were always so kindred, but it never entered my mind that . . . you . . . and you scour the papers for crimes every day and they never found his killer, Jane, never found any clue.”
This was not precisely true; Sam Quillfeather had released a statement that, thanks to the complete lack of witnesses, his privately held suspicions could never hold up in court, and thus should remain unspoken for the sake of peace and healing. This ambiguous, insinuating news had eradicated my appetite for four days, which I explained to Clarke as a nasty attack of la grippe.
“You murdered him.” Clarke swayed, pulling at handfuls of her curls.
“Sit down, you’ll hurt yourself,” I pleaded. “Oh, Clarke—”
“How could I never have worked it out?” She collapsed on the bed with rote obedience.
“Well, it wasn’t the likeliest scenario on earth, was it?” I laughed, and she looked at me as if I had turned lupine, as if all my absences during the full moon now made perfect sense.
Kneeling before her, I seized her elbows. “Listen to me. You’ve always listened to me, and I’m sorry I lied about the watch, and—”
“Being sorry for lying about murdering our headmaster might be more—”
“He was killing you.” The tears which had risen were not lies, reader. “He would never have let you eat again, and I went to the study, meaning to alter his food supply records, and he caught me, and I never meant to hurt him.”
“By hurt him, do you mean stab him in the neck with a letter opener?”
Laughing again did not help my cause. “I’m sorry, that was—I’m so sorry. Please understand, I had to choose between being sent to an asylum or watching you starve. What could I have done?”
“Attempted escape?” she offered hoarsely. “I would have gone with you, you know. Into the woods, the faraway cities. I would have gone with you anywhere.”
The past-tense construction of this sentiment spread invisibly around us, graphic as a battlefield.
Disengaging herself, Clarke pulled off her robe and her nightdress; I stayed on the floor, too numb to move as I watched her cover her creamy skin with her underthings and one of her daytime frocks, methodically shoving the others hanging in the wardrobe into her carpetbag. When this horrifying ritual had been completed, she retrieved a few songbooks and snapped the latch on the bag, which sounded to me like a pistol shot.
“Please don’t do this,” I begged.
Clarke paused, looking down at me almost regretfully. “Do you remember what I just said about Mrs. Grizzlehurst?”
A sob rose in my throat, for I did.
She’ll never be able to look him in the face again without knowing—can you imagine the torment?
“I lied at school every day.” I sounded angry; but I was not angry, never that, only trying to haul myself out of the rubble. “I lied for you constantly, lied for everyone—and even if you never lied, you stole, and if I would lie for you, and you would steal for me, why . . . why not this too?”
Clarke’s eyes had grown dragonfly bright, but there was something else there, an emotion I could not pinpoint, one which looked like shattered glass.
“Because I don’t know who you are,” she rasped. “You were always so cunning at school, but so gentle, as if you couldn’t bear to watch anyone go hungry. Even the beastly ones, like Taylor—yes, she was, Taylor was horrid, only you never noticed—and, oh, I so admired you. You have a terribly romantic air about you, you know. And I knew you carried secrets, you’ve no notion of how sad you look at times, but I thought that if I took enough care, you might trust me one day. I only wanted to know you, the heart of you, for you to show me. But . . .”
Trailing off, Clarke glanced at the desk where a stack of half-finished broadsides sat, my odes to every variant of death and damnation.
“I saw that room, after the murder,” Clarke said softly. “And I don’t know you at all.”
She turned to go. At the last moment, she snatched up The Garden of Forbidden Delights, hastily shoving it amidst her clothing as if the binding were aflame; then she departed, closing the door behind her.
• • •
I did not go to bed; instead I dressed and, at seven in the morning, I brushed a hand over Bertha Grizzlehurst’s arm. She seemed alert in a way she had not been the night