Part 16 (1/2)
Ryan turned to one of the constables. ”You know what to do, Gibson.”
”On my way, Inspector.” The constable hurried from the pavilion.
Becker asked Father, ”What about the names the women called to you? We know about Ann. But who are Jane, Elizabeth, and Catharine?”
”I don't want to talk about it.”
”But...”
”I wrote about them in my work. The killer read about them and used them to hurt me. That's all you need to know.”
”He kissed his dead sister is what he did,” Doris said.
”Be quiet!” Father shouted.
”Lay on his neighbor's dead girl's grave, he did. Clawed at the ground for nights on end. The gentleman told us what you was. Told us not to feel sorry if we made you upset and worse by calling those names at you. Said you deserved it.”
”Shut up!” Father raised his hands and made a pus.h.i.+ng motion, as if shoving away apparitions. I have never seen him so agitated. ”d.a.m.n you, not another word!”
Abruptly the door opened, and the constable who'd gone for tea came back with four waiters carrying trays.
”The biscuits! I don't see the biscuits!” Doris complained.
I turned toward Father, but he wasn't there. He had left the pavilion, closing the door behind him.
”Father.” I hurried out to him.
He stared down at the gravel path. His hat was in his hands. The cold wind ruffled his short brown hair. Dark clouds covered the sky.
”There is no such thing as forgetting,” he murmured.
The door opened, Ryan and Becker stepping out.
”De Quincey,” Ryan said.
Father didn't reply to them, either.
The two men stood in front of him.
”I'm sorry,” Ryan said. ”I need you to explain why the names disturbed you.”
”It isn't your business.”
”The killer made it my business,” Ryan persisted. ”Whatever twisted connection he feels with you, I need to understand it.”
”Leave him alone,” I said. In the woods, when I had recognized the names the women called out to Father, their horrid significance had become apparent to me-and why Father was so devastated. ”You can see how this affects him.”
”Miss De Quincey, surely you can understand,” Ryan insisted. ”I can't depend on your father for help if the killer is able to manipulate him. It jeopardizes the investigation.”
”Once,” Father said.
His voice was so faint that it took me a moment to realize what Father said.
”Excuse me?” Ryan asked.
”This time only,” Father said more audibly.
He looked up at Ryan and Becker. His gaze was anguished and determined.
”The killer manipulated me this time only. I won't permit it to happen again. He's twice the monster I imagined him to be. But now I'm prepared. Never again.”
”And the names?”
”To keep secrets,” Father said, ”to push them down, to try to hide them is to be controlled by them. I have written about them, but I have never been able to speak about them. Why is that, do you suppose? I find an empty page friendlier than speaking to another person. I allow strangers to read my deepest troubles, but I cannot allow myself to disclose my troubles face-to-face.”
Father removed his laudanum flask and drank from it.
”You'll kill yourself with that,” Becker said, repeating what he'd warned Father earlier.
”There is more than one reality,” Father said.
”I don't understand.”
”And some realities are more intense than others. You wish to know about Jane, Elizabeth, and Catharine?”
”Not wish to. I need to,” Ryan insisted.
”Jane was my younger sister. She died when I was four and a half.” Father took a deep breath. ”She was as bright as the sun, too young to be anything except innocent. How I loved to play with her. She contracted a mysterious fever and was hidden away in a sickroom. I never saw her alive again. My grief became more extreme when word traveled through our house that Jane's vomiting had so annoyed a servant that the servant had slapped Jane to make her stop. Slapped a dying child. It is no exaggeration that I was overwhelmed by a revelation that the world of my nursery was not as it seemed, that evil existed, that the universe is filled with horror. Please tell them your middle name, Emily.”
”It is Jane,” I said proudly. ”In honor of Father's dead sister.”
”There is no such thing as forgetting,” Father emphasized. ”By paying those pathetic women to call out Jane's name, the killer wants me to remember the servant who slapped my dying sister. He wants me to know that he is slapping me.”
Father's words came faster, his torment pus.h.i.+ng him.
”And now for my sister Elizabeth. She was nine. I was six. She had a large head, which physicians believed was caused by hydrocephalus.”
Ryan and Becker looked confused.
”Water on the brain,” Father rushed on. ”Perhaps her large head explained her amazing intelligence and sensitivity. Although I had two remaining sisters with whom I played, Elizabeth was my second self. Where she was, there was Paradise. We enjoyed endless games together. She read to me wonderful stories from The Arabian Nights. Sometimes the stories were so beautiful they made Elizabeth weep. In those cases, she read the stories to me a second time. I slept in the same room with her. I was secluded in a silent garden from which all knowledge of oppression and outrage was banished.”
Father stared up at the darkening sky.
”One Sunday afternoon, Elizabeth visited a friend at the nearby house of a servant. She drank some tea. As evening came, the servant escorted her home through a meadow. The next morning, Elizabeth had a fever. The illness grew rapidly worse. In a week, she succ.u.mbed. Was the water in the tea she drank contaminated? Was there something about the meadow through which she walked that made her sick? I can never know. The physicians thought that perhaps her large head had been the cause.”
Father trembled.