Finally, after what seemed like an agony of forever, a hand came down on my shoulder. As I turned to peer through my tear-blurred eyes, Marianne reached for my hand and pressed a small iron key into it.
“He had it in his pocket,” she said. “When you said he’d locked someone in the shed, I thought I’d better search him for it.”
The metal was cold against my palm, a small but solid reassurance that helped restore a modicum of sanity. Had I really fallen apart so easily? I’d ponder the reason for that later, but now I fumbled a few times but managed to slide the key into the lock and turn it.
“Derrick?”
At first . . . nothing.
Panic nudged once again. Making out his outline in the windowless gloom, I fell to my knees beside him. “Derrick . . . I’m here. Can you hear me?”
A shadow fell across the doorway and without looking up I ordered, “Marianne, get water . . . and a rag or washcloth . . . quickly!”
She hurried off. A groan sent my heart against my ribs. “Derrick?”
His fingers flexed, and then his hand inched toward his head to finally press against a spot at the back, just below the crown. A louder groan met my ears.
“Don’t try to move yet,” I said when he attempted to press upward. I shifted around him and drew his head into my lap. His eyelids fluttered and opened, his gaze instantly finding me in the darkness.
The smile that followed reached inside me and wrenched away my last reserves of strength. I simply curled, no longer able to hold myself upright, until my forehead touched his. Tears overflowed and sobs wracked my body.
“Emma? What did he do to you?” His voice resonated with dread and once again a speck of reason returned, enough to set my needs aside in favor of his. When his arms reached for me I embraced him in return and spoke into his ear.
“He didn’t hurt me, Derrick.” Not significantly, but I didn’t say that. “I’m fine. It’s over. All over now.”
A laugh broke from deep inside him. “You mean you . . . dear God, Emma. You brought him down, didn’t you?”
“I had help. If not for his sister, I might not have . . .”
“Sister?” With a sharp breath he turned on his side, rested there a moment, and struggled up onto an elbow. His other hand went beneath my chin, raising it slightly. “I have a lot to catch up on, don’t I?” The question ended with another groan, his hand pressing the back of his head once again. “From the beach I saw him riding in the back of a wagon along Paradise Avenue. He could have been anyone heading home for the day, but something . . . I don’t know what . . . made me follow. He turned onto this side lane”—with a jerk of his chin Derrick indicated the scene visible through the shed doors—“but when I followed, he’d vanished. I thought he’d gone inside the cottage.”
“He ambushed you,” I finished for him.
“Hit me—hard.” Again his hand drifted to the spot on his head. I reached up and examined his skull gently with my fingertips. The swelling was pronounced, and exceedingly tender, judging from Derrick’s wince.
“He told me he’d left you bleeding badly.”
“Am I?”
I searched his hair with my fingertips, and was relieved when they came away dry. “I don’t see any blood, and I’m not surprised that he lied. If it’s any consolation, I believe we bested him with the same weapon he used on you. A shovel. But come, let’s get you inside. Jesse should be here soon.”
Slinging an arm around him, I helped him stand, and together we made our way into the house.
“Just start at the beginning, Miss Reid.”
We sat around the kitchen table—Jesse, Derrick, Marianne, Consuelo, with Muffy once more ensconced on her lap, and I. A group of officers had trudged into the swamp to collect James, and he was even now being transported to the jailhouse in town. From the cottage’s other rooms came the sounds of another team of policemen opening drawers and cabinets, pulling cushions from the furniture, and collecting any evidence they could find. They wouldn’t discover much, at least not in the way of tangible clues. James Reid had left his murder weapons behind at each crime scene, and his motives were even now being revealed by his sister’s trembling, halting narrative.
As she spoke, Jesse took careful notes in the tablet that had become so familiar to me in recent weeks. He paused in his writing to ask, “So you say your father did doctor the Duke of Marlborough’s house accounts, as he was accused of doing?”
Marianne nodded. “He did, but not for the reasons the steward believed. You see, he did it to protect my brother. It was James who had been stealing from the Duke. Stealing provisions and selling them in the nearby villages. He was undercutting the local merchants and lining his own pockets nicely.”