Chapter 11
Inge leans over the table in the center of the spare bedroom.
Endlessly repeating citizens of blue-and-white toile wallpaper silently observe photos of some of the most horrendous things imaginable, and still they maintain their courtly poses.
I wonder how many visiting dignitaries, ambassadors, and wealthy tradespeople have slept under the watch of this wallpaper over the two centuries our house has stood.
Now, in place of a bed swathed in matching toile, there’s a table littered with documents, notes, and files.
And where portraits of my illustrious ancestors once hung, there’s a map with all the murders we know about pinned in place.
Poor long-suffering Mama told me to take my father’s study only a dozen or so times before giving up and ceding this space to become our headquarters.
It’s not as though she was using it; she certainly has never made an effort to be the heiress everyone expected.
The other important families of Amsterdam have entirely given up on her, her family’s legacy ended with disastrously moral financial decisions, an inadvisable marriage, and a refusal to set foot outside or allow anyone in.
Almost anyone, until three years ago. It’s been good for her, having new faces inside.
She adores Dávid, Maher, and Inge. Though they did have to pass an elaborate series of tests before she’d let them in the first time, including, inexplicably, having their pulses monitored for a full five minutes each.
They were so kind about it, so unquestioningly respectful, it was the moment I knew we’d work well as a team, the first layer of the love I feel for all of them now. Which makes knowing our current line of investigation is moot even more painful.
“It’s all men.” Inge taps the list Louis Lumière sent.
True to his word, Louis did his best to include the dates when their contacts were given camera equipment, where they primarily make their films, and what reels can be connected definitively to them.
There are forty-seven names. He was being modest when he said they had two dozen cinematographs in Europe.
“She could be working with one of them.” Dávid searches the list as though it will give something away.
“We’ll start with the Londoners, then we’ll have to track down the rest,” Maher says. “Do we think Louis can convince them to convene here, or in Brussels or even Paris? I don’t relish the thought of slogging between twenty different cities all over Europe.”
Dávid shakes his head. “Neither do I, but if she gets word of a meeting, she might suspect something. Quietly is best, I think, even if it takes longer. We’re getting close.
This is how we catch her.” His intense excitement is palpable.
It pushes my guilt to the breaking point.
But before I can make my confession, Maher speaks.
“I agree. But we need to discuss how we move forward,” he says, as serious as I’ve ever heard him. “Not with this branch of the investigation, but with our efforts in general. I can’t stop thinking about that poor girl in Brussels.”
“That wasn’t our fault,” I say, remembering Diavola’s words.
Was it, though? By publicizing her evil, did we help it spread beyond her?
Would that officer have killed the young woman no matter what, or did the idea only take root in his head after hearing about all the other violence and horror being done?
He wanted to be clever, Diavola pointed out.
He didn’t just want to murder her. He wanted to get away with something.
“That’s not what haunts me,” Maher says. “What I can’t stop thinking about is that we actually solved her murder. We brought her justice. We identified a killer who probably would have escaped without our intervention. That makes twelve now, right?”
Inge nods, looking at the little dots of blue scattered on the map. Blue pins mean solved and not connected. Red is for Diavola’s continued reign of terror. There are many, many more red dots.
I glance at Dávid to see if he knows where this is going, but he won’t meet my eyes. This is a conversation they’ve already had, without me.
Maher continues. “Twelve times we’ve accidentally solved cases.
Twelve murderers, no longer capable of harming anyone else.
I know how important stopping Diavola is to you, Anneke.
It’s important to all of us. But I want to have a conversation about whether this singular focus of our efforts is worthwhile, or if we can—”
“What?” I don’t believe what I’m hearing.
Maher’s face softens. “You are the most brilliant detective I’ve ever known. You have so much to offer the world. And I worry that this fixation is keeping you from the good you could be doing otherwise.”
I can’t quite catch my breath. It feels like someone is squeezing my heart. “You want me to give up?”
“No. I never said that. We’ll keep hunting Diavola. I swear to you, we’ll never stop.”
Dávid nods. Inge looks alarmed; apparently, she was left out of this discussion, too.
“We’ll never stop,” Dávid echoes. “But I worry about you. You’re obsessed. And the longer we go without catching her, the worse it gets. I think branching out, having more successes, seeing actual results will be healthier for all of us.”
“After we track down the cameras, though,” Inge says, scowling. “Don’t undermine the biggest break we’ve had. The break I found for us. We’re closer than we’ve ever been.”
“Exactly,” Maher says. “Which means we’ll have room to investigate other things.”
My head is spinning and I feel sick. I can’t let them change tactics. I can’t do anything but hunt Diavola. Because we aren’t closer than we’ve ever been, and they need to understand. “She already knows,” I blurt.
“What?” Inge asks.
“Diavola knows we found out about the camera and the reel.”
Maher frowns. “How could she know? The Brussels murder wasn’t one of hers. It was pure coincidence that we met with Louis and saw the reel.”
“Not coincidence,” Inge snaps. “Good detective work on my part.”
“Yes, of course,” Dávid says. “But still, how would Diavola know about it?”
I pull the newest letter out of my pocket and place it on the table. “This was delivered to me at the hotel while we were meeting with Louis. She was in Brussels, too.”
Inge grabs the letter before either of the men can and scans the contents. I expect her to be livid, or cold, or anything but dubious. With one eyebrow raised, she gives me a heavy look. “So, she was following you.”
“Us.”
“None of the rest of us got letters,” Dávid says. “She left one for you in Budapest, too, remember?”
Swallowing my shame, I hold up a hand for them to wait while I go to my bedroom.
It’s changed so little since I was a child.
The walls are still covered in a sunshine-yellow satin broken up by patterns of wild pink roses.
I run my fingers over the matching quilt my mother sewed for me.
Even before she banished servants and shut herself away, she’s always been one to do things by hand.
There’s a handmade quilt on Pieter’s bed, too, though his has much less wear.
Sometimes I think about changing my room to a more adult color scheme, but nothing is simple in this house.
If I wanted to make any changes, I’d have to do them myself or else expect Mama to.
We’re both trapped in the past within these walls.
At least I can leave whenever I choose. Because of that, I’ve never complained about the décor.
I can live in my girlish garden room I’ve outgrown.
I stand in front of the wall and run my fingers along the seams where the hinges are just visible.
In order to create the most aesthetically balanced spaces when our house was built, no closets or shelves were allowed.
Instead, the entire wall opens up to reveal hidden storage space.
When I was a girl, before I had nightmares about Diavola or my house crumbling into the canal with my mother inside, I used to dream that I somehow got closed up in my wall.
And even though I could hear the heavy steps of my father in my bedroom, no matter how I pounded and shouted, he never heard me or unlocked the panels.
I take the key to the wall from a chain around my neck, and then I hesitate. I don’t want to share the letters. It feels raw and shameful. I’d no sooner share a personal diary with them.
And…I could still keep the other letters to myself. Pretend I needed a moment to gather myself after what Dávid and Maher suggested. Let my friends believe this is only the second time Diavola’s communicated directly with me.
Though really it would have been the third, counting the night we met. Infinite, counting the number of times she’s whispered to me in my dreams.
The letters are intimate. They’re meant only for me. I know them all by heart, have read them so many times I can recite them verbatim. And the fact that I’ve kept them secret will alarm my friends. It alarms me, too. I can’t explain why I decided not to add them to our evidence.
No. I can, and that makes it worse. That letter I received after I raced home to protect Mama three years ago, where Diavola praised my remarkable mind.
I’d been so desperate for evidence she was real.
I had not only that, but proof that she…
respected me. Admired me, even. I decided in that moment to keep it to myself so no one would undermine it, or question it, or suggest that she was lying to manipulate me.
My own pathetic neediness is enough of a hot poker of shame to prod me into at last coming clean.