Page 135 of Disturbing the Dead
When Emmett’s voice rises, I peer between two crates. Gray has advanced a step, and it’s freaking Emmett out. I double-check my trajectory. I wish I could catch Gray’s eye, but he’s intent on his own part of the ruse—keeping Emmett’s attention.
I reach up, count to two, and then shove the boxes.
The stack crashes over. Emmett yelps, and I catch sight of him staggering back, dropping the rope. Gray lunges and shoves him away from Florence. I push through the remaining boxes while Gray subdues Emmett. That happens quickly enough, and by the time I have the ropes off Florence’s hands, I can pass them to Gray to bind Emmett.
“It’s true then.” Those are Florence’s first words when I remove the gag. “He killed Sir Alastair.”
That is what stands out for her, in all of this. Not that Muir wanted her dead or that Emmett threatened to strangle her. Maybe none of that came as a surprise. After all, there’s still dried blood under her nose from where Emmett struck her earlier this evening.
What has tears in her eyes is knowing that Emmett killed a man, not in a fit of rage, but to save himself from expulsion and earn some money. I have a feeling that marriage to Emmett King had already been an erosion of hope for Florence. A dawning understanding of why he’d married her. Without divorce as an option, she had to deal with it and soldier on. Maybe he’d change. Maybe he’d get his degree and a job with her father and the stress would ease and he’d be a better man for it, the man she thought she’d married.
Now, with this revelation, her hope evaporates, and she drops her head in silent tears.
With the three men secured and Florence asking, softly, to be left alone, we have one more task. Getting out of this storage room. I don’t think Florence has fully realized we’re trapped in a windowless underground room, and I’m not telling her until I have to.
We circle the room, checking every bit of the walls, but it’s as tightly constructed as it seems.
“The only way out is that door,” I say. “With a padlock on the other side.”
Gray squares his shoulders. “Then we need to open that padlock. I’ll batter the door until it breaks.”
“Or we could ask one of them to do it.” I nod toward the two behemoths watching us.
“I volunteer,” one rumbles.
“Yes,” Gray says, “and once you have it open, you will run. No, I shall do this myself and—”
“And save the day?” a voice says as the door swings open and McCreadie walks through. “This time, Duncan, I have saved the day. And saved you, using fine detective work to track you down.”
“Because we told Iain we were following Mrs. King,” I say.
“Still required detective work to actually find you.”
I smile. “It did. But you’ll want to go after Lord Muir. He’s the one who locked us in here and—”
“Iain has him right outside.”
“Fine detective work,” I say.
He doffs his hat in a bow. “Thank you. Now tell me what we have here.”
FORTY-TWO
Emmett King will go on trial for the murder of Sir Alastair, and that’s no longer the tragedy I thought it was going to be. Yes, it won’t be an easy life for Florence, as the wife of a killer, but when the alternative seems to have been dying at his hands herself, well, that’s not much of an alternative.
She’s a sensible young woman with the willpower to get through this, and she has the support network to help. She plans to stay in school—even her husband’s reputation isn’t going to drive her out—and I overheard Gray quietly offering whatever aid he can provide. Earlier Jex-Blake had wanted to convince Gray to lend his support to their cause. I know why he can’t—his own position is too precarious and he doesn’t believe his notoriety would help them. Aiding Florence is something he can do. She’s also considering moving to America afterward. That would let her practice medicine while escaping the shadow of her husband’s crimes.
Lord Muir is in prison, on a charge of conspiring to kill Sir Alastair. I asked McCreadie to request that the procurator fiscal not press charges for Muir’s attempted murder of me. McCreadie didn’t like that, but he understood it would only drag Gray further into the limelight. Better to let Muir know that I identified him as my attacker, and I’ll change my mind about those charges if he doesn’t negotiate a satisfactory end to his business arrangement with Lady Christie.
She’s decided to part ways with Muir and seek an Egyptian patron for their continued work. While the family wishes to continue living part-time in Scotland, they want the artifacts to stay in Egypt whenever possible.
The missing artifacts have been recovered, as well as most of the mummified body. Both will be repatriated. As for the remains, that’s a bitter note. Sir Alastair had hoped to identify the person in those wrappings and send them home for a proper burial. Now the burial will come, but only part of the body remains, and any hope of identifying the person is lost.
As for why Muir set us on Florence’s trail in the beginning, he isn’t explaining that. McCreadie believes it’s because Florence made such a poor suspect that we’d eliminate her quickly and, if clues later turned toward the Kings, the police would ignore them. Maybe McCreadie’s right, but I also wonder whether he did that on purpose to spook Emmett. After all, having Emmett flee the country would have been to Muir’s advantage, his only tie to Sir Alastair’s murder gone.
That leaves us with one loose end, only tangentially tied to this whole affair.
“It’s McBride,” Jack says. “He’s the one writing those adventures, and your housemaid has been spying for him.”
