But which one is it? my mind suddenly, silently screamed. WHICH ONE?
Frantically, I looked at their clothes more closely, even the dead one, although I was reluctant to draw nearer. But that was no help, I soon realized. How long had it been, I wondered, since the last time I could definitively say which garment belonged to which twin?
Which one? WHICH ONE?
They looked the same, the same.
It couldn’t be Mother, I told myself. It could not be Mother.
Before that moment, I would have said I loved Aunt Helen, greatly, and I would have meant it. But Aunt Helen was not my mother. There was only one woman whom I had ever loved with all my heart and she could not be dead now.
There and then, I begged God in my heart. Please, God, if one of them has to be dead, please, please let it be Aunt Helen!
The eyes of the live one had turned, were looking at me now with a puzzled expression in them.
I ran to her, dropped behind her chair, tore at the bonds that still held her wrists crossed so tight it was as though twin streams of rope had been embedded in the delicate skin, scrabbled at the rope with my nails until her hands were at last free. Then I moved around to the front again, looked down at her. Who was she?
“Lucy?”
She held out a trembling hand, a hand with much blood on it.
I went to that hand, not knowing whom I was going to, fell at her feet, took that blood-covered hand in both of mine and laid my cheek against it.
It was then, with the back of that sticky hand against my cheek, its copper scent in my nostrils, that I became aware that it was her left hand against my cheek and that there was something else I should have been feeling against my skin and yet didn’t.
Gently, I removed that hand from my cheek, studied the back of it as though I expected to find the answer to the mystery of the universe there.
And I did find the answer to the mystery, although it was not the answer I’d wanted. This hand was naked. There was no wedding ring on it.
“Aunt Helen.” I spoke the words flatly, having now realized which twin had survived.
She pulled back, startled, withdrew her hand from mine, studied the back of it as I had done.
“What? Where is my ring?” she asked, puzzled.
“Where is your—?”
“That’s right,” she said. “I remember now. He took it from me.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but as her eyes searched the room frantically, my eyes followed wherever hers looked.
And then, there it was, halfway across the room: a tiny flash of metal, only a tiny flash because most of the ring was covered with blood.
I raced to it, brought it back to her. Somehow, it seemed important to both of us that she have it back as quickly as possible.
Immediately, she slipped it on her finger, blood and all, looked at it.
“There,” she said, looking oddly pleased.
And I was oddly pleased too, seeing that familiar ring there: the symbol of unity made of cobalt blue and diamond, fashioned into the shape of forget-me-nots.
So Mother was alive after all!
But now that she had her ring back, confusion settled over her face again. It was awful to see.
“Lucy?” She placed her other hand against my cheek. “What has happened?”
I followed her eyes as they took in the room around us, the river of blood.
Then I started to scream.
• Twenty-three •
No one came.
ticktickticktick
“Where is he?” I asked Mother, the urgency in my voice threatening to spill over into hysteria. “Is he still in the house?”
He. Mother had already indicated a man had done this when, referring to her absent ring, she’d said, “He took it from me.”
“Who?” Mother still looked puzzled.
“The person who did this!”
“No.” Still that vacant, perplexed look. “He left.” Her eyes were the picture of someone trying to piece together the order of impossible events. A moment ago she had asked me what had happened. Now it was as though she were struggling to return from a faraway place. “That must have been when he dropped the ring. He ran away when first we heard you call out.”
This made little sense to me in my own confusion. Would a man who was capable of doing all …this suddenly run away at the calling out of a mere girl?
And where had he run to? I had not passed him coming in. Had he escaped through the door leading out to the private garden behind my father’s study? Had he gone to the kitchen, disturbing Cook and the servants as he escaped through the door back there?
The kitchen … the servants …
Where were the servants???
Why had they not stopped this?
And then my father was there, covered in soot.
I didn’t understand anything—nothing made sense anymore. Had the whole world gone mad? Aunt Helen dead, my father’s skin darkened as though he had been cleaning out chimneys, the servants nowhere to be found. Had the servants all been slaughtered as well?
Was I dreaming all this? Please, God, I prayed, slamming my eyes shut, praying to a deity I did not often think much on, let these images go away.
But they would not.
“Lucy, what has happened?” my father demanded of me. Everyone was demanding it of me, it seemed, as though I were the one witness.
As I saw my father’s eyes frantically move back and forth between the faces before us—my aunt’s dead one, Mother’s still living but so changed—I could not help but find it an eerie echo of the first time he saw the two women together, that night so long ago now when my aunt first came to us.
I knew what he was doing. It was what I had done. He was trying to figure out who had died, who had lived.
With a chin nod in the direction of the blood-drenched body, the one with its head thrown back, a mere thin stalk still attaching that head to its lifeless body, I put him out of his misery.
“That one,” I said, barely able to look at her, “that is my aunt.” I held tight to Mother’s frozen fingers. “This is Mother.”
I saw his shoulders sag with unmistakable relief.
What an odd feeling for someone to have at such a moment, in the midst of all this carnage: relief. And yet, I knew what he was feeling. I had felt it too, a feeling of such shameful relief that already I knew in a part of my mind that guilt must surely follow—if not today, it would be here tomorrow.
Even Mother looked relieved, if also still confused.
We were all glad—is that even the right word?—that if one had to die, it was Helen.
. . . . .
“Who did this?” my father demanded, striving to keep a gentleness in his tone, but not quite achieving it.
“He was a monster …” Mother shuddered.
And then the house began filling up with people.
First the servants straggled in. They, too, were covered with soot. It was all so confusing. Why was the world suddenly covered with soot? One servant screamed, fainting upon seeing the grotesque tableau created by my aunt and Mother. The others were equally shaken, although no one else fainted, and my father prevailed upon the strongest-looking one to go for help. The servant did not want to leave—we had to reassure her repeatedly that her mistress had survived—but did when my father at last shouted at her, “I cannot leave my wife like this! GO!”
When the servant returned, she had Victoria Tyler and Kit with her. A few minutes later, John Tyler followed, a constable in tow. And shortly after that, a superintendent, one Chief Inspector Daniels.
Chief Inspector Daniels was a short man, looking like nothing so much as a basketful worth of dinner rolls held together by the occasional bone and some sinew. He seemed as confused by the horror of it all as any of us as he bumbled his way through his instructions to people: telling the servants to stay, then telling them to go to their own quarters of the house accompanied by the constable until he sho
uld call for them; asking Mother, after her wrists had been bandaged, if she would like to change out of her blood-spattered garments, then gently requesting she wait; asking my father what part of the house the fire had taken place in and then, not waiting for an answer, sniffing the air and announcing firmly that there had been no fire here.
I was outraged that no one more competent had been sent. Still, I followed as Chief Inspector Daniels led the main family away from the scene of the slaughter.
“Where can we go to talk privately?” he asked my father as we exited the room. “I need to question you and your wife.”
“My study?” my father immediately suggested. It struck me as odd that my father, always so definite about everything, should phrase it as an interrogatory and not a clear statement.
“Very well,” Chief Inspector Daniels said. He turned to Mr. Tyler. “Go find another constable. Tell him to send for the coroner.” Then to Mrs. Tyler and Kit: “Please stay available in the house. I’m sure Mrs. Sexton and the girl will need friends close by afterward.”
The last thing I saw before Chief Inspector Daniels shut the door to my father’s study was the look of concern on Kit’s face. How far we had come since our innocent walk that morning.
No sooner had the door shut, however, than my father issued a gentle command to me.
“Leave us, Lucy,” he said. “You must wait outside with Kit and Victoria. I do not want you exposed to any more unpleasantness.”
“No.” I stood my ground with that one firm word: “No.”
I was not going to be banished along with the tearful servants, only to be later served a sanitized version of whatever had transpired. This was my home. This was my world that this had happened in.
My father opened his mouth, no doubt to press his suit, but Chief Inspector Daniels cut him off.
“Your daughter is right, of course, Mr. Sexton,” he said. “She was the first to happen upon the scene of the crime. She must stay.”
My father, not accustomed to taking orders from others, shut his mouth all the same.
Chief Inspector Daniels took hold of Mother’s hand gently, tucking it inside the crook of his arm as he slowly led her to a sofa.
Mother having been seated, Chief Inspector Daniels settled his soft bulk upon the seat right beside her.
“Mrs. Sexton,” he said, still holding her hand, “you have had a bad day here today.”
I thought, ruefully, that Chief Inspector Daniels was a master of understatement.
As though reading my mind, he amended, “No doubt, this has been the worst day of your life. Be that as it may, I will need all your help in bringing the guilty party or parties to justice. So I must ask you, although it is soon and however painful it may be for you to discuss, what happened here today?”
“There was a man …” Mother’s voice drifted off.
The silence stretched out long before she continued.
“I was looking out the window in the front parlor, watching the street.” There were still falters, but as she spoke, her voice gained a degree of strength. “I was trying to decide whether to go out or stay in when I saw a man come running down the street.”
“Did you know him?” Chief Inspector Daniels interrupted.
“No.” Mother shook her head vehemently. “I never saw him before today.” She paused, visibly seeking to gather more strength. “He ran straight toward our door. A moment later, I heard a knock.”
“And you answered the knock?” Chief Inspector Daniels asked. “You didn’t wait for a servant?”
“No.” Again the head shake. “I was standing right near the door, and there was something about him. His every movement spoke of a great emergency. I thought perhaps an accident had befallen Frederick.” Here she looked at my father. “I thought he was bringing bad news.”
“So you answered the door,” Chief Inspector Daniels said.
“Yes,” Mother answered, “and the man said there had been an emergency, only nothing like what I had imagined.”
“Oh?”
“He said there had been a bad fire at the Carsons’. He said that it was still raging and he begged the loan of all the servants to help with the bucket brigade.”
The Carsons lived in the next street over. Why had Kit and I not noticed the smell of smoke when we returned from our walk in the park? I supposed we were so caught up in thinking of what had transpired between us the night before, caught up in thinking about the changed way things were between us now, all London could have burned and we might not have noticed the conflagration.
“It is true,” my father spoke, breaking into my thoughts, breaking the flow of Chief Inspector Daniels’s interrogation of Mother. “I saw a shot of flame in the sky as I was returning from my club. When I went to see what was causing it, I came across the fire at the Carsons’. All our servants were already there.” He looked down at his soot-stained suit. “I stayed to help them.” A horrified look crossed his face. “Perhaps if I had not stopped—”
Chief Inspector Daniels held up his hand to stop my father’s words. I suspected he had no patience for self-recriminations, not at this moment.
“So you did send the servants,” Chief Inspector Daniels addressed his words to Mother, “as the man requested.”
“Yes,” Mother said. She looked up at my father, adding dully, “What of the Carsons? Did Elizabeth survive?”
“The house was completely destroyed, but they are both fine,” my father reassured her.
“And the man departed with the servants?” Chief Inspector Daniels asked Mother.
“No,” Mother said, the puzzled expression returning to her face. “I left him on the doorstep, went back inside the house to give the servants instructions, and they of course left through the back door. When I returned, I saw the servants parading in military fashion up the street below. The man had seemed so urgent, I thought surely he would go back with them. At the very least, I thought he would go knocking on other doors in the street—you know, to raise more help.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“You said you were watching the street when you saw him come running. He never stopped at any of the other houses?”
“No. I suppose I should have thought it strange at the time. He ran right past the Tylers’. I saw him run straight to our door! But I was so immediately worried about the Carsons, it wasn’t until the servants departed and he remained behind himself that the first feeling of unease set in.”
I suspect the same thought occurred to us all at once: the fire had been deliberately set so that the man could come to our house, drawing the servants away.
“Then what happened?” Chief Inspector Daniels asked.
“The man asked if he could have a drink of water. His skin was covered in soot”—she turned briefly to my father—“as Frederick is now. And I had no servants left to send for the water. He had obviously been helping to put out the fire. How could I deny him?”
Her question was a plea for which no one had an answer.
“I told him I would bring him a glass and to wait there, but as I turned away, I felt an arm grab me tight around the waist, the hand on the other arm drawing a blade close to my throat as I heard the door being kicked shut behind us. ‘Where is Helen?’ he hissed in my ear.”
Mother stopped as though she would not, could not go on.
My father moved behind Mother, placed a protective hand on her shoulder. She flinched at the touch. I supposed it was not surprising, given that the last time a man had approached her from behind a knife had wound up at her throat.
“And where was your sister?” Chief Inspector Daniels asked in a voice so soothing, he might have been a mesmerist.
“H-h-h-helen was in the back parlor,” Mother said at last. “But I refused to answer his question!” she added with some degree of pride. “I could tell that if I did, it would not end well.”
Mother, I thought with an awful ruefulness, could give Chief Inspector Dan
iels a run for his money in the field of understatement.
“He told me he would kill me right where I stood if I did not tell him where she was,” Mother said, “and still I did not answer. But then Helen was there. She came out from the back parlor. I could see from the look on her face, she knew him right away. ‘Let Aliese go,’ she commanded.”
“Did she call him by name?” Chief Inspector Daniels asked.
“No, but I wish she had.” She looked closely at Chief Inspector Daniels. “That would be valuable information to have, would it not?”
Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“It is too bad, then,” Mother said, “that I never heard it—not then, not … later.”
“But the man did not let you go?”
“Oh!” Mother looked surprised that he did not know this, as if we all should have guessed. “He did. Well, that is not exactly how it happened. Helen—you should have seen how brave she was!—told him to let me go, that it was her he really wanted. That’s when he told her that if she did everything he asked, I would not die. He told her to lead us to a room that could not be seen from the street, which was how we ended up in the back parlor. Then he directed me to sit in a chair, took a length of rope from his cloak, commanded her to bind my hands behind my back. He told her the instant she ceased to obey him, he would kill me. Helen obeyed. Then he pushed her into the chair beside me, tied her hands behind her back, and then … and then … and then he slit her throat.”
I couldn’t help it: I gasped at the suddenness. It was as though, so long as Mother kept telling her story—if she could somehow go on telling it forever—it would not end the way it had ended.
“And then,” Mother said, followed by a soft sigh, as though the telling of the tale had been somehow even more awful than the living of it and now she was tired out, “Lucy came home.”
“It had to have been someone Helen knew from before,” my father said darkly.
“Before what?” Chief Inspector Daniels, still an innocent in the ways of our family, asked.
So my father explained, beginning with the birth of Mother and my aunt, hitting all the high points between then and now, concluding with, “We never met any of the people from her past. We have no way of knowing what lurid things might have existed in that past! The man could have been anybody.”
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