“Not entirely. He saw enough to frighten him deeply.” Her eyes were guarded. Much as she appeared to enjoy my company, her loyalty was with Brisbane. I do not think she would have told me the full truth, not even then, had I not already known. She must have seen the fear in my face, for I knew I could not mask it. I did not want to ask her, but I did.
“What did he dream of?” I asked in a thin, bloodless voice.
“My dear…” She stretched out her hand and touched mine. “He dreamed of you.”
THE THIRTY-FOURTH CHAPTER
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
—William Shakespeare
Hamlet
She could tell me nothing more. When she had asked him about the dream, Nicholas had murmured my name. That was all. Whether I was in peril or simply a bystander in his vision, she could not say.
I was not comforted. The details she had given me about his time in Hungary left me chilled and nervous. In spite of myself, I cast glances over my shoulder as I returned to Grey House. No one lurked there, but I felt better when the door was shut and I was safely locked behind my own door once more.
Fleur had apologized of course. She had not meant to alarm me. She pointed to Brisbane’s absence and insisted that he would never have left London if he believed I was in any true danger.
This did not ease my mind. I thought of what he had told me when we began our investigation. He had warned me of the danger, but I had not heeded him. I had thought it all a marvelous game, a parlor trick to winkle out a murderer before he guessed I was on his trail.
I had been very, very stupid. I could see it now. I had confided in a few trusted souls. But should I? Were they worthy of my trust? Or were they simply waiting for that perfect moment when my attention faltered to give me a gentle nudge down a steep staircase? An innocent glove, laced with poison…a box of chocolates, envenomed with a pin…I sat in my study, torturing myself for the better part of an hour before I came to my senses. Honestly. I was no better than that stupid girl inNorthanger Abbey,seeing danger behind every bush, villains behind every door. The only thing to do, in spite of Brisbane’s warning, was to proceed with the investigation. The sooner the murderer was unmasked, the sooner the danger would be past.
Resolute, I pulled out a little notebook, wrote down everything, laying out all of the clues we had discovered, noting each of the developments that had led us to this point, and the blind alleys that had led us nowhere. I wrote tirelessly, knowing that if I just put it all down, somehow, something would leap off the page at me.
And there it was. So simple I could not believe it had not occurred to me or to Brisbane before. The Psalter. We knew the text of the message I had found because it was still in our possession. But what of the others? They, too, had been scissored from the holy book. Was there a reason those particular passages had been chosen? The scripture we had seen referred to wickedness. Were the others more specific? Did they point to a particular wrong that Edward had committed against the sender?
Fired with new enthusiasm, I fetched the ruined Psalter and an old Bible from the bookshelves. Comparing them carefully, I noted down the exact verses that had been fashioned into threats for Edward. There were eight of them altogether, including the last, the one I had found hidden away in Edward’s desk. I wrote them out onto a single sheet of paper and studied them.
The first was a warning, it seemed.
The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
The second was much in the same vein.
For lo, they that are far from thee shall perish; thou hast destroyed all them that go whoring from thee.
Three and four were grimmer.
God shall likewise destroy thee forever, he shall take thee away, and pluck thee out of thy dwelling place, and root thee out of the land of the living.
Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell; for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.
Five and six continued, more vicious than the ones before.
But thou, O God, shalt bring them down into the pit of destruction; bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days, but I will trust in thee.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away; as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish in the presence of God.
I hardly had the stomach to read the last two.
But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs; they shall consume; into the smoke shall they consume away.
Let me not be ashamed, O Lord; for I have called upon thee; let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave.
I sat back, the words running like mad squirrels through my mind. So much talk of wickedness and destruction. Clearly the sender was accusing Edward of some evil, but what? There was talk of shame and deceit and destruction by fire, all vague enough. But there was one word that caught my eye.Whoring. Was it significant that the sender had chosen this verse, perhaps the only one in the entire Psalter to contain that particular word? If so, it pointed very clearly in one direction. The brothel.
The one place that I could not investigate while Brisbane was out of town. I cursed him inwardly, as well as my own inability to get the information I required for myself. I could again assume a disguise and attempt to go myself, but I had taken Brisbane’s warning to heart. I felt, with some appalling certainty, that Brisbane would have had far more experience with such places than I. If he said there were thugs outside whose sole purpose was to inflict torture on the curious and the unruly, I had little doubt there were. I did not need to see them for myself. What I needed was a man. And I knew precisely where to find one.
