Page 40 of If Looks Could Kill

I stood in the upstairs hallway of the silent house and heard a cuckoo clock chime. Just a single cuck-oo. Half past the hour. Half past nine. Nearly time to find Mike.

Frozen, faithful Mike.

Pearl was asleep. Freyda, heading toward sleep.

Cora, still soaking in the tub. There was nothing, I thought, that should prevent me just nipping outside briefly to hand Mike his coat and thank him again for heroically helping us.

I owed him at least that much. I wouldn’t invite him in, but a moment or two of conversation on the front steps wouldn’t hurt anyone, provided the street seemed empty.

Miss Stella, I reasoned, had most likely come upstairs to bed. I buttoned up my coat and crept down the stairs as silently as I could. I trod softly on the tile floor of the foyer and felt my way along the wall to the door to the next set of stairs.

“Leaving already, young lady?”

I admit it. I yipped like a pet poodle.

The click of her walking stick was the only sign I had of Miss Stella’s presence. With the candles snuffed out, she was barely more than a darker shadow amid the blackness. I must have been about the same to her.

“You startled me,” I confessed.

I heard the strike and flare of a match as she lit a taper. Soon candlelight danced across her features, and her serpent crown.

“Was there something you needed?” Miss Stella asked. “Something for your room?”

My mind formed a reply about my patient, freezing friend waiting outside, but my gaze fell upon her diamond-white snakes, glistening by candlelight, and other thoughts slipped away.

Unlike Pearl’s hissing snakes, Miss Stella’s seemed more snuggled into one another than risen up to frighten me. These were genteel. Leisured. Like serpents snoozing, sunning on a rock.

I watched them, and for the first time today, there was no abject horror.

No shock of the unexpected. No terror of tragedy befalling my companion.

No panic of gunshots and fallen pimps in a house of sin.

Just a calm, peaceful scene—a fearless woman, standing before me, holding high and erect a head topped with sedate serpents, sliding across and through each other, supple and slow, and shining like stars.

Miss Stella, it seemed, could interpret my silence. She liked the admiration. It emboldened me to speak.

“Can you, er, put them away?” I ventured. “If you want to, I mean.”

“If I want to?”

“I mean,” I said, “that Pearl’s, er, came and went. They’re not there now.”

A small smile appeared on her face. “At my age,” she said wryly, “what’s left of my hair is not much to look at.

But these”—here she cupped a gentle hand against her snakes, much as girls sometimes fondly cradle and bounce their ringlets—“ these are as luxurious as ever. White suits them better than it suits an old lady’s thinning hair. ”

“Luxurious” was, indeed, the word.

My thoughts returned to Mike and to the coat in my hand.

“I’m sorry I disturbed you,” I told her.

To business: “I have a friend. A young man.” I blushed at how this must sound.

“He’s just someone I’ve met a few times, but he’s been kind.

” Tabitha, you have nothing to confess to this woman, for heaven’s sake.

“He accompanied us here for our safety, and this is his coat. He’s outside. I’ll just take it to him quickly.”

Miss Stella’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve kept a young man waiting outside all this time?” she said. “What a gallant fellow. Invite him in, do. He must be freezing.”

I imagined him meeting my Gorgon hostess. “I couldn’t,” I began. “I’ll just give him—”

“I’ll cover my head,” she said with a small smile. “No need for concern on that account.”

Easy for her to say. Mike would avoid me like contagion if he knew about the type of monstrous company I now kept. “That’s very kind of you, but it’s late, and I—”

“Please,” she said, “I insist. I can put on some water, and we’ll offer a cup of tea to warm him, after his pains. Give him a little treat. He’s quite the Sir Galahad, your beau.”

“He’s not my beau.”

The plaintive note in her voice made me stop. Since she was so keen to have Mike come in for a moment, why refuse her? He must be chilled to the bone. Inviting him in for a cup of tea would be sociable—safer, too—than being outside on the streets by night.

“I would like to talk to him a bit,” I admitted.

“Of course you would.” Miss Stella smiled, and when she did, her austere, forbidding manner melted entirely. “Young people must have their tête-à-têtes. I’ll go put the kettle on. Here.” She handed me her candlestick. “You need this more than I.” She went downstairs.

I stood in the empty foyer, debating. It didn’t feel wise to bring him in. Too risky.

But why on earth not? If she kept her snakes covered, what was there to fear?

I looked to see where Mike and I might sit and talk. A rocking chair waited for an occupant near a front window. I went looking for another chair.

A shadow made me jump. I thought a large man had loomed up beside me, but it was only one of the carvings I’d seen before.

A statue of a man, dressed in the elegant clothing of the Federal period, with breeches over his thighs instead of trousers and dance slippers upon his feet instead of shoes.

One of the Founding Fathers, perhaps? Hamilton or…

of course. Lafayette Place! It must be Lafayette, the Revolutionary hero.

He wore a waistcoat and jacket, with frilly lace at his throat that was carved in remarkable detail, and his long hair was pulled back and knotted in a queue at the nape of his neck.

He had a kind of beauty to him, and his pose was that of a dancer, with one leg gracefully extended behind the other and an arm outstretched as if to a companion.

I held my candle up closer to examine the face. He was staring straight at me, it seemed, with a look of horror etched perfectly upon his marble features. As if the sculptor had caught him just on the brink of a scream.

A chill came over me. It was only this dusty old townhome with spectral shadows. But the sculpture had rattled me. I decided I’d stick to my first plan and speak to Mike outside.

I hurried down the stairs, glad to put the main floor behind me, and found Miss Stella in the rear kitchen, carefully setting out cups while a kettle purred on the coal stove.

“Miss Stella,” I said, “I think that perhaps I ought not to invite my friend in.”

She set the sugar bowl down upon a tray. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

She seemed to shrink a bit. Disappointed. Wistful. It struck me, then, how lonely her life must be, alone in this house of ghosts, if only figurative ones.

I had hurt her feelings. Perhaps I should’ve invited Mike in, after all. But I shrank at the thought. A need that should’ve sat more heavily upon my conscience occurred to me just then, and I seized upon it.

“Actually,” I told her, “what I’d really like to do is go back to our flat, briefly, to get our things. Pearl’s and mine. And warn our friends.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Is it wise, to go out tonight?”

My heart fluttered with fear. “I know,” I said, “but I’ll just fetch our belongings and warn our flatmates. I’ll come straight back here.”

Miss Stella slowly took the kettle off the stove and placed it on a soapstone. “You must know,” she said, “that once you leave this house, I cannot protect you.”

I gulped. “I won’t be gone long.”

She opened the door to the stove and raked the coals apart so the fire would die down.

A frightening thought seized me. “When I return,” I asked, “will I be allowed back in?”

She opened a kitchen drawer and drew out a skeleton key with a bit of wool tied to one end. “Of course,” she said. “Here. Take the key.”

I took the key, thanked her, and hurried out the front door. There was Mike, still waiting in the shadows. He stepped into the light and waved.

I’d gotten Pearl, Freyda, and Cora to safety and had done what I could for them amidst their suffering, at least for tonight. I’d done the best I could on the worst, the absolute worst, day of my life and managed to keep Pearl’s hideous change a secret. Mostly.

And here was Mike, after a cold, lonely, dangerous hour, waiting for me.

Tabitha Woodward, you’ve been a good girl.

So good, I felt I’d earned a little spot of fun.