“There’s one more thing,” he admitted.
Gage and I shared a look of mutual misgiving, wondering what Michael had hid from us now. I suspected we both had been waiting for something like this. I couldn’t even summon up the anger I had felt on first learning of Michael’s dishonesty. Now I only felt deep disappointment.
He crossed the room to the farthest corner and carefully extracted a rolled piece of parchment from behind several crates. Whatever it was, he had certainly hoped no one would ever find it. That realization sent a quiver of alarm down my spine.
“William drew it during one of his episodes several months ago.” Michael offered no explanation for his omitting to tell us about it, just handed it to Gage and moved away from us toward the other sketches. He shuffled them together and stuffed them back in the box, keeping his back to us.
I stared at the innocuous-looking piece of paper in Gage’s hand warily, wishing we did not have to open it. I held my breath as he slowly unrolled the parchment, tilting it toward the light cast by his candles. The drawing made my blood run cold.
It was a crude sketch done in charcoal, like the others, but there was one main difference, and it was instantly apparent that this was what had impelled Michael to hide it. All of Will’s other drawings, even those sketched after the war, had been drawn as an outsider looking in. However, this sketch had been drawn from the artist’s perspective, staring down at a woman draped across his lap, her head cushioned by his thigh. The positioning of her body and the way she looked up at him would have seemed romantic, but for the hand the artist pressed over her nose and mouth. The woman didn’t appear to fight him, but actually seemed to be holding his hand where he had positioned it over her face.
I gasped and turned away, unable to keep looking at it. If Will was the artist, and he had drawn this from his point of view, that meant it was his hand over the woman’s nose and mouth. Until I saw this sketch, I would never have believed Will was capable of such a thing. To smother a woman with his bare hands! My mind rebelled at the idea. There must be some other explanation. Maybe the image in the picture was not what it seemed. Maybe it was harmless. But then why had it so haunted Will that he’d drawn it along with all of the other disturbing images he’d depicted?
Had he been forced to kill her? I just couldn’t accept he’d done it willingly. The William Dalmay I knew would never have harmed a woman. But if the suspicions raised by this drawing were true, if he had . . .
“Heavens! What did they do to him?” I whispered. I knew neither of these men had an answer for me, but I looked to them anyway.
“I don’t know,” Gage replied without emotion. “But we aren’t finding our answers in these drawings, only more questions.”
I followed his gaze to Michael, who still stood with his back to us. “We need to speak with William,” I told him, realizing that Gage had been waiting for me to make this statement instead of him. Whether he thought Michael would listen better to me or he wanted me to come to this same conclusion on my own, I didn’t know. “He’s the only one who might be able to answer our questions. To explain this.” I gestured to the parchment now rolled again in Gage’s hands. When Michael did not respond, I had to implore him. “Michael, it’s time.”
He spoke so low it was difficult to hear him, even in the silence of the attic. “All right. Just . . . not tonight. He does better in the daylight.”
I had witnessed the very same thing earlier that day, so I agreed.
Gage stepped forward, clasping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We need to find out the truth, whatever it may be. Will you promise me you’ll stop hindering that? That you’ll let us do what you asked us to? We can’t clear your brother’s name or, if necessary, get him the help he needs, otherwise.”
Michael nodded and finally turned to face us. “I haven’t intentionally kept anything else from you. At least, not that I’m aware of.”
He had aged before my eyes just in the two and a half short days since my arrival at Dalmay House. The man who had laughed and joked with us in the entry hall had been eaten alive by his worries. How had he managed to hide it for so long? His anxieties must have been consuming him for months. Why hadn’t he done something about them sooner? I understood that he did not wish to upset his brother with accusations, but surely Will could understand his brother’s concern over his drawings, especially this one with the girl. Maybe it was not so straightforward, but if tomorrow Will was able to explain everything to us, Michael was going to feel pretty foolish.
But I should have known it would never be that simple.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO