Free Wouldn't It Be Deadly by D. E. Ireland

not this time.” Eliza brushed her hand along the wall to the switch. With one click, brightness washed over them.
    â€œThere, that wasn’t so hard.” She turned to speak to Freddy but his sister let out a horrendous scream. He gasped beside her.
    Eliza spun around to see what they were staring at in such horror.
    Nepommuck lay facedown outside his apartment door, head turned to the side. Eliza could see that his eyes were motionless and wide open. She fell back against the wall.
    With a strangled cry, Clara pointed at the dagger plunged into his back. Freddy grabbed his sister, who buried her face against his chest. “Eliza, we must get out of here. Now!”
    But Eliza saw something else besides the dagger. Trembling, she forced herself to walk closer to the dead man. Blood streamed from his wound, staining his brocaded dressing gown and the carpet beneath him. She bent closer to the lifeless body. It was more gruesome than she feared. Plunged into his open mouth was one of Eliza’s shiny new tuning forks.

 
    FIVE
    Any day spent in Scotland Yard was a fearsome day indeed. Eliza could barely control her mounting fear. After examining the Maestro’s body and the hallway, the police brought her to the Yard for questioning. Shaken from the sight of the murdered Nepommuck, she expected the police to ask a few questions and then send her home. Instead they left her alone for hours in a small windowless room as cold as the North Sea. Eliza had nothing to do but worry and stare at the peeling paint on the walls.
    She huddled on a tilted bench that threatened to collapse at any moment. But Eliza refused to move to the two chairs pushed up against a scarred wooden table. No doubt those chairs were reserved for the detectives who would eventually come to interrogate her. Although heaven knew what they expected her to tell them that she hadn’t already said back at Belgrave Place.
    The police had no right to keep her waiting for hours, alone and forgotten. She’d done nothing wrong. Unfortunately growing up in the East End had taught her that the law didn’t give a fig about rights for a person such as her. And if they took it into their heads that she had killed the Maestro, she’d never see the gloomy skies of London again.
    But she wasn’t only worried about herself. Where had they taken Freddy and Clara? Poor Clara had been hysterical when they’d brought them all to the Yard. Freddy’s genteel sister would never stand up to rough treatment by the police. Eliza wasn’t even certain she could.
    If only one of her tuning forks hadn’t been found on Nepommuck’s dead body. It was like an arrow pointed right at her. She hoped the police realized that no murderer would leave such an obvious clue. The tuning fork had probably been left to direct suspicion away from the real murderer, although why that bastard chose to involve her, she’d bloody well like to know.
    She had no motive. Granted, Nepommuck had been a snobbish, irritating fellow, but he’d given her a good job with a salary to match. The police should see instantly that she had no reason to want him dead.
    No, she blamed that explosive article in the newspaper. Someone who read that realized the Maestro was not who he said he was. Certainly that Kollas fellow was enraged about being lied to, given his harsh words earlier that day. And how many other students would also feel cheated or betrayed? But she didn’t understand why that would lead to his murder.
    Eliza rose to her feet and paced the small area between the table and the wall. Did she know the murderer? Was it someone she saw every day? Perhaps a jealous husband. She recalled the spectacle that Mary Finch made of herself at the garden party on Sunday. Had Mary driven her husband not only to distraction, but to murder?
    And what about poor Lady Gresham? At the garden party, she seemed as thrilled as a girl of twenty to be announcing her