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Rather than being offended, Victor gave me a rueful smile. “That was playing. We were children. And who could want to harm Justine? You told me yourself she is an angel on earth. Does she have any enemies?”
“No! None. The only person who bore her ill will was her own mother, a wicked harpy of a woman who died last week.”
“Well, that certainly removes suspicion from her, then.”
“Victor!” I snapped.
He looked mildly abashed. “I am sorry. I know it is a terrible time. But I cannot deny I am happy to be reunited with you. Even under such circumstances.”
I sighed and closed my eyes again, bringing his hand to my lips and kissing his palm. “There is…something I have not told you.”
“What?”
“In Ingolstadt. I visited some addresses I found in your—” I caught myself. I had pretended I had seen nothing of his laboratory. Hopefully he had been so delirious at the time, he would believe my next lie. “I found on a paper on your table. One of the addresses was a charnel house. The man there—”
“Dear God, you went there?” Victor finally sounded horrified. “Why would you do that?”
“He was awful! And he said you owe him money. He tried to grab me. I stabbed his wrist with my hatpin. Is it possible he followed me here, saw the golden necklace on William, and—”
Victor interrupted. “He was still in Ingolstadt when I left.”
“How can you be sure?”
Victor leaned over me, peeling back my eyelids to examine my eyes. “Your pupils are returning to normal. That is good. I know he was there because he was part of the debts I had to settle. I told you as much before you left. So he was not here, and I do not owe him anything.”
I did not know whether to be relieved that I had not drawn the murderer here, or upset that I could not produce a suspect other than Justine.
Victor put his finger on my chin, tilting my head down so he could check the wound. “Now, tell me what happened in the forest. Why were you out there? What caused your fall?”
I sighed, wishing I were still asleep. “I ran out because I was upset with your father and Ernest for not defending Justine. And I did not want to mention the charnel house man as a suspect until I had spoken with you about him.”
“I am glad you waited. It would only have distracted from the investigation.”
I nodded, then instantly regretted the motion. Sparks danced in my vision, reminding me of the lightning. “I did not mean to stay out there. But I fell asleep, and when I awoke, the storm was in full force. I was running home when I saw someone. Some…thing.”
His hand twitched, and I opened my eyes to see him staring at me with wide-eyed intensity. “What did you see?”
“You will think me mad.”
“I have known madness, Elizabeth. I see none of it in you. Tell me.”
“I saw a monster. Like a man in form and shape, but no man created by God. It was as though a child had crafted a figure out of clay—disproportionate, too large, unnatural in both shape and movement. I cannot describe it except to say it was wrong. And I do not believe it is the first time I have seen it.”
“A monster,” he repeated. He spoke slowly, his words perfectly even, like the ticking of a clock. “You hit your head very hard.”
I scowled at him. “After I saw it! And now I am certain I saw it watching me in Ingolstadt, and again on the journey home.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I thought it a dream.” If the charnel house man had never been here, then it was some other presence I felt, some other nagging sense of having been watched since Ingolstadt.
“Does it not make more sense that it is still a dream? A product of your injury and your extreme upset? Maybe inspired by something you might have seen—an image? Or a nightmare?” He spoke carefully. He was holding something back from me. I could see it in the way he seemed to look everywhere but into my eyes.
“I am not the one who falls delirious into fevers! I have never dreamed anything like this. How would I have even conjured such a…” I paused. I had not had time to connect the two, but now that I could separate myself from the sheer panic and terror of being in front of the thing, I realized I had seen something like it before.
A drawing.
In Victor’s notebook.
