Page 75 of All of Us Murderers

“It was the girl. Florence. She came to my house, made demands. I told Elise she didn’t matter. I showed her in word and deed. I could hardly risk my marriage. What did she expect? How should I have known?”

“Knownwhat? What happened?”

The fingers of Bram’s free hand were tapping convulsively onthe arm of his chair. “She claimed she was in a delicate situation. Her father had thrown her out of her home. She said it was mine, my child to provide for. That she needed my help.”

“Your mistress came to your house in the family way? Mother of God!”

“She told Elise. Elise—Elise told me to prove that I cared only for her. And I did, I proved it. Not one penny, and so I told Florence. Coming to my home, forcing herself on my wife’s notice—Elise would have left me, scarcely two months after the marriage! What would people have said? And Florence had no claim on me, in law. No proof at all.”

Zeb took a deep breath. The smoke caught unpleasantly in his throat. He glared at his brother. “So she was expecting your child, her father threw her out, and then you threw her out. Congratulations, you upstanding pillar of the community. What happened?”

“She attempted an illegal act to rid herself of the consequences. That wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault!”

“She attempted an abortion,” Zeb translated. “And—?”

“Died.”

Zeb stared at his brother. Bram’s hand shook as he brought the cigarette to his lips. “Don’t look at me like that. She came to my house, talked to my wife. She ruined my marriage, and she stopped me having children!”

“What?”

“Florence. When we told her to leave—Elise and I together—she prayed we would never have children. Called on God as herwitness. She cursed us then, and she has come back to finish it now. Elise is dead, and she has come for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“On the wall of my room,” Bram said hoarsely. “Last night, after—I returned to my room and there was writing on the wall. A message from Florence.”

“And don’t tell me, after you went out, it vanished?”

“No,” Bram said. “It’s still there.”

“Oh. Well, that’s hardly supernatural,” Zeb said. “Anyone can write on a wall. Except a dead person, obviously.”

“She signed her name. She wrote that she will have her vengeance, and she signed itFlorence.”

“For goodness’ sake, man. Who else knew about this girl?”

“Elise. Elise and I killed her. Elise made me choose, and I chose her, so Florence died and now Elise is dead and Florence has come for me—”

“Bram!” Zeb yelped. “Stop it! Look, are you absolutely sure she’s dead?”

“She fell down the stairs! You saw her!”

Zeb breathed deeply. “Not Elise, Florence. If Florence’s still alive, she could have—”

“I saw her grave,” Bram said. “I did not go to the funeral—I should hardly have wished to associate myself, in the circumstances. But I went to the grave.”

Zeb briefly constructed a plot around a death elaborately faked a decade ago and then told himself not to be ridiculous. “Right. Well, clearly someone else knows. This house containsat least one peculiarly unkind practical joker, and you are the latest victim, that’s all. You mustn’t believe this stuff or you’ll run mad.”

“But she blames me,” Bram said, with terrible simplicity. “She blames us for her death, and she has avenged herself on Elise, and now she will come for me.”

Zeb’s loathing of him in that moment was a physical force. “Everything’s about you, isn’t it? You and the women you pick up and throw down. What about Rachel?”

“Who?”

“The housemaid!”

“What?”