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“I have a request that may shock you.” She looked up at him with a mischievous twinkle in her eye that he treasured because it appeared so rarely these days.

“Go on, then. Shock me, Miss Poole.”

“May I have just a sliver of whiskey?” She had in fact shocked him, not because he had any compunction about ladies drinking, but because liquor was something Electra generally abstained from.

Her avoidance was not borne of some religious or moral judgment, but rather because she had seen the toll it had taken on her father. They both had.

“Yes, of course you may.” He went to a cabinet in his dining room and pulled out his bottle of whiskey, poured a finger for each of them, and brought the glass back to her. “Here you go.”

He sat on the settee, leaving more distance between them than he wanted, and swigged down his finger. She sipped at hers, closing her eyes against the burn.

“I rarely have any wish for liquor, but on the rare occasions I have had any, it does warm one inside instantly. And it makes my thoughts a bit fuzzy.”

Gideon frowned and leaned closer. “Are your thoughts troubling you?” Murder cases, all the secrets one learned during the course of them, did weigh on one’s mind. Gideon sometimes struggled with the residue such darkness left behind too.

“Mmm” was all she offered in reply and then sipped more whiskey.

“This case is troubling you?”

“Yes,” she admitted quietly. “Of course, it is. Just as I’m sure it’s troubling you. But I will admit what happened at the Delacourts’ was shocking. I sat with Violet. I even touched her hands. And when I did, I saw a vision. An argument between her and Dr. Wakefield.”

“Oh?”

“She told me that they were arguing about planning their wedding. But my visions are usually of the future. I wonder if I was foreseeing whatever they’re saying to each other at this very moment. I don’t want…any harm to come to her. More than he has already done.”

“Did you see him doing any violence to her in your vision?”

Electra shook her head. “That is the only reassurance I have that perhaps it was merely a different kind of harm. Pain in her heart. The sense of betrayal. To know that she was harboring all this worry for her sister, and meanwhile she is engaged to the sort of man who would betray her with her own sister.”

She looked at him, her eyelids heavy, gaze glossy. “Could such a man prey on women over the course of years? Strangle them, dispose of them, and then go on with his day as a doctor?”

“I do not know, but we will continue to investigate him. His history, his habits. I will ask that a constable be tasked with watching him.” Wakefield was despicable, an admitted philanderer, but what Gideon couldn’t discern was whether he was capable of harming Iris Delacourt. Or Violet. Or the other young women.

“How do you look in the face of a woman who looks exactly like your fiancée and use her so ill? And then think that you shall go on and marry her sister and remain in the bosom of their family?” Electra’s voice had risen, and color had come back to her cheeks. Her eyes glittered with emotion and, to his shock, welled with tears.

“Even if Violet never learned the truth,” she continued, “how could he expect Iris to go on, knowing what they’d done? He cares nothing for her. Or for Violet.”

“Human beings are confounding.” As soon as the words were out, Gideon felt their insufficiency. Perhaps fatigue had gotten to him too; perhaps he had simply become inured to the kind of devilry he saw in his work. “Just when you think you know the extent of human nature, you meet someone who surprises you. Whose depravity shocks you,” he added.

“I’m sure there are people who are shockingly good,” Electra said, a bit defiantly. “I want to believe there are people who can be selfless, tell the truth, strive all their lives not to hurt others. But now, all I can think of is how much pain this one man caused others with his choices.” She took a breath. “And could he have harmed Calliope and the others?”

“He had access to Calliope’s lodgings. We will investigate further, search his home, for any evidence linked to the other murders.”

She looked up at him, hand gripping the whiskey tumbler tight before she sipped more of it. “And yet you have nothing that would allow you to charge him with any crime now.”

“Not yet,” Gideon told her.

“Do you think he hurt her? Do you think he’s killed his fiancée’s sister?”

Gideon was surprised at the question, having heard what Violet Delacourt whispered to her. “Do you discount her sister’s sense that she is still alive?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head and a glossy strand of black hair slipped free of its pin.

Gideon couldn’t resist leaning closer, reaching out, brushing his fingertips across her soft skin. The contact shot a spark of heat through him as he tucked the silken strand behind her ear.

She clung tighter to her whiskey glass and then drained the last of it.

“We will investigate him,” he said quietly, trying to reassure her. “Perhaps we will uncover a crime that he can be charged with and that can be used to leverage a confession.”