Sweet Revenge Page 20

  “How guarded?”

  “Here, for example.” Victoria turned to an entry dated July 23. “This was made the year before Robbie was born. Sophie’s been with the same lover she spoke about earlier for several months now.”

  “The ‘even foxier’ one?”

  “You remembered that?”

  “It seems like a funny way of referring to someone.”

  “I suppose.” Victoria set her mounting suspicions aside and read:

  “Goggy’s on a rampage again, the old bugger. He wants a grandson—pure Hollyburn to the core. I hope he chokes on his roast beef tonight. As if I haven’t been through enough since the twins were born, he has to bring that heirof-the-manor subject up again and rub my nose in it. The loss was my fault entirely, he says, and not nicely, either. I didn’t take proper care of myself.

  My lover tells me to ignore his gibes. I turn to him and my roses for solace. But I keep thinking that it was old Goggy’s fault really, for shoving me into the sitting-room wall. He’s a cruel man, and tiny babies can be damaged very easily before birth…”

  Zoe looked vaguely like the “powdery ghost” Sophie had mentioned on an earlier occasion. She offered no comment, simply asked, “Is there any more?”

  “Not that I’ve found, but there’s quite a lot that’s illegible. The next several days are a mess. She was either in a big hurry to record them or too upset to write clearly.” Victoria waited a beat, then said, “What did Sophie mean, ‘since the twins were born’?”

  Zoe appeared to extricate herself from some deeper thought. “What? Oh, that. Clover and I were always referred to as twins. Joey was just a name and grave site.” Her expression soured. “Although, in light of Sophie’s diary, maybe ‘died’ isn’t the appropriate term.” A thud against the outer stone wall brought her head around. “What was that?”

  Victoria hated to think. “Should we look?”

  “We’d better, or we’ll both be jumping at shadows for the rest of the day.”

  As if they weren’t already.

  Victoria approached from the left, Zoe from the right. Together they crept to the window, wedged up the warped sash and peered out.

  “Nothing,” Victoria said in a rush of breath.

  Zoe looked up the fire escape, then down. “Must have been a bird hitting the wall. Come on, I’ve had enough of this stuff. The Agatha Christie mysteries are on the telly. It’s Poirot today. ‘Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.’”

  “Better her than us,” Victoria murmured with an apprehensive glance at the clock on the bookcase.

  Zoe, surmising her troubled train of thought, shook her head. “If you’re worried about Torbel, don’t. The man’s a cat with nine lives.”

  Victoria summoned her best false smile. But the disquieting question remained. What if he’d used up eight of them?

  CLOSE. Far too close for comfort. Mustn’t let her see just yet. If she guessed the truth, and she very well might, given a few more of Sophie’s melancholy diary entries, the plan would fail miserably.

  Because there were flaws—small ones, to be sure—but they could conceivably lead to unpleasant revelations. No, at all costs, the truth must not come out until the appointed hour.

  Speaking of which, the tainted tea should start to take effect very soon. At least that had been easy to arrange. Tea for the flat came from Gooseberries. Stores of that tea were kept in the pub pantry. Anyone from bag lady to chief constable could steal into the pantry and doctor the tin set aside for the tenant upstairs. A few more minutes, and the machinery would be set in motion, plan A, backed up by contingency plans B and C.

  Because you couldn’t count on success where Torbel was concerned. And Victoria had so much luck on her side that she might have been born Irish, as well.

  A hand rose in concern to stroke a perspiring jaw, then fell away. Old habits must die, or too much could be revealed too soon.

  Nothing to do but wait at this point, think about the picture she’d found in Sophie’s diary and hope that what was so painfully obvious within its borders would not be prematurely perceived. What was it they said? A picture was worth a thousand words.

  Sadly, in this case, there were pictures, words and slips of the tongue that couldn’t be retracted. The possibility of doubt existed—about a person who, by all accounts, should not.

  VICTORIA HAD NO INTEREST in Mrs. McGinty’s death, or in the tea that Zoe had just refreshed for her. She lingered at the table, leafing through further pages of the diary and listening to the inexorable ticking of the clock.

  Five o’clock…five-thirty…six-fifteen. Torbel should have called by now. She looked outside, turning pages at random. Had that thump been a bird? Probably. But she couldn’t shed the notion that creepy eyes were watching her, that more was unfolding here than she or Torbel realized.

  She forced her attention back to the diary, sipping her tea as she noted the dates. Sophie talked of abdominal pains several times, then finally about the agony of childbirth.

  It’s a boy, with masses of blond hair that I’m sure will not last, brown, puppy-dog eyes and, unfortunately, his grandfather’s mouth and nose. A tiny telltale mark, as well, near his tiny mouth. I will call him Robbie. And this mouth, I shall teach to smile…

  Victoria mulled over that statement, took another sip of tea, then moved on.

  So far no rain had fallen, but the black storm clouds looked somber and threatening. She glanced at the clock—6:35. Where was Torbel? She’d give him until seven o’clock to call.

  In the diary pages, time marched on for Sophie Hollyburn. She made only a few references to Robbie. She spoke briefly of an operation—to remove the mole Zoe had mentioned? She also said that Augustus had commandeered the child early on and that the more time he spent with Robbie, the more fearful she was of the possible ramifications.

  Victoria stopped there. Was Sophie afraid that Augustus would turn Robbie into a carbon copy of himself? It seemed the likely answer, yet something about the nature of her remarks preyed on Victoria’s subconscious, some elusive thing she could neither identify nor dismiss.

  The movie droned on. Zoe sat unmoving, apparently engrossed. Hot, sticky and worried half to death, Victoria clawed the hair from her flushed cheeks and stared at the final few notations in Sophie’s book. One of them seemed to leap off the page at her. Again there was no year, only a month and day.

  Nov. 17

  I have him at last, the old goat. I’m away to County Clare, and when I return he’ll eat a double helping of crow. Assuming I’m right, that is, and I’m sure I am.

  All those innuendos, those nasty little barbs he tosses out—they’re only meant to hurt me. He wouldn’t dare breathe a word to anyone else. Oh, no, he’s far too desperate for life everlasting as he sees it, and the purity of the Hollyburn line. So he will feign blindness. The fool! Women are precious, too, if he only knew it. But even if he did, he’d never admit it. Better to let me have the blot of birth removed and pretend it signified nothing at all.

  No matter, I leave in three hours. Three more to ascertain the truth, and then it will be Father who is at my mercy. My lover and I will be free. Rags to riches, so to speak, in a way that old Goggy could never conceive. How ironic life can be…

  The rest of the words blurred. Victoria’s eyelids drooped. She had to prop her elbow on the table and rest her cheek in her palm. Reading must be more soporific than she realized. She wondered how Zoe was making out with Poirot and Mrs. McGinty.

  She tried to utter her flatmate’s name, but oddly nothing emerged from her throat except a funny sound like a sigh.

  Her thoughts wobbled. Where was Torbel? Why had Sophie gone to County Clare? Maybe the killer had followed Torbel, and that’s why he hadn’t called.

  Unable to hold her head up any longer, she rested it against her folded arms on the table. The flat had a weird air of mystery about it right now. A whodunit on the verge of a climax—just like the storm over the Thames. The ghost of Sherlocks past, her cloudy min
d proffered. Doyle and Sherlock, Agatha and Miss Marple, Dickens and Scrooge.

  There’d been a rag seller in that Dickens novel, hadn’t there? He’d bought Scrooge’s bed curtains, or would have if Ebenezer hadn’t changed his wicked ways. One thing about the Rag Man, he didn’t seem to need reformation.

  Good Lord, her mind was wandering all over the place. It would wander all the way to Ireland if she wasn’t careful.

  Torbel knew Ireland; he’d been born there, to an Irish-Welsh witch, according to Boots. Her own da had people in Ireland, didn’t he? Not in County Clare, but somewhere like that.

  She shifted her head on her arms, her troubled thoughts progressing. Why was Augustus Hollyburn so hateful? Everyone hated him—Torbel, Zoe, Sophie, Keiran, her—so he must be a horrible man. He wanted Torbel dead; he’d made no bones about that. He wanted Zoe out of his life. He’d wanted to control Sophie completely. And yet he’d loved Robbie and maybe he loved Clover, too.

  Was that his criterion for caring? Accept the people he could control and reject those he couldn’t. Even if those people were members of his family. And why did the purity of the Hollyburn line matter so much to him? Why had Sophie spoken of it so scathingly?

  More than weariness assailed her now. Augustus Hollyburn’s face bobbed in her head, then Sophie’s and Zoe’s and Robbie’s. The last to present itself was the most wanted.

  “Torbel,” she murmured.

  He didn’t answer, of course, but there was something; she saw it without understanding what it was.

  Fog enveloped her mind, thick and insidious. She saw Torbel’s eyes glitter, blue green and deadly. What was she missing here? Why couldn’t she think?

  With an extreme effort, she raised her head. It seemed a shadow fell over the table. She tried to look but couldn’t locate the source. A weird gray fog swirled in dizzying circles through her entire brain.

  The shadow hovered for a moment, then vanished. “Torbel,” she said again.

  But he wouldn’t come to her, because he wasn’t here. She made a feeble sound of protest as a black wave of unconsciousness spiraled in on her. Her head fell forward onto her arms. And she was sucked, dazed and unresisting, into a vortex of darkness, danger—and very probably death.

  “WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE, Torbel?” Oswyn glanced apprehensively around the narrow, cluttered alley. “No one would drag Boots all this way to hold him or even, you know, to dispose of his body.”

  Torbel kept walking, his attention fixed on a set of worn stone stairs ahead of them.

  “Torbel?” Oswyn said again.

  “Quiet. We’re here because I saw someone come this way.”

  “But—” the boy darted a quick look into the deepening gloom behind them “—maybe we should get some backup.”

  Torbel’s gaze remained fastened on the stairs. “Don’t we already have it?”

  “I think we might have lost—” Oswyn broke off with a start. “I mean, no, of course not.”

  “So your being with me today wasn’t Ron’s idea?”

  “No.” The denial came too quickly. In his peripheral vision, Torbel saw Oswyn wince. “I just think we need backup is all. I keep remembering that guy on the forklift. Anyway, you said you had to phone Victoria.”

  “The call box on the pier was out of order, Oswyn.” Actually the receiver had been ripped right off the chain. “I’ll find another as soon as I know where this alley leads.”

  He saw the shudder that Oswyn attempted to hide. It wasn’t unwarranted. The alley, like most of the area surrounding the Pierpont Hotel, was infamous. Cutthroats haunted these grimy lanes, and the hovels that crowded both sides housed rats of all shapes and sizes.

  One rat in particular had caught Torbel’s attention fifteen minutes ago. He’d been about to give up on his quest to find Boots when he’d spotted the figure dressed in layers of black, gray and brown, hurrying along the street toward the waterfront and possibly the old Pierpont Hotel.

  He’d searched the first two floors of the hotel earlier that day. But the third had been too rotten and creaky to explore. It was Oswyn’s brash opinion that any moron who dared to set foot up there would come crashing through the floorboards and wind up below anyway, so what was the point in going up?

  A logical question, but the real reason Torbel hadn’t continued his exploration was that it was getting late and he wanted to phone Victoria. He was also hot and sweaty and losing his patience with everything and everyone.

  Oswyn had been a leech on his back all day long, and a bloody obvious one at that. The only reason that Torbel hadn’t forced the boy to explain his presence was that his focus had been on locating Boots. That, and catching the psychotic git who’d been making his life and Victoria’s a hell on earth lately.

  “Wait here if you’d rather,” he said, then added a less testy “Watch my back.”

  Oswyn drew a steadying breath. “No, I’ll come, too. I’m not a coward, you know. I just don’t fancy dark alleys. Me da was jumped in one when I was five. Died the next day. There are eyes everywhere here, Torbel. I can feel them crawling over me like bugs.”

  Torbel noted a fleeting movement at the bottom of the stairs. Keeping Oswyn at bay with his hand, he moved closer. The door, halfway open at first, swung closed.

  Investigate or back off? It was no contest, really. He started for the door.

  Oswyn bumped into his shoulder as he tested the knob. “It’s starting to rain,” the boy noted uselessly.

  Glancing up, Torbel pushed his way inside.

  “It’s an old wine cellar,” Oswyn declared at length. “Look at the holes. Shelf pegs must have gone into them once.”

  Torbel shone the flashlight he’d borrowed from Ratz into one of Oswyn’s holes. For something intended to house a peg, it was awfully deep—and large around.

  “They run from floor to ceiling in an alternating pattern.” His brows came together. “I’ve seen something like this before…Don’t close the door, Oswyn.”

  “I’ve got it. It won’t cl—Oraghh!”

  Torbel pivoted at the choked sound. What he saw made his hands curl into fists.

  A lumpy-looking figure, silhouetted briefly on the threshold, yanked away the pole he’d used to ram Oswyn in the stomach, grabbed the bolt and dragged the door swiftly shut. Torbel heard a click and a thud as the iron bolt was secured from the other side.

  The moment he spotted the figure, he lunged for it, but the person was agile, and Oswyn, doubled over and staggering, blocked his path. He wound up pounding his hand against a solid three-inch plank and cursing his lack of foresight.

  Oswyn’s grunts of pain brought him around. He took the boy by the arm and eased him upright. “All right now?” he asked.

  Oswyn nodded. “Yeah, fine.”

  He wasn’t, but Torbel understood the necessity for preserving pride.

  Still bent from the blow, Oswyn squinted up at him. “What’s he got in mind this time, do you think?”

  Torbel scanned the ceiling. “Nothing pleasant.”

  “We’re below ground aren’t we? What is this place?”

  Torbel didn’t like the way those holes were positioned. “Not a wine cellar, that’s for sure.”

  “What, then?”

  The clank of an ancient mechanism reached them before Torbel could respond. He swung the flashlight up, aiming it at the topmost collection of holes.

  Oswyn edged closer, his pride forgotten. “What was that?”

  Torbel spied them first, the pointed metal spikes that emerged slowly from three of the walls.

  “Get back,” he snapped when Oswyn would have crept forward to look.

  He heard the boy gulp. “They’re coming out of the holes, Torbel.” Wide-eyed, he searched for an escape. “What do we do?”

  Pray, Torbel thought bleakly. Aloud he said, “Get to the wall by the door and search for a release lever.”

  Oswyn obeyed instantly. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  He sounded fear
ful…and with good reason. Crouching, Torbel felt along the base of the wall. “Yeah, I have. We’re in Black Sheep Alley. This is part of the old Fleet Prison. They used to interrogate prisoners here.”

  “Interrogate them how?”

  Torbel slanted him an unpromising look. “By torture.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Victoria. Come on, luv, wake up. It’s Keiran. You have to snap out of it. That’s right. Easy now. You’ve been drugged.”

  She sat up groggily, holding her head in her hand. “I feel like someone hit me with a sledgehammer.” She blinked her eyes. “What was that about drugs? No, wait a minute.” She squinted at him. “You shouldn’t be up. Why are you here?” She clutched his good arm. “Torbel! Where is he? Have you heard—?”

  Keiran’s hand across her mouth cut short the panicky last question. “I don’t know where he is, but I know the general area. Apparently Ivy’s been tailing them all day.”

  She removed his hand, her mind clearing slowly. “Why?”

  “I didn’t ask. She lost them near Hangman’s Lane.”

  “Then why…?”

  “Because she spotted the person they’d been following running out of the lane.”

  Victoria’s head throbbed. Over Keiran’s shoulder, she saw Zoe asleep in the chair. Ron was endeavoring to revive her, fanning her face with a magazine and jiggling her limp wrists.

  Pushing herself away from the table, Victoria tried to stand.

  Keiran set a firm hand on her shoulder. “Give it a minute,” he suggested.

  His face seemed unnaturally pale, but of course it would. He’d lost a great deal of blood. By rights, he shouldn’t be out of bed, much less wandering around the city.

  “Did you…?” She swallowed and tried again. “Did you catch whoever it was that Ivy saw?”

  “No. It’s more important that we find Torbel and Oswyn.”

  He’d said “them,” she realized belatedly. Oswyn was with Torbel. She wondered, with a surreptitious glance at a scowling Ron if that was good or bad.