Page 28 of A Madness So Discreet

She is my sister, a small, lovely creature who I shielded daily from the secrets in our shared home. That the pall of our parents’ lies should descend upon her now, I can hardly bear. I know what it is to live in that house. Even before the worst, life there was bearable only because I had her to coddle and protect. She must have some comfort, for she is surrounded by anger and deception. I recognize the danger in correspondence, but fear more the results should I not take some action.

Though she sheds her childhood now, once there was an imaginary friend she held dear, who she claimed would meet her in the gardens and leave small presents on a certain rock. That I was the bearer of these, you no doubt realize, and I would be that again. A carefully worded letter from the same friend need not be associated with me. If Reed would endeavor to be the bearer, I can tell him of a hole in the fence surrounding the house, long hidden by ivy. If ever I find myself in a position to repay both you and Reed, it will be done tenfold.

Of my new life I will say little and of Thornhollow even less. You know the deal that was struck in order to facilitate my escape, and I fear you disapprove. What then would you think if I were to tell you that I have already proven myself not only useful but also a keen student of this dark enterprise into the criminal mind? I would say that the work is distasteful, but only because that is what you want to hear. In truth I find myself looking forward to the next opportunity to sharpen my skills and must remind myself that in order for that to happen, someone must die. If it was darkness you feared I would turn to while in his employ, fear not. The darkness has long lived inside me, sown if not by my nature then by nurture.

Grace’s pen faltered as she lingered over the closing. How was she to end a letter written in the sunshine to a man who would receive it in darkness with the death of another still on his breath? She settled for a simple, Always, and left off signing it altogether.

Even though she was confident that Reed would spirit the letter to Falsteed and it would be destroyed soon after, Grace did not put her name to it. The enclosed letter needed to be written with even greater care, worded so vaguely that curious adults would spot only child’s play.

Dearest Alice—

I hope this letter has found you well. You may think it odd to receive a letter from someone you thought no longer existed, but I assure you that imaginary friends never cease to be, even when we have outlived our usefulness. Much like real people, we look for the right time to make ourselves known.

If you would like to leave a message here for me, the fairies will spirit it away during the night. But remember—fairies can only come when good girls are asleep, so do not watch for them. They shall not come if you do.

Do not let them tell you I am gone, for I am always here.

Fair Lily

Grace signed the name of her sister’s imaginary friend with a relish, using the same loopy scrawl she’d employed when they were younger. Her fingers trailed over the paper, reluctant to fold up and enclose it with Falsteed’s so quickly. That Alice’s small fingers might touch the same place as hers sometime soon left a happiness in Grace’s heart so fragile she refused to examine it more closely.

Falsteed might deem it too dangerous for her to contact Alice. Reed might refuse the delivery. Rain and sun might ruin the letter before her sister happened upon it. But there was still a chance that she would receive it and find solace from the same hand that had given it so many times before, though she would not know the source. Grace pressed the letter to her heart before folding it, hoping that somehow her unspoken emotions would seep into the paper and flow back out to Alice, even if it was the only reunion the two could ever know.

SEVENTEEN

“We got our man. Or rather, they were competent enough to. And it was a woman, after all. So ignore my first statement.” Thornhollow sat on the arm of a chair in his office, staring moodily at the floor by his feet.

“You don’t seem particularly happy about it,” Grace said, welcoming the freedom to speak after another day of feigned inability. Having Nell beside her made talking unnecessary and walking with Elizabeth usually consisted of companionable silence, both enjoyable in their own ways. But Grace’s voice grew in power every day as she discovered the joys of speaking her mind, and she never missed an evening in Thornhollow’s office to share her opinions.

“I’m not,” Thornhollow admitted. “How can I teach you anything without a more complex crime than a jealous wife?”

“Careful what you wish for,” Grace said, thinking of her words to Falsteed in her letter. “That opportunity means someone’s death.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “But we didn’t even get to use the blackboard.”

“What would you write on it if we had?” Grace asked, carefully handling him as if he were Alice in a fit of pique.

“Oh, the basics,” he said, lackadaisically rising from his seat, approaching the board, and drawing a neat line down the center of it. “I suppose we can have a lesson even if there is no object at the moment.” On the left-hand side of the board he wrote Planned; on the other, Impulsive.

“A killer may be able to remove evidence from a crime scene, hide the murder weapon, clean up spilled blood, and take any number of steps necessary to cover their tracks. Yet even by doing this they are giving us clues as to who they are—or rather, who they were.”

“What do you mean by that? Who they were? Aren’t we more interested in who they are?” Grace asked.

“We are, all of us, the sum total of our life experience, Grace. Everything that happened to you as a child, from the geography of your birthplace to the social status of your family, even the order of your birth, can be read in your actions today.” Thornhollow tossed the chalk from hand to hand as he warmed up to his topic.

“If I told you we had a victim who had been stabbed multiple times and there was little blood on the scene or under the body, what would you learn from that?”

Grace closed her eyes, picturing a faceless body in a dark street, cold hands lying still on the cobblestones that remained clean despite the fact there should be blood spreading. “The body was moved,” she said, opening her eyes.

“Very good,” Thornhollow said. “But what else?”

“I . . .” She pictured the scene again but could see no more.

“Let me rephrase the question—what does the fact that our fictitious body was moved tell you about the killer?”

Grace again imagined the clean street beneath the hand, so different from the bricks reddening with blood under the man whose wife had killed him. That killer had been in a rage, her passions driving her to murder, and the panic that followed her action chasing her from the scene, unable to hide anything about her identity as she fled.

“They knew they had to protect themselves,” Grace said slowly. “For someone to move a body indicates a clear head at the time of the crime.”