Chapter 4:
The Revelation
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Igglethorpe addressed the party, holding his hand out expectantly.
“Right. Hand it all over, all the Laudanum. Cough it up!”
With sounds of disgruntlement, the group produced their bottles of the opiate. Igglethorpe took them all, being careful to remember which bottle came from who. As he came to Isabelle, she angrily thrust her nearly empty bottle towards him.
“Go ahead Bosney. Run away again, like you always do.”
He scowled at her, not replying as he took the bottle and proceeded back upstairs.
“Oy, Bosney. What are we supposed to do?”
Igglethorpe looked back down the stairway to Dervy, who looked up from over his wife's dead body. Igglethorpe shrugged, having no answer for the man.
“I don't know. Whatever you were doing I suppose. One of us is a killer, and I intend to find out who. Until then, I suggest you watch your backs. I
will find you, and I
will apprehend you.”
With that he proceeded up the stairs, making the lonely trek to the library. As he walked, the light patter of the rain outside seemed to muffle his footsteps. The sound disappeared entirely as he entered the library, his shoes moving silently across the soft carpeted floor.
The library itself was dark, with a small gaslight rising from the floor in the center giving off a dim glow. Seating was positioned around it, with candles arranged nearby for use to peruse the rest of the shelves. Aside from the faint light, the rest of the library was cast in darkness, shelves quickly fading into the black oblivion only a few feet away from the center. Bosney took his seat up once again, spreading the bottles out nearby and consulting a copy of
Dr. Earnest Hawthorne's Guide to Compounds and Medications. The time began to slowly burn away as he read. As he did, he withdrew a fountain pen from his inside pocket and began to make small notes on the sides of the pages, quietly hoping that the Lady Scrimshaw would never partake in such a dry read and find his scribbling.
Four bottles. All measured out for 100 milliliters. Isabelle's, about 20 milliliters left? Takes for pain and old wounds. Book says doses of 1.5 milliliters every three to four hours. What does Scrimshaw take it for? About 75 milliliters left maybe. Will have to question her about that. Alabaster said he could not find his, which is odd. Someone with a condition would probably take better care of where they put it. Tavish's, about half. 50 milliliters. For, what did he call it? Stomach trouble? Diarrhea, I assume. Book says .3 to .6 milliliters, about four times a day for that. Describes it being used for symptoms that do not respond to normal treatments. Consider asking Tavish about that. Amount seems odd. My own, for sake of evidence, about 80 milliliters.
He stopped writing, pausing in his defacing of the book as he heard a soft click of the door in the black. He looked up into the void among the bookshelves, calling out in a quivering voice. “Hello? Who is it?”
Isabelle faded into view as she stepped closer, appearing from among the shelves. Bosney stood up quickly, throwing a hand in front of himself to stop her from advancing. She paused, raising her own hands up in caution. “It's alright Bosney. It's just me. No one but me.”
“What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with the others?” he replied, still not trusting her.
She laughed at him, disdain apparent in her voice. “What, those pompous knobs? No Iggy. No, they're all trying to find the answer themselves. They all want to find the murderer. I let them bicker. There is a different mystery that I want the answer to.
“Go on” he said, fearing he already knew where this was going to go.
“Us, Bosney. What happened to us? Thirty years ago you left me at the altar. You left me, you left me broken and confused. Why did you abandon me?”
Bosney swallowed slowly. “I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready for marriage. I was scared.”
Isabelle swelled with anger, Igglethorpe's words echoing through her head and building up pressure within her endless well of rage.
“You were scared? Thirty years of avoiding me, avoiding everything you built and abandoned with me, and all you can say is that you were scared? You coward! I should have known! After everything I did for you! Everything I ever did! I loved you Bosney! I loved you so much that I saved your life and hid you away while my mercenaries slaughtered your men. I helped you run away! But I guess that's where you got the taste for it, isn't it? Run away from one thing and you think you can run away from the rest!”
“It's not like that!”
“Oh, isn't it? Isn't it Igglethorpe? You know you're facing almost certain defeat in the morning to a mercenary army, and you leap at the chance to avoid your duty when the woman leading them learns she'll be massacring her childhood love? Is that why you led me on? Because I loved you enough to save your hide and keep it secret from the rest of the world? And then you just leave me! You left me at the altar, Bosney! Without a word or an explanation, you weren't even there! You got cold feet and ran away like I taught you to! You left me. You even left me with child.”
The last sentence rocked Bosney on his feet. His head swam as he attempted to process this revelation.
“I have a child?”
Isabelle shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. “No. You gave me a child, but he is not yours. How could he be? You were never there for him. You weren't there to provide. Soldiers were his fathers. He played with swords when other kids played with dolls. He has lived the soldier's life and knows his duty. Something that the person who sired him never will. You are a liar and a coward, Igglethorpe Bosney. I should have turned you into Treylbach when I had the chance! I should have-”
She was cut off as Igglethorpe's hand landed across her cheek. She put her hand to the stinging burn, staring at him in shock as he roared.
“No! How dare you? You wait thirty years? Thirty years to tell me I have a son?! You kept this secret just so you could bring this down on me now? No Isabelle. You're unbalanced, insane, and loose! I know you, Molatto. You sell your body like you sell your sword, and the only reason that my child ever had a man in his life is because they were paid by you to kill someone. I'm sure he found it confusing, what with a different man in his mother's bed every night! How dare you rob me of having the chance to raise my son!”
Isabelle fired back, her control on herself slipping.
“You stupid son of a bitch! I loved you Bosney. I loved you with everything that I had. I've had an empty bed ever since you left me. I have known no other lover, and I see now that maybe I am the stupid one here for letting you rob me of the love I could have given to another. I don't know who the killer is here tonight, but I know who will cause your demise, you twisted horrible worm of a man!”
She withdrew a stiletto knife from inside her clothing, screaming as she attacked him in her rage. Bosney leaped backwards, barely dodging her swipes and stabs as he grabbed at his cudgel.
“Isabelle, please! It doesn't have to end like this! Please think of what you're doing!”
She lunged, nicking him across the shoulder as he barely moved away in time. “Oh I know exactly what I'm doing, you cowardly son of a bitch!”
The two fought, Igglethorpe on the defensive as the struggle tumbled backward among the dark shelves of the library. In the dark confusion, Igglethorpe struck wildly with his cudgel, hitting something multiple times in the dark. Isabelle was nearly just as successful, her wild stabs and swings picking away at Igglethorpe. There was screaming as Isabelle's hand was struck by a lucky blow, causing the knife to tumble away to the dark obscured carpet. And then, her scream turned into a blood curdling cry.
“Isabelle? Isabelle?!”
Bosney breathed heavily, his body feeling fire from the blood oozing gashes on his body. He dropped the cudgel, feeling around in the dark in front of him for where Isabelle should have been. As he moved, he tripped over something and fell to the floor. In the darkness, he felt the prone body of Isabelle Molatto next to him, short and ragged breaths escaping from her.
“Isabelle, speak to me!”
There was no response. Her haphazard breathing continued in the black. Rising to his feet, Igglethorpe drug her towards the light in the center space of the library. Her unfocused eyes took in the light, but it did not register as it drew closer. Blood stained the carpet as she came to a stop, her dress ripped and torn. Igglethorpe stared down at her, trying to find the cause of her pain.
“Dammit Isabelle, do not die on me! What happened to you?”
Isabelle stared up into Bosney's weary and tired eyes. With a faint smile, her whisper disappeared and was consumed by the empty blackness that surrounded them.
“You could have been a great father.”
Her last breath escaped her lips. And with it, Isabelle Molatto's life.
“No no no! NO!”
Igglethorpe shouted, beating on her chest in an attempt to rouse her. In the faint glow of the gaslight, more blood pooled below her into the carpet. Tears in his eyes, Bosney turned her over to find the source of her bleeding. The back of her dress was tatters, and the torn away material revealed multiple stab wounds, with a long and deep slash running from the top of her right shoulder to the left side of the small of her back. The blood flowed freely, and Igglethorpe bloodied himself in her life fluid as he attempted to rouse her. In the end, there was nothing he could do.
He was sobbing still when the Lady Scrimshaw and the rest of the dinner party found him in the library, huddled over Isabelle's corpse. They had questions, but they kept their silence as he wept. With reddened eyes, he looked up at the group. His expression was filled with anger, and the distilled rage that Isabelle once had now dripped off of every word as he spoke.
“I am going to find you. And then, I will kill you.”
And thus, the third round of interrogations began.