Page 41 of All of Us Murderers

Twenty-Two

Zeb stopped himself in the hall, mid-fumble for his coat, as he realised he didn’t actually know where Gideon would be hunting for ladders, and probably shouldn’t come crashing in on him anyway.

Fear was thrumming through him, making him jittery, and perhaps he was good in a crisis, but they’d been in a crisis so long now that he could feel the drag of exhaustion pulling him down. Think.

Getting things together: that had been his role. Map and compass, but he hadn’t found a map. Move on. Food: he’d take—steal—some food, and something to drink if he could find a bottle, and then as soon as he found Gideon, they could run like hell.

He wasn’t sure where the staff areas were, but he made his way through a couple of plausible corridors toward the back of the east wing, passing the bleak, empty anteroom where Elise’s body had rested, until he came to a plain door and a corridor that had a kitchen sort of smell to it.

There was a heavy door at the end, closed.

Zeb headed towards it, keeping his ears pricked. He wanted to avoid people.

He eased the door open, just a fraction, and sound rushed through. It was Gideon’s voice, sounding raw and panicky. “Let me go!”

“You were warned,” said a deep, contemptuous voice. The chauffeur, Zeb thought through a wave of panic. “Chose the wrong side, didn’t you?”

“What blasted side?” Gideon snarled. “Why the blazes are you doing this? Get off me!” There was the sound of a scuffle, a blow, a cry.

“Hang on to him. Not going to do that, Mister Grey,” the chauffeur said with a sneer. “Wynn’s got a need for you and he doesn’t want Useless running away, so you’re going to sit tight for a while. If I put him in the stables—”

“Don’t be daft,” said a male voice. “Useless will be looking for him, and he’ll start outside. Let’s shut this one up and put him…uh…”

“Stick him in the cellar,” an unfamiliar woman said. “Keep him out of the way till the others are done with. Nobody will hear him down there. Well, except—”

“We’re not doing that.” It was a voice Zeb knew all too well. Rachel, the housemaid, except she didn’t sound distressed or respectful or any of those things any more. She sounded, in fact, highly authoritative. “Come, Anna, that’s not right. He hasn’t done anything.”

A man snorted. The first woman asked, sharply, “Then where do you suggest we put him?”

“The anteroom where they laid out Lady Macbeth,” Rachel said. “Nobody will hear anything from there, or if they do, they’ll think it’s ghosts.”

That got a general unkind laugh. Zeb felt his stomach plunge. He had passed the anteroom on his way here. They’d be coming out this way.

He retreated rapidly up the corridor, opened a side door with fumbling urgency, and revealed a storeroom into which he wedged himself. Don’t knock anything down. Pull the door closed. Don’t sneeze. Don’t breathe. Don’t move.

He wanted to move: he wanted to run and run and not look back.

He could feel the twitch in his muscles, the unbearable torment of enforced stillness, and the urge for escape was near-overwhelming.

He dug his nails into his palms, held himself rigid, and waited, heart thundering so loudly that it would surely be audible to anyone passing.

After a moment, he heard the squeal of hinges from the kitchen, and then the sound of feet: several pairs, one dragging.

He let them pass, then he made himself wait, and wait, and wait some more, teeth gritted, his muscles jumping with the urge to break out and flee.

It felt like his entire body was holding its breath.

The feet returned at last, two sets of heavy tread, and he heard the kitchen door shut.

He gave it another agonizingly long moment, listening to the silence, pulse racing, and then, once he was absolutely sure the corridor was empty, he eased the door open with a long exhalation of relief and slid into the corridor.

Rachel was standing opposite, arms folded, waiting for him.

***

A man of action might have leapt at her, bound and gagged her with some handy twine and a handkerchief, and stashed her in the cupboard. Zeb just stared.

“Come on,” she hissed almost soundlessly, jerking her head, and set off down the corridor, back towards the main part of the house. Zeb followed, utterly bewildered. They went through another set of heavy doors, and then she unlocked the anteroom door and gestured him in.

Gideon was inside, tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth. His face was marked dark by a blow, and his lips were bloody.

Zeb wasn’t sure what he said. He just found himself on his knees, fumbling desperately with the gag. Gideon was making urgent noises at him and Zeb crooned, “Wait, wait, I’ll get you out, just wait—”

He pulled the gag free. Gideon coughed, choked, and said, “Get out of here, you fool!”

Zeb looked round to the door. The door of the room he’d run into, in which Rachel now stood with the key in her hand. He said, “Oh.”

“I’m not locking you in,” she said. “Unless you try to attack me. Don’t do that.” She shot a glance down the corridor, then stepped inside and mostly closed the door, keeping her hand to it. “Come on, get him free. Hurry.”

“Er,” Zeb said. “Are you helping us?”

“I’m helping you. Can you get him untied?”

Zeb groped for Dash’s pocketknife. “Wait, wait—here. Uh, why are you helping?”

Rachel gave a mirthless sort of smile. “It hardly matters.”

“No, it does. It truly does.” Gideon’s hands had been tied tightly together, then lashed to the chair.

His wrists were already red and puffy and the knots looked horrible.

Zeb set to sawing at the thick, tough twine.

“Because I think I know what Wynn’s doing.

And if I’m right, that makes him frighteningly unhinged, and I don’t think you ought to be here in a house with him. It’s not safe for you.”

Rachel actually laughed at that, an incredulous choke. “Not safe for me?” she repeated. “Littlest Wyckham, you have no idea what’s happening here.”

“Probably I don’t,” Zeb agreed. “Could you tell me? And could you start with—what you said about my brother? Because he truly doesn’t seem to remember doing it, you see, and maybe that’s because he’s losing his mind but—”

“Of course he didn’t rape me,” Rachel said, voice hard and cold. “That was Hawley.”

Zeb looked up at her. She looked down at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m very, very sorry. But why did you say it was Bram?”

“Because a girl named Florence isn’t here to say what your brother really did.”

“Bram told me about her. Or, at least he said that he abandoned his expectant mistress when she had nowhere else to go, and she died trying to procure an abortion.”

“Proud of that, is he?”

“I think he probably feels very guilty somewhere inside.” A strand snapped. Zeb sawed away, concentrating on not cutting Gideon, his fingers cramping from his death grip on the knife. “Maybe quite deep. Did you know Florence?”

“Never met her in my life.”

“I don’t understand. Could you just tell me, please? Why are the staff helping Wynn to do all these horrible things to all of us? I can quite see that you would loathe Hawley, but the chauffeur, say—”

“Florence’s lover,” Gideon said suddenly. “Or brother, or father.”

Rachel clapped her hands in ironic applause.

“Very good, Mr. Grey. The chauffeur, Fenton, was her father. He threw her out in a fit of rage. The next day he was sorry, or sober, and he went looking for her, and if your brother had so much as given her a few pounds to tide her over, some indication of kindness, she might be alive now. But she was abandoned and afraid and she had vanished into London. She took the stuff that killed her before Fenton could track her down.”

“Wait. Bram was absolutely wrong in what he did. But if her father also sent her away—”

“He changed his mind.”

“Bram might have changed his mind in time!” Zeb snapped. “Why is he the only one to blame?”

“He isn’t,” Rachel said. “Fenton has been racked with guilt and remorse every day of the last ten years or so. Has your brother?”

“Regardless,” Gideon said, in the tone he used to close down conversations. Possibly he felt Zeb should not be arguing with her right now, and possibly he was right. “That’s the chauffeur. What about the others?”

Rachel contemplated Zeb for a few seconds longer, then switched her gaze to Gideon.

“Oh, it’s all the same story, told a variety of ways.

Anna, the cook, was an artist’s model, as I was until Hawley left me afraid to be in the company of men.

He called her his muse, made her promises, put a baby in her belly, and discarded her when his painting was done.

Her husband came back from abroad, beat her, and left her.

The child was stillborn; she turned to drink.

Her whole life ruined because Hawley wanted inspiration, and she’s far from the only one. ”

Gideon nodded slowly. “And the footmen?”

“Alfred’s sweetheart was Mrs. Bram’s lady’s maid. Bram pawed her; Mrs. Bram caught him at it and dismissed her without a reference. She stole a pair of earrings on her way out, with an idea of compensation, and Mrs. Bram prosecuted. She’s serving two years. Another life spoiled.”

“Right. What about the other footman?”

Rachel smiled, in a way he hadn’t seen before. “My husband.”

“Oh, well, that’s good,” Zeb said. “I’m glad you have someone. That’s nice. So all the staff hate my family, then. What about Dash? What did he do?”

“Wynn told you what he did. Colonel Dash ingratiated himself with a schoolgirl, his pretty young cousin. She was several months gone when she drowned herself.”

Zeb stopped sawing and stared at her. Gideon said, “That was Dash? Why did Wynn not act before?”

“He only found out last year. He was going through some old exercise books of Georgina’s that had been rotting in a chest and discovered one was a coded diary.” She shrugged. “I quite agree he’s unhinged. I suspect that discovery played a role in the unhinging.”