Sadie stepped around the dead maid. She knew immediately the best course of action would be to deny the whole event. She had read about such things in detective novels. She picked up the guns and hurried off with them in her arms to the woods behind Marie’s house. She stepped carefully over the roots so as not to trip. As she walked, her heart was beating so loudly, it felt as though she were marching in a procession that was signaling to everyone around that war had begun. Sadie buried the guns in the pet cemetery.
She realized it wasn’t the best plan to try to hide the guns in order to conceal the crime. But she had never murdered anyone before. And in the detective novels she had read, there always seemed to be an effort to throw the murder weapon in the river. She wished she could dispose of the body.
She sat between two giant tree roots that held her in their arms as though she were a baby. Her hands were completely covered in mud. She needed to let her little heart stop beating so quickly. The mushrooms at the base of the trees were shaped like ears, as though the forest were listening and waiting for her to explain.
There was a space the noise of the gun had cleared out in her head. All other outside noises were muted. She could not hear the sound of the stream passing by the tips of her boots. She couldn’t hear the branches rustling against one another above her. She looked up in the sky, and there were birds overhead but she couldn’t hear them. She could only hear what was going on inside herself. She sighed, and the sound of her sigh echoed through the whole forest.
She went back down to Marie’s yard, now empty of people, including Agatha’s body, and waited for her friend. She was waiting to find out if they were in trouble. Feeling faint, she reached into her pocket and pulled out an apple. She often carried a piece of fruit around on the off chance she felt hungry. She took a bite from it. Then seeing that she was all alone and not knowing what to do, she headed home.
Marie will take care of this, she thought. She and her father can fix everything. Marie is going to be the owner of a sugar empire. It will be nothing for her to find an answer to this problem. She had no idea how Marie would pull it off, but Marie thought in different, more worldly ways than she did. It was as though the day were a page in a huge book and they would rip it out if they chose. It wasn’t their fault the maid had hurled her body between them. No, this event need never have happened.
She walked home and found it was already dinnertime. She didn’t say a word to anyone at the table, but nobody noticed. They didn’t notice she was deaf and mute. They didn’t notice her thoughts were about a million miles away from them.
She lifted up her fork to take a bite, but it trembled in her hand. She put it down abruptly and looked around. It was as though the fork were asking how dare she hold it after what she got up to today. It was as if the fork were trying to notify everyone at the table what she had done. The fork was not inclined to feed her any dessert. The raspberry remained untouched in the center of the flan. Red juice began to seep out of it, like a bullet wound in the chest of a white chemise.
She asked to be excused, then went to the bathroom to puke.
* * *
The maid had been carried quickly inside by three other maids. Marie ran after them. Agatha’s undergarments were completely red and soaked in blood. They lay the maid on the carpet and unfastened her chemise. The other maids yelled her name and begged her to answer. “Agatha, Agatha, Agatha,” they cried. Marie kept hoping beyond hope that the maid would be resurrected, that she wasn’t actually dead. But she hadn’t shown any signs of movement. Marie realized how obstinate the dead were. They simply refused to take the world seriously.
Marie hadn’t even known people died instantly. She thought they were always given a bit of time. They would get to say famous last words if they were notable. And they could pass on messages to their favorite people if they were simple nobodies. She wished the maid had stayed alive long enough to forgive her.
Realizing how hopeless the situation was, Marie went back outside to find Sadie. She saw her at a distance. Her friend was sitting on a small white bench outside of the labyrinth, staring straight ahead. Marie thought she must be in an incredibly sad mood at the moment. Perhaps she had been unkind by abandoning her friend to run after a corpse. Sadie was clearly in a moral quandary.
Marie watched Sadie rummage through her skirt pocket clearly in search of something. She imagined it was a handkerchief, even though Sadie didn’t appear to be crying. She pulled an apple out of her pocket and shined it with her sleeve. And then she bit into it as though nothing in the world had happened. For a brief instant, Marie doubted reality.
* * *
Marie’s father took her by the hand. He led her abruptly away from the scene. She had never had to hasten her pace for her father. He preferred to stroll than to walk. He pulled her quickly down the corridor. They passed all the paintings of landscapes that seemed to stand still despite all their hectic motions, like those in train windows. He brought her to her room. He opened the door and pushed her inside. He stood outside the door as though the threshold were a line she had crossed but he had not.
“Stay in this room,” he said. “Do not come out until I tell you to. Do not let anyone come in other than me. Do you understand?”
Marie nodded. She couldn’t speak. She was holding her words in her throat as though it were a dam and the second she spoke one word, a cry would be dislodged and she would weep forever. Her whole body felt like a Champagne bottle that had been shaken and was waiting to explode.
Louis closed the door, and Marie felt shut off from everything around her. She turned and looked at the green wallpaper adorned with tree branches and birds and felt like Eve when she had been kicked out of the Garden of Eden. But she didn’t even have Adam to hold hands with.
Marie was shaking. She had been so concerned with the fate of the maid, she hadn’t had a chance to really think about what the implications of these events were for her. She could not lose her father’s love. Her father thought she was a perfect child. Could you be a perfect child if you were also a murderer? It seemed highly improbable. She could not bear the idea that she might be brought down in her father’s estimation to any degree. He couldn’t tolerate anyone on earth except for her.
She had no idea what they did to rich girls who murdered their servants. It could not be prison! Her factory! That would be what they would take away from her. She would never be able to execute all her plans. She had been looking forward to it. They would take her face off the side of the sugar bags. Who would she be if she wasn’t on the side of the sugar bags? She didn’t want to be ordinary.
Sadie did not have this problem. She was already living in a loveless home. She didn’t have a factory. It wasn’t fair! She had so much more to lose than Sadie.