Page 35 of A Vocation of Violence
“Especially then,” she insisted, her voice cracking under the weight of her emotions. “I would have willingly given my life for hers.”
“Oh, Claudia,” I said, my heart aching for the grief-stricken woman before me. “I’m going to tell you something I learned recently.”
She sniffed, looking up at me with young eyes shining with pain.
“True love is not blind devotion; it is seeing someone for who they truly are, flaws and all, and loving them despite—or perhaps because of—those imperfections. Vivienne was a complicated woman, and I didn’t know her well, but I know she didn’t treat you kindly all of the time. And I hope that you will expect your next employer to treat you with a little more humanity.”
“I will…Miss Mahoney,” Claudia said after a moment, meeting my gaze with a mixture of gratitude and pain. “You have given me much to think about.”
“Might I borrow this?” I closed the diary, aching to pore over the last two years of Vivienne’s life. “I’ll return it as soon as I’m able.”
She looked as if she might decline, but then shook herself and fisted her hands in her lap. “If you use it only to continue your investigation into Vivienne’s death.”
“For no other purpose. I’ll care for it better than the family Bible,” I assured her, my resolve strengthened by her plea. “Icannot promise that what I find will bring you peace, but I can’t see Darcy hanged for a murder he didn’t commit, and I’m just as dedicated as you are to finding the killer.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “That is all I ask.”
My mind racedas I hired a hackney, poring over the pages once ensconced within.
How did the threads of Albert Victor and the Mediterranean island entwine with the tragic fate of Vivienne Bloomfield-Smythe? Were these simply the frivolous distractions of the elite, or did they bear the stain of darker deeds?
Once home, I locked myself away from the world, looking over every scrap of knowledge that had come into my possession. The diary lay open before me, its secrets sprawled across the desk like a splayed corpse awaiting autopsy. Each entry was a clue, each appointment a potential motive or alibi. But the puzzle was maddeningly incomplete, the edges jagged and ill-fitting.
“Damnation,” I breathed, pressing my fingertips to my temples as if I could physically squeeze the answers from my beleaguered brain. My heart galloped a frantic rhythm, echoing through the hollow expanse of my chest. This was more than just a search for truth; it was a quest to quiet the restless spirits that haunted my sleepless nights—Mary Kelly’s among them.
One thing was clear—to get to the bottom of this mystery, I needed to assemble some of the players. It was risky, but it was my best chance at unraveling the knotted threads and exposing the truth. Their voices, their memories, their guilt and innocence—I needed them arrayed before me as palpably as the pieces on a chessboard. I needed to see how they moved. How they reacted.
What I needed was Grayson Croft. The one man of my acquaintance who navigated the murky waters of law and disorder with an unyielding sense of justice, his moral compass steady even in the face of tempests.
I would need to appeal to him, to convince him of the necessity of this unconventional ploy. For the mystery of Vivienne’s murder was not merely a knot to be untangled, but a labyrinth within which we might easily lose ourselves. Only together could Croft and I hope to trace the labyrinth’s path, to follow it to its heart, where the truth lurked, veiled in shadows.
Chapter Eleven
But first, I had to get permission.
The moment I stepped into the dimly lit Shiloh room of the Velvet Glove, a shiver of foreboding slithered down my spine. The air felt dense and heavy around the two towering figures locked in a silent tableau of fury.
Jorah and Night Horse stood like titans on the precipice of war, their postures rigid, fists clenched as if they were seconds away from letting their tempers explode into violence. The shadows cast by the flickering gas lamps danced upon their hardened faces, highlighting the stark lines of tension that had drawn their brows together and pinched their lips into thin, unforgiving lines.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” I said, my voice laced with feigned nonchalance. Their stances, rigid as iron bars, spoke of a quarrel interrupted. The air crackled with their unsaid words a silent war waged with glares that could flay flesh.
At my voice, Jorah shifted his piercing eyes to me, the tempest within them momentarily abated. Like a disciplined soldier, he regained his composure with an effort that was almost visible, his steely gaze betraying nothing of what words had passed between him and his right-hand man.
“Miss Mahoney,” he greeted me, his faint Eastern accent wrapping around my name like a caress, albeit one that couldn’t mask the undercurrent of rage in his tone.
“Fiona,” Night Horse muttered by way of greeting, his voice rough as gravel. A muscle twitched in his jaw, betraying the restraint it took to hold his tongue.
My desire to probe further was abruptly curtailed as the door creaked open once more, admitting two figures who couldn’t have been at starker odds with each other. George Tunstall, Darcy O’Dowd’s manager, entered first; his sour countenance seemed etched from stone, his lips set in a permanent sneer of distaste. He moved with the air of a man perpetually dissatisfied with his lot, as though life itself had dealt him a losing hand he could neither fold nor accept.
Behind him, a shadow of the formidable prizefighter I knew loomed into the room. Darcy’s broad shoulders were hunched, the usual fire in his eyes now extinguished, replaced by a hollow pain that spoke of sleepless nights and a heart weighed down by grief and dread.
“Evenin’, Fiona,” he murmured, his voice a hoarse whisper of its former booming cheer. His haunted eyes met mine, and in them, I read the turmoil of a soul torn asunder by Vivienne Bloomfield-Smythe’s untimely demise and the gallows that beckoned with grim promise.
“Darcy,” I acknowledged him quietly, my own heart clenching at the sight of him so diminished, so lost without the woman he had loved.
“Still parading about with this lot, then?” he teased halfheartedly.
“Good friends are hard to come by,” I retorted, my tone devoid of humor.
