Disclaimer: all characters belong to Laurie R. King, as does the idea that this story spawned from.


Chapter Three

Later that evening, Mrs. Hudson entered my rooms, finding me sitting on the floor amidst the piles of newspapers I had collected over the past six months. She was adamant in trying to get me to tidy up, but I resisted and distracted her by asking what she thought of Miss Russell. The woman then went into a long rant about the young lady's charm and intelligence.

It was difficult for me not to disagree with her on much of what she said, but finally I asked her for silence. "I'm looking for something that may assist Miss Russell's case," I explained with more patience than I felt. Nearly pushing her out the door, I once more had my silence.

Near the bottom of the pile of newspapers, I discovered a New York Herald from the previous August. The headline was one I now remembered reading with great interest, but had forgotten in the monotony of tedious cases since that time.

Financier and Family Dead in Carriage Accident

That was all it said. Yet it had drawn my immediate attention. Rising, I took the paper to a chair closer to a lamp, as the sun had sunk below the horizon. The minuscule print and the lack of proper lighting did not keep me from pursuing the story.

I summarize what was written here: A carriage carrying a family of four and the driver was hit by a fast-moving carriage coming from the other direction along a cliff-top road. The horses from the first carriage shied and broke loose, allowing it to roll over the cliff. The other carriage had continued on at its mad pace, even while the only survivor, a teenage girl, lay on the road watching it disappear. This second carriage was never found and the girl was sent to hospital for intense psychiatric care.

It was no small wonder that Miss Russell wished not to speak of the incident, I thought to myself as I re-read the story with a slight frown. She watched her own family be murdered under her own nose and yet no one believed her story. The fact that the police did not follow up the second carriage very well was enough for me to see that.

Who would believe a young girl just in a terrifying accident in which her close family was lost? Not only was Miss Russell a female, but she had needed "intense" therapy to cure her rattled emotions and mind.

Few people of sane mind would bother with such a case. But this one captured my interest. First thing in the morning, I would make some enquiries into the Russell fortune and into the greedy aunt. This case should, as the Americans say, "keep me busy" for the time being.


Without much trouble at all, I arrived back in Sussex and walked from the station to my house. The lights were blazing as I topped the rise and there was a large carriage led by matching greys parked near the front door.

How odd, I asked myself. Who would come here at such a late hour?

Wincing as my foot landed on a particularly sharp stone, I left the road and took a small cow path (fortunately clean of pats) that led behind the house. From there I could easily be able to spy upon whoever had come while he or she sat with my aunt (who of course would be entertaining them with stories of her "terribly wild niece") in the back parlour.

As I approached the house, I slowed my steps and lurked near the large parlour window which looked out over the Channel. Fortunately for me, it was surrounded by large deciduous shrubs - perfect for hiding in.

Not caring about the state of my dress (which was already ruined from the earlier rain and the conditions of the country roads), I knelt in the dirt and brought my head as close to the window as I dared. A few words leaked through the glass, but nothing distinguishable. So instead of listening, I decided to observe.

The room, decorated in gaudy shades of green and pink with furniture that a church jumble sale wouldn't touch, was occupied by three women. One was my aunt, noticeable chiefly because of her dyed blonde hair, naturally muddy brown. The other two were entire strangers to me, but not without interest. The elder of the two women was dressed all in black - obviously a widow - with her grey-streaked hair pinned up in a tight bun. Although she could not have been older than her mid-forties, deep wrinkles lined her eyes and mouth. The widow's watery-blue eyes were blank, as though she were surprised at something.

Beside her sat a woman only a few years older than I. From the similarities between her and the older woman, I supposed them to be mother and daughter. She was dressed in a lavender gown which brought out the strange violet-blue colour of her intense eyes. Her hair shone like spun gold in the lamp light and was arranged in a popular style - her whole persona was that of elegance and fashion. This woman was, in fact, everything that I was not: the sort of "perfect" lady my aunt was always nagging me to be. It was this woman who was carrying on most of the conversation with my aunt while her mother (at least, I believed the older woman to be her mother) sat quietly, seemingly in a daze.

Immediately, I found myself disliking this younger woman, but I could not explain exactly why I did so. It was not that she seemed unintelligent, like most young women around my age; her face revealed great cleverness while the slight squint of her eyes betrayed the hobby of reading by candlelight. There was something about the way she dominated the conversation and seemed to captivate my aunt's attention that made me suspicious.

Bringing myself closer to the window, I noticed the strangest thing about this woman: she had a scar across the left side of her face, starting at her temple and across her eye to the corner of her mouth. I had not seen it at first because of the way she was sitting with that side of her face in shadow, but when she had turned her head a fraction to say something to her mother, the shiny texture of the scar tissue flashed momentarily in the light.

How on earth did a fashionable young woman get a scar like that? I asked myself. The scars on my own body were hidden from sight, but this woman's scar was open for all to see. The strangest part was that she didn't even seem to care whether or not people saw it. An aura of confidence surrounded her like a blanket, protecting her from the harsh words of others.

After a quarter hour of watching, I gave into my curiosity and decided to go inside. My aunt would be angry, to be sure, but what possibly could she do to me before guests? Carefully, I stood and kept below the window so that those inside would not have seen me spying on them. At the back door, I tried the brush off the grass and dirt from by dress, but it was entirely hopeless. The dress was ruined; at best, it could be used for scrap cloth.

Quietly as I could, I opened the door, but my aunt with her predator-like hearing appeared in the parlour door.

"Where have you been, Mary?" she asked, her voice giving away her anger. "I've been worried sick for your well-being, my dear."

Worried? For my money perhaps more than for me, I thought to myself.

"What happened to your dress?" she continued when I did not immediately reply. "It looks as though you walked across an open field."

Ha! There was a perfect excuse. Perhaps my aunt was not as useless as I had previously thought her. It would still, however, take quite a poker face to lie so blatantly to her.

"I was - um- visiting Tillie in the next town," I said. "She's Patrick's friend, remember? Her sister is visiting with her new baby, so I'd thought that I would go and see it."

A strange look of deep thought (a rare moment, I will tell you) passed across my aunt's face. It seemed as though she actually believed my atrociously shallow lie.

"It began raining on the way there, as you know," I continued hurriedly. "And when I arrived, Tillie was all for me staying the night, but I knew that you would probably be worried about me, so I insisted in returning. Unfortunately, however, upon travelling home, I found the road to be pitted with holes filled with water, so I decided to walk along the path closer to the cliffs." Motioning to the hem of my ruined dress, I sighed wistfully. "As you see, that decision was no better than the rest."

My aunt sniffed. "Well, I hope you learned your lesson, young lady." She nodded towards the back stair near the kitchen door, usually reserved for servants. "Go change your dress and come back down straight away. There are guests who would like to meet you. Now stop goggling and hurry up."

Just before I turned to leave, she grabbed my arm, her fingernails digging into my flesh.

"Don't ever do that again, Miss Know-it-All," she hissed. "If you want to get out of this house with your pretty face intact, you'll act proper until you marry."

My face of mask of innocence to hide the anger beneath, I froze, seemingly in terror. She let go of my arm as though it were a piece of rubbish she'd rather throw back into the gutter. I hurried up the stairs, my hand in a fist that itched to make contact with her face.

Standing in my tiny room a few moments later, I looked through my wardrobe, hoping to find something at least half-decent, but I knew that it was impossible. Nothing there was newer than four months old and I had grown three inches since that time, which made them all frightfully indecent to wear. The dress I had worn today had been the best I had and now it was ruined. I had no choice now but to appear to my aunt's guests as a poor relation.

How ironic was that? I thought to myself, nearly laughing. It was not I who was the poor one, somewhere in one of the banks was over a million pounds and twice that amount in American dollars. I felt rather like a character from one of those penny dreadfuls.

Changing into an old muslin dress that showed my ankles, I smiled to myself. Upon arriving in the parlour, I felt ready for whatever the three harridans there would set at me.

Too bad I was entirely wrong. Once again, my aunt found the upper hand over me.

"Mary, there you are," she said from a tapestried settee on the other side of the room. "Allow me to present to you Mrs. Donleavy and her daughter Patricia. They've just arrived in Eastbourne from New York and thought to make friends with us. Isn't that brilliantly nice of them?"

A/N: now that's a cliffie, if I may say so. Sorry about the really really slow updates, this story was sort of dead in my mind. But thanks to Unseen Watcher, who seemed rather scared to death that I had discontinued the story, it has been updated. Thanks again for all the great reviews!