Chapter Twenty-Six

Meg.

The hour immediately following breakfast on weekdays was the busiest time in Kirkbride's common room, because that was when post would be delivered to the patients. I had expected that letters would be withheld, or at least opened by the staff, given that my father's replies from his asylum in Paris had been so brief and infrequent, but it was not the case at all. Nurse Ricci roamed the room on a day when the blue August sky gave way to a blanket of pewter grey clouds that rumbled with thunder, and rain hammered against the large windows.

One of the first women to receive a letter was Tillie Maynard, and she ripped the envelope open with the enthusiasm of a child receiving a present on Christmas morning. She could not have read more than a few lines, however, when she screwed the letter up and threw it towards the empty fireplace, before storming from the room.

At my side, Sally Caldwell elbowed me in the ribs.

"I can't stand litter," she said piously, and rose from her armchair to retrieve the rejected letter. Before I could open my mouth to object, Nurse Ricci appeared in front of me like a genie from a lamp, and handed me a large, thick envelope.

"Thank you," I smiled at her, and glanced down to see Erik's familiar, neat handwriting.

Sally returned to her seat as Nurse Ricci moved away, smoothed the crumpled paper across her knees, and began to read aloud:

"Mrs Maynard,

Your family have asked that I write to you in my role as their solicitor, as opposed to that of your godfather.

You have been sent to Kirkbride as a result of your own actions, and the harm that befell your infant son Jonathan. It is vital that you receive the treatment you need, so that such an incident can never occur again. You will submit to whatever treatment the doctors at Kirkbride deem appropriate, and your husband and your father will visit you when it is advisable to do so. Your mother will not be setting foot in Kirkbride Asylum, as she finds the notion too disturbing.

It is imperative that you stop sending such hateful letters to your family. It does not reflect well upon you or upon your station, and only adds to the idea that you will continue to humiliate the Maynard family and soil its reputation. Should you have any actual requirements, please write to me at my office address, and I will try to accommodate you.

In the meantime, I wish you a most speedy recovery.

Yours sincerely,

J. Edgar Carruthers."

Sally looked at me as she finished the letter, her expression as troubled as mine was.

"What horrible things to say to someone," I said at last. "I am truly grateful that my friends and colleagues visit me here. We're freakshow performers, as you know, but it seems that we have more human decency than whatever it is poor that Tillie has to put up with."

Sally nodded. "Tillie did right by throwing it away." She crumpled the letter up again, and threw it with perfect accuracy into the wastepaper bin in the corner of the room. "You have something less depressing there, I fancy."

"I hope so," I opened the large envelope in my lap and slid out the much longed for sheet music, a second, smaller envelope which was still sealed, and a note from Erik.

My dear Meg

Please forgive the brevity of this letter. You will find enclosed sheet music for the piano, as requested, and I have taken the liberty of including some of my own songs, including pieces that will be featuring in the upcoming Spring season on the Imaginarium. I hope this will help get you back into the mindset for performance once your stay at Kirkbride has been completed. You will also find a letter from Christine de Chagny. I very much hope that these will assist you in any way that they can.

Yours in haste,

E.

I wondered what the need for such haste had been. Maybe he was just short of time; it was the Summer season now and the busiest time of the year for the Imaginarium.

I glanced at the music Erik had chosen; several popular vaudeville tunes that were staples of the Imaginarium and would be familiar to the woman around me. The Boy in the Gallery, No Place Like Home, Daisy Bell. I shuffled the sheets. Some Chopin, Bach and Mozart, and Greensleeves for some reason, and then Erik's own compositions, including You Alone, the number used to open our shows, and Christine's aria, Love and Ashes.

There was plenty to keep my occupied and ensure that I did not lose any skill on the piano. Finally, I opened the letter from Christine. As I unfolded the paper, the scent of perfume rose from it, and some dried flower petals fluttered onto my lap.

My dearest Meg,

I am so pleased to hear that you are beginning to feel more settled, and that the torments you feared from the doctors are Kirkbride are not, in fact, true. I must say that although you will feel that the whole situation is out of your control, I am proud that you are receptive to those trying to help you. Erik tells me that you are making good progress, and I pray that you will be able to be released from Kirkbride in time for the birth of your child.

To answer your questions: I am afraid that there is no certain way to tell the gender of your baby before it is born. I can offer you some old wives' tales, but that is truly all that they are. Just for the fun of it, here are a few that I came across when I was pregnant with Matilda:

It is said that the way you carry the baby can be an indicator of gender, and that if you are carrying high then it is likely to be a girl.

You have not said in your letters that you experienced any cravings, but I was told that if I was drawn to salty things then I was expecting a boy, but if I was craving sweet things, then I was expecting a girl. Since I have always had a sweet tooth, I don't know how much truth to place in that.

Have you seen a change to your hair and nails? The story goes that if you have healthy hair and nails, then you are expecting a boy, whereas if your hair and nails seem thin and brittle, then you may be having a girl.

There is also a method that involves tying your wedding ring with a piece of string and letting it hang above your baby bump. If the ring swings from side to side, then you are expecting a boy, and if it goes round in circles, then it is a girl.

With regards to the heartburn you mentioned, I also experienced this, and another old wives' tale says that this is a predicter of whether your baby will be born with hair. Matilda had the softest, blondest strands when she was born."

The letter continued with Christine telling me of the events in her day-to-day life, her upcoming performances at the Palais Garnier and the new phonograph recording of her singing that would be made available to the public shortly. She told me how Matilda was getting along, and that she was now eagerly pursuing ballet lessons herself. She painted the picture of a busy but happy family life, and signed off with so much love that I found myself torn. I was pleased for Christine and her loved ones, would never wish her suffering, and yet deep within the pit of my stomach I was burning with jealousy. Christine was living a life that had been denied to me.

I reminded myself that Christine had been through many traumatic events in her young life. The fact that she was wealthy and happy now did not negate the facts that she was an orphan, that she had grown up poor, and that she had been stalked by the very man whom she was now corresponding with. Erik's attentions upon Christine had not been gentle, and I would not be surprised if she still had nightmares about him. Like I would be, she was raising a child without the guidance from her mother, and from what she had told me she still felt out of place in the aristocratic world that she had married into.

I wondered about the old wives' tales she had shared with me, and if there might be any truth to them. I wasn't sure whether I was carrying the baby high or low, because I had no-one else to compare myself to. I did not crave anything in particular that I could think of, but my hair and nails had appeared to grow longer and become more lustrous in my time at Kirkbride.

I did not know why I felt so surely that I was expecting a daughter, but of one thing was certain: as I was not married and therefore did not have a wedding ring, there was no way of finding out whether it would swing like a pendulum or spin like a top if I dangled it over my stomach.

I folded Christine's letter and Erik's note into my pocket and went upstairs to put them away in my carpet bag, which lived at the bottom of my wardrobe. Tillie was curled up on her bed, her face buried in the pillow, and I felt a wave of pity for her as the harsh words from her godfather echoed through my mind.

"Are you alright, Tillie?" I asked, stupidly. "Can I get you anything?"

"No," she mumbled. "Go away."

I reached out to pat her shoulder in comfort, but then thought better of it, and having squirrelled my letters away, retreated back downstairs to the music room.

I was irritated still further to find that someone had been mistreating the instruments. The glockenspiel had been knocked over sideways and some of the bars were scattered across the floor; more egregiously, there was a hole in the back of the piano at the bottom right corner, as though someone had kicked it in temper. The strings inside were partially visible, and the highest note had been vandalised into silence.

Jealousy and shame beat with equal fervour in my breast, and I took those feelings out on the piano, slamming the keys in a passionate, angry rendition of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-Sharp Minor which I found amid the sheet music that had already been donated to Kirkbride along with the piano itself.

A small foot announced its displeasure and I smiled in spite of myself.

"Not a fan of Rachmaninoff, are you? Well neither am I in truth. It just fit my mood. But if you insist, we will play something a little more cheerful."

I put Erik's sheet music on the piano and began to play Love and Ashes, concentrating on the unfamiliar patterns of the music.

I jumped when someone knocked gently on the open door, and looked around to see Dr Lockwood leaning against the doorframe.

"I'm sorry to disturb you. Who were you talking to just then?"

I blushed. "The baby."

"Ah. And does she prefer this… what is it? Haydn? Liszt?"

I chucked at that, thinking that he could not have picked two composers whose styles were more different.

"Actually, this is one of Mr Danton's compositions. It's an aria he wrote for Christine Daae when she performed for us at the Imaginarium. And yes, I think she does prefer it." I gently rubbed my baby bump. "At least, she has settled down now."

"I have never heard any of the music that is performed at the Imaginarium," Lockwood took a step into the room. "Do you mind if I stay to listen?"

"It won't be very good," I warned him. "I've heard it plenty of times, but I've never played it before."

"Can you sing it for me?"

"No, it's out of my vocal range. Erik did say that he would write an aria for me to sing, but then… well, he got a celebrity to perform and he got distracted."

I tried to smile, but I do not think that Lockwood was convinced. He gestured at the piano.

"Please."

I began to play, fumbling a little but managing well enough as I remembered the first time I had heard this piece, while Christine had been rehearsing it with Erik. To hear her perform it onstage at the Imaginarium's concert hall had been so magical, and I was still touched with excitement that I had been able to sing with this world-renowned star. It had been such a good evening; hearing Christine sing, performing alongside her, talking to the journalists, and then…

Dr Gotreich's face flashed abruptly across my mind.

"There is a Mrs Angela Merriweather asking to see you."

"It's beautiful," Lockwood smiled. "Please don't stop. Miss Giry?" I had ceased playing mid bar, and Lockwood looked at me, his expression changing to alarm as he sank to one knee beside the piano bench. "Marguerite? What is it, what's wrong?"

He put one hand to my forehead and took my wrist with the other, automatically measuring my pulse. I could feel it thundering like a stampede of horses under his fingers.

"I remember," I murmured. "I remember who Angela is."

"Who is she?"

"She is the woman who made me want to die."

Lockwood stared at me, and then rose to his feet and put a hand under my elbow to help me up from the piano bench.

"Come along, into my office."

I went with him, vaguely aware of him telling the nurse on the main reception desk to cancel his next appointment. He guided me into his office and sat me down in my usual chair opposite his desk. I heard the clink of glass wear and he pushed a tumbler of water into my right hand.

"Sip that slowly."

I obeyed, and Lockwood sat down behind his desk, opened a drawer, pulled out my file and opened it to a fresh page. Using a pencil that had tooth marks on the end, he wrote ANGELA at the top of the page, and then the date. I put the glass down on the desk, still half full of water.

"You're feeling steadier now?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Can you tell me who Angela is?"

"Angela Merriweather. She is the adult daughter of Thomas Seymour, the first investor in the Imaginarium."

"The man you had a brief sexual relationship with?"

"Yes."

And I told him, as well as I could remember, what she had said to me during that horrible meeting. By the time I had finished speaking, there were tears streaming down my face and Lockwood's pencil was flying across the paper as he documented my words in his usual illegible way.

"Drink some more of that water, please, it will help you calm down."

I could feel myself shaking, and the glass clinked against my teeth. Lockwood clasped his hands together on the desk and watched me.

"Where were you on Christmas Eve of 1899, Miss Giry?"

"I don't remember," I admitted, surprised. "But I expect I was with Mother, celebrating the holiday."

"You were not at the Seymour home, or wherever it was that Mrs Seymour was giving birth?"

"No, of course not."

"Of course not," he echoed. "And yet, you believe what Mrs Merriweather said, don't you?"

I sobbed, and covered my face with my hands.

"Miss Giry," Lockwood's tone was gentle but firm at the same time. "You cannot take other people's failings upon yourself. You had no way of knowing that Mr Seymour still had the drawings that he did of you, let alone that he was pleasuring himself to them. Those are his choices, not yours. And I know that you won't believe this either, but it is highly unlikely that Mrs Seymour's discovery of all this led to her death."

"She went into premature labour!" I sobbed. "The baby died too!"

"Maybe so, but you have no idea what sort of medical help Mrs Seymour was receiving. There may have been an underlining condition which caused her death, or she may have suffered a haemorrhage. Whatever the case, you were not standing there attacking mother and child with a knife, were you?"

"I may as well have been!" I lowered my hands and glared at the doctor through my tears. "If Mrs Seymour had been able to carry the baby to term, then maybe none of this would have happened!"

"We cannot live our lives on maybes. Now that you have told me about this, it is clear to me that it was guilt that made you do what you did. Not that alone, of course, you have suffered one trauma on top of another since you were a little girl, but the accusation that you were responsible for two deaths was the final straw for you. It is tragic that Mrs Seymour and her new-born baby died, but Miss Giry, you are not a killer."

"I didn't want to live my life after what happened to the Seymours," I mumbled. "And you're wrong, Dr Lockwood. I am a killer. I murdered a man back in Paris."

The doctor picked up his nibbled pencil again. "I'm listening, Miss Giry."

I leant back in my chair and stared at the painting of a King Charles spaniel on the office wall. Was it Lockwood's own dog, I wondered? Or was the artist someone he knew or admired?

I couldn't tell Lockwood Philippe de Chagny's real name if I was about to admit to his murder.

"For the sake of anonymity, we'll call him Charles. Charles was a patron of the theatre that I performed at, and where there were some… unfortunate and illegal activities taking place." I could feel myself blushing at the very thought of revealing Erik's darkest secrets. "Charles discovered that Mother and myself were aware of these activities, because of documents he found in my own hand when he went through the drawers in my dormitory. He told me that if he were to go to the gendarmes—that's the name for the name for the French police—and tell him what he knew, then Mother and I would be arrested and charged with conspiring in those crimes. Mother would be executed. I would be confined to a lunatic asylum."

I remembered the words I had spoken to Erik only a few weeks' before: 'Oh, how my circle has come around.' I closed my eyes and felt a fresh tear escape from beneath my eyelid, took a deep breath, and continued.

"Charles told me that he would not go to the gendarmes if I agreed to give up my virginity to him, but then he went back on his word. The situation escalated, and Charles started physically dragging me to the gendarmes. I just knew that if I told them what I knew then my mother would be executed, so I told Charles that I could help him, that I would help him, and I led him to a part of the building that I knew was physically unsafe."

I could no longer control the flood of emotions that caused my breath to come in rasping gasps and my body to rock.

"I led him to a place where he fell to his death, in the full knowledge that the fall would kill him. So that is my confession, doctor. You can tell me that I am not responsible for Mrs Seymour's death, her baby's death, my father's death, my fiancé's death. But I did murder a man, and that is a stain upon my soul that can never be erased! Do you know what happens to murderers, Lockwood? They get executed! Back in France it's by guillotine, in New York State, it's the electric chair! So maybe I was right when I put that piece of glass to my wrists! I deserve to die, to pay for my crimes!"

"Does your baby deserve to die?" Lockwood asked quietly. "You have an innocent life inside you, should she be sacrificed so that you can undergo the punishment that you believe you deserve? Would that assuage your guilt?"

"Oh, Dr Lockwood," I wept. "I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what to think, or what to feel."

"I will have to give careful thought to what you have told me today, Miss Giry. You have revealed two pieces that have been missing from the jigsaw. But I am not a policeman, I am not a judge, I am not a jury or an executioner. It is not up to me to decide whether actions taken in defence of yourself and your loved ones deserve a punishment any harsher than the one you are already putting yourself through. The man was blackmailing you and trying to have intercourse with you through nefarious means."

"Are you saying that you believe in private revenge, doctor?"

"I believe in justice, Miss Giry, but that is neither here nor there. We have more work to do together, but for now, I want you to go and get some rest. I can give you a sedative if you want it."

"Please, no more drugs," I swept my hands over my face, trying to stop myself from crying.

"As you wish. Go and lie down now, and we will talk further tomorrow." He opened the diary that was a permanent fixture on his desk. "I will have one of the nurses let you know the time for our appointment either this evening or tomorrow morning; I'll need to shuffle some things around."

Still sniffling, I retreated upstairs and washed my faces in the bathroom, trying to quell the storm of hiccoughing gasps that resulted from my storm of tears. I stared at my pale face in the mirror, feeling empty and weighed down at the same time, like someone had pulled my insides out and draped a lead-lined cloak over my shoulders.

I had told my secret to someone who could, conceivably, take that information to the authorities and ensure that the law dealt out whatever retribution it saw fit. And yet, I was surprised to find that I trusted Dr Lockwood; he would keep my revelation to himself as long as he believed that the incident was a one-off, and I was not about to embark upon a murderous rampage.

The baby inside me kicked again, and I dragged myself to my bedroom, where Tillie was still curled on her bed, and still sobbing quietly. I curled up on my own bed, turning my back to her and watching the rain spatter against the window. I did not want to sleep. I was afraid of the nightmares that would come.