“Ah,” I said. I could hear Dr. Halder lecturing in my mind.…aCuterebra. Botfly. Also called ‘wolf worms.’ Parasitic on mammals.
“Don’t worry,” said Jackson, seeing my expression. “They don’t bother humans much.”
“No, of course not,” I mumbled, scratching at my wrist involuntarily.
He went off to get burlap. I went back to the sketchbooks, trying, with difficulty, to push the idea of the botfly out of my mind.A thing hanging on the side of your head, pressing against your face and you can’t get it out and it keepsgrowingand your skin stretches and it starts to cover one of your eyes and maybe you feel it moving, the swollen body wriggling against your skull and it’s just a thin plate of bone between your brain and the larva that’s drinking your fluids…
I might start bashing myself against a window too.
With difficulty, I forced my mind away from that image. I picked up another sketchbook and welcomed the question of Louisa Halder’s identity in its place.
This sketchbook was dated from 1897, and it was only partly completed. The first few pages were studies of acorns and oak galls and an elegant drawing of a sweet gum ball that almost made me like the damn things. Then more faces. Most of them were of a man this time, one I didn’t know. He had a long, angular face and short dark hair. I don’t know if he was handsome. Something about the line work made me think Louisa had thought he was.
Her son?I wondered. In the drawings, he looked to be about the age I was now. How old had she been? If she was Halder’s age, she could probably have had an adult son. Would that make him Halder’s son as well?
Well, if she was actually his wife, that would be logical… butwas she?Itfeltcorrect, but just because it madesensedidn’t mean it wastrue, as any good scientist knew. How could I find out for certain?
Could I ask someone? Not Halder, who was so cagey about his illustrator.1897 was a little over a year ago. Sally’s probably too young to have been working as a maid then, but Mrs. Kent would surely remember…
And there I stopped, because Mrs. Kent had definitely known Louisa Halder—the sketchbooks were full of portraits—but when I had asked her about who had used the studio, she’d said she didn’t know. Had she lied to me?
No, she didn’t. She said that she couldn’t rightly say. Which Ithoughtmeant that she didn’t know, but that isn’t quite the same thing. She walked right up to the edge of a lie, but she didn’t quite go over.
I sat back on my heels, baffled and annoyed. First Phelps and the shed, Halder and the chickens, now Mrs. Kent? Why were people keeping secrets about things that seemed so utterly innocuous?
Had Louisa died?
Halder had one of her sketchbooks in his office, the one full of insects, but he’d left these here. Had he not known they existed, or had he simply not cared?
Given that there aren’t any bugs in these, he probably just didn’t think they mattered.No, that was unkind. Perhaps he’d been grieving and simply shut the room up and tried to ignore it. Grief takes people strangely, God knows. I remembered how calm and efficient I had been when Father died, deciding what to keep and what to sell, as if my life and my future hadn’t been buried in the ground alongside him.
Though it was strange, now that I noticed, that there were no insects in the books. Not even a bee or a butterfly crossed the pages. Flowers, yes, and studies of animal skulls and Smiley at various ages, but not a single insect.
Perhaps she drew them so often that she was tired of them.I could certainly understand that.
The door opened again as Jackson returned with a burlap sack and a shovel. I jumped up, sketchbook falling from my lap. “Jackson!”
He swung toward me, startled. “What? Is it the possum?”
“No, no.” I shook my head. “No, I—I have a question.”
“Sure, shoot.” He opened the door and lifted the possum on the end of the shovel, then maneuvered it into the sack. “What’s on your mind?”
“Who was Louisa Halder?”
“Ah.” I couldn’t see his face, but there was a world of meaning packed into that syllable, if only I could decipher it. He stood, holding the sack with its unfortunate contents. “She was the doctor’s wife.”
Ha! I was right.“But… ah… when I asked Mrs. Kent about who had lived here before…” I trailed off, realizing that could be taken as a criticism of his wife.
Jackson glanced toward the floor, as if seeing through the layers of boards to where Mrs. Kent was at work in the kitchen. “She ain’t too keen to talk about it.” He paused, clearly weighing up how much to say. “They were pretty good friends, Louisa and Rose. And I sure wouldn’t go saying anything to the doctor. It was quite a…” He stopped, as if he’d thought better of what he was going to say.
“Quite a…?”
Jackson shook his head. “Quite amess. It’s all done and dusted now though.” His lips thinned. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask Rose about it. She still feels like she shoulda done more, and it puts her out of temper.”
“All right,” I said. “Err… did she die?”
“She left,” said Jackson, “and who can blame her?” He glanced toward the glass door and the dead possum, and for a momentI thought that would be his last word on the subject, but the soul of a storyteller is hard to keep down. “Been a bit over a year now, though she was unhappy for a long time afore that…”
