Chapter Fourteen
Benscombe, 1986
Billie’s flight lands early in the evening, but it’s June and the sun is just beginning to set when she pulls up to Benscombe. She’s flown halfway around the world with nothing but a handbag that holds a change of underwear and a toothbrush. She’s wearing what she thinks of as her off-duty uniform—a silk blouse, thin suede jacket, and boot-cut jeans. Her vintage cowboy boots crunch across the gravel as she crosses the drive. She pauses just long enough to breathe in the scent of roses and cut grass and remembers it’s Midsummer night. The telegram in her pocket is creased; the message consists of only three words: It is time .
She doesn’t lift the knocker. Constance is expecting her and has left the door unlocked. She walks through the house, the hallways as familiar to her as her own reflection in the mirror. Constance is in the kitchen, sitting at the table she’s covered in oilcloth, a cheerful red patterned with oxeye daisies and fat pink roses. On the table is a pot of tea and a pair of cups, her best Royal Doulton.
Billie sits without speaking and Constance pours for her. “Drink it. You will feel better.”
Billie does as she’s told, putting the cup back carefully into the saucer when it is empty. “I don’t feel better. That was a lie. This isn’t going to work if either of us lies.”
Constance gives her a long, level look, her ice-blue eyes assessing. “Fine. There is a rather good single malt in the cupboard. I was saving it for a special occasion. I suppose this qualifies.”
Billie’s laugh is brittle, but she retrieves the bottle and a pair of glasses. She pours two fingers for each of them and pushes a glass towards Constance. She lifts the other, and Constance mirrors the gesture.
“What shall we drink to?” Constance inquires in an arch voice.
“Midsummer night.”
“To Midsummer night.”
They finish their drinks and Billie quickly pours another. Constance’s mouth twitches with amusement.
“You can’t put this off, you know.”
“I know.”
“I’ve trained assassins for decades—the best who ever worked have passed through these halls,” she said, gesturing expansively towards the house. “But I chose you for this.”
“Why?” Billie asks.
“Because you are the only one I trust to see it through. You may flinch, but you will not falter.” The words are not said with warmth, but Billie feels the affection in them. And she hears the tiniest thread of something she has never heard from Constance before. Fear.
That’s when she understands exactly what Constance wants from her. It isn’t her expertise or her competence. It’s her humanity.
Constance smiles thinly and when she speaks, her tone is arch. “Don’t get sentimental on me now, Billie.”
Billie drains her second drink. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says, putting the glass down decisively. “Are you afraid?”
Constance tips her head, her expression thoughtful. “A little. I don’t much care for pain. But I think it will be alright. And I will do this, with you or without you, you know.”
“I know.”
Constance’s smile is mocking. “I always knew I would die like a Roman.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
Constance thinks again. “No. Every death at my door—and there have been many, so very many—was a thing I was called to do.” Her expression turns severe. “When you are in my position, I hope you will remember that what we have done, what we do, is a small evil to preserve a much greater good. Humanity is so very fragile, Billie. It is threatened from every side, by greed and wickedness and chaos and a thousand other villainies. Humanity requires champions, like the knights of old, those who are willing to fight and die, bloody themselves so the others may survive.”
“You make it sound noble,” Billie says.
“It isn’t nobility,” Constance says calmly. “It is necessity. We are as nature made us, content to play God and take lives, and who knows what price we will pay for that hubris. But the world needs us. Remember what I told you all those years ago,” she adds.
“We are necessary monsters,” Billie finishes.
“Just so.” Constance sighs, her energy suddenly spent. “Let’s go upstairs then. I have everything ready.”
They pass the closed door of Constance’s study. It has been a long time since the door was open, and if it were open now, Billie knows she would see the portrait of Astraea hanging over the desk. Astraea, the goddess of justice with her scales and sword, to weigh the deeds of men and to administer the reckoning. But the door remains closed and they pass on to the stairs.
Constance leads the way upstairs to her room, slowly, painfully, putting both feet on each step as she climbs. Billie knows better than to try to help, but she maneuvers directly behind Constance to catch her in case she falls. The disease has settled in the aging bones, leaching the calcium and leaving them brittle and prone to breaking. A slip on an icy patch of gravel the previous winter snapped a femur and a wrist. The resulting scans were straightforward and the prognosis brutal. Constance dutifully completed her physical therapy before calling Billie and laying out what she wanted from her.
“It will be some months yet—two or three at least, so you needn’t decide right away,” she had said briskly. “If you refuse, I quite understand. I can take care of matters myself. I’ll just leave a note on the door for the milkman for when it’s done and he will fetch the police.”
“I’ll come,” Billie told her.
“Are you certain?” A shadow of doubt in the voice that had always been commanding.
“I’ll come.”
In the months since, the promise has followed Billie like a shadow, dogging every footstep. Now that the time is here, she feels lighter, almost buoyant. It is nearly over.
The bed is neatly made with a candlewick spread, and Constance climbs under it wearing an old-fashioned white nightgown. She smooths the spread out and settles herself on the pillows. There’s the faint crackle of a waterproof cover, a precaution to protect her dignity when the inevitable happens.
“Wait,” Constance says suddenly. She gets up, struggling a little. She makes her way to the window, using pieces of furniture as crutches as she crosses the room, her progress slow and breathless. The closed shutters have made the room gloomy, and she wrestles with the catch. Billie comes to help her, and together they fold back the panels and raise the window sash. Fresh air billows into the room, carrying birdsong and the smell of the sea that dashes on the rocks below the cliffs.
“That’s better,” Constance says firmly. She returns to the bed and arranges herself. She gestures towards the bedside table, indicating a photo frame. It stands beside a worn copy of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and a battalion of pill bottles. It is small and the picture inside is faded, a wedding couple stiff in their 1930s finery.
Constance looks at the image for a long moment, then hands it back, closing her eyes. “I am ready.”
She keeps her eyes closed while Billie pushes up her sleeve. From the items on the bedside table, Billie selects a narrow Liberty scarf and a silver teaspoon to fashion a makeshift tourniquet. The skin of Constance’s forearm is pale but surprisingly smooth, and with a twist of the spoon in the knotted scarf, Billie has the veins rising blue and vivid as rivers on a contour map. Constance has already prepared the mixture to her own specifications, choosing the amounts carefully and filling the syringe. Billie finds the most promising vein, a wide line in the crook of Constance’s elbow. The needle is poised just over the skin, and Billie hesitates.
Constance turns her head and opens her eyes. She says nothing, but she gives Billie a nod before turning back. She waits, eyes closed.
Billie doesn’t cry. She can’t. She owes Constance a good death. So she blinks back tears and sets to work, slipping the needle gently into the vein, angling it precisely and aiming it towards the heart. She pulls back the plunger slightly and blood, red and dark and slow, flows into the syringe. The needle is seated perfectly and she makes her mind a careful blank as she depresses the plunger as smoothly as she can.
Constance gives a little gasp as the lethal cocktail hits her bloodstream. Billie removes the needle and puts a cotton pad in the crook of Constance’s elbow because it matters that this death—of all the deaths she has orchestrated—that this death is tidy. She puts the syringe aside and waits.
It isn’t a long time. Only a handful of seconds pass before Constance opens her eyes again, tears standing in the corners, bright and unshed. She smiles. “Thank you.”
She sighs out the last word as she turns away, and the last thing she sees through her shuttering lids is Billie’s face, wavering, shimmering as if life itself were the mirage and the only reality is what lies beyond.
It is several minutes before Billie moves. A compact, vintage silver and engraved with Constance’s initials, lies on the bedside table. She could open it and use the mirror to check for a breath, but she has seen enough death to know there’s no need. Whatever Constance put into the syringe, it has worked, quickly, painlessly. With dignity.
Billie stands up on legs that feel a hundred years old. The relief that the favor Constance asked of her is finished hasn’t come yet. Instead, there’s only a cool, numb emptiness. She crosses to the window where the last golden rays of the sun are stretching over the landscape, gilding the trees and the grass and every living thing under its light. Somewhere in the distance, a nightingale sings, and Billie closes her eyes, raising her face to the fading warmth of the sun.
Midsummer night. A beautiful time to die.