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“Well, he hadn’t exactly agreed yet,” she says primly. “But I was working on it. Icanbe very persuasive.”
“You will regret this. You will regret giving up your life for me. I am not worthy of your devotion, and I do not love you as you deserve to be loved. You must stay, and endure, and let your pain fuel your art. But know that wherever I am, you will always be a muse to me.”
Those were Edward’s words to her. I understood what they meant now. I sat back on the bed and regarded the countess’ tear-streaked face, and the bloodstains on her dress after her husband killed her. She tried to endure, and look what it got her. Women have never had it fair.
I warm to her, just a little bit. “Okay, so let us say for argument’s sake that you didn’t kill him. Do you have any idea who might wish him harm?”
“Apart from his father, you mean?” The countess brightens. “Yes, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that his father sent an assassin to scale the building, climb in through the window, and push Edward to his death.”
Pax snorts.
I glance over at him in surprise, and he shakes his head. “This did not happen. I was guarding the grounds that night, as I did every night before I became mortal and must succumb to infernal sleep. If an assassin snuck into Grimwood, I would have seen him.”
“You never said that you saw Edward fall.”
“You never asked. And Edward would not like to know.”
That’s true.
I reel from this news. But if Pax didn’t see who pushed Edward, or even that he was pushed, he can’t give us any further information. I turn back to the countess. “It has to have been one of his friends at the party that night. Did Edward give any of them a reason to bear a grudge?”
“I do recall one thing,” the countess frowns. “I left Eddie sleeping and went downstairs to see what all the splashing was about. Some time later, I don’t remember when, I heard voices from upstairs. It was Edward and Hugh, and they were arguing. At least, they might have been arguing. I had had an awful lot of absinthe…”
“Either they were arguing or they weren’t. Which is it?”
“Their voices were raised with passion,” she snaps. “This is not an uncommon occurrence. Poets, you see, are naturally all aflutter with emotions. I shant expect you’d know anything about that. But Edward could be quite passionate, especially with his lovemaking—”
I don’t want to hear it.“Can you recall what they were arguing about?”
After all, Hugh was the one who stole Edward’s poem, ‘Thou Comest a Thief.’
She shoves her hands on her hips and glares at me. “You’re asking me to remember something that happened four centuries ago, while I was dancing with the green fairy?”
“It’s very, very important to Edward,” Ambrose says. He’s much better at this than I am. “If he could be here, I know he’d want to thank you for telling me all of this.”
“Oh, dear Eddie.” She clutches her heart and falls back onto the sofa. She must’ve expected to drop through the sofa, only because I’m still carrying my moldavite, her body slams into it. She yelps and jerks upright. “I don’t like this. What have you done to me?”
“Never you mind about that,” Ambrose says. “Bree will reverse it later. If you tell us everything you remember, then I can show you Edward’s trick with the light fixtures.”
She perks up at that. “Okay, yes, it’s strange that you say this, and it’s all rushing back to me. I passed Hugh on the staircase and he informed me that he needed to talk to Eddie. Something smashed downstairs. ‘That’s the last of it,’ Hugh was yelling, and Edward said, ‘I’llsay when we’re done.’ And then…and then Hugh says something like, ‘I won’t take it,’ and Edward responds with, ‘I’m a better poet than you will ever be.’”
“I remember nothing more after that, just more raised voices and at some point, glass smashed, but Eddie was always getting merry and breaking things. The next time I saw Hugh, it was after he found Eddie’s body. He was lying in the bathtub, with a new bottle of wine in his hands, and he was murmuring Edward’s name over and over again.”
So Hugh and Edward were alone in his bedchamber, arguing about poetry, right before Edward fell to his death. And in my vision, I saw a dark shadow looming from the corner of the room…
That doesn’t seem suspicious at all.
“You don’t happen to know what became of Hugh?”
Did he become a ghost? Can we confront him?
The countess waves a hand. “Oh, he went the way of all great poets – he smoked too much opium and went for a midnight swim in the Thames. They found him floating face up the next day, naked as the day he was born, the words of his final poem scrawled across his chest.”
“That sounds like the kind of violent death that might turn a poet into a ghost,” Ambrose says hopefully.
“How should I know? I can’t leave this blasted house. Now.” She stares pointedly at the light switch. “Tell me about naughty Edward’s latest trick.”
24
