“Then I think it's safe to assume that – unless John had an allergy to the drug and suffered anaphylactic shock – neither of them murdered him with that. Nor, I presume, did they murder him at all.”
“Well, that's not all I found in their room,” I said, then briefly relayed the eerily life-like doll that was hiding in the chest at the foot of their bed. Lennox's frown got deeper and deeper as he listened. “You have to admit, Dr. Lennox: it's a bit too fortuitous to ignore.”
“Well,” he began, and I could tell that he was still ready to argue with me. “I –”
“The doll was stabbed through the chest. You're telling me you think that's a perfectly normal thing to have laying around someone's bedroom?”
“Bill and Edie lost twelve children. Bill might have just been – getting his frustration out on the unfairness of it all.”
“Well, he might have been getting his frustration out on the unfairness of it all on John, too.”
He shook his head at me. We reached the front of the house and continued down the path toward the water. With every other step, his arm brushed up against mine, and my skin was growing warmer and warmer despite how frigid the air was.
“Alright, that's logical,” he said. “Do you actually believe it?”
I released the smoke from my lungs, watching as it created a cloud of white in front of me.
“To an extent,” I replied. “But this family's just too weird. Too secretive. I can't discount any of them, really. The way Amalia accuses everyone might be because she's trying to divert the blame off of herself, and Marjorie's certainly crazy enough to have done it. Cassandra, too. It's like Kneller said: If we're being perfectly honest, then we should all admit one thing: everyone here wanted John dead, for one reason or another.”
“I don't know that I wanted him dead,” Lennox mused.
“That's only because you wanted him to give you your painting. If he'd done that then keeled over, you probably wouldn't have blinked an eye.”
Lennox murmured to himself, though he didn't argue. As we turned around the clusters of trees that led to the dock, he turned to me with a thoughtful gaze.
“How do you do that, by the way?” he asked.
“Do …?”
“Repeat things from memory.”
I finished my cigarette and dropped it to the ground, pausing to stamp it into the snow even though it would surely go out on its own. Lennox waited for me to join him again.
“I just do,” I said.
“So you have an eidetic memory?”
“No. I'm not even sure that those exist.” I chewed the inside of my cheek, thinking of whether I wanted to go on or not. “I just trained myself to remember things.”
“How?”
“You've heard of Simonides?”
“The Greek philosopher?”
“Poet,” I corrected. “He was the one who came up with the idea of the Memory Palace. That's sort of what I do – only I do it better.”
“So what types of things do you remember?”
“Lots of things.”
“Conversations? Things you've seen or read?”
I nodded. Lennox stared.
“Which one were you nodding to?” he asked.
“All of the above.”
“So –” he started, still looking utterly lost, “ – how long do you remember it for? Just until you decide you don't need it anymore, then you forget it?”
“No. I don't forget.”
“You don't forget the important things, you mean?”
“No, I don't forget. Anything.”
He stared at me so long that it made me uncomfortable. I took out another cigarette and lit it.
“You can't possibly remember everything,” he said. When I didn't answer, he added, “What was the first thing I said to you when we met?”
I didn't even need to snap the rubber band around my wrist to give him the answer.
“I'm here for the wake.”
He made a humming sound. I had a feeling he probably didn't remember what it was he had said himself and was trying with difficulty to match the words with his arrival.
“But how do you do it?” he asked. “You can't have a room for everything you've seen or read or heard – even the Marlowe house isn't big enough for that.”
“That's why I don't use a house: I used a filing cabinet. Sixteen, actually – at the moment. I use the words to make up the scene that I'm in, like little tiny pen markings that form an ink picture, then I file it away in one of the drawers depending on its category to be retrieved whenever I choose.”
Lennox stared.
“That must be incredible,” he said.
“It beats the alternative.”
“And that's what your dissertation was about? Memory?”
“Understanding and preserving the way information is encoded, stored, and retrieved in the adult brain,” I recited.
“You must be popular among your peers. I imagine they come to you for help memorizing their class notes.”
“Not really. And that's not the point of my research.”
We reached the dock and paused, watching the water move back and forth against the shore. It looked as though it was made up of millions upon millions of sapphires and onyx stones, all glistening beneath a sunless white sky.
“What is the point, then?” he asked, and his voice had gone soft again. Perhaps he could tell what was coming from the way my tone had become clipped and my sentences had shortened.
“To prevent chronic brain disorders that cause people to forget,” I said.
Lennox waited for me to say more, but I didn't go on. I knew what he was going to ask me: I could tell from the way his eyes ran over my face. But then –
“Can I have a drag of your cigarette?” he asked. I was so surprised that I only stared. He offered me a smile. “I left mine at the house.”
I numbly handed it over. He put the cigarette to his lips as he stared off over the water, leaving me waiting for the question that I was sure he would ask and that I wasn't sure I wanted to answer.
“Mother or father?” he said as he exhaled. “Or is it a grandparent?”
“Mother.”
“When did it start?”
“Thirteen years ago.”
“She must have been very young,” he commented, and I shrugged, trying to look anything but as affected as I felt, though I didn't think that I was successful.
“She was forty-three.”
Lennox coughed as he took another drag and turned his head away. When he faced me again, a frown pulled deeply at his brow.
“Did something cause it?” he asked. “A stroke? A head injury?”
I stared at the water, trying to force my eyes to see the deep blue waves gently rocking back and forth rather than the memory playing in my head. The loneliness was filling me up just at the suggestion of it, and I didn't want it to overtake me. Not now. Not when I had held it off for so long.
“No. Nothing the doctors can pinpoint, anyway. One day she just … stopped remembering.”
“Does your father take care of her now?”
“No, his sister does.”
“Where's your father?”
“He went to war. And never came back.”
Lennox was silent for so long that I wondered if I had finally said something that he couldn't think of a response to, but then he shook his head.
“There's too much tragedy in this world,” he said quietly.
He held the cigarette out for me, but when I reached up to take it back, my fingers closed over his hand instead. All the cold in the air disappeared, replaced with a warmth that spread up from him and overtook my skin, and all at once it was as though the murder and the fights and the insanity of the Marlowe household had been erased, leaving us alone in the peacefulness and serenity of one another's company. I stared at where our gloves tangled in a ball of black leather, wondering what had made me do it, and then lifted my gaze to stare into his eyes. He had the
same genuineness that I had noticed the first night I had met him. It was an odd thing to see in a person – and odder still when it made me want to lean in and whisper everything into his ear that I was too frightened of admitting – and I hoped with everything in me that what Kneller had said wasn't true: I couldn't have just been a moth who went toward a flame.
A breeze skated over the water and whipped my hair up to dance around my shoulders. Lennox followed its movement with his eyes, and something akin to sadness fell upon his expression, though he gripped my hand tighter.
“I should tell you something, Alexandra,” he said quietly, his eyes still on my hair rather than my face. I stepped closer to him, telling myself that it was to better hear him and not for any other reason, and I was so close to him that I could see every fleck of gold in his brown eyes. I counted them as I waited for him to speak – twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three – but he seemed to have lost his nerve, and contrarily I seemed to have gained mine. Because if I was going to get rejected, I reasoned, then it might as well have been now, because later was becoming further and further away the longer that we were trapped here.
I stood up on my tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his, feeling heavy and weightless all at once. My heart hammered as I waited for him to push me away and tell me that I had made a mistake, but his arm had moved around my back to hold me closer, and my mind seemed to be floating somewhere outside of my body, staring down at the two people in the snow as it watched something that couldn't be true except in the wildness of my imagination.
When we broke apart I was nearly too lightheaded to stand, and for once my mind was completely blank. The incessant drumbeat to remember had vanished, as though the only thing worth knowing was that moment.
He took both my hands in his and pressed them to his chest. He stared at them for a long time, and it felt as though if I just moved a little closer, I would finally be able to see into his head the way that he always seemed to see into mine.
“I …” he began, but his attention had moved to something else as he lifted his chin to look up at me, and his olive skin paled as though he had taken ill. I waited for the words that he had been about to speak, nearly irritated that he could be distracted at a moment like this, but then his mouth dropped open and his eyes widened in horror.
I turned to search for what had disturbed him. Gulls were squawking in the distance, flailing and pecking at something floating in the water. I squinted momentarily, but it only took me a moment to recognize what it was: a body, skin stark white and clothing pure black, bounding back and forth just off the shore as it was rocked by the waves.
We both raced off the dock, but his legs carried him far faster, and by the time I was halfway to the spot he was already waist-deep in the water and moving with broken, painful steps to reach the body. He swiped at the gulls, smacking them away, and they opened their huge beaks to screech at him for stealing their prize. He shouted for them to get away, grabbing onto the body and pulling it toward him protectively.
I rushed to help him, wading knee-deep to meet him and grab hold of one of the rigid arms, and we tugged it together to the shore.
“C-coat,” he said to me through chattering teeth. “Give me – c-coat!”
I stripped it off and pushed it into his outstretched hands. He wrapped it around the body, and I barely had time to register the sight of Rachel's gruesome gray face before he turned her onto her stomach so that he could pound on her back, trying to force the water from her lungs.
“Go!” he shouted at me. “Get –”
He hadn't finished the sentence before I turned and ran, my boots pounding into the snow and flattening it down beneath me as I rushed to get back to the path. The house seemed farther away than ever, and I raced alongside the clusters of trees that shielded it from my view, ignoring the way my breath hitched from the icy air. Rachel's face was burned into my vision. What had she done? I thought frantically, but no sooner had the thought come than another followed: what had been done to her?
When I finally made it to the front porch, I threw myself at the stairs, tripping halfway up and banging my shins against the step, and then clambered back up and tore through the front door.
“Bill!” I shouted, my voice booming through the Foyer as I called for him. “Bill!”
He emerged from the Drawing Room, a wild and uncertain look on his face. The sound of doors opening came from above us, and footsteps pounded on the upstairs hallway as the others scrambled to see what the shouting was about.
“What on earth –?” came Marjorie's voice, but I ignored her and gave Bill a yank.
“What's wrong with you, Alexandra?” Bernadette said, huffing as she came downstairs.
“Come with me!” I said, tugging him toward the door. “It's Rachel! Go to the dock!”
His perplexed face morphed into an expression of understanding, and he freed himself and shot through the door. I raced after him, but the exertion from sprinting such a distance already rendered me far slower than usual, and by the time I turned around the cluster of trees he and Lennox were staggering toward me, Rachel's body hanging between them. They pushed past me wordlessly to get back up to the house.
“Rachel!”
Edie's strangled voice rang out as we entered the Foyer. Bill and Lennox laid the body down.
“Get something warm,” Lennox demanded. “Coats, blankets – go!”
He put his mouth over hers and held her nose, blowing air into her lungs. It made a whooshing sound as he tried to revive her.
Coats were brought from all sides of me, though no one dared to get closer to the body. I pulled the large overcoat from Bernadette's hands, moving toward Lennox while my eyes remained on Rachel's paralyzed face.
“Dr. Lennox,” I said, crouching down so that I was next to him. He didn't respond. I gently laid the coat over Rachel's form, tucking it over my own even though I knew it would do no good. “Dr. Lennox …”
No one was rushing around now. The only movement in the room came from Lennox's continued efforts, and he was adamant as he went, certain that she would take a breath at any moment. His hope outlasted the rest of ours, and he kept going far past the time when everyone else's eyes had dropped to the ground, and Edie had started to sob into her hands, and then her sobs grew louder and filled the room, huge gulping and gasping sounds that rang out beneath the chandelier and fell back down upon us like rain drops, and puddles formed at our feet from the snow dripping off our shoes, and everyone knew it by then: even Lennox, though he continued on anyways, his movements getting more frantic and frustrated the longer that he went on, before he finally stopped.
Rachel was gone.
Chapter 13
For the first time, the house was freezing. The front doors were still open, drawing cold over the black-and-white tiled floor that circled around our ankles and under the necks of our shirts. The air in the room had changed, and the breathing had changed with it. Short, shallow breaths came out all around the Foyer; nonsensical shakes of the head; fingernails digging into skin, twisting it around as everyone tried to wake themselves out of what could have only been a nightmare.
“Just like Mary,” Cassandra said.
“This can't be,” Edie whispered. “This – this can't be.”
There were no jokes this time. No one dared it, and no one wanted it. And then, from somewhere else in the house, a strange howling rang out. Everyone looked up, then –
“It's James.”
Bill was the one who spoke. He looked at Lennox as though he might have the answer to what to do about Rachel's husband, but Lennox only shut his eyes in response.
“Someone should go get him,” Marjorie said. “Birdie – it's got to be you.”
“I'm not bringing that man in here,” she said. “Hasn't he suffered enough?”
“We can't just leave him there,” Bill said. “What's he going to think happened?”
Marjorie ran her fingers over her mouth.
“Nothing,�
�� she said. “Nothing at all.”
No one could think of a way to respond. Lennox was still shaking, and he didn't look like himself anymore. It was as though the water had washed off the exterior he had so carefully painted onto his skin, and underneath it all was a man who had cracked in numerous places and was quickly coming undone.
“Why would she do this?” Edie asked, her voice muffled through her hands. “Why?”
“Isn't it obvious?” Amalia said. She was standing with her arms crossed, and her eyes were narrowed to slits. “Guilt.”
“She didn't kill John!” said an angry voice, and it took me a moment of looking around to realize whose it was. Bill had his hands balled into fists; he was shaking nearly as much as Lennox.
“She admitted it,” Amalia returned. “If that wasn't proof enough, then this is!”
“Rachel wouldn't kill herself!” He was so distressed that it was rendering him senseless. His glasses had slipped down his running nose and his eyes were bright with tears. Even his hair, or the little that remained, was standing up as though he had raked his fingers through it to push it toward the ceiling. “She wouldn't! And she didn't kill John! I know she didn't!”
“You don't know anything!” Amalia spat.
“Yes, I do! I know – because on the night John died, I saw who locked the door!”
A cold breeze skated through the door, opening it further and sending it banging against the wall. Everyone was frozen in place: even Lennox had stopped shaking, though his chest rose and fell heavily. It was so quiet that all I could hear was my heartbeat thumping against my rib cage, and the air was thick with tension as everyone waited for Bill to speak.
“Well?” Marjorie demanded. “Spit it out! Who?”
Lennox slowly stood from the floor. He was staring at Bill intently, moving his lips ever so slightly, but the meaning was unintelligible.
Bill raised his chin.
“It was Lennox.”
Marjorie's back straightened. Amalia went stiff. Lennox shut his eyes. It was just as he had feared, I knew: that the family would put the blame on him. I glared at Bill, and my uncertainty that he had been the one to kill John turned to sureness as I put it all together. He and Rachel had killed John, then she had gotten cold feet about what they'd done, and so he had had no choice but to kill her, too –
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