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“You stupid bitch. Why do you think I married you? Why do you think I wait around in this godforsaken hell-hole every Thursday night? For your bloody conversation?”

Had we heard any movements from the room during the lengthy silence that followed, we should have moved to intervene, but there was nothing but silence. Finally Margery spoke, calmly, in a voice I’d heard her use during our lessons.

“That boy with the knife; he was from you, wasn’t he? I thought for a moment he might be, that you’d decided the beating wasn’t enough, but I couldn’t believe it. But he was. And he died. Did you arrange that, too? You must have. You wanted me dead so you could have the Temple’s money. My God, what kind of an animal are you?”

I glanced at Holmes, and knew that the look of strain on his face was duplicated on my own. “He’s going to kill her,” I whispered.

“That may be what she’s after,” he said.

“Which means,” Margery continued, slowly putting together an incomprehensible picture in her mind, “that you would have killed Mary, once you heard about her will. Why are you laughing?”

“Jesus, you really are stupid.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t write a will. I had it written for her.”

This silence was shorter, as if she were becoming accustomed to a new and foreign mechanism. “You decided to kill me for my money. She saved my life. You then kidnapped her, forged a will, and would have killed her if the police hadn’t found her. I assume you would have then made another effort to have me killed. You aren’t human, Claude. Your own wife, in order to inherit—” She stopped, and when she spoke again her voice, for the first time, was low with horror. “Iris. My God, you killed Iris. Is that what gave you the idea? Her leaving me some money?”

“Margery,” he said, with what could only be affection in his voice, “I’ve been putting this together for months now, since last summer. Long before I married you.”

“Delia?” She groaned. “Oh, no, no.”

“Look,” he said, and I heard the sound of a chair scraping back. “I have to leave. I don’t want to hurt you, Margery. I liked you, I really did. It’s all gone to hell now, anyway. A year’s worth of work and that Russell female will have the police on me, damn her eyes. I’ll have to lie low for a couple of years at least—I could never risk making a claim on your estate.”

“I’m not going to let you walk out of here, Claude.”

“You don’t have any choice, Margery.”

“If you shoot me, Claude, you will die.”

Conviction rang out in her voice, not fear, but Holmes and I were already moving, and we hit the door a split second before the shot rang out. The old wood crashed open before our joined weight and we entered fast, Holmes high with the gun in his hand and me rolling low, as pretty a joint effect as if we had rehearsed it. Franklin was standing behind a heavy oak desk, with the gun still pointing at Margery. He brought it around and got off two quick shots that overlapped with a third from behind me. I came to my feet in a crouch, in time to see Franklin stagger and go down. There was a swish and a heavy thud behind the desk. Holmes, holding the gun out, took three quick steps to the side, and then his jaw dropped and he gave vent to a brief oath.

Franklin had vanished.

I stared briefly at the floor, empty but for a smear of blood, before I gathered my wits and turned to Margery. Holmes began to run his hands over the floor, feeling for the hidden panel.

“How is she?” he asked over his shoulder.

“She’ll do. It went through her below the shoulder joint, but it looks clean.”

“There’s no hope here,” he said, getting to his feet. “He bolted it from the back.”

“I should have known there would be a secret passage here, too.”

“Would have made no difference if we’d known,” he said briefly. “Can you leave her?”

“Yes.”

We thundered down the stairs, leaving all doors open, circled the corner at a run, and swept straight into the arms of the constable.

“What’s all this now?” he said predictably. Holmes dodged his hands and flew on; I danced out of the constable’s reach.

“There’s a woman on the second floor wounded;