Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(73)

   (I felt a flash of sorrow, a dim flicker of memory from when we were children and she was so small when our mother was buried. She looked that way beside the coffin, except then she was holding my hand.)





? ? ?


For her, then. I could be brave and adult about this. The inspector was being polite, and there was always the chance he was an enlightened sort. He must’ve seen so much of the world; perhaps he would not be surprised by something as innocuous as a woman with a pen.

I straightened up in my seat, held my head high, and said, “Yes. I am Doctor E. A. Jackson. Or I might’ve been, in another time and place. For now, as you see, I am a woman confined by her own skin.”

I wondered at my own strange choice of language, and he did, too—but he didn’t mock it. He only said, “Women attend universities these days. They become doctors of all manner. Still, I can’t blame you for preferring the secret. And . . .” He looked around the room. He took in the blankets, the canes, the extra rails on the stairs and the bloodied handkerchiefs I’d collected in a pile on the side table. “I can understand if it gives you some feeling of freedom, or escape. May I ask: What is your specialty?”

“Marine biology,” I told him. “And if I had a fraction of the health I once possessed, I’d be one of those women in the university, right now. I fear little, when it comes to the gaze or scorn of men.”

He was looking at Lizzie now. Recognizing her. Piecing together the rest—who we were, where Doctor Seabury had brought him. No, not a stupid man. A very quick one, and tactful when it suited him. (As for other occasions, I’m unable to say.)

“Jackson,” he mused. “Not the name either one of you was born to.”

Lizzie answered, “No. But beyond a certain point, names become accessories. We swap them out as needed, for the sake of peace. You understand?” she asked him, her voice calm and level. She really wasn’t asking if he understood.

“I understand,” he confirmed anyway. “Though I disagree. Names aren’t hats to change a look, or a suit to be swapped at a whim. Words mean things.”

“Then we must agree to disagree,” she told him. “Now. Tell us about this man who’s coming for Doctor Jackson.”

“It’s as I said—a teacher who’s lost his mind. We found a scrap of note, left by the killer at a scene. Not as a warning or boast, but as an afterthought, I think. Maybe he simply forgot about it. It seems to have been written to the doctor.”

“It only seems that way?” I asked.

“The note rambles excessively, and it makes sense only in fits and starts. Here,” he said, withdrawing a folded sheet from his vest pocket. “Since I believe it was intended for you, in a roundabout way. You may as well have it.”

And then he handed over the most astonishing document I’d ever set eyes on.

I read it start to finish; then I read it again . . . and a third time. All the while, my skull was boiling, cooking through the details and trying to figure out how they all fit together.

“Zollicoffris,” I whispered, my attention snagging on the corruption of a name.

“Does it mean anything to you?” Wolf asked carefully.

I cleared my throat. “Zollicoffer,” I said with more confidence. “Phillip Zollicoffer, at Miskatonic. We’ve been correspondents for some years, off and on.”

He sat back in the chair, exhaling. “So you do know the man.”

“I know the handwriting, and this isn’t his.”

“No, madam. A copy, produced by one of the Boston record keepers. But should I trust that the two of you have never met in person?”

“Trust and believe it. He has no idea who I am, or that I’m a woman.”

“When was your last exchange of letters?” he wanted to know, and when I finally tore my eyes away from the paper, I saw that he was now holding a notebook and a pencil. Something told me he was always similarly prepared. For anything.

“Erm . . . I don’t know. Last April, I suppose. It’s been a while. My health has its ups and downs, but last April I was strong enough to roam along the shore, a little bit. With my sister’s help.” I cast a nod in her direction. “Sometimes Doctor Zollicoffer and I would exchange strange finds, fossils or seaweed samples. That sort of thing.”

“Samples, yes. He refers to a ‘sample’ in the letter. Is there any light you can shed upon those particular ramblings?”

I remembered it was warm for April, the last time Lizzie and I went to the shore. It was windy but not uncomfortable, and we’d brought my wheeled chair, but I was walking a little, here and there, running my feet over the rocks in the rubber-soled slippers that help me keep my balance. I was holding Lizzie’s hand, and there’d been a smell . . . some strange stink from a tide pool, and inside the tide pool I’d found the dead thing. A dead thing like nothing I’d ever seen before, nor have I seen since.

“The ugly specimen . . . ,” I breathed, running my thumb along the paper. A stupid gesture. It wasn’t a genie’s lamp, and if I asked it for anything, it’d only give me more questions. “The one that smelled so awful. Lizzie, do you remember?”

“How could I forget?” She’d come up behind me, to read over my shoulder. I hadn’t even noticed. “You made me go home and get a jar to hold it. I thought you’d gone crackers, wanting to keep that awful thing—and then when you told me you’d send it to a colleague . . . I wondered how much you must hate him.”