The Lie Told Seven Ways

"Every liar keeps one true thing hidden inside the lie, the way a miser keeps a coin in his shoe."

The tower door was locked.

Roderick tried it twice, then once more with his shoulder, and the old oak and iron did not so much as shiver. It was a serious door. It had been fitted to keep out weather and men, and it had a lock the size of a man's palm, bright with recent oil.

"Oiled," Thalessa said, running a gloved finger along the hinge. "This month, I should say. Possibly this week."

"A clock needs its servant."

"A clock needs a winder. A winder needs a key." She straightened. "Who keeps the keys of this house?"

"I'd imagine the housekeeper."

"Then I should like to meet her without announcing myself."

But it proved unnecessary, for as they turned from the door a voice spoke behind them, mild and clear, at a distance of no more than ten feet.

"You will not find it open, Inspector. It is never open. The Duke prefers it so."

Thalessa did not start. She had trained herself long ago to take surprise as a cold in the chest and let it pass. But she saw Roderick's hand go to the revolver and stop, and she saw that he too had not heard the woman come.

Vespera Haze stood at the foot of the stair with her hands folded at her waist. She was in her gray dress and white apron, her dark hair drawn back so tightly that it pulled at the corners of her eyes, and she carried, as she had the night before, a single candle in a pewter stick. Her face was composed and pale, a thin, plain, patient face, rather young. Her pale eyes were turned a little to the left of them both, and they did not move.

"Miss Haze," Roderick said. "You move quietly."

"I have no choice, sir. I should walk into the furniture otherwise." She smiled faintly. "I thought I heard a gentleman climbing. The tower stair has thirty-one steps. They count them aloud, those who are afraid."

"I was not afraid."

"No. You counted in silence. I could hear your lips."

There was a small pause.

"The tower," said Thalessa. "Who winds the clock, Miss Haze?"

"Mr. Finch, ma'am. On Sundays. He has the key."

"Not you?"

"I cannot climb it. It makes me dizzy, being blind. It is the only stair in the house I fear." The faint smile again. "A great many of the Duke's guests have remarked on the gears at night. They say it sounds like a heart. I tell them it is only the weights settling."

"I heard it at four this morning."

"The wind does strange things up there."

"So I have been told." Thalessa looked at her steadily. There was nothing to be read in the plain, pale, sightless face, nothing at all. "I note there is salt on your stair."

Vespera's head turned a fraction. "Salt?"

"Along the center of the steps. A trail."

"Ah." She laughed, softly, with no embarrassment. "That will be me, ma'am, or the scullery girl. I carry salt in my apron for the pots. I am a fisherman's daughter. Old habits, you know." She touched her pocket. "The Duke is generous, but he does not like his cod fresh. I cure a little in the pantry."

It was an excellent answer. It was so excellent that Thalessa filed it away in a quiet corner of her mind, in the place where she kept things she had no reason to doubt.

"The Lady Aurelia has asked to see you, Inspector," Vespera added. "She is in the morning room. She says that she is ready to make a statement."

…

The morning room was small and square and hung with pale-green silk. A fire of pine logs burned in the grate. Before it, on a chaise longue, sat Lady Aurelia Vance, wrapped to the chin in a black shawl, her gold hair unpinned and tumbling over one shoulder and her face as white as the lace at her throat.

She was in her thirties, Thalessa saw now in the daylight, and might have been beautiful. There was a delicacy about her features, a certain fine-drawn symmetry, that the years had not quite managed to coarsen. But her mouth was strained, and her hands were never still. They plucked at the shawl, at the fringe of the cushion, at the ring on her third finger, as if they were searching for something to hold.

"Lady Aurelia," Roderick said, taking the chair across from her. "I thank you for seeing us. I understand you wish to give a statement."

"I wish," said Aurelia, "to be left alone."

"That is not possible, my lady."

"Then I wish to be told that I am safe."

"That I can promise, as far as I am able. I have twenty rounds, a pistol and a very short temper."

It was meant to be reassuring. It had the opposite effect. Aurelia's eyes slid to the gun, and the color went from her lips.

"Begin with the dinner," said Thalessa, from the window seat. She had settled there with her chest on her knee and her notebook open, quiet as a cat. "Tell me where you sat."

"I... at the Duke's left. Between him and Thorne. Between him and the place where Thorne should have been." She swallowed. "Mr. Sterling sat opposite."

"Who poured?"

"The footman. Finch."

"Did anyone handle your glass?"

"Only Vespera. She set the glasses in a row. She always does." Aurelia pressed her fingers to her eyelids. "The poor girl. She feels her way along the cloth. I think it is the most terrible thing I have ever watched, the way she touches the edge of every plate."

"And Mr. Sterling's glass?"

"The same."

"You are sure?"

"I do not... I do not know. I did not watch." Her voice cracked. "I was not looking at anyone. I never look at anyone any more."

Roderick leaned forward. "Why is that, my lady?"

"Because..." She stopped.

The fire popped. A log slid and settled in a shower of orange sparks.

"Tell me about the St. Jude," said Roderick.

"There is nothing to tell. I was ill. I lay below. I heard the wind, and the crack of the mast, and then I was in the boat and it was dark."

"How long were you in the boat?"

"I don't know."

"The record says twenty-one days."

"If the record says it."

"What did you eat?"

She flinched as if he had slapped her.

"Fish," she said quickly. "We caught fish. There was biscuit. There was rain, and we caught it in a sail. We were hungry, Inspector, but we managed. The captain saw to it."

"Captain Haze."

"Yes."

"A good man?"

For a moment Thalessa thought Aurelia would break. Her mouth trembled; her eyes filled and brimmed over, and the tears ran down unheeded across her white cheeks and fell in dark spots upon the shawl.

"He was the kindest man I ever knew," she whispered.

"You were fond of him."

"We were all fond of him."

"But he did not survive."

"No."

"How did he die?"

"I... he drowned. He was swept over the side in the storm. Before we were in the boat."

"Before you were in the boat," Thalessa said, writing it down. "Yet you said just now that the captain saw to it. That he saw to your food in the boat."

There was a silence in the pale-green room.

Aurelia stared at her, mouth slightly open, tears still sliding down her chin. For a long moment she did not seem to breathe. Then she gave a little, cracked, terrible laugh.

"Did I?" she said. "How very foolish. I am muddled. It has been a long four years."

"Evidently."

"I misspoke."

"It would seem so." Thalessa closed the notebook with one finger. "Lady Aurelia, I do not wish to distress you. But I have counted already seven things you have told us this morning that cannot all be true. You have said you were below, and in the boat, and that the captain drowned before you left the ship, and that he fed you in the boat. You said you did not look at Mr. Sterling's glass, and yet you were certain it was set like the rest." She spoke with the gentleness of a surgeon. "I do not think you are a liar, my lady. I think you are a woman carrying something too heavy to hold straight."

Aurelia's face crumpled.

"Oh, don't," she said, in a hoarse whisper. "Don't be kind. I cannot bear it if you are kind."

"Then be truthful."

"I can't." She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. "We swore. We swore we should never—"

She stopped dead.

The fire crackled. Outside, the sleet rattled the glass like fingernails.

"Never what?" Roderick said gently.

"Never speak of it. To anyone." Aurelia took her hands from her face, and what showed beneath was no longer a woman's face but a mask of pure terror. "He said that if we did, it would come for us. And it has. Thorne is dead, and now Ragnar, and the next will be—" She seized Thalessa's wrist across the arm of the chaise, with a strength that startled her. "You have a gift, haven't you? You can tell what the dead have eaten. Can you tell what a person remembers?"

"No."

"I wish to God you could." Her fingers were icy. "Because then you would not need me to say it."

"My lady—"

"Doctor Malakor says we must stay together. He says that is the only safe thing." Her grip tightened. "Do not let him take me to the cellar. Please. I do not care what he says. Whatever he tells you, I shall not go down to the cellar."

"Why the cellar?"

"I will not say."

"Lady Aurelia."

"I will not! I will not!" She was shrieking now, rocking, her gold hair tangling in her fingers. "He never cried out! Do you understand? Not once! Not once in all the days! He only asked us—"

The door opened.

Vespera stood on the threshold with a tray. A teapot, three cups, and a plate of dry biscuits. She stood quite still. Her eyes were fixed on a point of the wall.

"Your tea, my lady," she said gently. "Shall I leave it?"

Aurelia stopped as though a string had been cut.

She sat back among her cushions, her face blank, her hands folded in her lap. The tears were still wet on her cheeks, but her mouth was shut like a lock. When she spoke again, her voice was a dull, remote, polite monotone.

"Yes, Vespera. Thank you. That will be all."

"Yes, my lady."

The housekeeper put down the tray with exact, unhurried movements. She set the cups in a row. She poured. She did not spill a drop. Then she folded her hands and turned, with that eerie sureness, and passed between Thalessa's window seat and the Inspector's chair as if she could see the space between them.

At the door she paused.

"Mind the third step down to the cellar," she said, to nobody in particular. "It is slippery."

And was gone.

…

"The cellar," said Roderick.

They were standing in the long corridor outside the morning room, where the portraits of dead Blackwoods looked down with their painted, indifferent faces. The sleet had thickened to snow. It piled in the mullions of the tall windows and turned the light to a flat, shadowless white.

"The cellar," Thalessa agreed. "And the third step. And the housekeeper who knows how slippery it is, who has never, by her own account, seen the stair."

"She is blind. She counts."

"She counts the steps of a tower she says makes her dizzy and cannot climb. And a cellar she has no cause to visit." Thalessa pulled her gloves tighter. "I do not say it means anything. I say it is a very precise piece of information to have, for a woman who sees nothing."

"You suspect her."

"I suspect everyone. It is the whole of my method." She started down the corridor. "But I notice that Miss Haze arrived at the door at the exact moment Lady Aurelia was about to name the thing. She did not knock. She did not announce herself. She simply stood there, with a tray, and the tea was already poured."

"A servant's timing."

"A servant's timing is the best alibi in the world, Inspector. No one questions the person who brings the tea."

He fell into step beside her. "I can send for the footman. Finch. See what he knows of the hours."

"Do. And ask him who has the key to the cellar."

"And the Duke?"

"The Duke will lie to you in a fresh and different way each time you ask." She glanced up at him. "Which tells you something. A man with one story can be broken. A man with seven can only be outlasted."

"Seven."

"Aurelia gave us seven in as many minutes. I counted." She held up her notebook and let him read it, the neat column of dates, places and contradictions. "Below deck. In the boat. The captain drowned. The captain fed us. We caught fish. We swore. He never cried out."

"He never cried out." Roderick said it very low. "Who?"

"The captain, I think. Or the man whose scars they bear. Or both."

"They are the same man."

"Perhaps." She closed the book. "Or perhaps there were more than twenty-five aboard that boat, and the muster roll lied. Perhaps someone else had no business surviving, and was left to pay."

They had come to the stair. The treads curved down into a gray gloom, and a cold draft rose out of it, smelling of damp stone and old brine. Thalessa stood looking into it for a long time.

"Not yet," she said. "Let me be sure first."

"Of what?"

"Of what I should find."

He did not press her. He was learning, she thought, the particular silence in which she did her best thinking, and he had the grace to leave it alone. They stood side by side at the head of the stair, a tall man in a leather coat and a slight woman in ash-gray, looking down into a dark that neither of them yet understood.

Somewhere far below them, faint and regular, there was a sound like a slow drip. Or a tapping. Or a hand, gently, on a wall.

"Rats," said Roderick.

"Yes," said Thalessa. "Very likely."

Neither of them believed it.