Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [101]
Balantyne brought his head in from the window. His skin was whipped raw from the wind, snow crusted his hair.
“They’re still ahead of us. God knows where she’s going!” His face was so cold that his mouth was stiff and his words blurred.
She was thrown against him as the cab wheeled around another corner. He caught her, held her for a moment, then eased her upright again.
“I don’t know where we are,” he went on. “I can’t see anything but snow and gas lamps now and again. I don’t recognize anything.”
“She’s not going home?” Charlotte asked. Then instantly wished she had not said it.
“No, we seem to have turned toward the river.” Had he also been thinking of Alan Ross?
They were lurching through a muted world with muffled hoofbeats and no hiss of wheels. There sounded only the crack of the whip and the cabbie’s shout. Vision was limited to the whirl of white flakes in the islands of the lamps, followed by raging, freezing darkness again till the next brief moon on its iron stand. They were slowed to a trot now, turning more often. Apparently they had not lost her, because the cabbie never asked for further instructions.
Where was she going? To warn Adela Pomeroy? Of what? Had she hired some lunatic to kill her husband?
Answers crowded into Charlotte’s head, and none of them could be right. She put off again and again the one she knew in her heart was the truth. Christina was going back to the Devil’s Acre! To one of the whorehouses ... and murder.
Beside her, Balantyne said nothing. Whatever nightmare was in his mind he struggled with it alone.
One more corner, another snow-blanketed street, a crossroad, and then at last they stopped. The cabbie’s head appeared.
“Your party’s gone in there!” He waved his arm and Balantyne forced open the door and jumped out, leaving Charlotte to fend for herself after him. “Over there.” The cabbie waved again. “Dalton sisters’ whorehouse. Don’t know what she’s doin’, if n yer ask me. If ’er ’us-band’s gorn in there, she’d best pretend she don’t know—not goin’ a-chasing after ’im like a madwoman! ’T’ain’t decent.’T’ain’t sense neither! Still—never could tell most women nothin’ fer their own good! ’Ere! Best leave the lady in the cab! Gawd! Yer can’t take ’er in there, guv!”
But Balantyne was not listening. He strode across the glimmering road and up the steps of the house where Christina’s footsteps still showed in the virgin snow.
“’Ere!” The cabbie tried once more. “Miss!”
But Charlotte was after him, running with her skirts trailing wet and heavy, catching Balantyne on the step. There was no one to bar their entrance. The door was on the latch and they threw it open together.
The scene inside was the same large hall, with its red plush furnishings, gay gaslights, and warm pinks, that Pitt had seen. It was too early in the evening; there were no customers here yet, no lush, soft-eyed maids. Only Victoria Dalton in her brown tea gown and her sister Mary in a dress of blue with a wide lace trim. And in front of them stood Christina with the gun in her hands.
“You’re madwomen!” Christina’s voice choked, her hands shook. But the barrel of the gun still pointed at Victoria’s bosom. “It wasn’t enough to kill Max, you had to mutilate him—then you killed all the others! Why? Why? Why did you kill the others? I never wanted that—I never told you to!”
Victoria’s face was curiously expressionless, ironed out like a child’s. Only her eyes showed emotion, blazing with hate. “If you’d been sold into prostitution when you were nine years old, you wouldn’t need to ask me that! You whore around for fun—you let animals like Max use your body. But if men had relieved themselves in you since you