No, I said, and, finding a chair, sat, at last in shock.
We will dress you in that suit, she said, pointing at the bed. And we should leave at once. Downstairs, ask Madame Verdi about where we may go to purchase a mourning toilette in Sant’Agata. I’ll enter and say there was a telegram, that you are needed back in Paris urgently, and we will leave, but we will go directly to London instead. And you should not return until the murder is solved and the killer is found.
Mademoiselle, she said, when I did not stand. We should be on our way.
§
Giuseppina was both sad to see me go and also, I could see, pleased to see me dressed in black. The shock of my conversation with Doro neatly masked me as someone finally beset with grief. When I asked as to where to purchase a mourning toilette in town, she began to weep as well—I had forgotten that, of course, they knew him. A bell rang, and shortly after, Doro appeared to announce there had been a telegram, and we were to leave for Paris at once. Verdi fussed, made me the present of an unwieldy ham for the journey, and both of them kissed me and conveyed condolences of such heartfelt sadness that they made me ashamed of my bringing these theatrics with me as I bid good-bye to them and the sweet golden rooms of their home.
We went in the Verdis’ carriage to the train station, and on Doro’s advice, I bought tickets for travel through Switzerland rather than France so as to avoid any French authorities. Once we were on the train, Doro took out her cards and dealt me into a game of piquet I was grateful for, playing in quiet nearly half the way to Zurich.
Do you truly imagine you will not need a lady’s maid in London? Or do you have one there already? she asked.
I shook my head. I’ve not even a household yet, I said.
And will you bring nothing from Paris?
I want nothing of it, I said. I want to begin with new things. All new things.
I don’t, she said. It was very kind of you to offer me help finding a new position, but I am an old woman or will be soon, and it would be hard to learn the ways of a new mademoiselle, she said.
England will be strange to you, I said.
Not as strange as a new mademoiselle, she said. Bring me with you. I can be new, too.
I studied her then, waiting for her to meet my eyes. I was, in fact, contending with a new maid—she was a stranger to me now. Who had she served before me? From where came all of this knowledge of avoiding the police? When she looked up at last, she smiled, and I returned the smile. I will have Lucy do an inventory of the house in preparation for the sale, she said. I will instruct her to put black paper over the windows, to continue ordering food as normal, and to refuse all visitors, saying you are grieving. And we will get you as thick a veil as they make. You must go in secret.
She set down her cards.
Thank you, I said to her. She withdrew the bottle of gin she kept and poured us each a glass. I had been waiting for it, afraid to ask for it, and drank deeply. She refilled my glass, clucking. I hope they have gin in London, I said, and she laughed at me, and then we played on.
Eight
I WENT TO LONDON dressed in black, like a crow, a bird of death. Even my jewels had to be black except for those emeralds, which I could wear because they were his, at least according to Doro. If anyone should ask, it will look like devotion, she said. And if anyone asks as to the ring, she added, pointing at Aristafeo’s ring, tell them it was a gift from him as well.
She reasoned that this would be enough to placate Aristafeo while I was in mourning for another man. I did not believe it would, but I resolved to try.
On arrival, I checked into a lavish suite at Brown’s Hotel to console myself. I gave them a name I invented on the spot, Peloux Martineau, a somewhat lugubrious name that I forgot instantly so that each time the staff used it to speak to me and deliver the newspaper I’d ordered, they would have to repeat themselves until I remembered, embarrassing them and myself both. I was out of practice.
The newspaper was my vigil, my widow’s walk. I bought the Times each day as Aristafeo was to take out an advertisement in the paper when he arrived, saying he had lost a falcon and giving instructions for the return of the bird “if it was found.” He would give an address and I would write to him there. There was no way for me to get a message to him any longer—and I was in London as we’d agreed, just earlier than we’d agreed.
It was strange to be able to speak English to everyone. I found the words difficult to remember and my accent uncertain, much the way my French had been ten years before.
The first task at hand was consuming. Doro was busy instructing me on how to shop for my mourning toilettes—I kept nearly calling them costumes—and so we began at once.
I had always liked black, but only when I chose it. Not like this. I resented the way the foyer to this new life would be decked in black. All to hide his blood. Even in death, it seemed, I would dress for him. Even in death I would make false names because of him, would deny my lover because of him. And, of course, the color would be black. The black madness I knew so well from him now poured over my whole life in a flood after his death. I had killed him hoping to free myself of it and of him, to save the little world I hoped to make without him, only to discover there was no corner of it where he did not reach. The blow I had struck rang still, the rays of it spreading, and now I would see if what was left without him could hold. But as I donned the new black dresses I would spend the year in, I knew there was every chance that destroying him was as likely to destroy me.
After several days of such shopping, I found myself in front of a window to a store that seemed to sell only Chinese things. I had been to a milliner nearby, examining black hats and toques, black-jet hair combs, and any number of veils. I was rebelling, drawn to any color, first the beautiful gold thread and then the jewel colors in the satins, and so I stepped inside.
I found myself before a case of coins, Chinese coins, curious to me because of their square centers.
You want to see how they work? the proprietress asked, and drew the case out of the vitrine. She put them in her hand and shook them so they jingled lightly. She was Chinese also, with a whiskey voice, her skin white like a mushroom, the wrinkles on her face ridged like the veins of leaves. She had spent her life before this in the sun and was, I could see, much older than I had thought at first. Her silver hair she wore tight in a bun where it sat like a tin cap.
If it’s a coin, I know how it works, I said.
She laughed. I will show you, she said.
She lit a piece of incense, handed me the coins, and directed me on how to shake and throw them like dice, six times. She counted out whatever this measures, and in ink drew a character much like I could see on the coins. She looked at it long and hard, and this is what she said to me: When the earth opens up under your feet, be like a seed. Fall down; wait for the rain.
Wait for the rain, I repeated.
Yes. Rain is coming, she said. Everything you lose you get back. She folded the paper into my hand and pressed it shut.
It would be the first time, I said, as I pocketed it. I thanked her, offered to pay her, which she accepted.
Back out on the streets of London, each person passing me appeared like the shape of a Fate, and the feeling didn’t leave me until I shut the door to my hotel suite, alone with Doro and the British cook she’d hired for me, there with supper ready.
I asked the new cook if she believed the fortunes of fortune-tellers when she set my plate down.
I’ll show you your future, milady, she said, and then she smiled as she pointed at the plate.
§
When Aristafeo came at last, I nearly shouted when I read the ad; I had almost given up.