22
“IT ISN’T WHERE I live,” I told Robert. “It isn’t my home. And you had no right to invite them to come and see me there.”
He was guiding the chaise away from the crowds and the traffic. He had all he could do to manage this and was not listening to me.
I waited until we were away from the push of people and carriages and finally on a side street. “My train, at this very moment, might be coming into the station. My seat is waiting for me. Paid for. I have to get out of this chaise!”
He did not answer.
“You have to stop,” I said. “I have to get out. Stop the horse now, I say! Robert!”
We were on a side street now, the crowds were thinning, the horse clip-clopped at a steady pace, its mane streaming out, the cobblestone street whizzing by under its feet, making me dizzy. I started to stand up. He pushed me back down.
“Stop, please, I’m going to throw up.”
“Then do it and get it over with.”
“How can you be so mean? Robert, stop now, I say, or I’ll jump out.”
“Then do it. I’ll not pander to you further.”
“Pander? Pander? What does that mean?”
“Everyone’s pandered to you since you first got to your uncle’s house. And look how you repay him.”
“How? How do I repay him?”
“By setting the police on him.”
“Police?” The breeze was blowing his hair about. And I noticed he was growing a mustache. “What are you talking about?” I felt a sense of dread in my bones. “What happened?”
We were driving past a park now. He slowed the horse down. “Do you care what happened?”
Myra, I thought dismally. She went and told her father about the dead bodies in the laboratory. “Yes,” I said.
“Your uncle’s work was near ruined. If I hadn’t gotten rid of the evidence before the police arrived at the college with the reporters, it would have been. And he might now be in jail. Just because you and your silly friends had to go on a lark. Couldn’t you have thought of something else to do? Gone to the Soldiers’ Home, maybe, where you could have laughed at the veterans who are half blind and can’t walk anymore?”
“Stop it, Robert, it wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like, then? I want to know how a bunch of silly schoolgirls can get the notion to ruin the lifetime work of one of the finest doctors we have today in Washington.”
Oh, dear God, I thought, how can I explain this? But I had to try. So I told him. The words sounded so lame, so inept, the reasoning so selfish. But I told my whole sad tale, starting from the party at school for Myra and ending up with how we ran from the courtyard.
“And you never gave a thought to what this little Myra witch would do when she got home. Because you were busy thinking of yourself. And your own shocked little sensibilities. Am I right?”
Tears crowded my eyes and my throat. “No,” I said. “My feminine scruples.”
He said nothing to that. But he was angry. He had every right to be, yes, but he was missing something here, overlooking something. What was it? Then it came to me. “If you hadn’t lied to me, I wouldn’t have allowed them to go to the college. I’d have found a way to keep them from it.”
He said nothing.
“Didn’t you tell me the bodies you brought back from Memphis were alive? And when I asked you if I would find dead bodies at the lab if I went there, you said no. That it was the end of the semester and they were all gone. Isn’t that right, Robert?”
“Yes,” he said hoarsely.
“I believed you, Robert. I was convinced Myra would make a fool of herself.”
He’d allowed the horse to slow to a walk. “How long ago did you know Myra’s father was doing an investigation?” he asked.
“I’ve known it for a while, but I’ve been able to keep her at bay.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I wasn’t supposed to know what was going on.”
“You suspected. You admitted that to me the last time we had this conversation. You should have told us.”
“You should have told me things, too.”
“Could you have been trusted? As soon as you found out, you decided to run away.”
“Because I was betrayed. Not because I found it out.”
We rode in silence for a minute or two. We were a block from Uncle Valentine’s house. “Where is Uncle Valentine?” I asked.
“Home, waiting for you. He arrived at about eight this morning. Traveled on the cars all night. The minute he found out you were missing, he sent me for you. And I haven’t slept all night. I was tipped off yesterday afternoon, just as I returned from my trip to the ironclad, about the police raid on the lab. I got there first, with two other students. Just in time to get the bodies out.”
“So the police and reporters have nothing to go on, then.”
“No. Only you have. You know now what we’re doing. And you can turn us in anytime you want to.”
“How dare you! Do you think I would do that?” He didn’t answer.
“How did you find me? How did you know where I’d be?”
“Annie. She came around to see your uncle and told him—the train time and everything—so I knew you’d be in the vicinity of the depot. You can thank Custer for the rest.”
“Annie.” I fumed. “A fine friend she is.”
“Yes, she is a fine friend. You’re lucky to have her. She was worried about you running off to Godforsaken Richmond. There’s hardly any food in Richmond. There’s military rule. Annie felt she owed your uncle that much. I wouldn’t criticize Annie. She knows what she’s about.”
“And I don’t, I suppose.”
He drew the chaise up in front of the house. “Did you let Addie go?” The brown eyes pinned me. I could tell he was hoping I would say no.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well, you’ve really repaid your uncle for all his kindness. I don’t know why he puts up with you. I think he should put you in a convent school.”
“I’m not Catholic.”
“Well, maybe you’d learn right from wrong.”
I gave a bitter laugh. “Like Johnny Surratt did?”
He was decent enough not to elaborate on that thought. He fell silent for a moment.
“The Spoon and the Mole have been working for my uncle all along, haven’t they?” I asked. “And that night at the cemetery, when he chased them from my mother’s grave, he planned it all so I would be indebted to him, didn’t he?”
“Because he wanted you to live with him. He knew your mother had turned you against him. She knew about the body snatching. He wanted to make you think he was opposed to it, yes. But you wanted to live with people who were planning on assassinating the president.”
“That is unfair, Robert!”
He sighed. “I’m weary of this. My head is spinning. I need to go home and sleep. . . . Go into the house and face the music. He’s waiting for you. I wish you luck.”
I clambered down from the chaise. He handed down my portmanteau and the basket with Ulysses in it. “For your information,” I told him, “I wanted to get in touch with you yesterday afternoon, when Myra sprang her plans on us. But I couldn’t.”
He nodded briefly. “A lot of good it does us now,” he said.
I picked up my things and moved away. “I hate your mustache,” I said.