The Cloisters(62)

“No.”

“Okay.” Detective Murphy made notes. “What about you? Did you and Patrick have any relationship outside the museum?”

I thought of the day we had gone down to Ketch Antiques, of the way he had stood above me, looking over my shoulder, just as my father had done when he reviewed my work. But I shook my head and said, “No.”

“And what do you know about belladonna?” Detective Murphy continued.

“That it’s poisonous. That The Cloisters has been growing it since they opened in the 1930s.”

“Are you aware that the root is the most poisonous part of the plant?”

“I was not.”

“Right now,” Detective Murphy said, tapping a pencil on the desk in front of her, “we believe that Patrick was given a strong dose of belladonna root, likely ground into a fine consistency. Something that could easily have been added to a beverage or food. The flavor is very bland, so it would have been easy for Patrick to miss. Did you ever see anyone bring him food? Did you ever see anyone around the kitchen at work acting suspicious?”

I wondered if it had even happened in the kitchen at all, or if Patrick had gone to look for more of the tincture we had taken. If, with Leo tending to me, he had administered his own dosage. Even though we hadn’t spoken about it we all knew—Rachel, Leo, and I—that we could not share the events of that night with the police.

And so, instead, I said, “It’s a communal kitchen. We share the space. Like any office, people are always mixing things up—accidentally eating someone else’s lunch, drinking their coffee.” The cake Leo had pushed in front of me that night came to mind. I wondered now whose it was.

“Are you saying that it’s possible someone else was the intended victim?”

I thought about how easy it was for things in life to go off the rails, for mistakes to be made, for accidents to occur. My firing, my father’s death—the way we all lived, on a knife’s edge, so easily pushed by fortune onto one side or the other, success or failure, life or death. These were the caprices that the ancient Romans tried to rationalize with their philosophies and gods, but deep down, they knew the truth: fate was as brutal as it was providential.

“I’m just explaining the kind of kitchen we have,” I said.

“And what about you,” asked the male detective. “Are you involved in any personal relationships at the museum?”

“Intimate relationships,” clarified Detective Murphy.

“What would that have to do with the investigation?”

“We’re just trying to get an accurate picture of the work environment,” he said.

“Well, Rachel and I are friends. And I’ve been seeing Leo, but I wouldn’t describe it as anything more than casual.”

They both made notes.

“And what about Rachel. What’s your impression of her”—the detective waved her hand—“in general?”

“In general, she’s been very welcoming and professional. I don’t think she’s capable of anything like this, to be honest.”

“And you’re sure that—since you’re still new—you know her well enough to make that assessment?”

“I know her as well as I know anyone,” I said. It didn’t seem necessary to share that we were now living together, and spent all our time together. I wanted to keep myself apart from what had happened as much as I could; the instinct of self-preservation came naturally to me.

“Okay,” said Detective Murphy, standing to usher me toward the door. “We may have questions in the future. Please ask Rachel to let us know when she’s ready for a car when you get back to The Cloisters.”

They offered to drive me, too, but I wanted to walk. I followed the winding concrete paths in the direction of the museum, past groups of people sprawled on picnic blankets and knock-kneed girls reading books on their backs. An urban pastoral. And in that minute, I longed to see myself among them, a sandal dangling from my toe, my mind somewhere else. Worrying about whether the ants had gotten into the sandwiches from the deli on West Twenty-Fourth Street. Not worrying as I was about Patrick’s death, about my potential role in it. Perhaps it had been an accident; perhaps he had misdosed after Leo left; perhaps the coroner had missed something in their pursuit of the poison as a cause?

I knew why I had decided not to tell Detective Murphy everything I knew. It was because what Rachel and I had discovered was so rare it was worth the risk; it was worth the choices we had made. Wasn’t this what the city taught you? That it was your job to climb to the top, to hustle, to take chances? When I had arrived in New York, I was eager to forget myself, to become someone new, the kind of person who believed in tarot. Someone who was happy to be pulled into the uncanny and dark world of The Cloisters. Into a world where it was possible to get away with things. And Rachel had helped me become that person.

At The Cloisters, I went up the back drive and through the metal gate, feeling the cool iron on my fingertips before I let go and let it swing closed behind me. I found Rachel sitting at our table in the library, her head bent over the book in front of her.

I sat down across from her. My cheeks felt hot from the walk uphill, my body tight with excitement over the interview. Our eyes locked across piles of books and bits of notes.

All I said was, “I told them nothing.”