For Elise by Sarah M. Eden

Author:Sarah M. Eden [Eden, Sarah M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Separated, Romance, Love, Lost, disappearance, Fiction, LDS, England, mystery, Clean, Elise, West Indies, found, Friendship, childhood, Regency
Publisher: Covenant Communications Inc.
Published: 2014-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Miles sat in the library, horrified at reading about and reliving the terror of the night his father had been killed. The inquiry papers were detailed, almost too much for his peace of mind. The runner had assumed, as had Miles, that with an aim as good as the killer’s had been—Miles’s father had been shot directly through his heart, Mr. Furlong in the center of his forehead—Elise’s wound, several inches from her heart, had been intentionally nonfatal. But Miles kept returning to the first of the anonymous letters Elise had received at Tafford.

So will my aim. The shooter admitted that his aim had been off. Her survival, it appeared, had been nothing more than an accident. The realization sat like ice water on Miles’s heart. Elise was not supposed to have lived.

She had never said much about that night. Her brief testimony, which the runner had written down, gave no indication of why she might not have presented a clear target. It had been dark and possibly raining. But so had it been when the killer had shot his other three victims. Had she been running? Struggling to get away? Had the murderer been injured or held back somehow?

Miles was reluctant to ask her. Her trust in him was still very fragile, and this was not a topic she seemed at all equal to discussing. Simply sitting in the same room as these papers had nearly broken her.

Another question rose in his mind. Four shots were fired that night. Elise hadn’t spoken of the killer reloading. Either she’d been too distraught to mention that, or the killer had carried more than two loaded weapons. Surely if he’d stopped to reload, Miles’s father, perhaps even Mr. Furlong, if he had not already been dead at that point, could have taken the opportunity to overpower their assailant.

To have access to multiple weapons, the killer would have had to be quite well off or a hardened enough criminal to have stolen them. The accuracy of his shooting indicated not only experience but also superior weaponry. The runner had suggested the shooter had used Mantons. No other pistol was as precise. But Mantons were single-shot, which meant the murderer must have carried four of them.

Miles’s own father had owned a set of Mantons. They, like everything else, had been sold. Elise’s father’s weapons had also gone at auction—another set of Mantons. If only they’d had those weapons with them that night instead of locked in their homes.

The runner had questioned Mr. Cane about the existence of an heir to the Furlong estate had Elise not survived the attack. A review of Mr. Furlong’s will and family tree revealed his estate would have simply reverted to the crown. There was no would-be heir willing to kill for his inheritance. Even if one had existed, it wouldn’t have explained why the murderer had killed Father as well.

Scribbled in the margins of the runner’s notes was a question that now haunted Miles, for he had a feeling the answer held the key to the entire mystery.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.