The Klondike Mysteries 4-Book Bundle. Vicki Delany

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СКАЧАТЬ have no intention of discussing my parents with you. State your business and then be on your way.” Margaret stood in the doorway of her home, glaring down at me. Apparently I was not to be served tea.

      I got to my feet. “Jack Ireland told me he’d been a newspaper correspondent during your American Civil War.”

      Long ago, I’d been to the British Museum, escorted by Lord Alveron, because the exhibit of Egyptian artefacts was considered to be exceptionally fashionable. There I’d seen the most amazing carving of a long-dead queen. She transfixed me, that queen, with her steady gaze, the haughty lift to her chin, her imperial presence so strong it crossed barriers of time and space. So entranced was I that my escort had had to grip my arm with more strength than was seemly to drag me away before his grandmother-in-law, unexpectedly visiting from the country, entered the hall. I had always hoped to return, to see her again. The carving, not the grandmother-in-law. But circumstances forced me into leaving London before I had the opportunity.

      Margaret’s face reminded me of that stone queen.

      “I enjoyed our chat in the Savoy the other morning. The story of your brave Confederate husband captured by the Union solders because he chose to remain behind with a wounded comrade was most entertaining.”

      “It wasn’t a story.”

      “Perhaps it wasn’t. But Sam told my son another story. That you left the Eastern States before the war and travelled throughout the west in order to avoid having to take sides.”

      “You’re an unusual woman, Mrs. MacGillivray, if everything you ever say is the God-promised truth.”

      “I’ll admit I’ve been known to stretch the facts on occasion. But I’m wondering who stretched the truth here, Margaret. You or Sam? I suspect it was Sam, not wanting anyone to know he’d served in the war, although most men, in my experience, love to talk about their time in the army. So dreadfully tedious. But you had told Helen what really happened, and when Helen pressed you to tell me, you could hardly spin a different story in her presence, now could you? Not, I’m sure, that it even occurred to you that I’d hear both versions of your life story.”

      “Mrs. MacGillivray, if you have a point to make, please make it, and leave. You are no longer welcome in my home.”

      “What did Jack Ireland have on Sam?”

      Then she sighed. “Is any of this your business?”

      “Unfortunately, yes. My best dancer was arrested for the murder.”

      Her expression didn’t change.

      “Please, don’t allow yourself to get too alarmed. She was released. Some silly British legal point about no proof. I would like nothing more than to ignore this whole ridiculous business, Margaret. No one liked Jack Ireland less than I. Well, one person clearly did. But he or she left the body on my property, and thus he or she involved me.”

      “It’s a nice evening, but there’s a touch of chill in the air. Let me get my shawl, and we can go for a walk.” Margaret carried her plates into the depths of her shoddy home.

      Chapter Forty-Seven

      Did Margaret Collins regret how far she’d fallen in the world—their shack was so badly lit that even with the sun still lighting the western sky, I could scarcely see a foot inside—or was she happy with her choice? To have turned her back on her rich, but unloving family, and marry Sam, whom to all appearances she still adored?

      A pack of screeching children, every one of them dressed in hand-me-downs, their clothes and hair so tangled and filthy, it was hard to distinguish boy from girl, ran up the road in hysterical pursuit of a drooling dog. A stern-faced man with the best muttonchop whiskers I’d seen outside of a Regimental Mess grabbed the children’s leader in one meaty fist. The others pulled to a sudden stop, and the dog disappeared into the warren of shacks and tents.

      Margaret came out of the house, a tattered shawl tossed over her shoulders. Her eyes were dark in her pale face. “Let’s walk this way. I’d like to pick some fresh flowers. Those ones will be dead soon.”

      We walked up the street, towards the foot of the mountain they call Midnight Dome. Margaret talked about inconsequentials, flowers mostly, gardens her mother had tended back in her childhood, cacti she’d seen in the southern deserts. I let her prattle on, sensing she would shortly run out of chatter and tell me all I needed (but did not particularly want) to know.

      “Don’t you find the wildflowers here to be incredible, Mrs. MacGillivray? I suppose because the growing season’s so short, nature must do all she has to accomplish in one wild burst of colour.”

      “They are lovely,” I said.

      The cluster of tents and wooden shacks thinned and soon fell behind us. The roadway ended, but a rough track climbed into the foothills. There were no trees left, only bare stumps, thin bushes—no good for building—and naked soil. The hillsides higher up were ablaze with wildflowers in all possible shades of yellow, purple and blue, dotted with the purest white to be found outside of fresh Yukon snow.

      “I would love to have seen this country as it was two years ago,” Margaret said, puffing with the exertion of the climb. “Imagine what this wood must have been like as planted by God.”

      “Perfectly wonderful, I’m sure. Margaret, we’ve gone far enough. I can scarcely hear the people below. My shoes are not suited to this path.”

      “Just around this bend there’s a delightful patch of larkspur. I haven’t told a soul about it, so as not to have all sorts of people climbing up here with their ill-trained dogs and snotty-nosed children to trample all over my flowers.”

      The path, rough as it was, came to an abrupt end at a large boulder. Margaret gathered her skirts in one hand and climbed over the rock.

      Why I followed her, to this day I don’t know. Perhaps because I believed that a woman chatting about wildflowers and the harmful effects of dogs and children upon them could do me no harm? Perhaps because my comfortable life here in Dawson, where I was earning a legal, if only vaguely respectable, living had softened my instincts?

      I clambered over the boulder, my delicate calfskin boots protesting. When I got to the other side, I couldn’t see Margaret. I held onto my hat, jumped carefully off the rock and stumbled to regain my footing.

      A cold piece of steel pressed against my throat.

      “You are as much a fool as all the rest of them, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Her breath was hot in my ear. “Although I doubt you’re legally entitled to that title.”

      “Mrs.? That’s no badge of honour to me, but it serves its purpose, on occasion. Isn’t this a touch melodramatic, Margaret?”

      She moved the knife a few inches away from my throat and stepped to one side so I could see her. Her bushy grey eyebrows were drawn together in determination. With every hair on her head scraped back, forced into a severe bun, and the front of her calico dress ironed flat, devoid of a single wrinkle, Margaret reminded me of my childhood governess, who had tolerated me at best and hated me at worst. But at least she’d never drawn a knife on me.

      “Sit down, over here.” Margaret gestured to a small, but sturdy, bush, hiding under a rocky overhang. “And don’t believe I won’t slit your aristocratic СКАЧАТЬ