CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Maisie and Fraser walked into the kitchen to find Davina, Catalina and me sip-ping cof-fee and whis-per-ing in low voices. By the look on Maisie’s face, she might as well have walked in on Beelze-bub nib-bling cu-cum-ber sand-wiches at a teddy bear’s pic-nic.
The early morn-ing was sharp and sunny, the Great Lawn frosted with a glit-ter-ing layer of ice like a fes-tive cookie. In the cold light of day, Davina’s miss-ing eye was even more ab-jectly ter-ri-fy-ing: a sunken socket, that aw-ful gash. Catalina had fash-ioned a makeshift eye patch out of a long strip of cot-ton torn from a pa-jama top.
“What’s go-ing on?” Maisie asked from the door-way, still as a buz-zard hunt-ing prey.
“Noth-ing.” Davina was vis-i-bly shak-ing, and try-ing too hard to stop, so her whole body was rigid with ten-sion. “We’re just talk-ing ev-ery-thing through.”
“What hap-pened to your eye?”
“We got in a fight.” Davina ges-tured stiffly to the bru-tal mark on my face, which I hadn’t both-ered paint-ing over this morn-ing.
In re-al-ity, I’d taken Davina by the arm and ush-ered her up to Catalina’s room just af-ter mid-night. I trusted my room-mate not to panic, not to scream at the miss-ing eye, just to of-fer care and com-fort. That’s ex-actly what Catalina had done. She had laid down her ear-lier anger to-ward Davina, talk-ing so softly and sooth-in-gly that it al-most brought tears to my eyes. Yet as I watched her rub Davina’s ridged back, mur-mur-ing that it was go-ing to be okay, I hated my-self for the jeal-ousy I felt. It felt too much like watch-ing my aunt Polly coo over baby Pippa.
Catalina had also tried to in-sist we go to the hos-pi-tal, but Davina had re-fused. It wouldn’t make the slight-est bit of dif-fer-ence. The eye was gone. And how on earth would she ex-plain how it hap-pened?
Even-tu-ally Davina’s dis-traught wails had ebbed to fee-ble whim-pers, and with ev-ery pass-ing sec-ond, the de-bauch-ery of the mas-ter and sub-ject class be-came less and less im-por-tant. Be-cause re-ally, all she had ever done to me was yank out a lock of hair and dare me to take my clothes off. That was it—the only con-crete acts of an-tag-o-nism I could think of. Ev-ery-thing else had been smoke and mir-rors. Con-fir-ma-tion bias, on my part. Once I had de-cided she was evil, I had ar-ranged all the pieces of the story to fit my the-ory.
But I was wrong.
The real killer was still out there.
And we were both in the crosshairs.
Maisie took a few steps into the kitchen, re-ty-ing the fluffy belt of her dress-ing gown. “What were you fight-ing about?”
Davina shifted on her stool. The tap dripped be-hind her. “Noth-ing you need to worry about.” There was a note of dis-missal to her tone, as though Maisie had ceased be-ing of value. “Now kindly piss off, won’t you?”
The words were a shock of fire, so need-lessly cruel that for a sec-ond I felt vin-di-cated for how much I hated her.
Fraser took a few steps for-ward, like he was shield-ing Maisie. “Al-right, bro. You’re not com-ing into our flat just to shit on peo-ple. Maze was just mak-ing sure ev-ery-one was okay.”
Davina rolled her eye. “That tracks. She’s al-ways got her nose in other peo-ple’s busi-ness.”
She seemed at once like a cult leader, toy-ing with her sub-jects’ emo-tions for the sport of it—a way of as-sert-ing her au-thor-ity, of ce-ment-ing her po-si-tion as doyenne. Still, there was some-thing end-lessly com-pelling about her, in the same way hor-ror movies and se-rial-killer doc-u-men-taries were com-pelling. Equal parts grotesque and fas-ci-nat-ing. The the-ater of cru-elty per-son-i-fied. I felt lightly elec-tri-fied that she was here in our kitchen, no mat-ter how grim the cir-cum-stances.
Yet I still felt hor-ri-ble for Maisie. I pic-tured her bird-watch-ing in a wild gar-den with her grand-fa-ther, ask-ing ex-cit-edly about the dif-fer-ent types of spar-rows. We were all still just kids. We’re all just play-ing a part, as she’d said in the li-brary.
Thank-fully, Fraser had her back. “Nah, we’re not hav-ing this. You’re leav-ing. Now.”
Davina fixed him with a cruel glare. Then in a low, cut-ting voice, she snarled, “I know where you were last night.”
Fraser stilled for a mo-ment, a breath hitch-ing in his chest, then turned on his bare-foot heel and stormed out of the kitchen.
Maisie shot Davina a filthy look then tailed off af-ter him, say-ing, “Fraze? Fraze. Are you okay?” His bed-room door—the one near-est the kitchen—banged shut.
Some-thing in my gut twisted at the fresh poker card Davina had played. Even Fraser was hid-ing some-thing?
“That was slightly un-nec-es-sary,” said Catalina, sip-ping her tea.
Davina scoffed. “Oh yeah, I’m just the Wicked Witch of the West, aren’t I?”
A pro-tec-tive in-stinct bucked in-side me.
Say some-thing mean to Catalina, I growled in-wardly. I fuck-ing dare you.
But she didn’t. She clearly wanted to save her other eye.
“What do you know about Fraser?” I asked her. I was re-luc-tant to give her the sat-is-fac-tion, but I had to know whether our room-mate was some-one we should be wor-ried about.
Fraser kept strange hours. He was out most nights, and while it could have been that he was al-ways par-ty-ing, he didn’t stink of stale booze the way he had dur-ing the first cou-ple of weeks. He napped for a few hours in the evenings af-ter re-hearsals be-fore head-ing out with an over-sized sports bag over his shoul-der, de-spite not play-ing for any of the Do-rian teams. I some-times heard him re-turn around three or four in the morn-ing. And yet dur-ing the day, he didn’t seem to have a dis-cernible group of friends out-side of us. He ate lunch with us in the Cos-tumery, and stud-ied in the li-brary alone.
“I’m keep-ing that card close to my chest for now,” Davina said coolly.
I frowned. “But if he’s out ev-ery night … couldn’t he have some-thing to do with the gallery? With the mur-ders? Your eye? You’ve clearly an-tag-o-nized him.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t. Just leave it, Penny.”
“I still think you both should go to the po-lice,” Catalina said qui-etly. Tired-ness clung around her eyes. Her cardi-gan had slipped off her shoul-der, and I made out a hand-writ-ten tat-too snaking over her col-lar-bone. Haz bien y no mires a quién. I didn’t know what it meant, and that em-bar-rassed me more than it should. “This is all so dan-ger-ous, and you’re vic-tims.”
Davina lifted a shak-ing hand to the makeshift eye patch, as though con-firm-ing to her-self that it had re-ally hap-pened. She’d been do-ing it all morn-ing. “What de-tec-tive in their right mind would be-lieve us about what’s hap-pen-ing?”
“And my mum…” I trailed off, but Catalina winced in un-der-stand-ing.
“Your mum what?” Davina prod-ded. It was strange, hav-ing her show an in-ter-est in my life.
“My mum’s wor-ried about all of this get-ting out,” I said quickly, be-fore Catalina could tell her the truth about my mother’s sui-cide threats. “Her por-trait is down there too.”
Catalina chewed the in-side of her cheek. “I don’t know what else you can do, though, other than go to the po-lice.”
“Find the per-pe-tra-tor our-selves.” Davina drained the last of her cof-fee.
“How?” I asked.
“We go down to the gallery, night af-ter night, un-til they resur-face to strike again.” Her skin was ghost-pale, al-most blueish, in stark con-trast with her red-rimmed eye. “We catch them in the act. Maybe we can hide some-where and film it, so the po-lice have to be-lieve us about how this is hap-pen-ing. Or we take them down our-selves. Self-de-fense, isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Even if we were will-ing to put our-selves in dan-ger—”
“I’m pretty handy with a knife.” Davina’s hand went to the pocket of her leather jacket, pat-ting the sur-face. “We’ll be fine.”
“Of course you are.” I gave her a tight smile. “But that aside, we don’t have a key to the gallery.”
“Oh, I have a key,” said Davina mat-ter-of-factly.
“How?”
“Stole it from Cam-ran’s of-fice.” Her knee bounced up and down, pow-ered by fraught en-ergy. “When Dr-ever was call-ing the am-bu-lance, and you left the room. It was in the top drawer of her desk.”
Resid-ual sus-pi-cion prick-led in my mind like a net-tle sting. “Why did you take it?”
“I sus-pected that her death was be-cause of the por-traits, and knew I might need ac-cess to that gallery in or-der to save my-self.”
Catalina stud-ied Davina cau-tiously now. “Have you used it?”
“Not yet.”
Some-thing oc-curred to me, then, as I thought back to that night in Cam-ran’s of-fice.
“Davina…” I said slowly.
“What?” she snapped, al-most au-to-mat-i-cally, like an im-pulse she couldn’t con-trol.
I fought the ridicu-lous urge to laugh. She wasn’t an evil mur-derer. She was just kind of a bitch.
“How much does Dr-ever know?” I asked. “About the Gallery of the Ex-quis-ite. The Masked Painter.”
She shrugged. “Noth-ing. There was no rea-son to tell him.”
“Did you see him last night?” I was care-ful to phrase it as a ques-tion—she couldn’t know I’d been lis-ten-ing in on their con-ver-sa-tion.
Her re-main-ing eye nar-rowed. “I did. Why?”
“Did any-thing … hap-pen?”
I wanted to know what ex-actly they’d talked about. Be-cause I had a the-ory.
Her gaze drifted out of the win-dow, to where the swans glided over the ice-blue lake. “I ended things, ac-tu-ally. He’d served his pur-pose.”
My heart started to beat a lit-tle faster. “How’d he take it?”
“He was an-gry. Said I’d ru-ined his life for noth-ing.” She shrugged again, as though none of it mat-tered at all, as though peo-ple were just games to win or lose. “He’d fallen in love with me.”
Ru-ined his life seemed a stretch.
The thought I’d had on the edge of the moon-dap-pled lake came back to me: Who hated both Davina and me enough to want to hurt us?
“Did you ever tell him it was me who black-mailed him?” I asked slowly. Of course I knew she’d told him yes-ter-day, but I had to hear it from her.
“Yeah. Af-ter he lec-tured me for go-ing af-ter you in the mas-ter and sub-ject class.”