Violet still held my hand, and I could feel her trembling. A strange, subliminal dread coalesced out of the air and settled about my heart.
“Could the Farnsworths—could two hack actors—have ever dreamed all of this up? Never—never. My Moriarty is made of stronger stuff.” He laughed.
My eyes were fixed on him. His face appeared grotesque and twisted, his anguish apparent in his terrible smile. He ran his long fingers through his oily black hair, leaving his arm raised and bent.
“Who?” I asked. “Who?”
Holmes stared out the window at the bleak white landscape. “She might have gotten away with it if only she had kept me out of it. The note made Wheelwright call me in. He was never much of a suspect. I sensed something wrong, but the Farnsworths were her agents and a shield before her. If not for the spiders... But she could not resist the spiders. They were a cruel touch. Wheelwright has a mortal fear of them—there can be no doubt of that. But she was an entomologist’s daughter, one who took after her father.”
I felt a very odd sensation at the nape of my neck, and while my face felt hot, my hands were suddenly cold as ice. “Oh, dear God—no. No.” I stared out the windows at the whiteness. Small black dots began to swim about and fall slowly downward, while the blood in my ears roared like a waterfall. Very distantly, I heard myself saying, “Oh God!” again.
Someone shook me hard, and briefly I saw Henry, his blue-gray eyes intent, the flat bone running down his nose, the brown thick hairs of his mustache, and the creases in the dark skin of his lower lip. “Sit down—you must sit down.” I nearly fell into the chair. He was massaging my hands. “Keep your head low. Damnation, Sherlock! Next time don’t do this to her after she has been up half the night and has had no breakfast!”
My eyes came back into focus upon Violet. She was staring at me, her dark eyes full of concern. “I am sorry, Michelle.” She looked up at Holmes, the mocking smile pulling briefly at her lips. “I knew from the first that I could never deceive you.” She appeared somehow relieved.
Lovejoy—or Farnsworth—or whoever he was—shook his head grimly. “Mr. Holmes, you have no proof of any of this. You have upset my wife; you have driven my mistress half mad. When will you be satisfied?”
Henry still had hold of me, and I could not see his face. His voice was grim. “Are you certain of this, Sherlock—are you absolutely certain?”
Holmes drew in his breath. He looked very tired, dark circles under his eyes, his face gaunt, his lips grayish. “Yes.”
Violet was smiling at him. “Tell them what proof you have.”
Holmes reached out with his long arm and sagged against the wall next to the fireplace. “It was those attacks which gave you away. The first was brilliant, the second merely desperate.”
“But the bruises...” I moaned. “Who choked her?”
“That was Mr. Farnsworth.” He turned to Farnsworth, whose genteel front suddenly wavered, his alarm apparent.
“But he was with Wheelwright!” Henry exclaimed.
“Yes, but he had choked Violet a few minutes earlier. He did it quite carefully, not wishing to injure her, and then he went downstairs. The two women did the rest. Violet is not a professional actor like those two, and as a result, I... was more easily taken in.” He was staring at Violet. “All the same, it must have hurt. Other women might have dreamed up such a scheme, but to actually sit there and let him put his hands about your throat...” He let his arm drop. “This would be quite easy to verify. Mr. Farnsworth’s hands should perfectly match the handprints on her throat. Enough of the bruises remain to make such a comparison.”
No one said anything. I felt dizzy again and faintly nauseous. What kind of woman could possibly...?
“This attack was followed by your desperate plea to escape—to go somewhere else—anywhere else. This happened the day after we met Mr. Steerford. Farnsworth had recognized me, even as I recognized him. You knew I was getting very close, and you wanted me out of the way, out of London and far from Steerford and the Angels of the Lord. I was forced to rely on Lestrade. Yesterday the Farnsworths arrived, no doubt with an enormous sum of money, and it was time to send me packing. Mr. Wheelwright had given me one more chance. What better way to get rid of me than by staging a final attack? You did your best to make your husband send me away at once—you baited him—but the storm complicated matters. You three planned to depart today with the money, no doubt heading for the continent. England would be far too hot for you. However, that final attack was clumsy. It confirmed all my suspicions and made everything fall into place.”
Violet’s head was held high, her brown eyes glistening and chin thrust forward. “And your proof?”
Holmes walked over to the small desk, opened the top drawer, and held up a common garden fork, less than a foot long, with a wooden handle and three curved tines. I had used such a fork many times to prepare a bed for flowers.
“Last night I found this near where you were attacked. You had laid it upon your shoulder like this.” Holding it in his right hand, he set the three metal claws back behind his left shoulder. “You pulled it forward and down, ripping open your dress and cutting yourself. You then hurled the fork over the wall as far as you could.”
“Oh, Violet!” I could not keep the revulsion from my voice. “How could you do such a thing to yourself?”
She gave me a pained smile, and then looked again at Holmes. “The fork might have been misplaced by the gardener. One would expect to find it amidst rhododendrons and ferns.”
Holmes gave a savage laugh. “This particular fork was in a bucket before the house with several other tools yesterday morning. The fork was not in the bucket last night. You seized it when you ran from the house.” He held it upright again, his hand shaking. “Shall we examine your lovely white shoulder and verify that the spacing of the tines matches that of the wounds?”
Violet sighed. “That will not be necessary Mr. Holmes. As I said, I knew I could never deceive you. And I could no more have ignored you, than you could have ignored your Moriarty.”
I felt curiously empty inside. I made a sound, which I recognized as a sob. “But why, Violet? Why did you do all these terrible things and hurt yourself and...?”
She lowered her gaze. “Mr. Holmes?”
“Her all-consuming hatred of her husband. She has hated him for many years, and that hatred has grown into a hatred of his entire circle of acquaintances, of his entire class. It has become a hatred of life itself. She began by wanting to revenge herself upon her husband, to frighten and humiliate him; then she determined to destroy all those who seemed equally shallow, vicious, and cruel. Perhaps... perhaps there was an element of jealousy as well.”
“Never!” Violet leaped to her feet, her voice a sudden clap of thunder, both hands raised. “Never.” She glared fiercely at him.
Holmes shrugged. “Comprehending female sentiments has never been my strong point.”
“His little blonde shopkeeper is welcome to him—welcome to him!” She sank into her chair.
I put my hand over my mouth. My throat hurt, and I felt almost as if I had been physically assaulted, kicked, or slapped. “I don’t understand,” I managed to say.
“No,” Violet said sadly, “and you never shall.”