A Murder in Time(127)

51

Kendra didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but the next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes to the misty light of dawn. She glanced at the small clock on the bedside table. Six forty-five. She’d slept about four hours.

For a moment, she just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Her head had that dull ache brought on by too much adrenaline and too little sleep. Her eyes were gritty from the tears she’d shed last night. She felt drained and disheartened. She didn’t want to think about the day that stretched out before her, or wonder what it might bring.

She forced herself to roll out of bed and used the chamber pot. Afterward, she poured water in the ceramic bowl and gave herself a quick sponge bath. She was rubbing baking soda against her teeth when there was a knock at the door, and Molly poked her head in.

“Oi wasn’t certain ye’d be awake, miss.” Her eyes, Kendra noticed, were red and puffy.

“I’m awake. Come in.” Kendra rinsed out her mouth, and then surveyed her throat in the mirror. The bruises were still noticeable.

“The villagers ’ave begun to arrive for another search, but . . .” Molly faltered. In the mirror, Kendra saw how Molly’s eyes cut to Rose’s bed, and noted the sheen of tears over her eyes. “Oh, miss, everyone is frettin’ that it’s ’opeless!”

Kendra wished that she could give her some reassurance that Rose would be found, that she would be all right. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even reassure herself.

When Kendra remained silent, Molly stifled a sob and bent down to pick up the gown that Kendra had discarded last night. Smoothing it over her arm with an aura of melancholy, she walked back to the wardrobe to hang it up.

Rose did that, Kendra remembered suddenly. Rose was always so careful with clothes, picking up what Kendra treated so carelessly, making sure everything was put away properly. It was the behavior of someone who valued clothing because it wasn’t plentiful. This was not the disposable society that Kendra was familiar with.

“W’ot do ye wish ter wear today, miss?” Molly asked as she studied the gowns in the wardrobe.

“I don’t care. You choose.”

She pulled out a blue-and-yellow paisley muslin. “’Ow about this?”

“Sure.” Really, who cared?

Molly helped Kendra into the dress. “Oi can pin up yer ’air,” Molly said after she’d finished fastening the buttons.

Kendra was about to tell her that there was no point, but caught the look in Molly’s eyes. Routine, she realized. It was something Molly needed. A bit of normalcy in a world suddenly tainted by tragedy.

She understood that need. It was what drove her to the study fifteen minutes later. Again, she stared at the names she’d written down. Morland. Dalton. Harris. They each fit her profile.

She circled the room, and tried to come at it from a different angle. The unsub had established a pattern of taking girls in the months of February, June, and October. But this year, with Lydia, he’d broken his pattern. Why?

If that kind of acceleration in behavior was usually connected to a stressor in the unsub’s life, then they all might have a reason. Morland was the most obvious, because Lady Anne was suffering from dementia, an illness that would add stress to anyone’s life. Morland’s father had also been absent in his childhood—a common denominator among serial killers. But he’d had a father figure, an authoritarian: his grandfather. If he’d been abusive, Morland might’ve come to resent, even hate, his mother for allowing the cruelty. That kind of pattern was disconcertingly familiar. But by all accounts, the late earl had doted on his grandson.

Kendra rubbed her temples, tried to ease the dull ache that she suspected would turn into a full-blown headache in the next couple of hours. She shifted her focus to Dalton. A likeable guy, trying to build a horse farm. It couldn’t be easy, she mused. There were always a lot of stressors when you started a business. Maybe he’d had a financial setback.

She considered his background: affluent family, father a doctor. A doctor was more prestigious in this era than a surgeon. For the first time, Kendra wondered what was behind Dalton’s decision to become a sawbones rather than a physician. Some sort of rebellion against the father?

She remembered the small cuts on Lydia’s torso. Fifty-three in total, four different knives. A surgeon was familiar with knives. Was it a taunt against a society that thought less of him because of his profession?

Then there was Dalton’s wife, who’d left him for another man. Kendra didn’t believe for a second that Dalton didn’t know how his wife had died. So why lie about it? Unless he’d killed her. She could’ve been the first victim, triggering the killings that followed. The timing was right.

Kendra moved on to Harris. He was the least likeable of the bunch, the one who openly expressed his contempt for prostitutes. And beneath that, a disdain for all women. Arrogant *.

Like Dalton, Kendra didn’t know much about the vicar’s background other than the fact that his father was an earl who’d fallen on hard times. What had Rebecca said? Punting on the River Tick. That had to be a blow to Harris’s ego. He’d been forced to marry a woman he considered his inferior, to take a job that, although respectable for younger sons of the aristocracy, was not one he’d have chosen.

That time line was also interesting. He’d married his unwanted heiress a year or so before the prostitutes began vanishing. And a young maid had been murdered in a similarly brutal manner down the street from where he and his wife had lived in London. Was the maid the first victim? An impulsive act, to release the pressure building inside because of his unwanted marriage? And then, perhaps, he’d found that he’d liked it? It was possible.