Jane Steele(88)

“Tell them I ruined everything, that I always ruin everything.”

“Stop this,” he growled. “It was my own wretched fault. You are a young woman—intelligent, beautiful, vibrant. Why should you wish to live with a pair of ruined men in a house full of ghosts?”

“But I never minded that! Only you ought to be free to see ghosts without my demanding to know where the bodies are buried. I’ve always wanted too much, sir—your not wanting me back doesn’t make you culpable.”

“I never said I didn’t want you.”

“You could say it now,” I requested, heart hammering.

“No.” He glanced up at last. Whatever gnawed him, it had burrowed through to the bone. “I could not say that, Jane.”

“Heaven help me, this is madness.” I leant forward, half-seated on his desk and inches from his weathered features. “The whole truth, is that what you want—my truth in exchange for your own? It could quite literally cost me my life, I . . . You know what happened when Ghosh attacked me, and—”

“That was self-defence, you raving—”

“But I’d not care, I wouldn’t, not so long as you loved me. I should be the happiest woman on earth if you did. Anyone would be.”

“The last one wasn’t.”

I suspect something else would have happened there in that cosy study, our lips parted and eyes ablaze with both craving and restraint, had we not heard steadily approaching footfalls.

“Jane!” he protested when I pulled away, but I turned my back as he rose, composing myself, and so it was in the mirror above the hearth that I first saw the door swing open following a confident knock and Inspector Sam Quillfeather enter the room.

I did not scream; it was a near thing, however.

“Oh, gracious me, what was I thinking barging in so?”

Teeth set tight as a ship’s hull and eyes glued to the mirror, I took in Mr. Quillfeather. He had aged, but not diminished, and the perennial forward sweep of his spine and the exaggerated arches of his nose and chin and brow would already have imparted an impression of relentless momentum without the additional trajectory of his steel-grey shock of hair as he swept off his shabby beaver hat.

“Quillfeather.” My employer quickly forced his features into neutrality, but this only left him resembling a tattered shoreline after a squall.

“I’ll come back after surveying the cellar?” Mr. Quillfeather proposed, voice retaining the old questioning lilt. “I’m before my time, I see—yes, three full minutes! Won’t you forgive me? I’ll just—”

“No, no, it’s all right.” Mr. Thornfield coughed. “Inspector Sam Quillfeather, may I introduce Miss Jane Stone, Sahjara’s governess?”

There was nothing for it: I forced my fists to unclench and turned to face the gallows.

He might not recognise you, not after so many years and so much sorrow, I told myself.

Gallantly, he made a neat bow over my hand; and then his eyes met mine, variegated hazel and canny as ever, and a spark flared to life, and I was caught. For Highgate House had been mine before my disappearance and here I was again, and he could not help but know me.

“Mrs. Stone, I take it?” he clarified. “It is very good to see you again in these parts. A country widow and so young?”

“No indeed, she comes to us from London.”

Mr. Quillfeather studied me, and then Mr. Thornfield added his curious gaze to the already potent atmosphere, and I was just considering the benefits of throwing myself into the fireplace when the inspector waved his hand in the air.

“Of course, of course, I must have momentarily mistook her? The older I get, the more everything and everyone manages to remind me of, well, of something or someone else entirely? Pleased to meet you, Miss Stone.”

“Likewise,” I managed.

The floor was opening like a pit beneath me, gravity turned upside down.

“Was Miss Stone affected by these dreadful events?” Mr. Quillfeather asked, politely addressing Mr. Thornfield.

The trail of bodies, oh God, he knows, he must know, first Edwin for certain and then Vesalius Munt in all likelihood, and now there just happens to be another carcass needs burying and here I—

Mr. Thornfield hesitated not a whit. “Miss Stone arrived downstairs first following the crash which alerted us, and suffered injury at Jack Ghosh’s hands—but thankfully, he was already bleeding out. I’ll show you the window and the glass, naturally, but it’s all quite straightforward. Hoisted upon his own petard at last, if you’ll pardon my satisfied tone, Quillfeather.”

“Nothing to pardon, my good man! You suspect Sack’s behind this?”

“I should be a simpleton not to.”

“Yes, yes, we’ll work it out between us, won’t we? How was the young lady injured?”

“Torn scalp. It bled considerably, and she nary made a sound. If you ask me, the blackguard could have died for that alone and I should have said good riddance,” Mr. Thornfield droned in his haughtiest tone even as his eyes dared me to contradict him.

“Might I see, Miss Stone?” Sam Quillfeather asked gently.

What could I do? I bent my head, and Mr. Thornfield cupped my nape in a tender touch I did not think planned, and Mr. Quillfeather tutted, “Shameful, Thornfield, simply shameful,” and I raised my face after a gentle press to my neck preceded both men stepping back.