And Lucy was confused. Because it was impossible that Lily Millington could have remained in the stairwell hiding place all of this time. It had been four days now since Martin had come to Birchwood. Lucy could remember how it felt within the tiny cavity, how difficult it was to breathe, how quickly the air had staled, how desperate she’d been to escape. Lily Millington would have called out for release long ago. No one could have stayed in there this long.
Maybe Lucy had got it wrong, after all? Maybe she hadn’t locked Lily Millington away? Or, if she had, maybe Martin had released her and they’d run off together, just as the inspector said. Hadn’t Lily told Lucy that she’d spent her childhood in Covent Garden; that she’d learned the coin trick from a French illusionist? Hadn’t she called herself a pickpocket? Lucy had presumed at the time that she’d been joking, but what if Lily Millington had been working with that man, Martin, all along? What else could she have meant when she said that she’d told him she needed one month? Maybe that’s why she had been so eager for Lucy to run back to the woods, to leave them to it …
Lucy’s head hurt. She screwed her eyes tight. The bump must have jumbled her memories, as the inspector said. She had always placed the utmost value on being accurate, disdaining those who abbreviated or approximated and did not seem to realise that it made a difference; and so she made a solemn decision not to say anything further until she was 100 per cent certain that what she remembered was true and correct.
Edward, naturally enough, refused to accept the inspector’s theory. ‘She would never have stolen from me and she would never have left me. We were going to be married,’ he told the inspector. ‘I’d asked her and she’d accepted. I’d broken off the engagement with Miss Brown a week before we came to Birchwood.’
It was Fanny’s father’s turn to wade in then. ‘The lad’s in shock,’ Mr Brown said. ‘He’s not thinking straight. My daughter was looking forward to her wedding and was discussing plans for the occasion with my wife on the very morning that she left for Birchwood. She would most certainly have told me if her engagement had been cancelled. She said nothing to that effect. Had she done so, I’d have had my lawyers involved, I can assure you. My daughter had a spotless reputation. There were gentlemen with far more to offer than Mr Radcliffe lining up to ask for her hand in marriage, but she wanted to marry him. There’s no way I’d have allowed a broken engagement to spoil my daughter’s good name.’ And then the big man broke down, sobbing, ‘My Frances was a respectable woman, Inspector Wesley. She told me that she wished to spend the weekend in the country where her fiancé was hosting a group at his new house. I was pleased to lend her my coachman. I would never have allowed her to attend the weekend if not for her engagement and she would not have asked.’
This reasoning was good enough for Inspector Wesley and his Berkshire counterpart, particularly when it was further cemented by Thurston, who took the inspector aside to inform him that he was Edward’s closest confidant and that his friend had never breathed a word about breaking off his engagement to Fanny Brown, let alone entering a second engagement with his model, Miss Millington. ‘I’d have talked him out of it if he had,’ said Thurston. ‘Fanny was a wonderful young lady and a sobering influence. It’s no secret that Edward has always had his head in the clouds; she managed to bring his feet back firmly onto the ground.’
‘It was your weapon that was used in the murder, was it not, Mr Holmes?’ the inspector had asked.
‘Regrettably, yes. A decorative piece only. A gift from Mr Radcliffe, as it happens. I’m as shocked as anyone that it was loaded and used in such a way.’
Lucy’s grandfather, having learned about the missing Radcliffe Blue, had decamped by then from the Beechworth estate, and was only too happy to round out the description of Edward. ‘Even as a child,’ the old man told the inspector, ‘he was filled with wild ideas and wilder inclinations. There were many times when he was growing from a boy to a man that I despaired. I couldn’t have been happier or more relieved when he announced his engagement to Miss Brown. He seemed at last to have set himself on the right track. He and Miss Brown were to have been married, and any suggestion from Edward otherwise signals nothing more than a sad loss of his senses. Natural enough in the face of such terrible events, especially for one with his artistic temperament.’
Mr Brown and Lord Radcliffe were right, Thurston said soberly; Edward was in shock. Not only had he loved and lost his fiancée, Miss Brown, he was forced to accept that he was responsible for the horrific events, having brought Lily Millington and her associates into his group of friends. ‘It wasn’t as if he didn’t have fair warning,’ Thurston added. ‘I told him myself some months ago that I’d noticed certain items of value missing from my studio after he and his model had come to visit. He left me with quite the black eye for even daring to suggest such a thing.’
‘What sort of items were taken, Mr Holmes?’
‘Oh, mere trifles in the scheme of things, Inspector Wesley. Nothing to bother yourself with. I know how busy you are. I’m just pleased to have been able to offer you some small assistance in clearing up this disturbing matter. To think of my friend being taken in by a pair of charlatans – well, it makes my blood boil. I reproach myself for not having put it all together sooner. We’re lucky Mr Brown sent you to us.’
The final nail in the coffin came when the inspector arrived one morning and announced that Lily Millington had not even been the model’s real name. ‘My men in London have been asking questions and looking into the records of births, deaths and marriages, and the only Lily Millington they could find was a poor child who was beaten to death at a public house in Covent Garden in 1851. Sold to a pair of baby farmers and lock pickers by her father as a child. Little wonder why she didn’t make it.’
And so, it was settled. Even Lucy had to accept that the inspector was right. They had all been taken in and swindled. Lily Millington was a liar and a thief; her name wasn’t even Lily Millington. And now the faithless model was in America with the Radcliffe Blue and the man who’d shot Fanny.
The investigation was closed and the inspector and the constable left Birchwood, shaking hands with Mr Brown and Grandfather and making promises to contact their counterparts in New York City in the hope that they might thereby at least recover the diamond.
Uncertain what else to do, stuck out in the country where the lazy stretch of summer had come to an abrupt end and the rain had set in, the Magenta Brotherhood returned briefly to Birchwood Manor. But Edward was a wreck and his desolation and anger permeated the very air. He and the house were one, and the rooms seemed to take on the faint but foul odour of his grief. Powerless to help him, Lucy stayed out of his way. His distress was catching, though, and she found herself unable to settle to anything. She was beset, too, with an uncharacteristic apprehension about the stairs where it had all happened, and took to using the smaller set at the other end of the house instead.
Finally, Edward could stand it no longer: he packed his things and sent for a carriage. Two weeks after Fanny was killed, the curtains were closed, the doors were locked, and two horse-drawn carriages thundered up the lane from Birchwood Manor, carrying them all away.
Lucy, sitting on the back seat of the second one, had turned as they left, watching as the house receded further and further into the distance. For a second, she thought that she saw one of the curtains in the attic shift. But it was just Edward’s story, she knew; the Night of the Following playing on her mind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT