Death Under Wrathful Skies, page 1
DEATH UNDER WRATHFUL SKIES
BLYTHE BAKER
Copyright © 2022 by Blythe Baker
All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
About the Author
A vicious killer haunts the streets of London and has selected a member of Victoria Sedgewick’s household as his next victim. Still reeling from recent revelations surrounding her late husband’s murder, can Victoria identify this new killer before he claims another life?
The inquiry agent hired by her in-laws still delves into the Sedgewick family secrets, but when violence strikes close to home, Victoria must take matters into her own hands.
1
“I am afraid, madam, that there is little choice.”
The mess of paper spread out before me, filled with blots of ink and scribbles from scratched out notes, had certainly never done anything to anger me. It was not alive, after all. How could something so simple cause me such great frustration?
It was not the paper itself, of course, but the words upon it. List after list of items, lists that had been altered and added to over and over for the past three hours. Lists that had left me feeling betrayed and vulnerable, something I was none too pleased about.
Perhaps I put undue pressure on the pen in my hand as I squeezed it, staring down at the most recent additions and subtractions from the list. “Why?” I asked. “Of everything that must go, why must those?”
“Because after you returned from your rest at the seaside, you instructed me to look out for unnecessary expenses, madam. And these are exactly that,” said the woman standing beside my desk, examining her own list that was stretched out beside mine.
I knew she had not brought up my short holiday by the sea to make me feel guilty about the expense of it. Still, I admitted to myself that I had taken the trip at a time when I could ill afford to do so. It was as well that I was back in London now.
I looked up at her, and found the same frustration mirrored in her stern face. A face I had looked into many, many times over the years, a face I knew almost as well as my own.
Mrs. Bell, while not the warmest housekeeper, was certainly the most efficient I had ever had.
“Am I to forsake everything that I hold dear?” I grumbled.
“Surely that is slightly dramatic,” Mrs. Bell said.
I watched with great sadness as her pen hovered over the words Pear’s soap before scratching it out. It was as if the nib was scrawling itself over my soul.
I sank back against the back of my chair, a heavy sigh escaping me. “Mrs. Bell, how is changing the soap we use going to save the household money? In the grand scheme of things, it is only going to be a few pence.”
“Every bit will help,” Mrs. Bell said, writing another brand of soap down beside the newly scratched out name – Schwartz Soap – and moving down to the next item on the list.
I glowered over at the letter that lay open across the desktop just a short distance away, still within arm’s reach, hoping that the fire in my gaze alone would set it alight. My eyes passed over the words once again, still in disbelief over their content.
My Dear Victoria,
As promised, enclosed is the modified allowance that was agreed upon. I have taken the liberty of deducting a portion to reimburse myself for the funeral expenses. In future, your allowance will return to the following amount.
The amount stated in the letter was a great deal less than what Erasmus, Duncan’s father and my father-in-law, had promised originally. What he had sent me was barely enough to survive on, and he was surely well aware of what he had done.
“Mrs. Bell, I do not mean to be a bother, but are you certain about this?”
The voice came from my house cook, Corbyn. The patient, cheery man never failed to put a smile on my face or a warm meal on my table that tasted as good, if not better, than something produced by London’s most distinguished chefs.
Corbyn had come up from the kitchen and now stood in the doorway. His arms, visible as the sleeves of his coat had been rolled up in frustration, showed firm muscles from years of kneading dough and carrying wood for the fires. A mop of curling ginger hair crowned his head, and his steady, typically patient eyes were fixed on Mrs. Bell. The list to which he referred was clutched in his hand.
Mrs. Bell huffed as she looked up at him. “On the mistress’s orders, I have spent a great many hours going through each and every expense that goes out of this house. This was the kindest I could possibly be, while still maintaining standards.”
“But to cut so much…” Corbyn said, shaking his head as he stared down at his list. “Are you certain we can make do with so little?”
“If you are referring to the lesser amounts of imported spices, chocolates, and sugar, then yes, I am certain we can do without,” Mrs. Bell said, her eyes flashing. “I am quite sure that the mistress can survive without an elaborate array of sweets. She needs to maintain her health, especially with the little master now beginning to eat more.”
I looked behind me at the rather disgruntled infant.
Daniel was nearing six months old now, and was comfortably sitting up on his own. It was hard to believe that he had grown as fast as he had, and was doing exactly as Mrs. Bell had said; eating more solid foods.
Eliza, his nanny, sat before him with a frown on her young face, and a quivering spoon in front of Daniel.
“I’m doing my best, madam…” Eliza said, looking at me with a dismayed expression on her face. “But he just does not seem at all interested in it.”
I’m not certain I would be all that interested in mashed peas either…
I turned my gaze up to Mrs. Bell again. “Are you certain all of these cuts must be made?”
“It was your decision that economies must be made, due to limited funds,” Mrs. Bell reminded me, tapping the paper with the back of her pen.
I drummed my fingers on the desk, not having the stomach to look at all of the items my housekeeper had suggested we remove from our household necessities. “But now we have one less staff member,” I said. “Surely that saves us a great deal in the long-run?”
The footman, Adam, had not been mentioned very often in the weeks that had passed since his death. No one seemed to have the courage to mention his name around me.
Not that I minded, of course. The young man had clearly been dangerously insane and, now that he was gone, I preferred to put all thought of him out of my mind.
Mrs. Bell sighed, pushing her reading spectacles up the bridge of her straight nose. “It does save a little money, his being gone, but not enough.”
Though she did not complete the thought, I knew what she was thinking. That the absence of my late husband, Duncan, would prove to be the greatest savings of all for the household. As a hopeless gambler and incurable opium addict, Duncan had frittered away all the inheritance left to me by my parents and much of the allowance supplied by his own father. He would soon have brought us into dire poverty had not his tragic, but convenient, death at the hands of a deranged footman brought his reckless spending to an end.
Yet even the removal of Duncan and Adam, it seemed, was not enough to spare us all an uncertain future.
A soft knock echoed in the room, and my heart skipped. For a moment, I had lost myself and forgotten where I was.
“Come in, yes,” I said, turning in my chair to look over at the door.
The aged, wooden door swung inward, and a dark-suited man in his later years stepped in. One might not have known he was older, as he was in perfect condition and more agile than most, but his years were given away by his greying hair.
The butler stood with a straight back, hands clasped tightly behind himself, and bowed deeply to me. “Madam, I know you asked not to be disturbed, but something has occurred that I knew you would wish to be made aware of.”
“Oh?” I asked. “To be quite honest, Warrington, I welcome a bit of interruption. We have not gotten far, and I fear we might be here all evening.”
“I certainly hope not,” he said. “But here…you should see it with your own eyes.”
He walked across the room to me, and laid a newspaper down in front of me.
“I already read this, at breakfast,” I said, my brow furrowing.
Warrington shook his head. “This is the evening post. If madam would flip to page three…”
I did as he asked, and felt the eyes of all the others in the room on me. Corbyn had stepped closer to see what it was we were looking at, and Eliza had left Daniel to play with his peas as opposed to eating them.
My eyes swept across the page, and it was only a moment before I realized what it was that had brought Warrington into the study.
An advertisement, perhaps no larger than a calling card, was situated in the bottom right corner of the page.
Persons in need of private inquiry into dis
I smiled. “I am amazed they printed it. But I suppose, for a fee, one can get anything into the paper.”
“Ward is an interesting choice of name, if I may say so,” Warrington said.
I nodded. “Yes, well, I could hardly use Duncan’s family name, nor my maiden name. It would attract far too much attention, and would likely embarrass my in-laws. As for the initials, my being a lady might turn some away, at first, without giving me the opportunity to prove my capabilities.”
“Too true, madam,” Warrington said. “This way, they might at least give you a chance.”
“That is my hope,” I agreed. “Of course, extensive experience is not something I possess yet…”
Briefly, an image flashed through my head, a memory of my late husband’s body lying lifeless on the floor.
“Naturally, I have known little of death or violence…” I continued.
Another image, this time of myself holding a murderous footman at bay with a broomstick.
“…However, I am sure I shall prove equal to any tasks set before me. I intend to gather enough cases to, not only cover the difference in what my father-in-law will not pay, but also to create the reputation I need in order to take on higher paying cases in the future.”
“It could be lucrative,” Corbyn said with a nod.
I gazed down at the ad once again, smiling at the text.
Something out of the corner of my eye drew my attention, then. Another article up at the top of the page, rather long in length, was accompanied by a photograph of a man.
Murder Spree? Or Mere Coincidence? was the title of the article.
“Oh, good heavens…” Mrs. Bell said, glimpsing the article. “Another murder?”
2
“London is a large city, you know,” Corbyn said, squinting down at the newspaper sprawled out across the desktop. “Murder should not be much of a surprise.”
Our lists lay forgotten beneath the post, our attention entirely focused on the article before us.
I glanced up at Mrs. Bell, whose brow had formed a hard line across her forehead. “What do you mean by another murder?” I asked. “Are you referring to Adam? Or Duncan?”
“No,” Mrs. Bell said. “This is someone we do not know at all, it seems.”
I noticed her eyes zipping across the page, and I quickly turned my own gaze to the article as well.
Hyde Park, London.
It is just after daylight, the sunlight just beginning to peek through the trees. The water in the pond is sparkling, and the gentle call of the resident ducks can be heard as they swim together, leaving trails behind them. It is a lovely morning.
Robert Finch (whose name has been changed to protect his identity, as a witness) wanders the park, just as he does every morning around this time. He finds his favorite bench beside the pond where he sits to read his book. This morning may be one of the finest he has seen in weeks.
But something is not right. As Mr. Finch continues to read his book, there is a bone-rattling chill in the air. Something is disrupting his peaceful sanctuary, but he cannot put his finger on precisely what it might be.
“I simply could not relax,” he tells writer Jonathon Black in an interview this afternoon. “Something felt wrong, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get comfortable.”
When asked what prompted him to rise and search for the source of his unease, he answers, “There were vultures circling overhead a little distance away. I don’t typically see them unless they are on the ground, already picking a smaller creature clean…perhaps a squirrel or a rabbit. But they were high over the trees, near a clearing…and something about seeing them sent chills down my spine.”
He goes on to say that he arose from his bench and made his way over to where the vultures were circling. “I thought if it was a large enough animal, the authorities might need to be alerted so they could dispose of it if need be…”
The look that passes over Mr. Finch’s face is one of terror.
“It was a body, indeed. Not the corpse of an animal…but that of a man.”
Mr. Finch tells us that at first, he thought the man might have been sleeping. His body was sprawled out across the grass, after all. “It was almost as if he was looking up at the sky,” Mr. Finch explains. “It wasn’t until I drew nearer that I saw the blood –”
“Madam, if I may,” Warrington interrupted my reading. “Are you certain that you wish to read this?”
“Mr. Warrington is right, madam…” Mrs. Bell said. Her face had paled significantly, as she began collecting all of our lists from the desk. “There is no need to distress yourself with such terrible things.”
I raised an eyebrow, faintly amused. “Yet all the rest of you have, I see.”
Warrington said, “But so soon after the master’s death, such details might be too worrying for you.”
“Must I remind you that I just put out an advertisement in the very same paper to help others resolve troubling or dangerous situations?” I asked. “I am hardly a delicate flower, unable to bear descriptions of violence. Anyway, now that I am to be a private inquiry agent it would not do me any good to turn my face away from such happenings, would it?”
Warrington inclined his head. “My apologies, madam. You must read whatever you wish, of course.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that you all wish to protect me from unpleasant news, but really my emotions are not as fragile as you think. And how am I to deal with violent situations for potential clients if I am unwilling to read about them in the paper?”
Mrs. Bell, clearly still displeased at the idea, huffed softly as she turned away to collect the rest of our spare papers from the table in front of the sofa.
I shook the newspaper out once again, and continued to read where I had left off.
Mr. Finch explains that the body was found with a gaping hole in the chest, where the heart should have resided. Though blood stained the front of the man’s clothing, very little was beneath him. “I imagine he was moved after he was killed,” Mr. Finch says. “It was horrifying to see. The body had something unusual fixed to it, as well, a small, thin feather of some sort tucked into the pocket of his jacket.”
“A feather?” I murmured. “That’s rather peculiar, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed,” Mrs. Bell said from across the room, evidently unable to resist gossip, even when she disapproved of the subject matter. She was tidying up sofa pillows, and a thin, gauzy tablecloth sat neatly folded atop the side table, perhaps the place where I had spilled my tea the afternoon before. She went on, “It is especially odd, since that seems to be a similarity to two other deaths that have occurred over the past few weeks.”
“Truly? Why haven’t I heard of such bizarre murders?” I asked, staring at the face of the man portrayed in the photograph. I supposed he must be the witness, Robert Finch, or whatever his real name might be.
“With all of the busyness in the aftermath of Adam’s death, as well as the master’s, I’m not entirely surprised that you missed hearing of it,” Warrington said. “The first death occurred sometime in August and garnered little attention, apart from the fact that it was gruesome. The second death seemed to imitate the first, as the body was found in the same way with the hole in the chest.”
“And with the feather,” Mrs. Bell said, shaking her head as she pulled a feather duster from some hidden cupboard on the other side of the room and began to sweep it over the bookshelves tucked away in the back corner. “That is three deaths now that have had the same feather on each of the corpses…”
I marveled at the way my butler and housekeeper always seemed to be unending sources of information whenever anything grisly or shocking occurred in the city. There truly was no one so useful as a well-informed servant.
I looked back at the article.
