Page 54 of Silence of Deceit
“What I should have done the moment that devious woman contacted me to tell me of Esther’s deceit.”
The closet was pitch dark, stuffy, and warm, and Audrey could trace the odor of perspiration the wronged husband had been producing as he’d waited. Surely, he had expected Doctor Warwick to climb the stairs earlier, not her. He must have seen her and thought to stay put.
“Delia,” Audrey whispered. “She did blackmail you after all?”
“How are you involved with her?” His grip on her tightened. He’d wrapped his arm around her, and though he had not struck her as a particularly robust man, one did not need to be muscular to properly sever a carotid artery.
“I’m not involved with her,” she replied, still quietly. The child and woman were her main concern now. Their voices still emanated from below.
“In fact, until just now, I believed Delia to be dead,” Audrey added.
“The viper deserves no less.”
Audrey could presume what had happened. “Delia went to you with the truth about Esther. Why? To blackmail you?”
The voices of Warwick, the child, and aunt seemed to grow louder and closer. They were on the second level; Audrey was certain of it. Her heart thudded. She wouldn’t allow Mr. Starborough to harm the child.
“Not at first,” he replied. “No, at first, she only told me because Esther had betrayed her. Delia was running some extortion scheme and had pulled Esther into it. I should have seen it coming, but all I cared about was Esther, that she was alive. She’d betrayed me, let me believe…” He hushed as emotion constricted his throat. The blade shifted and pressed harder. Audrey felt a hot prick of pain.
“I didn’t believe the woman,” he went on after regaining some control and lightening up the press of the knife. “So, I followed her. And there she was…Esther. My Esther. Alive. All this time.”
Mr. Starborough began to shake, the tremors in his body affecting the hold of his blade. Audrey squeezed her eyes and prayed he didn’t accidentally nick her throat. She tried to hear whether Warwick was still present downstairs, or perhaps coming up to the third level. But all she could hear was the soft hiss of Mr. Starborough’s voice in her ear.
“I didn’t mean to. The fury…I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Audrey opened her eyes to the darkened closet. She could see nothing, and yet she also had a clear vision of what had occurred when Mr. Starborough had seen Esther, alive and well.
“You killed her,” she whispered, her throat dry.
The back of the corpse’s skull had been shattered by a blunt object…a walking stick?
“She was supposed to be dead…drowned in a bog.” Anguish thinned his voice. “And she acted as ifIhad done something wrong by discovering her secret. As if…as if my questions, my confusion aggrievedher.”
“You didn’t intend to,” Audrey led him, wanting to calm him before he slipped and cut her throat.
“No, I didn’t, of course I didn’t,” he hissed.
There were no voices coming from below now; they had either heard them and gone still or left the private apartments.
Mr. Starborough had lost control when faced with the depth of Esther’s betrayal. And could Audrey blame him? The heartless woman had allowed him to suffer so that she could be happy. It had been indefensibly selfish. And wrong. But she had not deserved to die.
“You are not a killer, Mr. Starborough. Losing control once doesn’t make you a cold-hearted murderer. But if you kill Warwick, you’ll hang.”
“You think I care about that?”
Surely, he believed he had lost everything already. But she sensed she could sway his mind with a little bit of hope.
“Warwick is going to be arrested,” she said. “A Bow Street officer knows what he and Esther did. It is illegal. He’ll be punished. He is going to lose everything. Cooperate and the magistrate may well show you lenience.”
She had no earthly idea if that was true, but at that moment, she would have said nearly anything to calm him.
“Delia is the true killer,” she added. “Not you.”
If Esther was the woman from the Thames, that meant Delia was alive. She had not been used in this extortion scheme—she’d been the driving force behind it.
The woman Audrey had seen when she’d held Mary Simpson’s ring…it had been Delia. Mary must have seen her and known she was not dead. Could that be why she had wanted to come to Violet House that day? To tell her? Before she could, Delia had silenced her.
“Help me find Delia,” she went on, sensing Mr. Starborough’s indecision. “She needs to be stopped.”
