"Did I say you can talk?" the Pillar races up to her and grabs her by the neck. Again, for a short man, his agility is superhuman. "This isn't the Parliament of the United Kingdom anymore. It's the Pillar's one man Parliament. Welcome to my surreal democracy." He feeds her marshmallows and forces her to swallow them so she’ll stay immune to his smoke for a while. Then he pulls the hose and wraps it around her neck, almost choking her, as he fixes the hookah somehow on the desk. The hose is wickedly long. He pulls it far enough and sits on a chair facing her. Then he notices a rocking chair nearby and prefers to sit on it. All this time, the Duchess is choking on the hose snaking around her neck.
"We have three minutes before the guards unlock the code on your door,” the Pillar tells her. "So here is the deal. I will ask you questions. You will answer them. And I'll go away." The Duchess nods, hanging onto the hose in case he pulls harder. "If you lie to me, I will choke you to death, Margaret. It's an easy question. Where can I find the Cheshire?"
"I…" the Duchess's eyes beg for slack around her neck. The Pillar loosens his hose a little. "I truly don't know."
"I never trust anyone who says 'truly,' 'believe me,' or 'deeply.'" The Pillar doesn't pull, but he takes a drag from his hookah. It still has some pressure on the Duchess’s neck.
"Believe me, I don't," she reaches out her arm. "Is that Alice?" she points at me.
"No," the Pillar says. "That's an insane underage girl with acne, angst, and parental issues. I am eloping with her. Now, answer the question. When was the last time you saw the Cheshire?"
"You know this is an absurd question," she says, her eyes glancing at me. The Pillar pulls on the hose, and she diverts her gaze to him. There is something they both don't want me to know about the Cheshire. I wonder what it is. "The Cheshire is a master of disguise."
"He is not a master of anything," I sense envy in the Pillar's voice.
"He wasn't walking around in a grinning cat's mask, for God's sake," the Duchess grunts against the hose. "I’ve never even seen his face since he’s transformed from a cat to a human."
"But you know him when you see him," Pillar says. "Can you tell me why he is killing those girls? What's gotten into him?"
"I'd like to know that myself. Believe me, I would. All I know is that he reappeared two years ago and approached me. It was the first time I saw him since Carroll trapped the monsters in Wonderland. So I thought he'd make a good assassin. I send him the missions by email, pay with wire transfers. That’s all."
"See?" the Pillar turns to me. "The government people fund assassins from Wonderland. Even Lewis Carroll couldn't have thought of that." He pulls the hose harder, looking back at the Duchess.
I am speechless. The world outside is a mess. I remind myself that the Pillar told me that from now on, I need to suspend disbelief. It’s funny I have to do this in a sane world. Did the Duchess just say that Lewis Carroll locked the Wonderland Monsters away?
The Pillar takes a long drag. The Duchess’s face begins to turn blue.
"Wait,” she raises her hand. “I remember one last thing. I thought it was trivial, but it rings a bell now,” the Duchess says.
"I am listening."
"Three months ago, the Cheshire emailed me, asking for some of Lewis Carroll’s vintage photos," she says. I remind myself Lewis was a photographer. "Photos of girls, specifically."
"More than fifty percent of Lewis's photos were girls," the Pillar says. I didn’t know that. "Young girls, to be precise." Now, that sounds a bit weird to me.
"I know, but the Cheshire had a list of names. Seven girls," the Duchess says. "You know that Lewis’s work has never been collected properly in one volume, so the Cheshire asked me to use my connections and get him the photos."
"And you didn't think that might have anything to do with the killing spree he is on?" I feel the need to interfere.
"Sane folks, baby doll," the Pillar barely tilts his head toward me. "They love to look away from reason. It's a common symptom." He turns back to the Duchess. "What happened after you got him the photos?"
"He disappeared. A week later, the killings started," the Duchess said. "The reason why I dismissed this incident is that the names of the dead girls didn't match the girl in the photos."
"Of course they don’t match," I say. "The girls Lewis photographed lived a hundred and fifty years ago. They are dead."
"Still, there has to be a connection," the Pillar contemplates. "How many girls has he kidnapped so far?"
"Six killed. Constance is the seventh," I say. Poor Constance. I'm sitting here with these mad Wonderlanders, unable to help her.
“It means if we don’t save Constance, we might never find him again. I assume she is the last on the list,” the Pillar says, then asks the Duchess for the list of names. She writes them down, still tilting her neck awkwardly, then asks him to let her live. “This isn’t enough, Duchess. It’s all too vague,” the Pillar says. “Give me something better than this. A lead I can follow once I leave this office.”
“I have a lead,” she says, her eyes show her reluctance to speak. “I know someone who knows about the Cheshire’s origins. But I doubt she will want to talk to you.”
The Pillar grimaces. I assume he never had a problem forcing people to talk. “Who’d that person be? And it’s a 'she?’"
“It’s the White Queen.”
Chapter 41