Maplecroft (17 page)

When
we were finished with our merriment—and it was merry indeed, because God, I was starving for her . . . I offered to
make some tea, but she said no. She’d make it. I think she just didn’t want me in the kitchen, so fine, all right then. We were both being wary about one another. But she didn’t retrieve the key, though—so she was not as cautious as I was opportunistic.

She must want a partner, and not just a lover. Whatever she’s hiding, I can bear it. We can hide it together.

She
was still shaking a little when she arose and pulled on a robe, and wearing nothing else she headed downstairs. But who would see her except for Emma? And Emma was already asleep, almost certainly.

So while she was gone, I crept free of the sheets, unwound myself, and walked naked as quietly as possible. My dress was on the floor nearby. In its front right pocket, I had a small assortment of keys, collected from around the house. I hoped none of them were important, but I doubted it; I’m sure they were merely the keys of a household, some left behind by the previous owner, some to locks that no longer existed, on doors that had long since been removed.

I felt around for a key that more or less matched the one on the chain, and when I found as near a twin as possible, I switched them out—stashing the cellar door key in my empty dress pocket, and vowing that sooner or later, I’d replace them all where I’d found them. Not that I could remember them all, but I had a general enough idea that my small act of subterfuge would not become known anytime soon.

More likely, it’d serve the purpose of confusing the gardener, next time he needed entrance into the shed out back. Small price to pay, in my estimation.

Lizbeth
came back to bed with tea, and when she wasn’t looking, I added a few drops of the soothing syrup. If she noticed
anything was different, she didn’t mention it. She downed the tea quickly (surely scalding herself), but I didn’t mind, because then we were free again to untangle from our robes and sheets, and retangle to our hearts’ content.

Later, when I came tripping lightly downstairs wearing Lizbeth’s robe, I saw a candle or two lit downstairs by Emma’s sleeping place. She was up, damn her—reading or writing, and within full view of my only passageway into the kitchen, to the cellar door.

So I gave up temporarily, thinking that I could try again some night when the cool weather returned, and the elder Borden had returned to her spot upstairs.

Back in Lizbeth’s room, she too was stirring. “Where were you, dear? Where did you go?” she asked.

“I only wanted some water,” I purred at her, as I slipped back between the light covers, and pulled my skin up against hers. “Go back to sleep.” I drew her into my arms. She felt very warm and soft, all drowsy kitten and velvet skin.

“I
am
very sleepy,” she said, and of course she was. I’d have been astounded to hear otherwise. If I hadn’t successfully worn her out, Mrs. Winslow should’ve done it.

“Close your eyes, then. I’ll sing you to sleep.”

“No, don’t do that.”

For a brief second, I took offense. “You don’t want to hear me sing?”

She shook her head, rocking it against my bosom. “Of course I do. But I’d prefer to stay awake . . .” She yawned. “Rather than insult you by drifting off during the performance.”

I squeezed her, and adjusted myself on the pillows, so that I was lying on my back with her head atop my chest, and my arms around her more comfortably. “You’re a silly thing,” I told her, but I loved her, and maybe all love is silly in its own way.

“You, too,” she said in return, and then she was out again. Her breath was damp and sweet against my skin, and it was lovely, this evening alone in bed, with the butter-soft moonlight to keep us company and no one ringing a bell for attention.

I petted her hair and tried to enjoy the moment, but in the back of my head, I was wondering how much more I ought to give her in a dose—in order to keep her sleeping soundly while I explore.

This
was all the night before last.

It’s still warm enough now that Emma remains downstairs again, but the old familiar chill is creeping back into the air, and I think we’ll reinstate her to her proper bed this afternoon. This will all be so much easier when I only have to sneak past one of them.

But I can’t put it off too much longer.

Eventually Lizbeth is bound to notice that the key she wears isn’t the one she thinks. Somewhere a clock is counting down, waiting to reveal my deception. But I don’t know where it is, and the only way past it is downstairs, through a strange door, and into whatever mystery awaits me beyond it.

A
PRIL
22, 1894

I finished the article I was working on, the one about the mollusks, that I’d promised to send off to the editor of
Marine Life
last month. I was a little late, but as far out as their schedules run, I won’t worry much about it. If it’s that great a problem, they can refuse to run it, and I’ll sell it to
Aquatic Quarterly
. The lead biologist they consult is still that fellow at the university, my long-distance friend Dr. Zollicoffer. (To the best of my knowledge, that is.) He’ll see to it that the piece finds publication, one way or another.

Speaking of that great man . . . I haven’t heard from him in months now. I hope he’s well. Perhaps I should send him a letter, or scare up a sample that might entertain him. The samples I’ve sent thus far have been gruesome, but well received.

The last missive I received from him requested more specimens like that one sample . . . the strange and smelly piece I sent him last year. Lizzie was confident that it was a half-rotted version of something ordinary on the beach, but my scientist’s eye told me otherwise. Alas, I haven’t seen any others since. He’ll have to content himself with the one I sent.

I’m glad I passed it along. He seemed to enjoy it, and Lizzie wouldn’t let me keep it in the house. It’d be a pity for the thing to go to waste, unexamined.

It is late. I ought to be asleep, but I’m finding it difficult this evening. I’d blame the balmy weather, for it certainly hasn’t helped; but no, the real problem is Nance—to no one’s surprise.

Not to mine, anyway. Sometimes Lizzie is hard to read.

I know she loves the girl, but for heaven’s sake. If she loves her that much, she needs to invent an excuse and send her packing. Now is really
not
the time for visitors, least of all rowdy visitors who snoop, badger, fight, and ultimately yowl like a cat in heat, as if I can’t hear through the floors. I’m feeble. I’m not deaf.

I’m sure that she and Lizzie both felt like the opportunity to banish me downstairs was a good thing, and I don’t even care about that. It was my idea, to give them some time alone. I appreciate their impetus to carry on behind my back rather than in front of my face—honestly, I do—but all the tiptoeing around was becoming tedious.

Just
go
, already.

Traipse upstairs like the scandalous fools you are, get it out of your blood, and then get that girl out of our house. We have real problems here, and a real solution in sight—or at the very least, we have a real chance at an ally, and a shared wealth of added information. We can’t jeopardize it over a silly fluttering of the heart.

I
pretended I didn’t notice, but just now Nance came downstairs. I don’t know what she wanted, and I didn’t ask. She made a show of getting a glass from the kitchen, collecting some water, and retreating again.

But she’s up to something.

She’s drawn to that damn cellar door, and drawn to what’s behind it. That part she can’t help; I know that, and I can’t even hold it against her. But we have to keep her out, and I am absolutely terrified that Lizzie is on the verge of some terrible decision, or terrible slip of her concentration, and we might all be lost.

What if Nance finds her way to the key, or to some other method of opening the door? It’s reinforced, yes. The lock is sturdy and expensive, yes.

But whatever is in those stones, those shiny bits of tumbled ocean glass (or so they innocuously appear) . . . it has an intelligence. Whatever voice cries through them, it cries not with words—yet it cries instructions, suggestions, and changes to a person’s ordinary behavior.

It commands.

That’s the word I’m looking for.

It commands, and it commands so forcefully that I must assume anyone snared in its call will find a way around whatever restrictions are tossed in front of her.

I
caught Nance rifling through drawers, and she said she was hunting a pair of scissors. I directed her to the sewing room. I spied her examining the contents of Father’s old cabinet, and she said she was hoping for something hard to add to her tea. I said she should help herself. I found her fishing about under the
settee, and she insisted she’d dropped an earring. I wished her the best of luck in its retrieval.

Really, she must think I’m a fool.

If she stays here much longer, she’ll find her way downstairs, and what will become of us then? What if she sees the whole lot of equipment, never mind what we added from the upstairs—the most incriminating books, charms, devices, and whatnot that we wished to remove from her view?

From a certain slant, it would appear that my sister and I are the witches we’re accused of being.

Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps the whispers have merit. What else would you call it but witchcraft—these experiments my sister undertakes in the basement laboratory, and around the walls and windows of this home? She’s turning it into a fortress of superstition, but if you ask her, she’ll argue that it’s all science . . . of a kind.

I understand her sentiments, but it’s hard to agree wholeheartedly when she starts wondering aloud which herbs and prayers might protect us.

The distance between an honest Christian mystic and a fortune-teller is sometimes less than half a whisper. Less than a pot of tea or the space between two book covers.

Unless I’m the silly one now—and that’s entirely possible.

It’s
very quiet upstairs. I’m almost surprised they wore themselves out so quickly, though given the noisy vigor of the whole affair, it might not be such a mystery. Lizzie often has trouble sleeping, but if rumor among married ladies can be believed, there’s nothing quite like a good frolic to send one off to slumberland with haste.

And yet.

Lizzie’s trouble sleeping has extended into Nance’s visits, in
the past. But tonight, she doesn’t even snore. It’s only Nance who’s restless, wandering up and down the stairs, standing in the kitchen like a ghost, like she’s forgotten something, like she’s waiting for something. Like she’s listening.

This is the second instance tonight that the girl’s appeared, and this time she either didn’t notice that I was still awake and writing, or didn’t care. She stood before the cellar door again; I could just barely see her shadow, stretching out into the corridor between us. It was long, for she is tall; and it was half-gauzy with the moonlight and gas lamp glow through the windows, shining through the fabric of her nightdress.

I reached for the bell beside my makeshift bed, but before I could ring it and, it is to be fervently hoped, summon my sister . . . Nance changed her mind and returned to the upstairs.

Maybe she was warned away by my candle after all.

Well, these words—combined with the last of the article revisions—have eaten up an hour and a half. No, closer to two, I should think. And I’m still wide-awake.

Perhaps I’ll begin that letter to Doctor Zollicoffer.

I would dearly love to hear from him
again.

A
PRIL
24, 1894

I’ve avoided the Borden sisters these recent days—not by choice, but by forced circumstance. The mysterious Inspector Wolf has occupied much of my time, and most of that has been too tedious to record in this informal, private journal. Regardless, I am sickened at heart to know what I now know, or believe what I now believe; and the scientific facts under consideration do little to soothe me. Whatever they are, they don’t add up. Whatever they say, it answers no questions that a reasonable man might ask.

When did I stop being a reasonable man?

It must have happened slowly at first, with Abigail Borden. And then with great finality, across that cold wood table from
Ebenezer Hamilton. And now . . . now I am either much closer to the truth, or much further from my sanity.

I honestly could not say which.

Ebenezer
remains in Boston, and I haven’t spoken to him since that awful night in the courthouse. I offered my continuing services as confidant, witness, and even friend, should he require one; but either the message was not passed along or the ensuing silence was his response.

Were we friends, really?

No. But he needs one, and I’m too close to . . . to whatever this is . . . to walk away now. If he were to summon me, I would respond.

Inspector Wolf finally returned to that city as well, with all his notes and flash-fired photographs of the corpses, the scene of the crime (Was it a crime? No one seems certain), and whatever else he deemed significant. We shook hands and I told him to call upon me anytime, if he required a partner with a steady hand and a cast-iron stomach. He agreed with a smile, but I’d be surprised to see him again.

He suspects something strange is afoot. But suspecting it and doing something about it are two different things, and
my
suspicions tell me this: If I tried to bring him in, to confide in him the things I have learned, and the theories I’m inexorably forming . . . his training and allegiance to law and order would prevent him from being any real aid. Besides, he wouldn’t even offer any badge, or the title of any official organization as employer. Heaven only knew who he was really working for. At worst, he might have me carted off to join Ebenezer, that we may rot together, two madmen in our soft-walled cells.

It is best that I leave him out of this, despite my inclination to do otherwise.

Upon reflection, it’s apparent that I wish for someone to help me bear the weight of it, though. Lizzie must feel the same way. For that matter, she must’ve felt the same way for years now.

I wonder how long she’s known?

Before her parents’ deaths, that is. I wonder how long she’d been aware that something was amiss, and how long she’d told herself that no, it couldn’t possibly be anything so absurd as . . . as whatever this has turned out to be. I wonder how long she lied to herself, and maybe to her sister, before the situation forced itself to a climax, and there were no options left except to murder or be murdered.