“What if someone overheard us talking? What if someone was in the enamels room when you placed it with Mr. Frick, and we didn’t know it?”
Miss Helen paused. “If someone was in there, they would have heard everything. But that’s really quite a stretch.”
“What if your mother or your brother heard us coming, and hid in there?”
Miss Helen let out a harsh laugh. “Why would my mother or brother want to take the cameo?”
Lillian struggled for an answer, anything to keep this conversation going, keep Miss Helen considering other options. “Your mother might have wanted it as a remembrance of Martha, not wanted to see it be buried with your father.”
“My mother would have told me such a thing, and not allowed an innocent woman to be accused. You might as well be accusing Miss Winnie.”
“What about her? Might she have taken it?”
“To what end? She adores the entire family, has been with us for decades. What’s she going to do, steal the cameo and run off with the butler? Also, don’t forget that she’s quite deaf. She couldn’t have overheard us talking.”
That was true. And regardless, no one in the family would take the blame for this, even if they had done it. “Well then, as I said, I didn’t do it, so I can’t tell you where it is.”
“So you’d go to jail when you could be free?”
“I have no choice in the matter. Who told Mr. DeWitt that I was Angelica?”
“I can’t say.”
Not that it mattered.
“Well, I’m sorry it has to end like this,” said Miss Helen. “I valued your assistance.”
She was dismissing Lillian, as if she were moving on to take another job, not being sent to jail.
“You are cruel.” The words flew out of Lillian’s mouth.
“And you are stubborn. I’ll call for one of the footmen to take you back to your room.” She walked to the far wall of the billiard room and gave a yank on the embroidered bellpull.
Lillian’s instinct told her to run. To hide. She had only a minute or so before she’d be locked in her room again.
The basement was full of corners and hideaways. How tempting it would be to find one and tuck herself away. Or make her way up to the third floor and crawl into an empty trunk in the storage room, or one of the massive drawers in the linen closet. Then, in the dead of night, she’d figure out how to escape. After all, she’d done it before, from the apartment. But the Fricks’ servants knew the house better than she did. She’d eventually be caught.
“I will show myself to my room, I don’t need an escort.”
Lillian strode to the stairs, wondering if Miss Helen would try to stop her.
She did not.
Instead of continuing up to the third floor, Lillian walked out onto the main hallway on the first floor. A parlor maid let out a soft “Oh” as Lillian walked by, but otherwise didn’t call out. If the front door was clear, Lillian would continue, with only the clothes on her back. She had nothing to lose.
But the same beefy footman was outside, standing under the porte-cochère.
Over at the organ niche, she spied Mr. Graham’s leather case resting next to the bench. A quick glance up the stairway showed an open door to the organ chamber, where she and Mr. Danforth had shared that lethal kiss.
She tiptoed up the marble stairs and slipped inside.
Mr. Graham was inspecting one of the pipes near the window. He turned around and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Ah, Miss Lilly. I was just doing a final visit. Mrs. Frick said the sound of organ music reminds her too much of her husband. I’m to play today, but then that’s the end of it. On to bigger and better things.”
How he could blithely make small talk when Lillian’s life had been ripped to shreds infuriated her. “Or maybe they want to get rid of you, after you brought my scandal to their attention?”
“I’m sorry?”
“They know everything, now. If I wasn’t already in trouble, you doubled it.”
“How?” He pushed his glasses farther up on the bridge of his nose.
“You told the private detective who I was, and now they’re about to cart me off to jail.”
“Whatever you’re accusing me of, I didn’t do it.” His cadence was even, not the overemphatic denial of a liar. But maybe he was a good one.
“You overheard Mrs. Whitney call me Angelica. And later, you listened as I admitted the same to Mr. Danforth, in the driveway.”
“Yes, I was there on both counts. And yes, I did suspect who you were. But I would never have told anyone else.”