The Woman They Tried To Kill

CHAPTER 4 - THE OTHER PERSON ON THE LANDING

The emergency lights came on seconds later, dim and yellow.

Marta stood in the doorway, one hand to her throat. At her feet lay a smashed picture frame from the hall console. The glass glittered across the wood floor.

Nathan crossed the room first. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "No. But someone ran past me."

Charles bent with difficulty and picked up the fallen photograph. It was an old charity gala picture. Vivian in silver. Her late husband beside her. Nathan and Daniel younger, stiff in formal jackets.

And in the background, half turned away from the camera, was a man with sandy hair and a driver's badge pinned to his lapel.

Marta stared at it. "That man."

Nathan took the frame. "Our old chauffeur? Peter?"

"Yes," Marta said. "He was on the second-floor landing tonight."

Daniel's eyes widened. "Mother told us Peter moved to Scotland years ago."

Vivian had appeared in the doorway again, composed at last, though her voice came too bright. "This is absurd. Peter has nothing to do with this family."

Charles looked at her with open disgust. "He has everything to do with it."

The room held its breath.

Charles gripped his cane. "Peter was the one who carried messages when Vivian forced me out. And later, when she discovered her husband had used family accounts to pay gambling debts, Peter helped her hide the records. He has been cleaning up this family's scandals for twenty years."

Vivian's face changed then. Not guilt exactly. Fear.

Eliza saw it and understood. "He came back because of the letter."

Vivian said nothing.

Nathan stepped closer to his mother. "Did you invite him here tonight?"

"I asked him to collect something from the upstairs study," she said.

"What thing?" Nathan asked.

Vivian's silence answered him.

Charles lifted his chin toward the hall. "The second letter."

Eliza turned. "There was another one?"

"Your mother wrote two," Charles said. "One for you. One naming what Vivian did."

Marta whispered, "If Peter took it, he may destroy it."

Nathan was already moving toward the stairs.

Eliza caught his sleeve. "No. He came because of me. I am done being carried out of danger."

For the first time since the fall, her voice did not shake.

Together they went upstairs to the study.

The desk drawer was open.

And on the leather blotter lay a single cream silk thread, torn from Eliza's dress, beside an empty envelope slit cleanly with a knife.

"I am done being carried out of danger."