Page 57

“Stay there. We’ll have a bigger one if you get lost or stuck. I’m coming. Can you see my light?” My voice was loud and disorienting as the bats whirred unseen past my head. I retraced my steps back into the narrow passageway.

I stumbled into Ruan as I exited the narrow pass. He steadied me, his hand on my elbow. “Something’s happened at the priory. We have to go. Now.”

I slithered around him and led us both out of the cave. The discordant sound of the priory church’s bells pierced the silence of the night as we stepped out of the rock opening. I raced to the promontory where my shoes were waiting—not at all noticing that my headache had fled the moment I left the cave. I was far too fixated upon the bells, and what I would find at the priory.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINEMake That Five Dead, Not Four

IT was full dark by the time we reached the strangers’ cemetery and began to ascend the rutted road to the priory. Several uniformed gendarmerie gathered at the gates, including a distinguished mustachioed fellow wearing a long overcoat and speaking with Father Crawford. Whoever he was, he looked to be in charge. Finally, the authorities were paying a bit of attention to things here.

On the far side of the yard, the children were being rounded up by Sister Agathe, the young nun, who ushered them back inside the children’s home. Periodically she would cast a worried glance over her shoulder to the crumpled human shape on the ground by the front door to the hospital. My stomach sank at the sight. I’d not noticed it at first.

Make that five dead. Not four. The fellow’s white physician’s coat flapped in the wind. I slowly inched closer. His body was contorted at an odd angle, neck clearly snapped where he lay on the ancient stone pavers near the entrance to the hospital. Mud was smeared across one side of his white coat as if he’d been toiling in a garden. The wind howled across the priory courtyard, echoing off the tall walls.

I stared at the face of the dead man, scarcely able to believe my eyes. My increasing concerns that Cecil Peterson was our killer were wholly unfounded. For there, upon the stones, lay the young American doctor and he was most certainly dead. I’d been foolishly convinced his arguments with Violet Devereaux and the dead reporter indicated guilt, but perhaps it meant something else entirely. I struggled to order my thoughts.

“What are you doing here? Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” I’d not heard Dr. von Keller approach. He stood beside me, hands thrust into the pockets of his own coat as he looked down at the body of Cecil Peterson without a drop of emotion. No grief. No anger. Nothing but defeat.

I’d been wrong. Utterly, horribly wrong about Peterson. Dark pools of blood stained the stones around Dr. Peterson’s head. Blood that soaked through to my own soul. My voice came out small. Weak. Echoing the defeat in von Keller’s expression. “I heard the bells…”

“And now you’ve seen, as has everyone else here.” He turned his back on me, dropping to the ground, pulling a thin linen sheet over the body. The mustachioed member of the gendarmerie finished his conversation with Father Crawford and was walking in our direction. I could not help but notice how weary and drawn Father Crawford appeared. But who wouldn’t be after beholding such a garish sight?

Thin as the sheet was, the contours of Dr. Peterson’s body remained visible—his dark shoes scuffed and poking out from beneath. “It is time for you to go, Miss Vaughn. Do you not see?” Dr. von Keller hissed.

“See what precisely? That there is a dead man and all the secrets you’ve been keeping have likely caused it?” I straightened my spine, meeting the doctor toe-to-toe.

“Keep your voice down!”

“And why should I? I think it’s high time somebody other than me shows an ounce of concern for what is happening here.” The mustachioed inspector, at least I assumed he was the inspector, was now talking with a flustered nurse who was pointing at Dr. Peterson’s body as she spoke.

“Let me help you, Miss Vaughn,” he hissed. “There is nothing for you here. Nothing but death and grief. You cannot help these people tonight. If anything, your presence puts them more at danger.”

Ruan lay a hand on my shoulder, pulling me away from von Keller as his words settled eerily in my chest. There is nothing for you here.

Perhaps he was right.

I glanced from Peterson’s broken body to the rooftop above. He must have fallen or perhaps been pushed. If only I could examine him.

Ruan leaned close, his breath warm on my ear. “He wants to speak to you.”

I blinked, uncertainly. Who?

Ruan inclined his chin to the darkened loggia alongside the orphanage. There was no one there. Only shadows.

Ruan’s forefinger drew a gentle F on the back of my hand. Félix. He meant Félix. I’d been desperate to talk to him after he’d found the bodies in the lake but that was forgotten as the chaos of the day unfolded.

I supposed now was as good a time as any. I quietly slipped into the shadows toward the loggia as Dr. von Keller fell into a hushed conversation with Father Crawford. The two men gesturing from the body to the hospital. The white coat and black cassock in the shadows of the night. By now, most of the hospital staff had withdrawn into the hospital. Only a handful of people remained out here besides the gendarmerie and the body of poor Dr. Peterson.

I cast a final look at them, before stepping into the covered walkway. With Dr. Peterson dead, I was quickly running out of suspects. Could one of the people I’d discounted be our killer? Violet. Félix. Von Keller … Perhaps it was Dr. von Keller after all. My fingers curved around the little poppet Sister Agathe had dropped this morning as frustration surged through me.

Félix sat huddled upon a bench alongside the hospital, his head bowed low. His middling brown hair was askew as if he’d been driving his hands through it over and over. The hospital-issued pajamas he wore were torn and dirtied and the silver magpie missing altogether. As he looked up, I recognized that same distant look I’d seen hundreds of times during the war. The one Ruan had when he was locked into his nightmare. Félix reached out for me. His frigid hands trembling. The dirt was embedded beneath his nails as if he’d spent the day digging in the garden. The filthy smears upon Dr. Peterson’s coat came back unbidden. Good God.

“Are you…”

He reached up, taking my face in both hands as he had the first time he saw me. His hands trembled as he took me in, studying my face with an intensity I’d not yet beheld. “It is not safe for Eva. You must go. Eva must stay away.”

I frowned. He must be having another of his episodes and confusing me for my mother. I covered his hands with my own, pulling them from my face. “I’m Eva’s daughter. Eva is safe.” I hoped.

I held his icy hands between my own, rubbing them to try to warm him.