Miss Miller continued to evade me. I tried to catch her in the hallways, but she proved more elusive than the dream ghost of Helen Burns. Once she stuck her head in my classroom and borrowed Rufina to mind the Infants for “a while.” By the time I was on my feet and within whispering distance, she had turned tail and vanished. At the luncheon table, she sat stiffly and played with her food. All the while, she took elaborate pains to avoid my glance.
The girls changed from their mourning slippers into boots so we could go to Hyde Park. On our way out, we bumped into Miss Jones, coming from the parlor and carrying in her hands a fulsome hank of long chestnut hair. Selina’s hair.
“For the mourning jewelry,” said the tall teacher. “I have a braiding frame made from a man’s top hat, and a new pattern for a finished brooch that resembles a bow. It should look quite lovely, I think.”
She winced and touched her fingers to her temple.
“Sick headaches,” she said. “They attack me regularly and keep me up all night. I believe I shall be forced to take a bit of medicine and lie down. Would you ask Signora Delgatto to take over my class when you return from your plein air class? I fear I will be sound asleep. Probably right through dinner. It is an inescapable side effect of the drops.”
“Yes, of course. I shall do so when we return. Meanwhile, allow me to help you upstairs. Rufina? Lead the girls outside, please.”
I bore the teacher’s weight as best I could while Miss Jones and I climbed the stairs. Because she towered above me, her limbs put a heavy burden on mine. After she took to her bed, she directed me to look in her top drawer. There I found a dark brown glass bottle labeled LAUDANUM. There was also an eyedropper and a small jar of honey. As per her instructions, I added the tincture and a spoonful of honey to a glass of water. While she drank, I arranged her pillows and helped her remove her mourning slippers, noting the length of her feet—they certainly could have been the same size as the footprints leading down the stairs because hers were long and slender. As I tucked her slippers next to her boots, my fingers brushed against the leather. Soaking wet. She must have worn her boots outside!
My mind raced. Sometime in the night, Parthena might have left the building—and since the footsteps only went down the stairs and not up, she must not have returned until after I mopped up the powder.
“Please, could you see to the dead girl’s hair?”
At her direction, I started to wrap a hank of it in a clean linen square.
“There are two large pieces of hair there, am I correct?” she asked.
“I see but one.”
“Ah, then I dropped the other. I hate to ask but…”
“I shall go downstairs and retrieve it.” I retraced our steps to the landing, down the stairs, and through the hallway, but I did not see the missing locks of hair. There was only one other place to look. Opening the door quietly, I let myself into the parlor.
The snoring of the old midwife shook the ornaments on the shelves of the whatnot cabinet she leaned against. Each shudder included a snort at its end for punctuation. The slack-jawed look of the woman told me I need not worry about being seen. She was sound asleep, and from the stink of her, too drunk to care about my presence.
I walked around the coffin but did not find any hair on the floor. There was only one other place where the hank of hair could have fallen. I steeled my nerves for the examination I planned to conduct. Disregarding the unpleasant sensation of cold flesh, I gently tugged at the muslin wrapped around the dead girl’s head to keep her jaw in place. When the fabric was removed, it disclosed two bare spots, one on each temple. The denuded areas were huge! The hair had been completely shorn! Miss Jones had cut the hanks, and in the process robbed the corpse of its natural adornments. This shocked me. Although I knew little about the making of such a keepsake as a piece of funerary jewelry, logic suggested that any hair taken could be cut from the back of the scalp, thereby doing the least to disturb the appearance of the dead. Of course, one could argue that the theft would have gone unnoticed, except for my poking about. But even so. There seemed to be something wantonly cruel about this harvest.
With my eyes, I traced the length of Selina’s body. Again, her size astonished me. She probably weighed nearly as much as Edward. Although death had started its inexorable task of destruction, it was clear that the girl’s skin was smooth as porcelain, the shape of her countenance a perfect oval, her hair lush and dark as it fell in loose curls, and her mouth perfectly contoured.
The midwife sighed in her sleep. One lonesome eyetooth stuck out from the roof of her mouth, and a thin rivulet of drool hung from her loose lower lip. I needed to find the missing hair in a hurry and go.
I stooped down to look under the coffin, and finally I found the curls coiled in a shadow over by a large floral offering.
I tiptoed out of the parlor and took my prize back up to the Junior dormitory. Miss Jones opened one sleepy eye to watch as I tucked the second hank of hair next to its twin.
“Your kindness overwhelms me,” she said. A grimace of pain overtook her, but she managed to add, “Thank you, my friend. I will not forget this.”
She could barely keep herself awake when she bid me good-bye.
I climbed back down the stairs, thinking about what I had seen, and the rapidity with which Miss Jones had fallen asleep.
Was it possible that Miss Jones had dosed Selina? She had access to the Senior dormitory. She could easily have put a few drops of her laudanum in Selina’s evening tea. But what would have been her motivation?
Walking briskly through the foyer, I went down the front steps and a few yards along the sidewalk to where the girls were gathered around a dog, a small terrier, held on a leash by its owner, an elderly woman. Rufina succeeded in making the pup dance for a bit of bread. The girls turned to me expectantly.
“Oh bother!” I said as I reached into my pocket and discovered only one glove. “Rufina, pray continue to watch the others.”
Back inside Alderton House, I crossed the marble tiles of the entryway once more, being as silent as possible. My movements were quiet, as the dead seem to demand of us a certain reverence. Perhaps we feel compelled to rehearse the silence of the grave. I made no sound as I slipped into the parlor.
Signora Delgatto stood with her back to me, leaning slightly over the polished walnut coffin. I froze there in the doorway, so as not to startle the elderly woman, who cleared her throat, hawked, and spat. Her spittle landed on Selina Biltmore’s face with a splat.
“You no-good spawn of the devil.” Signora Delgatto spoke directly to the corpse.
I gasped. The music teacher turned to stare at me, her eyes twin pools of milky brown, the clouds within them obscuring any sense of the woman’s soul.
“Have you come to spy on me?”
“No, signora. I lost my glove. Is it on the floor? I cannot afford to replace it.” Such a simple lie, one that came easily to my lips.
“You will tell Mrs. Thurston what you saw?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I?”
“Let me tell you about this, this demon.” She pointed at the body. “You have heard of Fräulein Hertzog? The teacher you replace? She was a long-suffering sojourner. A woman who had endured much, and who recognized the same in me. Such a friendship! So much in common! So rare to find another soul with whom you have such a connection. Fräulein Hertzog loved singing, but God in His glory denied her a voice. But oh, how she loved music. So one day when we were walking at the market, she bought a canary. She named him Figaro. What a singer he was! So glorious! He brought my friend much joy.”
In her exuberance, the old woman threw open her arms and nearly lost her balance. Slipping my hand under her elbow, I walked her to a chair and eased her down onto the seat.
“Do you know what Selina did? That evil girl twisted the bird’s neck and fed it to the cat! She did it only to hurt Fräulein Hertzog, who loved her little pet.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would she do that?”
“It was an act of revenge. Pure and simple. Fräulein caught Selina slipping out of the building. Two times. Fräulein told Mrs. Thurston—and there was a quarrel.”
“Between Mrs. Thurston and Selina? Or between Selina and Fräulein Hertzog?”
“Mrs. Thurston and Selina. They screamed at each other. Mrs. Thurston decided to punish the girl.”
“Did she?”
“Mrs. Thurston told Fräulein to make Selina copy verses from the Bible. But the girl refused. Back and forth they went.” Signora Delgatto raised a dingy handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away tears. “Then came a man in a handsome carriage to visit Mrs. Thurston. They spoke in private, and everything changed. Poof!” The woman snapped her fingers. “Like that, Selina became the favorite of Mrs. Thurston. I could not understand why. No one could.”
“And your friend? Fräulein Hertzog?”
“She was told to leave Selina alone. Of course, the girl understood she had this new power—and everything was worse. She could do whatever she pleased! Selina teased Fräulein about the dead bird. Putting the feathers on Fräulein’s pillow! And in her food! My poor friend went mad with grief. And what did Mrs. Thurston do to help? Nothing. Nothing at all!”
“So Fräulein left?”
“Home to Germany.”
“I am sorry.” My words sounded inadequate, but I was struggling to find an explanation for this odd turn of events. Who, I wondered, was the man who visited Mrs. Thurston—and what did he say that changed the balance of power?
Signora Delgatto grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. “Listen to me. Leave this place. Leave it now. These children, they care nothing for us. Do you know what this girl did to her own governess? She pushed that woman down a well! Broke her arm! Left her there for two days while she cried for help.”
“Oh my,” I said. “How awful.”
“That is not all. Then Selina found a snake and dropped it on the governess just to hear her scream! Finally, someone heard the teacher and she was rescued. But a few days later, the poor girl went mad and hanged herself from a rafter in the carriage house.”
Pulling me down to her level, the signora locked her eyes on mine. “Find another way to survive, but do not surrender your life to the children of other people! Especially children like this! They have so much and they give us nothing in return! Nothing! They do not treat us like humans. They treat us worse than the dumb animals!”
We both heard the noise of horses stopping outside. I disentangled myself from Signora Delgatto’s grip and ran to the front window to see a carriage on the street.
“Hurry! Someone is coming! We must go,” I said to the Italian woman, taking her by the arm and heading her toward the door. “Ah! There it is! I spy my glove. Under the coffin.”
Leaving her in the doorframe, I ran to grab my missing glove. As she waited for me, Signora Delgatto’s narrow shoulders slumped, tenting the fabric of her mourning dress. “You do not listen. You do not understand.”
“On the contrary, I have listened and understood you. And I share your sorrow. But Selina Biltmore will answer to a greater judge, Signora Delgatto. This I believe. Now please, we must go.”
Leaning heavily on me, she limped into the hall. There I bid her good-bye and hurried outside, where I glimpsed the Biltmores as they were climbing out of a carriage. Fortunately, they did not see me. I hurried down the street to where the girls were still being amused by the little dog.
“All right now, ladies. Tell the dog good-bye,” I said as I herded my charges farther from Alderton House.
Away from the morbid atmosphere of the school, the girls giggled among themselves. After a while, Rufina added a hop to her step and skipped toward the park. In short order, the others joined in. Their gaiety did my heart good, so I chose not to admonish them to act like ladies.
I walked at a brisk pace to keep up with the students. Perhaps Miss Jones had a perfectly good reason for clipping so much of Selina’s hair. I knew nothing of funerary jewelry. Was it possible that Miss Jones needed locks of a certain length or thickness? Was that why she robbed Selina of her beauty? Or had Miss Jones intended to deal the corpse one last indignity? Was she as bent on revenge as Signora Delgatto was?
As puzzling as these questions were, Lucy and Mr. Douglas would help me think through them. There was so much that I was eager to share! What with the footprints on the landing and all the new knowledge I had about Selina. Especially the visit from the mysterious man who had interceded on Selina’s behalf, and how his visit marked a change in the girl’s privileges.
Taken individually, these bits of information probably meant nothing, but in the aggregate they might form a pattern. The question was, could we see it?