Eventually, Evangeline slept. Inevitably, it was troubled sleep.

She had a nightmare of her childhood, the first in a very long time.

Grace was screaming, and Evangeline could not bring herself to turn around and see why.

That was all.

LYING IN THEIR BED AND WATCHING THE LACE PATTERNS CAST across the ceiling from the streetlamp outside, Sebastian sensed that Elisabeth had an inclination to talk. So he stirred a little, to signal that he was wasn’t asleep.

“Are you awake?” she said.

“I suppose,” he said.

“Frances tells me that Robert’s teacher has been talking about finding him employment again.”

The last time he’d raised the subject, she’d had no enthusiasm for it. But now her tone was optimistic.

“That’s encouraging.”

“Yes. It is.”

Sebastian said, “I wish someone could say where he’d fit in. I know he’s good for something. If I didn’t know the boy was troubled, sometimes I would think him a genius.”

“He’s no longer a boy.”

“If he were merely slow, employment would be no problem. There’s many make a living with a shovel or a broom that can barely speak their own names.”

“He isn’t slow.”

“Anything but,” Sebastian agreed.

After a moment, Elisabeth said, “I do have a strange feeling that all’s going to be well.”

Given her recent moods, Sebastian was surprised to hear this. “What’s caused that?” he said.

“Nothing I can begin to explain.”

Then she began to explain.

“I went up to see the little girl. The one I told you about? The one whose drunken father came in and threatened the nurses. She’s a beautiful child, the way so many consumptives are. Large eyes and a lovely transparent complexion. She said that she hoped her sisters won’t cry too much when she’s gone.”

“Who told her she’s dying?”

“No one’s had to. She just knows. We understand nothing, Sebastian. We don’t know where we’re going or why. We think that what we know is all there is. But sometimes you just get a sense of what’s beyond it. And that can take your breath away.”

They lay there in silence for a while. And then he felt her leg against his own. He laid his hand on her stomach, and she rose to press against it; and from there the journey of intimacy took its familiar, though of late less frequent, course.

Afterward, they said nothing. Within minutes, she was breathing deeply and he knew she was asleep.

Sebastian could not sleep. Normally his work did not prey on his thoughts. But this case was different.

He found himself constructing a rough sequence in his mind. How old was Grace Eccles now? Twenty-six, twenty-seven? Evangeline would be the same. Their ordeal had taken place two years after Sir Owain’s return from his South American expedition. Then a gap of years in which deaths and disappearances had certainly occurred, but none that drew so much notice as these present murders.

Something troubled him. He could construct a narrative in which Sir Owain roamed his estate in search of the beasts that lived on in his mind. But try as he might, Sebastian could not reconcile this narrative with the indecencies that had been practiced upon the victims.

Perhaps he simply lacked the necessary education in man’s psychological complexity. He certainly knew of man’s capacity for harm, and he’d heard rumors of soldiers abroad whose actions beyond the sight of God and country were a disgrace to their flag and their uniform. But try as he might, he could not quite believe it of the man he had met.

Evangeline had returned to London, and was somewhere close. One way or another, he would find her.

After that afternoon’s visit, he even had an idea for how he might go about it.

Perhaps the nature of these beings is best made clear by saying that they correspond very closely to the dragons, unicorns, and griffins, and to the horned, hoofed, and tailed devils of our own folk-lore.… The one common quality which these animals have for us is that they are all fabulous and non-existent. But our knowledge of this fact is derived entirely from science. The Indian, being without even the rudiments of scientific thought, believes as fully in the real existence of an animal as impossible as was ever fabled, as he does in that of animals most usual to him. In short, to the Indian the only difference between these monstrous animals and those most familiar to him is that, while he has seen the latter, he has not himself seen the former, though he has heard of them from others. These monstrous animals, in short, are regarded as on exactly the same level as regards the possession of body and spirits as are all other animals.

EVERARD F. IM THURN,

Among the Indians of Guiana:

Being Sketches Chiefly Anthropologic from the Interior of British Guiana

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1883

SEBASTIAN HAD INTENDED TO BEGIN HIS SEARCH FOR EVANGELINE Bancroft as soon as his other duties allowed. But when he read the midmorning message waiting for him at the cabmen’s stand, he forgot all else and ran. There was a crowd on the street outside the Evelina, and half of it seemed to comprise policemen. One of them tried to direct him away, but he pushed by and ignored the angry shout that followed him into the building.

In the hospital’s chaotic entrance hall he stopped the first sergeant that he saw and said, “Where is she?”

“Who are you?”

“Sebastian Becker. I’m the husband.”

“Who of?”

“Elisabeth Becker! The receiving officer’s clerk! I had a message to say she was attacked.”

“Ah,” the sergeant said. “One of the doctors is stitching her up.”

The entire place seemed to be in turmoil. By contrast the dispensary wing was almost empty, and the outpatients’ waiting area had been completely cleared. It was in one of the adjoining treatment rooms that Sebastian found his wife receiving care from one of the senior medical men. Sebastian recognized him; he was one of the doctors from Guy’s.

For a moment, Sebastian stood in shock. Elisabeth sat with her dress cut away to her bodice and her arm raised; her arm was bared, but covered in so much dried blood and iodine that it might have belonged to a terra-cotta statue, freshly dug from the wet earth. By contrast, her face was deathly white. Her expression was calm and serious. A few flecks of blood had peppered her neck and chin. A blood-spattered nurse held her steady while the surgeon, in waistcoat and rolled-up shirtsleeves, made at her arm with a needle that looked as if it might belong to a sailmaker.

“Oh my Lord,” Sebastian said.

The nursing sister, whom he didn’t know, was about to speak, but Elisabeth saw him and said, “Sebastian. Don’t be too distressed. It looks much worse than it is.”

But a brief glance up from her surgeon seemed to suggest otherwise. He met Sebastian’s eyes for a moment and then returned his attention to the work.

The fresh wound spiraled all the way around the length of Elisabeth’s forearm, like apple peel. Her fingers were bent, her wrist cocked. The surgeon had sutured about three-quarters of the slash. The wound above the stitches gaped, like a shallow rip in a cushion.

Sebastian said, “Can I stay?”

“If you’re prepared to help,” the surgeon said without taking his eyes from his work.

“How can I do that?”

“Hold her other hand. She’s got my knee squeezed down to the bone.”