“I will inquire, ma’am, if you care to come this way. Mr. Tormod is in the morning room, but you will find it very chill in there.”
For a moment she was startled by the mention of Tormod as if he were alive; then she realized that naturally he would be laid out, and there would be those whose last respects included a look at the dead. Perhaps it was expected of her also?
“Thank you.” She hesitated, then went to view the dead man.
The room was dark, and as chill as the footman had said, possessed of the peculiar coldness of decay. Black crepe festooned the walls and the table legs, and there was a black cloth on the sideboard.
Tormod was in a dark, polished coffin on the table in the center, and the gas lamps were unlit. The outside sun, filtered through the blinds, gave a diffuse light, quite clear, and she was compelled against her will to go over and look at him.
The eyes had been closed, and yet she felt as if the expression were unnatural. There was no peace in the face. Death had taken the spirit, but his features held the unmistakable impression that his last emotion had been one of hatred, impotent and corroding hatred.
She looked away, frightened by it, trapped by something cold and all-pervasive that grew in her mind and rooted firmer and firmer.
The door opened silently and Eloise stood still a moment before coming in.
Now that they were face to face with the corpse between them, it was far harder than Charlotte had expected.
“I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly. “Eloise, I’m so sorry.”
Eloise said nothing, but her eyes stared straight back at Charlotte—direct, almost curious.
“You loved him very much,” Charlotte went on.
There was a flicker across Eloise’s face, but still she said nothing.
“Did you hate him as well?” Charlotte found the words coming more easily. Pity was stronger than embarrassment or fear. She wanted to reach out and touch Eloise, put her arms around her, hold her close enough to give her warmth, feed her own life into her frozen body.
Eloise breathed in hard and gave a little sigh. “How did you know?”
Charlotte had no answer. It had come from impressions gathered, a look, a word, things remembered from the dark understandings of the mind, hidden from thought because they are forbidden, too ugly to own.
“That was what Mina knew, wasn’t it?” Charlotte said. “That was why he killed her—it had nothing to do with past affaires, or marrying Amaryllis.”
“He would have married Amaryllis,” Eloise said softly. “I wouldn’t have minded that, even his not—loving me anymore.”
“But she wouldn’t have married him,” Charlotte replied. “Not if Mina had told everyone that you and Tormod were lovers, as well as brother and sister.” Now that the words were out, they were not so frightening—they could be said, the truth of them faced.
“Perhaps not.” Eloise was looking down at the dead face. She did not seem to care, and Charlotte knew suddenly that she had not reached the core of it yet. There was more truth to come, and worse. The self-hatred in Eloise, the despair, was more than a knowledge of incest, and then rejection, deeper than anything she had yet understood.
“How old were you when it began?” Charlotte asked.
Eloise reached out and touched the winding-sheet.
“Thirteen.”
Charlotte felt the tears well up inside her, and she experienced an overwhelming hatred of Tormod so profound she could look on his mangled body and his dead face without regret, so coldly as if he were fish on the market slab.
“You didn’t kill Mina, did you?”
Eloise shook her head. “No, but it doesn’t matter if the police think I did, because I’m guilty anyway.”
Charlotte opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“I let Tormod kill my baby.” Eloise’s voice was no more than a whisper. “I was with child, about four months. I didn’t realize for a long time—I didn’t know enough. Then when I did realize, I told Tormod. That was when I first met you. We didn’t go to the country because of Mina’s death. I went to get an abortion. I didn’t know till we got there. Tormod said I had to, because I am not married, and what we were doing was wrong. He said the child was not formed, that it would only be like—like a little blood.”
She was so ashen Charlotte was afraid she would not be able to stand, but she dared not move to help her. These words came from an agony so deep it must burst.
“He lied to me. It was my child!”
Charlotte felt the tears run down her face and, without thinking, her hands went to the surface that contained her womb and the child in it.
“It was my baby,” Eloise said. “They never let me touch it. They just got rid of it.”
Silence filled the room, but it seemed nothing could be vast enough to contain the pain.
“That is why I killed him,” Eloise said at last. “As soon as I was well enough, he took me out for a drive in the carriage. I pushed him off, and the other carriage and horses drove over him. It didn’t kill him. It only crippled him. We brought him back here to lie in that bed upstairs, tormented with pain, knowing he would never walk again. I used to go in and look at him. He was paralyzed, did you know? He couldn’t move, couldn’t even speak. He would
