Chapter Twenty-Eight

It took me a moment to decide where the driver should drop us off. Too close and it could draw attention to us entering the tunnel. Too far and, well, it's not late enough yet for me to stroll through the streets of the New Town dressed in a multicolored frock coat and top hat.

I settle for having him stop a couple of streets away, and we alight as quickly as we can and then get into the shadows before he pulls away. I draw my coat tight to hide my blindingly white dress and then hurry to the shed that marks the entrance to the tunnels.

I reach for the door, and there's a massive new lock on it.

Without a word to Mrs. Wallace, I take out a hairpin, bend, and…

The lock is open. Oh, it looks as if it's shut, but the shackle hasn't been pushed down. Someone has left it like this so they can get back in without it appearing open. Someone who had access to a key… but didn't count on having it for long.

I find a hiding spot for my carpetbag. Then I pull a box of matches from my pocket. I light one and show Mrs. Wallace the ladder before I position myself and put out the match as I descend. Only once I'm at the bottom, where no one will see the light, do I strike another match.

I move into the tunnel. I don't wait for Mrs. Wallace. If she insists on coming, she can either keep up or bring her own damned matches.

To give her some credit, she doesn't grumble. Or, if she does, it's silent. She follows right behind me and when I glance back, she has her derringer in hand. Better yet, it's not even pointed at me.

I relax a little and begin my search. I check the partial passage where we found Selim. Nothing there. I check others. None go beyond six or seven feet deep, and when I find one that seems to have been destroyed by a collapse, I wriggle partway into a crack between timbers, only to find a solid wall of dirt behind it.

I check another dead end that seemed to be the victim of structural collapse and find the same thing. As Gray suggested, these were almost certainly test runs, where those building the tunnel headed in one direction or another, only to find that it wasn't a good spot to dig.

Not an old system of tunnels then, but a single one.

We haven't determined the nature of the tunnels. Lady Christie knew of them, and said that, despite what the children thought, Sir Alastair knew of them, too, but hadn't used them since he was a boy.

McCreadie's investigations have revealed that no other houses on this street have subbasements. That suggests the one under Sir Alastair's house was built for this tunnel. An exclusive secret passage just for the occupants.

It must be a smuggling tunnel. For getting illicit lovers and shady business partners in and out of the house? Or for transporting illegal goods? Whatever the original purpose, they've been co-opted by the children and Selim… and the killer.

I continue my search. I'm nearly out of side passages when I reach another one that looks collapsed, with a gap big enough to crawl through. I crouch and shine my match inside. Deep in the hole is a burlap bag.

"There's something there," I say as I pass the match to Mrs. Wallace. "I'm going to crawl inside."

I'd love to take the match, but the hole is too small to crawl with it in my hand, and I don't trust this outfit to be fireproof.

I remove the frock coat. Then I hike my skirts and tie them awkwardly, in hopes I won't drag them through the dirt and ruin them.

Mrs. Wallace only watches. When she doesn't complain, I presume she doesn't care what I do to the dress. After all, it's really not a dress at all but undergarments. Still, I don't want to give her any reason to grumble.

I get down onto my hands and knees and crawl past the half-broken barrier between the tunnel and the solid ground beyond. What I discover past it is a hole dug into the earth, just over two feet in diameter.

It's a tight squeeze for me. Was this something the children dug while they were bored? Or a hiding spot for smuggling tools and goods, hidden before that barrier broke?

I'm in past my hips when I can finally touch the burlap sack. I tug, but it sticks. A bigger tug has it coming free and, even in the dark, I can tell it's empty. I push it past me and then reach my hands into the spot where I'd pulled it from. I touch dirt on all sides. It's the end of this little passage, and there's nothing else there.

I squirm backward until my hips are out. "Nothing. Just an empty—"

"Stop."

I go still and whisper. "Did you hear something?" but the dirt swallows my words. I resume wriggling and something presses into the small of my back. Something hard and exactly the size of a derringer barrel.

"Are you holding a gun to my back?" I say, twisting my head so Mrs. Wallace can hear me.

The barrel presses in, answering that question. Anger surges, but I resist the urge to fight. For one thing, there's a gun pressed to my spine. For another, I have a feeling we are about to have a long-overdue conversation, one Mrs. Wallace prefers to hold at gunpoint.

"Who are you?" Mrs. Wallace says.

I sigh and resist the urge to drop my face into the dirt. "You know who I am. If you think I'm conning Dr. Gray—"

"You have them fooled, lass, but that is only because they've never met the likes of you. I have. I used to see her in the mirror."

That gives me pause. I work out what she's saying. "You're a con artist?"

"A what?"

"A grifter. A hustler."

Silence.

"You used to run confidence schemes," I try. "Trick someone into your confidence and defraud them. With the poisoning-ring case, Mrs. Ballantyne said she was going to talk to an expert. The next time I saw her, she was coming up from the basement. I thought she'd returned from her visit and gone down to speak to you about dinner. But it was you she was talking to, wasn't it?"

"I have run more schemes than you could imagine, and the only reason I was caught was because I trusted someone who was not nearly as skilled at them. I know a confidence scheme when I see one. Some are short and quick, but the most profitable ones go on so long that those involved are thoroughly fooled."

"And my intention is to become Dr. Gray's mistress, at which time, he will shower me with gifts. Like severed hands and medical journals."

"You scoff, but that hand is very valuable. It is also such an odd item that no one would ever suspect your motives, the way they might if he gave you fancy rings and jeweled hairpins. And he did give you a ring. You are wearing it tonight. Yet, again, because it is a joke between you—a poison ring—there is an excuse for accepting it. You were very pleased with the ring, and now you are pleased with the hand, and so he will continue to find things that please you, because you might say you are not wooing Dr. Gray, but he is wooing you, and that is all that matters."

My snort sends dirt into my nose, and I cough so hard I half expect to jostle the trigger on her gun. "That would be the oddest sort of wooing."

"An odd wooing for an odd girl."

I sigh again. "Yes, I'm odd. Dr. Gray finds that interesting because he's not exactly average himself. When I hit my head—"

"Tell that lie one more time, girl, and I will smash this pistol on your kneecap."

I hesitate. For one thing, my kneecaps are on the ground. For another, a smack might break that pistol. Still, I get her point. She's angry, and she believes the only way to get honest answers is to threaten me.

"So you think I'm still Catriona," I say.

"No, I do not think you are Catriona at all. There is too little of Catriona in you, and too much that does not make any sense. You speak words I do not understand. I have looked in Webster's dictionary, and they are not there."

"It's the blow to my—"

"Stop. You will answer my questions satisfactorily, or I will leave you in this tunnel nursing a bullet wound. I will not kill you. Not unless I decide you are a threat to anyone in our household. But I will shoot you and lock the garden exit, and you will need to go through to the Christie house and explain what you are doing in their tunnel. If you say I shot you, I will lie. I am excellent at it. You, however, are not."

"I—"

"Tonight, you made jokes about that tent for women. Catriona might have been a demon, but she was as prudish as an old maid. Yet you speak like that as if it is the most natural thing."

"Maybe because I realize—in my new mind—that it is."

"Catriona would not even know what an ‘orgasm' was, much less be able to speak of it. You know many things she did not. She could not read, and I once heard her tell Simon that words muddled, and so she never learned. Yet you can."

"Because I was taught, and that knowledge—"

"You are not Catriona. You do not speak like her, think like her, walk like her, gesture like her. There is nothing of Catriona in you except your face, and therefore the explanation is obvious. You are her twin sister. If not, then you are a very close relation who looked enough like her to pass as her."

"After being found unconscious in an alley? Where is Catriona then?"

"I believe she is the one who attacked you. You met with her. Perhaps she demanded something. She strangled you and thought she had killed you, and that went too far even for her. So she exchanged clothing with you and fled, leaving everyone to think she was dead."

"That is… elaborate."

"Are you mocking me?"

I try to wriggle again, but she only digs in the gun barrel.

"I'm not Catriona," I say. "Does it matter who I really am? Whether I'm here with an addled mind? Whether I'm her twin sister taking her place? Whether I'm a fairy changeling? What matters is that I have no ulterior motive, and if you discover otherwise, you're free to take any necessary steps to protect your household. Also, as I've told Alice, if I ever become Catriona again, I want you to warn Mrs. Ballantyne and Dr. Gray immediately, so they get her the hell out of your lives."

"You realize you do not even sound like a proper Scottish lass."

"Because I curse."

"No, because of how you talk. The patterns of your speech are wrong. You will usually find correct ones when you address me, but you do not bother when you think you are alone with Dr. Gray or Mrs. Ballantyne. Now that I have you at gunpoint, you have slipped out of them again. Whatever story you have told the mistress and the master, it means they do not question your oddities, whether in your speech or your mannerisms or your ideas. I want the story you gave them."

"I gave them the truth." I pause, and then I go for it. "And that's going to have to be enough for you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know they are intelligent people. Yes, they are kindhearted, and someone could use that to take advantage of them. They might also be a little sheltered and naive. Dr. Gray can be easily distracted. But do you honestly believe that if I gave them a preposterous story, they would accept it without investigating? They're scientists. That's what they do. They challenge theories."

"So your story is preposterous?"

"Is that really all you got from that little speech? Of course it's preposterous. Slightly less than your changeling theory, but more than your identical twin or doppelg?nger one."

"Doppel…"

"Germanic folklore to describe someone who looks exactly like you. In the lore, it's an evil spirit. In common parlance, it means someone who just happens to look like you, which is actually more possible than you might think. There are only so many combinations of the DNA that make up our physical features, and people who aren't related can look alike. There's a theory, mostly urban legend, that everyone has a doppelg?nger out there. As for how I know about the German lore, it's the same way I recognized the Hand of Glory. Reading. I like the weird stuff. Always have. Helps to have overly indulgent parents with an academic bent, who encouraged their only child to study anything she likes, however strange. Kinda wish I'd studied history more, though. It'd sure be helpful now."

I'd done the same thing with Isla, bombarding her with information that she'd struggled to process, in hopes it would make my story easier to handle.

"You're right, Mrs. Wallace. I'm not Catriona. However, if you know any physical trait that would separate her from a twin—scar or such—tell me where it is and I'll show it to you. This is her body. I'm just not her."

Silence.

I continue, "I'd like you to just trust that Mrs. Ballantyne and Dr. Gray know my story and accept it, however unbelievable it is. So does Detective McCreadie. Three people who aren't going to swallow anything without testing it from every angle. They accept it. Now, can we please finish searching? I'm no threat to your employers. I'm only here to help them, and if I haven't proved that by now, I don't know what else I can do."

"Tell me who you are." The barrel drives into my tailbone. "Now."

"We're really doing this?" I settle back on my haunches. "Fine. My name is Mallory Elizabeth Atkinson. I'm thirty years old. Born March 20, 1989, in Vancouver. My parents are Scottish. Mom came to Canada after she went to university here in Edinburgh. She's a lawyer—a barrister, you'd call it. Dad's family emigrated… well, around now, actually. He grew up in Vancouver. He's a university professor. English lit. Especially the Victorian era, which is about all the insight I get into this world."

I try to glance back, but I can't see her. "There. Is that weird enough for you? I'm from the future."

Silence.

I continue, "If you want to test me, can we do that later? I'm not going anywhere. Kinda stuck here, in the body of a Victorian housemaid who was a really nasty piece of work. Seriously, if she ever shows up again, get her out of the house. She's probably a sociopath. I've met a few. In my world, I'm a cop. A detective, like Hugh McCreadie."

"And how did you end up in Catriona's body?"

"You want that part, too? Fine. My world. 2019. My grandmother is dying." My voice hitches there, but I push on. "I was sitting vigil in her final days. After she fell asleep, I slipped out for a jog—running for exercise. I needed to get away. Clear my head. It was late at night, but hey. I'm a cop. I can handle myself, right? I hear a woman in trouble. I run into an alley in the Grassmarket. I see what looks like the image of a young woman in Victorian dress. Catriona, as I realize now. I thought it was some kind of macabre tour video. This young woman was being strangled. At that same moment, I got grabbed by a guy who'd been stalking me. He strangled me as she was being strangled in the same spot a hundred and fifty years earlier. I woke up in her body, and I'm really—really—hoping she didn't wake up in mine, conning my family—"

There's a thud behind me, as if she's rocking back hard. The gun is gone from my lower back.

"Does that mean I can come out?" I say.

No answer.

Someone else might be rendered speechless, not sure how to even answer such a preposterous story. But that's not Mrs. Wallace. She'll have lots to say, and I might find myself locked in this tunnel while she decides what to do with me.

Either way, she's no longer holding a gun to my ass, so I'm taking full advantage. I start reversing out when hands grab the back of my dress and haul me.

"Hey!" I say, twisting.

My hand moves to plunge into the coat pocket for the knife. Except I'm not wearing the multicolored coat. I'm wearing the equivalent of underthings, which have no pockets.

I'm being dragged from this narrow tunnel, fingernails scraping the ground on either side as if I can stop myself. I can't stop myself. I can only prepare to fight like hell once my attacker hauls me out—

Hands grab my hair and rip so hard I scream, my head jerking back. I kick and twist to punch, but my attacker has my hair wrapped around their hand. Something soars over my head in a blur. A cord cuts into my throat, and my brain goes wild, torn between raw animal panic and disbelief.

You're hallucinating. You're mistaking something brushing against your neck for a rope, and you're panicking when you need to be fighting.

There cannot be a cord around my throat. I just explained to Mrs. Wallace how I got here, saying I'd been strangled by a rope, so this cannot be happening.

Except it is happening. My hands fly to my neck and catch the cord. A smooth silken cord.

Mrs. Wallace is killing me. I told her my story, and she's decided I'm a madwoman, and she needs to protect her family from me. I'd claimed to have been strangled, so that's what she's doing to me. A fitting end.

I wedge my fingers under the cord. A foot slams down on my back, so hard that pain rips through me. I'm on my knees, being lifted aloft by the cord around my throat, the foot on my back now a knee pressing me down, keeping me from fighting.

I should be able to fight. I don't know whether I could beat Mrs. Wallace in a brawl, but I'm strong enough to fight back. Yet I can't do more than grip the cord around my throat, that knee plus the cord giving me no leverage however much I struggle.

I manage to twist, trying to see Mrs. Wallace, to let her see my face, to hope she might not be able to murder me if she sees my face.

A makeshift torch that Mrs. Wallace stabbed into the earthen wall illuminates the darkness, but it's a poor light, with a sputtering flame. When the knee slams into my back, my head jerks down and I see Mrs. Wallace… lying on the ground behind me.

I also see the legs of the person hauling me out. Two trousered legs set in a wide stance.

The thud I heard was Mrs. Wallace being knocked out.

Knocked out? Or murdered?

I can't worry about that. I just need to fight. Selim must have come to retrieve his artifacts and found us here, and I underestimated the danger.

Hands grab mine and wrench them from between the cord and my throat. I twist again, looking up, and I see a face over my shoulder. A face set in a twisted mask of determination.

It's not Selim's face.

It's Lord Muir's.

I see his face… and then I don't see anything at all.