Tess Gerritsen - The Bone Garden - A Novel

— Mother! —

Eliza went rigid. She looked up at the bridge, where her son was now standing beside Wendell.

— Mother, don't! — Charles pleaded.

— Your son told us, — said Norris. — He knows what you did, Mrs. Lackaway. Wendell Holmes knows, too. You can kill me here, now, but the truth is already out. Whether I live or die, your future has already been decided. —

Slowly, her arm dropped. — I have no future, — she said softly. — Whether it ends here, or on the gallows, it's over. The only thing I can do now is to spare my son. — She raised her gun, but this time it was not pointed at Norris; it was aimed at her own head.

Norris lunged toward her. Grabbing her wrist, he tried to wrench the gun free, but Eliza resisted, fighting with the viciousness of a wounded animal. Only when Norris twisted her arm did she finally release her grip. She stumbled back, howling. Norris stood pitilessly exposed on the riverbank with the gun in his hand. In the space of a heartbeat, he realized what was about to happen. He saw Watchman Pratt take aim. He heard Rose's anguished scream of — No! —

The impact of the bullet slammed the breath from his lungs. The gun dropped from his hand. He staggered and sprawled backward on the mud. A strange silence fell over the night. Norris stared up at the sky but heard no voices, no footsteps crowding in, not even the swish of the water against the bank. All was calm and peaceful. He saw stars above, winking brighter through the clearing haze. He felt no pain, no fear, only a sense of astonishment that all his struggles, all his dreams, should come down to this moment at the water's edge, with the stars shining down.

Then, as though from far away, he heard a sweet and familiar voice, and he saw Rose, her head framed by stars, as though she gazed down from the heavens.

— Is there nothing you can do? — she cried. — Please, Wendell, you must save him! —

Now he heard Wendell's voice as well, and heard cloth rip as his shirt was torn open. — Bring the lamp closer! I must see the wound! —

Light spilled down in a golden shower, and as the wound was revealed, Norris saw Wendell's expression, and read the truth in his eyes.

— Rose? — Norris whispered.

— I'm here. I'm right here. — She took his hand and leaned close as she stroked back his hair. — You're going to be fine, darling. You're going to get well, and we'll be happy. We'll be so happy. —

He sighed and closed his eyes. He could see Rose floating away from him, carried on the wind so swiftly that he had no hope of reaching her. — Wait for me, — he whispered. He heard what sounded like a distant clap of thunder, a lonely blast of gunfire that echoed through the gathering darkness.

Wait for me .

Jack Burke yanked up the floorboard in his bedroom and frantically scooped out the money he had hidden there. His life's savings, close to two thousand dollars, clattered into the saddlebag.

— What're you doing, taking it all? Are you mad? — asked Fanny.

— I'm leaving. —

— You can't take it all! That's mine, too! —

— You don't have a noose hangin' over your head. — Suddenly his chin shot up and he froze.

Someone was pounding downstairs, on the door. — Mr. Burke! Mr. Jack Burke, this is the Night Watch. You will open this door at once! —

Fanny turned to go downstairs.

— No! — said Jack. — Don't let them in! —

She looked at him with narrowed eyes. — What'd you do, Jack? Why've they come for you? —

Downstairs, the voice yelled: — We'll break down the door if you don't let us in! —

— Jack? — said Fanny.

— She's the one did it! — said Jack. — She killed the boy, not me! —

— What boy? —

— Dim Billy. —

— Then let her go to the gallows. —

— She's dead. Picked up the gun and shot herself with the whole world watchin'. — He rose to his feet and slung the heavy saddlebag over his shoulder. — I'm the one'll be blamed for it all. Everything she paid me to do. — He headed for the stairs. Out the back way, he thought. Just saddle the horse and go. If he could get a few minutes' head start, he could lose them in the dark. By morning, he'd be well on his way.

The front door crashed open. Jack froze at the bottom of the stairs as three men burst in.

One of them stepped forward and said, — You're under arrest, Mr. Burke. For the murder of Billy Piggott, and the attempted murder of Rose Connolly. —

— But I didn't— it wasn't me! It was Mrs. Lackaway! —

— Gentlemen, take him into custody. —

Jack was hauled forward so roughly he stumbled to his knees, dropping the saddlebag on the floor. In an instant Fanny darted forward and snatched it up. She backed away, hugging the precious contents to her breasts. As the Night Watch yanked her husband back to his feet, she made no move to help him, said not a word in his defense. That was his last glimpse of her: Fanny greedily cradling his life's savings in her arms, her face calm and impassive as Jack was led out the tavern door.

Sitting in the carriage, Jack knew exactly how it would all turn out. Not just the trial, not just the gallows, but beyond. He knew where the bodies of executed prisoners invariably ended up. He thought of the money he'd so carefully saved for his precious lead coffin with the iron cage and the gravesitter, all to defeat the efforts of resurrectionists like himself. Long ago, he'd promised himself that no anatomist would ever cut open his belly, hack at his flesh.

Now he looked down at his own chest and gave a sob. Already, he could feel the knife begin to cut.

It was a house in mourning and a house shamed.

Wendell Holmes knew that he was intruding upon the private agonies of the Grenville home, but he made no move to depart, and no one asked him to. Indeed, Dr. Grenville did not even seem to notice that Wendell was in the parlor, sitting quietly in the corner. Wendell had been a part of this unfolding tragedy from the beginning, and it was only fitting that he should be present now, to witness the end of it. What he saw, in the wavering firelight, was a broken Aldous Grenville hunched deep in a chair, with his head bowed in grief. Constable Lyons sat facing him.

The housekeeper, Mrs. Furbush, timidly entered the parlor with a tray of brandy, which she set down upon the end table. — Sir, — she said quietly, — I gave young Mr. Lackaway that draught of morphine you requested. He's asleep now. —

Grenville said nothing, merely nodded.

Constable Lyons said to her: — And Miss Connolly? —

— She won't leave the young man's body, sir. I have tried to pull her away, but she stays by his coffin. I don't know what we'll do with her when they come to take him in the morning. —

— Leave her be. The girl has every reason to grieve. —

Mrs. Furbush withdrew, and Grenville said, softly: — As do we all. —

Lyons poured a glass of brandy and put it into his friend's hand. — Aldous, you cannot blame yourself for what Eliza did. —

— I do blame myself. I didn't want to know, but I should have suspected. — Grenville sighed and drank down the brandy in one gulp. — I knew she would do anything for Charles. But to kill for him? —

— We don't know that she did it all herself. Jack Burke swears he's not the Reaper, but he may have been involved. —

— Then she most certainly instigated it. — Grenville stared down at his empty glass and said softly, — Eliza always wanted to be the one in control, ever since we were children. —

— Yet how much control does a woman ever truly have, Aldous? —

Grenville's head drooped, and he said softly: — Poor Aurnia had the least of all. I have no excuse for what I did. Only that she was lovely, so lovely. And I'm nothing but a lonely old man. —