Page 41

Electric wires had been rudimentarily affixed to the walls, and a great utilitarian light hung above Narcisse’s body. I didn’t dare cut on the switch for fear of drawing attention. We must be quick. With two dead men it was only a matter of time before someone else appeared.

I darted to the door leading into the hospital and locked it before running my hand over my face. Everything here at Saint Oda’s was all wrong. A veneer of sterile professionalism over a rot running deeper than anyone could fathom. But like any good doctor … we needed to perform a thorough examination to see what the root cause of the sickness was.

Not von Keller.

It was too simple.

Certainly not Narcisse either, as he was already dead.

Étienne, Félix, and Djhan had grown up together—been close as brothers. Mrs. Wauters told me that much. Two of the men remained in the hospital, the third was missing. As was my mother and the girl from the orphanage.

Djhan Wauters left here with my mother. Could he be with my mother and the child somewhere nearby?

I swore beneath my breath as the battle lines grew visible in my mind.

Cecil Peterson, the American doctor. Violet Devereaux, the reporter who’d claimed to be my mother in order to gain my attention in Oxford. The damned woman’s lies had brought me here. Was it truly to help, as she pretended, or was there another more sinister reason? Could she and Peterson be the true villains here?

I had no proof. Nothing but my sheer disdain for the woman, but that wasn’t enough to prove murder. I moved toward the body of the poor man from the café and pulled the sheet back. Alfred. “Whose side were you on, hmm?”

He looked so impossibly young in death. I brushed the hair back from his brow, studying a peculiar bruise on his neck. I traced it with my fingers, moving my light to get a better look. Small purple dots were visible on his skin from burst capillaries. I lifted one of his lids, the white on one side was bloodied and red. Strangulation most certainly. It must be what killed him.

But who … and why?

The sharp scent of electricity filled the air, pulling me from my questions. I flicked my light back to the center of the room where Ruan stood over the orderly’s body, the sheet now pulled back as he laid his hands gently on the dead man’s chest, listening for some evidence left behind.

I took a few steps closer to watch him. Narcisse’s kind face was tired and worn as if the mere sixty years he’d spent on this earth took their toll tenfold. My fingers knotted into the fabric of my trousers as I waited—watching Ruan’s ministrations over the corpse. Narcisse lay nude upon the table, just as Alfred had. His mouth slack. Impatiently, I took a step closer, tilting his jaw to see if perhaps he too had been killed in the same way—but the skin at his neck was unmarred. I shone my light over his face, seeking out the telltale purple dots when I saw a flash of white inside his mouth, lodged in the back of his throat.

How very strange. There was something there. “Ruan, do you see any forceps around?” I tilted the light to get a better view. A handkerchief, perhaps? No. No. Not that. I caught my lower lip between my teeth as my mind raced. One thing for certain—whatever it was had not been placed there by accident.

Ruan placed a pair of metal forceps in my palm and took my flashlight without a word. I gently pinched the corner of the object and withdrew it before laying it on his chest.

Paper … what on earth was paper doing in a man’s throat? It was thin and almost translucent from the dampness. I couldn’t bear to touch it. Using the forceps and a thin metal probe, I gently unfolded it—careful not to tear the delicate substance. One edge was already jagged from where it’d been ripped from its binding.

Good grief, had I not been looking closely I would have missed it altogether.

“Perhaps that was the point…” Ruan added, catching my train of thought.

“But did he want to hide it, or had someone else tried to?” I struggled to uncrumple the paper without causing any further damage. I could see writing through the damp translucence of the page but could not quite make it out. A marriage record, perhaps?

No—not a marriage. My breath stilled. A baptism.

Manon Marchand. b. 12. Sept. 1914 to

Anna Marchand and Hugo Marchand†

Baptized 12. Oct. 1914.

Manon … the missing child. A red line crossed through it, the ink bleeding from the moisture. How very strange.

Suddenly my mind flitted back to the conversation I’d had with von Keller that very first day. Anna Marchand was the first woman to die, right before my mother tried to escape in December. She was also the child’s mother. My breath came in unsteady gulps. First Anna, then my mother and Djhan disappeared, and now Narcisse and the poor barman. Three dead and three lost—presuming, of course, we counted my mother and Manon among the missing.

My gaze drifted to Ruan’s. “But why would someone want to hide a baptismal record?”

The breeze from the open window caught something enclosed in Narcisse’s fist, a flutter of white in the periphery of the flashlight’s glow. I caught it before it blew away, opening my palm to reveal a small downy white feather. Exactly like the one that had been in Manon’s poppet that pricked my finger.

Ruan gave me a slow shake of his head, murmuring to himself in old Cornish. A language I’d never learned, but it was growing increasingly evident I would need to start. Ruan gently lay his hands on the man’s brow, tracing it with his thumb.

Several seconds passed before he exhaled and shook his head.