Tasha Alexander - A Crimson Warning

“You think too highly of yourself, Jeremy,” I said.

“We shouldn’t be joking about this.” Ivy pressed her pink lips together. Her face was drawn and pale.

“It’s all over now,” I said. “There’s no more need to worry.”

Her whole body trembling, she started to cry.

“Ivy, darling, what is it?” I asked.

“I can’t live with myself any longer,” she said. “I’ve done something so wretched. Every day has been agony, waiting to see if my secret was the next to be exposed.”

“You?” Jeremy doubled over, laughing. “Ivy, there’s no one in England—no, the world—less likely to have done something dreadful than you. I’ve seen you remove ants from picnic blankets in lieu of smashing them.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” she said, her voice raw.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Barnes has been stopped, and you’ve nothing more to fear.”

“Nothing but your censure and my husband’s,” she said. “After all these weeks of worrying, I’ve decided I must confess everything. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. And I certainly couldn’t live through another period terrified of exposure.”

“There’s no need, Ivy,” Colin said, moving to sit next to her.

“I must.” She took a deep breath. “I did something terrible when you were all in Vienna and Robert was in Newgate, awaiting trial for murder.”

“That was a dreadful time, Ivy,” I said. “Anyone might have strayed into morally ambiguous territory. You were afraid your husband was going to be executed.”

“Very afraid,” she said. “And although I had faith in your skills as an investigator, Emily, I still worried that you might not be able to clear his name. I was frantic. And I couldn’t think of any other way to save him.”

“We were all frantic,” I said.

“But I did something immoral,” she said. “I found a man, a poor man. A man with no income, an invalid wife, and more children than he could ever hope to feed. He’d lost his job in some dreadful factory and couldn’t find another that paid enough. So I made an offer to him.”

We all sat, our stillness almost inhuman. Ivy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Colin handed her a handkerchief.

“I told him that if he would agree to confess to the murder, I would see to it that his wife received the best medical care money could buy and that I would support his family in a style better than any in which they’d ever lived.”

“But if he confessed—” I started, but she interrupted.

“Yes, he would be hanged for the crime,” she said. “But he would die knowing his loved ones would be looked after in a way they couldn’t be if he were alive and trying to care for them.”

“Oh, Ivy,” I said.

Tears poured down her face. “I know how awful it was to do,” she said. “I’m ashamed of myself. But I’m not like you, Emily. I’m not strong enough to live without my husband.”

“Ivy Brandon!” Jeremy rescued us from the heavy silence engulfing the room. “That you, of all people, would make me look a paragon of English goodness.”

“It’s no joking matter, Jeremy,” she said.

“No?” he asked. “I seem to remember Emily clearing Robert’s name and your husband being released from jail. Correct?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So, your working-class bloke? Did he ever make his confession?”

“No.”

“Which suggests—now, do correct me if I’m wrong for I’ve not Emily’s investigative mind—it suggests he was not, in fact, hanged?”

“No,” Ivy said.

“And do tell us, Mrs. Brandon, about the plight of his family today.” Jeremy had never performed with such bravado. “Did you, upon finding you didn’t need them, cut them off from all support?”

“Heavens, no!” she said. “I’ve looked after them the whole time. They’re happily settled in Newcastle. The children have a governess. Their father has no need for a job.”

“And the health of the man’s dear wife?” Jeremy asked.

“She suffers from consumption, but receives the best care possible.”

Jeremy threw his hands in the air. “Only you, Ivy, could turn a very nearly terrible sin into a great act of charity.”

“I was going to let the man hang for a crime he didn’t commit,” she said.

“I don’t believe for one second you would have ever gone through with it,” I said. “Look how tormented you are over just having thought about it. In the end, you wouldn’t have stood by and let it happen.”

“And furthermore,” Colin said, “the police would require more than a vague confession. This man would never have been able to give them the necessary details to convince them he was responsible for the murder.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I am,” he said. “And I agree with Emily. You would never have gone through with it.”

“You don’t all despise me?” she asked, wiping away more tears.

“Not in the slightest,” I said.

“You may depend upon our undying friendship forever,” Jeremy said.

“I don’t deserve you,” she said. “And can only hope Robert takes my confession as well as you all have. But I’m being so selfish and thinking only of myself. What will happen to Winifred?”

“There won’t be any charges filed against her. Her husband didn’t want the additional embarrassment. Nor did Lady Glover,” Colin said. “Mrs. Harris returned the extortion money, and Lady Glover was given the option to forgive or to face charges of her own for staging the kidnapping.”

“She made the right choice,” I said.

“But why did Winifred do it?” Ivy asked.

“She has secrets of her own that haunt her,” I said. “Her mother eloped with a cad of a man who turned out to be a complete profligate. He abandoned her eighteen months later, after which she took up with someone equally as bad and wound up infected with syphilis. She died trying to give birth to her second child, and lost the baby as well. Winifred, only two years old, was sent to live with relatives. She didn’t find out the truth about her background until she was an adult. At that point, she became obsessed with protecting her secret. She was convinced her husband would leave her if he knew what her mother had been.”

“I don’t understand how that led to extortion,” Ivy said.

“She was petrified when the paint started, convinced she’d be next, and as a result, starting keeping careful records about every secret she heard. And she heard quite a lot. She tried to analyze the facts and find anything that might enable her to identify who was spreading the gossip, and the paint. In the end, she found connections of one sort or another between each of the victims and Lady Glover. She came to the conclusion Lady Glover was behind the attacks.”

“No doubt there were connections because she’s trifled with nearly every husband in London,” Jeremy said.

“It wasn’t all affairs,” I said. “There were overlapping charities, servants who had worked for both Lady Glover and the victims, all sorts of things. As soon as she found the pictures and then realized that her own husband had become embroiled with Lady Glover, she was terrified she’d be the next whose life would be ruined.”

“She thought blackmail would keep Lady Glover quiet,” Colin said. “She’d also started writing to Mr. Foster. I thought this might be evidence of them working together, but it turns out she was campaigning to get him to introduce morality bills into Parliament.”

“Morality bills?” Jeremy asked. “Are such things even possible? If they are, I’m denouncing my citizenship and moving to France.”

“I wouldn’t be too worried,” Colin said.

“What about Bucephalus?” Ivy asked. “Who was behind the attempted poisoning?”