“I’m wondering if she’s relieved. Not that she’d admit to it, or even recognize it,” he said. “But she did something astounding, almost unheard of. Even if the end result was not what we hoped for, she should be proud of herself.”
“She should,” Elise agreed. “But she can’t, right now. She needs time. Did you realize that Anna has been confined to bed, too? Mrs. Cabot has got her boxed in.”
“No escape attempts?”
“Not yet, but you’d better hurry.”
? ? ?
HE TOOK OFF his shoes and went upstairs in his stocking feet, meaning to be thoughtful but hoping to fail, in a small way. And Anna didn’t disappoint, calling out as soon as he reached the upstairs hall.
“Mezzanotte.” Her voice cracked and wobbled. “Stop tiptoeing around and come in here.”
At the foot of the bed he took stock.
“You’re losing your voice and that means for once I have the advantage. I might even win an argument.”
Her expression softened, and then she laughed, a soundless huffing.
“Sleep,” he said. “We can talk later.”
“I’ve been sleeping most of the day. Sit down and tell me about your meeting this morning.”
She stared at him until he gave in with a sigh and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Not so close.” She pointed to the chairs by the hearth. “Sit over there.”
He dragged the chair closer to the bed, obeying and not obeying. Sitting down, he remembered the tin in his pocket and retrieved it.
“What’s that?”
“Nicholas Lambert gave it to me for you, for your hands. For dermatitis.”
“Why would you be talking to Nicholas Lambert about my dermatitis? And when was this?”
“Earlier today. Because he was talking about his own, and so I mentioned it.”
She curled her fingers in a hand-it-over gesture, but he shook his head. “It can wait until you’re feeling better.”
“Don’t coddle me. Tell me about this meeting with Lambert. What did you need to talk to him about? Oh, wait. It’s about the Campbell case, isn’t it. Is it?”
So he told her.
? ? ?
AT FIRST IT seemed she hadn’t understood him, but the color rose in her cheeks as if she had been slapped or insulted. Which, Jack supposed, she had been.
“Seven or eight women.” She shook her head. “All like Janine Campbell. How are they similar?”
He gave her what she needed: described the overlapping circumstances, age and marital status, social standing, childbearing history, autopsy findings.
“He won’t have to redo the Campbell or Liljestr?m postmortems, but the others he’ll start with tomorrow. They’ve already started on the exhumations.”
Anna leaned back against the pillows. “I can’t grasp this. I can’t believe something like this is really happening. Somewhere nearby there’s a doctor or midwife or—I don’t even know what to call such a person—who kills women because they don’t want to have children.”
“More children,” Jack said. “All of them already had children.”
“That’s even worse, in some ways. A woman who wants to be finished with childbearing has no right to live.” Her voice cracked.
He picked up a cup, half full, and handed it to her. For once she drank without wrinkling her nose. Then she let him smooth the sheets and adjust the blankets. All the time he wondered if he should mention Neill Graham, when he had so little concrete to offer.
Something in Graham’s tone of voice, the way he turned his head, the curve of his mouth, the connections he made between whore and woman and filth. There was something very wrong with the man, but he would have to keep that to himself for a while longer, until he had more concrete evidence to offer this woman who was a scientist before she was anything else at all.
He sat with her while she drifted off to sleep. He was about to get up when she roused.
“If Janine Campbell was the first, that would mean that there was one victim a week for eight weeks. Did they all happen on the same day of the week?”
Even in the middle of this god-awful case, she made him smile. “Did you think like a copper before I married you, or has that rubbed off?”
There was something almost shy about her smile, as if she wasn’t sure this was a compliment, and if it was, whether she had earned it. But she waited for him to answer.
“We’ll be more able to answer that question once Lambert is finished with the postmortems.” And then he said, “Oscar thinks Lambert likes you. I think he’s probably right.”
Now her smile shifted to plain disbelief. “Don’t be silly. He doesn’t know me.”
“Maybe he knows you better than you imagine.”
“Oh, I see,” Anna said, blinking sleepily. “This is that argument you think you can win because I’m losing my voice. And you know what, I’ll let you have this little victory. As wrong as you are.”
39