“I just… I have to go.” Morrie threw a shirt over his shoulders and stumbled into the hall. The door slammed behind him.
Chapter Fourteen
“Morrie, wait!” I threw myself off the bed, scrambling around on the floor for my clothes. I grabbed my dress, then realized it would take far too long to fasten with any degree of propriety. My rucksack was in the other room, and we’d locked the door between the two in case Lydia decided she had to join us. I couldn’t risk opening it if she was on the other side, having her discover what was going on.
I swiped Heathcliff’s flouncy shirt off the floor and flung it over my head. He was so broad and tall that it came down nearly to my knees. It wasn’t exactly Regency appropriate, but it was at least somewhat decent.
“Mina, what are you doing?”
“I’m going after him.” I pulled on Heathcliff’s enormous topcoat and shoved my feet into my Docs.
“Why?” Heathcliff demanded. “He’s just being Morrie. He can’t handle it if he doesn’t get to be in charge.”
“I don’t think that’s it this time.” I yanked the door open and jogged into the hall. It was empty. At the top of the staircase, I paused, looking down over the edge. Couples milled around in the entranceway below, holding wine glasses and making chit chat. Piano music floated in from Uppercross. If Morrie was upset, he wouldn’t have gone downstairs.Where, then?
I remembered the covered balcony where we’d watched the fencing. At this time of night, it would be completely deserted. I raced across the upper landing, ducking down one hallway and then another until I found my way back to the small study that led to the balcony.
I didn’t want to turn any lights on and risk scaring Morrie off. I shuffled my way through the dark study, wincing as I smashed my hip against a large oak desk. Moonlight shone in from the windows outside, and a headache bloomed in my temples as my eyes focused on the squares of pale light, obliterating everything else within my narrowed field of vision.
“Ow!” My knee slammed into a stone plinth. I thrust out my hands and managed to catch a terracotta vase before it toppled onto the floor. As I righted the plinth and set the vase back onto its stand, a shadow passed through the moonlight.
“Mina?”
I glanced up. A tall figure stood in the doorway leading out onto the balcony. In the dark, I couldn’t make out any features beyond a vague shadow, but I knew that voice anywhere.
“I came to find you.” I straightened up. “I thought we could talk.”
“Go back to the room. I’ll be along in a minute.” The figure disappeared.
Oh no, you don’t.I made my way to the doorway, leaning against the frame and watching Morrie. He leaned against the railing, staring out into the snow-cloaked night. In the gloom, I couldn’t discern his features, but the shape of him was unmistakable.
“Morrie?” I stepped up beside him.
“I’d prefer to be alone,” he said, without turning.
“Is that true, though?” I took another step closer. “You’re always alone, even when you’re with me. You hold something back and you fight against yourself. I think maybe you don’t know any better, but whatever the reason, you’ve built this space between us. I hate it. Tonight, you closed that space and let me see you,reallysee you. And I think you’re scared of that.”
Morrie didn’t speak for a long time. I took my chances and shuffled across the balcony to stand beside him. He wouldn’t look at me, so I leaned over the railing, trying to glimpse his face. His mouth set in a firm line and his eyes formed ice-crystals – cold and hard, but fragile. Morrie bit his lower lip, and I dared to hope that something I said got through to him.
“What’s going on with you? Why’ve you been acting so strange these past few weeks? Ever since we solved Mrs. Scarlett’s murder you’ve been surly and mean.”
Morrie drew a paper from his pocket, folding it and unfolding it in his hands. He sighed.
“I put you in danger.” He didn’t whisper or choke. His words came out clear, confident. Whatever he was about to tell me, he had a fundamental conviction that it was true.
“What do you mean?”
“When you went to Mrs. Winstone’s house and found her husband’s body. It took me too long to figure out there were two different killers, and I should have seen her as the killer immediately. All the clues were there – the missing husband, the conflict with Ginny Button, the walking stick attack that didn’t fit with the killer’s pattern. But I missed it.” He shook his head in disbelief.
“It doesn’t matter. We figured it out together and caught Mrs. WinstoneandGreta. We solved the case thanks to your cleverness, and no one else got murdered.”
“Don’t you see? It matters very much. I should have figured it out, but I didn’t, and I’ve been racking my considerable intellect trying to figure out why. The terrifying thought occurred to me – that perhaps I was losing my mind. For the last couple of months, I’ve been addled, mixed up, stupefied. Perhaps it was an undiagnosed medical condition. I needed to find out, and the first part of the equation was to understand just how badly my brain was depleting.” Morrie handed the letter to me. “So I re-took the MENSA IQ test. I sat this test a year ago, for the sole purpose of winning a bet with Heathcliff, which I did in fact win. I tested with an IQ of 172.”
The envelope from MENSA. It was his test results. But he wouldn’t be this upset unless…
Yikes.I knew Morrie was clever, but an IQ of 172 was off-the-charts. Morrie’s lip quivered, and my heart ached from him as all his erratic behavior and snide comments came into sharp focus.
Morrie prized his intelligence above everything else, and if for some reason he was losing it, that would feel like losing a core part of who he was. I knew enough of what that felt like to know that it felt like utter shite.
