The Witches Three Cozy Mysteries 4-6

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

I regretted closing the door when I found the room in total darkness, the only light from two windows set low to the floor under gables. They overlooked the back garden, but the lights around the patio were too far away to provide more than a dim glow, and the night sky was overcast.

"Edward?" I whispered, brushing my hand over the wall beside the door in a futile search for a light switch.

"Amanda?" He didn't sound like he believed it was really me. I tried to follow the sound of his voice but tripped over a chair that lurked in the darkness. "Is it you?" he asked.

"Hold on," I said and pulled my traitorous wand out of my beaded bag. Making light was one of the few bits of magic we had mastered together, but we had failed at it just hours before. My only real hope was that it would work better when the need was real.

I had never been a particularly good test taker, after all.

I summoned power and directed it to flow into the wand, gritting my teeth against the nausea that rose up in my stomach. It still felt so wrong, so not a part of me.

But we managed a glowing ball of light that drifted slowly out of the end of the wand to rest softly on the floor.

"What is that?" Edward asked. I could see him now. I told myself that his features looked pale and thin because of the unfriendly light, but I didn't really manage to convince myself. He looked like someone who had been distraught for more than the course of an afternoon and evening.

Then a rise of anger burned away the last lingering effects of nausea from working with my wand. They had cuffed him to the foot of the heavy iron bedstead. The door was locked, with two guards, and yet they had cuffed him in a way where he couldn't even scratch his own face if he needed to. He couldn't even sit upright. He was sort of lurched to one side. I could imagine how stiff he was, how much it was going to both hurt and yet be a relief when he could stand again.

"This is lunacy," I said, dropping to my knees beside him and examining the lock on his cuffs. "Who had these manacles just in the house?"

"How did you get in here? There are guards outside," Edward said.

"I have ways," I said, taking the golden key back out of my bag. It looked too big to fit into the lock on the cuffs, but when I tried it, I found the very tip could slide in. Because of course it could. There was a click, and the manacles fell from his wrists to the floor.

"How did you get the key?" he asked, sitting up straight and stretching his arms with a groan.

"I have a key of my own,” I said, stuffing it and my wand back in my bag.

He raised an eyebrow at the sight of my wand but said nothing.

"Edward, I need to know what happened," I said. "Otto is in the library with the chief and the detectives. He's stalling the questioning, I'm certain of it. But they will be talking to you and Thomas when they are done with him. We don't have much time."

"What happened?" he said as if he didn't understand the question.

"Edward, the police are trying to pin this on you," I said, leaning in to force him to focus on my eyes, to see I was deadly serious. "It had to be either you or Thomas, and Thomas' family are important. If nothing can be proved otherwise, you will be found guilty."

"But Thomas didn't do it either," Edward said, then paused. "I don't think."

"Coco thought there was…" but then I stopped myself. "Never mind. Tell me first what you saw. You were upstairs the entire time, weren't you? You're the one Thomas kept looking to?"

"Yes," he admitted, dropping his eyes to examine the chaff marks from the manacles, barely visible in the yellowish light from my magic globe. "Where do you want me to start?"

"Mr. McTavet gathered everyone to hear the announcement," I said.

"Yes," he said and took a breath. "Mr. McTavet and I had been in his study just before. Talking. Mrs. McTavet came in and said it was time, and Mr. McTavet asked me to go up with him. I would rather just have left, frankly. But he's still one of my bosses at the bank, and none of what happened was his fault. Quite the opposite. So I went up. But I didn't want to go out on that balcony. I suppose it would have been gracious to do so, but I wasn't feeling particularly gracious."

"Thomas was signaling you to join them?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Why?"

"To show there were no hard feelings, I suppose," he said.

I desperately wanted to ask if there were hard feelings, but I had to stay focused on proving his innocence. Talking about feelings was sure to explode into a huge conversation we didn't have time for. Even if I really wanted to know.

"But I just couldn't," Edward said with a shrug.

"Coco and Charlotte were also there," I said.

"Were they?" he asked, his gaze shifting up and to the right as he thought back. "Yes, they were there. But not near the balcony. Closer to the wall. They were well clear of the scuffle."

"There was a scuffle," I said, my heart sinking.

"To my everlasting regret," Edward said, not looking at me.

"What happened?"

"After Mr. McTavet sent everyone back into the ballroom, he turned to speak to his wife. I don't know what about. He wasn't pleased with the turn of events, but his wife was. I think he was annoyed with her about that. He wasn't inclined to celebrate as much as she wanted him too.

"At any rate, now that the attention of the crowd had shifted away, I decided to speak to Ivy. We hadn't had a moment alone since she told me she had chosen Thomas over me. Her mother had been with her in that moment, and then her father and Thomas as well. And Coco and Mary and Charlotte. I hadn't had a single chance to say a word to her at all."

"You were angry?" I asked.

"Angry? No!" Edward said. "I mean, it was a shock at first. I don't imagine anyone is jilted and doesn't feel a lot of terrible things. But I was never angry. All I wanted was a moment to tell her I wished her and Thomas well. But when I approached her to say so, I guess Thomas took that wrong. I'm not sure why. It's not like I was rushing forward with my blood hot or anything. I had my hand extended to shake hers and his as well."

"So Thomas started the fight?"

"It wasn't really a fight," he said. "It was far too awkward to call it that. I had my hand out to shake, and Thomas I guess wanted to knock it aside, to step between Ivy and me. But he sort of tripped and fell into me. I grabbed his shoulder to help him steady his balance. But it must have looked like something else to Ivy because she threw herself on Thomas' back as if to pull him off of me. Thomas pulled away from me, but too violently, and fell back against Ivy."

"And that's when she went over the railing?" I asked.

"No, she only fell against it," he said.

"Are you sure?"

He considered for a moment. "Yes. She only fell against it. But she cried out. Not loud, just a little sound of pain, but it made Thomas' blood boil. He swung at me." Edward touched a spot over his eye. I leaned forward to see more clearly, gently brushing back the locks of hair that had fallen over his forehead.

There had been blood, smeared away at some point but leaving little streaks to stain his skin. The goose egg underneath was mostly concealed by his eyebrow, but visible now that I knew to look for it.

"He struck you," I said.

"It was a trying day for all of us," Edward said.

"Why do you excuse him?" I asked.

"How can I not?" he asked. "I know what he is feeling now. We both lost a fiancée today. We're both wondering how much we are to blame."

"Did you hit him back?" I asked.

"No," he said. "But who knows what I might have done if the next moment had not occurred."

"This is when Ivy really did fall?"

"Yes. Thomas had just struck me, and I was seeing stars. Then there was blood in my eyes. I couldn't see what happened, but I heard Ivy scream. The way the echo of her voice through the hall changed as she fell. The way she…"

He didn't finish, but I knew what he meant. The sound of her body hitting the floor.

"So you don't know for sure, but Thomas had opportunity. He was closest to her," I said.

"There wasn't time," Edward said. "From punching me to turn and push her? No, there wasn't enough time."

"Are you absolutely sure?" I asked. "Time can run differently in such moments. An eyeblink can be an eternity. Or vice versa."

"I concede my perception of time might be off," Edward said. "I felt the world wanting to slip away from me for a moment. I think I was about to pass out. Thomas does box at a club in the city."

"There you are," I said.

"But no," he said. "I don't believe it of him. He was only striking me in the first place because Ivy was jostled into the railing and cried out as if hurt. He was protecting her, misguided as that impulse was. To turn from that to murder her? No."

"Was anyone close enough to Ivy then to push her besides Thomas?" I asked.

Edward touched his fingertips to his forehead and flinched. "Not that I could see. But Amanda, I couldn't see. You can't condemn him on so little."

"I'm not trying to condemn him. I'm trying to exonerate you," I said.

"Thank you," he said. "I don't even know how you're here. It's like I summoned you with a wish."

My stomach flipped over at that, but I told it to hold still. This was not the time.

"Coco invited the three of us, I guess when she still thought this was going to be your engagement party too," I said.

"I'm not surprised," he said. "She knew I didn't have any family to stand with me."

"She loved you like a brother already," I said. "She still does. She is also part of the reason I'm here now in this room with you. She knows you're not the guilty party and she won't stand to see injustice done. She's helping the three of us and Otto to clear your name."

"But if it wasn't me or Thomas, who was it?" he asked.

"I'm working on that," I said. The little globe of light on the floor was starting to sputter and die, but I couldn't complain. As unpleasant as its illumination had been, it had lasted far longer than I had expected. "Coco insists that someone knocked her down. So you were both trying to recover from a blow the moment Ivy fell."

"Who knocked her down?" he asked. "Did I bump into her when I fell back?"

"No," I said. "She thinks someone else was up there with you all."

He frowned. "I don't think so. But even before Thomas punched me, it was hard to see up there."

"Yes, that's a common theme so far," I said. I poked at the globe, and it shot up a couple of sparks like a pathetic volcano then lapsed further towards darkness.

"What is that thing?" Edward asked.

"I'll explain later," I said. "Just now I have to talk to Thomas."

"I understand," he said. "I wish you could stay, but I understand."

I raised a foot to stomp on the last of the light but hesitated. "Did you want me to reshackle you? It might be hard to explain how you freed yourself, but on the other hand, you looked very uncomfortable."

"I was," he said. "I don't care what they think. Leave me free." He wrapped his arms around himself, turning towards the wall as if to try to sleep.

The ache in my heart was almost more than I could bear. I wanted to sit down beside him, to put my arms around him and stay with him in the darkness.

But I couldn't. And not just because I had to go speak to Thomas, and to follow up every other lead I could find to prove him innocent.

I couldn't because the least kind thing I could possibly do for him in this moment, on this day when all of his hopes were so cruelly crushed, would be to make him believe he might have a different future with me. We had no future.

I really hated my life.

"Don't despair," I said. "You may have no family in the world just now, but you have many friends. Loyal, loving friends who will not rest until you are out of harm's way. Edward, you are not alone."

"Thank you," he said. He didn't look back at me, but his words were brighter than any he had spoken since I had come into the room.

I stomped out the light and left him in the darkness.