FIRST CASE

Day 10 of 100

There were two of them, and they were lying side by side on the boards of the boathouse floor, with their hands folded, like the figures on a tomb.

Mara stood in the doorway and did not go in.

It was nine in the morning. The sky above the lake was the color of pewter, and the wind off the ice came in through the gaps in the planking with a thin dry whistle; the boathouse smelled of tar, and wet rope, and old varnish, and under them something else, a clean cold odor like the inside of a freezing cellar. Two skiffs lay overturned on trestles. Oars hung in racks along the wall. A single lantern burned on a nail. And in its light, on a canvas tarpaulin spread across the planks, a pair of young men in the gray flannel of the Academy lay on their backs and looked at the roof.

They were identical.

She had known they would be. Okafor had told her in the sledge, in his slow grave voice, as they came across the ice from the Post: two students, same face, found at six by the boatman. She had nodded and written it in the little book she had begun to carry, a new one, black, bought in the town with the first of Nell Fenwick's money. She had said, I see. She had been very calm. But it was one thing to be told. It was another to stand in a doorway and see her own situation laid out on a tarpaulin in the likeness of two dead boys.

The faces were long and fair and a little foolish. Snub noses. A cowlick. A scatter of freckles over the cheekbones, standing out like ink spots on the dead-white skin. They looked about twenty. They looked, with their closed eyes and their mild, composed mouths, remarkably alike; and she felt a wave of something that was not quite horror and not quite pity, a cold prickling at the base of the skull.

One of them was the original, she thought. One of them was real.

And he lay down beside himself and died.

"Miss Fenwick."

She started.

Rooke stood at her elbow. He had come up so quietly that she had not heard the planks. He wore the long gray coat, with the collar turned up, and snow lay in his hair; the scar through his brow was white with cold. He looked at her with those level gray eyes, a little tired, a little guarded, and she saw that he had not slept again.

"If you'd rather wait outside—"

"No."

"It is not pleasant."

"I was engaged to catalogue it," said Mara. "I can't do that from the step."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. It might have been approval. It was gone before she could be sure.

"As you wish," said Rooke. "Come."

…

She had been at the Post for two days.

They had been, in their way, the strangest of her life. She had risen at six in the little back room, under the eaves of the loft, in a bed that smelled of woodsmoke, and washed in cold water, and dressed in her gray gown. She had pinned on her spectacles. She had descended the stair with her heart in her throat to find Okafor in the kitchen, frying bacon with a delicate air, and the plump constable, whose name was Pip, asleep at the table with his cheek in a plate. Nobody had questioned her. Nobody had looked at her twice. And at eight she had sat down at the long table by the east window, under the cabinets, in the gray winter light, and begun to read.

It was a revelation. Winnie had said the private files would be a lie, and they were not. They were worse. They were thin, and cautious, and bound up with the tape of a thousand redactions; but they were true. They were the field reports of men who had stood in the cellars and written down, in plain words, what they saw. She had read the account of the Albany pair, in Rooke's own cramped hand: Two women, same face. Both claim to be the original. Both in distress. I cannot tell. She'd read the report of a Warden in Providence, who had written at the end, in pencil, God forgive us.

She had read, and written, and had not once looked up when the Captain passed behind her chair.

He had not spoken to her. He'd been courteous, brief, absolutely correct; he had left her on the first morning a note on the corner of the table, Cabinets 3 through 7. Chronological. Cross-refer by name. He had come in once, on the second afternoon, and stood for a moment by the window with his back to her, looking out at the lake. She had felt his gaze on her neck. She had gone on writing.

And this morning, at half past seven, he had appeared in the loft door with his coat on and said, quite curtly, "Miss Fenwick. There's a case. I'd like you to come."

…

"Doctor Veldt is on his way from the Academy," said Okafor. "He was delayed by the road."

He knelt on the planks beside the nearer body, the big hands resting on his thighs. He had taken off his cap. There was a look about him of grave and decent reluctance, such as one sees in a man called to bury a stranger.

"Boatman found them at six. A Mr. Dunne, ninety years old, with a bad leg and a dog. He says the door was shut and the lantern out, and when he lit it, there they were. He ran for the Post. Nobody else has been in. I have posted a man on the shore."

"Names?" said Rooke.

"Elias Vane. Second-year. Natural philosophy. Lodging in Hale House, North Court." Okafor's voice dropped. "He was reported missing on the first of January. The Dean put it down to the Christmas recess."

"Both of them?"

"One of them. We have, of course, no way of telling which."

Mara had crossed the floor.

She did not remember doing it. She had gone, step by step, with her stick tapping on the boards, until she stood at the foot of the tarpaulin and could look down at the dead. She felt the Captain beside her. She felt, too, though she told herself it was nonsense, the eyes of Okafor on the side of her face.

She knelt.

It was harder than she had expected. Her ankle howled. She braced herself with the stick, and lowered herself onto one knee on the cold planks, and looked at the nearer boy: the face, the folded hands. He wore the standard Academy flannel. His collar was undone. His tie was in his pocket. And on the white skin of his throat, below the angle of the jaw, there was a mark.

It was faint. It looked, at first, like a bruise. It was blue-white, delicate, ramified, as though a spider had spun a web beneath the skin; fine branching lines, radiating from a point at the base of the neck, spreading across the collar-bone and up under the chin. She leaned closer. They were crystalline. She could see tiny glints in them, like frost on glass.

"Captain," she said.

"Yes?"

"May I have the lantern?"

He brought it. She held it low, and tilted it, and the glints flashed. They were exactly as she had read. She had seen the drawing in a monograph by Fludd, in a book that had been in the locked case in the Academy library, and she had spent a night copying the plate by candle.

"Lattice-frost," she said.

"What?"

"It's a term. From the old Continental writers. It describes — the residue." She heard her own voice, thin and steady, the voice of a lecturer. "When a soul is drawn out of a living body by force, as opposed to leaving of its own accord, the withdrawal leaves a mark. A sort of burn. It follows the channels of the spirit, along the veins. The old name is vitis gelida. Frozen vine."

"Drawn out."

"Yes."

"By whom?"

"I don't know." She moved the lantern. "But look at this. It begins at the sternum, here, just above the heart. It spreads upward. And it isn't uneven. It's very regular. A clean pull, from a single point." She hesitated. "It would have taken a considerable skill. And some sort of instrument."

"An instrument."

"A focus. You couldn't do it by hand, not in a single clean draw, not without leaving a ragged edge. This is surgical."

She turned, still on her knee, and looked at the other body.

The mark was there too.

It was identical. It spread across the other throat in the same shape, branch for branch, the same fine blue lines, as if a seal had been pressed to each. She looked from one to the other. The resemblance was horrible. It was as though a hand had been laid on both of them in the same instant, and had not troubled to distinguish.

"They were killed together," she said slowly.

"Or one killed the other and himself."

"No." She shook her head. "No. Look at the hands. There's no struggle. No defensive injury, no torn cuffs. They didn't fight. They lay down, side by side, and they were—" She stopped. "They were emptied. Both of them. At once. By someone who knew how."

"Or by themselves."

"I don't see how."

"A suicide pact," said Rooke. "It has been done. Two persons of one soul, unable to bear it."

"That's an interesting hypothesis."

"But?"

"But you don't believe it," said Mara, "or you wouldn't be standing so still."

She had not meant to say it. It came out of her like a sneeze. She felt her cheeks flush, and bent her head at once; but she heard, above her, a faint sound that might have been a breath let out.

"No," said Rooke. "I don't believe it."

…

Dr. Veldt arrived at ten, a plump anxious man with a bag, and was shown the bodies, and was sick in the lake. He pronounced both dead of "cardiac failure from unknown cause." Okafor took the dog's owner's statement, three pages long, concerning a quarrel with the neighbors. The plump constable, Pip, was dispatched for sledge-runners and a covered cart. And Rooke walked slowly along the edge of the boathouse floor, looking at the planks with his head bent, like a man searching for a coin.

Mara went outside.

She did it because she could not breathe. The boathouse was suffocating, with its smell of tar and cold; she felt, in the pit of her stomach, a slow nausea. She stepped through the side door onto the landing-stage, which jutted out over the water on black piles, and stood there at the rail, with the wind in her face.

The lake lay below her, white and endless.

She had not been so close to it in ten years. She'd looked at it from the library window and the Hall; she had crossed it, in a sledge, with Okafor, that morning, with her eyes shut. But she had not stood at its edge and looked down. The ice was clear here, close to shore, a pale-blue glass a foot thick, and through it she could see the water below, dark and green. A drift of snow lay across it in a long curve. Beyond, the ice stretched to the horizon, grained and glittering, and the Green Mountains stood along the far shore in ranks of blue and white.

And to the north, on a spit of land where the lake narrowed into a bay, stood a house.

It was a small gray cottage. Its roof had fallen in. It stood among a tangle of dead raspberry canes, with one chimney still upright, black against the sky; and beside it a wooden dock ran out into the water, half-collapsed, its piles slanting.

She knew the dock.

She had never seen it. She was sure of that. But she knew the number of boards. She knew the third from the end was split. She knew how it would feel under a bare foot in August: warm, a little rough, with the smell of tar and sun and the lake's green breath rising between the planks. She knew a boy had sat at the end of it, with his knees drawn up, and a book, and a knife.

Don't look down, said a voice in her head.

Mara. Look at me. Look at me.

She gripped the rail.

The world tilted. She felt the planks move under her feet; the cold wind turned to a wet heat. Her skirts were heavy. She was in the water. The green was closing over her head and her mouth was open and the cold had hands. A shape was at the end of the dock, black against the high white sun, stretching out an arm, and she was reaching, reaching, with all her strength; and the shape was a boy, and the boy was crying, and the boy was calling her name.

Cal, she thought. Cal, I can't—

"Miss Fenwick!"

A hand closed on her arm.

It was strong. It spun her half round. The world slid back into place like a slide into a lantern, the boathouse and the rail and the white sky; and she was looking up into a lean pale face, a scar, a pair of gray eyes gone dark with alarm.

"You were falling."

"I'm all right."

"You were going over the rail."

"I was— the dizziness—" Her teeth were chattering. She did not know when they had started. "The ankle. I turned it. It's nothing."

"You've gone the color of paper."

"I haven't eaten."

"Sit down."

"I'm perfectly—"

"Sit."

He had hold of both her arms. He pressed her down, gently, firmly, onto an upturned crate, and she sat, and he went down on one knee in front of her in the snow, and held her wrists. His hands were warm. They were large and calloused, with a long white scar across the back of the left. She stared at it. There was a groove in the palm, a ridge worn by rope.

"Breathe," said Rooke.

She breathed.

"Again."

"Captain—"

"Breathe. Slowly. In." His voice was low and level, as to a frightened horse. "That's it. Look at me. Don't look at the water. Look at me."

The words went into her like a hook.

She did look at him. She could not help it. She saw the gray eyes, close, and the dark lashes snow-flecked, and the white scar through the brow; and she saw, for a flash too brief to hold, a different face. It was thinner, younger. It had the same eyes. It had a smear of dirt on the cheek and a split lip, and it was shouting, hoarse with terror, across a green glittering gulf: Look at me! Mara, look at me, I've got you!

"Cal," said Mara.

It slipped out.

She heard it. She heard it fall into the cold air between them, small and clear as a dropped coin. A syllable. A name. She clapped her hand over her mouth.

He had gone absolutely still.

His hands were on her wrists. They had not tightened or released. But something went through his face: a flicker, a sort of blank, as of a man who has stepped on a stair that isn't there. His lips parted. His eyes, fixed on hers, did not blink.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

"You said—"

"I said Captain. I said— it was the cold, my teeth." She was gabbling. "I'm a little faint. It was a stutter."

"It was not."

"Captain Rooke, please—"

"Nobody has called me that," said Rooke slowly, "in ten years."

…

The wind blew. A flake of snow fell between them, and then another. On the landing-stage behind them a board creaked. Somewhere in the boathouse, Okafor was saying something about a cart.

He let go of her wrists.

He did it with great care, one at a time, as one lets go of a thing that might break. He rose, and stood over her, a tall dark shape against the pewter sky. His face was perfectly composed. It was the face of the Captain of the Wardens. But she was looking up at him from the crate, with her spectacles slightly crooked and her heart pounding in her ears, and she saw the pulse jumping at the side of his throat.

"My brother used to call me that," he said.

It was a lie. She knew it. It was the thinnest of lies, and he knew she knew; it fell flat as a stone on ice. But he said it steadily, and she bowed her head, and said, "I'm sorry."

"It's of no consequence."

"I must have heard it somewhere."

"Yes."

"In the town, perhaps."

"Perhaps."

The silence lengthened. She waited. She counted the planks of the landing-stage between her boots. Eleven. Twelve. She heard the lake sigh and mutter under the ice, a long, low, breathing sound.

"Miss Fenwick," said Rooke.

"Yes."

"Have you been to this lake before?"

She lifted her head.

He was looking not at her but past her, out over the rail, at the empty white expanse and the gray cottage on its spit. His profile was hard and clear against the sky. She could not read it. There was something in the set of the jaw that she had seen only once, in the face of a man at a funeral who is determined not to weep.

Tell him, said a voice in her. Tell him now. Take off the spectacles and say, "I am Mara Ashgrove, and I don't know why I remember your hands."

And be put in a cell.

"No," said Mara.

"Never?"

"I come from Concord. I told you."

"So you did."

"I have never been to Lake Merrow before this week."

"I see." He did not look round. "That is odd."

"Why?"

"Because you looked at the Lake-Keeper's dock," said Rooke, "as if you'd been there."

Her hands, in her lap, had begun to shake. She folded them, one over the other, and pressed them against her knees until the knuckles went white. She said nothing. She could not have said anything. She sat on the crate, in the wind, in the thin falling snow, and looked at the half-fallen pier where a boy had once sat reading, and a girl had once drowned.

Behind them, in the boathouse, two dead men lay with their hands folded. Along the shore a cart was coming, with a creak of runners. Somewhere out on the ice a single fisherman raised his arm.

"I think you ought to go in," said Rooke at last. His voice was very quiet. "You're cold. Lieutenant Okafor will see you back to the Post."

"Yes, Captain."

"And Miss Fenwick."

"Sir?"

He turned.

She saw his eyes. They were dark, and troubled, and very tired, and they held hers for a long time. His hands were closed at his sides.

"If you ever remember where it was you heard that name," he said, "I should like to know."

He walked away along the stage, a tall gray figure growing small, and did not look back; and she sat where she was, with her stick across her knees and her sleeve pulled down over the ash-colored sigil, and shook so hard that the crate rattled on the boards.