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I sat up in shock at being spoken to. I did know her face after all, but in the bleak haze of the asylum it took me a few moments to process it.
“Mary?” I asked, incredulous.
She sat, tugging off her white nurse’s hat and setting it on the bed next to me. “You have been a difficult girl to track down.”
“How long have you worked here?” My mind spun, still unable to process the appearance of someone from my old life, here, in my new hell.
“I do not work here, silly thing. I tried to get permission to speak with you, but they would not allow it. So I stole their laundry instead. It is hard to get out of this asylum, but decidedly easy to get in.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So easy, I did it while sleeping.”
“I preferred a method that would allow me to leave when I was finished.” She frowned, studying my face. I was suddenly conscious of how I must look. My hand darted to my hair to smooth it down, but she shook her head. “I am sorry,” she said, “for what has been done to you. I suspected that you were Victor’s accomplice, but now I think you are yet another of his victims.”
I leaned forward, grasping her arms. Too hard, I was sure, but I could not stop myself. “You know about Victor? About what he has done?”
“About his murders? Oh, yes. I have figured it all out.”
“Have you seen the monster?”
Mary frowned at me, and I instantly regretted my words. She would think me truly insane and stop talking to me!
But she continued. “After you left, I did not hear from my uncle. It worried me. One day a fisherman had been dragging the river with nets and pulled up a number of bodies. Seized with a premonition of dread, I went to the charnel house, where they were being kept until someone could determine where they had all come from.”
“Did you meet that horrible man? The one who looks like a weasel?”
She shook her head. “No. They said the man who ran it had disappeared not long after you left. I went to see the bodies, but I had been misled. It was not bodies so much as it was parts of bodies. Arms. Legs. Torsos. One body had the head and torso intact. Even its jacket was still in place. The face had been ravaged by its time in the river, bloated and picked at, unrecognizable and so horrible I will never forget it. But I knew the jacket. I reached inside and withdrew a tiny gold-filigreed book of scripture that my uncle always kept. The pages that he loved had dissolved in the water, leaving only the empty shell of it.”
She paused, looking haunted. “The empty shell of the book, the empty shell of my uncle. It was him.”
Mary stood, pacing the tiny room. “They would have assumed the parts were other bodies that had been decomposed until they came apart in the water. But my uncle’s condition prompted them to look closer. Because above where his ravaged face should have been, the top of his skull had been neatly, surgically sawed off.”
She finally stopped, looking at me with her chin raised. “They found all the bodies downriver from Victor’s residence, which had a chute running directly from the second story to the river. I know he is well connected, and I know how precarious my own situation is as a single woman. I already cannot collect on what is owed my uncle because men simply refuse to see me. If I were to accuse Victor of murder, I would lose any credibility left to me through my uncle’s name. So I cannot go after Victor without risking all I have left. That is why I looked for you. It was not easy. But I was determined. You know more than you had ever said.” Her lips twisted wryly. “And your presence here confirms it. So please, I beg of you. Tell me the truth. Tell me all of it.”
I stood, taking her hands in mine. Her pretty face was braced against pain, and there was a determined set to her jaw. This new revelation made me sad for her. It also forced me to revise what I had assumed yet again. How many times would I be wrong about Victor’s activities and motivations? I had not known, had never dared to suspect he had killed before William and Justine. I assumed his murders had started with them. My old reflex of turning away from the worst of him had not been abandoned, apparently.
But of course Victor would want only the best materials. Of course he would not be satisfied with flesh long dead. He had moved from the graveyard to the charnel house to picking his own supplies.
No wonder Frau Gottschalk had locked the doors so insistently. No wonder rumors of what happened if you were out at night alone plagued the city. There had, in fact, been a monster in Ingolstadt.
Henry, I remembered with a sharp stab of panic. But Victor had told me Henry was still alive. And he had not been lying, had had no need to lie after confessing to the murders of his brother and my Justine. I had not failed Henry, then. Perhaps through my conniving unkindness, I had saved him alone of those I loved!
I wiped beneath my eyes, startled to find my face wet with tears. “I did not know until now Victor was murdering people in Ingolstadt. I swear to you. If I had suspected, I would never have protected him,” I told Mary, then paused. Was that true? I did not know. Not for certain. It was so hard, sorting through what was left of me when I cut off the parts that existed for others. I did not think even old Elizabeth would have been able to overlook the murder of strangers. But she did not need to. She had deliberately and willfully looked the other way, as always.
Mary’s sharp, unyieldingly intelligent gaze had forced me even back in Ingolstadt to be honest. Perhaps if I had stayed with her, I would have come to these truths sooner.
I shook my head. It did not matter now. Nothing mattered now. “I could have investigated more thoroughly. But I thought the bodies were stolen from graveyards and purchased from charnel houses. I thought that he had lost his mind, that I was protecting him from the censure of the world, not from justice well deserved. I should not have rushed to help him. I am so sorry. Please know that being complicit has cost me everything I love in the world.”
She gripped my hands, her clutch almost painful. I leaned into her touch, starving for it.
“I am not sorry,” she said. “I am furious. And you should not be sorry, either. He has taken too much from both of us. From the world. He cannot be allowed to win. Will you help me?”
I laughed bleakly, looking around the box that held me. “I cannot even help myself.”
She reached under her skirts and removed a second nurse’s uniform hidden there. Nurses always left in pairs. The two of us could walk out of this nightmare.
“Elizabeth Lavenza.” Her black eyes narrowed with intensity. “It is time to kill your husband.”
THE MOON HERSELF HID her face from our violent intent, shrouded in clouds as though ready for burial. The gates of Geneva were closed, but we had no use for the city, no desire for witnesses.
