In a frenzied blur I dug my fingers around the silk scarf to loosen its grip. Even as the ends slipped free I knew it was too late. Madame Devereaux had breathed her last, and no amount of hoping would coax her lungs to fill again. A trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. Her lips gaped and her tongue lolled, showing where she had bitten clean through. A bruise was already forming on her temple, where her head had struck the table in front of her. Or . . . perhaps she’d been struck, before being strangled.
A whimper came from one of the ladies grouped in the entrance of the pavilion. I looked up to see them gaping, dumbfounded. Then, as one, they lifted their gazes to the person whose presence I’d all but forgotten.
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” Clara stammered. She stood with her small back plastered to one of the structure’s carved columns, looking like a child called to the headmistress’s office and babbling incoherently.
Aunt Alva’s arm came up, her forefinger aimed at the maid. “Your hands were around her neck. I saw you.”
“I swear . . . I didn’t . . . I swear . . . she was like that . . . I only tried to help . . .”
“Shut up,” Aunt Alva ordered. “Just shut up.”
Her command may have silenced Clara, who clamped her lips tight, but it also released a flurry of cries and exclamations from the other women. Alva whirled about to shush them. Her gaze must have landed on her daughter, because she immediately said, “Go back to the house. Tell Grafton to call for the police. Go, Consuelo, now.”
I don’t know how much my cousin saw. I wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but when I looked up from the sight that held me so horribly entranced, she had gone.
Chapter 4
“We caught you red-handed, girl. What other reason could you have had for being out here?”
Aunt Alva had Clara backed up against that support column so tightly I could have sworn the wood creaked in protest. Clara sobbed hysterically, continuing to shake her head in denial.
“Why did you murder Madame Devereaux?” Aunt Alva pressed her flushed face close to Clara’s, spittle flying from her lips. “You’d better start talking, girl. . . .”
It was that imminent or else that propelled me across the pavilion to them. I’d wanted to stay with Madame Devereaux until the police came, just stand at her side to watch over her. It seemed heartless to simply leave the poor woman half slumped so grotesquely in her chair, where she could easily tip to one side and slither to the floor. She deserved more dignity than that, didn’t she?
Yet the living also deserved their dignity, and Aunt Alva was doing a blasted good job of stripping Clara of hers. I stepped up beside them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders— Clara’s thin, shaking one and Aunt Alva’s much sturdier one. Aunt Alva veered toward me as if to swing a punch. I winced, but the blow never came.
“Aunt Alva, we don’t know that Clara did anything wrong. Please, we should wait for the police.”
“What other reason could a housemaid have for being in the gardens?” Alva never took her eyes off of the blubbering Clara. “Well? Why were you out here?”
Clara clutched at the railing on either side of the column behind her until her fingernails scraped the wood. “I . . . I . . . came to see if anyone needed anything. If Madame wanted—”
“Liar!” Alva’s shout squeezed a sob from Clara, who shut her eyes and turned her face away. “It’s not your job to see if my guests need anything. Grafton wouldn’t have sent you out here.” The emphasis Aunt Alva put on you reduced Clara to the status of the lowliest street urchin.
“I only w-wanted to . . . to help, ma’am.”
“Then why did we catch you standing behind her, as if you’d just wrapped the scarf around her neck and squeezed the life out of her?”
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t.” Releasing the column behind her, Clara buried her face in her hands and broke down into unintelligible sobs.
“Mrs. Vanderbilt, your niece is right.” Mrs. Stanford’s stern face appeared beside me. “Badgering the girl will accomplish nothing. Leave it to the police. They should be here soon enough.”
I noticed now that the other women had retreated back down the pavilion steps and stood gathered on the walkway. The Spooner sisters had their arms around each other. Their faces were mottled, their eyes watery. Lady Amelia stood off to one side hugging her middle, a pained look on her face.
Hope Stanford, on the other hand, seemed her usual self: stoic, sensible, single-minded. In fact, she moved away now to extinguish the incense and the candles Madame Devereaux had apparently lit in preparation of telling our futures. Was Mrs. Stanford always so unshakable, so calm in the midst of a crisis? Or was her composure due to some other reason? I moved back to Madame Devereaux’s lifeless body, but I studied Hope Stanford until the police arrived.