The Death of Jane Lawrence(54)

Dr. Nizamiev tapped the photographs, and Jane turned to the final print. It looked for all the world like a body hanging from a noose.

But there was no noose. The body was a woman’s, and her toes hovered limp an inch above the floor, the rest of her body floating above. Her head had fallen to one side. She stared at the wall.

She was impossible.

“This world is real, Mrs. Lawrence,” Dr. Nizamiev said. Her voice, chill and emotionless, made Jane’s skin crawl. “There are ghosts in this house, and they will not go away merely by wishing it to be so. They will not go away if you ignore them. And now that you’ve seen them, you can’t go back to the understanding of the world you had before.”

Jane swallowed, lifting her chin to look at Dr. Nizamiev. The other woman was watching her closely, as if taking note of every minute detail of her. Studying her. Measuring her for a cell.

As if one day, Jane might end up in her care after all, and Dr. Nizamiev was eager for it.

“I have penned my address on the back of the first photograph. I have a wealth of research available to you, should you want it.”

Jane frowned. “Strange, that you brought these with you for a house party. Were they for Augustine?”

“No,” Dr. Nizamiev said. “He has also seen these patients in person.”

“Then how could you have known to bring them?”

Dr. Nizamiev picked up her bag, and at first Jane feared she would not answer, so calmly was she moving toward the foyer. But then she looked back, lifting one elegant shoulder in a shrug. “Georgiana explained the concept of synchronicity, did she not? Call it that, if you like.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


JANE STOOD IMMOBILE, clutching the photographic prints, until long after the door had shut and the carriages had all driven away. Her head swam with exhaustion. Tears pricked at her eyes. She closed them and saw, faint and confusing, a blond woman on a red-soaked plinth. She shuddered.

Dr. Nizamiev was right. There was no option for a simple life anymore. Slowly, Jane peeled herself from the sitting room, leaving behind the stale scent of old cologne, of spilled brandy, of what might have been a pleasant night except in the particulars. Friends from afar; stories of her husband’s life; a brief dance with him where he proved to her that he could have played his role far better, if only circumstances had been different. But the night had been sour from the first.

The contorted figures in Dr. Nizamiev’s photographs and memories of the shadows in the hallway pressed in on her, leaving her barely able to breathe. If the servants crossed her path, she didn’t notice. She thought of impossibilities, and mathematical proofs, and the steady cadence of Dr. Reese’s voice. The world falling away. Fear. Anger. Desperation. Hers, or Elodie’s?

She reached the locked cellar door. The final padlock stood, unmoving, taunting her. The cold dread she’d felt the other day rose from the floor, curling around her calves, reaching for her heart. This time, she knew it for what it was: the promise of knowledge. Another hidden secret, one last place she could not go. Augustine had been quick to anger after Hunt had begged the use of his cellar; had it only been that he hoped to keep Jane from realizing that he had played at magic, or because the cellar itself was not what he had said? He had made it sound so sensible, so simple. The tunnels could collapse. She would have believed him, had it not been for the wax burns on her foot. For his agitation in front of his guests. For his hands, drenched red, inside a body where they should never have gone.

Her headache spiked as she stalked back through the halls, up the stairs, making her way to the library. Dr. Reese had taken away all her ritual implements, but the candelabra Jane had clung to so desperately in the face of the spirits that haunted Lindridge Hall was still there, off to the side of the faded chalk circle. It was made of good iron, kept rust-free by Mrs. Purl’s attentions, and the weight of it felt powerful in her hand.

Minutes later, the padlock gave way after only three great swings against its upper arc. It clattered to the hall floor. There was no answering sound, no shout from the kitchen or running feet upon the stairs. Jane carefully replaced the candles, which had been knocked free of their holders, and lit them one by one in the gas sconce nearest to her. Her fear had made her as cold as the metal in her hand.

She hauled open the door.

Inside it was pitch-black, and there was no switch for gaslights on the inner walls. This part of the house had not been modernized with the rest. The candlelight was her only illumination as she made her way into the gloom. She followed a short hallway to a set of stairs that began as wood, but as she descended, they and the surrounding walls were replaced by old white stone. Familiar white stone. Cold, damp air rose up from the blackness beneath her, chasing away the last of the midmorning warmth that clung to her shoulders.

She welcomed it. She wanted the chill. It made her stronger.

Because the room she now stood in the middle of was no collapsing cellar.

It was a crypt.

Its ceilings were high and vaulted, and the sections her candles illuminated were made of more of the same carved stone. Niches lined the walls and several halls branched off into the darkness. This had been here first, she was sure of it, before the house, before the horror. It was old, and solid, and wrong.

Picking a passageway at random, she entered a room that was longer than it was wide. Jane’s light fell on a stone chair, facing away from her. Another few steps and she could make out the bulk of a long banquet table, with chairs on either side, all made out of the same glimmering white rock. Her heart seized in her chest, and she clutched the candelabra with both hands, trying to offset her sudden shaking. There was no red stain upon the table, and her vision had not shown her chairs, but she knew. She recognized the plane of the stone, and saw where Elodie’s nightgown had lain, spread out across it. One of the seats had words carved into it. She approached, fear weaving through her spine.