Page 39 of The Business of Blood
“Did you find the Hanged Man?” My hand froze halfway to my cape as a veiled specter drifted to block my front door.
Aunt Nola often wore a shroud of black lace over her aging features and down her back. It was an utterly macabre practice, but she claimed it assisted her while walking among her spirit guides with ease. Apparently, they recognized her as one of their own. And while I found the idea of spirit guides prosaic and ridiculous…I did acknowledge that she was a living ghost. A shadow of a once vibrant woman who was tied to this one place. She haunted my home. She hauntedme.
Nola had not left my house since I’d brought her here, aside from venturing into the gardens. And only then, on what we called her “good days.”
Today was not likely to be one of them.
“How did you know about the hanged man?” I queried, recovering from my shock. “Surely, it’s not in the papers yet.”
Black velvet rasped against wine-red muslin as she rustled toward me. “You need to find the killer, Fiona, before he kills again.”
Despite my skepticism, her dire words chilled me. “I do what I can, Aunt Nola, but don’t you think finding the killer is the inspectors’ job?”
Claw-like fingers clung to my elbow as the smell of incense and mothballs stung my nose. When Aunt Nola spoke, it was like the words were shaken out of her, tumbling from trembling lips with no apparent shape or trajectory. “No, no, no. You already know him. And he knows you. He knows you so, so well.” Her eyes were wide and wild behind her veil as she held up the card in her other hand for my inspection. “You—you just need to look him in the eyes. Right in the eyes, Fiona. And ask himwhy. Why did the hanged man deserve to die? What did he do wrong?” She released my elbow to tap the figure on the card several times too many.
“May I?” Reaching out, I took the card from Nola and inspected it thoroughly.
The Hanged Man. I hadn’t realized he was part of a tarot deck. On the face of the card, a man hung from a crossed beam by one foot. His other knee bent in a triangle; hands tied behind his back. Exactly like Frank Sawyer, but for one significant difference.
The man in the card seemed alive. Relaxed even. Contemplating his fate rather than fighting it.
Pittura infamante.
This was an interesting development. I wondered if Aberline or Croft had made the connection. Neither of them seemed the type to study the arcane. But then, Inspector Croft had surprised me with a depth of intellect I’d not previously assumed he was burdened with.
“Would you mind, awfully, if I take this card for the day, Aunt Nola? I promise to return it.”
“Yes. Yes,” she encouraged. “Show the others. See what they see.”
I didn’t believe Aunt Nola could see the future.
But, sometimes… Sometimes, when I looked into her touched and tortured eyes, I feared I could seemyfuture in them. That, maybe, reality would become too intolerable, and I’d begin constructing my own. That the world would seem too big and cruel, and so I’d limit it to whatever four walls I was allowed by the benevolence of a loved one.
Except, besides Nola, all my loved ones were dead or some other form of gone.
And I’d rather die than go to an asylum.
One must do one’s best not to go mad, then.
A spurt of sudden tenderness and tolerance warmed my heart toward my father’s sister. She looked like him, copper-haired and fair-skinned, plagued with a multitude of freckles. We resembled each other, actually, in both stature and structure. Though her teeth and eyesight were both perfect, whereas mine, were not.
I’d inherited a bit of my mother’s darkness. Both literally and figuratively. She’d also been a pale woman, but her hair had been black as midnight, and her eyes blue as cobalt glass.
“A black Irish beauty,”my father used to call her.
Grace Mahoney was dramatic and melancholic, whereas my father, Francis, had been light-hearted and quick-tempered. I supposed I was an assortment of all those qualities—with a few more for good measure.
I missed them so terribly…even their not-so-good days.
“You didn’t come say ‘hello’ to Oscar in the garden.” This was my gentle way of informing Nola that I was aware she’d likely been listening in as I’d told our neighbor the details of Frank Sawyer’s murder, andshe’dthought to show methisspecific card.
There was no other way she could have known about the hanged man.
Her eyes shifted, and her movements became erratic and sharp. “My…my guides. They woke me. Told me I-I had to come show you this card before you left. So you could be looking forhim, explicitly.”
I didn’t fail to notice that she hadn’t addressed my question. “Looking for whom? The hanged man? I already know where he is. They found a body last night. In fact, I’m on my way to the coroner’s office to—”
“No.No!” She shook me a little, stunning me silent. Aunt Nola had been many distressing things since I brought her home from the asylum, but never physically confrontational. “Him. They said to look for him! In the faces of the killers you already know.”
