You were always her favorite.”
“No, not once.”
Matilda shot me a glance, then looked back to our brother. “Bram may have been her favorite, but you had some kind of relationship with her, didn’t you?”
He frowned at her. “What on earth do you mean?”
“I once saw you enter her room with a bag; something inside that bag was moving.”
Thornley lifted his glass and took yet another hearty swig. He searched the amber liquid for an answer. When he found none, he finally spoke again. “Ellen sometimes asked me to bring chickens to her room. I didn’t ask her why. I didn’t want to know why. I went to the coop and got them for her and said no more of it.”
A question burned in me then, and I asked it before the will abandoned me. “That day you showed me the chicken coop, all the dead fowl. Was it a fox that killed them? Or did they die at your hand?”
Thornley huffed. “I am not capable of such an act. I assumed it was a fox; I found the chickens that way, just as I showed them to you.” His eyes were glossy with drink, but his speech was still sound. “I think I know why she came to me, why she still comes to me,” he said. He dug deep into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief folded over something. Setting the bundle on the table, he carefully unfolded the cloth. At the center sat a lock of blond hair tied together neatly with a leather band.
My eyes went wide. “Is that hers?”
Thornley nodded. “She gave this to me when I was a lad of no more than three, a year or so after you were born, Bram. I got lost in the forest the day prior—Pa had half the town out searching. They found me near one of the bogs with a makeshift fishing pole in hand, nothing more than a branch with string, and no bait. I told them I planned to catch supper. Ma had quite the fright; she cried for days at the sight of me and threatened to tie me to her leg if I wandered off again. As Ellen tucked me in bed that night, she gave me the lock of hair and told me to always keep it in my pocket; as long as I held it near, she would be able to find me and keep me safe. I know it’s silly, but I kept this in my pocket for every day that has passed since.”
“That may explain why she came to you, but why me?” Matilda asked. “Why would she be in Paris?”
“The maps,” I replied. “The Cimetière du Père Lachaise.”
“The cemetery?” Thornley asked. “What maps?”
I gave Matilda a nod, and she showed Thornley the maps she had sketched as a child, then explained how we came upon them.
“O’Cuiv may be the key,” Thornley pondered aloud after all this discussion, tapping the newspaper with his empty glass. “Ellen hasn’t been found in all these years simply because she doesn’t want to be, but we know where to find O’Cuiv.”
“Where?” I asked.
“His body would have been taken to the nearest hospital for autopsy, for verification as to cause of death.”
“Swift’s is closest,” Matilda said. “Where you work.”
Thornley shook his head. “Steevens’ Hospital next door to Swift’s is more likely. We work in tandem. The morgue is there.”
A burning log crackled, causing the three of us to startle. I set my empty glass on the table; no more for me tonight. “What can we hope to find by viewing his body?”
Thornley waved his finger through the air. “Not ‘we,’ my little brother. If someone is to concoct a plan for a clandestine trip to the morgue, it will be me going it alone.”
Matilda appeared ready to boil over. “We must do this together!”
“She’s right, Thornley. We should all go.”
“Under what guise? As a doctor on staff at the hospital, at least I have reason to be in the morgue. What calling would the two of you have to be there?”
Matilda