After Alice Fell(59)

“I met with a matron. The last one—” I gulp back a sob and cover my mouth. “Someone killed her, Cathy. Someone opened her door and dragged her to the roof and pushed her off.”

She chucks her chin and doesn’t say anything.

“Miss Clough—”

“Miss Clough?”

“I need to see the constable. I want to add to the complaint.”

“What complaint?”

“I told you.”

She pulls the reins hard and stops the buggy on the side of the road. The wheels roll and crush the cicada husks and leaves. “What complaint?”

“I made a formal complaint. Against Mayhew.”

“Why?”

“For negligence. Now I want it for murder.”

“Oh, Marion. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I should have done it right away. The first day when I thought . . . But now there’s witnesses. There were people who saw it all.”

“What all? What did they see?” She turns to face me. “What have you started?”

“I don’t . . . You were there. Last month. When Ada was. She told me so.”

“I wasn’t.” She shakes her head and turns back to drive. Her skin is splotched. She clenches her jaw, long muscles along the bone tensing and relaxing. “Ada is mistaken.”

“Cathy.”

“I wasn’t there. She wouldn’t see me.”





Chapter Twenty-Three


My legs can’t hold me. I fall back to the bed, bones and chest hollow, listening to Cathy’s footfalls upstairs, muted steps on the hall runner, the staccato on the wood. Lionel’s voice. Toby’s. There’s a clatter of pans in the kitchen. No one comes to the room for what seems hours.

“Here.” Cathy finally returns. She tilts her head, then offers me a spoon, the liquid sluicing in the bowl. She reminds me of myself once, sitting on the edge of a soldier’s cot, hip to leg. “Here,” she says again.

I turn my head away; the liquid has a sharp smell. She touches her finger to my chin to tip it, then the medicine slides like velvet across my tongue. Her touch is warm as she caresses my throat, soothing it into a swallow. The liquid is bitter and I rub my tongue on the roof of my mouth to get rid of the taste.

She waits.

The medicine’s already doing its trick; my lips don’t cooperate, are numb and swollen. I want to know what she’s given me. But my mouth doesn’t work, and I can’t formulate words.

She combs back my hair with her index and middle fingers. “You need to let your sister go.”

“I can’t.” I lean back, my head to the pillow and eyes too heavy to keep open.

She puts her hand on my wrist, just at the edge of the splint, and holds her thumb on the skin. Then she leans close. “There won’t be a complaint.” She squeezes then, sending a radiating pain up my arm. “You won’t ruin this family. I won’t let it happen.” She twists, just enough that my vision sparks and flashes. “I don’t care if someone pushed Alice or if she jumped. I do not care.”

I struggle against her, swing my arm, and then push at her chest. The sheet has twisted around my arm, pinning it and tightening like a noose. I gasp a breath and struggle up. “Let go.”

“Shush, Marion, shush.” She reaches over, takes the sheet end, and unwraps with the care one gives a babe. “Shush. You’re having a nightmare.”

“You were just here . . .” But I don’t finish, my words curdling under her gaze.

Her mouth toys with a smile, one side and then the other, and her eyes are overbright, as if she’s just woken from a high fever. She picks at the ties on my arm, but not with any attention. Instead, she bites at a loose piece of chapped skin on her lip, all the while staring at the cut on mine. “What did she do? When the door was opened?”

“I don’t . . .”

“You said the door was left open. There are only two choices: stay or flee. She didn’t stay. Did she? And if she chose to flee, why to the roof and not down the stairs and out to the woods?” Her eyes grow wide and then shift away, move side to side as if she’s unreeling a story.

“Three doors. One, then another, then another. Up the stairs. It’s a steep roofline, shale shakes. It would take effort to stay upright. You’d need to balance on the cornice. She’d need to be sure that’s where she wanted to be. Wouldn’t she?”

Her breath is hot and sour sweet. She rubs her lip. Watches something just beyond my shoulder. “Just to the tip of the building, where the ground is lowest, the drop the longest. That’s where she stopped. Arms out, and one foot, then the other. Mm.” Her gaze snaps back to mine. “Yes. Just as she told me she would.”

My mouth gapes open. I can’t move.

“Just as she said. Just as she wanted.” She pulls at a button on my nightshirt, then stands and walks the hall to the stairs, the white lace of her shawl aglow. She stops at the turn to the stair, her hand resting on the banister. “Good night.”

In the morning, I sit on the covered porch in a rocker, brought here by Cathy and Saoirse, with a side table stocked with magazines and a plate of meats and cheeses. Saoirse has made molasses bread, still warm and aromatic. Lionel stole a slice before clambering down the stairs to join Elias and Amos by the boathouse. He waved as he strode backward, then grabbed up a crowbar and called, “It’s all fine.” Though I didn’t know what he meant, and why he wasn’t furious about the wreck of the Hargreaveses’ buggy nor worried I might have lost my life after it crashed. No, just, “It’s all fine,” before hefting the crowbar to the wood and levering out a plank. Amos glances up as he crosses with an old rocking chair slung over his shoulder. He’s clean-shaven and wears a felt hat I recognize as one of Elias’s. His brown hair still touches his shoulders, but there’s more shine in it. It’s his eyes that give me pause, though, a gray green that remain a second too long. He gives a quick nod and drops the wood to the rest. Then he shields his eyes and looks up at me. “Are you well?”