Dangerous to Know

“Oui. Like light and dark, the pair of them. Her a sunny day, all fair and bright, him inky midnight. It is all very difficult, you see. Edith fell ill and her sickness became unmanageable for us.”

“She was a raving lunatic,” Toinette said.

“Toinette, there’s no need for that. Too much candor, chérie. You must restrain yourself.”

“Laurent wanted us to bring her home,” Toinette said, ignoring her mother. “But what does he know? He’s never cared for anything but his own whims.”

Toinette’s words seemed to me an excellent description of herself. The initial sympathy I’d felt for her had vanished.

“It must have been a terrible time for all of you,” Colin said.

“Far from it.” Toinette’s beauty would have shamed the brightest sun. “It was much easier to live without her than with her.”

Her mother gave her a sharp tap on the wrist. “Enough.”

“Are you staying for dinner?” Toinette asked, disregarding her mother entirely and looking at Colin.

“We wouldn’t dream of imposing,” he said, a rather too dashing grin escaping from his lips.

“It would be so helpful if you would,” Madame Prier said. “But whatever you do, you must come back to hear the concert I’ve arranged for tomorrow evening.”

A feeling not wholly unfamiliar—but utterly alarming—was creeping upon me. My thoughts sounded like those better suited to my mother. I raged against the idea of being a person who registered horror at the behavior of others when they veered out of society’s norms, yet here I stood in disbelief that Madame Prier would host a concert so soon after her daughter’s death. And Toinette now struck me as less a modern woman attempting to assert independence than a shameless flirt whose scandalous behavior could lead only to ruin and devastation.

A perhaps too-discreet voice of reason suggested to me my feelings might have differed if her attentions had met with direct and obvious resistance from my husband. Colin’s gaze locked on mine, but I did not see in his eyes what I wanted and felt myself slipping into a sea of unpleasant emotions. Madame Prier reached towards me, concern on her face, her words revealing she’d incorrectly identified the source of my angst.

“Please don’t judge us too harshly,” she said. “When Edith was taken away, I mourned for longer than you can imagine. It was worse than death, knowing she was alive but inaccessible to reason. Toinette is correct even if her manner is…abrasive. Edith’s passing is a relief—she’s out of whatever strange hell trapped her all these years.”

“It’s outrageous that you would say such a thing.” I hadn’t heard Laurent return, but felt the weight of his hands on the back of my chair behind which he now stood, the fire of anger painting his olive complexion. “If you had let her come home, she’d still be alive.”

“This is the sort of conversation that can lead to nothing but pain,” Colin said, stepping around to hold out his hand to the other man. “Colin Hargreaves. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

Laurent scowled but let Colin shake his hand. His mother introduced the rest of us, who were granted nothing beyond a stiff nod.

“Are you really going forth with this entertainment tomorrow, Maman?” he asked. “Your concert?”

“Mais oui,” Madame Prier said. “You know I have already grieved.”

“Then stop drowning yourself in mourning clothes,” he said. “The hypocrisy is outrageous. Or do you care more about the opinion of your acquaintances than in holding to your principles? You want to look as if you grieve.”

“I shall not discuss this with you, Laurent,” she said.

“And I shall not remain to hear any further nonsense.” He turned to me, a look of ferocious intensity shooting from his eyes. “Lady Emily, it is you who found my sister, is it not?”

“I—I—yes,” I said, cringing at the question and lowering my eyes to avoid his mother’s gaze.

“I’ve returned to ask for a word with you in private.” His voice held no note of query, only demand. He held out his arm, as if to guide me from the room. I did not rise from my chair. “Can you not move on your own? Must you seek permission? To whom do I apply to receive such a thing?”

Unaccustomed to being addressed in such a manner and paralyzed at the thought of him questioning me about what I’d seen, I said nothing.

“It’s perfectly fine, Emily,” Colin said, coming close and helping me to my feet, his voice husky and quiet. “He’s entitled to know, and it’s best done away from his mother.”

In principle, I agreed. Principles, however, are one thing in theory and another in practice, particularly when sticking to them means being sent off with an angry stranger to speak about a topic I’d have preferred to forget altogether. “May my husband accompany us?”

“No,” he said and opened the door. “Seulement vous. This is not a garden party. You’ve no need for a chaperone.”

Colin put a gentle hand on my arm. “Don’t make him speak of these things in front of other people. It’s too awful.” I searched his eyes for sympathy to my plight. He touched my cheek.

“It’s just that—”

“Go, Emily,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Hardly aware of anything beyond the thumping of my heart, I followed Laurent. Even before he’d closed the door behind us, Toinette’s laughter filled the room.

Laurent balled his hand into a hard fist. “He should have taken her instead.”

We walked along a small corridor and up three flights of a square turning staircase to a dim, wood-paneled room, whose wide windows afforded a glimpse of the top of the cathedral. In one corner stood a pianoforte, its case covered with haphazard stacks of paper similar to the ones scattered over a long table pushed against the wall. A glossy puddle of black had ruined the pile nearest an overturned inkwell, and the only chair in the room lay tipped on the floor.

“Did she suffer?”

“I—I—” How could I answer such a question? He grabbed my arms and shook me.

“Tell me what you saw. Did she suffer?”

“I didn’t witness the crime,” I said. My heart pounded and my stomach lurched, my breath catching in my throat.

“But you saw her. You saw what he did. I must know.” His eyes, wild and fierce, scared me.

“Yes, she did suffer.” Tears spilled from my eyes as I remembered her face and the unnatural angle of her head. “Unimaginable horrors.”

“I must know everything.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“What did she look like?” he asked.

“Brutalized.”

“She was strangled first?”

“I don’t know!” I said, summoning the strength to push him away from me. “You will not force me to live it again.”

“I have to know.”

“Why?” I asked. “Do you wish to never sleep again? To be haunted by a ghastly and inhuman image?”

“No one possessed more humanity than she. Even in death she couldn’t have lost that.”

“You misunderstand,” I said, my voice now firm. “I speak of the crime.”

“Did you see her eyes?” he asked, clutching my arm in his strong hand.

“Her eyes?”

“Yes.”

“I—” I closed my own and remembered hers. “They were vacant. Dark and empty.”

He dropped my arm and turned away. “Then he did take her soul.”