Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

The Headless Horseman and the Horseless Carriage by James Powell

Speaking of the title of his story, James Powell wrote: “ ‘Horseless’ got me thinking about negative adjectives and nouns. The Brits still use ‘wire-less.’ Certainly carriages have been around longer than cars. But when cars went from ‘stick shift’ to ‘automatic,’ was it be-cause we wanted to save ‘shift-less’ to describe our neighbors?”

In 1894, early in his acting career, Edgar Meynell toured Ireland with a repertory company managed by a certain Austin Brownlea, a man with odd hair. It was white on his head and black as a raven’s wing on his chin. He once told Edgar this meant he used his brain more than his jaw. Indeed, he proved to be a schemer.

Business was not good, and by the time they reached Londonderry, the cast had not been paid for several weeks. Brownlea assured them their stint at the Empire Theater would change all that. But when the curtain came down on Saturday night’s popular The Ticket-of-Leave Man, in which Edgar played Hawkshaw the policeman, the cast discovered Brownlea had taken off with the week’s receipts.

Old Bantry sat backstage in his ancient fez and dressing gown with frayed cuffs, ragged frogs, and stray buttons. He coughed his graveyard cough, setting the bright yellow tassel on the fez to dancing. Then he looked around at Edgar and the rest of the players. “Should have smelled it coming,” he said. “Lord knows it’s happened to me enough times. The swine was out the door before the Act One curtain.” Tossing aside the train schedule, he snapped shut his pocket watch. “No catching him now. The last train for Belfast will put him there in time to make the overnight steamer to Liverpool.”

Mrs. Foley kept the boardinghouse where the cast was staying. Having dealt with theatrical people all her life, she viewed managers skipping with the money as an act of God, like drought or flood. She understood their need to get back to Birmingham, the hiring hub of provincial touring companies, to find themselves fresh situations. So the next morning she arranged for a pawnbroker friend to let the players come to his side door, it being Sunday, and do business in the back room of his shop. When they sent her money plus enough to redeem what was pawned, she would send the objects on to them.

So the cast pooled what they had. Bantry’s and Edgar’s watches and chains went in, Vera Dale’s cameo inherited from her mother, her brother Jack’s silver pocket flask, and the leading lady’s jet necklace. With these items in a handkerchief, Bantry and Edgar set out together. In his tall black hat with the ruined-tower look to it, and his cough, Bantry resembled a haunted churchyard. For the young actor, the trip involved his craft. He wanted to see an Irish pawnbroker in case he had to play the role someday. They carried their suitcases, for they were to meet the others at the railway station and catch the train for Belfast and the afternoon steamer for Liverpool.

Fortunately Edgar took his share of the money when the pawnbroker handed it over, for as they left by the side door, he stopped dead and grabbed Bantry’s arm. Before the old man could turn to look, the carriage had passed the entrance to the alley. But Edgar swore he had seen Brownlea’s white head and black beard in the window.

Telling Bantry that he meant to recover what was due to them and meet him and the others at the railway station within the hour, Edgar set off running, suitcase in hand, trying to keep the carriage in sight while he flagged down a hansom. He had his own reason for catching Brownlea. At yesterday’s rehearsal, when he knew he was going to bolt with the money, the company manager continued to be beastly to Miss Dale, criticizing her acting until she burst into tears. Yes, Edgar was looking forward to catching the sadistic cad and knocking his headlights out.

By the time Edgar got into his cab, he had lost sight of Brownlea. But after riding around for several minutes, he thought he recognized the man’s carriage heading back from the docks. He was willing to bet Brownlea had spent the night with a certain lady friend he bragged of knowing in the city and was now going to take the coastal steamer, which stopped at Londonderry every day on its way to Belfast, where it would arrive in time for the night packet to Liverpool. Edgar ordered his driver to go directly to the steamer.

As he bought his passage at the foot of the gangplank, Edgar thought he saw Brownlea pass by on the deck above. On board, he stayed at the rail to watch them raise the gangplank, telling himself that now Brownlea was trapped with no place to run for the next ten hours.

Edgar had missed the last sitting for lunch. A steward offered to provide him with bread and cheese to tide him over until dinner. But he refused, for he was anxious to begin his search for Brownlea.

Some passengers were gathered at the rail to watch the gray landscape slip away. The company manager was not among them. But entering the ship’s library where the newspapers and periodicals were, Edgar thought for a moment he’d found his man. The passenger in question was sitting across the room by a portside window. Yes, he had a black beard. But the white showing from beneath his hat proved to be a head bandage that came down to cover an ear. And when the man rose to get another newspaper, he showed himself to be quite long in the legs and a good six inches taller than Brownlea. Had this been the person he had seen in the Londonderry carriage window?

Edgar was beginning to suspect he had been too smart by half and that Brownlea was not on board. Nevertheless, he went back out on deck to continue his search. Portside, he was surprised to discover an old yellow traveling carriage out of the previous century, with a crested door, lashed down onto the deck with chocks beneath the wheels.

Edgar proceeded along the deck until he reached the wheelhouse, where he turned back to look at the carriage again, wondering if Brownlea could be hiding inside. The ship’s master-at-arms, a bright, brindle-haired little man in a dark blue uniform with a Zulu War ribbon on his chest, was sitting on a bench pumping a grindstone with one foot as he sharpened a saber. Perhaps it was Edgar’s puzzled look that prompted him to say, “A rare sight in our day, this age of steam, sir. But common enough in times of less hustle and bustle. Think of it, sir. A gentleman steps out his front door in London and into his own carriage, which is then placed on the deck of a Channel packet with his horses stabled in the hold. So the gentleman makes the crossing seated in his own carriage and continues his journey on the Continent at his own pace, seeing the countryside and the people as they are, taking the roads he wants to, stopping or not stopping at an inn, and a month later steps out of his carriage into his own house abroad. In this case it is on the Isle of Capri.”

The master-at-arms stopped pedaling, wiped the blade with an oily rag, and slid it back into its scabbard. “As the butcher always says, sir,” he said with a wink, “it’s the dull blade that cuts you every time.” Then he got up and reached in through the open wheelhouse window and hung the saber and scabbard on a peg.

Edgar sat down on the bench, took out his tobacco, rolled a cigarette, and offered it to the master-at-arms. The man took it gladly, introduced himself as Martin Drugan, late of the Third Hussars, and watched with interest while Edgar rolled another for himself. Edgar lit both cigarettes and nodded back at the carriage. “I don’t know the crest.”

“Gilroy, sir,” said Drugan as they smoked. “An old Anglo-Irish family. Not Cromwell’s crew. The first Gilroy came over with William the Conqueror. But what I was just telling you about traveling with a carriage, that was London. Lord Gilroy had his carriage taken aboard at Sligo, bound for Liverpool, with Lady Gilroy accompanying it in a cabin, of course. His idea was to get in two more days of the fox hunt. Then he’d take the train and the Dublin mail packet and be waiting there in Liverpool when she arrived with the carriage. Only Lady Gilroy wont be there, sir.” Drugan shook his head solemnly. “Last night she committed suicide.”

A startled Edgar turned to look at the man. When the master-at-arms brought the palms of his hands together Edgar thought he was going to utter a prayer. Then he realized the gesture represented a swimmer about to take a dive. “You mean over the side?” he demanded.

Drugan nodded solemnly. “Yesterday morning, up the gangplank she came right before departure time, a handsome woman, if I may say so, sir, with blue eyes and the fine complexion our climate seems to foster. A steward was waiting to show her to her cabin, the last one we had.

“She took a light dinner in her cabin late last night. When the steward came to take away the dishes, she did not answer his knock. The purser came, unlocked the cabin door, and called on me to witness the scene. On the writing table lay her wedding ring, a bracelet concealing a fairylike timepiece behind a silver lid, and a suicide note. The Gilroys come from my part of the country, sir. My mother lives in a village near their estate. She hears things. According to her, theirs was not a happy marriage.

“I made a search of the ship, sir, and reported to the purser that I could not find her. He went to the radio room and sent word to Lord Gilroy of his wife’s suicide.”

Edgar still hadn’t given up on finding Brownlea and hanging the scoundrel over the rail by his lapels until he cried the way he’d made Vera Dale cry. So he left the master-at-arms sitting on his bench to give the ship one more search from stem to stern. From his small store of money he even bribed a young steward to show him the crew’s quarters below deck. No Brownlea. With a growing fear that it had, indeed, been the man with the head bandage and not the dishonest theatrical manager whom he’d glimpsed at the carriage window, Edgar returned to the library to decide what to do next.

Edgar Meynell had begun his acting career as an extra gentleman at the Elephant and Castle, working his way up from crowd scenes and walk-ons to speaking parts. In those days English stage actors were of two distinct kinds, those who appeared in the theaters of London’s West End and those who toured with companies in the provinces. Though it was in London, the Elephant and Castle was on the Surrey side, which meant the provinces. So when he was ready to move elsewhere, Edgar looked in The Stage, a newspaper in whose “Wanted” columns company managers like Brownlea placed ads for actors, and found himself in Ireland.

Not long after he arrived there, Old Bantry had asked him whom he most admired as an actor. When Edgar praised Irving and his picturesque realism, Bantry asked derisively, “You mean Washington Irving? ‘The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow’ Irving?”

When Edgar laughed and said, “No, the Henry Irving who played Mathias in The Bells,” Bantry, an actor of an older, more stilted school, uttered a theatrical groan. “In ’sixty-two I shared the stage with him in The Merchant of Venice at the Prince’s Theater in Manchester,” he said. “Irving played Bassanio to Edwin Booth’s Shylock. But he called himself plain John Brodribb then. In those days a star actor like Booth sent his dresser on ahead for a run-through with the cast. ‘Mr. Booth will enter from there and advance to here.’ ‘Mr. Booth will exit there and you will all hold your positions until the curtain falls.’ Et cetera, et cetera. The great man himself came down from London by train, arriving just in time for the first-act curtain.”

Edgar remembered Bantry’s story now as he sat there in the ship library, and it inspired him to pass the time improving his acting skills. He began to observe the room’s occupants, looking for a gesture, an expression, or a set of the head to add to his actor’s bag of tricks. The first to attract his attention was the passenger with the head bandage still sitting by the portside window. Lean and of very erect posture, he carried a handkerchief tucked in his sleeve in the military fashion. He wore boots and riding britches. This was common in Ireland, where the horse loomed large, though hardly usual for a sea voyage.

But it was the man’s air of utter haughtiness that drew Edgar’s eye: how he rubbed the tips of his gloved fingers together when he accidentally touched something, his glare of disdain when the progress of the ship over the high waves sent anyone lurching in his direction. Edgar had been impressed with Henry Irving’s portrayal of Shakespeare’s haughty Roman general in Coriolanus. But now Edgar thought he might play the role better.

Suddenly his subject rose and went out on deck. Edgar jumped up and followed, because he wanted to see how his Coriolanus would walk. But when he stepped out onto the shifting deck, he found his man standing there waiting for him with one hand outstretched as if to prevent him from coming closer. The man had just lit up a particularly pungent cigar. There were no other passengers on the portion of the deck where they stood.

“You took an inordinate interest in me back in there, sir,” the bearded man said. “Now you follow me out. I wish an explanation.”

Caught off guard, Edgar confessed to be an actor who observed people for something he might use in his craft. “Along the way I may try to guess at their professions,” he added.

The man heard him out with a hard look and a scowl. “And what did you decide I was?” he asked.

“A cavalry officer on half-pay,” ventured Edgar, explaining what had led him to that conclusion: his bearing, the handkerchief in the sleeve, the head wound, and the riding boots.

The stranger made a sour face. “I hope you can act better than you can deduce,” he said. “My name is Wilkes and I am a horse trader from Sligo. And here is my wound.” He folded up a corner of the head bandage to reveal a missing right ear. The amputation was old and seemed crudely done.

“It was taken from me twenty years ago during the rent-boycotting disturbances in our corner of the island,” said the man. “First the Land Leaguers cut off the tails of my livestock. Then when I continued to pay my rent to my rightful landlord, three of them held me down while another cut off my ear. And it hurt like the very devil, sir. The devil. Today I bear the wound like a badge of honor. Among those who know me, it declares I am a law-abiding man who pays his rent. But I cover it when I travel so as not to be stared at by ignorant strangers. Keep your eyes to yourself, sir. Or else I shall be obliged to consult one of the ship’s officers.” Here the man strode away with Edgar’s apologies following after him. Indeed, the actor had heard of severed ears back in the rent-boycott days.

It wasn’t until he was alone that Edgar asked himself what the policeman Hawkshaw would have made of Wilkes’s false beard, one applied with more gum arabic than an actor would use.

Edgar went back into the library and caught up on the theatrical news in The Idler. Then he arranged to have the first sitting at dinner. After the meal he returned to his reading. But when the sea had driven all but the most stalwart of the passengers inside, Edgar, being a young man, decided he must venture out and make the circuit of the heaving deck.

Dusk was falling. Overhead, the pale moon passed through a line of scudding clouds like a ghost trying on masks. In the near distance lay a shelf of rain clouds as gray as anchovies in a jar.

Reaching the carriage lashed to the deck, Edgar timed his staggering strides so that they brought him down to the railing not far from the carriage door. He worked his way over to it, half-hoping to find Brownlea inside. But the leather window curtains were tightly drawn shut. However, he was puzzled by the distinct smell of one of the Sligo horse trader’s cigars. And he was puzzled a second time when he came around the carriage to continue his walk and saw Wilkes’s face at a dining-room window. But the man’s attention was so focused on the carriage he did not notice Edgar pass.

The young actor continued on his way until he reached Drugan, the master-at-arms, on his bench. Sitting down, Edgar rolled them each a cigarette. “It looks like rain,” he said.

“It always looks like rain on this passage, sir, coming and going,” the man told him. “But tonight we’ll have rain for certain. This is St. Ronan’s feast day. Tonight every Irish maiden who doesn’t think she’s as pretty as she ought to be goes to bed early with a prayer to St. Ronan on her lips. Sleep will instantly transport her to St. Ronan’s Well in Scotland, whose sacred water she will try to bring home with her. The next morning she’ll wash her face in it and become prettier than before.”

“But why does that make it rain?” asked Edgar.

The master-at-arms slapped his knee and laughed at himself. “And we are supposed to be an island of storytellers,” he said. “I left out the best part. They have to bring the water back in sieves.”

Edgar smiled. “A happier story than the one you told me before.”

Drugan grew solemn. “Yes, sir, I’ve been thinking about that. You know, sailors hold it unlucky to have a widow in full mourning aboard a ship. I never held with that until yesterday morning in Sligo when our first passenger up the gangplank, with the help of a cane, was a fresh widow bound for Belfast to live with her children. Mrs. Noonan wore a black veil and a dress that could have been cut from old umbrellas. The day began with a widow in full mourning and would end with Lady Gilroy’s suicide.”

The two men sat deep in their own thoughts for some time. Then the rain began to fall. “Perhaps you’ll join me in the wheelhouse, sir,” said Drugan. “We’ll be high and dry there and I must relieve the second mate so he can have a bite to eat.” Calculating that he could afford the tobacco, Edgar agreed.

The second mate greeted them both pleasantly and left for dinner with a “Steady as she goes, Mr. Drugan.”

Drugan laughed. “There’s even less to this job than my own, Mr. Meynell. The ship’s come this way so many times she’s worn a rut in the water.” Then he grew serious. “You know, here’s a funny thing about Lady Gilroy’s suicide. In her note she instructed her solicitor to alter her will to leave to her husband whatever she possessed in her own right.”

“Why is that so strange?” asked Edgar.

“I know the man, sir. I served under Lord Gilroy at Ulundi. Against his commander’s orders — he held the man too much his social inferior — he initiated a charge that cost him an ear to a Zulu blade.”

Cost him an ear? Edgar was opening his mouth to speak when Drugan added in a hoarse voice, “And it cost my brother his life.” The master-at-arms pounded a fist into his hand. “Back when my loss was fresh, had I come face to face with Lord Gilroy on a dark night, only one of us would have walked away alive.

“And another odd thing, sir,” remembered Drugan. “What’s time to a suicide? But the lid of Lady Gilroy’s bracelet timepiece stood open. If she was taking a last look at the photograph inside the lid, well, it wasn’t her husband. It was his brother Wilfrid, who my mother once pointed out to me on the street. Two men, she said, as different in personality as chalk and cheese. Did Lady Gilroy love another? Was this why she killed herself?”

When the second mate returned from his dinner, the master-at-arms put on an oilskin and took the saber from its peg and said, “Time for me to make my rounds, Mr. Meynell. I’ll be back in a shake.” But Edgar thought it best to save what tobacco he had for the rest of his journey. Following Drugan out of the wheelhouse, he made a dash for the first doorway.

In the noisy dining room, the stewards had pushed several tables together, put up a numbered wheel, and were operating a steeplechase game for the betting passengers, moving bright silhouettes of horses and jockeys around a felt racecourse.

Edgar went to the darker end of the room hoping to find the man who called himself Wilkes. Could he be Lord Gilroy? He was certainly paying enough attention to the Gilroy carriage. But why come on board in disguise? Perhaps the message telling him of his wife’s death failed to reach him. He hadn’t been at his estate, after all, but away fox hunting. Had he come expecting to find his wife alive? Edgar hoped to get some answers. But the man’s chair was empty. Perhaps he’d been driven away by the noisy gamesters.

Edgar sat down by the window to think things out. Beyond the glass was rain and darkness. Now and then a stroke of lightning linked sky and sea and outlined the carriage lashed to the deck. Suddenly, as if the leather curtains had been thrown open, an ember-bright spot appeared out of nowhere like the eye of a feral cat. Edgar thought it came from the interior of the carriage. The dot of light held steady while moving with the deck of the ship. Edgar thought it might be a signal, for soon after the light appeared he saw a figure pass between his window and the carriage. He thought of Drugan making his rounds. Or some woman come to get St. Ronan’s rain on the cheap. Or was it Wilkes or Lord Gilroy? Or Brownlea? A moment later three bright fingers of lightning forked down into the water. There was a crash of thunder and everything was darkness again.

Two hours later, Edgar stood at the top of the gangplank not far from Drugan, who was bidding the last of the disembarking passengers goodbye. The actor told himself there was still a faint chance Brownlea had somehow got into a cabin and stayed there for the trip. The last passenger down the gangplank was a large, bent-over woman in full mourning leaning heavily on the arm of a steward. Drugan called her Mrs. Noonan and raised his hand to the visor of his cap.

So that was the end of it. Old Bantry had been right all along. Brownlea, damn him, had taken the last train to Belfast the day before, and was long gone. Edgar felt very foolish.

As he turned to say goodbye to Drugan and go ashore, an ashen-faced sailor came up to the master-at-arms and said, “Better come see, sir. It’s the carriage. We were preparing to hoist it over the side for it’s due aboard the Liverpool packet tonight.” Drugan hurried portside and something told Edgar to follow. Several crewmen stood around the carriage. The one with the lantern said, “We needed to see if everything was secure inside, sir.” The man opened the carriage door and raised his lantern.

Propped in one corner of the upholstered seat was the bloody head of a man with a severed ear. It was Edgar’s horse dealer from Sligo stripped of his fake beard.

“Good God Almighty,” said Drugan, “it’s Lord Gilroy! But where’s the rest of him?”

Edgar still had the train trip to Birmingham ahead of him and expected to arrive there close to flat broke. So he made the night-packet crossing sleeping beneath his overcoat in a lounge armchair. He didn’t expect to sleep well anyway. A severed head can do that to you. He remembered wondering aloud back there at the carriage, “Saber work?” But another voice, the ship’s doctor’s, said, “No, a finer blade than that.” Now Edgar wondered why Lord Gilroy had come aboard in disguise in the first place and who had killed him. Just before he drifted off to sleep he thought he knew.

Mrs. Noonan entered the railway compartment bent over in her widow’s weeds. She gave Edgar a polite nod when he rose to take her valise from the porter and placed it on the overhead luggage rack. As he did, he noticed a faint odor of Lord Gilroy’s pungent cigars. Edgar returned to his window seat and watched the woman from behind his newspaper.

She sat with an ample bombazine reticule in her lap. Now she pushed up her left sleeve as if to consult something on her wrist. Stopping in mid gesture, she turned her head a bit toward him as if to see if he had noticed.

Edgar could see the clock on the railway platform. “It is eight-twenty, madame,” he told her. “We shall depart in three minutes.”

The woman froze for a moment. Then she unpinned her veil and laid it across her lap. Her face was pale but handsome. Smiling, she straightened her back like a bow unstrung. The train got under way without any other passengers entering the compartment.

As the railway yard gave way to countryside, Edgar tried a bit of business he’d worked out for his role as Hawkshaw. Putting on his policeman face, he brought his hands together to make a church and steeple, tapped the tip of the steeple against his lower lip thoughtfully, and said, “What I can’t understand, Lady Gilroy, is why you left the severed head behind.”

The woman had a wonderful alto laugh. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before. At the Royal in Sligo. You were what’s-his-name in The Ticket-of-Leave Man. You were very good, though a bit young for the part.”

Edgar blushed and tried again. “What I meant, Lady Gilroy, was that you and Wilfrid Gilroy disposed of the body. But why leave the head?”

Determination overtook Lady Gilroy’s smile. “First of all,” she insisted, “I killed my husband alone. Wilfrid had no part in this. Nor do I regret what I did.

“Oh, yes, when I married my husband I quickly discovered what a terrible mistake I’d made. Have you heard of the French marquis who refused to take Holy Communion unless the wafer had his coat of arms imprinted on it? That was my husband Tancred.”

“A haughty man,” Edgar agreed. “I can certainly testify to that. He came aboard disguised as a Sligo horse dealer.”

She laughed. “He was doing his Wilkes, was he? That was the nom de guerre he used when whoring around the countryside.” Looking away for a moment, she said, “My marriage was my mistake. But I am no crybaby. I was prepared to live with it. After all, I can give as good as I get, which kept him civil toward me. But then his brother came for an extended stay. Wilfrid was a fine, sensitive man, though of a weak and indecisive nature. We fell in love. My demand for a divorce was such a shock for Tancred it was only his fear of discovery and the indignities of a public trial that stayed his hand from killing us on the spot. So instead he made our lives as miserable as he could. Wilfrid bore his many humiliations better than I.

“When I could bear things no more I decided to offer Tancred an opportunity to kill us and get away scot-free. One day when he was away fox hunting with the Manor Hamilton pack, I ordered the carriage loaded on the Belfast steamer. Next I sent a telegram in our estate agent’s name informing Tancred his wife and brother had left together for the Continent. It wasn’t that difficult to predict his reaction. In a rage, Tancred set out for Londonderry to intercept the steamer and kill us both.”

Edgar understood. “What he didn’t know was that you’d faked your suicide the night before.”

“Correct,” she said. “And that Wilfrid wasn’t involved at all. For the suicide business I came on board at Sligo as the widow Noonan, in premature mourning. Then I changed and slipped ashore amid the coming and going of people seeing other people off. Later I returned as myself. After staging my own suicide, I slept in Mrs. Noonan’s cabin. Yesterday morning, before we reached Londonderry, I dressed up in the black veil, took the cane and a picnic hamper of biscuits and water, and settled into the carriage.

“When he couldn’t find us on board, Tancred would assume we were trysting in the carriage. That’s where he meant to kill us, caught in an amorous embrace. But Tancred needed darkness if he was to escape the punishment for his crime. He would wait. But I knew he would be watching the carriage. So I smoked one of Tancred’s terrible cigars which Wilfrid was so partial to, in case my husband came creeping about.

“When I thought it was dark enough for Tancred to risk it, I opened the leather curtains toward the ship and lit another filthy cigar for Tancred to see.” Lady Gilroy brought her fists side by side and moved them apart as if pulling the blade from the sword cane. She held the blade hand low. “Then I waited,” she said. “Before long I saw a shape move across the deck toward me. I heard the handle of the door turn. Suddenly the door flew open and Tancred thrust himself into the carriage, revolver in hand. Just then three strokes of lightning illuminated the scene. Surprised to find me alone, he opened his mouth to utter some blasphemy when I shoved my blade up and into his heart.

“I lowered his dead body down onto the deck against a scupper-hole. When I had recovered my breath, I stepped down out of the carriage, put a foot on his chest, and, sword in hand, I severed his head from his body. I tumbled the rest of him through the railing into the sea. Then I threw the sword cane, the picnic basket, the fake beard which I stripped from his chin, and those damned cigars after it. When we reached Belfast hours later, I left the ship as Mrs. Noonan.”

“And your leaving your wealth to a husband you despised?” asked Edgar.

“To give a certain authenticity to my suicide,” she said. “Of course I knew Tancred would never live to read the letter. And his estate would pass to Wilfrid.”

“And the business of the severed head?”

“I had a score to settle,” she replied. “Besides, the object in question proved beyond a doubt that Lord Gilroy was dead.”

“And now?”

“Now I shall go to Capri and wait. My suicide will distress Wilfrid. But when he learns his brother has been murdered he will understand what I have done. Once the estate is in order, he will join me in Capri. I think by train would be best. There we’ll marry and I will be Lady Gilroy again.”

What if Wilfrid didn’t come? Edgar wanted to ask. But another look at the formidable woman and he knew the man would not dare stay away. Was this woman guilty of murder or had she only acted in self-defense? Edgar was happy he did not have to make that decision. “I wish you a happy life, madame,” he said.

“And I you,” she said with a tired smile. With the words she removed her hand from the reticule beneath her widow’s veil, where it had remained during their conversation, and he realized what she had been holding. In her catalog of the things she had thrown overboard after killing her husband, she had not mentioned his revolver.

Edgar felt a sudden need for a cigarette. Excusing himself, he went out into the passageway. At the end of the railway carriage, he took out his tobacco and tried to roll himself a cigarette. But his fingers shook too much to do the job.

Copyright (c); 2005 by James Powell.