“Tell me why you know it’s not her,” I said, which made Lock study my expression.
Still, he answered me. “The motive of this doesn’t match her. She’d never do anything that might make your father look innocent of the Regent’s Park crimes. If she’s coming for you, it’s because she wants both of you in prison, not you at the expense of your father going free.”
I nodded. It couldn’t be Lily who killed Constance anyway. She was with me all night.
Until she left in the wee hours of the morning. Before the killer had struck.
“It is possible that whoever is behind this wants me to think that Lily is involved?” I asked.
Lock asked, “How so?”
“She collects handbags, like the ones at the boutique at Church Street. The message was built from magazines at her mother’s work. The burner phone led us right to her last night, and a body turns up on my front porch the morning after Lily spends her first ever night in my house. Too many pieces there for them all to be coincidence.”
“Could it be her?” Mycroft asked.
“No. Lock is right. She wants my father to rot forever in prison. She would never do anything that might give anyone even the tiniest doubt of his guilt.”
“And we saw the burner phone moving away from her,” Lock added. “We know that the person holding that mobile is the one who called in accusations about Mori.”
We all fell into a thoughtful silence for a while. I thought about bringing up my theory about her passing off the phone, but his thinking on the motive was right. Not that it helped me to know she didn’t do it. Deciding who wasn’t our culprit did nothing at all to solve the actual problem at hand. I could come up with a hundred people who didn’t kill Constance Ross, but that wouldn’t stop me from being arrested for a crime I didn’t commit. And, at the moment, I had no other suspect to offer them in my stead. I was just the girl who had stepped over a dead body to flee from the scene in front of witnesses. Just like everyone would expect of me.
I sat up straighter in my seat. All my enemies would expect me to shout my innocence until the end. Even my father would expect me to evade police and lie about what had happened and when. The very last thing anyone would expect was for me to come clean, which was why telling Mallory everything was the exact right thing to do. And I needed to do it as soon as possible.
This time I didn’t give Mycroft any warning.
I pushed to unlock my door and jumped out. I ran down the street, though I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew it felt good to be out in the city, to feel the drizzle on my face, to be anonymous on an anonymous street. But then the buildings got nicer, all red brick with perfect white windows and white brick trims, and I knew I was in Mayfair. I walked to a crossing and saw the Italian flag on one side of the street up ahead and the low shrubbery wall of Grosvenor Square on the other. Which meant I was only a ten-minute walk from where I needed to be—West End Central Police Station.
I stood at that corner for a few minutes as all the other pedestrians picked a direction to cross, and I couldn’t find it in me to take the crosswalk to my right. I stared down the path I would take, tracing it as far as I could see, which is when I noticed Sherlock, leaning back against the red postbox to my left, hands in pockets, like he was just waiting to see what I’d choose.
I was sure Lock had been following me since I jumped from the town car, but he hadn’t yet approached. I should’ve been grateful for that, really, but instead it made me a little sad. Perhaps he’d heard what I’d said in the car after all, that he shouldn’t be seen with me. That was still true, but I didn’t believe he cared all that much about things like appearances and associations. Still, when he did approach, I’d only have to send him off again. I couldn’t let him get involved with this any more—not when someone was killing people to get my attention.
But the very thought of sending him off made a question pop into my mind.
Was this the place where our “temporary” became “finished”?
Pain lanced through my chest. I closed my eyes against it and crossed my arms, then another set of arms held me too. Did my pain draw him to me? He managed to always be there when I was falling apart. He pressed his cheek against my hair and pulled me back against him.
“Tell me what to do,” Lock said.
Was this where I was supposed to become a noble girl? Because a girl more noble than me would pick a fight and tell lies until her boy ran off, hurt but safer for being apart from her. I, on the other hand, leaned back in Lock’s arms, closed my eyes as he tightened them around me. I’d never been very good at being selfless. But I couldn’t let him be ruined either.
“Call your brother. Have him take you to the hospital.”
“And you?”