Mr. Baxter’s voice was strained. “I would have thought that this time I wouldn’t need to tell you. You killed Charlotte Holmes. There will be consequences for you.”
“Consequences?” Miss Baxter laughed contemptuously. “No, there will be no consequences for me.”
She turned to her right. “Mr. Peters, kindly fetch Mrs. Watson for me.”
Peters left. Silence descended. De Lacey felt as if he stood on nails.
“Mr. de Lacey, how do you do?” Miss Baxter said all of a sudden.
The silence had been damnable, but her attention was even worse. He did not want any questions from her. He wanted even less for Moriarty to be reminded that he was there.
“Ah, very well, Miss Baxter.”
“It is an admirable but thankless task, being Mr. de Lacey, do you not find?”
“No, indeed. I mean, of course it is admirable, but not at all thankless. It is a great honor, the greatest honor of my life.”
Miss Baxter was all smiles. “There have been others who leaped at that great honor, thinking that reaching the point of de Lacey meant that they were one final step away from becoming Baxter. When in fact, they are much more likely to become a late, former de Lacey.”
Her honeyed voice—de Lacey felt as if he’d drunk a whole tankard of vinegar. He chuckled. It came out high-pitched. “Professional hazards, what can I say?”
He was never so happy as he was to see Mrs. Watson more or less dragged into the chapel.
The woman seemed to have aged ten years from when he last saw her. Then she’d looked haunted, but still lovely and glamorous. But now her face, swollen from tears, had lost all youth and elasticity. The grooves beside her mouth furrowed deep as trenches. The skin beneath her chin sagged. The bags under her eyes were the size of fists.
She shook loose Peters’ hold on her arm and took two steps away from him—even her movements had taken on an elderly ungainliness, a combination of frailty and hesitancy. “Miss Baxter,” she said hoarsely, “is it not enough that you refused to lend me anyone to help me search for Miss Holmes? Must I dance attendance on you now?”
“Mrs. Watson, are you sure you really want to know what happened to Miss Holmes?” asked Miss Holmes, a note of malice in her voice.
Her question made the older woman stumble back a step. She looked about the former chapel, her gaze coming to settle on de Lacey. “Mr. de Lacey. What are you doing here?”
“Mr. Baxter wished to see for himself that Miss Baxter is well,” answered de Lacey.
Mr. Baxter’s name—and presence—seemed to signify nothing to her. Her eyes continued to bore into de Lacey. “I know I’ve asked you this question before, Mr. de Lacey, but are you sure that you and your men never saw Miss Holmes leave the Garden night before last?”
“Mrs. Watson,” said Miss Baxter coolly, “you can ask Mr. de Lacey all you want. But the answer lies with me. Miss Holmes fired at myself and Mr. Peters night before last. Happily for us, she missed. Unfortunately for her, when we returned fire, we did not miss.”
Mrs. Watson visibly recoiled, but she did not even look at Miss Baxter. Instead, she spoke to de Lacey with greater urgency. “I went to sleep before she did that night. When I woke up to drink some water around midnight, she was still reading in the parlor of our cottage. But when I woke up again a little past five thirty, she was no longer there. If she’d left the Garden, it must have been during the hours in between. Did you have anyone watch the gate? Did you see anyone leave in that time period?”
“She is dead.” Miss Baxter’s voice rang out like a funeral toll. “A bullet went through her heart. I always wondered whether a good corset would prevent such a thing. Apparently not—as Miss Holmes’s corset was quite first-rate.”
Mrs. Watson’s mouth opened and closed. Opened and closed. She spun to face Miss Baxter. “I—I don’t understand what you are talking about, young lady. How would you know anything about Miss Holmes’s corset?”
De Lacey felt a twinge of sympathy for her. She must be on the verge of losing her mind. Had she not heard a thing Miss Baxter said? Why was she asking about a corset, of all things?
“We had to remove her garments to put her body inside a drum of perchloric acid, so of course I had a good look at her corset. It should have dissolved entirely by now—her body, that is, not the corset.”
Mrs. Watson stared at her, as if a crow had alit and croaked some words. Then she looked at Mr. Baxter, and again at de Lacey.
He waited for her to scream, and perhaps to drop to the floor in a dead faint. But she only took out a lace handkerchief, patted her brow, put the handkerchief away, and said, with an earnest yet wooden expression, “As I was saying, Mr. de Lacey, from midnight to an hour or so before sunrise. Did you keep a record of what you and your men saw during that time? I’m sure you must h—”
“Mr. Peters, would you help Mrs. Watson to the drums?”
Peters walked toward Mrs. Watson. McEwan went to one side of the chapel, where there stood a high altar, draped in dark blue brocade, with two tall candelabras on top. He removed the candelabras, whisked off the cloth, and underneath was a tabletop sitting above two large drums that reached his chest in height.
De Lacey recognized the drums—he’d watched them being transported into the compound his third afternoon on the coast.
Mrs. Watson resisted, pushing Peters’ hands away and kicking at his knees. But he easily caught her hands by the wrists and then, with one hand under her armpit, dragged her unceremoniously to the drums.
“You must not persist in delusions, dear lady,” said Miss Baxter. “The truth is right there, in front of you.”
McEwan removed the tabletop and then set to work on the lid of one drum.
Miss Baxter continued, her voice soft yet inexorable. “Such was my father’s design that Miss Holmes was doomed from the beginning. I tried—I helped her leave the first time. But he forced her to return. It saddens me that she had to die, yet I cannot let myself be blamed for her death. My grandmother would not have wanted that. She wanted me to move beyond my father’s shadow and live free. Surely you can understand a grandmother’s love, Mrs. Watson?”
She was mad, this woman. She openly admitted that she shot Charlotte Holmes. Why wouldn’t Mrs. Watson hold her responsible?
But perhaps she had long been mad. After all, she had two children out of wedlock, and that spoke eloquently to her dementedness.
Mr. Baxter rose and headed for the drums, forcing de Lacey to follow in his steps. “I would not stand too close,” called out Miss Baxter. “Perchloric acid won’t just dissolve you. It will explode, too.”
Mrs. Watson emitted a whimper. McEwan pried open the lid. An indescribable odor invaded de Lacey’s nostrils, as if a meat market had been set inside a chemistry laboratory and caused people inside the lab to vomit.
He waved a hand in front of his face and retreated a step, still he was close enough to see a clump of yellow hair floating atop the equally indescribable liquid that looked as if milk, urine, and blood had failed to intermingle. And dear God, were those bits of as-of-yet-undissolved flesh? And was that a toe?
Mrs. Watson, who was the closest to the drum, slumped in Peters’s arms. Miss Baxter ordered the drum closed, walked up to Mrs. Watson, and slapped her in the face. Mrs. Watson’s eyelids fluttered. At the sight of Miss Baxter, she emitted a bloodcurdling scream.