I digested this information.
“One thing you can be sure of,” Aunt Martha said.
“Yes?”
“I am fairly certain that whatever your mother is doing, she is not out robbing banks.”
Aunt Martha looked pleased at her own rare joke.
. . . . .
I took to being watchful again.
With no other happy distraction to entertain me—Kit still being gone, what happy distractions could there be?—I determined to seek out the cause of Mother’s increasingly frequent absences. Minerva, always chasing after her sisters, was hardly what I would call diverting company. Doing needlepoint with Aunt Martha had never held any charm. As for the books I used to turn to, even they had let me down of late. What use were made-up stories when every day I woke to the fresh reality that this might be the day a stray bullet would find Kit, take him from me? And so I resolved, for the time being at least, to transform myself back into Lucy Sexton, Girl Detective.
Of course, I was limited in the tools of my trade. Yes, I could follow Mother along in the daytime, far enough to see her go into the park, but I could not follow her into that park, lest she might see me. Yes, I could follow with my eyes the carriage as it took her out of an evening, ascertaining the direction in which it was heading, but there was no second carriage for me to follow her in, to discover her destination. And so I had to content myself with watching and listening, waiting for the opportunity to arise when I might learn more.
That opportunity came late one evening.
After Aunt Martha had gone up to bed, I had remained in the parlor. But the fire had died out with me neglecting to notice the diminishing flames, and the lull of the ensuing cold gloom had overtaken me.
I awoke at the sound of the front door opening, followed by the sound of footsteps on the marble floor:
Two sets of footsteps.
I shrank into the corner of the sofa, hoping that in the dark Mother and whoever was accompanying her would not see me when they came in. But the twin sets of footsteps did not advance in my direction. Rather, they receded off toward the long hallway leading to Father’s study. In the dead stillness of the house, I clearly heard the door to that sacred room click open and then shut again.
With no Kit around to entice me to meet him in the tunnel that could only be accessed from the trapdoor in Father’s study, I had not gone in there since Father’s death—that room was now a relic of the family’s past, only observed by the servants who went in there to dust. Indeed, I barely even used that hallway anymore.
But now I did so, removing my boots and treading down it swiftly on padded feet. I did not intend to enter, nothing so brazen as that. But I did want to listen at the door, hoping to hear the voice of whatever person it was that Mother had invited into our home.
No sooner did I skid to a halt in front of the door, however, than I heard a second door opening from within. That could only mean one thing: the door to Father’s private garden had been opened. Why would Mother and her secret visitor be going out there?
I raced back down the hallway, running up two flights of stairs until I achieved the landing on the third story. There, I made straight for the end of the corridor: Aunt Helen’s old bedroom, now Aunt Martha’s.
Turning the knob slowly, I entered as silently as possible, crept past Aunt Martha’s sleeping form as I crossed the room to the window on the other side: the only window that overlooked the garden. But I needn’t have exercised such caution. Aunt Martha had always been a sound sleeper. And now that she was older, she snored, as she was doing now, the sounds coming from her prone body so loud they would camouflage anything else.
I pressed my face to the glass, relying on the strong moon to afford me a clear view of the garden so far below.
They were seated side by side on the curved stone bench.
Mother wore a pretty gown, shimmering scarlet, while the man beside her had on a dark suit. I could not see Mother’s face, nor the man’s. All I could see of him was that he was tall, his thick brown hair longer than the norm, causing it to curl up a bit at the ends. As I say, I could not see their faces, for the man’s back was to me as he kissed her. There was something disturbingly familiar about the back of that head.
I don’t think I could have been more shocked if Aunt Martha had begun speaking in tongues between her loud snores. In all my life, I had never seen Mother kissed so. It was as though this man would bury his entire body within Mother’s, if such a thing were possible.
I don’t know how long I stood there, witnessing, unable to tear myself away. But then the man was pulling away from Mother, her head tilted upward until her eyes caught mine. She tapped him on the shoulder, gesturing with her chin, and then he was looking up at me too and for the first time I saw his features.
In addition to the shock of brown hair, unspectacular in its color, he had a strong jaw, and as his full lips parted I saw a set of teeth that sent a chill up my spine. I would not say they were wolf’s teeth, and yet they made me think of one as the moon glinted against their brightness. His eye color was not visible at such a distance—later on, I would judge them to be hazel—but I could just make out the faint trace of a scar running from temple to the corner of his mouth.
He was not a handsome man, not by any means, and yet there was something compelling about him, something dangerous about the defiant, self-confident gaze that met mine.
I did not want to be caught in the trap of those eyes any longer, but when I looked back at Mother, I saw her mouthing my name, Lucy.
Struggling to open the double-hung window, I at last jerked the lower frame upward.
“Lucy.” Now I could hear her. “Why don’t you come down and meet the man I am going to marry?”
Aunt Martha snored on.
As I exited the room, I could not help but remember the first sight of them together in the garden, the back of that man’s head.
As I walked down the staircase, I remembered once, a long time ago, witnessing a startlingly similar tableau, a woman I knew well seated across from a man just like that. When Kit had the typhoid, I had stolen out by myself to the park one day, where I’d come across Aunt Helen seated on a bench with a man, the back of whose head looked exactly like this man’s head.
And then it finally struck me: the twin who had survived had not been Mother.
It was Aunt Helen.
My knees buckled under me as I collapsed onto the step.
Mother was dead.
. . . . .
“Are you sure he is not after your money?” I heard Aunt Martha say to the woman I now knew to be Aunt Helen the next day.
The night before, I had obeyed Aunt Helen, making the long way back down to the garden to meet, as she had put it, “the man I am going to marry.” But I cannot say that I registered much of the specific details of what transpired, only vague impressions. I had been too shocked: at the news, at everything, not least of which was the possessive hand the man held at Aunt Helen’s spine, reminding me of a ventriloquist and his toy.
I did note that he was far younger than Father had been—more Aunt Helen’s age, really—and that even though his clothes were fine, there was an impression of unkemptness about him. His words were fine enough too, but again, something about them struck me as not quite right. And there was his energy, a coiled energy coupled with an almost frightening overabundance of manliness.
I am sure I must have offered congratulations to one and best wishes to the other, as appropriate—I must have done, because good manners had been bred into me—but I have no recollection of it.
The whole time I stood before them, stunned, all I could do was try to work through things in my mind, pushing grief aside until later. For some reason, I felt that I could not, should not let show what I now knew to be true.
It all made sense now: the changes I had perceived in the woman I had thought to be Mother since the day of the murder, the new harshness in her, the way she had been with Father, even
the difference in the sounds I had heard coming from their bedroom at night, so much rawer. I realized then that I must have suspected, must have known the truth all along, somewhere in the deep corners of my mind, that this woman before me was not my mother. Certainly, I knew she was nothing like the mother I had grown up with.
But why had Aunt Helen done it? Why pretend to be someone she was not?
And then I saw that clearly too. No matter how much Mother and Father had ever given Aunt Helen, could ever give Aunt Helen, she would always view herself as a poor relation, everything she had in this world dependent upon the benevolence of others. How it must have galled her all those years, to always be second best through no fault of her own. And so, when Mother was murdered, she’d seized her chance to achieve what should have been her life all along as well as Mother’s: a good life, with no one to question her right to it. Perhaps she also worried, with Mother dead, that there would no longer be any reason for Father to support her. Then, too, I liked to think: maybe she loved me so much, she was glad of the opportunity to be my mother, with no one else between us. Her diary had certainly indicated her strong affection for me.
I was as shocked as a person could be to realize that it was Mother who had been dead all along—yes, I would still need to wait until I was alone, away from these two, to properly grieve the loss—and yet I could not fault Aunt Helen for what she’d done. The world had never dealt with her fairly, and so, when opportunity came to call, she had answered.
If I exposed her now, what good could come of that? Aunt Martha, everyone in our world, would no doubt insist upon her expulsion from the house based on the lie she had lived. How hard, I thought, it must have been for her to live that lie all these years, all the things she had been compelled to do.
I did not want her gone, I suddenly saw. She was my only remaining tie left to Mother. Not to mention, if she were exposed as not being Mother, whom would I live with: Remain here alone with Aunt Martha, if the circumstances of Father’s will were even such that we could remain on here? Go with Aunt Martha to live with her ancient parents, my dreadful grandparents, in the country? Neither option was attractive to me.
And so, I resolved, I would live the lie too. I would help Aunt Helen maintain her fiction, for her sake and mine.
There was only one thing I remembered clearly about meeting the man:
I had not liked him.
And then one final thing struck me. Chief Inspector Daniels had told us that the medical examiner had said the murdered woman had been with child. Now that I knew it was Mother lying dead in the churchyard, it meant it was my own brother or sister who lay in that grave with her.
When I lay down on my bed later, I had to shove the corner of the pillow into my mouth to mute the racking sobs of grief as I at last mourned the twin losses of Mother and the sibling I had always longed for and now would never have.
But now it was a new day, and it was time to pay attention. Perhaps Aunt Martha would do my dirty work for me, asking questions I had been too stunned to ask the night before.
“You have said many rude things to me over the years,” Aunt Helen addressed Aunt Martha, “and I have forgiven you each time. But this really is the limit! Do you think my money is the only thing that might attract a man?”
“I am well aware that you have many attractions, Aliese,” Aunt Martha said. “But my brother left you a very wealthy widow. Surely you must acknowledge the possibility that—”
“I acknowledge nothing.” Aunt Helen bit off the words. “The man I am going to marry has plenty of his own money.”
“Oh, really? What profession does he pursue?”
“He is … he is …” In her anger, Aunt Helen stumbled over her own words. “He is a merchant,” she finished at last.
“I see.”
“I think it is time you went, Martha,” Aunt Helen said.
“Went? Went where? Out? To bed?”
“I think it is time you leave,” Aunt Helen clarified. “No doubt, now that I am to remarry, we will all be more comfortable—yourself as much as anybody—if you and I are no longer under the same roof.”
“I don’t understand,” I said to Aunt Helen after Aunt Martha had clumped her way up the stairs to commence packing one last time.
“Surely you must see that it is not tenable to have her here any longer.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, nor was it.
The idea of Aunt Martha, at her age, going home to live with her parents again—probably the last move she would make—created a sad vision. But it must have been very hard for Aunt Helen to suffer her presence for so long, given how much they had always hated each other, and while I did love Aunt Martha, I could not now blame Aunt Helen for seizing the chance to have her gone.
“What I meant,” I continued, “is that I don’t understand why you have to get married now. Or at all. I have only just met this man!”
It was a pitiful excuse, I knew, particularly since I was well aware that she had known him for far longer than she was saying. Had she been in love with him all these years? Had she waited patiently for Father’s death, having endured being Father’s wife in every way, so that now she could marry the man she truly loved?
But I could say none of that.
“I am still relatively young,” Aunt Helen said, echoing the words Aunt Martha had spoken when I’d first wondered where the woman I’d previously thought to be Mother was disappearing to. “There are still opportunities to be had. There is still a lot of life ahead of me. Don’t you think I have a right to take advantage of those opportunities, to have that life be as happy as possible?”
. . . . .
Aunt Helen was not at home when Aunt Martha took her leave.
“I hope you will be all right here without me, Lucy,” Aunt Martha said. “I fear for you alone in this house.”
As so often in the past, there was an underlying harsh judgment in Aunt Martha’s words.
But I did not mind on that day.
She was the only tie still connecting me to Father. So rather than questioning her about her meaning, or censuring her for speaking the words in the first place, I merely hugged her hard, wiping the tears from her crepe cheeks when she began to cry.
. . . . .
His name was Richard Earl.
As I say, I did not like him upon first acquaintance, nor did I like him markedly more as that acquaintance grew. I suppose an alienist would say that I resented the idea of seeing Father replaced as man of the house.
Surely there was truth in this. But there was a deeper truth, one I could not quite put my finger on. No matter how I might try to unravel it in my mind, I still came back to the same thread: I did not want to see another man sitting at the breakfast table every morning, did not want to see another man occupy Father’s private study, did not want to see another man go up to the bedroom Mother and Father had shared at night.
“Someday soon,” Aunt Helen said, adjusting her gown before her looking glass just prior to leaving for the wedding ceremony, “though it may not seem so to you now, you yourself will be married. And then, were I not to marry Richard, I would be left here alone.” She turned to look at me. “Is that what you want? Tell me now and I will call off the ceremony.”
Would she do that? I wondered, studying the dare in her unflinching eyes without knowing the answer. But no. I would not ask that of her. She had waited patiently so long for this day. I did not want her to be left alone.
“I just want you to be happy, Mother,” I said. “Are you?”
“Never happier,” she said, turning back to her own reflection.
. . . . .
The ceremony was a simple one with no guests, save myself and a second witness, a maid from the vicarage, drafted into this service at the last minute. The vicar, Mr. Thomason, presided.
Studying Aunt Helen’s face as she looked up at Mr. Earl, I saw that she was happy. She did love him.
And he? Suffice it to say that even standi
ng before a man of God, there was an untamable energy that sprang between the two of them that was more animal than human.
Afterward, at home, Aunt Helen went up to change, leaving me alone with Mr. Earl.
“I suppose,” he said, assuming a seat and languidly crossing one leg over the other, “you should call me ‘Papa’ now.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” I replied.
“Very well, Lucy.” He placed his hands behind his head and laughed, a sardonic sound. “As you wish it.”
• Thirty-six •
He had left me in the mist. He returned to me from the mist.
. . . . .
Aunt Helen and Richard, as I had come to think of him, had long since left for their month-long honeymoon in the Swiss lakes when the knock came. With Mother dead, Father dead, Aunt Helen away, and Aunt Martha gone, I was the only member of my family still under that roof, and it was lonely. So it was something of a relief when a knock came at the door.
A moment later, Victoria Tyler was announced, ushered in. Immediately, I saw that her eyes were rimmed red and I suspected the worst.
“This came today.” She thrust the letter she clutched in her hands at me. “Here. John is still at work and I have no one with whom to share the news.”
I did not want to take that letter from her, feared the words it might contain. If I never read it, then I would never learn any bad news. Father’s words came back to me: Once a bell has rung, it cannot be unrung. So long as I remained ignorant, worse could not come to the worst. But I could not bear to see her alone in her concern and so I accepted it, unfolded the pages.
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