Page 90 of Disturbing the Dead
“You used to run confidence schemes,” I try. “Trick someone into your confidence and defraud them. With the poisoning-ring case, Mrs. Ballantyne said she was going to talk to an expert. The next time I saw her, she was coming up from the basement. I thought she’d returned from her visit and gone down to speak to you about dinner. But it was you she was talking to, wasn’t it?”
“I have run more schemes than you could imagine, and the only reason I was caught was because I trusted someone who was not nearly as skilled at them. I know a confidence scheme when I see one. Some are short and quick, but the most profitable ones go on so long that those involved are thoroughly fooled.”
“And my intention is to become Dr. Gray’s mistress, at which time, he will shower me with gifts. Like severed hands and medical journals.”
“You scoff, but that hand is very valuable. It is also such an odd item that no one would ever suspect your motives, the way they might if he gave you fancy rings and jeweled hairpins. And he did give you a ring. You are wearing it tonight. Yet, again, because it is a joke between you—a poison ring—there is an excuse for accepting it. You were very pleased with the ring, and now you are pleased with the hand, and so he will continue to find things that please you, because you might say you are not wooing Dr. Gray, but he is wooing you, and that is all that matters.”
My snort sends dirt into my nose, and I cough so hard I half expect to jostle the trigger on her gun. “That would be the oddest sort of wooing.”
“An odd wooing for an odd girl.”
I sigh again. “Yes, I’m odd. Dr. Gray finds that interesting because he’s not exactly average himself. When I hit my head—”
“Tell that lie one more time, girl, and I will smash this pistol on your kneecap.”
I hesitate. For one thing, my kneecaps are on the ground. For another, a smack might break that pistol. Still, I get her point. She’s angry, and she believes the only way to get honest answers is to threaten me.
“So you think I’m still Catriona,” I say.
“No, I do not think you are Catriona at all. There is too little of Catriona in you, and too much that does not make any sense. You speak words I do not understand. I have looked in Webster’s dictionary, and they are not there.”
“It’s the blow to my—”
“Stop. You will answer my questions satisfactorily, or I will leave you in this tunnel nursing a bullet wound. I will not kill you. Not unless I decide you are a threat to anyone in our household. But I will shoot you and lock the garden exit, and you will need to go through to the Christie house and explain what you are doing in their tunnel. If you say I shot you, I will lie. I am excellent at it. You, however, are not.”
“I—”
“Tonight, you made jokes about that tent for women. Catriona might have been a demon, but she was as prudish as an old maid. Yet you speak like that as if it is the most natural thing.”
“Maybe because I realize—in my new mind—that it is.”
“Catriona would not even know what an ‘orgasm’ was, much less be able to speak of it. You know many things she did not. She could not read, and I once heard her tell Simon that words muddled, and so she never learned. Yet you can.”
“Because I was taught, and that knowledge—”
“You are not Catriona. You do not speak like her, think like her, walk like her, gesture like her. There is nothing of Catriona in you except your face, and therefore the explanation is obvious. You are her twin sister. If not, then you are a very close relation who looked enough like her to pass as her.”
“After being found unconscious in an alley? Where is Catriona then?”
“I believe she is the one who attacked you. You met with her. Perhaps she demanded something. She strangled you and thought she had killed you, and that went too far even for her. So she exchanged clothing with you and fled, leaving everyone to think she was dead.”
“That is… elaborate.”
“Are you mocking me?”
I try to wriggle again, but she only digs in the gun barrel.
“I’m not Catriona,” I say. “Does it matter who I really am? Whether I’m here with an addled mind? Whether I’m her twin sister taking her place? Whether I’m a fairy changeling? What matters is that I have no ulterior motive, and if you discover otherwise, you’re free to take any necessary steps to protect your household. Also, as I’ve told Alice, if I ever become Catriona again, I want you to warn Mrs. Ballantyne and Dr. Gray immediately, so they get her the hell out of your lives.”
“You realize you do not even sound like a proper Scottish lass.”
“Because I curse.”
“No, because of how you talk. The patterns of your speech are wrong. You will usually find correct ones when you address me, but you do not bother when you think you are alone with Dr. Gray or Mrs. Ballantyne. Now that I have you at gunpoint, you have slipped out of them again. Whatever story you have told the mistress and the master, it means they do not question your oddities, whether in your speech or your mannerisms or your ideas. I want the story you gave them.”
“I gave them the truth.” I pause, and then I go for it. “And that’s going to have to be enough for you.”
“I beg your pardon?”
