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STEFAN BACHMANN

She could hear them below in the garden, the hiss of their feet in the cool grass, voices soft as moth wings as they whispered to one another. A childish screech floated up toward her window. Then they were singing again, the sound of it eerily high-pitched and wavering:

A is for Anna, who licks all the forks

B is for Bobby, who’s thin as a stork

C is for Camden, who ought to be kicked . . .

She smiled at that: Camden did need be kicked. Lady Gortley had said so the other day at luncheon, whispering it to her husband while young cousin Camden had a screaming tantrum on the floor. Everyone at the table had heard the remark. And somehow the children had heard it too, though they ate in the nursery, in another part of the house entirely.

She moved closer to the window. A breeze was drifting through the open panes. She felt it on her face, felt it stirring the lace at her sleeves, a slow current, heavy with sunlight and the thick scent of apple blossoms. She extended one hand until her fingertips brushed the warmth of the light. Then she stopped, still in the shadows. If the children looked up now, they would not see her. They mustn’t.

She heard one of them call out, a girl’s voice, sharp and prickly as a briar branch. Then the pack moved around the corner of the house. There were more children today, now that the hunting party was here, and all the guests. The song went on, cold and distant now, as if sung in the shadows of a courtyard:

J is for Jamie, alone in the park

K is for Kerstin, who’s good for a lark

L is for Louis, who douses the spark

M is for Misha, who sits in the dark . . .

She stiffened at the sound of her name, then turned her back on the window and felt her way to the other side of her chamber. Her hands brushed the sunlight-warmed smoothness of a tassel, the rich fur of velvet, sleek porcelain, brass, dark wood, growing colder as she sank farther into the room. She sat down in her chair. It creaked inelegantly under her.

It had taken them eight months, then, to realize the cousin in the attic, whom no one spoke of, and whom no one wanted to speak to, was worthy of inclusion in their songs. The children seemed to know everything that went on at Hatfield—they were like a dwarfish, all-knowing jury—but they had never sung of her before. Not until today.

Whenever she went downstairs to join the Gortleys for their family tea (which she did as seldom as possible, because going downstairs felt, to her, akin to drowning), she never once heard the children speak. She could imagine them sitting in their starched collars, eyes grave and full of secrets, but she never heard them whisper or laugh, and there was certainly none of the running and shrill singing she heard now. Sometimes she wondered if the children were not ghosts, conjured up by her own mind, and that if she stumbled into the garden and felt about with her hands she would find no one there, because what child would sing such songs as these?

But they sounded real enough now.

O is for Oscar, who might be a pig,

P is Patrick, who definitely is.

Misha sorted through the names in her head, trying to pin them to the sachets of sounds and smells with which she recognized people. J for Jamie and L for Louis were no doubt two of the guests who had come up for the foxhunts that weekend. She was related to a Jamie, and a Louis, too, but of course, these might be different ones. Kerstin was a housemaid, a loud, jolly girl, from what little Misha knew of her. She liked to sing “I’m the Queen of London-Town” while bustling laundry across the green toward the stone wash-house. Oscar was a stable boy, Patrick a duke. And then there was M. M for Misha, who sits in the dark. They were right about that, the children. She did sit in the dark. She did other things too, but no one knew.

Misha sat very still, her thumb rubbing over a ridge in the armrest. K is for Kerstin, who’s good for a lark.

Misha often wondered whether she would have been like Kerstin if she had been born to a charwoman instead of a lord. Would she have grown up jolly and loud? Would she have been able to see? But what was the use of thinking about it. Misha had been born to a lord, and the lord had died, and then had begun the endless passing about among relatives, from house to house, from London to Oxford to Wiltshire to here, like some sort of odd and awkward present, a lead goose thrust among the china and delicate figurines on a mantel. No one had wanted the great, ungainly girl for long, because she couldn’t sew, that Misha, and she couldn’t sing, and she couldn’t speak interestingly, and she couldn’t see.

She had seen, once. She remembered being small, dancing in a garden much like the children outside were doing now. She remembered white smocks and scratchy stockings, laughing and jeering, and the brilliant green of the grass, so brilliant, it made her eyes sting and water to think of it. And then she remembered cramped rooms and medicine bottles and sickness. They had pressed a poultice over her eyes, soaked in strong herbs to help her sleep. It had burned them. The last thing she recalled seeing was a shape in the cloth, a long, thin tear in the upper right corner through which the light came. And then the light was gone, and there was only pain and darkness . . .

W’s for William, who’s such a great boor

X is for Xavier, who happens to snore

Y is for Ylenia, who snaps like a stick

Z is for Zelda, who drinks like a tick

Misha’s fingers were running over the armrest frantically now. The dinner gong would be ringing soon. That meant going downstairs, drowning, resurfacing stiff and silent in the dining room while the chorus of dinner conversation drew around her like a net, while she listened to the bitter grievances and false friendlinesses whispered across her lap, as if she were deaf as well as blind. She heard every word, of course. She often thought of witty things to say in response, and she waited for other people to say them, but no one did. She could imagine the rows of faces if she tried to, the stunned silence, then the sneers and pitying smirks. It was like a cage almost, the image they had of her, and she could not break out of it for fear of hurting herself. And so she would sit, stiff and hollow, like a doll, but inside, there were colors swirling, and faces like flowers, opening and smiling, and wind and words—

Someone was at the door. Misha’s heart gave a terrible squirm; she struggled up out of her thoughts. She sat very still, listening. She heard a woman’s voice, high and giggly, and the light tap of a slipper. Then the heavy tread and deep voice of a man. A hand was placed on the doorknob.

“It—it is occupied,” she coughed, but the words came out in barely a whisper.

The knob turned. Misha half rose, then scrabbled toward the door, hoping she could lock it in time, or that they would hear her and leave. The latch clicked open. She froze, hunched over, halfway to the door.

She tried to straighten herself, look composed, but it was too late for that. She could feel the two figures in the doorway, watching her.

“Oh!” said a woman’s voice. “Good gracious, we didn’t realize—”

Go away, go away. Misha wanted to sink into the floor, into the dust and beetles between the beams. She heard a nervous titter, heard the woman’s hand on her companion’s arm. “Come along, darling, we’ll find somewhere else . . .”

But they didn’t move, and if Misha’s instincts were not mistaken, the man continued to stare at her, his presence hanging in the doorway, filling it.

“Come on, will you?” the woman said, testily now. Lady Willoughby. That’s who it was. Ginty Willoughby, second cousin once removed.

Silence. Misha felt ill. She heard a sound like a throat clearing, and teeth coming together inside a mouth. Then the door closed abruptly, and the footsteps moved away.

Misha felt her way backward toward her chair and collapsed into it. The visitors had left behind an odious smell, like lavender and tobacco, far too strong. The children outside were not singing anymore. No doubt they had been called in for dinner. It wouldn’t be five minutes before the gong for the grown-ups rang.

She got up and went to the washbasin. Her fingers shook against the porcelain, rattling like bones. She felt drained and tired, as if the mere seconds of facing the strangers had taken the last of her energy.

Stop it, Misha. Stop being so frightened of everything.

But she couldn’t stop. She carried fear with her like a little animal, curled in the nook behind her heart, and it whispered to her: You are weak, you are frightened, and you will never dare do anything at all.

She felt about on the floor for her shoes, which she had kicked off. She went and closed the windows. Far down in the house, the dinner gong sounded. She spent a great deal of time clasping a necklace. Then she clenched her hands at her side, opened the door, and poked her head out, breathing heavily.

The hallway was curiously quiet, as if it were holding its breath. Three stories down, in the entrance hall with its great stone staircase and tapestries, she heard guests arriving, the distant rumble of their voices, but up here there was nothing. Less than nothing: an odd, aching void, as if something had been here, and had been ripped from the air so suddenly it had left a hole.

A floorboard creaked softly somewhere farther on. Misha listened, her heart beating hard and quick, like a stone mallet.

Oh, stop! She set off purposefully up the hall in the direction of the stairs. Seven, eight, nine, she counted, and her hand caught the newel post at the top of the banister. She started down. A sound reached her ears: a soft knocking and the scuff of shoes. Someone else was on the stairs.

She paused, suddenly afraid it was the man and woman again, hanging about for a joke. She took another step down. Her face brushed against something. There was an odd smell in the air, like unwashed skin, and she could sense something in front of her. She was fairly sure it wasn’t a person. It was almost the feeling she got when she was near another human being, but this was more like a weight, something solid, displacing the air. She swept her hand out in an arc. She felt cloth again. And all at once something hot dripped onto her face, and she stumbled forward, and suddenly the cloth was everywhere, tangling with her. Her head knocked into something. She felt skin, strangely heavy and clammy, and a face, upside down. Her fingers wriggled across a mouth, hair hanging down, and Misha’s feet were slapping about as if— No. No, not blood, she was dreaming, there was no one there, there was no sleeping woman hanging before her, and no blood, NO BLOOD.

Something rushed past her. And then she felt a mouth press close to her ear and a thick arm snake around her neck and clamp tight like a noose. A man. He was breathing heavily, gasping, as if he had run a great distance, and his arm went tighter and tighter, and he gasped and breathed, and at last, when Misha thought she was to die too, he said in a rough, country voice that sounded of earth and gravel: “Not a word, old girl, or it’ll be you hanging from the lights, and your guts a-slipperin’ and a-slidin’ on the stairs.”

He let go of her neck. And then she was alone, standing in silence next to the dead woman. It was a full two minutes before she began to scream.

× × ×

Dinner was called off, but the murder had done little to dampen anyone’s appetite, and so all the food was laid out on a buffet in the front hall, and everyone ate there, standing and speaking to one another frantically. Misha was brought into the drawing room, where a police inspector tried to pry words from her head like teeth. She barely spoke. She heard him. She heard all his questions, and she heard the vexation begin to rise in his voice, and she heard Lady Gortley take him to the other end of the room and whisper: “Do be patient, Mr. Bilgeberry. I’m afraid she’s a bit simple, and now with this beastly murder business and her finding poor Lady Willoughby like that . . . Oh, I can’t imagine. Hanging upside down, and the blood just dripping. Thank heavens she’s blind.”

Misha stared out in front of her, into nothing. She held her hands clasped tightly in her lap. It was all she could do not to rub them raw. They said the murderer had being trying to haul Lady Willoughby’s body up into the attic, through the trapdoor above the landing. He had let her fall when Misha had interrupted him, and the body had tangled with the antlers in the chandelier. One of the prongs had driven clean through her leg. A servant had washed the gore off Misha—she had felt the warm water and the rub of the cloth—but somehow it was as if the blood were still there, drying stickily between her fingers.

“Miss Markham?” The inspector was leaning over her again. She could smell his breath, rot and meat and the sherry Lady Gortley had been so liberally offering him, and which he had been accepting gratefully. “We will try again: You were the only one in that level of the house. Your rooms are only a few steps from the stairwell where the woman was savagely attacked with a knife. Surely you must have heard something!”

Misha turned her head. She imagined how the inspector must look with that voice and that meaty, rotten breath. No doubt he was a constable, hurried away from his dinner in the village, not a real inspector at all. She imagined spectacles and a brown tartan waistcoat and a great walrus mustache, someone with a family and a cottage, someone who would find this all rather thrilling and flattering, and who really had no idea what he was doing.

“I heard nothing,” she said, and the smell of the blood and the lavender and the tobacco flooded over her so that she thought she might be sick in the middle of the drawing room. Not a word, old girl, or it’ll be you hanging from the lights. “I left my room to go to dinner. And then I was on the stairs, and . . .”

“And what?”

“And there was the body.” Her fingers tightened in her lap. She felt like running. If she could get away from that house in its little bowl of gardens and walls, away from the narrow corridors and the guests, all the J’s and the L’s, the grand and prideful people, maybe she could be happy. Maybe she could burst her cage and brush the splinters from her hair, and never be afraid again.

She sensed the inspector leaning back. “Very well,” he said, frostily now, and perhaps a little bit petulantly. She was ruining this for him. “We will speak again in the morning. Miss Markham, if any new scrap of information should surface in your mind, we would be very thankful if you would share it with us.” His tone shifted abruptly, all posturing and humble subservience now. “Lady Gortley, if it isn’t too much trouble, we will question the others now. And you’ll make sure, won’t you, that all the servants are accounted for, and that no one should leave the house or grounds, at all? Yes. Not under any circumstances.”

× × ×

After the interview, Lady Gortley positioned Misha in a chair in the hallway and left her to speak with Mr. Hudson, the butler. It was then that they descended on Misha. They were not cautious or polite. They buzzed toward her like a cloud of mosquitoes, and they wanted to know everything, gory details, things not even the inspector had asked.

“Were you quite covered in blood? Head to toe?” Minerva Boulstridge. Great-aunt.

“Was Lady Willoughby, well—I heard she was wearing all her jewels, every last ring and bauble, and you know that means she was planning to elope.” Emily Howsham. No relation. Guest.

“What if the blind one did it herself?” Jamie Thorpe. Cousin. Up from London.

She recognized many of the peripheral voices too, all of them elegant, shiny like boot-black, and smooth as cream: Lady Dartmouth, whispering behind her fan; Lord Bellham, Duke of Westerdown, also known as Patrick, Definitely a Pig. She could feel their eyes boring into her, pinning her to the chair. Some hung back, what they thought was a safe distance, but she heard them too:

“To think, it was someone in the house. Perhaps one of us. And she can’t even tell us who!”

“Horace, look at her nose.”

“I see it, I see. She’s like an ogress.”

“There are convents for girls like her.”

“And prisons.” Somone laughed.

Misha let their words flow over her, and she retreated from them, surrounding herself in kinder thoughts, pictures of things half remembered from childhood, teapots and clocks, and her characters and friends that she kept in her head, beautiful, kind people with golden hair and rosy cheeks. And all at once, someone snatched her firmly by the arm and dragged her up. She struggled at first, shocked. She heard a rough voice nearby, and was sure it was the murderer come to finish her off. But then she heard the heavy shoes, and a brisk girl’s voice saying: “Sorry, ma’ams, sirs, I was told to take her up, she’s quite disturbed, mistress’s orders, come along now, Miss Misha.”

With that, Misha was dragged from the crowd of spectators and bundled quickly toward the baize servants’ door, and Kerstin was muttering, “Wicked folk. Wicked, wicked people.”

× × ×

Fear made Misha raw and empty, scratched her insides to ribbons, as Kerstin helped her up the stairs to the fourth floor. They were going up by the back way, as the front stairs were still occupied by the murder scene. No doubt the landing was strewn with white sheets and shattered flashbulbs, and crawling with policemen like bluebottle flies.

The murderer knew who she was, and yet Misha knew nothing. Nothing except that he smelled of lavender and tobacco and spoke in a strange country voice, and those were things easily falsified. If he decided to kill her, no one could stop him. And if he decided to kill someone else—

“Miss?” Kerstin said, and Misha flinched. Kerstin had never spoken to her directly before, not even when bringing up the breakfast tray, or passing her in the hall. “Miss,” Kerstin said again, and she sounded a little breathless, as if she had gathered up all her courage and now she was a steam engine, barreling unstoppably forward. “I’m sorry for all them down there. I just want you to know that I saw someone murdered once, and it weren’t a pretty sight, nor sound, and I know— Well, I just know.”

Misha’s face felt like a mask, cotton skin on porcelain bones, but underneath she had begun to spin. It was strange, what words could do. No one had spoken to her like that since she was a child, like she was a real person, a real girl, and not just a walking list of ailments and deficits.

She didn’t answer at first. Kerstin fell silent, as if worried she had spoken out of turn.

“You saw a murder?” Misha said softly, at last. “In the village?”

“No. In Leeds, where I grew up.” Kerstin’s voice turned eager, and a shade dramatic. “It was a dreadful thing. Guts everywhere, like all that skin a person has is just wrapping, and when it pops you splatter everywhere. And I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t seen it. You know, it’s not really the sight that sticks with me. It’s the feeling. I got there right after it happened, and the feeling in the air, like something unnatural horrid had been done that couldn’t ever be taken back, like something had left and when it went, it tore a hole right through everything.” Kerstin’s voice softened suddenly, the bravado gone. “It was dreadful.”

Misha wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted to say: “That is what I thought. That is what I felt,” but she didn’t. She climbed the stairs next to the servant girl in silence, feeling strangely light.

“You know, they don’t talk about you much, the Gortleys,” Kerstin said, at the third-story landing. “Or the servants. You’re like a character in a novel. Rather like a secret.”

That sounded nice. Being a secret. “It’s not like that at all,” Misha said. “It’s miserable here.”

“Isn’t it everywhere,” Kerstin said matter-of-factly.

“You’re not miserable. I hear you singing. When you’re taking out the washing. I’m the Queen of London-Town. You don’t sound miserable at all.”

“Don’t I? Oh. Well, better singing than crying. Anyway, I don’t want to be a servant forever. One day I’ll get away from here. I’ll be an actress or a circus performer. I’ll shoot pistols and whisper to snakes.”

Kerstin sounded dreamy, and Misha fell into the dream, thinking of bright lights strung across a tent, sawdust kicked into clouds, jangling music drifting from an organ grinder’s box. She wanted to pursue the subject, but they were walking down the corridor now, and Kerstin was speaking of murder again. “Tomorrow it’ll be a bit fresher, I think. Clearer in your head, and less like an awful nightmare. It was with me. D’you have any idea who might have done it?”

“No. There are thirty guests in the house at least, and just as many visiting servants.”

“But did you notice anything? Perhaps a—?”

A floorboard creaked, footsteps approached, and suddenly Misha was surrounded by the smell of tobacco and lavender. Someone passed behind them in the corridor.

Misha stopped, rooted to the floor. Kerstin tried to keep going, but Misha’s muscles were locked, her shoulders stiff and high.

“Miss?” Kerstin’s fingers squeezed Misha’s arm encouragingly. “Miss, go on?”

Misha turned, looking back down the corridor. Someone was standing there. She could feel him. She could feel eyes on her, watching, and through the fog of her vision, she could see a shape, tall and dark, facing her through the swirling gray. She wanted to scream, but the only sound that came from her was a hissing, high-pitched whine. Her hands went tight around Kerstin’s arm. She wanted to ask who it was, who was standing there at the end of the passage. Then Kerstin opened the door to Misha’s room and pulled her in, hurrying to fold down the bedspread and plump up the pillows.

“Kerstin?” Misha whispered. But by then Kerstin was gone, and the fear returned, creeping around the edges of the door, red and murky.

× × ×

Misha slept fitfully that night, her sheets twisted around her legs. She had wedged the door shut with a chair and closed all the windows, but it was summer and the night was hot. The temperature seemed to have seeped into the velvet drapes and the wood and the bric-a-brac, and was now releasing itself in puffs of steam, slicking her forehead and dampening her pillow. She could not close her eyes. She felt she could still smell the thick cologne, feel the woman’s skirts hanging down from the ceiling, the blood dripping, and the cold arm . . . Every shifting in the house, every scuttle of a rat under the floorboards, sent her skin rising into gooseflesh.

There in the dark, she wondered why the man had not killed her when she had stumbled across Lady Willoughby’s body on the stairs. She had practically walked into the murder as it was being committed, and she had witnessed his presence, and surely it would not have been such a great risk to add a blind girl to the scene. But Misha knew why, even if she wished she didn’t: He had not killed her because he thought she was not a threat. He thought he could whisper a few horrid words into her ear and it would be enough to frighten her into silence. It had been enough, almost. She was frightened, a part of her, but another part was forming too, deep in her chest, and shaping into an angry, spiky little burr, and that part wanted to catch him, wanted to grab him by the hair of his wicked head and drag him to justice. He was still in the house, one of the guests, or more likely one of the guests’ servants, judging by his rough voice. And either she caught him, or she waited in fear and silence while he did whatever he pleased and perhaps got away with it.

No, she could not allow that. She was done sitting quietly in her attic room. He would come to regret having spared her.

× × ×

When morning came, it was a sick sort of relief. Misha stumbled from her bed and shuffled about for her clothing. Kerstin came up several minutes later with the breakfast tray. No sooner was she in than Misha snatched her arm and pulled her into the middle of the room.

“Kerstin, you’ve got to listen. Is the door closed? Was anyone in the hall?”

“Miss, please, I’ve got a load of work to do—” Kerstin started, but Misha shook her. She listened for a second, and when she heard no sound, either from the garden or the house, she went on:

“I know who did it. I know who killed Lady Willoughby. At least, I know a little. I know he smells like lavender and tobacco, and I can see him somewhat, like a dark shape in my eye. I know that sounds mad, but it’s more than anyone else knows, and we’ve got to do something or he might kill me. He might kill you, Kerstin. Did you see the man that passed us in the hall last night?”

“Do you mean, when you had that little fit and fairly well clawed my arm off? No. I was distracted.”

“Oh. Well, that was him. That was the murderer, and you’ve got to help me catch him. He sounded like a country man, a Yorkshire man perhaps, though come to think of it, he may have put that accent on. He didn’t smell like a country man. He smelled like lavender and tobacco. Do any of the servants smell like lavender and tobacco? And if they don’t, I need you to go through all the men’s guest rooms and find a cologne that does. Tobacco and lavender, all right? Can you do that?”

Misha had barely breathed at all during the rush of words, and now that she did, she realized that Kerstin was probably staring at her as if she were the maddest creature alive. “Can you do that?” she said again, somewhat suspiciously this time.

Kerstin did not answer at once. Then, quietly, and a little awed, she said: “We passed him? We passed by the very murderer?”

“Yes. And he came into my room right before he did it. He was right there in the doorway with Lady Willoughby.”

Suddenly Kerstin tore away from Misha, and she heard her go to the window and pause there. “Oy!” she shouted down at someone. “You shouldn’t be out there! Back inside, the lot of you!” She slammed the panes closed and came back to Misha. When she spoke again her voice was breathless and a little bit excited. “He was right there? Oh, lawks, the murderer, right there with you . . .”

Misha was about to launch into another plea, when Kerstin said: “I’ll help you. I don’t believe that you can see him, not unless you aren’t blind as a bat as we’ve always supposed, but I know you were there, and so I’ll look. You, miss, should go downstairs and be with the Gortleys and not by yourself.”

“No, I can’t, I—”

“Then come to the kitchens. Wait there. At least there’ll be folk around to watch you. I won’t be able to tell you right away, but I’ll do my best. Now come on, or Cook will have my head for chicken dinner.”

Misha was not convinced she wanted to be in kitchens either, not until she was sure the murderer was not one of the staff, but at least she would not be alone there, and so they both ran from the room, down the back stairs and into the servants’ wing. Misha hung back while Kerstin whispered to the cook and the other maids that they would have a guest. A hard wooden chair was brought out for Misha, and she sat down. She listened carefully for a rough voice like gravel and earth, for the dark spike in the corner of her eye that would tell her the murderer was here, but he was not. Misha sat very still on her chair and listened to the bustle swilling around her, the snap of aprons, the crackle of the stoves, the clang of pans, the whispers.

The servants tried to be quiet at first. Even the head cook, the queen of the lower levels second only to the butler and the housekeeper, lowered her voice while giving orders. But after a while of Misha sitting like a statue they seemed to forget about her, and the regular noises of the kitchen returned as loud as ever. She heard their gossip like a constant newspaper reading: The servants’ quarters had been searched again; Mr. Hudson, the butler, was disgusted, and said that if it was one of his servants who was the murderer, he would break the perpetrator’s neck himself and spare the cost of rope; the entire house was being searched; the old governess, Essa Beet, just down the hall from Misha, was missing from her room, and a side table was knocked over as if there had been a struggle, and no one had seen her in hours; guests were wailing desperately about their wish to leave the wretched place; and Lady Gortley did nothing to dissuade them, because if Miss Beet’s body was found, Lady Gortley would be ready to go as well.

× × ×

Kerstin did not come back to the servants’ hall for many hours, or if she did, she had no time to speak. Eventually it was teatime and Misha was sent away by the cook to have tea with her own people. She did not tell Cook that she didn’t have people, that the Gortleys were no more her own sort than the servants. She came into the parlor just as Lady Gortley was arriving, conversing loudly with a guest:

“. . . and what is that lovely scent I’m smelling everywhere?” Lady Gortley was saying. “Such a rich accord. Is it Guerlain?”

“Oh, it’s not Guerlain. I don’t know where it’s from. All the men found a bottle in their rooms, tiny little ampoules with lovely notes. I was sure you had done it as a welcome gift!”

“Darling, no, I couldn’t possibly afford it. The taxes, you know. They’ll be the death of us. But it is a strong scent, isn’t it? Like tobacco and lavender.”

Misha’s heart sank into her shoes. She walked to one of the sofas, counting the steps, sat down, and waited as others arrived. Someone arranged herself to her left and began eating daintily. A gentleman sat to her right; the Earl of Prylle, judging by the sound of his bronchitis. The room filled quickly, bodies jamming the space. And everywhere, completely drowning the smell of black tea and scones and finger sandwiches, was the scent of the murderer, rolling from every soul, like purple smoke.

× × ×

There was one more grand dinner before the end of the hunt. None of the guests were allowed to leave, even the important ones, because Lady Willoughby was the daughter of a councilman, and that made her death much more problematic than it might have been otherwise. Most of the guests huddled together in the drawing room or billiard room, nursing cups of strong drink and murmuring to one another. The brave ones helped in the search for Essa Beet and the murderer, and the less brave spoke fervently of planning to do so. No progress was made on either front.

And so the dinner went on as planned. Misha had taken a new room, a small cupboard of a place lower down in the house, and had told Kerstin not to tell anyone, not even the servants. That morning, as she climbed the stairs on her way back from her bath, she passed an open window. She heard the children again, singing:

F is for Frederick, who laughs like a hog

G is for Ginty, who died like a dog

Misha shivered and hurried on, the bathwater suddenly cold on her skin. She dressed quickly and started down toward the servants’ quarters.

“Misha! Oh, there you are.” It was Kerstin, stopping her on the stairs. “You heard about the perfume. I don’t know, I don’t know how, but he knew somehow that we knew, and all the ampoules from the silver cabinet had been stolen and an eye-dropper and fourteen pieces of card-paper, and what’s the first thing you do when you have a new perfume, you try it, of course, and now—”

“Kerstin, it’s all right. We’ll catch him another way. There’s a dinner tonight. He’s not one of the servants. He gave himself away with the scent. If he were a servant, he would have given the scent to the servants, but he knows where I’ll be and he wants to throw me off. He made a mistake there. He thought I knew more than I did. I’m going to find a way to get near him tonight, and then I’m going to mark him.”

“I told you I didn’t believe that nonsense about you being able to see him.” They began clattering down toward the kitchens. “You can’t know—”

“I do know. It’s like—it’s like a sickness in the air whenever he’s close. You don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. Now. I’ll need a bit of red paint and a letter stamp, or something similar, and then I’m going to have to distract him at dinner tonight and mark his suit or his hand, and then I’ll need you again, Kerstin. I’ll need you to tell me who it is. When we have that, I’ll go the police, tell them the entire story, have them follow him about incognito until they’ve got something to arrest him for. It shouldn’t take long. D’you have a stamp?”

“Can’t you just point him out to me, and I’ll tell you who he is?”

“You’re a housemaid, Kerstin! Of course I would if you could get into the dining room, but what’ll Mrs. Hawksmith say if she hears you were in with the guests during dinner!”

“She’ll say, ‘You’re sacked,’ and that’ll be that.”

“Precisely. So. A stamp. Do you have one?”

It took Kerstin some time to catch up with Misha’s thought processes, but when she did, she said: “Of course I don’t have a stamp!” She paused and perhaps she winked, but Misha couldn’t see it, so at last Kerstin squeezed her fingers and said: “But I can fetch one. I’ll have to sneak into Mr. Hudson’s pantry. He’s busy enough right now. It shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll meet you down in the scullery and slip it to you. I’m not sure this will work one bit, but . . .”

But she did it anyway. They found each other an hour later and Kerstin passed her a metal-something and a tiny envelope of red stamping ink, slipping it behind her back as they passed each other, right under Mr. Hudson’s nose, as sly as two cats. They agreed that Misha would try to mark his shirt, and then they would meet early the next morning at the latest, and search for the marked clothing among the washing. With that they parted ways, and Misha dressed herself for dinner and crept down to the dining room.

You should have killed me when you had the chance, Misha thought, and she smiled bitterly and trudged into the whirl of sound and bodies.

× × ×

The dinner was eight courses—soup, jellied salads, fish, fowl, red meat, sorbet, cheese, and a sweet, and the chatter was slow and dull and everyone spoke a little softer, displaying the usual symptoms of worry and righteous anger and grief, though none were quite so sincerely expressed as the worry. The inspector had been allowed to eat with them, and sat drinking up the admiration of the highborn guests like a sponge. Misha knew the murderer was at the table too. When she turned her face one-quarter of an inch to the left, she could see him, far down at the other end, his form like a flickering blot of ink, like his very essence was a blight in the room. She took care not to stare in that direction, but even so she felt him, the weight of his eyes on her, like a dead-cold stone. She did not hear his voice. Or perhaps she did, but she could not separate it from all the other shoe-black voices slipping and hissing and sliding into her ears, smooth as eels.

What did the others see, she wondered. No doubt a suave and smiling shell. Perhaps he was speaking to them, condoling with them, expressing little tuts of outrage over the monster who had hung Lady Willoughby by her legs from the chandelier. And they believed him, simply because he was polite and rich, like them. And suddenly Misha wished everyone were blind, every single person at that long table with its clinking silver and hissing lamps. Because what good did seeing things do, really? For all their squinting, peering eyes, they did not know who was good and who was wicked, who was strong and who was cowardly, who was murdering in their house, and who was trying to save their lives. Eyes were tricks in bone boxes, but everyone believed them.

Misha tried to eat, poking her fork idly about her plate. There wouldn’t be much time left. The murderer knew of the incriminating perfume. He knew she was following him, and if he knew that, he would not let her go on with it. He would kill her too. Two murders in one house—three, if Miss Beet was not found soon—was a dreadful number, but he felt secure, no doubt, invisible. He thought he was safe.

You aren’t safe, Misha thought, crushing her napkin in her lap. I see you. And you think you see me, but I’m not what you see, and I’m not what you think.

M is for Misha, who sits in the dark, the children had sung. They could change that now: M is for Misha, who faced the dark and vanquished it. M is for Misha, who acted, who caught a murderer and rescued a houseful of aristocrats. They would have to work on the rhyming, but it sounded infinitely better to her already.

× × ×

After the dinner came the dancing, and that was when Misha saw her chance and took it. The string quartet (farmers from the manor, buttoned tightly into fine livery like sausages in skins, with lace at their throats so that none of the guests would know) began to tune their instruments. The first piece started, a slow, rather blue-sounding waltz.

Misha stood up and tapped her way toward the dancers. She could feel eyes following her, appraising her dress, her walk, her poise or lack thereof. They don’t know. They don’t know who you are, and so they don’t matter. She saw the shadow of the murderer out of the corner of her eye, but she did not go to him. She went to the center of the floor, held out her hand, and said, “Who will dance with me?” as clearly and loudly as she could.

She felt sure she heard the first violin slip a note when she spoke, but she did not flinch. She stood and waited, and let the snickering wash over her. And then she felt a wrinkled hand in hers and an elderly gentleman said, “My dear? Will you permit me?”

His voice was kind enough, but she could hear the wink in it, spoken as much to the audience as to her. She took his hand, and they began to dance. Or he did. She walked, clumsily, stepping here and there and swishing her skirt. The tittering became louder. Her ears began to burn. They’re laughing at you, her mind told her. They think you’re a mad, foolish girl. And as much as she did not want it to, it stung her. She danced with the elderly gentleman for several minutes, and then, when she felt the attention begin to shift away, she let herself be passed to another fellow, and then a third, moving closer and closer to the shadow man. She swooped past him, so near she could have reached out and touched him. A new song began, a sharp, scratching three-step in minor. And then she was in his arms.

He did not smell like lavender and tobacco anymore. That scent had been scrubbed off him. He smelled of soap now, milky and nondescript. He took her hand, but he did not speak a word, and his darkness was right in front of her, pulsing, swelling like an inky thundercloud. She felt cold suddenly, terrified. They danced up the floor, down. She dropped one arm for a moment, let the red stamp slip down her sleeve and into her hand. She fingered it, felt the squelch of the ink, the prongs of the letter:

M.

M for Misha.

M for murderer.

It would stain. It would blot his collar and then it would drip over his skin, red as the blood on the staircase. She moved closer to him, close against his chest, and his darkness seemed to be flooding over her, suffocating her. He whispered something in her ear. And then she pretended to trip, and caught him around the neck, pressing the stamp hard into the back of his collar. But she was not quick enough. There was too much ink. She felt it dripping, splattering over his neck. He jerked back with an oath. And before she even realized what was happening he lifted his hand and struck her hard across the face.

The orchestra screeched to a halt. The dancers stopped, and a whisper spread through them. Misha stumbled, her eyes wide, her hand to her burning cheek. She did not cry out. She smelled the tobacco and lavender closing over her as arms took her, and his darkness was drawn away. But it was stronger now than ever, that darkness, a black flame, fuming and roiling against the gray plain of her sight.

× × ×

“Misha?” Kerstin’s face was inches from her own, her breath coming in gasps. “Misha, wake up! Wake up, hurry!”

Misha sat up with a start, her head still heavy with sleep. Her face was aching, and she could feel the purple bruise, tender under her eye. “Kerstin? Did you find it? I got red ink all over his jacket and his face, and I stamped his shirt collar, did you see who it was?”

Kerstin pulled her out of the bed and began practically ramming clothes down over her head. “I was in the kitchens until midnight, silly, of course I didn’t.”

“And no one said anything?” Misha pulled away. She’d had a suspicion of what the reaction might be. The murderer could have said anything he wanted while Misha was out, that she had been playing wicked pranks on unsuspecting gentlemen, that she deserved the slap, like an unruly child. The others would nod their heads and agree because she was not quite all there in the head, that Miss Markham, the typhoid you know, it didn’t only take her eyes. And maybe it had been stupid to stain his clothes. All it proved was that she couldn’t be trusted, that she wasn’t sane . . .

But Kerstin believed her. She prodded Misha from the room, her voice low and excited. “We’ve almost got him now. And when the inspectors are awake, I’ll back you up. I’ll say I smelled the scent too, and that it’s mighty suspicious giving everyone the same perfume as you, when that’s the only thing the blind girl knew you by. We’ll get him.”

They ran together down the stairs and through the herb garden, starting across the green. The sun had not yet risen. Misha felt the air, chilly and brisk, and the wet grass soaking her skirt. She heard Kerstin unlock a rough old door. Then they were inside the echoing cool of the wash-house, and Kerstin was hurrying about.

“The valets will have collected all the shirts the gentlemen wore last night. They won’t all be laundered yet, but Moll will have gotten a head start yesterday.” Misha heard Kerstin flipping through the racks of hangers, the whisper of fabrics. “But she won’t have gotten that stain out, poor girl. We’ll have to apologize afterward. Oh, I’m the queen of London-Town,” she began to sing softly. “The shirttails’ll all have tags on them. Room and name, or at least the valet’s name. And even if he was clever and switched the tags, the shirt will have a monogram on it. We’ll know for sure.”

Kerstin’s voice was electric. Misha wanted to join in somehow, but there was nothing she could do there, and so she said: “Hurry! I don’t know if anyone saw us, but we mustn’t be caught, not out here—”

She heard footsteps, little feet hissing through the grass. The titter of voices.

“Kerstin?” she said through her teeth.

“What?” Kerstin practically screeched over her shoulder, and then she came and stood by Misha, and let out a little gasp.

The children were there. Misha couldn’t see them, but she felt them, a coiled, watchful presence. They were simply standing, staring.

“What are you all up so early for?” Kerstin said after a moment, her voice snappish. They did not answer. Misha’s hand dug into the fabric of her dress. She tried to say something too, tried to tell them that they needed to be inside, and they needed to be careful, when all at once she heard a whistle, and they were rushing away through the grasses, and gone as quickly as they had come.

Kerstin made a grunting noise and turned back into the wash-house. “I’m just about through with those little devils,” she muttered. The sliding ring of hangers resumed.

A minute passed with no results. “How much longer?” Misha cried, her eyes straining, watchful for a shadow, a tall, dark shape.

“There are a lot of shirts, all right?” Kerstin said. “And quite a handful look like someone took red ink to them. Are you sure you didn’t splatter the entire room?”

Misha waved her hand back desperately, silencing Kerstin. Her neck craned. She thought about running, but it was too late now. There, moving along through the whiteness toward her, was the murderer.

“Get . . . back,” Misha whispered, without moving her mouth. “Hide!”

She heard footsteps retreating into the wash-house, a quiet exclamation. Misha backed into the room, her hands sliding over the walls, the equipment, searching for something, anything to use as a weapon. She turned her head, slowly. He was standing in the doorway, a pillar of darkness, darker than the pre-dawn outside, darker than the fog of her vision. He was standing there, watching her. She went so, so still, but the stillness was all he needed and he took a step toward her. She made one last desperate attempt for a weapon, but her fingers closed on air. Her hands were empty.

“Good morning,” he said, and it was his real voice now, no more rough country tones, no more gravel and earth. She didn’t move. Not a muscle. Not an eyelid. Outside, the children were singing again:

J is for Jamie, alone in the park

K is for Kerstin, who’s good for a lark

“You tried, old girl. You did. But perhaps you should have left well enough alone. Perhaps you should have been grateful for your spared life and run away with it. You’ll join the others now. Essa Beet and Ginty Willoughby.”

L is for Louis, who douses the spark

M is for Misha, who squirms in the dark

It was too late now, too late to tell anyone, too late to scream. She knew who it was: Cousin Jamie from London. She remembered him from long ago, a tall pale boy with a sharp face. He had been in the garden, in that childhood memory of the white smocks and the painfully green grass. Ginty Willoughby was there, ten years old, and sallow from influenza, and several other children too. And Essa Beet, wizened as ever, had been meant to watch them, but she had fallen asleep against the roots of an apple tree. Misha remembered a prank being played, how Jamie had rallied the children, how he’d had them carry old Essa Beet softly and silently to the old barn as she slept. How Jamie had tied her wrists and held bees to her skin by their wings. Essa Beet woke up when they stung her. She had screamed. Misha had begun to cry. Later, Jamie had been beaten for it. Lady Thorpe had wept and Lord Thorpe had threatened to send him to India, and yet Misha remembered watching Jamie during all this, standing like a pallid spike in his dark suit, tall and nervous and smug. He had not looked sorry. He had simply been interrupted.

His hand was growing tighter and tighter around Misha’s own, and she could feel the sweat spring up in his palm like cold needles––

She stood bolt upright. In one swift motion she tore her hands from his and leaped toward the door, or what she thought was the door, but the man caught her hair and jerked her back savagely. She swung about, pummeling his face. He caught her fingers a second time, and they squeezed in his hands like wet twigs until she thought they would break. She tried to scream. His hand clamped over her mouth.

“Now, now,” he said, and his voice was maddeningly patient, a gentle scold. “Quietly. We wouldn’t want to frighten the children.” And then he dragged her to the door and closed it, and the sound of its latch was like an anvil strike.

“How did you know?” she gasped, struggling against his grip. “How did you— ? Kerstin didn’t tell you, she never would have!”

“Oh, Kerstin didn’t say a word. She is a good and loyal girl. And no one else knew. But the children did. The children know everything.”

Misha tried to scream again, but her throat would not allow it, and her voice box let out nothing but a dry crackle. Get away, Kerstin, she thought desperately. Get out, get out, don’t let him find you!

“So,” the man went on, and his breathing was coming quick again. He swallowed thickly. “Let’s have some fun, shall we?” And here she heard the snick of a blade being drawn from its sheath.

Misha screamed into his palm, flailed wildly, but he only clamped down harder until her jaws ached. She felt cold metal on her neck. Somewhere out in the gardens the children shrieked with laughter.

And then, behind them, there came the rattle of hangers parting and the pounding of shoes, and something struck Jamie with a metallic thunk so heavily, Misha felt it in her own bones.

“Kerstin?” Misha wriggled out from behind the hand. The shuddering thunk came again, again, whizzing through the air, and Misha knew it was Kerstin, wielding a pressing-iron the size of a birdhouse. She smashed it into the shadow’s head. Misha heard the knife skittering out of his hand. He collapsed, but in an instant he was up again, and she saw his darkness coming at Kerstin, his shoulders hunched. Misha launched herself from the floor, following the sound of his blade as it slid across the boards. Her hand found it. She flew at the dark shape.

“Help us!” Misha screamed. “Help us, someone, he’s killing us!” But he wasn’t. They were killing him, and he was curling on the ground beneath their blows, and Kerstin had the knife now, and Misha’s fingers were over the man’s mouth, and she felt a liquid sliding between them, hot as the blood pooling on the stairs . . .

When the inspector woke up, he would see the dots—a gentleman, brutally murdered, an orphan recluse, a lowly country maid of questionable reputation. He would not see the lines, though, that connected them, or the spaces between, where the truth lay. Perhaps Misha and Kerstin would be brought to an insane asylum for deranged females. Perhaps they would be hanged. But not then. Not that day. When the deed was done, and Jamie no longer moved, they took each other’s hands and ran from the wash-house and the gardens, away into the morning sunlight. Behind them the children began to sing again, a new song, and a dark one:

J is for Jamie, who gave us quince pies

K is for Kerstin, who stabbed out his eyes

L is for laughter that flew through the green

M is for Misha, who stifled his screams . . .