46. Crow
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CROW
The key turns in the door, unlocking it. I am on it before Cassandra can open it, pulling it forward, desperate to escape.
But it is not Cassandra who opened the door.
“Patricia.” I gasp.
Patricia is standing over Cassandra, Victorian cast iron in her hand.
It’s the same one used as a doorstop to the old dining room; she must have grabbed it and used it to strike Cassandra’s head.
I can surmise this with reasonable certainty because the iron has blood across its sharp, pointed edge and underbelly alongside the rust. Patricia is shaking, gasping for breath, and Cassandra is lying face down in front of her, blood pouring from the back of her head.
Next to her, confirmation of what our fate almost was, is an open box of matches, several of them spilled across the floor.
“Oh my God,” Patricia says, who only upon seeing the four of us hurry out of the room seems to understand what she has done.
The iron falls from her grip, smashing to the floor and causing the floorboards to crack and dent underneath it.
Some of the blood splatters, droplets of red on varnish.
Patricia staggers backward until she is gripping the stair banister, face white.
“She had the matches . . . I heard . . . I panicked . . . Is she . . .”
“What are you doing here?” Cuckoo whispers.
Wren drops to her knees in front of Cassandra, who has not moved. She turns her over, feels for a pulse.
“I think she’s dead,” she says quietly.
“Oh my God,” Patricia says again.
Starling bends down, repeats Wren’s action. When her hand retreats from Cassandra’s neck, she nods. “Wren’s right.”
That’s three bodies now. Hugo, Goldie, Cassandra.
Didn’t Starling say that’s what makes a serial killer?
No. Stop it. Only one of those is because of us.
Isn’t it?
And what about Patricia? Will we have to make it four?
“Cassandra came to me,” she says. “I had no idea who she was at first. She knocked on my door, explained that she was Hugo Fletcher’s wife, that my niece and he had gone missing around the same time. Of course, I knew that part.”
Cassandra really did do her research into all of us.
“She said she was hosting a charity event tonight,” Patricia says.
“Said it inspired her. She was planning to do a fundraiser in her husband’s memory and said in the future she wanted to include Goldie.
She said she felt all the attention had been on him and it wasn’t fair, and perhaps this could renew interest in the both of them. ”
She played Patricia.
Just like we did.
No. We are better than her. We had to lie.
“I was suspicious,” Patricia says. “This had come out of nowhere after so many years. So I decided to do my own digging, and I found out where she lived. That’s when I saw you”—she nods at Wren—“coming out of her house.”
No wonder she was so suspicious, so mistrusting of us. No wonder she ran.
It’s all falling into place.
“And then I went to the event tonight,” Patricia says to me.
“Kept myself to myself, made sure no one noticed me. And there you were again, with her. All of you. At one point you all disappeared, but she came back inside and started saying her goodbyes to people. The four of you had vanished. So I followed her. To here. Bishop’s House. ”
She is exhausted, hair messy and eyes wide. A wild woman.
“I heard you,” she says, with no idea how fatal those words are.
“You heard us?” Wren whispers.
“I was outside for a bit,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. But I came into the grounds, and then something about the place was calling out to me, and I thought you might be in trouble, so I went inside.”
Was that Goldie, calling for her? Does she see her too?
“I heard raised voices.” Her breathing steadies. She can’t bring herself to look at Cassandra. “I started hurrying upstairs. And then I heard . . .”
I am sure the others take a breath as deep as mine in this tiny pause.
Starling and Wren have risen to their feet, have returned to Cuckoo and me, but not before Starling retrieves Goldie’s charm bracelet from Cassandra’s wrist. She plays with it, then passes it to Cuckoo, who holds it close to her chest, and then Starling flexes her fingers, as if trying to reach for Wren’s hand.
“I heard you, begging to know where her body was. Cassandra would not tell you. I saw that she was holding a set of matches. I knew then it was her, that she had killed her.”
Wait.
Patricia continues to talk, continues to explain, but I can no longer hear her.
Everything around me seems to have switched off its volume, muffled noises as though I am six feet underwater and desperately straining to listen.
I look around, expecting Goldie to appear any second, to swan into this dark hallway with her typical nonchalance and somehow make this better.
But she doesn’t. It is just the four of us, Patricia, and Cassandra’s broken, dead body.
Patricia is the only one speaking. Cuckoo has her face in her hands, masking her expression, but Starling and Wren are focused intensely on Patricia, rigid in their postures.
They know as well as I do what’s happening.
Patricia has only heard half the story. Whenever she came in, it wasn’t when we were discussing our involvement in all this. She thinks Cassandra killed her.
She has saved us from far more than she realizes.
The truth threatens to burst from my mouth as sound gradually returns to my ears, and I have to clamp a hand across it.
Surely we should tell her. After everything, shouldn’t now be the time for the truth to come out at last?
I am reminded of books, the storytelling structure.
This is our denouement, our chance to clear up falsehoods, give Patricia the complete picture.
If this was my novel, the one I have dreamed of writing for so long, I would give my characters this noble moment.
A sacrifice, after everything, a final giving in and accepting the consequences.
They would have learned their lesson, been prepared to face judgment.
When the police came, there would be little despair, only relief, relief that at last they were free and they didn’t have to hide anymore.
But we are not characters. And Starling has already begun talking.
“It was all about Hugo Fletcher,” she says.
Before Goldie, I want to shout. And her disappearance was never taken as seriously as his.
He swallowed all the attention, and she was left with scraps.
Scraps that ultimately benefited us and still twist my gut even now.
But nobody knows this; Hugo wasn’t reported missing until Goldie was already dead.
For all intents and purposes, they vanished together, and it is benefiting us again now.
Patricia nods. “He had something to do with all of this?”
“He and Goldie were seeing each other before they disappeared. He’s the man who killed Cuckoo’s mother in that hit-and-run.”
She’s telling Patricia Cassandra’s story. What Cassandra Fletcher thought was happening and completely misconstrued.
I am appalled. Cuckoo’s head snaps up from her hands, and she’s horrified too.
But before either of us can correct this or say anything, Wren silently puts a hand on each of us.
She looks at us in turn, a pleading look in her eyes, a tiny shake of her head.
Patricia is too busy with Starling to notice.
It’s clever, I can see that. If Cassandra had spoken to anyone about this, she would have told them what she thought she knew.
That Hugo and Goldie were having an affair.
The way Cassandra was talking, it was common that he cheated on her, and she looked the other way.
It was only when he strayed too far—with that poor missing girl—that Cassandra got involved, made sure there was no trace of anything.
And if she had a history of that, there’s no reason she wouldn’t have done so with Goldie.
Except that it betrays Goldie. She would never have gone anywhere near him.
He was ten years older than us. He was smarmy, arrogant, rude.
He was from a whole different class. And most importantly, he killed Cuckoo’s mother.
She would never have betrayed us, and yet here we are, betraying her memory.
Starling is explaining this to Patricia, her words rushed and breathless. “We don’t know why she was with him. We all got a bit obsessed during the trial. Maybe she sought him out, we’re not sure. She never told us about it.”
“I knew she was seeing someone.” Patricia closes her eyes for a second, pained.
When she opens them again, they are filled with tears.
“That last night. When we argued . . . I asked if she was seeing someone. A boyfriend. She denied it. She sounded so genuine at the time. But that’s obviously why she was sneaking out. ”
The memory of Goldie recounting this argument to us on her last night alive is so strong I have to stifle a gasp. We have to go along with this, even though Patricia is clearly heartbroken, and it kills me.
“Cassandra told us she found out about the affair,” Starling says.
“Hugo killed Goldie,” Cuckoo says. “We don’t know why or how. Maybe she was going to tell someone about it. He buried her here. It’s where he and Goldie were apparently seeing each other before they disappeared.”
What are we doing? This is madness.
“Cassandra found out.” Wren picks up where Cuckoo left off. “She killed Hugo when she found out he had cheated on her again.”
“Again?” Patricia echoes. “He’s done this before?”
I am reminded of Hugo’s death, of the others taking turns with the knife and stabbing him.
They had transformed, they were suddenly so at ease with murder.
As soon as one of us joined Cuckoo, it was a domino effect, and it was better to be in than out.
I still remember the shaking way I took hold of that knife, my pleas to not do this ignored, the way they all pressured me, encouraged me, cajoled me into doing it.