EIGHTY-ONE

Having once wondered what it was like for Chance to live in prison, I now knew what it was like firsthand. I now lived in a space a mere thirteen by seven by nine feet high. I now lived in a space where the guards wore padded shoes so as not to disturb the silence. I now lived in a place where the female subwarders were known for “tampering” with female inmates; a practice that could most politely be called “growing overfond.” I now lived in a place where women were known to “breakout,” a term for a very particular form of temporary insanity, wherein the woman would smash everything in her cell, rending clothes, rending hair, until someone came and punished her by putting her in a place referred to as “in the dark.”

A couple of women down the row, in prison for violently protesting for a woman’s right to vote, actually believing one day such a thing might be attained, were inclined to rend things. Sometimes they liked to starve themselves and were then force-fed, unimaginably long tubes shoved down their throats, in a most disturbing fashion.

Thank God the treadwheel had been abandoned, and the oakum-picking, which I had read about in John’s research notes on prisons, was now a thing of the past. I could handle shirt-making, hemming, stitching, even doing laundry for seven hours a day.

Besides my father, I had only one other visitor at Hollowgate in the entire time I awaited trial. It was, of all people, Hettie Larwood.

She told me after my arrest, Chance had moved back into the house. She told me all of my friends had rallied around him. She told me he would not be coming to visit me, could not bring himself to do so.

“That poor man,” she said. “What he has been through. He feels, and he is not the only one, I might add, betrayed by you. He thought he knew you better.”

I said nothing.

“I have never seen a man more broken up by anything. Really, I do not know how he will survive this.”

I had nothing to say to that either.

Then she told me a surprising thing: “Constance Biltmore is dead.”

“Constance? But how?”

“They say she was murdered; poisoned, to be exact.”

I sat, stunned, wondering who would ever kill Constance, and why. Of course, there had been a time when I would have had a very good motive: to ensure her silence. But I had been in here when she died and could not be held accountable for her death.

“Do they have any idea…?”

“Oh, yes,” Hettie replied, with what could only be called a satisfied smile. “They have arrested Charles.”

For the briefest of moments, I was shocked. Despite what she had tried to do to me, I could not picture anyone being evil enough to snuff out Constance’s life. And then I realized I had been paying too much attention to the what of what Hettie told me and not enough to the how. She had said Constance had been poisoned. And Chance had once told me, as I well recalled—or had I imagined that too? had I merely learned it from John?—poison was a woman’s weapon.

“Charles did not kill her,” I said with a pleased certainty.

“How can you know such a thing?” Hettie was shocked.

“Because Charles would not do it in that way. Charles Biltmore is many things, but he is not a woman. Constance must have grown desperate, taken her own life.”

The horrified expression Hettie turned on me showed, clearly, she thought me mad. And in that moment I saw that anyone else I might tell my theory to would have the same reaction. People are, after all, ready quickest to blame the spouse.

Well, what matter that?

If Charles Biltmore was in this prison with me, if he was to hang for the death of his wife, then I could only think it justice.

If I was the only person in London to know the truth, that Constance, in desperation over a life trap she could no longer find a way to escape, had taken her own life, what matter that?

The last time I had seen Constance, I had thought her resolute to persist in trying to blackmail me. Was this the act of a resolute woman, now, taking her own life? Reading Flaubert, as I had once done to see what my fictional fraternal twin was like, I had not approved of his heroine’s final decision. It had seemed cowardly to me and, perhaps worse, unnecessary. But I thought now of Constance, who, with my incarceration, must surely have grown convinced there were no longer any exits out of the box. After all, no one but I had ever believed her that her husband was a danger to her and even I had been unable to help her. Society had never helped her, would never help her, not in this year, not in our times. Where, then, had she to turn for help? Perhaps it was a strength that, rather than waiting for Charles to eventually kill her, she had taken the matter into her own hands.

It gave me a cold pleasure to think, even though I did not believe for a second Charles had poisoned Constance, he would die for a death he was responsible for nonetheless.