My jaw clenched.
“I won't pass out,” I said. I would be dead asleep in thirty minutes, of course, but for the moment I was still perfectly functional.
“How often do you take them?”
“None of your business,” I said automatically.
“They're highly addictive – do you know that?”
“I know exactly what they are,” I said tersely, and in the moment it no longer mattered what we were truly arguing about, because the only thing of importance was the fact that he had allowed me to make a fool of myself by falling for him when he was married to someone else. I tried to snap the rubber band around my wrist, but the bandage was in my way. I tore it off, not caring that the burn throbbed harder and harder with each tug of the gauze, angry beyond belief at myself for failing to notice the wedding band before and wondering if – in my desperation to have him fill the loneliness that had made its home in my chest – I had simply pushed the sight of it from my mind. I tossed the bandage down and snapped the rubber band. No, I thought with certainty, I wouldn't purposefully forget something no matter what the reasoning was.
“You're going to mangle your hand further,” he told me, then nodded to my wrist. “Why do you do that to yourself?”
“I don't know what you mean,” I said, putting my hands behind my back.
“It looks painful.”
“It's not.”
“Not compared with other things, you mean?” he said, and heat flushed my face. His dark eyes were steady, and, against all my logic, I was positive he could see right through the skin and bones into my thoughts. I didn't like what he was going to find.
He had managed to revert back to his composed tone, yet I couldn't do the same. There was something intrinsically easier with being angry with him than there was with being comfortable, especially now. I looked away from him, trying not to linger on how it had felt to be so close to him in the Augustus Suite and instead on how irritating it was that he always asked me if I was alright as though he was just waiting for me to tell him that I wasn't. I wished that I could shake him and make him as unsettled as I always felt.
“No, I mean it's not painful,” I repeated. “And for the record, I don't need your concern.”
Lennox stepped away from my bed.
“I'll let you get some sleep. You're not yourself.”
“How would you know?”
He shifted his jaw. I could tell that I was cracking him, and the image of the hard shell that surrounded who he was being shattered and falling to the floor spurred me on despite my better sense telling me to stop.
“You're right,” he said shortly. “I wouldn't.”
He turned to go to the nursery, but at the door he looked back, seemingly unable to contain himself anymore.
“Sixteen-hundred milligrams is an unprecedented amount of Meprobamate, especially for someone of your size,” he said. “I'm shocked that any licensed doctor would prescribe it, and I'm equally as shocked that someone who's educated in psychology would take it.”
“I take it to sleep,” I said.
“If you want to sleep, you might as well take a horse tranquilizer – it's less dangerous than what you're doing.”
“If you're worried about danger, then you shouldn't have suggested we go to the Augustus Suite,” I shot back. “Don't blame me for decisions you made yourself.”
His expression was locked, preventing me from guessing what he was thinking. I waited for his response, counting the seconds with my pounding heart and throbbing hand, but it never came. He surrendered to his room without another word.
As the door shut between us, I realized that I was still wearing his coat. I took it off and chucked it toward his room. It hit the door frame and slid down the wall, barely making a sound as it crumpled into a heap.
I leaned back on my bed, tense and anxious again even though the medication ought to have taken its effect. I reached over to my bedside table and picked up two more pills. Fuck him, I thought angrily as I swallowed them dry. He didn't know anything about me.
But worse, I thought as I stared up at the blotchy ceiling and finally succumbed to sleep, was the idea that I knew nothing about him – and despite everything, I still desperately wanted to.
Chapter 11
When I awakened, it was to the sight that I wasn't alone in bed. A woman slept peacefully at my side, her dark red hair swept away from her lined face and her hands gracefully resting beneath her head.
“Mom?”
Her eyes opened, blinked twice, and her face broke into a smile.
“Alexandra,” she whispered. “There you are.”
“How did you get here?” I wanted to sit up, but my body felt too heavy. I could barely keep my eyes open. “How did you know I was here?”
“Don't you remember?”
I thought back, trying to retrieve the information from my memory, but I was unable to. I shook my head.
“No.”
Her smile turned downwards.
“Me neither,” she said sadly, and before I could say more, her body became transparent until she vanished into the air.
I jolted from my dream, my arms flinching violently and my fingers curling into fists. The familiar sight of the empty nanny's room greeted me, bathed lightly in cold winter light, but my skin prickled with sweat and my head pounded and burned against the pillow. I had taken too much medication.
I tried to sit up, but just as in my dream, my body wouldn't allow me to. The entirety of it ached as though I had a case of the flu and my stomach gurgled in discomfort.
“Well, finally,” came an irritated voice from behind me, and I forced myself to roll over. Mrs. Tilly was standing next to my bed. “Sleeping in, are we?”
“What?”
“Your were supposed to be in the kitchen an hour ago!” she said. “I had to set the table and serve the coffee myself! I couldn't wake you!”
I glanced around the room. The door to the hallway was open, as was the one to the nursery; Lennox was nowhere in sight. I groggily flopped my legs out of bed and pulled myself to my feet to get dressed, but I could barely think. I snapped the rubber band against my wrist to recall the previous day's events: Marjorie. The burner. The Augustus Suite. The letter opener. Cassandra. Lennox.
“I thought Marjorie said –”
“Mrs. Pickering expects you to serve. Or are you really so foolish that you think she was letting you off the hook?”
I shifted my jaw. I wasn't sure what I thought anymore.
“It might be a bit difficult for me to hold the tray –”
“Don't make excuses,” Mrs. Tilly snapped. “Get up and get downstairs: I don't want my food burning.”
She stomped from the room, and though I was glad to see her go, I wasn't pleased to be alone. I glanced back at my bed, fearing that the sight of my mother would greet me. Perhaps I had hit my head harder than I'd initially thought, or perhaps it was just the sight of Cassandra laying next to Mrs. Marlowe that had made me dream of her. I got down on the floor and patted around for my shoes. Yet even as I settled on the idea, I couldn't shake the feeling of anxiousness that had come over me, as though my mother had somehow entered my dreams to warn me about something. I pulled my shoes on and brushed the thought aside. No, I reasoned, I had just taken too many pills. My mother couldn't watch out for me anymore, and certainly not through the impossibility of dreams.
I grasped at the banister to ease myself downstairs, feeling as though I wouldn't get through the Foyer without vomiting. When I made it to the kitchen, Mrs. Tilly had the tray waiting for me. I took it from her hands, shoving it up against my hip to hold it in place with my good hand, then slowly made my way to the breakfast nook. It was safe to assume that Cassandra was going to tell the family that she had seen me and Lennox in the Augustus Suite, assuming she hadn't already; and I – with my head hammering and stomach contents threatening to come up at any moment, didn't know how I was going to defend myself.
No one spoke
of the incident when I entered the room. I glanced at Lennox. He gave the slightest shake of his head. Cassandra was sitting at the head of the table, her long veil trailing down to the floor like a puddle.
I brought the tray around the table to serve them, certain that they could hear my head pounding as I stooped to their level. The smell of ham wafted up from the tray and into my nostrils, and I clamped my mouth firmly shut as another wave of nausea came over me.
“Oh, feeling better?” Bernadette asked as I lowered the tray for her.
“Yes, Mrs. Carlton.”
“Had a bit of an accident, did you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Carlton.”
“It looks quite painful,” Rachel said from down the table.
“Yes, what a nasty gash,” Marjorie agreed. “I hope it knocked some sense into you.”
I waited to respond until I reached her. A part of me hoped that, if I was truly going to be sick, I would do it on her lap.
“It did, Mrs. Pickering. I'm going to be more careful in the future.”
She only smiled. I stole another glance at Lennox, but he was busy drinking his coffee. I wondered if he was doing so because he didn't agree with my response, or if he was just concerned about Cassandra.
She stayed silent as I worked my way around the table, but when I reached her and stooped down to lift some meat and eggs onto her plate, her veiled head turned in my direction.
“Oh, Alexandra – your cap,” she said, noting that it wasn't on my head. She reached beneath her veil and produced it, the black fabric barely distinguishable from her satin gloves. “Here you go. You left it behind last night.”
My mouth opened but no words came out. She gave a little chuckle before pulling it down over my head, brushing my hot cheeks with her gloves as she went. As her index finger came to rest against my lips, she leaned toward me and whispered, “Shh. It'll be our little secret.”
“Is everything alright down there, Cassie?” Marjorie called. “Or should I assume there's a good reason that you're dressing the maid?”
“Oh, everything's fine,” Cassandra giggled. “I was just telling Alexandra not to worry … I won't get her into trouble.”
“I don't think any of us would give her a hard time for losing her hat,” Bill said, though he threw me a look as he said it, and his eyes were still distrusting of me.
“Oh, no, it's not that,” Cassandra said with another giggle. “It's something much bigger …”
“Well, either tell us or shut up about it,” Marjorie snapped, “and send her over with the juice.”
I pulled away and went to serve Bill, then maneuvered the tray onto the buffet before getting the juice for Marjorie. When I was done, I took my place against the wall, hoping that that was the end of it, but –
“Alexandra did something quite naughty last night,” Cassandra said, seeming to realize that no one was going to drag it out of her as she had hoped they would. She put her hand over her mouth to hide another giggle. Her dead mother's ring gleamed up at me like a wicked smile.
“What's this?” Bernadette asked. She glanced from her sister to me. I opened my mouth and closed it. Two seats away, Lennox took a sip of coffee, his back straight and his eyes fixed on his saucer.
“Oh, yes,” Cassandra went on. “She and Isidore had a very exciting time.”
She lifted her veil from her lap so that she could bring her food underneath it. I stood in my spot, wanting to explain myself in my usual direct way but only managing to focus on the searing pain in my head.
“They … had what?” Bernadette asked.
Marjorie had her fork raised to her mouth, but the scrambled eggs slipped off of it and back down to her plate with a plop. She raised her eyebrows in disgust.
“Would you care to explain, Cassie?” she called. “Or will our imaginations suffice?”
“Oh, I'm not sure if I should share the details,” Cassandra said. “It was highly unsettling …”
Lennox put his coffee cup down. It clattered against the saucer.
“Alexandra and I were in the Augustus Suite last night,” he said wearisomely. “It was my idea. I wanted to examine John.”
The family's faces went from one shocked expression to a completely different type. I raised my eyes to look at him, but his gaze was on Marjorie.
“You wanted to what?” she asked.
“To examine him,” Lennox repeated. “I was curious about his cause of death –”
“You had no right to touch my husband!” Amalia said. “How dare you disturb him without my permission?”
“I'm sorry, I must not have heard correctly,” Marjorie cut in. “You wanted to examine him? For what?”
“His cause of death,” Lennox said again. “It's been troubling me that he was killed by a – by such a short knife. I was hoping to –”
“You mean you were doing an autopsy?” Marjorie said. “My God – and you didn't think of discussing it first with all of us?”
“I admit that it was wrong, though in the circumstances –”
“How do we know you weren't tampering with evidence?” Amalia exclaimed. “Wiping your fingerprints from the blade? Covering your tracks?”
“If anything, there will be more of my fingerprints on him now than there were initially,” Lennox replied calmly. “But the point is –”
“The point is that you shouldn't have been in there!” Amalia said. “I suppose you were hoping you'd get away with it? You and your little roommate?”
“I thought it might be best to do it privately, yes,” Lennox said.
“But Isidore,” Rachel said, “you must have known that it wasn't your place –”
“I'm not sure that regular rules apply at the moment,” Lennox said. “And, quite frankly, I doubt that you all would have allowed me to look at him had I asked –”
“For good reason!” Amalia exclaimed.
“How is it that you caught them, Cassie?” Bernadette inquired.
Cassandra's veiled head turned up in surprise. She faltered for a moment.
“Well, I was in there checking on Mummy –” she began.
“Oh, Cassie,” Marjorie said. “You weren't sleeping in her bed again, were you? It's bad enough you've been wearing her clothes.”
Cassandra made an indignant sound, and I was certain that, had I been able to see her face, she would have been blushing.
“I certainly wasn't –”
“Really, Cassie,” Rachel said. “It was odd enough when she was alive –”
“I was checking on her! And it was a good thing I was, or else –”
“It's highly unhygienic,” Bernadette stated. “Once a body begins to decompose, all sorts of toxins are released –”
“Poor, poor Cassie,” Marjorie went on. “Never got enough of Mother's love in life so she has to take what she can get now …”
“I was checking on her!” Cassandra said, her voice still fairly calm despite being raised. “And Mummy and I were the closest, so I certainly never wanted for her love and affection –”
“How did you even get in there?” Amalia asked. “I locked the door!”
“Well, you obviously didn't do a very good job,” Bernadette said. “Considering that both Cassie and Lennox were able to walk right in –”
“I locked it! I have the key!”
“There are two keys to the Augustus Suite,” Marjorie said. “One was Mother's, one was Father's.”
“Well – well –!” Amalia spluttered angrily. “Well someone might have mentioned that!”
“It wouldn't have done you much good: it's not like Cassie would have handed the one in her possession over,” Bernadette said. “Not if it meant she couldn't snuggle up to Mother's corpse …”
“Well, you might have at least locked the door behind you!” Amalia said angrily as she rounded on Cassandra, but before the veiled woman could counter that she had indeed locked the door, Bill cut in.
“Perhaps we should get back to the point,” he said. He
looked at Lennox, whose shoulders had tensed. I watched him, thinking that he would relax now that he didn't have to tell them he had taken the key from Amalia's room, but the uneasiness didn't leave him. “What exactly did you discover when you … examined John?”
Lennox glanced my way. I stared down at my hands, focusing on the shiny, purplish skin on my left palm and fingers rather than the fact that he was taking the majority of the blame for what we had done.
“Well, I didn't get to finish –” he started.
“And you certainly won't now!”
“ – but it seems,” he carried on, ignoring Amalia, “that John was stabbed postmortem.”
The family stared at him, not understanding.
“He was stabbed after he was dead,” Lennox explained.
“But that doesn't make any sense,” Bill said. “He couldn't have been dead before he was killed.”
“You must be mistaken, Lennox,” Bernadette agreed. “He didn't just drop dead of fright upon seeing someone come at him with a knife –”
“That's not what I'm saying,” Lennox said. “It would appear that whomever stabbed him did it for – shall we say – show. To cover up how he really died.”
“This is ludicrous,” Amalia said. “My husband was murdered!”
“Yes, he was,” Lennox said. “But not in the way we initially thought. I'm very confident that something else killed him first.”
“Something else like what?” Bernadette said. “Hypothermia?”
“If I could take another look at the body –”
“You certainly may not!” Amalia said.
“It's the only way we're going to discover what happened to him,” Lennox said. “I can guess, but conjecture won't do us much good.”
“Neither will having you poke around my husband's body!”
“Afraid what he might find, are you?” Marjorie asked.
Amalia drew in a breath, her chest puffing out as she seethed.
“It's Lennox I'm worried about!” she said. “He could be doing all sorts of things to John – trying to cover up how he died –!”
The Marlowe Murders Page 21