Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(72)

I would’ve preferred some warning, prior to meeting him. Then again, I would have preferred a great many things which are well outside my grasp, so there’s no sense in sulking. The good doctor has done well by us—as best as he could, given the circumstances. I know he meant no harm, and likely meant only to protect us from further inquiry, but still. I found the whole thing stressful beyond belief.

(As if Nance weren’t already problem enough. She’s presently secured to a sturdy set of mahogany bedposts in the second guest room. Lizzie lingers by her at every spare opportunity, but I can’t say there’s been any real change since the other night. She moans and fusses. She struggles and whines. She chants, or asks, or whatever she’s doing, to be let out . . . out . . . out . . . until I’m so sick of the word that I wish to stitch her lips shut and throw her into the ocean. Would that be far enough out for her?

God, look at me. I’m coming apart at the seams. We all are. We all must be civil, instead. I must throw away these pages, lest Lizzie should see them.

But I’ll write them first.)





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The doctor came by, knocking on the door around lunchtime—when I was down in the parlor and Lizzie was in the kitchen, making cucumber sandwiches. I’d made my way downstairs myself, much to my sister’s irritation; now she complained she had to go up and down the stairs every time she need tend to one of us, or the other.

But I don’t always need tending, and I never want it. Sometimes I want to finish dressing myself and with the help of my cane, descend the stairs like a more or less normal woman who’d care to read the newspaper in the parlor today. A woman who’s sick of being sick, and can’t bear the thought of lying down another goddamn moment.

So I was in the parlor, and not in my room. When the knock came, I mean.

Lizzie answered it, at first with a smile, and then with a frigid politeness that told me something was amiss. I listened for all I was worth, and before she even invited them in, I knew it was Doctor Seabury come to visit . . . and that he was not alone.

Coolly, she ushered the men inside, and that’s when I was compelled to make the acquaintance of Inspector Wolf, the strangely named.

Everything about the doctor’s demeanor suggested apology, and a begging of indulgence. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to be here, he told us all, but the matter was outside his control and he had nothing but our best health and happiness in mind.

My face flushed warm, and my hands went cold. I had no idea how much Seabury had told this man, and I was not certain of the subject matter. We hide so many secrets here at Maplecroft—it was impossible to assume which one might have been transgressed.

The doctor sat on the chair opposite the settee where I rested. He fidgeted with his hat in his hand, and seemed very earnest when he leaned toward me and said, “I apologize from the bottom of my heart, Miss Borden, but it’s a matter of exceptional importance that brings us unannounced.”

I tried to keep from glaring when I replied, “It must be indeed, for you to surprise us like this.”

He nodded hard, his eyes trying to convey something I couldn’t quite grasp. I think he was trying to tell me to trust him, but that wasn’t easy. Not when he knew so much, and could do such harm. “Yes, and I trust you’ll forgive me if I’m direct: This is Inspector Wolf, from Boston. He wishes a word with Doctor E. A. Jackson.”

I was stunned. It would have almost been easier to swallow had he offered up some greater—but less personal—secret for this out-of-towner to chew on.

“About what?” I was not quite ready to give up the game. I had my gender on my side, for once. Any man would believe the whole thing was an utter fabrication, if I swore it was so.

The inspector answered this stuttered question of mine before the doctor had a chance. “I believe that he’s in terrible danger. A madman on a spree wishes to meet him, and thus far, everyone who crosses this madman’s path has turned up dead.”

I struggled to get a handle on the matter, all the possibilities rolling around in my brain like so many marbles. “Dead? The doctor is being hunted by a murderer?”

“A murderer many times over. We’ve tracked him since his first killing spree at a university, up at the northwestern end of the state, and—”

I interrupted. I couldn’t stop myself. “His first killing spree?”

“The first of seven, all told. Perhaps more,” he informed me calmly but firmly.

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t figure out what my publishing persona had to do with a murderer on a spree, as if we didn’t have problems enough in this household. “Who is this murderer?” I demanded.

“Madam—” Wolf made a conciliatory stab at calming me, using less condescension in his tone than I had any right to expect, given my outburst. “He’s a professor who’s taken leave of his classes and his senses alike. And it’s only just now dawned on me that I must be speaking to Doctor Jackson this very moment, a fact which gives me some measure of pain and pause. I made assumptions, and assumptions rarely take me anywhere useful.”

I swallowed back whatever had bounced onto the tip of my tongue, and I cast Lizzie a glance. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking helpless and afraid.





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