Garden of Lies(55)
She went to the gilded floor safe in the corner, crouched and opened the combination lock. She pushed aside a handful of mementos from her other life—a photograph of her parents, the last letters her father had written to her before perishing of a fever in South America, and her mother’s wedding ring.
Storing the latest message from the blackmailer alongside the small velvet pouch that contained Anne’s few pieces of jewelry and the Paladin correspondence, she took out the small, dainty pistol her father had given her. He had taught her how to use the gun before he set out on his last trip abroad. “A lady never knows when she might have to defend herself.” She had been eighteen at the time.
She made certain the pistol was loaded and then she closed and relocked the safe.
Rising to her feet, she put the gun inside her satchel and searched the room, looking for something suitable to use as fake bank notes. A copy of yesterday’s edition of the newspaper was on the table. She tore it into several sheets, stuffed them into an envelope and dropped the envelope into the satchel.
Hoisting the bag, she hurried out into the front hall. She was taking her gray cloak off the peg when Mrs. Dunstan appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Going out again, madam?” she asked. She peered through the sidelight window. “The fog is coming in.”
“I just remembered that I have an appointment with a new client this afternoon. I almost forgot.”
“Bit late for a meeting with a client, isn’t it?”
“Clients can be very demanding.”
Mrs. Dunstan opened the door with obvious reluctance. “Shall I summon a cab?”
“That won’t be necessary. It will be faster if I walk through the park.”
“Where does this client live?” Mrs. Dunstan asked, increasingly uneasy. “After what happened yesterday—”
“Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Dunstan. The client resides in a very quiet neighborhood. Wickford Lane.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The old church and the cemetery on Wickford Lane were both in a state of deep neglect. The small chapel was locked and shuttered. The nearby graveyard was overgrown with weeds. The gates stood open, sagging on their hinges. There were no fresh flowers on the graves. The monuments and crypts looming in the fog were badly weathered and, in many cases, cracked and broken.
Ursula made her way slowly through the stone garden of grave markers, searching for a weeping angel. She gripped her satchel in one hand. The pistol was in her other hand, concealed beneath the folds of her gray cloak. The mist was thickening rapidly. She could no longer see the iron fencing that surrounded the cemetery.
The fog was a good thing, she told herself. It gave her ample cover for what she intended to do.
For a few unnerving minutes she worried that she might not be able to locate the weeping angel. In the end, she nearly collided with one broken wing.
She stepped back quickly and looked at the figure guarding the entrance to a crypt. It was a large, stone angel in a weeping pose.
The wrought-iron gate that had once secured the opening to the burial vault stood open.
The muffled sound of a footstep somewhere in the fog sent a shock of icy fear through her. The blackmailer was somewhere nearby, watching her. She resisted the temptation to turn around and search for him. She told herself she must give no indication that she was aware that she had heard him.
She moved through the doorway of the crypt. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low light. Between the windowless interior and the gray glow from the entrance she could barely make out the stone bench that had been designed as a place to sit and contemplate mortality.
She took the envelope out of her satchel and set it on the bench.
The task accomplished, she moved out of the crypt and walked steadily toward the front gates. She listened closely and thought she heard the soft thud of footsteps in the fog. They seemed to be moving toward the burial vault but she could not be certain.
She hurried out of the cemetery trusting that, with her gray cloak, she would soon vanish into the mist. She made certain her footsteps echoed on the pavement for a time, hoping to give the impression that she had left the scene. Then, walking as quietly as possible, she ducked into the arched doorway of the church.
From where she stood, she could just barely make out the posts of the iron gates at the entrance to the fogbound graveyard. As far as she had been able to discern, it was the only exit from the cemetery.
She waited, her heart pounding at the prospect of what she intended to do.
For a time nothing moved in the mist. She began to fear that her plan had gone awry, that the blackmailer had eluded her. Perhaps she had been wrong about the footsteps in the cemetery. But surely he had been waiting and watching for her, she thought. He would want to seize his payment quickly before some vagrant searching for shelter happened upon it by accident.
She was in the middle of trying to concoct a new plan in the event the first one failed when she saw a shadowy figure moving in the dense fog that pooled inside the cemetery. She stilled, hardly daring to hope that her scheme had worked and not wanting to consider too closely what she intended to do next. She had made up her mind. She must not lose her nerve.
The figure in the mist proved to be a man in a shabby greatcoat. The collar was pulled up around his neck and a low-crowned hat concealed his features. He paused at the gate, searching the vicinity. Ursula knew he could see very little in the fog.