“So this man Beaton, he mixed medicines for prostitutes?” Thornhollow went on.

“He did, was the only man that would service them. Did it free of charge as well,” George added. “Said he wouldn’t take money from them that had so little to spare, though perhaps he took payment otherwise.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Thornhollow said to himself.

“This’ll be a blow to his mother,” Davey said. “She lost her other son just a few months ago at Wounded Knee.”

Grace felt her mouth twist as Thornhollow’s brow came together in confusion. “He had a brother?”

“Yeah, few years older if I remember right,” George said. “He joined up soon as he could, no doubt to get away from their mother. I wouldn’t shed too many tears over Beaton, Davey boy, except over his medicines. He’s happier wherever he’s gone. Those were the two most browbeaten men I ever seen.”

“He may be happier dead, but who would kill him?” Davey asked.

Grace watched Thornhollow, the twitch of his jaw muscles the only indication of his inner struggle. “His medicines may have been the end of him,” he finally said. “Whoever drove this blade knew how to cut and did so with no hesitation whatsoever. There’s a complete lack of human compassion at work here.”

Grace stood slack, eyes wide and uncomprehending, though a yawning chasm had opened inside her stomach.

“It’s a professional job, then?” George asked. “You think he got mixed up in something over his head?”

“Possibly. The taxes on opium imports are high—I can tell you as a doctor that uses them on the most violent of patients. When it’s wanted for recreational purposes the cost can go sky-high unless you can find someone homegrown with the capabilities to maximize the effect of the drug. And of course you’d have to pay them well for their services and discretion.”

“So Beaton got greedy, you think?” George asked.

Thornhollow shrugged. “Or said too much to the wrong person. We’ll probably never know.”

“I can at least check at the depot, see if there was anyone behaving oddly on the last train out,” Davey suggested.

“You can if it’ll make you feel thorough,” Thornhollow said. “Though someone with the training to kill with that kind of precision can undoubtedly stand right next to you without giving away a thing, they’re that adept at mimicking true feelings. Gentlemen, I am freezing.” He turned to leave, about to take Grace by the elbow when he found that Davey’s hand was already there. The policeman handed her up into the carriage and Grace fought to keep her face calm as Ned brought the horses to a trot, and they left the gaslit lamps of the park behind them.

“Please tell me you already burned your clothes.” Thornhollow’s voice came from the darkness, devoid of all inflection.

“I did.”

“And the ether rag?”

“Thrown in the river.”

Silence stretched between them and Grace sat stiffly, ready to combat any argument that he would use against her actions.

“Grace, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I’ve killed a man,” she said. “One that deserved to die.”

“And what of yourself, Grace? What part of you had to die in order to take this drastic step?”

She expected to feel the heat of her rage at his words, but there was nothing but the darkness that yawned inside her. “I don’t want to speak about this anymore,” Grace said, her voice shaky.

Thornhollow slammed his foot onto the carriage floor. “Whether you will or not does not dictate the course of the conversation. I’m speaking to you now as your doctor, and I do not like what I’ve seen before me these past few months. It was human nature to rant and explode at Nell’s death, but this—this is something entirely new. You’ve cut off your emotions to the point where you could look a fellow human being in the eye and drive a knife into his throat.”

“A fate he well deserved,” Grace said.

“And was not yours to deliver!” Thornhollow shot back. “Can you not see it? Only your sister’s name can evoke any emotion from you, that or a new break in our case—one that you’ve very thoroughly closed. The ends neatly tied up with butcher’s string.”

“I’m the butcher?” Grace asked. “With so many bodies in his wake?”

“Bodies that he covered,” Thornhollow reminded her. “Bodies that he positioned so that he may believe them alive and absolve himself of guilt, not with their throats open to the world as if to proclaim no guilt could be had from the action!”

“None can,” she asserted, though he had planted a seed of doubt that had found traction somewhere inside her hollowness. She searched for words to appease Thornhollow without giving ground. “I want to say that in many ways he seemed so very normal.”

“As do you, Grace,” Thornhollow said. “As do you.”

THIRTY-FOUR

“Doctor,” Grace said quietly as she watched him erasing the blackboard. “I need to speak with you about my sister.”

“Yes,” he said. “I know.”

Grace had kept to herself in the week since Beaton’s death, giving Thornhollow a wide berth and processing her own actions. There had been a veil over her mind when she killed, her blade striking true, the sharp edge of the asylum kitchen’s knife slicing through Beaton’s neck easily. The spray of blood had not alarmed her, having seen so many crime scenes. His face as he went down, the confusion in his eyes, the ether-soaked rag in his pocket—none of these things had slipped into her nightmares.

The killing itself was easy, her removal from it in the moment, complete. But Thornhollow’s words had torn the veil away, and Davey’s words of Beaton’s kindness haunted her. Little memorials began to appear in the newspaper from private citizens who posted in their mourning. Beaton had treated prostitutes when no one else would. He had mixed a substitute powder for an infant who would have died after refusing her mother’s milk. He delivered medicines to elderly patients in their homes so they need not wander out in the weather. Except for one glaring exception he had been a lovely man.

Thornhollow had left her to mull her actions in private, granting her wish to not speak of it again, which she now realized was in fact a harsh punishment. It was not guilt precisely that plagued her but a nagging realization that while her actions had saved lives, it was clear that some of Beaton’s had too. And she’d removed him from the world with a flick of her wrist. Their chalkboard had always consisted of black and white, but the reality was gray, and she struggled with the pain of learning it.

Breaking Thornhollow’s silence was not easily done, but time was passing. Each day brought her father closer to home and to Alice, with a present he would demand something infernal for in return.

“I’ll be blunt with you, Grace,” Thornhollow said, back still to her. “I’ve not been able to come up with a plausible way to remove Alice from the household. Even if anonymous letters were written to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, your father is powerful enough to see it brushed under the rug. There are possibilities for delaying his return further, but I can see nothing that will separate the two of them for good.”

“I can,” Grace said.

He turned to her, his features drawn. “I won’t let you kill him.”

“I won’t have to,” she said, willing some calmness into her face as she watched Thornhollow carefully. “We have dead women with no one convicted of the crimes, the true killer no longer among us. The blame can be shifted.”

Thornhollow mulled this, his mind working. “True, but your father was only in the area when one of the crimes was committed.”

“Yes, I know,” Grace said, moving to the chalkboard to create a new picture. “Jenny Cantor’s time of death was never fully established due to the temperatures. She could easily have been killed when he was here.”