The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [652]
We stood shoulder to shoulder, peering through the narrow gap in the blocks. Two coffins of polished wood stood inside, each on a pedestal of marble. And on the floor between them . . .
“Who is he, Aunt?” Jamie’s voice was quiet as he turned to speak to her.
She stood as if paralyzed, the muslin of her gown flapping round her legs in the wind, pulling strands of white hair from beneath her cap. Her face was frozen, but the blind eyes darted to and fro, seeking an impossible escape.
Jamie stepped forward and grabbed her fiercely by the arm, making her start from her frozen trance.
“Co a th’ann?” he growled. “Who is he? Who?”
Her mouth worked, trying to form words. She stopped, swallowed, tried again, eyes still flickering to and fro over his shoulder, looking at God knew what. Had she still been able to see when they put him in there? I wondered. Did she see it now, in memory?
“His name—his name was Rawlings,” she said faintly, and something inside my chest fell like an iron weight.
I must have moved or made some sound, for Jamie’s eyes went to me. He reached out a hand for mine, and held on tightly, though his eyes went back to Jocasta.
“How?” he asked, calmly, but with a tone that warned that he would brook no evasion.
She closed her eyes then, and sighed, broad shoulders slumping suddenly.
“Hector killed him,” she said.
“Oh, aye?” Jamie cast a cynical glance at the coffins inside the mausoleum, and the huddled mass that lay on the floor between them. “A good trick, that. I hadna realized my uncle was so capable.”
“Before.” Her eyes opened again, but she spoke dully, as though nothing mattered any longer. “He was a doctor, Rawlings. He’d come to look at my eyes, once before. When Hector took ill, he called the man back. I canna say quite what happened, but Hector caught him nosing round where he should not, and smashed his head in. He was a hot-tempered man, Hector.”
“I should say so,” Jamie said, with another glance at the body of Dr. Rawlings. “How did he get in here?”
“We—he—hid the corpse, meaning to carry it off and leave it in the wood. But then . . . Hector got worse, and couldna leave his bed. Within a day, he was dead, too. And so . . .” She lifted a long white hand, gesturing toward the draft of dank chill that floated from the open tomb.
“Great minds think alike,” I murmured, and Jamie gave me a dirty look, letting go my hand. He stood contemplating the stillness inside the violated mausoleum, thick brows drawn down in a frown of concentration.
“Oh, aye?” he said again. “Whose is the second coffin?”
“Mine.” Jocasta was recovering her nerve; her shoulders straightened and her chin lifted.
Jamie made a small puffing noise and glanced at me. I could believe that Jocasta would callously leave a dead man to lie exposed, rather than put him in her own pristine coffin . . . and yet. To do so drastically increased the odds of discovery, slim as those might be.
No one would have opened Jocasta’s coffin until it was time to receive her own body; Dr. Rawlings’ corpse could have lain there in complete safety, even were the mausoleum to be opened for some reason. Jocasta Cameron was selfish—but by no means stupid.
“Put Wolff in, then, if you must,” she said. “He can lie on the floor with the other one.”
“Why not put him in your coffin, Aunt?” Jamie asked, and I saw that he was looking at her intently.
“No!” She had begun to turn away, but at this whipped back, her blind face fierce in the torchlight. “He is dung. Let him lie and rot in the open!”
Jamie narrowed his eyes at her response, but didn’t reply. Instead, he turned to the tomb and began to shift the loosened blocks.
“What are you doing?” Jocasta could hear the grating noise of the shifting marble, and became agitated anew. She turned round on the walk, but became disoriented, staring off toward the river. I realized that she must now be completely blind, unable even to see the light from the torch.
I had no attention to pay her just then, though. Jamie wedged himself through the gap in the blocks, and stepped inside.
“Light me,