“Well. Best be safe, I suppose.”
She grasped his face and righted it so he faced the ceiling again. His mouth was slightly open, his graying beard obscuring his lips. She ignored her disgust at being so close and carefully tipped the bottle over his open maw until a slip of liquid poured in. The ether made him gag and sputter but not quite wake up. It reddened his lips and tongue, bubbled and rattled in the back of his throat. She repeated the act three more times until the bottle was empty and she was sure the liquid was scorching the insides of his lungs and stomach.
She remembered the lesson that Allene had given her years ago. On and on, she’d prattled about this molecule or that element. It was both adorable and tiresome at the same time.
“Ethyl ether. It’s like a bird, like you, Birdie!” she’d said. “Two carbons attached to an oxygen in the middle. It has wings.”
“What’s it for?”
“Oh, in chemistry, for so many things. It’s a wonderful solvent. And they use it to put people to sleep, but . . .” She had scanned a page of an open book before her. “It’s too flammable. They use chloroform now, which is safer in that respect. Oh, chloroform! What a tidy little bugger, it has three chlorines . . .”
But Birdie had not forgotten the lesson.
She stared at Mr. Cutter’s insensate body, went to the water pitcher in the corner, and carefully rinsed her hands, leaving them wet. And from her other robe pocket, she took a small box of matches.
An arm’s breadth away, she lit the match.
“You’re welcome,” Birdie whispered, and dropped the lit match into Mr. Cutter’s fume-filled throat.
There was a brilliant flash of fire as the ether quickly ignited inside his throat and lungs, his face, his beard, the bed linens. It was the most beautiful thing Birdie had ever seen, even more beautiful than Holly. She shielded her face and backed away from the searing heat. Leaving the roar of fire behind her, she hobbled to the guest room, gritting her teeth, tears running down her face from the pain.
The room had become Holly’s entirely. Tiny books were tidily arranged on a little white shelf, and a toddler’s crib was covered in a fairylike tenting that the maids had created out of a bolt of old organdy fabric found in the attic.
Birdie was careful not to gasp in discomfort when she bent over the crib. She kissed Holly’s warm cheek and tucked a curl behind her ear. It was hard to look at Holly. In that sleeping, innocent face, she saw her own nightmares.
“Good night,” she murmured. “Sweet Holly Berry.”
There was a pitcher of water and a glass on a stand near the bed, as Holly always woke up thirsty. Birdie soaked a tiny blanket, left the room, shut the door, and wadded the wet fabric in the crack by the floor. Holly would be saved. The maids adored her and would rescue her first.
Plumes of black smoke now boiled out of Mr. Cutter’s bedroom. A yell sounded from the stairs below. Good. The servants must have heard the explosion. With great difficulty, Birdie maneuvered to Allene’s room, locked the door, and climbed into the bed. More cries of horror came from downstairs. Feet thumped up the stairs, then downward; a telephone call was being made. And yet no one sought her out. It didn’t matter; they knew where she was.
The worst was over, and now she was free. Free, yet unable to move without excruciating pain. Free, but with the coming hatred of the people she most loved. Free and penniless. Homeless too, for that matter. Free, and revolted by her own memories. Revolted by herself.
A paroxysm of agony once again lacerated her leg and throbbed deep within her malformed bone. She shifted on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position, but searing pain spread through the center of her chest. It quite took her breath away. She panted for more air, feeling like she was inhaling nothingness, devoid of oxygen. The pain spread rapidly, and she felt her heart race, skip a beat, race on, skip two more. It did a frenzied jig in her chest. Her face and neck felt oddly engorged with blood, as if a ligature were being tightened irrevocably. Relentlessly. The breathlessness became suffocation.
Sometime in the next minute, she flitted in and out of consciousness. Surely she would go to hell, but at least Andrew would be there, mooning over her, grasping her so hard in his effort to possess her that her joints would loosen. Her limbs would give way, twisting off like an overcooked chicken leg. He would hoard these bits, and Birdie would look at the leftover pieces of her fairy self. Mr. Cutter would be there too, strung up on razor wire and charred to a crisp, his glittering eyes still able to watch with enjoyment.
And Birdie would laugh through the torment because at least she had this one grace—Holly wasn’t there. Holly would never belong in such a place. Just as Birdie had never deserved the poisons that touched her life, neither did Holly. But Birdie had sacrificed enough to keep her daughter protected. This one good, pure thing she would cling to. The darkness in the Dreyer family would end, once and for all, with Birdie.
She awoke for one last moment, convulsing, and then she shrieked, the terrorized cry of a child in the dark, just before her heart beat its final pulse.
CHAPTER 33
They found her in bed, dark as the room, her preternatural glow winked out. Her eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling, her mouth slightly agape as if in surprise that death had finally come for its truant visit. Allene and Jasper saw her at the same time, after the police had broken open the door; the key was nowhere to be found.
And there was a letter.
Always, there was a letter.
Jasper held Allene by the shoulders. The police had not let her see the charred remains of her father’s corpse, but Allene knew that it was horrific. She imagined blackened flesh, a wide-open jaw with burnt lips adhered to teeth, the ungodly scent of cooked human flesh. So when she saw Birdie’s corpse, it was too much. She promptly vomited on the pristine carpet underfoot.
Once recovered, she read the letter with the police. She and Jasper hadn’t recognized the handwriting, but on closer inspection, they saw flourishes that resembled Birdie’s. She’d disguised it enough to throw them off. And of course Birdie had volunteered to have the killer’s notes examined by a “professional,” because she had been driving the game all along.
There was no anger in the words on the page. Every cursive letter was written with care, almost lovingly. How Andrew had, out of infatuation and love, performed her killing deeds by proxy. How she had laced his pastilles with arsenic almost as soon as they’d begun their affair. Months ago, he was a dead man walking.