Chris put his head down and scurried after her, desperately praying that neither would call upon him.
They emerged out into the stormy night. Gathered up under the canvas, musicians had started to play again, their music hesitant but lively, and a few of the guests danced. Children sat in a circle playing clapping games. Chris looked, but he caught no glimpse of either Rachel or Rosie.
Olivia made a disgusted sound at the back of her throat while they kept their distance from the tentative revelry. “Well. I was a bit worried about Norwood going back to the guest house tonight, considering. At least it seems as if Mother will herd him into a bed, instead. So. I’ll count the entire encounter a victory.”
Chris pulled his hood closed. The wind pushed rain in through the gaps. He looked at Olivia from the corner of his eye, and he remembered her old murmured bruises shared with him by a sunlit pool. He licked his lips. “Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” Olivia snapped.
Swallowing, he nodded.
Olivia was less introspection and more bloodhound by the time they reached the guest house, both of them dripping head to toe. Chris sighed as he pulled off and then shook his cloak in the foyer. Why did it seem as if every time he went anywhere with this woman, he ended up soaking wet? For her part, Olivia toed off her rubber boots and was already halfway up the stairs before Chris could hang his cloak.
“Maris!” she called. “We’re here and ready to interrogate!”
They found Billy Jones hunched into a ball, his back pressed up against the darkroom door, surrounded by photographs. Maris stood over him with her trusty icepistol glowing faintly white in the night air. Olivia nodded to her, and then slowly moved into the room. Jones didn’t so much as move. His chest rising and falling was the only indication that Maris hadn’t shot him.
“Hullo, Billy,” Olivia murmured softly. She didn’t look at him but instead began prowling the perimeter of the room, plucking photographs off the walls seemingly at random.
“Miss Olivia,” Jones replied, his voice low and pained and hollow.
“I really wish we hadn’t come to this.” Olivia shook her head, studying a photo before pulling it down from the line and adding it to her growing pile. “I’m already the reason so much has happened to you. I don’t much care for being the one to interrogate you right before I hand you off to the police.”
“I’ll keep your name off the report,” Maris hastened to offer.
Olivia heaved a sigh. “Ah, no, it’s the principle of the thing, isn’t it, Billy?”
“Aye, Miss Olivia.”
“I can’t even imagine how thoroughly you resent me.” Her voice was very quiet. She stroked one photograph with a long index finger. From what Chris could tell, it was just a landscape showing the orchards from up high, and yet his employer’s touch was so gentle it moved his heart. “If you’re willing to try and beat a man to death even after he’d been proven not responsible, how much must you want to sink your fists into me? There’s no debate to be had about my role in your situation.”
Jones swallowed loudly, wetly, and hung his melted head even more. “Aye, Miss Olivia,” he repeated.
She clucked her tongue. “Gods, Billy, please don’t sound so bloody guilty about it. Really, unlike poor Doctor Livingstone, the honest truth is that I thoroughly deserve your anger. You’d have been far away from the fall zone if I hadn’t have pushed you out the door with two hands and my back in it.”
“You didn’t know.”
“And Livingstone wasn’t even involved, but I hear you still tried to pound his brain out through his ears.”
“Aye.”
Olivia turned about in a swirl of wet skirts, scattering droplets across the floor. She flipped through the stack of photos she’d gathered, lips curled into something neither quite sad smile nor guilty grimace. “I suppose you’ve thought more than once how things would have been different if it were Ollie you followed into Darrington City.”
“Aye, miss.”
Olivia’s expression decided to be a smile. “It seems most everyone thinks this family ended up with the wrong Miller,” she said, shaking her head. “Even the ones who don’t so much mind me would have preferred Ollie. Well. I suppose that’s why I stay in the city and embrace my Faraday half, hm?” She flipped a photo towards him.
Chris didn’t need anyone to tell him that the handsome, broad-shouldered man grinning into the lens was Roger Greene. Mabelle looked so much like him that it was staggering.
“You’ve been watching the guest house for months. Have you seen him coming and going?”
“Roger?” Jones asked roughly and nodded. “I… ah, yes. All the time. Before he hung himself, of course, poor sod. Walking about with that black woman. Had his hands dirtied up more often than not, and blisters where a stable master isn’t likely to get them.”
“Her name is Emilia Banks,” Maris interjected, glowering like a bear pulled from its winter cave.
“And your paramour, aye. Can’t say I relish any of it, but I don’t mean no offence. She was always kind enough to me. Looked me in the eyes.”
Maris settled back guiltily.
“Right.” Olivia nodded just once as if confirming something to herself. She tucked the photo back to the bottom of the stack and produced another one. “What about him?”
It was Foster, the veterinarian. Jones’s brow… furrowed, most likely, and Chris had to glance away as the entire top half of his face contorted. One eye narrowed, and the other stayed quite unpleasantly open. “He looks plenty familiar,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ve seen him about.”
“Good. Thank you. This is helpful.” Foster went back into the pile. One by one, Olivia produced and vanished photos of almost all the names Chris had recorded for her this afternoon. Some he recognized; others he didn’t. One by one, Jones absolved the grand majority. Chris sighed with relief when he frowned and shook his head at a photo of Rachel on a ladder, laughing and halfway through the motion of picking an apple. She looked full of life and beautiful, and Olivia’s suspicions had been misplaced after all.
But his breath froze in his lungs, and his heart stopped beating when Jones nodded firmly upon being shown the very photo that Miss Banks had brought him in Darrington: Rosemary, smiling and lovely, with her hair windswept and a bushel of apples on one hip. “Oh, aye, Miss Olivia. That girl’s about here all of the time,” he said. “Always looking over her shoulder. She doesn’t want no one following after her.”
“Huh,” Olivia said, flipping the photo and looking at it carefully. “Well. I can honestly say I didn’t expect that.”
“It means nothing,” Chris said fiercely. “Rosie… Rosie has reason enough to visit the doctor. He offered to help us before you blackmailed us into it, you might recall!”
Olivia gazed at him blandly and then turned her attention back to Jones. “All the time isn’t very specific,” she said. “How often? Three times a week? Four?”
“At first,” Jones said. “But lately… near every day.”
“Well.” Olivia raised her eyebrows and stared down at the photo.
“It doesn’t mean anything!” Chris repeated.
“That is incredibly unlikely,” Olivia said.
“She’s visiting the doctor.”
“We can certainly ask him if that’s the case, but I rather doubt it’s so simple, Christopher.” Olivia sighed. “Your sister has long been trying to ingratiate herself with the Combs family. She’s made her allegiances entirely clear.”
“She’s changed,” Chris said. He thought of the way she’d been when she’d come home to visit in the summer, so aware of the risks that could come from being seen by the forces trying to find her. He thought of the self-possessed young woman he’d seen here at Miller. Was that the sort of person who was secretly obtaining information for a dangerous movement? No. No, absolutely not. It was impossible nonsense.
“If she put Em at risk…” Maris growled. “I don’t care if she’s a fourtee
n-year-old girl.”
“She didn’t! She wouldn’t!”
Olivia shrugged and produced another photo. “One more,” she said. “Personally, I’m surprised that I found one snap of the fellow, considering how Livingstone is deep in hiding from him back here, but I suppose it’s just as likely that Norwood took it.” She showed Jones a flick of Dayton Spencer. He was getting into a fine black carriage and wasn’t looking at the camera. The photo didn’t have the polish that most of the others had, and the lines were shaky, the background blurred.
But Jones didn’t have any difficulty recognizing Spencer’s profile. “Aye, him,” he said. “I’ve seen that sod lurking about. Not so often, but he comes back here, peeking over his shoulder and hiding from any eyes he thinks are giving him the gander. I don’t know why he’s about, but I reckon he’s up to no good. Looking for something, like.”
Olivia nodded slowly. She stacked the photos together. “Well. Rosemary and Spencer it is! Of course, there’s Sister Margaret to think about, as well. No photographs of that one, but, goodness, she was a thief on the streets of Darrington before she failed categorization. I daresay she knows how to move about unseen. And, we can hardly rule out Norwood either way. He lives here, after all.”
“Norwood,” Jones said. He looked up. “That’s a strange sort. Says he’s here for his uncle’s research, but I don’t see them together so often. He’s off to town plenty, too, for that.”
Olivia furrowed her brow. “We did see him at the post office in Summergrove, didn’t we, Christopher? Looking none too pleased to be seen there. Hm. He could be relaying messages he couldn’t trust to send via mirror…” She sighed. “Or he could actually just be a skittish, shy, unattractive man with a stutter gathering his uncle’s mail. Impossible to say, isn’t it? Well. At least we have all of this narrowed down to four.”
“Rosie isn’t involved,” Chris said again, feeling a deep and echoing anxiety gnawing at his guts. “She can’t be. She’d… she isn’t….”
“I’ll need you to talk to her, Christopher,” Olivia said, acting for all the world as if she didn’t hear his protests. Maris just glared, making him feel as if he were pinned down beneath her eyes. “I doubt I’ll be much good interrogating the girl.”
“She doesn’t need interrogation at all.”
Olivia stomped a foot, and when she spoke again, he saw more than a little of her mother’s flinty fire in her. “Enough,” she said firmly. “Stop being a child. Billy identified her. Either you’ll speak to her or I will. Or better yet, I’ll send Maris to do it. Don’t let yourself be blinded by love. She’s acted more than passing strange ever since we got here, and I know you know it. And being so cozy with Mabelle Greene, when her father is dead?” She shook her head. “It’s time to make sense of what she’s about, one way or the other.”
Chris swallowed down another round of protests. He hated how the words pierced him like arrows, hated how his certainty began leaking. Rosemary had always taken after their father. And Michael Buckley had been a bloodhound for the Combs family.
“If she’s involved in this…” he said. He didn’t know how to conclude.
But Olivia’s gaze softened, and she sighed. “I know,” she said. “And yet, we require an explanation.”
Miserable, he nodded. “I…” he shook his head. “I haven’t seen her at the Festival. Not since Norwood and Spencer’s fistfight.”
Olivia raised her eyebrows. “If that isn’t suspicious, I don’t know what is.” She focused her attention on Jones. Her expression softened. “Well, Billy. I suppose that’s just about all I need from you unless you’ve got something else to offer me.”
“Nothing, Miss Olivia.”
“Maris will need to be taking you off to Summergrove, now. Get you nicely squared away in the brig. You did try to kill a man.”
“Aye, miss.”
She looked down at him sadly. “Do you hate me, Billy?” Her voice was very soft.
He gazed up at her with his mismatched eyes. His neck worked where his throat would be. “Sometimes, miss,” he said, finally. “Sometimes I do.”
Olivia’s lips twisted bitterly. “Well,” she said and sighed. “I suppose it’s understandable. And inevitable.”
“An apology would go a long way, miss.”
But she shook her head. “I’m sure it would if I could produce one you’d believe. But I never could, you see? I’d do it the same way if I had the chance. I went to Darrington for independence. I can’t see a version of events where I happily accept my mother’s guard dog at my side. With all that in mind, apologizing to you would just be insulting, wouldn’t it?”
His jaw hardened. For a moment, Chris thought he’d either start sobbing or leap back to his feet and throw himself at his employer in a renewed fighting rage.
Instead, he hung his head. “Yes, miss,” he agreed, his voice utterly without life or hope.
“I won’t add insult to your injury, Billy. Now. If you could use that tiny bit of lifeknitting you have in you to see if your victim is going to make it through the night, we can leave him peacefully sleeping and spirit you off to your cell.”
Jones looked up at her. “I know he didn’t do it,” he said. “It was a bitch of a thing to do. I just… wanted someone to suffer like I have.” He stared down at his hands, and just for a moment, Chris felt an echo in himself, that feeling of responsibility.
“I know, Billy,” Olivia said gently. “But there’s not much that can change after the fact, now is there?”
“No, miss.”
“Indeed. Come along, then, so we can deal with you.”
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Olivia asked, staring up at where Maris sat, Jones quiet and recalcitrant beside her, on the bench of the fly.
Maris jerked a finger at her companion, who didn’t move. “Whatever flavour of guilty conscience has infected this bloke,” she said, her voice low and rough, “is the kind that leads me to believe he isn’t going to be trying anything.”
Olivia shot a glance at Jones. He didn’t react. At least, not outwardly. Chris flinched as the hairline link between them vibrated like a plucked chord. Instinctively, he shrank back into the alcove of the stable, sure that they were about to turn to him and demand, again, what he had done. With both of their noses twitching in his direction, he wasn’t sure he could dissemble, and… and that would open a can of worms he really could not deal with. Not right now. Not with the responsibility and guilt he’d forced into Jones still echoing back at him.
Will’s voice reverberated through his skull.
My emotions are my own!
Chris felt his back press against the canvas-covered carriage chassis Miss Greene had told him to get away from. He swallowed hard. Neither Olivia nor Maris glanced in his direction.
“Well,” Olivia said. “Presuming we take his quiescence as a given, I was really referring more to the state of the road. I did tell you—twice, I believe?—that my mother said it was washed out.”
Maris shrugged. “Too washed out for a guest to travel,” she said. “Sure. But I’ve driven hippogryph-drawn flies through peat swamps up North. Trust me. I can get these birds through some flooded road.”
As if on cue, the closest hippogryph shook its wings.
“Well, at least the birds themselves are eager to get things moving,” Olivia said and sighed. “Fine. Be on your way, then, Maris.”
“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” the policewoman vowed with a fierce kind of conviction. “Come hells or high water.”
“High water, at least, is a certainty,” Olivia quipped but stood back dutifully as Maris slapped the reins and the shaggy dun-coloured birds trotted out of the stable.
Olivia watched them go, and then turned to Chris, shaking her head. Seeing him all the way back in the alcove, she furrowed her brow. “What are you doing back there?”
“I….”
She waved for him. “Come on out. We have one last thing to do, tonight.”
“Ah.” He started forward. “Gods, that’s right. You found something.”
She nodded. “Now, with everyone tucked away into bed and the grounds mostly empty… I think we can actually look into it!”
She led him back out into the rainy night. A few people still milled beneath the canopies, but their attention was on one another, and no one glanced in their direction. Thunder rolled, and lightning split the sky, and Chris wrapped his cloak tighter around his body as she led him along the wall of the stable and up the side.
Between estate and stable, the rain didn’t fall quite so heavily, blocked as it was by the walls. But the grass grew nearly waist-high, and Chris’s trousers were soaked in moments. “Where are we going?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the rain falling on the stable’s tin roof.
She stopped in a seemingly random spot. As he watched, she reached out and encircled the rung of a ladder, rusty and dripping with water. He looked up, following the outline.
“Oh, Gods, no.” He groaned. “Olivia, it’s pouring, and that’s high! We’ll fall to our deaths!”
“We won’t.” She insisted. “I can climb, you know!”
“You’re in skirts! What, exactly, are we doing?”
She turned to him, lips pursed. “Finding out what, exactly, Em was working on. Just like I said.” She folded her arms. “I followed the wiring.”
“What?”
“The thick black wiring that held all the white lights aloft. They all end up there.” She pointed upward. “Whatever mechanism is powering them, it’s up in the loft above the stable. What are the odds that it will still be there in the morning?” Shaking her head, she turned back to the ladder. “I’m not taking the chance. Stay down here if you want, Christopher, but I am going up.”
She began to climb.
Chris watched with his heart in his throat. He was absolutely not going up. He’d remain down here, and—and if she fell, perhaps he could catch her, or…
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