Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(46)
“I know what’s brought you here, and I can’t flatter myself by pretending it was the promise of my company. To keep you waiting any longer would be unkind.”
He produced a thin sheet of sketch paper, folded in half. He let me do the honors.
With trembling hands, I straightened it.
“The likeness isn’t perfect.” He sounded almost apologetic. “But it’s clear enough that I knew it, and I thought of you. The connection with the axes notwithstanding.”
I ran my thumb along the edge, careful to keep from rubbing the pencil marks that made up the halo of her hair. And it was her hair. It was her face, her eyes, her jawline. Her mouth, full and wide, ready to turn up at the edges for a bawdy joke or a sip of scotch. It wasn’t a caricature, or a loose sketch; it was indeed a portrait, and a good one—if not from a hand with formal training.
I would’ve known her anywhere, even after all this time. Even though she didn’t haunt me, for all that I wished she would.
My heart squeezed tight, and I tried to keep from squeezing the paper, too. I swallowed hard, and blinked back the dampness that welled up in my eyes. “Where did you find this?”
“In a basement, beneath the big government building downtown. It was in a box with other evidence, regarding the city’s recent spate of axe murders. But I think I mentioned most of that over the telephone.”
“Yes, I’m sure you did.” I couldn’t remember. I looked up from the image, though it almost hurt me to do so. “What does this . . . what does she have to do with the local axe murders?”
“This picture was drawn by one of the attack survivors, a man named Gaspera Lorino. He was badly injured, and his recovery has been incomplete—or so I’m led to understand—but that’s the way it sometimes goes with a bad head wound. He called her the gray lady, but if he offered any further explanation, it wasn’t passed along to me.”
I stared at the drawing again. The gray lady . . .
I remembered Nance, her body as gray and pale as a fish’s belly. Alive, but changed, or changing. The image I held in my hands—it wasn’t an image of my beloved as she’d appeared toward the end, no. This was before the darkness took her, when her eyes were still bright and she still smiled at me when I said her name. This was before the water, and before Doctor Zollicoffer. Or whatever he was, by the time he reached us.
“I haven’t yet spoken to Mr. Lorino,” Wolf said gently. “I was waiting for you. I thought you might want a word with him, and for that matter, I think his sister might prefer a woman’s inquiry to mine. I chatted with her briefly on the phone, through the sanatorium offices; she did not sound wildly enthused about the idea of a detective interviewing her brother, so I might’ve mentioned that Lorino’s artwork depicted a woman from a missing persons case, unsolved all these years. I said that you were coming into town, at my request . . . and I may have implied that Nance was your sister. As a matter of narrative convenience, you understand.”
“You didn’t mention my name?”
“Not your old one. To the best of everyone’s knowledge, you are Miss Lizbeth Andrew, and far be it from me to correct anyone’s assumption. Yours is a veritable reincarnation!” he said, but his smile looked almost forced. “I hope this arrangement meets with your approval, and my caution has not proved . . . insulting? For that surely was not my intent.”
“You’ve played the situation admirably,” I assured him. “And don’t look so bashful about suggesting my rebirth; it’s a fascinating belief that I’ve studied more than a bit. So I’ll be Nance’s sister, and play upon the sympathies of Mr. Lorino’s sibling in turn. It’s the best cover I could hope for in a thousand years.”
“The plan sounds mercenary, when you put it like that.”
“How else should I put it?”
“No, no. I didn’t mean it was a bad thing.” His smile was easier now. “I’m glad that we agree in intent and execution, that’s all. So! The sanatorium’s hours extend through five o’clock and it’s only one thirty now. We have plenty of time—but I did tell the sister and the staff that we’d come by after lunch.”
“You’ve constructed all sorts of plans ahead of my arrival.” Without even being certain of it, I did not add. His confidence amused me.
“Time may be of the essence. It would not do to dally.”
We found another car—or rather, Wolf had one arranged for us already. Quite an architect of the calendar, this man. One step ahead of everything. I liked it, even though I found it intimidating (if I was honest with myself). Why did he need me, after all, if he was already so prepared? What role did he expect me to play in this weird drama?
If he had anything particular in mind—apart from “pretend to be Nance’s sister, for interrogation purposes”—he did not disclose it on the ride to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
The hospital itself was situated on a great lawn, green with lush grass and manicured hedges, and shady trees that hadn’t lost any of their foliage yet to fall. Despite its exterior elegance, as we pulled up a driveway and parked in the shadow of the place, the word which sprang to mind was “hulking.” The main structure was enormous and made of brick, with stone details lovingly applied in the last century’s style. Grand, stately, and hulking, yes. Four and a half stories, with a steeplelike appendage on top, pointing toward the sky, plus a secondary wing with white porch rails running the length of each level.