my rooms near the fire when Basil came to visit. I had sent a message to him through Greta, asking him to come see me. He must have thought I needed some cheering up, because he had a folio of Ernst Haeckel’s etchings of jellyfish and squid in one hand and a bottle of bourbon in the other. While Vita had forbidden genepy, there was no restriction on bourbon. Basil threw a log on the fire, poured out two glasses, and sat down across from me.
“I saw the nursery,” I said, raising my glass to him.
“Ah, I haven’t had the heart to go there since . . .”
“Joseph made drawings of blue men,” I said, sipping the bourbon. “Dozens of them.”
Basil considered this, and then said, “Greta brought one to me after he disappeared. They are very evocative.”
“There is this word, ‘Simi.’” I showed him the page. “Do you know what it means?”
Basil shook his head. He had no idea.
“Do you think there’s some connection?”
“Between blue men and a child’s disappearance?”
“It sounds ridiculous, I know,” I said. “But maybe Joseph was trying to express something that frightened him. Some kind of abuse.”
“Are you suggesting that Vita hurt Joseph?”
I remembered the incident in Eleanor’s memoir in which Vita killed the men in Nevenero. I remembered the look of triumph on Vita’s face as Dolores lay dying. Vita was capable of hurting people. But was she capable of hurting a child?
Basil finished his glass of bourbon, poured another, and went to the fire, where he poked the logs with a fire iron.
“Vita had an extraordinarily difficult childhood,” I said. “Was she ever treated for trauma?”
“Psychological care was simply not done for most of Vita’s lifetime,” Basil said. “In Eleanor’s time, Vita was considered a vessel of the devil. The cure for that was exorcism, prayers, fasting—all to rid Vita of evil spirits. As time passed, so did the approaches. If you look in the family archives, you’ll find all varieties of reports. There is one account of a Jungian therapist brought in to explore the archetypal origins of Vita’s behavior. There was discussion of shock therapy, which did not happen, thank goodness. She endured every kind of diet and physical regimen.
“Guillaume and Dolores were quite anxious to understand the real danger her existence posed to them . . . genetically, but to get a definitive answer to that question meant bringing in doctors, and while the question of what was actually wrong with Vita might have been answered through testing, Guillaume refused to allow her to be seen by anyone who might expose the family’s past.”
Basil left the fire iron against the wall and returned to the seat across from me. I could see, in the brightening of the flames, the creases lining his brow. “After Guillaume died, Dolores hired more researchers, authorized genetic samples to be taken from Guillaume’s corpse, and paid a small fortune to find you. She made mistakes, I agree. The latest pharmacology had made its way here, and Dolores had been dosing Vita with powerful sedatives, which left Vita disoriented and angry. She also gave Vita SSRIs of various types—Paxil, Prozac, Celexa. She had a terrible reaction to these medications. They drove her into indescribable rages. She would become wild, confused, violent.” Basil paused, met my eyes, and continued. “I’m not saying that Dolores had it coming, but . . . at times, she could be quite cruel.”
As I took this in, I felt a new sympathy for what Vita had endured. And yet, I couldn’t dispel the suspicion I felt. “Do you think Vita could have hurt Joseph?”
“Impossible,” he said. “She is far too weak. She cannot even get down the stairs of the northeast tower without Greta or Sal to help her.”
I took the drawing of the blue man in hand and looked at it again. The large hands and feet, the enormous eyes: I couldn’t help but believe it was a clue to something.
“Have you heard of the Beast of Nevenero?” I asked.
Basil looked at me with surprise. “Yes, of course. It is one of the local monsters,” he said. “A legend of sorts. It is quite well-known.”
“Does this legend have anything to do with Vita?”
“If you are asking if Vita is that creature,” Basil said, giving a strained laugh, “the answer is no. She is not the Beast of Nevenero. I know there were such rumors in the village, but they do not reflect reality.”