The words shot from her, scorching: “Like the bison.”
“Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Much like the bison. Endangered as it is without . . . intervention.”
“You’re a monster. And a madman. It was your mind, your influence behind the murder.” Kerry saw it all over again: the kind, idealistic reporter sprawled in the mud. “Aaron Berkowitz knew something about you through his work at the Times. Something, I’d imagine, that suggested you were the sort of man who would kill to protect your reputation as a preserver of wildlife and a cultured”—she spat the next word—“gentleman.”
“And yet, as we’ve seen, it was not I after all who culled the herd, so to speak.”
“You are truly despicable.”
“Apparently you thought me well worth pursuing up here—for who knows what lusty reasons of your own. Followed me here despite your knowing the little Jewish reporter thought I’d kill if necessary to protect my reputation.” He took a step toward her as if to demonstrate his willingness to do just that.
She stood her ground. “All the theories the killer was the Italian or Robert Bratchett or Ling . . . you helped spread those, too.”
Grant smirked. “Any of them could have done it, or worse—predisposed toward violence as their sorts always are. Who knows what any of them might already have done? But in any event: yes, it all fit our purposes perfectly. Merely a matter of fanning the flames.”
Fear as a tactic with the people here—the rich tourists and the natives alike. Whoever would swallow what Grant and his kind were spooning out.
Stretching as if his small confession was a relief, he leaned into the wall away from the top of the staircase.
“The Gallic rooster,” she said. “The crest. The LNA.”
“And Farnsworth’s uncle, Édouard Drumont . . . Ah, I perceive this is still murky to you, of course. The pretty little kitchen maid, for all her cleverness and her noticing the framed crest in the telegraph office, did not deduce a familial connection—second cousins or something, it seems—between the not-so-mild-mannered telegrapher Edward Drumont Farnsworth—his initials EDS on telegrams, you may recall—and the Édouard Drumont who is well known in France these days.”
“Infamous, some people might say.”
He ignored this. “Our leaders are partnering with those of like mind in Germany and France, nations worth protecting from infestation from outsiders, much like—”
“This country, you and Farnsworth believe,” she finished for him.
Trying to keep her own mind steady as the blood pounded inside her head, Kerry saw the images fan out like a display: Lilli Barthélemy, having arranged for what she thought was scaring someone into silence; Grant, who’d not instigated the attack but saw a chance to spread suspicion.
And Dearg Tate, who’d perhaps not meant to kill, but had become first a pawn, then a killer. And then a corpse.
Grant’s eyes narrowed on her, then dropped to her right boot.
He’d not forgotten, she could see, where she kept her knife.
He lifted his eyes to her, his smile still in place. “You know, Kerry, I can’t help but wonder at the wisdom of your coming up here all alone, with the intent, I presume, of finding me here.”
She should be wondering at it, too, she knew. She’d acted without thinking, driven by the horror of Dearg’s death and the reporter’s death that he’d caused, all that wasted life, all that blood spilled at the train station and in the chapel clearing—and by the fire in her veins after realizing the truth. It burned in her still. However this turned out, this was where she had to be.
“A shame, Kerry, because I only came up here for one last view of the landscape before leaving on the last train tonight. I’ve no reason to run away, of course, having committed no crime, but I’ve little taste left for staying. A shame that you would think so lowly of me. What was it you said? A monster? And a madman?” Grant’s mouth twisted beneath the thick of his mustache. “I’m known as a man of intellect and organization. A man whose name will be remembered in history for the creation of national parks, the saving of entire species from extinction—including, of course, the master race. Political leaders will heed my writings, the research I’ve done and yet will do, and they will thank me. I can’t have my reputation publicly slandered. I’m sure you understand.”
He hadn’t yet moved for her, but Kerry knew he was coming. She leaped to the right, ducking past him toward the stairs. But Grant was just as quick. As if his arm had suddenly lengthened like wet cord, he snagged her by the waist and yanked her to him.
“You’re a little too smart for your own good, aren’t you?” His body blocking the only exit, the stairs, he released her, his eyes glinting.
Backing away, Kerry gripped the sill of the open window behind her. Her eyes darted out and down: the ground, four stories below.
“It will be a sad story, Kerry, that they’ll tell about you: a charming but quite replaceable kitchen maid with an unfortunate urge to end her life—brought on by grief after her father’s funeral. And the loss of her land, poor thing. Tragic, really.”
He finished his thought with a grab for her.
This time, though, he lowered his shoulder as if he were making a tackle and caught her in her middle, sending her tumbling backward, flailing for balance. One minute she was perched at the edge of the window, her hands on its frame, and the next she was plummeting backward onto the narrow balcony with its low stone balustrade.
And over.
Chapter 57
As she flailed backward, one of Kerry’s hands caught the edge of the stone railing. She clung to it, hanging precariously from it. Instinctively, she swung to grip it with her other hand as well. Her whole body extended, feet dangling free over a four-story fall, she tried to scream, but the air came from her in only a choking rasp.
As she looked up, Grant stepped to the edge, eyes narrowed in concentration, with the same expression—analytical, calculating, detached, almost amused—he’d worn watching the farmer in the buckboard hurtling with his mules toward the train tracks all those months ago.
She turned her head to look down. Somewhere off in the distance—the walled garden maybe—the tulips of early spring stretched out in yellows and reds and pinks that pinwheeled in her dizzied head.
Kerry could not afford to look down again.
Far below came shouts for help. Estate workers who’d spied her swaying there, she assumed. She could not look down to see them.
Now Grant, surveying the landscape below, leaned over the railing. “Help!” he cried. “Help! She’s jumped, and I’m not sure I can reach her! I tried to reason with her, to calm her, but she’s jumped!”
Kerry could see Grant bending forward, the look in his eyes not concerned, not panicked, but steely. Assured. His hands reached for hers—not, she knew, to pull her to safety, but to pry loose her grip on the ledge. If she stayed like this, desperately holding on to this stone railing, he would make sure she fell even as he appeared to help her.
Without first formulating anything resembling a plan, she let go with her right hand and grasped at a stone baluster to the right, frantically gripping it as she swung her body so that her left could grip the baluster beside it. Reaching again with her right, hands clawing for a better grip, arms and back aching, she swung herself to the end of the line of balusters.