Dru was quiet the entire way home from the wax museum. What had Una been thinking, revealing her suspicions about Deidre’s death? It was the music that had done it—that slow, haunting tune stealing inside her like a phantom. Telling Dru had been the only way to expel it. But so bold a truth was never a good idea.
“Really?” Dru had said. “Yes, I think so.”
“By whom?”
Una looked down at her lap. “I . . . I don’t know.” “You must go to the police.”
“No,” Una said, loudly enough that several people at nearby tables turned to scowl at her. She leaned across the table and whispered, “I can’t. If I’m wrong, I’m afraid . . . afraid I’ll be expelled from school.”
“Have you told Miss Perkins?” Una shook her head.
Dru leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips. Her eyes drifted toward the orchestra, lingering there until the haunting song was done. Then she’d signaled their waiter and paid the bill, saying nothing more on the subject.
Now, as they mounted the nurses’ home’s steps, her mind scrambled for a way to walk back her admission. Dru’s uncharacteristic silence made it all the harder to think. She must believe Una mad. Unhinged. Overworked and hysterical.
Mrs. Buchanan opened the door and waved them inside. “Almost locked you out, I did.” She closed the door behind them and fastened the lock. “Straight up to your room, now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Una muttered, shrugging out of her coat. “I’m just going to grab a book from the library,” Dru said.
“It’s too late for studying, dear,” Mrs. Buchanan said. “I’m about to turn off the gas and head to bed myself.”
“I shan’t be but a moment.”
Una started up the stairs without her. What sort of a textbook did she need at so late an hour? A Manual of Psychological Medicine and Allied Nervous Diseases? Did she mean to diagnose Una and see her to the Insane Pavilion at first light?
Inside their room, Una changed out of her dress and into her nightshirt. It had been a joke, she’d tell Dru. A fleeting idea of no real substance. Dru arrived a moment later, tossing a book onto her bed before hanging up her coat and beginning to undress.
“About what I said earlier, my nerves were still rather excited and I—” “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” Dru said over her shoulder as she
unbuttoned her dress. The tautness in Una’s hands and neck eased. “Not until we figure it out, anyway.”
“Figure it out?”
“Who the killer is,” Dru whispered as if afraid the women in the neighboring rooms might hear. Even so, Una detected a hint of excitement in her voice.
“You believe me?” “Of course I do.”
“But I don’t know the first thing about solving a murder. Do you?”
Dru stepped out of her dress and horsehair bustle, nodding at the book on her bed. Una crossed the room and picked it up. What she’d thought was some diminutive textbook was actually a collection of stories. The gold lettering on the cover read, The Works of Edgar A. Poe, Vol 1, Tales.
Una frowned. She’d never heard of the author, but doubted some silly love story, as Dru was fond of reading, would help them figure out who killed Deidre. “You think the answer is in one of these tales?”
Dru flung on her nightgown and grabbed the book. “Haven’t you read ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’? It’s one of my favorites.”
Una shook her head. “I’ll read it to you.”
Una lit a candle just as the overhead gas lamp flickered out. She squeezed beside Dru on her bed and listened as she began the tale.
“‘What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed. . . ’”
Dru had a pleasing voice when she read, clear and steady, yet animated when the story called for it. Una leaned back against the fluffy pillow and stared at the far wall. In the dancing light and shadow, she could see the tale unfold—the peculiar Mr. Dupin, the winding streets of Paris, the horror-
filled apartment in the Rue Morgue. For a moment, her thoughts strayed, and she wondered whether this—lying here beside Dru—was some version of what her life could have been. If she’d had a sister. If her mother hadn’t died. If she’d gone to live with Claire instead of staying with her drunken father.
She rested her head on Dru’s shoulder. Her nightshirt smelled of lavender and violets. A rise in her voice drew Una back to the story, and she listened intently through to the end. When Dru finished, Una sat up and grabbed the book from her. She flipped through the final pages of the story to be sure she hadn’t misheard. “An orangutan? You think an orangutan killed Deidre?”
“No, silly.” Dru took back the book and turned to the beginning of the story. “To figure out who, if anyone, murdered her, we have to think like Mr. Dupin.” She ran her finger over the lines of words, stopping halfway down the page. “‘He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences.’ That is what we must do. He didn’t confine himself to a particular line of reasoning or reject anything out of hand. He visited the scene of the murder. So too shall we.”
“The alcoholics’ ward? What could we find there? Her body has already been removed and buried.”
“See, you’re already thinking too narrowly. We won’t know what we might find until we go. And you saw the body, did you not?”
“In the morgue, yes.”
“If it’s not too terribly upsetting, you can relay to me what you saw, and I shall endeavor to imagine it. We can sneak a look at the pathologist’s report too. You said he examined the body, yes?”
“But he’d made up his mind about the cause of death before even looking at her.”
“We don’t have to accept his conclusions. We can make our own deductions from his observations.”
“If Miss Perkins or Nurse Hatfield catch us snooping around, there’s no telling what kind of trouble we’ll get into.”
“You and Dr. Westervelt have managed to sneak around without getting caught.” She nudged Una playfully in the ribs. “So too can we.”
Una winced at the mention of Edwin. She hadn’t spoken to him since fleeing so abruptly from the alcoholics’ ward. I love you, he’d said to her. I
love you. No man had ever said such things to her and meant it. She rattled her head. That was another mess she’d have to work out. But not tonight.
Dru closed the book and set it on her nightstand. Surely she was tired after so long a day, but her bright-eyed expression was like that of a child in a sweet shop. “Once we solve the mystery—if there is a mystery to be solved—we’ll notify Miss Perkins together.”
Una climbed from Dru’s bed into her own, sinking into the soft mattress. It was a good plan, certainly better than Una could have come up with on her own. Perhaps this Mr. Poe had his merits. But the plan wasn’t without risk. And Dru’s willingness to help flew in the face of Una’s most important rule: Look out for yourself.
She sat up and turned to Dru, who was just about to blow out the candle. “Why are you helping me?”
“We’re friends, you goose.” She smiled and blew out the candle before Una could correct her.
