David tore his gaze free, staring instead into the empty teacup. “For years, before my illness, I imagined I was two people. I did bad things and escaped to be someone else, to live better, happier, but I always came back to being me.” His eyes lifted suddenly. “And then there was you. Exactly like me. And you are real. The bad things are real too. They appall me because of you. So, what if I talked myself into believing I didn’t do the worst of it? My evil twin did it.”
Solomon flicked a glance at Constance, seeing the pity and incomprehension that reflected his own.
David rubbed his forehead, his eyes. “I am a mess of a man.”
“You are a confused man in shock,” Constance said, and Solomon could have kissed her. “And if you have only just begun to remember what happened before your illness—”
“I haven’t,” David interrupted, his eyes meeting Solomon’s once more. “You know I haven’t. I began to remember almost as soon as I saw you. Just images at first, like dreams. On the island. Playing as children. Not being alone.”
Solomon’s throat ached for those times. And the loss that came after. And most of all, for whatever had happened to his brother.
“Bit by bit, it came back during that voyage after I left you here in November. In dreams and spurts, till I could make something of the whole. I remembered the idea of being someone else. Of being you. I was hiding from what I did.”
“What happened to you?” Solomon no longer wanted to know. He wasn’t sure he could live with it. But David had, andSolomon needed to shoulder his share of that burden. “Do you remember quarreling with me?”
David’s frown flickered. “Not really. I remember being alone on the docks and wishing you were there to see the man with the puppets among all that panic and chaos of people trying to leave the island. He said I could have a puppet of my own, since I liked them so much, and I said that I needed two, one for my brother. And he said I should come aboard and choose my favorites from all the puppets. I’d begun to go with him when I realized it was a bad idea, and the ship was almost ready to sail. They were waiting to pull up the gangplank. I tried to run, but he caught me and dragged me aboard the ship.”
“Then it was true,” Solomon whispered. His father had pursued that rumor, and so had he. “I always feared that was you… Were youenslaved, David?”
Astonishingly, David shrugged. “In a manner of speaking. Not as you understand it. Not legally. But I was not free. And I had no choice but obedience…until I grew big and strong enough to fight. By then I had forgotten most of my old life. It felt like a dream, and for a time freedom was enough. I traveled the world.”
“So did I,” Solomon said. “And yet never once…”
“The world is big and I’m just an anonymous sailor.” David shrugged impatiently. “Then I got ill and really did forget everything. Looking back, that was a good thing, but I didn’t know that. It was frightening, starting again from nothing, like a newborn baby but one who can speak and read and knows enough about seamanship to get a job on any ship I took a fancy to. Anyway, that’s no longer my most urgent problem. The police are after me for a murder I may or may not have committed.”
David paused, drew in a deep breath, and looked from Solomon to Constance and back. “And I need your help to findthe truth. I can’t ask questions for myself because I’ll be arrested. I’m too perfect a scapegoat for this crime.”
“What will you do if we find out you’re guilty?” Constance asked, and Solomon’s blood ran cold.
“Turn myself in,” David replied. “I won’t run anymore. I’ll face the consequences.”
Oh, no. You’ve suffered enough…But Solomon would not go down that road, not yet. David’s story was so unsound it was ridiculous. The investigation needed cool, hard heads, and this, it seemed, was the one thing he could do for his brother.
“In the meantime,” he said briskly, “we have to find some means of hiding you from the long arm of the law. I suppose you could hide here in the office, but that would rather make Janey complicit.”
“And Mrs. Silver. And you.”
“We are family,” Constance said, “and don’t count. But as it happens, we also have the perfect disguise at hand. You, David, are Solomon Grey.”
*
While Solomon returnedto his desk with admirable focus to write his report on the fraud case, Constance set about cutting David’s hair. When that was done to her satisfaction, she took him along the passage to their little cloakroom and brought him some warm water to wash and shave with.
“There’s a razor in the cabinet,” she told him. “And there is a complete set of Solomon’s clothes hanging behind the door.”
Deciding to work in Solomon’s office—he was far too tense and brittle for her to leave him alone for too long right now—she collected her notepaper and pen and returned to his room, where he barely looked up from his desk. One would not have known, from the concentration in his face or the speed of hishand gliding across the page, that he was tired to the point of exhaustion and severely rattled by emotional strain and anxiety.
Interruption would not help. So, she sat in one of the comfortable chairs and wrote out her instructions to Sarah, her lieutenant at the establishment. While she was rummaging through the railway timetables to discover where and when they could board a train to Sutton May tomorrow, she realized that Solomon would not now come with her. She understood it, and yet her heart sank for entirely selfish reasons. Another separation, another chasm opening between them, when she already missed him so badly she wanted to howl.
It had taken her some time to realize that Solomon had proposed Silver and Grey as a means of deepening their friendship, of being together, to discover where it was leading. To love, of course, if it had not already been there. Working apart had never been part of their plan.
Janey came in to clear away the tea things.
“He gone, then?” she asked, jerking her head at the sailor’s cap, which still lay on the chair where David had left it.
“Notexactly,” Constance said, just as David walked hesitantly back into the room.
Janey stopped clattering. Her jaw dropped.
