“Told him you were so moral and upright that you didn’t even drink,” said Jackson, patting his flask. He winked at me.
I groaned, thinking of the horrible possibility that Phelps was looking for a wife. “I’d almost rather you told him that I was a degenerate,” I muttered.
“Oh, well. If he asks again, I’ll tell him I found you smoking, cursing, and playing cards.”
I rolled my eyes, took my plate to the scullery, and went to fetch my sketchbook, hoping that time spent outside would shake the dread that followed me like a shadow.
Mrs. Kent’s favorite flower, according to Jackson, was sweet shrub. I knew it well.Calycanthus floridus, also called Carolina allspice. It’s a big, suckering shrub that likes to send out runners and form thickets, and there’s not all that much to recommend it, except for a month or so in late spring when it flowers. The flowers are deep, dark burgundy and they smell like nothing else in the world. If you’ve smelled them, then you know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t, then the best that I can say is that they smell like how berries and cream tastes.
I wanted to paint something for Mrs. Kent, in gratitude for allthe meals and what was, in her rather brisk way, a great deal of kindness. Her favorite flower seemed like a good choice.
It was coming on toward May and there was a thicket of sweet shrub down by the stream that probably still had some flowers. I could have used the illustration in theBotanicafor reference, but I never quite felt that particular image did justice to the flower. I took my sketchbook and a little knife to cut a branch, and tromped down to find some reference material.
I don’t know if I believe in fate. I don’t think I do. Things just happen sometimes, and you can drive yourself mad thinking of all the ways that they might have happened differently. If you’d turned left instead of right. If you’d said yes instead of no. If you’d gone to visit your father’s friends in Richmond instead of Wilmington. But even below the level of conscious choice, there’s another level, where dramatic things happen because of facts that should be utterly insignificant.
If Mrs. Kent’s favorite flower had been marigolds or wake-robin or wild violets, I would not have gone to the stream, and everything that happened after would have happened differently or not at all. But she loved a shrub that smelled like berries and cream, so off I went.
I spent about two hours at the stream, drawing. By the time I set back toward the house, I had three pages of sketches and a cut branch emitting the spicy halfway-cinnamon smell of sweet shrub bark.
The woods were dense with new growth, much of it still pale green. I gave a wide berth to a stand of poison ivy that straggled up a chestnut tree, the thick stem covered in hairy rootlets like a millipede’s legs. The swamp jessamine had stopped blooming by now, but the cross vine was still putting out blazing coral trumpets. Coral is a marvelous color in nature and a damnably difficult one to render on the page. You need red and pink and orange in the right proportions, all in washes thin enough for the white of the page to shine through and keep it bright.
My mind was running through the paints back in the studio, wondering if there was anything that might make a good coral, while my feet took the most familiar path through the woods. I saw the shed up ahead, just as Phelps stepped out of it.
If I hadn’t spied on Halder, if I hadn’t been nursing a nervous guilt, I would have said nothing. Probably I’d have turned back and hoped he didn’t see me at all. But it seemed imperative that he not think that I was suspicious, so I called out “Mr. Phelps!” in hearty tones the moment I saw him.
He jumped a foot in the air. I can’t tell you the satisfaction that gave me.Moral and upright woman, my aunt Fanny.
“Miss Wilson! You—err—startled me.” Phelps hastily pulled the door closed and fumbled with the lock.
“I was just cutting some sweet shrub,” I said gaily, waving my branch in his direction. A touch of malice led me to add, “But don’t worry, Mr. Phelps. I took your warning very much to heart.”
He blinked at me. “My warning?”
“About the gunpowder.”
“Oh… err… that warning.” Phelps glanced back at the shed, as if it might rise up and declare him a liar on the spot.
“And the other one too. I never go out in the woods at night.”
“Very wise.” He moved hastily away from the shed. “Please allow me to walk you back to the house.”
“Certainly.” A thrill of adrenaline shot through me. Had I heard what I thought I had? I was nearly certain of it, but I couldn’t stop to check now.
Phelps walked beside me, his shoulders slightly hunched, like a shabby vulture. I glanced over at him. “Jackson told me about what happened in the woods three years ago,” I said. “The murders.”
“Oh.” His voice, never particularly expressive, became as flat as paint. “Yes.”
“It must have been quite horrible.”
Phelps grunted.
“I’m so glad that you all were able to put an end to it.”
His shoulders hunched even deeper. The house appeared through the trees before us, and Phelps made for it, stretching his legs slightly so that I had to hurry to keep up.
At the edge of the woods, he paused and turned to me.
“It is the duty of good men to kill monsters, Miss Wilson,” he said, in his flat, solemn voice. Then he tapped the brim of his hat and stalked toward the stable. A few minutes later, I heard the sound of his horse trotting away.
