“Probably.” I didn’t feel like getting into a discussion over the joys of discovery. Mostly I felt an overwhelming need to wash my hands. Possibly with lye.
I went inside and scrubbed myself nearly raw with water that only had a few beetle parts floating in it. Partway through, I heard the sound of hoofbeats, a trot breaking rapidly into a gallop, as Halder made for Siler City and the train station. In the hall, the clock struck eleven.
The itch in my memory suddenly blossomed. I had staggered downstairs not long after dawn, and had found Mrs. Kent. Call it seven in the morning. She had insisted that I eat, and I had obeyed, not wanting to seem any more hysterical than I already did. She had finished cooking, then agreed to go see the door. Had that been about eight? And it had taken at least an hour for Jackson to arrive, while I perused the sketchbooks. Yet when he had nudged it with his boot, the body had been as limp as a dishrag.
I had heard the clock toll midnight while I was frantically throwing the lock on the door. No matter how I calculated, the possum had been alive on the balcony until almost dawn, separated from me by no more than a pane of glass.
The time of death hardly matters, does it? It didn’t get in, and what’s an hour or two either way?
Yet despite that, it troubled me to think of the poor mad thing lying outside the door all night. Both because it had been suffering, and because I could not escape the feeling that it had been waiting for me to unlock the door so that it could finally get inside.
I went back to my room in a mood that had passed through pensive and come out the other side. Possums with wolf worms in the brain. Halder’s excitement. The sketchbooks.
Dear Lord, the sketchbooks.
I picked one up, flipped through it, and set it down again.Louisa.What had become of her? Had she died? Had she gotten away safely? Had Halder really killed her lover?
Who might know more? If Mrs. Kent didn’t want to talk, who would?
The image of Ma Kersey dropped into my head, fully formed, like a page ripped from the gossip rag of the gods.I would bet my eyeteeth that she knows what happened to Louisa. Possibly before Louisa did.
I snatched up my own sketchbook and went to find out.
“You want to see Ma Kersey?” Mrs. Kent gave me a wary look, as if a rabbit had just announced its desire to pay a visit to the wolf. “What for?”
I’d run the housekeeper to earth two doors down from the studio, where she was determinedly airing out a guest bedroom. Furniture huddled under sheets like the ghost of occupations past.
Fortunately, I had already thought of an answer to this question. “I draw plants,” I said. “Well, I used to. For my father, you see. I like them a lot more than bugs.”
Mrs. Kent smiled, though she still looked a trifle puzzled. “I can understand that. Plants, eh? Flowers and such?”
“Yes, but also… here, it’s easier to show you.” I fetched theBotanicafrom my room and opened it to my favorite page, the jack-in-the-pulpit. A strange little vase of a plant, with dark streaks running up from the base, and the spadix tucked inside like a tongue in a toad’s mouth, and another illustration alongside it, of the bright orange fruit that clung to it later in the year.
Mrs. Kent gazed at it for a long time, turning the pages almost reverently. “So this is what you do…” she murmured.
I felt a sudden stab of embarrassment. Had I really not shown her any of my work? No, I hadn’t. However good a job I did on the screwworm larvae, it wasn’t the sort of thing I could imagine showing Mrs. Kent, and I’ve never been the sort of person to show off my sketchbooks. And yet she was, by leaps and bounds, the closest thing I had to a friend in this place.
I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Yes. That’s what I’ve been doing in the studio all day. Only bugs, not plants.”
“Virginia bluebells,” she said softly, running a fingertip over the page. “These were my mother’s favorite.”
I had no idea what to say.
“You have quite a gift,” said Mrs. Kent, handing the book back to me. She cleared her throat and straightened her back, apparently realizing that she’d been poring over the book for the last few minutes instead of working. “What’s it to do with Ma Kersey though?”
“Plants,” I explained. The deception, which hadn’t bothered me in the slightest five minutes ago, suddenly seemed like a betrayal. Nevertheless, I had started down this road, and suddenly changing my mind would sound even stranger. “You said she was good at doctoring. A person like that uses a lot of herbs—they always do—and I wanted to ask her about some of what she uses. Father was very interested in things like pollination and seed dispersal, but he never cared much for things like medicinal uses. I did. Do.”
Mrs. Kent nodded. “Ah, yeah, herbs. She does a spring tonic that’ll curl your toes and chase the winter right out of your bones.” She fanned the air with her apron. A little breeze forced its way through the sluggish heat and stirred the furniture covers. “Right. She’s not hard to find. Just go left as you come to the road and go about a mile down, maybe a little bit more. You’ll cross two roads, and then there’s an itty-bitty drive with about five houses on it. Hers is the last one in the row.” She paused, eyeing me up and down. “She likes people to ask her for advice. She’ll probably be happy to tell you. But I’d take her a little gift anyway, just in case.”
I set out the next morning with a satchel I’d borrowed from Jackson slung over one shoulder. Despite leaving early enough that it was still cool, I can’t say that it was a particularly pleasant walk. The weight of theBotanicamade the strap dig into myshoulder after the first half mile, and the road itself was in dismal repair. The recent rain had turned parts of it into sucking mud, and I had to switch which side I walked on multiple times to avoid puddles that resembled small inland seas.
Oh well, it’s still more comfortable than riding in Phelps’s wagon, I thought,with all his talk of devils in the woods. Presumably he’d been referring to the blood thieves? I suppressed the urge to look over my shoulder. There was nothing out here. It had been three years ago. I’d been roaming around at night myself, and the only thing I’d seen was Halder, who had been quite alarming enough, thank you.
The distance was more like a mile and a half, all told, but the right-hand side opened up after a while, into fields that had been cleared for farmland.
My mind kept returning to the possum, to the hole drilled into its skull… I ordered myself to think about something else.
Fine. Is Halder really a murderer, do you think?
