Page 100 of Evil at the Essex House

Of course she had done. Nobody had dragged her forcibly off the street and into a motorcar. She had simply walked away on her own two feet.

“And last night?” Tom asked.

Myrtle eyed him. “We loaded up the heiress and took her to the house in Southwark?—”

“How did you know about that?”

“Sid grew up around there,” Myrtle said, with a flicker of a glance at him. Sid looked sour, but he didn’t protest, or comment in any other way.

Tom nodded. “And then?”

“Sid went to pick up the money. And we came back here.”

The way in which she phrased it was quite solid. That was what happened, nothing more and nothing less. But of course there was something fairly fundamental missing from the recitation, and of course we all realized it.

“And the murder?” Tom asked gently. “Who committed that?”

There was a moment of silence, one in which Myrtle flicked another glance at Sid and at Ruth. And then?—

“Don’t you dare, you bloody cow!” Sid growled. Ruth let out a sob, but after a moment, when she didn’t say anything else, he continued, “I’m copping to the kidnapping and the thing with the money?—”

The thing with the money? The ransom? Or the embezzling, basically, of the Schlomskys’ wealth over most of the previous year?

“—but I’ll be damned if I let you accuse me of a murder I didn’t commit!”

“You didn’t know there would be a murder?” Tom inquired. “Wasn’t it part of the plan you concocted?”

Sid swung his head towards him and opened his mouth. And seemed to think better of it, because nothing came out.

“Of course it was part of the plan,” Myrtle said. She gave her head a toss. “We couldn’t leave her alive. We all knew that. There’s no point in pretending we didn’t agree to it now.”

Sid opened his mouth, and then closed it again. And opened it again. “At least I didn’t kill her!”

Ruth sniffed wetly.

“No,” Myrtle agreed. “You didn’t.”

She sneered at him, actually sneered, as if being unable to commit coldblooded murder was something to be ashamed of, and Sid flushed angrily.

“So the murder of Miss Florence Schlomsky was always part of the plan,” Tom said, yanking the conversation back on track, and everyone’s attention turned back to him. Christopher squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. “Is that correct?”

“Not always,” Sid said. “At first, it was just about getting some of our own. Keep the heiress busy, spend the money.”

“Keep her imprisoned while you slowly drain her father’s coffers.” Tom’s tone was pleasant, but his face was not. His jaw was tight and his usually warm hazel eyes were hard as pebbles.

Sid squirmed a little. “I don’t know why you’d want to put it like that…”

“That’s the way it was,” Tom reminded him. “But you had no plans to kill her.”

“Ididn’t.” Sid slanted a look at Myrtle. “Not then.Shemight have had other plans.”

“As long as nobody knew anything, there was no need to kill her,” Myrtle said, brows lowered. “We could just keep her, and keep the money coming. But when the parents showed up, it changed everything.”

She slanted them a resentful stare, as if it were their fault that her plan of embezzlement had failed eventually.

“You didn’t consider letting Miss Schlomsky go and cutting your losses?”

Sid shifted uncomfortably, and Ruth sniffed again.