Page 103 of The Masterful Mr. Montague

His expression was set. His mind was made up.

Slowly and deliberately, he started to walk around the bed, his gaze rising to lock with hers.

Violet saw her death in the dark orbs, in his fixed and weighty stare.

She swallowed and took a step back. Found her tongue. “Is that how you killed her?” She nodded at the pillow. “Your mother? With that pillow?”

He blinked, slowed. “Yes.” He hesitated, then added in a blandly conversational tone, “It was surprisingly easy.”

He stepped around the corner of the bed, and she sidled another step, scrambled to say, “What about Runcorn? Was that you, too?”

Halting, turning the pillow so he held it crosswise, he frowned. “Of course. Once the old bat set him onto going through her affairs, eventually he would have stumbled across the missing shares.”

“But Tilly.” Keeping her eyes locked with his—if his gaze was locked with hers he wouldn’t notice what lay beyond her—Violet clasped her hands before her, wrung her fingers, and hoped she was projecting a suitably helpless image. “Why did you kill Tilly? She was no threat to you.”

“Ah—that’s where you’re wrong. Tilly surprised me while I was going through Mama’s share certificates, looking for the one that would best serve my need. When the question of the missing share certificate arose, as it would have at some point, Tilly would have remembered, and I couldn’t have that.” Mortimer’s gaze searched Violet’s face, then his eyes narrowed.

Violet held her breath and prayed he hadn’t guessed her plan.

She almost exhaled in relief when he asked, “Didn’t Tilly tell you? Didn’t she mention seeing me here, going through Mama’s papers?”

Violet forced herself to shake her head. “No. She never mentioned it.”

Mortimer stared at her for a long moment, then his brows faintly arched. “How sad for you that you’re going to die essentially for no reason.”

Eyes flaring wide, she opened her mouth to try to dissuade him, but he spoke first, his voice dropping in register as he murmured, “But, regardless, you are going to die.”

“But how on earth will you explain it?” she all but blurted. She didn’t know why she was so desperate to keep him talking; she knew there was no help on the way. But the longer she kept him talking, the longer she put off the final dreadful moment when she would have to fight for her life. “Your wife knows she left you here with me. How will you explain that away?”

The faint curve of his lips chilled her blood. “Simple. I’m running late for a meeting at the Home Office—I truly am. Suddenly remembering that meeting, and knowing of no reason I couldn’t trust you, I left you here continuing to sort through my mother’s things for the rest of the time you could spare us.”

Shaking her head, she eased back another step. “But then how did I die?”

His gaze flicked to the window at the end of the room, then returned to her face. His smile grew even colder. “Again, what could be more simple? Overcome with guilt, because, of course, it was you all along—you who, with your lover-accomplice, stole the share certificate, then, when that threatened to come out, you let him in and he killed the old lady, and then Runcorn, and then Tilly. But in looking through my mother’s things, here in the room where you watched her die by your lover’s hands, guilt rose up and smothered you.” He glanced at the pillow he held in his hand, and his smile grew. “Literally smothered, and then, of course, you do what any self-respecting lady like you would do—you jump out of the window to your death. The cobbles below should ensure that no evidence of you being unconscious, or having struggled before you fell, remains.”

Such evil . . . Violet met his eyes and slowly shook her head. “It won’t work. Too many people know me too well—and even now they’re asking the Earl of Corby who he got that share certificate from. He’ll identify you, and you will be caught.”

Mortimer blinked; for an instant, the pedantic civil servant who was paranoid about his status, his social and professional standing, surfaced, but almost immediately he sank back behind the darker, somehow deader, almost certainly more genuine face of the murderer. “Montague.” He paused, then shrugged. “I’ll take care of him later.”

What? “No!” She hadn’t intended to point him toward Heathcote. “I mean, why add another murder to your list?”

Again, he shrugged. “Why not? Removing people one by one has proved easy enough thus far.” His fingers flexed on the pillow. “And instructive though our little discussion has been, Miss Matcham, I regret that meeting of mine won’t wait much longer.”

Raising the pillow, he came for her.

Violet whirled. Grabbing the poker from its stand by the hearth as she turned, she swung it up and around—straight for Mortimer’s head.

He saw the danger just in time to ward off her blow with the pillow.

Feathers flew. Mortimer cursed. Desperate, Violet yanked the poker free, hauled it back, and swung again.

Flinging the pillow aside, with both hands Mortimer caught the poker along the shaft.

Seizing it, he pulled.

Violet clung and refused to let go. If she did, she would die.

Mortimer cursed and hauled.