ROSITA HAD BEEN pretending to be Claire; Claire was the actual murder victim.
And Rosita had killed Dr. Aldridge with his own morphine.
I heard scratching outside the door, saw the knob turn. I turned, alarmed, and then the door swung open and in stepped the woman who still had the look, the demeanor, of Claire. I blinked, trying to see Rosita. I couldn’t.
I would have doubted, but in one hand Rosita held a gun far more steadily than Claire would ever have, all while poking a hairpin back in the lock tucked behind her ear, giving me a smirking grin.
When she spoke it was lower, in Rosita’s register. “You two aren’t nearly as sneaky as you think.” She closed the door behind her. “I see you’ve found my stash.”
“Why?” The word crept out of me, a tremulous yet curious thing. “How?”
She looked at me with such hatred and disdain that I withered back into myself for a moment, again her guilty, cowed servant.
“During one of Dr. Aldridge’s earliest monthly visits, I paid him handsomely to remove the beauty mark over my lip. There is only a faint scar,” Rosita explained. “Unfortunately, last night in the candlelight, I got too close to him, and he noticed the scar, and realized the switch I must have made. After everyone was asleep, he said he wanted to talk with me.
“We came up here, and he confronted me. I told him it was for good reason. Soothed him, reassured him—I would reveal all to him soon. He got into a coughing fit—the cold of the mansion was getting to him. I got him some water. And put in half a bottle of my own Veronal. I rarely take it. It was enough to put him to sleep, and then another dose of his own medicine took care of the rest.”
“All so he wouldn’t talk?” Seamus asked.
“I wasn’t done being Claire,” Rosita said. “And I’ve hated him for what he did to the Carmichaels’ daughter. Hated seeing him around the house, kowtowing to Eddie. Do you know what he said to me after Oliver died? I was holding my dead son in my arms and Dr. Aldridge said, Comfort yourself that you’re young and fertile. You can have another child if you want. As if children are interchangeable.”
I shared her outrage, and yet, was chilled that she could use the doctor and then kill him in cold blood.
I had a feeling that ever since Oliver—and maybe before, though not to the same degree—she’d been using all of us all along.
“You would leave the suite, and be Claire,” I said, “and Claire would be you?”
“Yes. Ever since I came here after Oliver’s death. She got a kick out of being cold and stiff toward you, hiding under my veil, wearing my mourning dress. With those clothes, and under strict orders from me to remain silent, she could pull it off. She loved being my confidante, loved seeing the hurt on your face and reporting it to me,” Rosita said. “And I loved hearing about it. Seeing it myself at other times.”
“But why did you do that?”
“I told Claire it was because I didn’t want to talk to anyone else as Rosita, but I did want fresh air and to hear gossip and just pretend to be a regular person from time to time.” She gave a wavery smile, but then quickly recomposed herself. “What I was really doing was gathering as much information as I could from other women, and a few men, about what was going on in Eddie’s world. And, of course, visiting Liam, convincing him to help me. To get the records. To eventually pass on to you.” She smirked at Seamus.
Suddenly he lunged, grabbed Rosita’s arm, forcing her to drop the gun. He pinned her arm behind her back, snagged the gun from the floor in an easy swoop, and held it to her temple. “You’re going to sit down now,” he said, “very quietly.”
Rosita complied, lowering into a side chair.
“How do you have a gun?” Seamus asked.
“I kept one hidden away in my suite. The night after Claire went missing, I went back up and got it. I’ve kept it on me since.”
“And you took the records.”
“Yes. And hid them elsewhere—outside the mansion. After what happened to her, after it was clear someone wanted to kill me, I knew I couldn’t trust anyone.”
“What happened with Claire?” I asked. “How did you switch?”
“She came up to my room that first night, after midnight.”
After I’d seen Rosita, and she’d told me she blamed me for Oliver’s death. After I’d seen Claire stumbling from the bathroom toward her room. Then what? I replayed the timeline in my head: I’d gone to my room, cut the rope, then been pleasantly surprised by Seamus. Claire must have gone up to Rosita’s suite after I let Seamus in.
“She came up, I let her in,” Rosita was saying. “She wanted to talk like old times. She’d had too much to drink and threw up on herself. I helped her clean up, put the rinsed but dirty dress in my laundry basket, helped her get dressed in one of my nightgowns. I was afraid she was going to throw up again, and she was getting too loud, so I told her to go back to her room. She said only if I’d come down too, and we could lie in bed beside each other like we did when we were kids, and chatter and giggle.” Rosita rolled her eyes. “As if I was in the mood for girlish games. But I agreed, helping her down, hoping she’d just be quiet. I didn’t want her to draw attention to the fact that she had come up to my suite. I was afraid she might say we’d switched roles before, and that might lead to Liam giving away that he and I had been meeting up, too. I wasn’t ready for Eddie—for anyone—to know about the records I’ve been copying. She was still too loud so I convinced her to take a walk with me. Thought that might sober her up. She loaned me her fur and a pair of boots, put on her blue coat and another pair of boots, and we went for our walk.
“But we soon got into an argument. She whined that it was cold, that I wouldn’t help her and Douglas, and why wouldn’t I?”
For a moment, I thought Rosita was going to confess to having killed Claire, but she just looked sad for a second. Then she returned her face to its placid composure and went on. “I stormed off. Left her on the path. Wandered to the cemetery and took the dove, which I knew had broken off from the angel’s outstretched hands. A storm last winter. From my window, I’d watched a large tree branch come down on it, break the dove. Then watched Henry clean up around the graves and put the dove in the angel’s hand.” For a moment, Rosita looked sorrowful. “Henry knew I’d want that, without having to ask me.” Her expression abruptly reverted to coldness. “Anyway, I retrieved the dove, knowing then that I would leave, I would help you,” she glanced at Seamus, “but I would take a part of the island with me forever.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I felt bad about the argument, went into Claire’s bedroom, planning to wait for her. I waited up and then fell asleep—until I heard Eddie screaming, ‘Where’s Rosita?’ That’s when I knew something had gone very wrong with Claire.”
“The note that drew him up to your suite—why did you write that?” Seamus asked.
Rosita shook her head. “I didn’t. I learned later that Douglas had done so, hoping to get Eddie and Rosita—well, me—to talk. He told me this in confidence, thinking I was Claire.”
“So you decided to pretend to be Claire because—”
“Because something had obviously happened to her! And later, she was found—murdered. Everyone thinking it was me. If I could be Claire, I could be safe. And I could try to figure out who would want to kill me.”
“You could have come to me,” Seamus said.
“Really? You could have flipped to Eddie’s side like Cormac did years ago.” She looked at me then, as if expecting me to also say she could have come to me.
And once, she could have. I would have protected her, as I believed she’d tried to protect me by having me sent here. But that first awful night of Eddie’s arrival, I’d learned that Rosita actually hated me. Blamed me as the catalyst of her son’s death. Wanted to punish me. Would I have protected her after that?
I wanted to believe so. But I wasn’t sure.
I looked away from her.
“And the night that I accused everyone of having a motive to kill Rosita—they were all true, of course, except Seamus’s. It was easy to convince people who knew me best, or thought they did”—her eyes flicked to me but I knew she also meant the Carmichaels—“that I was Claire. Because no one wanted her to be dead. But really, deep down, everyone but Liam—sweet, trusting Liam—could have a reason to kill me. Liam loved me—though I did not love him back. But I found him sweet. Useful, for gathering those records. And he trusted me to get him out of Eddie’s clutches. That’s all I told him—‘Make me copies of the records you’re making Eddie, and I’ll get you free. You can go back to your archaeology.’”
Had he believed her? Was there a chance she’d meant it?
But Seamus and I had just worked out the possibility that Liam had killed Claire, thinking she was Rosita. Seamus gave me a warning look, and a tiny head shake.
He didn’t want her to know just yet.
How awful. To be alive in a different guise, all the while knowing that most of the people around you had reason to want you dead.
“I can tell you where the records are,” she said to Seamus, as placidly as if she was a librarian directing someone to files.
“Oh no,” Seamus said. “You will take me to them.”
He did not trust her.
“I’d like a coat,” she said.
I grabbed the mink on the chair, checked the pockets, the lining. No stashed guns. Rosita snatched it from me. As she put it on, she rolled her eyes when I said to Seamus, “You need a coat, too—”
“I’ll be fine,” Seamus said. I understood. He didn’t want to disturb anyone in the library for the sake of a coat.
I embraced him, for just a moment. “Be careful,” I whispered. “Don’t trust her.”
“You stay up here until I’m back, all right? It will be safer.”
I obeyed. I sat down on the edge of the bed, like a good girl.