The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie(12)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

Far away, in another country, with different names and different personas. If no one connected Daniel and his visit to this house tonight, well and good. If they did connect it, then Violet, her mother, and Mary wouldn’t be here to answer awkward questions. Not being here when the investigation was conducted would be best. At least Violet’s mother, upstairs in her laudanum slumber, was truly innocent of everything.

Pieces of the vase had blood on them. Violet instructed Mary to put the broken vase into a box, which she would drop over the railing of the boat on the way to France. Mr. Mortimer might rage over the price of it, but that was the least of her worries.

The next hour was one of the most harried of Violet’s life. Time seemed first to crawl and then to fly past.

She and Mary arranged Mr. Mackenzie’s body on the handcart on which they carried groceries home from the markets. As they buttoned up his clothes again, they discovered a fat wad of money stuffed into his coat pocket.

Mary and Violet looked at each other over it. So much cash, right in their hands.

“Some thief will just take it if we leave it on him,” Mary pointed out.

But if constables caught up to them, and Violet had all Mr. Mackenzie’s money, her claim of hitting him in her own defense went out the window.

Violet compromised. She peeled several large notes away from the others, and put all the rest back into his pocket. A small amount from such a large stash wouldn’t be missed, would it? And Violet would need the money to buy tickets.

Violet changed out of what she called her parlor clothes to an old pair of breeches, over which she put a wide skirt and linen shirt. To finish, she tied a scarf over her hair. Any person who spied her in the dark would see an elderly immigrant woman, perhaps taking foodstuffs home or getting ready to go clean for the day at a middle-class woman’s home.

Mr. Mackenzie still lay motionlessly on the cart when Violet went out into the tiny yard behind the house to wheel him away. No moon shone tonight, London so thick with coal smoke in January that no moonlight or starlight could penetrate the gloom. Better for her errand.

She and Mary covered Mr. Mackenzie with sackcloth and then stacked a few bags of coal on top of him. The shapes in the cart Violet pushed would be several small upright lumps, not the horizontal form of a man.

Violet went alone, guiding the cart through the passages to the main street and quickly across to the warren on the other side. She saw a constable down the block of one street, but he was walking the other way and never saw her.

She was thoroughly sick to her stomach by the time she decided she’d laid a false enough trail. Violet doubled back with the cart until she reached a quiet, narrow street east of Portman Square, and the house where she knew a doctor lived. He was a kindhearted man, Violet had come to know, often looking after people in the neighborhood for no charge. If Mr. Mackenzie wasn’t truly dead, the doctor would help him. And if Mr. Mackenzie was dead, the doctor would make sure he was returned to his family.

Violet waited until the street was free of constables or any late-night strollers. This was a poorer neighborhood, with gaslights fewer and farther between. She crept forward, happy she’d kept the handcart well oiled. In the shadows of the silent house, Violet pulled back the sacks and rolled Mr. Mackenzie from the cart.

As his body landed on the cobblestones, Violet choked back a sob. Daniel had been so warm when he’d kissed her in her upstairs room, so vibrant. He’d looked into her eyes and known her for the fraud she was—a fraud in every way.

He’d seen to the heart of her as no one had before. He’d kissed her, because he’d known Violet wasn’t a respectable lady, but at the same time he’d been tender, not demanding.

Tears filled her eyes, and Violet tried to banish them. Crying never helped.

She leaned to Daniel’s inert body and kissed his cold lips. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She smoothed his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

Wiping her eyes, Violet climbed to her feet, restored the sacks to the cart, and pushed it away, her stomach roiling.

She made her way back to their rented house, taking a roundabout route. Halfway there, she abandoned the cart and changed from her peasant clothes into the plain skirt and shirtwaist she’d brought with her. Violet walked the rest of the way back to the house as herself, a basket over her arm, as though returning from a very late errand.

Back inside, her bewildered mother was out of bed, demanding to know why they had to go. Violet had already sworn Mary to silence about Mr. Mackenzie, knowing her mother would fall to pieces at the truth. Instead Violet invented the story that Mr. Mortimer had come here tonight to make trouble about the rent, and had thrown them out.

Her mother believed her and in a remarkably short time was ready to leave. Celine could move quickly when her fear of bailiffs was roused.

The morning was still dark when Madame and Mademoiselle Bastien and their maid left their London house for Dover, and ceased to exist.

Daniel opened his eyes, let out a groan of pain, and snapped his eyes shut again.

Some daft idiot had left the curtains to his bedroom open, and the light of morning stabbed directly into his brain. He never opened the curtains until at least noon, often later, depending on how bad was his hangover.

Today’s was a pounding monster of one. What the hell had he been drinking?

Time passed. When Daniel made himself peel open his eyes again, the light was not as agonizing, though the headache remained.

He didn’t at first recognize the man who turned from the fireplace in Daniel’s upstairs bedroom, then he remembered Matthew Simon, bone-breaker and debt collector, who had pounded his fists into Daniel until Daniel had subdued him.

But the blow that had put this dent in Daniel’s skull hadn’t come from Simon. He remembered all that had happened now, as clearly as the afternoon light pouring through his window.

“Mr. Mackenzie, sir.” Simon leaned over the bed and released a sigh of relief, with a breath that made Daniel note he would buy the man a toothbrush and tooth powder. “I thought you were a goner for sure.”

“I’m a robust, obnoxiously healthy Scot,” Daniel said. He tried to sit up then decided the pillows were the best place for his head. “How did I get here? What happened?”

“A constable was called to a doctor’s house in Marylebone—he’d found you near to his doorstep. I was coming to find you after having a little rest at me old mum’s place, to take you up on your offer of a job. I asked around about where you lived—everyone knows, so it wasn’t hard to find. When I got here, a couple of constables were carrying you inside. I said I was your new man, and I’d take care of you. They didn’t know no more about what happened to you than where they found you.”