Episode
#320 - Season Finale
Part Five of Six
Act Four
The Queen
As angry as she had been with Roberto before, she thought she understood him a little better now. She had thought she could put on the mask and it would not change her. Now, she felt as though she would never be able to take it off. Somewhere along the line, Tessa Alvarado had faded away and now only the Queen of Swords remained in her place. And now the Queen was about to put herself out of business.
She had hoped to avoid it a little longer, just a few days, a few weeks, a month or two more before she had to make the cold, hard decision to take her revenge. But what Marta had told her had forced her hand. She had no more excuses. She knew who had killed her father and she knew why. Now, she was finally doing it. She was riding out to kill the man who had murdered her father.
It was reckless to ride into town in broad daylight. Not that she'd never done it before, but this time felt different. All of it was different. Today, she was going to kill a man, not in the hot blood of battle but coldly, deliberately. Today, she was going to kill Marcus Grisham.
She made sure to come into town on the opposite side from the doctors' office. She did not want Roberto involved this time. This was her journey, not his, but he would never understand that. He would certainly interfere. She left Chico in the alleyway and slipped into the barracks through a hole in the wall. The men were either at drill or lazing in the shade of the buildings. She slipped through the space between them and the officers' quarters. With luck, Grisham would be somewhere else, anywhere else, while she got her final proof. But if he wasn't...she'd worry about that then.
Grisham's quarters were locked up tight. She wasn't sure if she felt relieved or disappointed. Pulling her dagger out of her boot, she employed some of Roberto's training and picked the lock. She smiled briefly to herself at the memory of him teaching her the trick, then sobered. Those days were done. Her trial had seen to that. He would never forgive her for rejecting him, even if she had done it to keep him safe.
She shut the door behind her, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light coming in through the curtain on the window. The quarters inside were neat and orderly, but why should she be surprised by that? Grisham was a soldier, wasn't he? A soldier and a murdering bastard. She felt a flash of anger. Yes, that was what she needed--anger. The world would be a much better place without him.
She would do this in an orderly fashion. Grisham was only the triggerman. She wanted to know who had ordered her father's death, who had really been behind it. She couldn't believe that it had been a now-dead Viceroy and a lust for some gold that she supposedly had on her land. If that were so, why was the new Viceroy so eager to hire her in her guise as the Queen? There was more to it, far more. She would have that out of Grisham before she killed him...slowly. She had let her temper get the better of her before and lost out on the answers that she needed. Not this time.
She pulled up the mattress and looked under it--nothing. So, Grisham was not the type to keep his money in his mattress. She started going through the furniture next, pulling out the drawers one by one and rifling through them. She was surprised at how little was there, considering how long he had been in Santa Elena. Just a pile of uniforms and some toiletries, hardly anything personal at all. She found a box of jewelry, which seemed incongruous for a man like Grisham, and dumped it on the floor. There was nothing useful there, no hidden notes in the casing. Perhaps the jewels were gifts from grateful women? If so, many women had had cause to be grateful to Marcus Grisham. But not for much longer. She smiled grimly at the thought and thanked Heaven that Vera would be distracted with her new baby and Gaspar's devotion. Vera had always deserved better than this snake.
Then, at the very bottom of one drawer, under what looked like a cloth that he used to polish his shoes, she found a wrapped bundle. She pulled it out. Inside were letters. All sorts of letters. Some were from the United States of America, Grisham's homeland, some from Monterey...and one was from Spain.
She opened it. She did not recognise the crest, but she did recognise the style. The elegant Spanish and the elaborate seal told her immediately that this was someone from the royal court. The note was not addressed to Grisham at all (where had he gotten it?) but to the previous Viceroy, the one Grisham and his informant in the alleyway had claimed ordered her father's death. It sent pointless greetings to him, discussed now stale court news and then she saw one, clear passage that leapt out at her: "It has come to our attention that Don Rafael Alvarado has interfered with our plans one time too many. We request that you take care of this problem immediately in as discrete a fashion as possible." The note was unsigned.
She fought down an urge to vomit. This was the person who had ordered her father's death. The plot to murder her father did not stop with Grisham, oh, no. It went all the way back to Spain, even to the king's court. Oh, God. Oh, God. She had had no idea. Could she have even known the writer? It was possible that the person who had written this had danced with her or gossiped with her, even as he--or she--had plotted her father's death as coldly as if organizing a wedding feast.
She rifled through the letters again--no, there were two letters from Spain. The second one began in the same way, but this was more recent, for it was addressed to the current Viceroy. The relevant passage, two thirds of the way down the parchment, read, "We understand that your efforts concerning Seņorita Alvarado continue to prove unsuccessful. We strongly suggest that you resolve this business, discretely of course, one way or another by the end of the year or we shall take action ourselves." Again, the note was unsigned. She rifled through the letters again, but none of them proved of interest, though she noted with bitter amusement that all of them seemed to be of some blackmail use to Grisham. No doubt this was why he had held on to this letter. But whom was he blackmailing and whom did he intend to make those revelations to, if necessary? Surely not her? She smiled an angry smile. No, Tessa Alvarado wasn't nearly important enough for that, though villains like the Viceroy didn't mind hiring the Queen to do their dirty work.
At that moment, the latch clicked, bringing her alert. She looked around wildly, but before she could figure out how to get the window unlatched in time, the door opened and a man slipped through. It was not, she saw immediately, Marcus Grisham.
"We meet in the strangest places these days, Doctor," she said, the bitter amusement flooding back.
"Tessa?" Dr. Helm squinted across the room at her, looking startled. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?"
Helm
"I do not think you need me to tell you that this is a very bad idea, mon ami," Pirenne said as Helm stuck a pistol in the back of his belt and pulled his duster on over it.
"I didn't ask for your opinion, Roger." Helm turned his back on Pirenne and strode out through his office to the back door. Let the Frenchman do something about it if he wanted to interfere so badly.
Pirenne followed him. "And yet, you will get it. You must be vraiment fou if you think you can get away with murdering the executive officer of this garrison."
Coldness flooded through Helm. Damn Pirenne! He knew too much. Helm looked back at Pirenne, who slouched against the door to the workshop. "Who said anything about killing Grisham? I'm just going over there to have a little chat with him about leaving Seņora Hidalgo alone. You don't think I'd be stupid enough to shoot him in cold blood in the middle of street, do you?"
Pirenne folded his arms. "I do not know about that, but I have heard that you have tried to beat him to death with your bare hands in the middle of the street in the past. You have to admit that shooting him would at least be quicker and more effective." Helm narrowed his eyes, clamping down hard on his temper. Pirenne looked unimpressed. "Do not glare at me so, mon ami. If you really want to get away with this, you had better keep all that rage for your enemy. And I am not your enemy." He turned back to the worktable that they shared. "Besides, if you want to do anything with that pistol, you had better leave now. I have an appointment with Colonel Montoya and he is due any moment."
"Then, I reckon it's a good thing I'm leaving by the back door." Helm sketched an ironic salute to Pirenne and slipped out the door into the alleyway.
It was a simple enough thing to make his way around to the barracks by way of the alleys, though it was more roundabout than just marching through the square. He had scouted out a convenient back way into the barracks, through a hole in the wall, months ago. As he recalled, Montoya had ordered that it be repaired, but the men detailed to do it had never got around to the business. All the better for Helm.
He was surprised to find the door unlocked--Grisham was more careless than he'd thought. For a fleeting moment, Helm thought it might be a trap and he hesitated. But he had come too far for caution, now, and the longer he lingered in front of Grisham's door, the more likely it was he'd be caught. As soon as he stepped inside, though, he sensed another person. Reaching for his pistol, he squinted into the gloom. The familiar voice, when it came, made him start.
"We meet in the strangest places these days, Doctor," Tessa said, sounding angry.
Helm peered at her, then sagged with relief. "Tessa?! What the bloody hell are you doing here?" As his eyes adjusted, he took in the wreck she had made of the room. "And what are you doing redecorating Grisham's quarters? Somehow, I don't think he'll love what you've done with the place."
She chuckled. "You think I care?" She took a deep, shuddering breath. He thought she might be crying. "He killed my father."
"I see," he said quietly, at a loss for anything more profound.
Her voice turned cold. "You don't sound surprised."
"I'm not." Might as well get it out in the open. "I've known for some time." Her silence was even colder. "I just could never prove it."
"And you never told me." The cold was melting in the white-hot anger he sensed beneath the ice.
He sighed, reaching under his coat to finger the pistol in the back of his belt. "I told you. I had no proof."
"Proof?!" She laughed, short and bitter. "You just didn't trust me to keep from rushing off to kill him."
He took the pistol out of his belt and brought it out before him, rubbing the barrel. "Not after you shot Colonel Alfonso in front of a crowd of witnesses, no."
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, he could see her stricken look. Her breathing sounded fast and panicked in the small room. For a moment, he wondered who else she'd killed in her quest to find her father's murderer, and if they'd been innocents. Probably not, considering the scum that had swirled around the affair of Rafael Alvarado's death, but she did have a tendency not to look before she leaped. It was probably an inherited trait, and the same one that had got her father killed.
"You should talk!" she hissed. "Look at you! You come in here with a loaded pistole and you expect me to think you came just to talk with him?"
He stared back at her. He had expected to be angry at her accusation, even ashamed. But all he felt was longing and sadness as he saw the crack, made at her trial, widen into a canyon between them. He had no idea how to cross it. "As I said, I had no proof. Nor am I likely find any now, after over a year of dead ends. I thought I might find it here and give the Hidalgos a chance to raise their baby in peace, but you're right. A legal way to get rid of the good captain wasn't exactly what I had in mind."
"Well, congratulations, because I've found one!" She grabbed two pieces of paper by her boot and shook them at him. "Look at them!"
Wary, Helm stepped forward and took them from her. "What are these?" he said, squinting at them in the dim light.
"Proof!" She looked triumphant. "He did it all right--but he wasn't the only one. Both the Viceroys and someone else in Spain--I don't know who yet, but I'll find out. And now they want me dead!"
He was opening his mouth to ask why she thought that when the door latch clicked. He flattened himself against the wall, hidden for the moment, cocking the pistol in his hand out of habit. Tessa had no such chance. As the door opened, she blinked in the sudden light, caught crouched over a pile of paper. Helm heard the click of a pistol--Grisham had come back armed. "Well, well, well," Grisham said, inches away from Helm through the wooden door. "I thought I might catch a rat today."
Continue to Part Six
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