. kept them. As protection, I assumed. But you never returned them.”
At the thought of whey-blooded Miss Lilyvale plunging a makeshift dagger into the cords of Vesalius Munt’s throat, I laughed so hard that a fox or a badger or some such went crashing away through the bracken.
“All right, she isn’t the bravest woman I’ve ever met,” Clarke agreed, half smiling in a way that sent me into further fits. She slapped my arm. “Jane, stop.”
“If she was looking for the letters, she took an unnecessary risk in slaying him, for I burnt them,” I gasped. This was factual, but Clarke need not know that I had shoved them in the dormitory fireplace after stabbing our headmaster. “In any case, why should I have given them to him?”
“What I mean to say is, we hated Mr. Munt—every student, better than half the teachers, the domestics. Isn’t it much more likely that someone he wronged took revenge?”
“He ought to have been at the sermon during that time,” I insisted, abruptly no longer amused, “so it would have been the perfect occasion to burgle his sanctum. It was a complete accident that he was present at all. Someone else was there, someone up to no good, and Mr. Munt caught them.”
My words skated so close to truth telling that I sliced my eyes to Clarke; shrugging, she nodded.
“You’re probably right, but I’m right too—that person could have been any of us.”
I pretended to ponder this theory—as if I were upset at the implication that such a monster could hide in the skin of a young girl or a teacher undetected, when in fact I was upset at the fact we could at any moment be dragged back by our hair. The village inn rose before us, half-timbered and sagging at the roof like the shoulders of an ancient farmer, a comfortable pile of lumber emitting a faint aroma of meat pie. Clarke sagged in concert with the building, swallowing audibly in her ravenous state, even as I stiffened.
“What is it?”
“An idea,” said I, gazing with impetuous hope at the vehicle resting on the cobbles. “Come along, we’re filling you with a hot meal.”
As Vesalius Munt was only my second murder, in the immediate aftermath I imagined that a black reaction would set upon me with razor teeth; such was not the case, however. My mind was piercingly clear, and I recognised the shabby manure-spattered coach which had carried me to purgatory at age nine as soon as I glimpsed it, thinking, Here—if we are very lucky—perhaps is an ally.
The instant we entered the tavern, Clarke leaning weakly against my arm, I spied him: Nick, the driver who had conveyed me here so long ago. Swiftly, I ushered us to a table. A cheerful wench wearing an apron which perhaps had been used to muck out the stables previous to dinner service grunted at my order and, upon her departure, I leant across the table to grasp Clarke’s frail hands.
“Eat your curry when it arrives, slowly. I need to speak with someone.”
“Who could you possibly know here?” Clarke asked, but I was already striding towards the coachman.
Nick sat, nursing a pint, staring at grooves carved in the bar by time and dissolution. The same forces had done a workmanlike job with his face, for his mouth was bordered by stark crevasses, and his once-red nose had abandoned its unheeded alarums and subsided to a sulky yellow.
“Nick, I think.” I nearly coughed at the ripe cloud surrounding him. His boots were worn, which gave me hope, and his fingernails were cracked. “It’s a long time ago we met, but I hope you—”
“I dun’t know ye,” he slurred, slurping at the beer. “I live on the highway, Lunnon to Manchester, Manchester to Lunnon, picking up fares. Never a respit’, never two nights i’ the same bloody place. Unless yer a sprite after hauntin’ my carriage, and ye look a sprite right enough, by Jesus, I dun’t—”
“You brought me here when I was a girl. I gave you a potted rabbit luncheon I couldn’t eat for nerves.”
“Chestnut—he’s a horse, mind—knows me better than me own pillow, us having spent considerable more time together, and I’ve never clapped eye on ye before. I tell ye, I never stop moving—”
“‘The world is a hard place, and I live in it alone,’” I whispered.
Flinching, Nick narrowed red-rimmed eyes at me. “By George,” he husked at length. “Is that ye in the flesh, then? The wee miss wi’ the tragic