Dangerous to Know (27 page)

“Only two can play that,” George said. “You ladies divide up and I'll float between tables giving bad advice to everyone.”

I was not familiar with the game, but Cécile was a huge proponent, and soon she'd taught me the rules. We took one table and Mrs. Hargreaves and Madeline the other, laughter erupting with great frequency as George bounced between us, stealing cards and generally making mischief. Some time after we'd switched partners and I was paired with Madeline, a footman came into the room with a telegram.

George glanced at the envelope and handed it to me. I tore it open. “It's from Colin,” I said. “He's well. They're close, he says, to having the final bit of evidence they need. He doesn't think it will take more than three days and he'll be back with us. And he says we're safe where we are, that there's no need for any worry.”

“This could not be better news,” George said and turned to the waiting footman. “Take Lady Emily's reply, my good man, and then bring us a bottle of champagne.”

“You don't think to celebrate now is premature, my dear?” Madeline asked, concern tugging at her pretty face.

“Only if you object to celebrating again once the madman has been apprehended and jailed,” George said.

“I do not understand, monsieur,” Cécile said. “Objecting to celebration? Is such a thing possible?”

We all toasted and drank to Colin's efficient success, giddy with relief that the end was all but in sight. I was proud of my husband, delighted with the speed of his success, and eager to return to London. George was about to open a third bottle of champagne when Madeline stopped him.

“Look,” she said, pointing out the window. “They've lit the lanterns. Let's go outside.”

Glasses still in our hands, we stepped into the garden, brilliantly bathed in dancing light, and made our way to the maze. George raised his hands to silence our chattering when we reached the entrance.

“Madeline and I have a tradition of racing each other through the maze,” he said. “Which does, of course, mean we're starting on unequal footing here, but there it is. I say we all set off at once. And I warn you, I may lead you astray should you try to follow me. First one to the center and back wins. There are five scrolls in the center—pick one up and bring it back with you. I've written poems on each and when we're done we'll read them aloud.”

It was an excellent idea for an entertainment. We quickly split up after entering the labyrinth hedge, none of us at first wanting the others too close by. Laughter drifted through the night air, Madeline's louder than the rest. I'd never been particularly good at mazes—I'd forget which direction I'd taken when and found the only way I could make my way through was by not paying too close attention to the fact that I would have to encounter every dead end on my way to the solution.

After more than a quarter of an hour I still hadn't found the center. As I reached yet another stopping point, a feeling of panic filled my chest, and it seemed as if the dark hedgerows were closing in on me. I slowed my breathing and turned around, continuing on. When I again dead-ended, I retreated back to the last junction I'd been at and tried to remember which way I'd gone before. Making the best guess I could, I marched on, finding myself in the same dark spot I'd been in only moments before. Back at the junction, I turned what I thought was the other way, but wound up yet again in the place I'd started.

Unless it was an identical dead end. I felt trapped, more scared than frustrated, my breath coming faster and my heart rate increasing. Surely I couldn't have been going back and forth to the same place over and over again all this time? I dropped my handkerchief to the ground and returned to the junction, where I closed my eyes, concentrated, and went in the direction opposite from whence I'd come.

The white linen of my handkerchief struck my eyes like a blow. This time, I marched back to the junction and kept going, but the path only returned me to where I'd been. I'd somehow become trapped in a portion of the maze that went nowhere. I stopped, the feeling of claustrophobia pressing in harder now, and fear gripped me. I couldn't get out. Couldn't find my way. Couldn't even backtrack. I was about to shout for help when I heard Cécile and Mrs. Hargreaves chatting in the distance. Reassured, I reminded myself this could not be so difficult, and set off for another try.

Only to find, once again, my handkerchief.

I could no longer hear my friends, but far away in the distance rose the sound of a thin wail, growing louder and louder as it came closer to where I stood. Shaking, I reached into the bushes, wanting to push my way through them and force my way out, but they were too thick. Running now, I retraced my steps, determined to escape.

This time, I didn't find my handkerchief. Instead, crumpled on the ground in front of me, I saw a blue satin ribbon. The keening sound had followed me, weak and sad, and I felt as if it was nearly upon me, its eerie moan a plea for help or release.

Against all my principles and everything I believed in, I did something I abhorred with a passion.

I fainted.

I woke up to the sensation of someone tenderly rubbing my forehead. I opened my eyes, expecting to see Colin, surprised to find George instead. I parted my lips to speak but he covered my mouth, gently, with his hand.

“Don't exhaust yourself, Emily. You need your rest now.”

“Rest? I only fainted,” I said, groggy and confused. “I'm fine.” I tried to sit up and realized that I'd been bound to the bed on which I lay. Leather straps at my ankles and wrists secured me, and instinctively I pulled against them. “George! What is this?”

“Just one more, my friend,” he said, and tightened something around my forehead. What a mistake to have thought I'd been awakened by sweet ministrations.

“Where are we?”

“In the tower I've convinced Madeline is unsafe. It's the only way I could ensure privacy for my work.”

“Work? What work?”

“There's no need to worry about that now, dear.” He stroked my cheek. I flinched.

“Where are the others?”

“At the house, resting happily after drinking the laudanum-laced brandy I poured for them after we came inside. There's no danger any of them will wake up until morning.”

“What do they think became of me?”

“You, my friend, succumbed to a fit of the vapors after getting lost in the maze. I found you and carried you to your room, where everyone believes you are sleeping peacefully. Cécile herself tucked you into bed. I didn't move you here until they were all asleep.”

“Our rooms are adjoining. She'll check on me.”

“She won't wake up.”

“Why would you do such a thing?” I asked, my heart racing.

“I need your help, Emily. Madeline needs it. Edith was taken away from me too soon—I couldn't finish the work. But you're the right size, and I was close, so very close to solving the problem. You must understand, though, that I can't test it on her. The risks are too great.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” I struggled to release my hands.

“Don't,” he said, gripping my wrists. “You'll only hurt yourself. Edith had terrible sores from trying to escape. I didn't want to hurt her, you know. I was trying to help her, too.”

I looked around, desperate to find a way to escape. The architecture matched the oldest parts of the château, but there were no windows that I could see in the room, only unbroken stone walls. There was nothing else to do. I screamed for help.

“You really shouldn't do that,” he said, forcing a dirty rag into my mouth. “I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but I can't have anyone finding you here. Not right now.”

I strained against the leather straps.

“This may hurt some, but it won't kill you, and you're doing so much good, so much for my Madeline.”

On a table next to me I saw a strange object: a metal cylinder with a crank and a jar full of clear liquid attached to it. A long wire, of which George held the terminus, extended from the end of the tube.

“It is through this the electricity flows,” he said, explaining as if I were his pupil. “A fascinating machine, elegant in design, simple to operate. We attach the wire here—” He put it on my temple, something sticky catching on my skin to hold it in place. I was struggling to pay attention to everything he said, to remain focused, as it occurred to me my only hope for survival was to understand this contrivance. “And then I turn it on. First, though, I'll adjust the current.” He spun a knob on the base of the platform. I heard a whirring sound, a sudden pop, and my muscles convulsed as pain shot through me. Tears poured from my eyes. George wiped them with his handkerchief and removed the rag from my mouth, covering it once again with his hand.

“You mustn't scream again, do you understand?” he asked. “Or I shall have to put a real gag on you.”

“What are you doing?”

“I'm making it so you can help your friend,” he said. “That's all you need know.”

“No, George, tell me what this is. I'm scared.” Whatever he was up to, there seemed to be some small measure of compassion still present in him, and at the moment, appealing to it seemed all I could do.

“This is a treatment—medical electricity—that can be used for nervous disorders, but it's not been much studied, and as you see, it's painful. I think it may help Madeline, but I must be sure before I try it on her.”

“I don't have a mental disorder, George. You can't learn anything from doing this to me.”

“You're just her size,” he said. “I didn't notice it until you wore her clothes after you both got soaked in the rain. I have to figure out how much current is required—and how much is too much—so I can try to stop the progression of the hideous disease that's destroying my dear girl.”

“But you won't know the effect on her brain,” I said, hoping to keep him talking until I could make an escape from the leather straps. They weren't terribly tight, but tight enough. I might be able to wriggle my way out of them if given enough time. I rolled my ankles, not wanting to draw his attention to my hands. “What you're doing to me is futile.”

“No, no, you're wrong,” he said. “Edith started to respond to the treatment and as the results got better and better I escalated too quickly, although I wasn't giving her even half what this machine can generate. When the volts went too high, she fell into a coma. It was a horrible sight. She foamed at the mouth and twitched violently. She recovered in less than half an hour, but I could see that she was no longer herself. She was more crazed, and she broke free and lashed out at me. Knocked me against the wall and I lost consciousness for a brief moment. When I woke, she was gone.”

“You killed her.”

“I had no choice, Emily. If she'd made it to the village, she would have told them, she would have brought the police, and all my work would have been for naught. Would you have me let my wife slip into the irrevocable bonds of madness?”

“You can't save her by killing others,” I said.

“Edith shouldn't have died. I admit, it's my fault for escalating the experiment at the wrong pace. But she left me no option once she'd fled. I found her easily enough—she was crying, couldn't stop from the sound of it. All I had to do was follow the sound.”

“But the manner in which you killed her. It was so brutal, George…how could you?” The horror of being trapped so near a person capable of such crimes was beyond any words. I was sweating, my stomach churned, my muscles clenched. My very bones ached with pain as my entire body revolted at his proximity.

“I did it quickly. The knife was sharp. The rest…” He covered his eyes. “It was terrible for me, too, you know. But I thought if I made it look like something it wasn't—if I mimicked a crime more famous…perhaps I would avoid all scrutiny.”

“You have to let me go, George.”

“Oh, Emily, I should like nothing better. But you know I can't do that, especially now. I've always liked you, and Madeline adores you, so I can promise to be as kind as the situation allows. I have to figure out how much current you can take before the seizure, and that I will do slowly. But in the end…” He choked on the words. “I will do it when you're unconscious. You will feel neither pain nor fear. And you can die knowing you're giving back to me the woman I adore more than anything.”

I couldn't speak, could hardly think. No terror could be compared to this, no dread, no hideous imagining. I let my eyes meet his, wanting to see if madness was visible on his face. His pupils were dilated, his skin flushed, but he looked otherwise like a perfectly ordinary man. To have found otherwise might have provided a slim parcel of comfort.

“Where's Lucy?” I asked, desperate to distract him from the course of action on which he was bent.

“Don't worry about the child,” he said. “She will come to no harm. I'm taking care of her and soon will introduce her to Madeline, who I know will be an excellent mother to her.”

“Why did you take her? Would it not have been better to leave her where she was safe and well cared for?”

“She may show signs of the illness, too. I might need her.”

“You can't do this, George. The poor child! What must she think? Surely she knows something is dreadfully wrong.”

“No, I've taken exquisite care of her, even if I have had to hide her away. Sometimes she gets upset in the night and cries for her mother—which is to be expected, I suppose. I take her for long walks in the countryside until she falls back asleep. She's come to quite depend on me. She knows that her mother's illness was fatal, and all orphans, you know, long for a real home. I've told her she's to have one.”

I shuddered, realizing the eerie keening I'd heard had been the child—a real one—weeping over the loss of her mother. The reality of this all-too-human pain, hopeless and devastating, felt far more frightening than any ghostly apparition could have.

“And what will you tell everyone else?” I asked. “You can't just magically have a child appear in your household.”

“Lucy believes that her father, Vasseur, had an accident on his way home from the Foreign Legion, and asked me, as he lay dying, to look after her. She thinks her mother had to spend time away from her because she was ill, and that Madame Sapin was taking care of her only until I came for her.”

“What really happened to Monsieur Vasseur?”

“I served in the Foreign Legion with him—did a stint after serving in the British Army as a physician. We traded stories of the girls we loved. When he confessed to me his amour had been sent away in hopes of having her progressive madness cured—the symptoms of which I recognized all to well as those beginning to plague my own dear wife—I told him of Madeline's troubles. In short order, he realized she was Edith's distant cousin, a revelation that made me all the more interested in her treatment. If something worked for her, it would almost certainly help Madeline. I made note of the location of the asylum to which she'd been sent by her family, and when I returned to France, I visited her, telling her Vasseur had sent me.”

“Did she believe you?”

“Why wouldn't she?” he asked. “We bonded almost at once, both of us knowing the pain of having the one you love taken away from you. She trusted me.”

“And Vasseur? Did he trust you?”

“We lost all contact after I left the Legion. He did, however, keep in touch with Edith. I read all of his letters while she slept—she hid them in her headboard. Eventually, I decided I could use him to lure her away from the asylum.”

“Why did you want to remove her from Dr. Girard's care?”

“Girard was making no progress with her, so I talked to him, asked him to consider more radical treatments. But it was to no avail. I'd studied enough to have learned of the potential benefits of medical electricity, and the fact that Madeline and Edith were nearly the same age and build…”

“You befriended Edith so that you might use her to test treatments for Madeline?”

“Can you fault me for it? Would you not do the same for your own husband?” he asked.

“How did you convince her to leave?”

“I told her Vasseur and I had arranged to bring her to live with him in Étretat. I thought it would be dead easy, but she refused to go unless Lucy was with her. She'd told me about the girl early on in our friendship. I would have preferred not to be saddled with her, but Edith grew quite hysterical on the subject, and I knew that Lucy might prove useful herself, so I found her and brought her to Edith's window on the night we fled. She did not hesitate for an instant once she saw her child.”

“Did Vasseur know what you were doing?” I asked.

“Not at first,” he said. “But Edith managed to send him a letter begging him to meet her in Étretat. He realized her parents didn't know where she was going, and I suppose felt it would be safe, at last, for him to try to be with her. A terrible misjudgment on his part.”

“You killed him.”

“I tried not to. I explained to him that I wanted to help Edith—to find a treatment that would cure her. But he wouldn't agree to let me try even one course of electricity on her. He left me no choice, Emily.”

“Please tell me where Lucy is, George.”

“She's here and safe. I tried to place her at a school in Rouen not long ago, but she cried so much on the way we never even made it to speak to the headmistress. Once things have calmed down here, I shall try again. Madeline and I will visit her, but Lucy will not come here until enough time has passed for this scandal to be forgot.”

“Murder goes beyond scandal.”

“No one will ever connect me with murder.”

The irrationality of this statement pushed indignation ahead of fear in me. “My husband will notice I'm missing, George.”

“Not quite, Emily. He'll notice you're dead. When you're unconscious, I will drop you off this tower, and he will believe you could no longer bear the pain of the loss of your child.”

“He'll never believe that.”

“Of course he will. You left a note.” He waved a page taken from the diary I'd brought with me to the house and left in my bedroom—I could not read the words, but could guess it was something I'd written in the dark haze of mourning that paralyzed me after my days in Constantinople.

“It won't work. He'll recognize it as being from my journal.”

“He'll be consumed with grief and more malleable than you can imagine.”

“That's a risky assumption,” I said.

“I'm confident,” he said. “He's got nothing but a clear mind now and is convinced Laurent Prier killed Edith. If he does decide you were murdered, Laurent will be found guilty of that as well.”

I needed time. Time to get away, time to find Lucy, time to get Cécile and Mrs. Hargreaves away from this house. “We've had a raucous, celebratory evening,” I said. “No one would believe I'd kill myself after such a night.”