After Alice Fell(64)

I rub my face. Wince when my hand brushes and pulls at the scab on my lip. “What time is it?”

She lets out a frustrated breath, then moves to the windows and pushes open the shutters. The light is early-morning peach and violet, the air cool from night.

“What’s the matter? Is it Toby?”

She yanks open the wardrobe and throws out a dress, followed by stockings. “The constable.”

“What?”

“The constable.” Her words are a hiss.

I stand, tugging at my nightdress, fumbling it off, grabbing and pulling the clothing on. My hands shake. “Help.”

Chemise and drawers. Stockings rolled—Cathy’s hands tremble, too, as she works the garter buttons.

“Arms out,” she says and settles the working stays, circling to my front to cinch it up. Blouse and bodice, stockings and shoes. All the while, she breathes in and out and moves me about like a doll and misbuttons both the blouse and my left shoe.

Finally, she flicks the gaudy fabric for the sling and bungles the knot. She yanks the fabric and jostles my arm.

“Lionel?” I query and pray he’s left already.

She shakes her head, her hands busy again with the knot. She’s rough as she pulls at my hair, braiding and pinning it. “You make this right.”

“It’s what I’ve been trying to do all along.”

I nod at her to open the door. Then I take in a breath and hold it all the way down the hall. The men murmur from the parlor. My step hitches. There are three voices. All men. Lionel, yes, I hear his laugh, though there’s no mirth in it.

I pull and smooth the sling on my arm. Set my shoulders and enter. “Constable Grent. How kind of you to finally choose to visit. I thought you’d quite forgotten . . .” But my words drain away as the men’s gazes swing to me. Lionel at the window, his face blotched with anger. Dr. Mayhew stands next to him, his bowler held to his chest. He gives me a perfunctory nod.

“Mrs. Abbott.”

Lionel gestures to the constable before clasping his hands behind his back. “This is Constable Grent. Come for you, Marion.”

“Why—”

The constable, whose knee creaks as he crosses one fat leg over the other, fans himself with a sheaf of papers. His white mustache flutters and his eyes peek from his cheeks. His gaze is hard as malachite.

“Do you ignore every complaint,” I ask, “or just mine?”

The man lowers his lids and curls the papers. “May I ask after your injury?” Then his eyes pop back open, and he looks at me as if anything I say will be misheard or ignored.

“You may not.”

He blinks again. “But I may.”

“It was a carriage mishap.” Cathy has slipped in the room, closing the door. She lurks near the corner card table and taps a nail to the felt. “I don’t think that’s illegal.”

I pull in a rasp of breath; my knees are too wobbly to move. “You never answered my complaint, Mr. Grent.”

The constable rolls the papers in his hands. The tips of his fingers are stained brown from tobacco, and a faint stale smell of mildew wafts from his clothes. “I am here now.”

“I have more to add. To my statement.”

Dr. Mayhew gives a tight, quick smile. “But I have a countercomplaint. Trespassing on private property. Which you did. And in which”—he points his hat—“you injured your arm.”

“I was with a friend in town. At the Phoenix.”

“I do recognize there is a bit of road that needs repair,” Mayhew says, and looks to Lionel, “so have made payment to Mr. Thomas Hargreaves for the replacement axle.”

“No,” I say.

Grent flicks the papers on his lap and glances at Cathy, then Lionel. “We would like to talk to Mrs. Abbott. Make sense of this complaint. Alone.”

Lionel swallows and sulks to the door, taking Cathy by the arm. “I would like to—”

“Alone, Mr. Snow.” And Grent’s smile is wide as a walrus’s. He waits until the door has clicked shut. His smile remains as he watches me. “Will you sit, Mrs. Abbott?”

“No, I’m quite well here.”

The sofa cushion wheezes as Mr. Grent settles back. “Mrs. Hargreaves states that you took their buggy. An Abbot-Downing.”

“She offered.”

Grent’s eyebrows raise near to his hairline. “That is not what she has written.” Now he unfolds the papers, licking his thumb and flipping the corners until he finds what he wanted. “I heard a commotion in the barn and could not stop Mrs. Abbott from leaving. She perseverated earlier upon the grievances she believes were committed at Brawders House. I thought I had dissuaded her but was not successful in my attempts.”

I step back. My heel catches the doorstop and twists my ankle. Ada . . .

Constable Grent coughs.

“That’s not true, I . . .” But why wouldn’t she say that? How else does she explain to her husband she’s mixed up in this, even if only as a messenger. “Did you read my complaint?”

“Indeed, I did.”

“My sister was pushed from the roof of his asylum.”

Mayhew turns to the constable. “As I said.” He tosses his hat to a chair and leans against the window frame. “Your sister was not pushed. I answered that before, Mrs. Abbott.”