Murder by Twilight

by Blythe Baker

  “Is that a good thing, though?” I asked gently. It was now apparent I’d stepped into a situation without knowing all of the facts, and I would try not to bully my way into matters that didn’t concern me, but this did concern me. Clearly, Catherine felt uncomfortable with her relationship with Hazel, which made this issue my highest concern. Especially since I believed wholeheartedly that solving the problems surrounding Hazel’s care would help to heal my sister immensely. If ‘heal’ was the proper word. I still did not understand what it was she needed to be healed of, other than a possibly overactive imagination.

  “Camellia feeling better isn’t good?” Charles asked defensively.

  “No. I mean, is it a good thing for her to be reminded of Grace in Hazel?” I tangled my fingers together and looked down at my lap, hoping I looked as humble as I felt. “Camellia’s loss is greater than most people could ever imagine—more painful than almost anything a human can bear—and I’m not sure the solution should be to hand her another child.”

  Charles sat up, his neck strained, head cocked to the side. “I’m not handing anyone my child. I’m making sure she is cared for.”

  “I know Camellia is good with Hazel,” I admitted. “They love each other, and that is wonderful, but I just wonder if it is a good situation for everyone in the house.”

  Charles pushed away from his desk and stood up, shoving his hands into his front pockets. Still, I could see they were fisted in frustration. “See here, Alice. I know you were brought here to help your sister, but I imagined you would speak with her and talk sense into her. I did not ask you here to question the way I am running my house.”

  “You aren’t running your house!” The words were out of me before I could consider, and I regretted them immediately. I tried walking them back, but it was too late. They’d struck at Charles’ center, as intended.

  “Everyone in my care is in need of something,” he said, voice ominously steady. I’d rarely seen Charles in any burst of emotion, and the few times I had, he was in ecstasy. The day he and Catherine were engaged, at their wedding, when they announced they were expecting. Never before had I seen him livid. Until now. “My wife needs constant attention, as does my newborn daughter, and my sister is grieving a loss I cannot fully understand. So, if two of those people are able to care for one another in ways I can’t, how am I supposed to refuse them one another?”

  “You are Hazel’s father. You can care for her better than anyone else who is not her parent.”

  “I can’t nurse her,” Charles snapped.

  Wet nurses were not unheard of, especially when a mother was ill, but the confirmation that Camellia was nursing my sister’s child as her own made me even more uneasy.

  We sat in silence for a moment, letting the tensions in the room abate slightly. My intention was not to upset Charles, but to open his eyes to the possible issues with his current solution. He appeared to want to stand back and allow the women in his life to heal themselves, but I believed he would be better off with a more active approach.

  He wanted me to speak sense to Catherine, but who could understand and appeal to her more than her husband? If he would try to understand where she was coming from, perhaps he would see she was not insane. And that she certainly did not need to be tended to by Nurse Gray, who seemed to want to do nothing more than send her into unconsciousness.

  With Camellia, I did not have a perfect solution for that, but I knew the hole in her heart could not be filled with another child. It needed to be mended with time and compassion.

  “I see you are trying, and I appreciate that,” I said softly. “You have always loved my sister well, and my family loves you for it. You know that. However—”

  “Must there be a however, Alice? I’m tired, and I think—”

  “However,” I continued, holding up a hand for him to allow me to finish. “I just wonder whether Camellia is healed enough from her trauma to be trusted with Hazel’s care?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Do you think my sister unwell?”

  “Isn’t she? Any person in her position would be unwell, don’t you think?” I pressed a hand to my heart. “I do not have a husband or child to lose, but I’ve lost a brother. I’ve seen people die before my eyes, and…it is a wound not easily healed. I just worry what spending so much time with Hazel is doing to your sister. You would hate for her to become confused.”

  I saw Charles’ face shift, his eyes go flat, shuttering themselves against any more of my appeals. He shook his head. “She is not confused. She is distracting herself from her troubles, and I do not think that is a bad thing. It does not do to dwell on situations like the one my sister endured. There is nothing to be done about it, so one might as well carry on as best as possible.”

  My brother-in-law walked around his desk and extended an arm, ready to lead me from the room. I remained in my chair, determined for my point to be heard.

  “She cannot simply carry on. This isn’t like a rainy day ruining a picnic, Charles. Your sister’s family died in a horrible way, and she needs to deal with those feelings before she throws herself into mothering again.”

  “Thank you for your thoughts, Alice. I’ll keep them in mind.” He laid a hand on my shoulder and all but forced me from the chair. “But I need to attend to some business.”

  He ushered me towards the door, pulled it open, and I stopped short.

  Standing just on the other side was Camellia.

  I felt Charles stiffen next to me, and I went wide-eyed, not sure what to expect. Would she rage at me for doubting her ability to care for Hazel? Would she be angry with Charles for sharing such a personal part of her history with me? Had she overheard our conversation at all?

  A second later, Camellia smiled and stood aside. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here with you, brother. I can come back.”

  “No, no.” I gave her a shaky smile and stepped aside. “Please, come in. I was just leaving. I think I’m going to go see my sister.”

  “She’s sleeping.” Camellia smiled so big her eyes crinkled at the corners, and I couldn’t remember her ever looking so cheerful.

  It looked forced.

  “Maybe later, then.” I nodded my head at the siblings and headed for the stairs, desperate to be alone in my own room.

  As soon as I got there, I locked the door behind me, as if Camellia would charge up the stairs and into my room, ready for an altercation.

  Maybe she would. I didn’t know. To my mind, no one did.

  The kind of trauma Camellia had endured could manifest in many different ways. Maybe it already had.

  Catherine confided in me that she’d been attacked on the moors. Nurse Gray and Charles insisted it was a fall, but what if it hadn’t been?

  I’d been dismissive of Catherine’s claims from the start just like everyone else, but now I knew there was more going on inside my sister’s home than I had realized. There were dark forces at play, and whether they were the spiritual kind touted by the Wilds next door or something of a more human nature, I didn’t know. But I would soon find out.

  9

  Catherine slept through the morning and felt nauseous over lunch. By early afternoon, I’d convinced Nurse Gray to let Catherine go for a walk, but then it began to rain. And rain. And rain.

  It was a good soaking rain that puddled on the ground and lashed against the windows. It filled the house with a consistent drumming noise that made everyone feel lazy. Even me. I was not usually one to nap, but when Catherine fell back asleep, I went to my room, locked the door, and slept for a restless hour.

  I dreamt I was in my sister’s house, in the guest room, taking a nap. Then, the doorknob began to rattle.

  In the dream, I sat up in bed, staring at the door, certain Camellia would charge through it at any second, ready to take me to task for talking about her with Charles.

  The doorknob would go still for long seconds that stretched to minutes, and I would swear the light outside the window was changing fro
m afternoon to evening to night. Yet, I sat and stared at the knob. When it began turning again, I jumped and let out a shriek.

  This happened again and again, until I grew hungry and tired and even bored. I wanted whatever was on the other side of the door to come in already. So, eventually, I gathered my courage and my dressing gown and walked towards the door.

  If this is the way I die, I thought, then let it be the way I die.

  Then, I thrust open the door.

  I’d prepared myself for Camellia to be standing outside, but there was nothing. No one at all.

  I walked down the hallway, checking the doors as I went, but they were all locked. The usual sounds of shuffling feet or soft voices had been replaced with perfect silence. The kind of silence that felt like a physical presence lurking over one.

  After checking the second floor and the main floor, I finally walked outside. The ground was muddy and damp from the rain, but my feet didn’t sink into it. I seemed to float above the ground, in fact, my bare feet immune to the cold slime of the mud. I called out for my sister or Charles. At one point, I became so desperate to find another human that I called for my infant niece, as well. No one answered.

  The longer I walked, the less I remembered why I was walking at all. I couldn’t remember what had sent me out of the house, so I tried to turn around, but the house was gone. In its stead was a smoking pile of rubble with a small pile of bricks in the center that had once been the living room fireplace.

  Just as I opened my mouth to scream, something cracked over the back of my head.

  At once, whatever dream magic had kept me from sinking into the mud faltered, and I fell flat against the earth. The cold seeped into me, drawing me to sleep, and I listened. I closed my eyes and sunk into the ground as footsteps squelched in the mud around me.

  When I woke up, I was shivering.

  The fire in my hearth had waned to small embers, and the cool wind that had blown away the rain clouds, also blew open my window. The draft was icy, and I darted across the wood floor in bare feet, slammed the window shut, and then threw myself back beneath the covers to get warm.

  I couldn’t hear any movement in the rest of the house, and that more than anything propelled me out of bed. I wanted to be sure my dream hadn’t come true.

  The second I opened the door, I could hear Camellia’s singing voice, lulling Hazel back to sleep. I could also hear the confident click of Nurse Gray’s heeled shoes on the floor. Charles, I couldn’t hear, but I had every reason to believe he was down in his study as usual.

  Confident the rest of the house hadn’t disappeared, I went back into my room, laced my walking boots on over my stockings, and slipped into my wool coat.

  No one stopped me as I tromped through the house and through the back door. I didn’t expect they would. Catherine as the only exception, everyone seemed to want me to leave sooner rather than later.

  I would not give them what they wanted, but I did require frequent outings to help keep my sanity. Part of me felt Catherine had begun to lose her wits because the house itself was so gloomy.

  No one smiled or laughed or joked. It was nothing but glum people coexisting alongside one another without ever really interacting. Nothing like the home I knew Catherine wanted.

  If there was any doubt that my dream had been nothing more than a dream, my first step out of the back door was proof enough. Almost immediately, my boots sunk two inches deep in mud.

  The ground suctioned around my shoes, pulling at my feet in turn as I moved down the path, but I did not turn back.

  I needed a break from the four walls of my room, and I could not spend another second next to my sister’s bedside or reading books in the sitting room downstairs, or trying to talk sense into my brother-in-law.

  If I was to remain at Catherine’s home—a previously and mistakenly described ‘picturesque countryside escape’—I needed fresh air and time to think. I needed to remind myself of what was real and what was not.

  Despite what Charles said, I knew my sister was not insane.

  Camellia’s relationship with Hazel was not normal or healthy.

  Nurse Gray over-medicated Catherine.

  Margaret and Abigail Wilds might be the most normal people I had met during my time in the moors.

  Aside from the strange moment we’d shared the last time I’d visited when the women refused to acknowledge the striking similarities between their sister and mine, they had been nothing but open and honest with me. That seemed much more normal than hiding away in dark rooms and not talking to anyone. It seemed a better option than avoiding difficult problems and hoping they went away on their own.

  When I reached the fork in the trail, I turned back to the house to be sure it still stood.

  The house nearly disappeared in the ominous gray sky. The walls looked pale and lifeless, and each of the windows was like a dark tunnel one could get lost in.

  It was not a comforting image, but there were no flames and it remained standing, which gave me some measure of comfort.

  When I turned back around, I looked for the carved rock Catherine had said marked the safest trails and followed it through an overhang of trees.

  The ground was less wet where the trees had provided some protection from the rain, so my muscles got a small break from slogging through thick, sticky mud. Though, I still had to push aside plenty of branches and climb a number of large rocks. If this was the easier of the two trails, I did not want to know what the other would be like.

  My sense of direction had always been woefully poor, so I would trust whichever path Charles had marked without hesitation.

  Just as I came out on the other side of the stand of trees, I decided to stop for a rest. The sun had broken through the clouds enough for my skin to feel warm while basking in the light, and I wanted to catch my breath. There was a large rock with a downed tree resting across it, and I perched on the spongy bark like a bench. The back of my skirt was probably getting soiled, but there wasn’t anyone to impress all the way out here in the country. It was nothing like the city where anyone could see one at any moment. My appearance mattered less here than it ever had, and that was one good thing about my visit if nothing else.

  I wished I’d brought some water with me. Looking at the gathered puddles all over the ground made me wish I could sip from them directly, but I knew better. I’d tried that exact thing as a child, taking large mouthfuls of standing water, and I was ill for over a week. Besides, if I did become ill here, Nurse Gray would likely oversee my recovery, and that was the last thing in the world I wanted.

  I never asked Charles how many nurses he’d seen before settling on Nurse Gray, but perhaps I should have. Margaret and Abigail Wilds had given her a recommendation, but they were not exactly women in tune with modern science. What did they know about nursing and health? Very little. Besides, their sister died under Nurse Gray’s care.

  The thought felt cruel, and I pushed it aside. Nurse Gray could not be blamed for one patient’s poor health. It was written into the description of nursing that lives would be lost no matter the quality of the care.

  By all accounts, she seemed to care deeply for Catherine. Though, my issue was with how deeply she cared. Too deeply, if anyone asked me. Though, they never did.

  I dug the toe of my boot into the soft earth, pushing a large dollop of mud aside, unearthing a long brown worm. I bent to examine it closer, feeling more like a child than I had in years, and I noticed something white in the mud next to it. Using the toe of my boot once again, I sifted small layers of mud away until the object became more discernible.

  It was a bone.

  A jawbone by the looks of it, though it was small enough with a long curved tooth arcing upward that I knew it belonged to a small animal who had likely met its fate from a predator or a fall from the tall trees above.

  I remembered what the Wilds had said about collecting bones on the moor. It seemed a strange way to spend time, but I liked the women and wanted to
show them I respected their pastime even if I didn’t understand it. So, I plucked the bone from the mud and banged it lightly against the tree trunk to shake off some of the remaining filth. Then, I dropped it into my pocket.

  When I started out on my walk again, rather than looking up, I kept my eyes on the ground. It wasn’t long before I’d found several other small bones without any digging at all. It seemed the heavy rains had softened the ground and unearthed things. I wasn’t skilled enough to know if the bones came from the same animal or from multiple creatures, but I dropped them all in my pocket hoping the sisters would be able to tell me later.

  If nothing else, delivering the bones would be another excuse to drop in on Margaret and Abigail. I wanted to ask them more about their experience with Nurse Gray and see if they noticed anything disturbing about her care for Dorothea, and I also wanted to ask them about Dorothea.

  It was likely they had no explanation for the physical similarities between their sister and mine, but it seemed too striking not to comment on. Perhaps we shared a distant family lineage. It was rather unlikely that the sisters would have a family genealogy on hand, but it was worth asking.

  When my neck began to hurt from looking down at the ground so intently, hunting for bones, I rolled it back and then looked forward. Suddenly, I realized the late afternoon had quickly given way to evening.

  I’d been so focused on the ground that I hadn’t paid the sky any notice. The sun was dropping below the horizon, painting the sky in deep shades of orange and purple. If I wanted to get back to the house without turning an ankle on the uneven ground, I needed to go now.

  As I turned to go, however, a strange cloud to my left caught my attention.

  It hung low to the ground and looked to be much closer than the rest of the sky. I puzzled over it for a moment before understanding the deep gray cloud was not a cloud at all, but smoke.