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And the one Lenora stole from her.
“Yes.” Even if I lie, she’ll know from the look of repulsion I’m certain is on my face. “You are.”
Terrible. And selfish. And heartless.
Because Lenora didn’t just take the life her sister longed for. She took away the chance for Virginia to have any kind of life at all.
“How could you?” I say. “She was your sister. I know you didn’t like each other. But she was the only family you had left.”
“What else could I have done?”
“Told the truth.”
Lenora slams the glass down, sloshing wine. It spatters the counter like blood. “I tried! No one believed me! In everyone’s mind, Lenora Hope had slaughtered her family. I couldn’t continue to be her. I would have been as much a captive in this house as my sister. And what goodwould that have done? Virginia couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything. By pushing my identity onto her—”
“Against her will,” I interject.
“Yes, against her will. But by doing that, at least one of us got to enjoy a little freedom. At least one of us got to have a life outside of Hope’s End.”
“Why did you come back?”
“Europe was changing,” Lenora says as she blots at the spilled wine with the cuff of her sleeve, the black fabric sucking up the red liquid. “The storm was gathering, and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before it swept across the continent. I got out and came back here, pretending to be Miss Baker, the prodigal tutor returning to an estate in dire need of her assistance. My sister was Lenora Hope, unfortunate victim of polio and multiple strokes. Because we kept a low profile, no one knew it was all a lie. No one but Archie, who understood the benefit of keeping silent.”
“Why didn’t you leave again after the war?”
“I no longer had the desire,” Lenora says with a shrug. “Or, frankly, the money. What I inherited wasn’t infinite. It’s expensive keeping this place going. And keeping our secrets required additional but necessary costs.”
“Like paying off Berniece Mayhew,” I say.
Lenora nods, grudgingly impressed I know about that. “The night of the murders, she saw me in the kitchen fetching a knife. And no, I didnotuse it to kill my parents.”
“Then why did you spend so much money making sure Berniece kept quiet?”
“Because even though I’m innocent, her testimony would have been the proof the police needed to charge me with multiple homicides. I knew it, and Berniece knew it, too, so I paid her off. But now the money’s running out. There’s no third act for me. I got away. Not for long. But it was enough.”
“For you, maybe,” I say bitterly. “But Virginia didn’t even get that.”
Lenora crosses her arms and fixes me with one of her frigid stares. “If my sister had wanted—truly wanted—a life like mine, then she wouldn’t have tried to take her own.”
“What do you mean?”
“My dear, how else do you think Virginia ended up dangling from that chandelier?”
Shock rolls through me like thunder. “Shehanged herself? How do you know that?”
“There was a chair placed under the chandelier,” Lenora says. “I assume she stood on it to loop the rope around one of the arms of the chandelier. She then tied the rope around her neck and stepped off the chair. The chandelier barely held her.”
I think back to Jessie’s murder tour and how I noticed the slanted chandelier that looked as if it had been jarred out of the ceiling.
“Wasn’t she pregnant?”
“No,” Lenora says, her voice clipped. “Not then.”
I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.
“Why didn’t the police suspect Virginia tried to kill herself if there was a chair there?”
Lenora stares at me, unblinking.