The studio in the old guildhall had not changed since Elena's last visit, the day of the first sitting, the day she had come to study her rival and had found instead a mirror. The same north-facing windows, the same soft, diffuse light, the same smell of turpentine and linseed oil and the faint, sweet scent of the dried lavender that Camille hung from the rafters to mask the fumes. The canvases still leaned against the walls, some finished, some only begun, and the easel in the center of the room still held the half-finished portrait of a woman in a white dress, her face still only a suggestion of features.
But everything else had changed. The three women who entered the studio were not the same women who had occupied it before. They were different now, hardened and sharpened by the weeks of investigation and inquest, by the secrets that had been revealed and the secrets that were still hidden. They moved through the room like players in a drama whose final act had yet to be written.
Camille led the way, her steps slow and reluctant, her shoulders hunched as though she were walking into a wind that only she could feel. Inspector Holt followed close behind, her winter-sea eyes moving across the room with the swift, methodical attention of a woman who was cataloging everything she saw. And Elena came last, her face composed behind her veil, her hands folded before her, her heart beating with a slow, heavy rhythm that seemed to shake her entire body.
"The documents," Inspector Holt said, and her voice was crisp, businesslike, stripped of all the careful politeness she had shown at Ashwick Hall. "Where are they?"
Camille crossed to the far corner of the studio, where a stack of blank canvases leaned against the wall. She knelt and pushed them aside, revealing a small, iron-bound chest that had been hidden behind them. The chest was old and rusted, the kind of thing that might have been used to store tools or linens or the accumulated detritus of a life. Camille lifted the lid with trembling hands.
Inside were papers. A thick sheaf of them, bound with red ribbon, the same red ribbon that Marcus had used for his legal briefs, the same red ribbon that Elena had seen a thousand times on the desk in his study. Camille lifted the bundle out of the chest and held it for a moment, as though weighing it in her hands, and then she turned and handed it to the inspector.
"I never read them," Camille said, and her voice was barely a whisper. "He told me not to. He said they were insurance. He said that if anything happened to him, I should take them to the constabulary, but I never—" She broke off, and her voice caught. "I never imagined anything would happen."
Inspector Holt took the bundle and untied the red ribbon. She unfolded the papers, and her winter-sea eyes moved across them with the swift, precise attention of a woman who had spent decades reading documents that people did not want her to read. The silence in the room was absolute. Elena stood very still, her hands folded before her, her face composed, and she waited.
"These are letters," the inspector said at last, and her voice was strange, distant, as though she were speaking to herself rather than to the two women who stood before her. "Letters from Judge Voss to various women. Letters of a—personal nature. Some of them are quite explicit." She turned a page, and her expression flickered, a brief, unreadable spasm of something that might have been disgust. "And there are other documents as well. Receipts for gifts. Hotel registers. A lease for a flat in the capital, in the name of a woman who is not his wife."
Elena felt the world shift around her. The documents were not evidence of her crime. They were evidence of Marcus's infidelities, his deceptions, his long, systematic betrayal of his marriage vows. They were damning, certainly, but they damned him, not her.
"There is more," the inspector said, and she unfolded another paper. "This is a letter from Judge Voss to a woman named Lise Markham. The same Lise Markham who is currently missing. In it, he threatens her. He tells her that if she speaks a word of their relationship to anyone, he will have her arrested and imprisoned. He tells her that he is a judge, that his word is law, that no one will believe a penniless artist's model against a pillar of the community."
Camille let out a soft, choked sound. "I knew it," she said. "I knew he was responsible. I knew he had done something terrible to her."
"This letter," the inspector continued, "was written two weeks before Lise Markham disappeared. It is, in my estimation, sufficient evidence to open a formal investigation into Judge Voss's involvement in her disappearance. If she is found, and if she testifies to what he did to her, it would be enough to destroy his reputation utterly."
"But he is dead," Elena said, and her voice was calm, almost detached. "His reputation is already destroyed. At least among those who know the truth."
The inspector looked at her for a long moment, and her winter-sea eyes were sharp and searching. "Yes," she said. "He is dead. And these documents, while they are deeply incriminating, do not provide any evidence of how he died. They provide a motive for someone else to have wished him harm—the family of Lise Markham, for instance, or one of the other women he threatened and abused—but they do not provide any evidence against you."
There was a silence. The light through the north-facing windows had begun to shift, the gray of the afternoon deepening into the darker gray of early evening. The studio was growing cold, and the smell of turpentine was stronger now, sharp and chemical in the still air.
"Miss Delacourt," the inspector said, and she turned to face Camille. "You had these documents in your possession for months. You did not read them, by your own admission. But you must have suspected what they contained. Why did you not bring them forward earlier?"
Camille's face was very pale, and her hands were trembling, but her voice, when she spoke, was steady. "Because I was afraid," she said. "Because I was ashamed. Because I had been his mistress, and I did not want the world to know. Because I believed, in some part of myself, that I was to blame for what he had done. I thought that if I brought the documents forward, I would be exposing myself as well as him. And I was not ready to face that."
"And yet you kept them."
"Yes. I kept them. I told myself that I would give them to the constabulary someday, when I was stronger, when I was braver, when the shame had faded enough that I could bear to be seen. But I never did. And then he died, and I thought—I thought perhaps it was over. Perhaps the documents did not matter anymore."
"They mattered," the inspector said, and her voice was cold, colder than Elena had ever heard it. "They mattered very much. They might have shed light on his death. They might have prevented this entire investigation from being necessary."
"I know," Camille whispered. "I know. I am sorry."
The inspector was silent for a long moment. Then she folded the documents and returned them to the iron-bound chest. "I will take these into evidence," she said. "They will be examined more thoroughly, and the investigation into Lise Markham's disappearance will continue. As for the investigation into Judge Voss's death—" She paused, and her winter-sea eyes moved from Camille to Elena, and then back again. "I have no new evidence to present. The coroner's verdict stands. The case remains open, but inactive."
Elena felt a wave of relief pass through her, cold and sharp as a blade. The inspector was letting it go. The inspector had found nothing that connected her to the monkshood, to the hellebore, to the slow, careful administration of poison. The inspector was walking away.
"Thank you, Inspector," she said, and her voice was steady. "I appreciate your diligence, and your integrity. My husband was not a good man. I am glad that the truth of his character will be known, even if the truth of his death remains a mystery."
The inspector looked at her, and there was something in her winter-sea eyes that Elena could not quite read. It might have been respect. It might have been suspicion. It might have been something else entirely.
"Mrs. Voss," she said, "I have been an inspector for twenty-five years. In that time, I have learned that there are truths that the law cannot touch, and truths that the law will not touch. Your husband's death may be one of those truths. I do not know. But I do know that you are a very fortunate woman."
Elena met her gaze without flinching. "I have been told that before," she said. "Usually as a criticism."
"Not by me." The inspector picked up the iron-bound chest and tucked it under her arm. "I will see myself out. Good afternoon, Mrs. Voss. Good afternoon, Miss Delacourt."
She walked out of the studio, her boots echoing on the wooden stairs, and then the door closed behind her, and Elena and Camille were alone.
The silence that followed was vast and deep. The two women stood facing each other across the width of the studio, the space between them filled with all the things that had not been said, all the secrets that had been revealed, all the betrayals that had been committed and forgiven and committed again.
"You lied to me," Elena said, and her voice was very quiet.
"I know," Camille said.
"You told me you had told me everything. You told me there were no more secrets. And all the while, you had these documents. You had proof of what he was, what he did, and you kept it hidden."
"I know." Camille's eyes were bright with tears, but her voice was steady. "I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you, a hundred times. But I was afraid. I was afraid of what you would think of me, of what you would do. I was afraid that if you knew I had kept them, you would never trust me again."
"I trusted you," Elena said, and the words were sharp and bitter on her tongue. "I trusted you more than I have ever trusted anyone. And you lied to me."
"I am sorry," Camille said, and the tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. "I am so sorry, Elena. I do not expect you to forgive me. But I need you to understand—I did not know what was in those documents. I never read them. He told me they were insurance, that they would protect him, and I believed him. I was a fool, but I was not malicious. I was afraid, but I was not false."
Elena looked at her for a long moment. The young woman standing before her was the same woman who had held her hand in the kitchen, who had offered her friendship when she had every reason to offer nothing, who had stood by her through the inquest and the investigation and the long, terrifying weeks of not knowing. She had lied, yes. She had kept secrets. But then, so had Elena. They were both liars. They were both secret-keepers. They were both women who had learned to survive by hiding the truth from the world and, sometimes, from each other.
"Do you know what I felt," Elena said, "when the inspector read your letter aloud? The letter to your mother, the letter that said Marcus was afraid of me? Do you know what I felt?"
Camille shook her head, her face wet with tears.
"I felt betrayed," Elena said. "But not by you. By myself. I felt betrayed by my own weakness, my own foolishness, my own desperate, pathetic need to trust someone. I should have known better. I should have known that trust is a luxury that women like us cannot afford."
"Elena—"
"But I also felt something else," Elena continued, and her voice was softer now, almost gentle. "I felt a kind of relief. Because I understood, in that moment, that you were not perfect. You were not the idealized image I had constructed in my mind, the brave, defiant woman who had refused to surrender. You were a human being, flawed and frightened and capable of making terrible mistakes. Just like me."
She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. "I have spent my entire life being judged by others. By my husband, by the society we lived in, by the law that was supposed to protect me and never did. I have been judged, and found wanting, and I have learned to live with that judgment. But I will not judge you, Camille. I have no right to. We are both of us sinners, in our different ways. And we are both of us survivors."
Camille looked at her, and her dark eyes were wide and wet and full of a hope that was almost painful to behold. "Does that mean you forgive me?"
"It means I understand you," Elena said. "And understanding, I think, is more important than forgiveness. Forgiveness is a word that people use when they want to pretend that the past can be erased. But the past cannot be erased. It can only be carried. And I am willing to carry it with you."
Camille crossed the space between them in three swift strides and threw her arms around Elena, holding her with a fierce, desperate intensity. Elena stood very still for a moment, and then, slowly, she raised her arms and returned the embrace. They stood there in the cold, dim studio, the two women, the widow and the artist, the poisoner and the witness, and they held each other as the light faded and the shadows lengthened and the world outside went on its ordinary, indifferent way.
When they finally drew apart, Camille's face was blotched and swollen with weeping, but there was a lightness in her expression that had not been there before. "What happens now?" she asked.
Elena looked around the studio, at the canvases and the easels and the jars of pigment, at the detritus of a life devoted to art and beauty and the patient, laborious pursuit of truth. "Now," she said, "we go on. We live our lives. We do the best we can with what we have been given."
"And the inspector? The investigation?"
"The investigation is over. The inspector has what she came for. She will pursue Lise Markham's disappearance, and she will leave us alone." Elena paused, and a faint, cold smile touched the corners of her lips. "We are free, Camille. For the first time in our lives, we are free."
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