by Karen Odden
Even before I took in the full import of this, I felt the blood drain from my face. Had I truly been a suspect? What motive could I possibly have for killing Edwin?
“What do you mean?” It came out barely above a whisper. “What evidence?”
His voice was restrained. “First, there were reddish bits on the hem of your dress.”
I felt my eyes widen. “But it was paint. I’d dropped my brush that day.”
“You also didn’t seem surprised by his death.” His eyebrows rose, and he paused to allow me to acknowledge that truth, if only to myself. “I don’t know if you recall, but you simply sat down, and your expression was very calm. Typically people respond with surprise or tears when we tell them a relation has died. And then, when I asked if someone might want to hurt him, you almost laughed. Not as if it were humorous, but . . .”
I couldn’t even reply.
“Last—and most important—was your letter to Edwin.”
My mind darted back to that afternoon in search of a missive we’d found but came up with nothing. Bewildered, I said, “I don’t remember any—”
“It was in the desk drawer.” His voice was somber. “We searched it before you arrived.”
“Very well. What did it say?”
“That you hated him for what he did to your parents, and you wished that he’d died instead of either of them.” His eyes, watchful, never left mine. “It had no date, but it was signed—clearly—with your name.”
A blaze of shame raced from my crown to my feet. Overcome, I stood and went to the window. The chill from outside penetrated the diamond panes and I drew in my breath so the air could cool the heat in my lungs. My hands found the pair of hasps and clung to their metal edges until they bit into my fingers.
I couldn’t recall everything I’d said in that letter, but what little Matthew had quoted brought back the hateful, bitter state I’d been in when I wrote it, and a groan escaped my lips. The thought of Edwin reading that letter—and perhaps rereading it over the years—made something inside me shrivel with a combination of anguish and remorse.
“I shouldn’t have written those things,” I said shakily. “Or at least I should never have sent it—it was after my mother died . . .” My voice dwindled, and I stared out at the street, at the shops across the way, their interiors dark, and the gas lamps casting a glare on the plate-glass windows. “He never mentioned the letter to me. I didn’t even know it reached him.” My throat was thick with tears. “I wish to God it hadn’t.”
Behind me the chair creaked and his steps came close—close enough that he could touch my shoulder. “Annabel.”
His voice was full of kindness, and I choked out, “Why have you been so decent to me? You must have thought I was a monster.”
“Not a monster,” he corrected and turned me toward him. The faintest smile came and went, but his eyes were somber. “But it did make me wonder what he’d done to make you so angry. Because a letter like that—well, clearly it was written under extreme duress.”
I winced and forced out the question: “So you thought I might have had something to do with his death?”
“Instinctively, no.” He shook his head. “The chief and I both saw how indignant you were when you found us in your brother’s room. He thought you might be concerned about the paintings. But it didn’t seem that way to me. Your every instinct was to defend your brother.”
I managed a nod.
“Yet I couldn’t acquit you merely because . . . well, because my instincts said to. So I took the opportunity to observe you rather closely that afternoon.”
That took me aback. “You did?”
“Yes.” He paused. “You handled Edwin’s things gently, with tenderness. Slowly your face took on a look of grief as you absorbed what had happened. And when I asked you questions, your answers suggested a relationship that had been difficult—but it appeared you felt more regret than anger about it.”
“That’s true,” I said softly. A distant church bell chimed the half hour; a closer one echoed it more clearly. “Is that why you let me come along, why you accepted my offer of help?” And then, as another thought occurred to me: “Or was it because your chief inspector still suspected me?”
“He asked me to arrange for surveillance, at least for a few days, and he ordered me to follow you home,” he admitted. “Although I would have done it anyway. I surmised you wouldn’t be thinking about your own safety, and it was late.”
I nodded. Aside from the lamplighter, I recalled nothing of that walk to my flat.
“We set a constable to watch you the next morning.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “You can imagine his surprise when you came straight to the Yard.”
I couldn’t help but smile by way of reply.
“I’d been told that Mr. Pagett’s case was a priority,” he continued, “so I had passed your case on to another inspector. However, once I realized that your concerns were intertwined with Mr. Pagett’s . . . well, accepting your offer to help seemed to be the most practical course. Eventually my chief was convinced you had nothing to do with Edwin’s death, and he told me to keep you at a distance.” He looked apologetic. “When we’re building a case, there can be no possibility that any personal considerations have tarnished the evidence. He has to follow procedures very properly right now. We all do.”
“Why especially now?”
“Because the political situation has changed,” he replied. “When Disraeli became prime minister last year, some of his cabinet pushed to dispense with plainclothesmen altogether. In the end, it was decided to keep us, but then several months ago, our superintendent was found to be colluding in a thieving ring.”
I felt my eyes widen.
“Naturally, when it came to replacing him, the police commissioner found the straightest arrow he could. Chief Inspector Martin is meticulous and exacting, and he expects his orders to be followed to the letter. That’s why he was”—he paused briefly—“surprised when you showed up at the Yard this morning.”
Now I realized the awkward situation I’d created for him. Alarmed, I asked, “Will you be disciplined for it? I didn’t say a word—”
He shook his head. “No. I think he assumed you were naturally concerned. He just abhors any hint of interference or oversight from a civilian.” He grinned, and I saw he was trying to cheer me. “I assured him you were uncommonly inquisitive but could be reasoned with.”
A soft laugh escaped. “I wish you’d told me. I never meant to put you in a difficult position.”
“I know. I chose to take it.”
“Why?”
He took my hand gently in his own, turned it over, and drew his thumb over my palm in a way that sent heat along my every nerve. “Because you deserve an ally in this.” His eyes were dark with sympathy. “The day of the funeral, when I saw you standing by Edwin’s grave, you looked so full of uncertainty and despair that . . . well, I knew you had questions about Edwin, and you’d have no peace until you understood what had happened to the brother you loved and lost.” His voice dropped. “I’m familiar enough with the feeling myself to recognize it in someone else.”
Suddenly I understood. He longed to help people find the truth and peace he hadn’t yet found for himself. “That’s why you became a policeman,” I said, and when he made no reply, I added quietly, “Am I right?”
He gave a single nod. “That’s a good part of it, yes.”
In that moment, the two of us stood facing each other, my hand still in his, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off him, and I felt suddenly, acutely aware that we were alone. I could have reached out my other hand and touched his cheek, traced his mouth with my thumb—
He swallowed, and I perceived him pulling back as if from a precipice. He released my hand, shifted his weight to step away, and took up one of Edwin’s sketchbooks.
“What have you found?” he asked, his voice pragmatic.
The moment had vanished like a trace of smoke in the wind.
But at least I understood why.
In an attempt to match his practical demeanor, I picked up the first sketchbook of Tennersley, paged through, and turned the book so he could see it right side up. “Here’s the school he attended—the river—and here are some of the boys. His friends, I suppose. But look at this.” I opened to the page with the young man from the funeral. “He was at the funeral and introduced himself. Will Giffen.” I turned a few pages. “And so was this man. He left without speaking to me, although he gave me a strange look, almost as if something I’d done had made him angry.” I took up the next journal and paged through. “There’s another sketch of him back here—”
“Wait.”
I stopped turning and flipped back one page and then another.
“There.” He pointed.
It was a sketch of a young man, with dark hair and eyes, cheekbones that brought attractive angles and planes to his face, and a finely cut mouth. But the dark eyes were flat and cold. Edwin didn’t like this young man; I could tell.
“Who’s that?” Matthew’s voice had sharpened.
“I don’t know. Most of them aren’t labeled. It must be one of the other boys at the school. He doesn’t look very friendly, does he?”
“He was at the auction.”
I stared. “He was? You’re sure?”
He nodded, his eyes fixed on the page. “If Edwin’s sketch is accurate, I think so. Are there any more of him?”
I flipped through the last few pages of the sketchbook until I found one on which several boys’ faces were drawn more meticulously than in the earlier versions. Whoever this dark-haired boy was, Edwin had caught him in a moment of callousness and arrogance.
Matthew blew out his breath. “I’d swear that’s him. We entered the room at the same time. He sat on the opposite side.”
A cold feeling began at the top of my scalp and crawled its way down my spine. “Matthew, this means . . .”
He nodded. “Edwin’s death might have been personal—not a result of the theft, but—”
“Somehow connected to Tennersley.” I felt a beat of alarm. “And if this man was an art student with Edwin, that could explain why he took the Boucher.”
Matthew’s expression changed to understanding. “Because he would recognize its value.”
I nodded.
“Oh Lord.” Matthew scrubbed hard at his scalp with a hand, as if to energize the organ inside it. “This upends the way I’ve been thinking about everything, and . . . sorry, I’m just trying to put things in order.” He gestured toward the sketchbooks. “Was he unhappy there?”
“I think so. Not at first—but later, yes. His sketches become sharper and bleaker in tone.”
“What year did he leave?”
I calculated backward. “He wasn’t yet sixteen, so it must have been the spring of 1865.”
“He came home?”
“He returned to London,” I corrected him. “But he didn’t come home, not at first. I told you he went to live with a friend—mostly to avoid my father. Father didn’t want to see Edwin, said he was a disgrace.”
“Did you see him at all?”
I shook my head. “Father wouldn’t allow it. I didn’t even know where he was staying. Mother saw him, I think, but only when my father was away, and she never told me where he was.”
“In your letter you said something about Edwin’s habit of going to dangerous places, how it led to your parents’ deaths.”
I nodded unhappily. “At the time, the doctor said their deaths were caused by the miasmas down by the river near the . . . the opium dens. He believed my father brought some of it home on his clothes, which is why my mother died as well.”
“Edwin was in an opium den, then?”
I noted gratefully the lack of horror in his voice. He might have been asking about the weather.
“My father had to go and fetch him out.”
“How did he know where Edwin was?”
A cold draft from the window brushed the back of my neck, making me shiver. I wrapped the blanket more securely around me, and tried to turn the memories of that horrible night into words. “A boy came to our door, very late, to say Edwin was in an opium den and unconscious. He would die if he wasn’t taken to a doctor. So my father went to find him.”
“He had some fatherly feeling still.”
“No,” I said quietly. “My mother got down on her knees and begged him.”
He drew in his breath. “I see.”
The scene was as clear in my mind as when I first watched it. “He was disgusted with Edwin—and disgusted with himself for giving in to my mother. I remember as he left, he said to her, ‘I’m doing this for you, Louisa, not for him. And it is the last favor you may ever ask of me.’” I paused and my voice sounded far away, even to myself. “Little did he know that his prediction would come to pass. They were both dead within a fortnight.”
Matthew remained silent.
I sighed. “So Father brought Edwin home, and the doctor came each day to bleed him and dose him with tonics. Mother slept on a pallet in his room every night. As Edwin began to recover, my father and mother both fell ill. My father died first, my mother a few days later. By then Edwin had run off again. Weak as he was, he said he couldn’t bear to be there, watching her suffer.” Into my mind came the image of my mother in her bed, sweating and shivering at once. “She begged me to help Edwin, to keep him from going back to opium, and not to abandon him. I told her I would try. But in those weeks after she died, I was very angry with him, and that’s when I wrote that letter.” A pause. “Later the doctor admitted he might have been wrong about Edwin causing their deaths.”
“Oh?”
“I think he said what he did because he was upset.” I remembered Dr. Walker, full of bitterness toward my absent brother as he and I stood at my mother’s deathbed. His hand shook as he laid aside his stethoscope. “But later, Felix told me the doctor mentioned several similar cases of fever in houses near ours. So it wasn’t necessarily Edwin’s fault.”
“Hm.” A pause. “When did you next see Edwin?”
“Not for a long time,” I said. “He was arrested for forgery, and he was in jail for a year, not allowed visitors—with the exception of the vicar. I wasn’t told when he would be released. But one day I came out of the Slade and found him waiting for me. He looked thin and desperately unhappy. He apologized profusely, said he despised himself, and understood why I would hate him, but he had nowhere else to go.” I sighed. “So I brought him home. He only stayed for a few days.” I looked down at my fingers where they held the blanket. “We had a row, and the next day he told me he’d found a place to live. He gave me this address and left.” Matthew remained silent, and I wrapped the blanket more closely around me. “I told you I knew Edwin better than anyone, and it’s true that we were close as children. But when it comes to the last few years, before jail, I hardly knew him at all. The places he went, the people he met . . .” My voice faded. “I didn’t know half the people at his funeral.” I gave a brittle laugh. “What a rotten little family history.”
A long minute passed, and then he reached into his pocket.
“Yours was one of two letters we found in Edwin’s desk the day he died.” He held the letter out to me. “The other was this, from your father.”
I remembered watching my father compose his letters to Edwin at the desk in his study. The bald spot at the top of his head shone in the lamplight as he bent over the pages, and the nub made a furious scratching sound on the paper. One night the ink bottle flew off the desk as he jerked the pen out of it. The black stain on the carpet never came out.
Matthew was still holding Father’s letter for me to take, but I hesitated. “I can only imagine what it says,” I said.
He grimaced. “Yes. I wouldn’t want to receive such a letter as this.”
That decided me. “I don’t want to read it. At least, not now.”
His hand dropped. “Very well. Although there is a passage in here
that pertains to you.”
“There is?”
He opened it and turned the paper over, so he could read from the back. “‘Your sister,’” he read, “‘is everything you are not. Whereas you are lazy and embittered, she is industrious and devoted; whereas you have squandered your talents, she has embraced and developed hers; whereas you have devolved to a mere copyist, she has gained originality. All that you could have been, she is, and I have no regrets as to the provisions in my will.’” He looked up. “Does he mean giving you the income from the house?”
I nodded. “Probably. When was it written?”
“November of 1872.” He folded the pages back into their original shape. “Would you like to have this, for what he wrote about you?”
“No, thank you.”
He looked at me curiously, but I understood all too well the reason for my father’s ardent praise in a letter I was never meant to see.
“I’ll keep it for now.” Matthew slid the letter back inside his coat pocket and withdrew his pocketbook together with a different piece of paper, folded in quarters. “I’ve something else to show you. The layout of the Pantechnicon. I went to see George Radermacher today.”
“Oh?”
“He’s a garrulous fellow, quite lonely, I think.” He paused. “He had a famous visitor last week, the novelist George Eliot.”
My eyebrows rose. “The author of Middlemarch?”
He nodded. “Apparently, she had come by to inquire if he’d catalog her books. He was pleased as punch, had to tell me all about it before I got a word in edgewise.” A wry look. “Finally, about half an hour along, I managed to steer him toward talking about the Pantechnicon. He opened up readily enough, and told me all about how he’d have made a good policeman himself because he was an expert at detecting when people were trying to cheat them.”
“Cheat them,” I echoed.
He nodded. “Some depositors would go so far as to have special headboards built with secret compartments, to avoid paying high insurance rates.”
“I don’t understand.”