaks had dried on her cheeks as she held a china cup unsteadily in her shaking hands. Beside her sat the little blue teapot and a tray of sandwiches. Leave it to Mrs. Penrose to make sure a body is fed in a crisis—even at four in the morning.
“They’ve arrested Mr. Mueller,” she whispered, half to herself. “They’vearrested…Mr. Mueller… for murder.”
I watched her warily, noting the flicker of fear on her face as the words sat in the air between us. “Julius Harker’s bookkeeper?” The man nearly died of shock himself after discovering the body of his colleague. Certainly not the reaction of one who was guilty of a crime. “When was this? I watched him leave the museum not long before I did. That was”—I leaned against the cool porcelain face of the sink and reached for my pin watch, which was unfortunately still upstairs on my dresser, and sighed—“hours ago.… Why would they arrest him? If anything, he needs a stiff drink and a few days’ rest after such a shock.”
She flicked the rim of her cup with her broken nail and my eye caught on the bloodied edge. Her damaged thumb traced the smooth china rim, running it back and forth, seeking comfort from the repetitive motion. Outside a dog began to bay in the night, low and deep.
I crossed the kitchen, covering her hand against the rapidly cooling cup before tilting her chin up with the crook of my finger, forcing her to face me. “You have to talk to me. You’ve come here for a reason, and I cannot help if I don’t know what happened tonight and what you need of me.”
Leona swallowed hard, staring off into the distance at some imagined spot on the floor.
I crouched before her. My dressing gown pooled around my feet, as the cold from the stone floor seeped through my skin and into my very bones. “The last I saw you, you were leaving the museum with Frederick Reaver. Did something happen at the Ashmolean? Because dressed as you are, you appear as if you’ve clawed your way out of a…grave.” The final word evaporated on my tongue. I’d not connected the thoughts before, but the state of her fingers very much resembled Julius Harker’s hands, except he hadn’t escaped his tomb. Dread lodged itself in my throat. “What happened to you?”
She shrugged away from my touch, shooting to her feet andmoving to the far end of the table. “I did this to myself. I’ve been in the archives all evening seeking…something.” She studied my skeptical expression for several heartbeats before adding, “A book, Ruby. I was looking for a book—all right? It has nothing to do with poor Mr. Mueller.”
I raised a brow. Goodness knew I’d spent many an hour digging around in old books and never ended up in that condition. “Where did Professor Reaver go? Was he looking for thebooktoo?”
She shook her head, lips pressed into a thin line, oddly defensive of Reaver. “He left me in the archives and returned to his office. They are two separate matters.” Leona clenched her wounded fist. “What is important is that Julius has been murdered.” She sat the teacup down with a clatter and covered her face with her hands. “I cannot believe he isdead.”
“You were friends?”
Her dark lashes fanned out over her cheeks. She raked her hands over her face, struggling to put herself to rights. “Freddie—Professor Reaver—” She caught herself. “He told me he’d found something at the museum earlier that day that he needed my assistance with. I had spent all day with him there. But if I’d known that Julius was dead in that box, I would not have left—” Her words were swallowed up by a mournful sob.
“There’s nothing you could have done—nothing at all. Gauging from his body, he’d likely been in there for a day or two. It’s probably why he didn’t show up to the Ashmolean for that lecture earlier this week. The poor fellow.”
Leona grew gray at the thought. She clenched her hands to keep them from trembling. “Oh, Julius… He did not deserve this. Neither of them does…” Her wounded finger began to bleed again and she shoved it into her mouth to stop it.
My eyes drifted over her torn and dirty clothing. “Leona, I want to believe you that you were at the museum—but the state of you—if you could only see yourself as I do. Where were you truly?”
Leona’s gaze narrowed. “I am not lying. I was at the museum. Reaver dragged me over there and then left me in one of the subterranean storerooms to assist with a plinth he was having trouble dating. He left me there, I presume to return to Harker’s museum—said he had things to see to. I locked myself in because it was late, but the door was stuck—”
