Carrie Bebris - Pride and Prescience

The constable’s gaze flickered to Hurst’s waistcoat. “I’m told you carry a pocketknife. Is that true?”

Hurst’s eyes narrowed. “Yes — lots of gentlemen do. What of it?”

“May I see it?”

Grumbling, Hurst produced the pocketknife. The constable opened it. The blade was clean. It extended three inches, and was perhaps half an inch wide at its base.

The constable folded the knife and returned it. “Mr. Hurst, do you know what a pentagram is?”

“A what? No. I haven’t the foggiest.” He handed his glass back to Darcy with a shaking hand. “Are we done now?”

“Yes, Mr. Hurst. Thank you.”

The normally sluggish Hurst could not leave the room fast enough.

That night, Darcy entered his chamber, and his wife’s embrace, like a man seeking sanctuary. Whatever trouble surrounded them, Elizabeth’s presence brought peace to his world. How he had lived without her in the days before they met, he could scarcely remember.

She gently directed him to sit down while she rubbed the tension out of his shoulders. “Tuppence for your thoughts.”

He groaned. With her hands on his back, he ought to be able to banish all unpleasantness from his mind, but he could not. Pieces of the day kept intruding, nagging him to ponder them until he knew what had happened to Lawrence Kendall. “I cannot figure out what Randolph’s watch was doing in Kendall’s hand, or why that symbol was used. Setting those details aside for the moment, Hurst emerges as the most likely suspect. He’s the only one with a clear motive, and his claim that he passed the whole afternoon napping is hard to believe — even for Hurst. Circumstantial evidence points to him.

“Yet the watch puts Randolph in the room at the time of the murder, and who else knows about symbols like that?” he continued. “And he, too, owns a knife. The physical evidence implicates the professor. But why would he kill Kendall?”

“Other than general principle?” She massaged the corded muscles of his neck.

“There is no connection between the two of them. At least, none that I can see.”

“That’s because you are looking with your eyes. I think the connection is in Randolph’s head.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I believe Randolph is a fanatic, bent on using his supernatural knowledge toward some ill purpose. He begged me today to obtain his watch from you and get Mrs. Parrish to wear it on her person, without her husband’s awareness. He claims it will help her, but I think that watch is the root of all her problems. It’s cursed somehow, or he has used it to curse her. It bears the same pentagram symbol that was on the floor and carved into the corpse — I shudder to contemplate what diabolical ceremony he conducted on Mr. Kendall at the time of the murder.”

This again? As much as Darcy respected his wife’s mind, he could not understand her willingness to entertain such preposterous notions. She was a smart woman, gifted with wit perhaps greater than his own. Yet she allowed herself to indulge in ideas that held no more credibility than faerie stories. “I would like to curse him for putting these thoughts in your head.”

“Mr. Kendall was killed on the same day that I interrupted whatever ritual Randolph was performing on Caroline. A day that seems to hold meaning for him — the winter solstice.”

“I agree that he may have tried to invoke some mystical effect with that symbol, perhaps even related, in his own mind, to the date. But attempting and doing are two different things, and I do not believe him — or anyone — capable of magic.”

Her hands stilled. “I am quite serious. There is something unnatural going on at Netherfield. I can feel it.” She came round to face him. “I–I sense things sometimes. Indistinct impressions. Randolph — when he spoke to me today, it was as if an alarm sounded within me. We should not dismiss his studies as nonsense. He possesses some power — some knowledge.”

“He possesses a watch that was found in a place it should not have been.”

“And why would Kendall clutch it in his dying moments if Randolph hadn’t been using it somehow at the time of the murder?”

Darcy pondered a moment. Why indeed? “Kendall was struck from behind. To me, that indicates that he did not grab the watch to interrupt some ritual. Rather, it was already in his hand as he was leaving. But even if Randolph was futilely trying to conduct sorcery, what killed Kendall was a knife wound.”

Elizabeth’s expression grew cold. “You will not believe me.” She crossed to the window and gazed into the darkness, her back to him. It was the first night of the new moon, and the blackness outside Netherfield’s walls matched the gloom within.

“Elizabeth, if Randolph could command the kind of power you think him capable of, why would he resort to killing Kendall with a physical weapon? Would he not instead slay him with a lightning bolt or something?”

“Do not mock me.”

“Elizabeth—”

“I am not some simpleminded country girl. I may not have had an education equal to your own, and as a woman, I cannot move about in the world like you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how it works.”

He crossed to her, put his hand to her shoulder. “Elizabeth—”

She shrugged him off. “Do you think I cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy?” She turned to face him. “Do you think I am that foolish?”

He had hurt her. Without meaning to, he had hurt his wife, and he wasn’t sure what to do to make it right. He could not believe in the ridiculous, and he would not lie to her by pretending to. “I do not think you are foolish,” he said finally. “Only misled.”

“And I do not think you are arrogant.” She blinked back angry tears and turned again toward the window. “Only blind.”

The amulet called to her from across the room.

All right — it didn’t call, exactly. It lay silent in the top drawer of the highboy where Darcy had placed it. And it was a watch, not an amulet. Just a watch.

Yet it arrested Elizabeth’s attention like no object ever had.

She sat upright on the bed, hugging her knees, staring at the drawer. Darcy had departed the room for the moment, summoned by Bingley on some late errand just as he’d been about to retire. He’d left Randolph’s timepiece behind.

Deliver the watch to Mrs. Parrish without her husband’s knowledge, the professor had exhorted. For what purpose — fair or fell? What did the supernaturalist think or hope it could do?

She crossed the room and slid open the drawer. The watch rested in the corner, its chain pooled around it. Despite Randolph’s claims, it appeared innocuous — a simple timepiece, albeit one with unusual markings. She grasped the fob and slowly pulled it out of the drawer.

Firelight danced across the silver as the watch gently swung like a pendulum from her fingertips. She detected a faint humming noise — surely deriving from its movement, nothing more. The sound distracted her, and the sway made it further difficult for her to study the engraving. The five-pointed star and its surrounding circle remained fixed, but a shape within the star seemed to change in the uneven light. It looked to her like a man, standing with arms and legs spread to the sides. She tried to focus but the image would not hold still. It shifted — one moment visible, the next not.

She grasped the watch itself to stop its swing and get a closer look. But as she touched it, intense heat seared her hand. She let go. It dropped back into the drawer, which she quickly shut. She then darted just as quickly away from the chest to stand, heart hammering, near the fireplace.

The heat had lasted but a moment — gone so fast that she wondered if she’d only imagined the sensation. It left no burn or other mark. But she could still feel the weight of the watch in her palm.