A few more moments passed. The clock downstairs chimed but I didn’t count the hour. I picked up a pillow, no doubt it had lain beneath Father Joseph’s head the night before. Then I tapped her to make sure she hadn’t fallen asleep. Her eyes fluttered open. I smiled, dearly wanting her to see love and kindness in my face. She managed a wan, thankful smile in return. Then down came the pillow.
I took one risk, in the middle, taking the pillow away for the barest second. Sister Mary Clare rewarded me with the second honest expression of her life: fear and shock and anguish. I could have told her who I was, in that moment. But I liked adding confusion to the terrible emotions overcoming her. So I pressed the pillow back down. I held the woman down. Until she stopped struggling. Until she stopped causing harm. Until her body came to rest, and her breath ceased to flow. When I pulled the pillow away her face held no false cheer, no false kindness. Her lips spoke no empty promises. All she had were eyes newly made of glass, open but not seeing. Her mouth open, frozen in its useless attempt to find oxygen.
For years I’d been swept in directions I never meant to go. I’d made mistakes, acting by accident or imperative. Finally, in this moment, I was the author of my story. The universe must not have held it against me, because I was rewarded almost at once with my days in the Timeless Manor.
When Sister Mary Clare lay dead before me, how the air metamorphosed. Particles that had been charged became inert. The rage inside me quieted. A violent storm had ended.
The urge to murder. It never left me until the job was done.
The Disappearance
Day Eight
Saturday, 11 December 1926
FINBARR WAS DOWNSTAIRS stoking the kitchen fire when Chilton and Agatha returned to the Timeless Manor. On the table were bottles of wine – he had helped himself to the collection in the cellar – along with a tray that held three loaves of fresh bread, various kinds of sausage, a wheel of Swaledale cheese and tins of peaches.
‘You said you were tired of tongue,’ he told Agatha. ‘So I went on a little scouting mission.’
‘Aren’t you a darling,’ she said.
Chilton frowned the slightest bit, looking from one to the other. Agatha sat, weary, the force of these days away, this time away, still not seeing the future take any shape she could recognize. Chilton pulled out a chair and sat beside her. In a calm voice he told Finbarr what they’d pieced together. The Marstons’ true identity and my hand in their murder.
Finbarr listened, his face unmoving and inscrutable. When Chilton had finished he said, ‘Good.’
‘Good?’ said Chilton. ‘Come now, man. You can’t mean that.’
‘But I do mean it.’
Agatha poured wine into a teacup. This seemed the right night to make an exception to her abstinence. It occurred to her she ought to be glad of the thought, me headed to jail, which would not only get me out of the way but also punish me for the pain I’d caused her. But even before our escape, accidentally mutual, such a thing wouldn’t have made her glad. She wasn’t that sort of person and never would be. She might be capable of imagining other people’s plots of revenge and the bitterness that drove them. She could even sympathize with mine. But she never could carry them out herself. She was better than me in that way. Or else just luckier.
‘What happens next, then?’ Finbarr asked.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to tell the Yorkshire police what I know,’ Chilton said. ‘About who the Marstons are. And what Nan and her friend are guilty of. I’m afraid the inquest will take it from there.’
‘Not today,’ Finbarr said. Agatha heard the rasp of mustard gas strangling his voice, worse than usual.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Not today.’
‘But Agatha.’ Chilton turned to her as if Finbarr couldn’t hear. ‘That will give him the time he needs to escape with her.’
‘Would that be so bad?’ Agatha said. ‘Sometimes an escape is precisely what’s needed.’
Chilton looked dubious. How many of his duties would he let float away before all this was over? What if Agatha wanted Nan to escape to form a road back to her husband? Though surely my arrest would net the same result. Archie would not have stood by me through a murder trial. He might not have stood by me if he heard me speak with the working-class accent I’d so carefully expunged.
‘One more day,’ Agatha said, softy, delightfully aware of the romantic power she had over Chilton. ‘Perhaps two.’
One more day undiscovered. Perhaps two. One more day exempt from time and repercussion. One more day dispensing with propriety and responsibilities. One more day as if her mother had never died, and her husband had never left her – indeed, as if both of them had never existed at all, to cause her joy or pain. Why not two more days? Why not a thousand?
‘One more day,’ she said again. ‘Just one. We’ll decide tomorrow. We’ll make a plan?’ The question mark was a brilliant stroke. Implying he was in a position to argue.
‘Come with me,’ Finbarr said, as if they’d all reached an agreement. He picked up the tray and left the kitchen, moving his head ever so slightly, indicating that Chilton should collect the wine.
Upstairs the great room was nearly empty of furniture except for a settee covered by a dust sheet and a cluster of large pillows thrown to the floor (as if we had not been the first squatters the Timeless Manor had seen and someone else had sojourned here, and made free with what could be found). On the floor beside the settee sat a Victrola – of the gramophone variety, old fashioned even for the time, with a great mahogany horn.
‘I found it in the butler’s pantry,’ Finbarr said. He wound it up and placed the needle on its record, and scratchy big band music filled the cavernous room.
To join the party, I had but to follow the music. Finbarr lounged on the floor against one of the big pillows, a goblet filled with wine in one hand. Chilton and Agatha were dancing, her face aglow from the firelight and the day in the baths, looking as lovely in her trousers and jumper as she ever had wearing any gown in any ballroom.
Three faces turned towards me, fondly, withholding the devastating information. Tomorrow. It could all be saved until tomorrow. For now we would let our disappearance extend a little longer. It would continue into the night and small hours of the morning. One thing we’d learned since discovering this place: there was nothing in the world that couldn’t wait.
‘Oh, Nan,’ Agatha said, as Chilton dipped her, her head thrown back, her tone joyful, as if I were her best friend in all the world. ‘Come and have some wine and cheese, come and have a dance. For who knows what tomorrow will bring?’
Remarkably, my ears did not hear this as ominous. It sounded like an invitation. If I had been a different sort of person, raised in a different time and country, I might have told her I loved her. And she might have said it back. Instead, the two of us smiled at each other. Not rivals but landsmen. A shared sorrow can create unexpected warmth, even as it illuminates all the ways our world is ruined.
The Disappearance
Days Nine and Ten
Sunday, 12 December and Monday, 13 December 1926