by Quenby Olson
***
Even the appearance of the sun above the crenellated rooftops does little towards waking the slumbering figure now propped against my shoulder. I glance heavenwards, long enough to take in the colour of the sky, that silvery haze above everything that promises no relenting of the season’s uncharacteristic warmth, and I wonder if I should take the trouble to wake him. But in the end, I decide against it. One of us, at least, should be allowed some rest. I’m sure that my turn will come, but for now, he can sleep for the both of us.
The churchyard stands before us, or lists towards every corner of the horizon, I should say. The various stones show no preference for a particular direction, a few of them shooting bolt upright out of the ground while the others tilt every which way. A few more of them are broken, their dearly departed pieces hidden beneath overgrown tufts of grass, of soil, of whatever bits of refuse managed to blow in and find a place to settle on the uneven ground.
The grass is dead, the colour of its decay disguised by the layers of grime and soot that have descended from the same sky I had been so intent on studying a moment ago. The wall beneath us is a tumbledown thing, bricks fallen into heaps, the better ones long since pilfered away, the rest left in piles that have eroded down into something nearly indistinguishable from the patchwork buildings that rise up in the background.
It is on one of these mounds of deteriorated masonry that Chissick and I have situated ourselves. Our backs rest upon a stronger portion of the wall, while over the last hour, his left side has slid nearer and nearer to my right, until his arm presses against mine, his head tilted down almost onto my shoulder. A soft buzz of sound comes from the back of his throat, and when I move to wipe my brow—my face becoming more saturated with perspiration the higher the sun climbs through the sky—a breath, almost a gasp, and the buzzing falters before quitting entirely.
"Miss..." His greeting is truncated by a yawn, and when he notices how close to my person his own figure has shifted, he sits up abruptly, his poor balance almost sending him sprawled onto the pavement in his haste to regain some small amount of propriety between us. "I’m sorry."
"It’s half past nine," I inform him, and avert my gaze long enough to allow him a bit of privacy while he performs an abbreviated morning routine: brushing his hair back from his forehead, straightening his collar, wiping dust and dirt from his sleeves, from his legs, before he finds his hat—that depressed piece of haberdashery—fallen down to the pavement, neatly camouflaged against the backdrop of broken bricks and dirt.
"I’m sorry," he says again, as he turns the brim of his hat between his fingers. "I only intended to close my eyes for a moment." He clears his throat, claps his hat onto his head and turns to survey me in the bright morning light. "And have you slept, Miss Hawes?"
"Yes," I lie, swift and easy. And here I'm rewarded for my deceit by the expression of relief that erases a few of the lines from between his eyes.
"Good," he says, nodding. "That’s good. I had hoped..." He leaves his thought unfinished, his gaze drifting away from me, towards the first row of headstones, not ten feet from the tip of his boot. He studies them for no small amount of time, and I allow myself to roll my shoulders beneath the confines of my dress, stretch out my arms until I feel a satisfying crack in my right elbow. When he looks at me again, I can already sense the new direction his thoughts have taken. "You know," he begins, and dips his chin until he’s watching me from beneath a furrowed brow. "You know what happened?"
The slight lift at the end of his speech marks the phrase as a question, but as I withstand the urge to fidget beneath his scrutiny, I realise he is not in search of an answer, but making a statement of what he must already know to be true.
But still, I stall for time. My hands reach up to prod at my sadly deflated sleeves, crushed by both the heavy moisture in the air and their most recent appropriation as a pillow. My gloves have also suffered, the black silk stained and wrinkled, and as I turn my right hand, I notice a hole on the inside of the thumb.
"I would have to venture a guess at a few of the particulars," I say, my attention still caught by the tear in my glove and the pale skin of my hand that shows through the flat black of the fabric. "But, yes, I will admit to having a fairly clear idea of what happened last night."
"But with all those people about, surely someone would have seen…"
His words falter at the expression on my face, on the sharp, quick shake of my head. "We’re not looking for a moustachioed villain, bearing a wicked sneer and a jagged blade. No one would have seen anything, apart from Ryall being alive in one moment, and then dead in the next."
"But—"
"Enough," I say. The word is spoken gently, but it succeeds in its purpose. Chissick presses his lips together, his tongue prodding once into the inside of his cheek before he is still. "My head hurts and I have no wish to argue with you this early in the morning."
The fact that he does not rush to apologise does him credit. And so, in the ensuing silence, I manage to shift my skirt about my legs and make it onto my feet before he has an opportunity to lend a hand or a crooked elbow in my direction. A turn of my head and I can feel my hair tumbling loose from its pins, lank and nearly colourless in the brilliance the humidity lends to the daylight. I push the worst of it back behind my ears, snag a few of the dangling pins that strike my neck and cheeks, but I cannot do more. Not until I’ve had a rest, or a meal, or the sun again departs from the sky.
"Oh," Chissick says, a tentative sound from him, as if testing if I will allow him to continue without interruption. His hands fumble over the exterior of his coat before he reaches inside and removes a thick packet of letters and photographs, all of them tied together with a frayed bit of ribbon he must have rescued from the floor of Ryall’s bedroom. "I would not want you to forget these."
I take the packet from him, the cards and papers warm to the touch. Before I have even allowed my gaze to linger on any word long enough to read it, I can already sense other people’s thoughts and feelings, flowing from the pages like water. I give my already throbbing head a shake and begin to flip through them, less from any sort of curiosity but more to give my hands something with which to occupy themselves.
"We did learn something," Chissick speaks, his voice warring with the congestion of voices inside my mind. "This Ryall, he must have known Isabel."
"No," I say, without looking up. One by one, I flip through the photographs again. But this time, I'm looking at the back of them, or more specifically, at the carefully written names that grace each and every one. "Just because Ryall had a photograph of your sister in his possession does not mean he was ever acquainted with her. Well, at least beyond what she revealed in front of a lens."
I reach the end of the stack, draw in a deep breath, and start over. The names… The names mean nothing to me. But it is the writing itself, each beautifully formed letter that seems to provoke a new sort of ringing within my head. I recognise this handwriting. And with each photograph that passes between my fingers, I feel an incredible fury build up within myself, a companion to the increased pain behind my eyes as I struggle to scrutinise each stroke of the pen that created those names. Because I know the handwriting. I have seen it before, countless times, and yet it is as if something will not allow me to touch upon the memory of it.
A sharp swear leaves my mouth after my third pass through the photographs, and I realise that I must force myself to stop or else risk further injury to my head. Even my vision is inhibited by the pulsing ache behind my brow, and so I return everything to its former place, the edges of the stack tapped against my palms, the ribbon wrapped around once, twice, and finally knotted between my trembling fingers.
"I need to pay a visit to Marta," I say, before I tuck the packet beneath my arm. "I need to speak to her, to warn her." I look at Chissick, and I wonder—oh, how I wonder what he must see on my face at this moment.
"There will be more, won’t there?" he asks, and before I can even inqui
re as to his meaning, he presses on. "More people, more deaths."
I try to compose a lie, ready to send it off the tip of my tongue to assuage that flicker of fear in his eyes. But as I open my mouth to speak, I find I cannot give the words a voice.
"Miss Hawes?"
"Yes." It takes every ounce of strength I still possess to keep myself from looking away. "I believe so."
"How many more?"
"I don’t know." And as soon as I say it, I see the slight recoil pass through him, as if by uttering those three short words, I have devastated him.
"Very well," he says, and touches his fingers to the brim of his hat, giving it the slightest adjustment on his head before he holds out his hand. "Do you mean to pay your call to Miss Summerson now, or would you rather…"
Again I shift the hem of my skirt, caked in filth as it is, and seek a steady place on which to take my first step forward. "I see no reason for delay," I inform him, and when his gaze takes a quick measure of my appearance, I raise my chin, tilt my head to one side. "She’s seen me in a far worse state. And more times than I would prefer to count."
He says nothing, only makes another offer of his arm, one I accept. "Thank you," I tell him, but my words seem to pass over and around him without leaving even the faintest indentation. And at that moment, I wonder how much more death there will be before this is at an end?
Chapter Fifteen
* * *
* * *
Twelve hours have now passed since we left Ryall’s house. His body, no doubt, has since been removed from its place on the foyer floor. A doctor would have been called in to examine the prone figure and declare him deceased, and I assume that a coroner would follow. The police have been called in by now, and some of the guests—those who chose to linger—have already been questioned as witnesses. There will be no suspects announced, not yet. No motive for the death has been discovered. And of course, once they look closer at the body, at the quality of the wound that ended his life…
But this is nothing more than conjecture on my part. The scene I’ve invented is so tangled up with the truth of the matter, I’m unable to separate fact from the imaginings that swirl about in my head. Giving that same weary head a shake, I blink out of my reverie and tell Chissick which street we need to turn onto.
For the last few minutes, Chissick has maintained a steady grip on my arm, his fingers tucked into the crook of my elbow.
"Are you certain you're feeling well enough?"
It is not the first time he has asked after my health since we started towards Marta’s, and I'm doubtful it will be the last. And yet he words it differently with each repetition—How is your head? You're not feeling faint, are you? The heat, is it too much?—fooling me, he must think, into believing that each query is independent of the last. And so I play along with his game, responding with a nod here, a few words there, enough to pretend the art of conversation is alive and well between us.
"This way, Miss Hawes. You almost missed the turn."
For a moment, I wonder how long it has been since I’ve eaten. I consider asking Chissick for confirmation, but the last thing he needs is yet another item to add to his catalogue of worries. But I’m sure it has been a full day and a night since anything has passed my lips. No wonder I fail to recognise the street beneath my feet, or even the houses that sprout upwards from the pavement, until the faded green door of one house in particular is staring me in the face.
"Shall I wait for you out here?" Chissick asks, but already I'm raising my gloved fingers to the brass knocker, the hairs prickling on my arms as his hand falls away from my elbow.
It's a mark of how little Marta has travelled over the last few years that a simple knock on her door should thrust me back, with no small amount of force, into the midst of my childhood. Two raps with the knocker, and there's Katie to answer the call. But here, already, is where past and present diverge. In the past, Katie would never have answered the door. She was too young then, keeping herself to the kitchen on most days, always clad in a dress three sizes too large, and an apron that could've fit around two girls her size. And here is another sign of the changing years, that I must ask permission to enter the house I used to call my home.
Katie greets me today with a beaming smile, the corners of her mouth stretched wide enough to nearly leap past the boundaries of her face. She's still a small creature, even after all this time, but she bears her physical deficiencies with a great deal of cheer.
"How do you do, Miss Dorothea?" Katie bobs a belated curtsy as her gaze flits to the man beside me. "And, um…"
"Is Marta in?"
With a great demonstration of reluctance, Katie returns her attention to me.
"Of course, Miss."
She ushers us inside, then stops mid-stride and turns around. Her hands reach out as if she's offering an invisible gift. "Oh, should I tell Miss Marta you're here? She'll want me to put you—" Here, her glance takes in Chissick, as well. "The two of you in the drawing room, I'm sure."
A part of me almost feels offended by this show of formality. To be escorted to the drawing room, like a common guest! "No need to trouble yourself on my account, Katie. But you could take care of this young man, bring him a cup of tea and something from the kitchen."
"Oh, of course!" Katie springs forward, her hands splayed open as she rises onto the balls of her feet and grasps Chissick’s shoulder for support as she reaches to take his hat from his head. So committed is she to the task, that I fear she may knock him off his feet. But the hat is successfully removed while all of Chissick's limbs remain intact.
"Katie, is Marta ready to receive visitors?"
"Oh, no, Miss." She laughs, Chissick's hat pressed beneath her arm. "You know better than I what sort of hours she keeps."
I do, indeed. "I'll show myself up to her room, if you don't mind. And please see that my friend is well looked after while I am gone."
It's a chore towards which Katie shows little reluctance. Chissick's hat clutched even more tightly against her thin chest, she chivvies him into the drawing room, all the while interrogating him as to how best he likes his tea.
Her chattering dies away as I move towards the stairs, my hand grasping the rail for support. I didn't think to ask if Marta had decided to change bedrooms during my absence, but I follow the faded carpet runner to its end, outside the room I remember as belonging to her. Nothing more to do but land a soft knock on the door, followed by a much louder series of raps that finally elicits a response.
"Yes, yes? Who is it?"
It's a robust voice that answers, tinged with some annoyance. And finished off with something that might have been a yawn.
"Marta?" I say, my forehead pressed on the door. "It's Dorothea. I'd like to speak with you for a moment, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother."
A series of noises for a response now, the clattering of a glass, a thump—perhaps of a shoe landing on the floor—and a sigh, loud enough to be audible even through the heavy panel of oak that separates us.
"Come in!"
I'm startled, at first, by the changes made to the room since I last set foot inside of it. Of course, I couldn't have expected Marta not to keep pace with the latest interior fashions, but the profusion of palms, cheap bamboo, and papier-mâché leaves me to assume that only someone possessing the talents of an acrobat would be capable of navigating the maze of ornaments and three-legged tables that litter every corner.
Something else that catches my attention: there is some organization to the mess. Several trunks are flung open, their insides lined with clothing, and other items have been gathered into discreet piles. Shoes laid out with their partners, books and newspapers stacked along the wall, and most telling of all, the wardrobe that stands empty on the other side of the room, its innards removed, folded, catalogued, and ready to be packed into one of the trunks or suitcases that surround the end of the bed like an archipelago.
And there, in the middle of the bed, sits Marta herself, ma
rooned in an ocean of stockings and shawls and tangled scarves edged with beaded fringe. She looks remarkably altered from the last time I saw her. Wearing a plain dressing gown, her hair flattened from sleep and trailing over her shoulders, there is little of the entrepreneur about her now. And when she opens her mouth, the fullness of her Manchester roots dances off the tip of her tongue.
"Christ, you look like a corpse." Another yawn and I'm gifted with a view of every single tooth in her arsenal. "And I can’t say that’s a dress one should go about in while making their round of morning calls." She looks me up and down a second time, eyes blinking as her attention settles on my face. "Where were you last night?"
"I paid a visit to Lord Ryall."
"Oh, right. Right." She waves a hand, ready to dismiss me as her interest slides back to the task before her. But I watch as the corners of her mouth turn down, in fact her entire face seems to drift towards her chest as she gives my soiled dress, my untidy hair and exhausted features a more careful scrutiny. "Am I to assume you’ve only just departed from his home?"
"You may assume what you like," I tell her, my voice steady, despite the tiredness that has now infected my hands and feet with a peculiar numbness. "However, the truth of the matter is far less scandalous, at least as far as your imaginings will venture."
Her mouth tightens at this, but instead of making any further inquiry, she settles back onto her mound of cushions and pillows as she fingers the collar of her dressing gown. "You going to give me a proper greeting, or are you going to frighten away the rest of the morning with that bloody frown of yours?"
I rearrange my features for her benefit, enough so she won't notice the way I lean upon the door, the way the hem of my skirt marks the shaking of my legs. "I would have sent a note, but I thought it better to catch you unawares."
"Mmmph." She picks up a handkerchief, vibrant yellow silk, and folds it into a neat square. "Too much about you is enough to catch me unawares." She dabs her fingers at the puddle of sweat gathered at the base of her throat and dries them on the edge of her nightdress.