TWENTY-ONE
“I Do Not Think We Will Find Him”
Muriel Chanler was waiting for us in the von Helrung parlor. She rushed to Warthrop, threw her arms around him, and pressed her face into his chest. Warthrop murmured her name. He stroked her auburn hair. Von Helrung turned his head and coughed politely, ending the moment. The two withdrew quickly from each other’s arms.
“Have they found him yet?” she asked.
“If not, it will be soon,” the doctor said firmly. “In his condition he could not have gotten far.”
“Muriel, liebchen, perhaps you would like to find little Will something to eat?” suggested von Helrung. “He is looking very pale to me.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. I was, I will admit, deeply concerned about the doctor’s mental state. I’d not witnessed him this close to breaking since those awful days in the wilderness.
“I hope you’re right,” Muriel was saying to him now. “And I hope Meister Abram is wrong. I hope it was someone else who murdered Skala.”
“He is in the wrong about practically everything,” the doctor allowed. “Except that.”
She turned her lovely face away. Warthrop raised his hand as if to console her, then allowed it to fall.
“I’ll see to it he has the best defense possible, Muriel,” he promised. “And of course I will testify on his behalf. I’ll see to it a proper place is found for him.”
“An asylum,” she whispered.
“Please, please, you must be strong, Muriel; you must be strong for John,” said von Helrung, taking her by the elbow and guiding her to a chair. “Here. Sit. You will listen to your uncle Abram now, yes? There is a time to grieve, but that time is not yet! What shall Bartholomew bring you? Would you like some brandy? A glass of sherry, perhaps?”
She looked past him to Warthrop. “I want my husband.”
The doctor demanded a word alone with von Helrung. They retired to the older man’s study and shut the door. After a moment I could hear their row; the doctor was upbraiding him for telling the police they were hunting a mythical beast when their quarry was nothing more than a terribly disturbed man.
I looked over and found Muriel smiling at me through her lingering tears.
“Whatever happened to your neck, Will?” she asked.
I avoided those penetratingly beautiful eyes, casting my own upon the Persian carpet and mumbling, “It was an accident, ma’am.”
“Well, I didn’t think it was something deliberate!” She laughed in spite of herself. “It isn’t easy, is it? Serving a monstrumologist.”
“No, ma’am. It is not.”
“Especially if his name happens to be Pellinore Warthrop.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So why do you?”
“My father served him. And when he died, I had nowhere else to go.”
“And now I shall guess you are indispensable to him.”
She smiled at my startled expression.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I have little doubt he’s told you that. He used to tell me the same thing, but that was a very long time ago. Do you love him, Will?”
The question rendered me speechless. Love—the monstrumologist?
“I shouldn’t ask that,” she went on. “It is none of my business. I know he is all that you have. He was once the same to me. But a house cannot be built upon sand, Will. Does that make any sense to you? Do you know what I mean?”
I shook my head slowly. I did not.
“It used to comfort me to think he was incapable of love—that in no way should I take what happened between us personally. But I think I understand now. It isn’t love he lacks—he loves more fiercely than any other man I have ever known—it is courage.”
“Dr. Warthrop is the bravest man in the world,” I said. “He’s a monstrumologist. He’s not afraid of anything.”
“I understand,” she replied gently. “You’re just a boy and you see him through different eyes.”
I had nothing to say to that. For some reason I heard his voice, echoing in a snowbound clearing, You disgust me. I lowered my head, and felt the memory of his arms pulling me close, his warm breath on my neck.
She sensed my distress, and her heart was moved with pity. “He is quite fond of you, you know,” she said.
I searched out her expression. Was she teasing me?
“Oh, yes,” she continued, smiling. “Worries about you like a mother hen. It’s quite sweet—and quite unlike him. Just last night he was saying—”
She stopped herself. She looked away. I saw that she was blushing.
By the time the two monstrumologists had suspended their debate, she was ready to leave. Though von Helrung pleaded, there was nothing he could say that would change her mind.
“I will not hole up here like a frightened kitten,” she said. “If they don’t catch him first, he’ll find his way home, and I want to be there when he does.”
“I will come with you,” the doctor said.
She avoided his eyes. “No,” she said simply. But Warthrop would not let it go; he followed her to the door, pressing his case urgently while he helped her with her wrap.
“You should not go alone,” he said.
“Don’t be silly, Pellinore. I am not afraid of him. He is my husband.”
“He is not in his right mind.”
“A defect not uncommon among you monstrumologists,” she teased him. She spoke to his reflection. She was adjusting her hat in the hall mirror.
“Can we be serious for a moment?”
“Describe a moment when you were not.”
“You’ll be safe here.”
“My place is at home, Pellinore. Our home.”
He was taken aback by this; he did not attempt to hide it. He said, “Then I am coming with you.”
“To what purpose?” she demanded. She turned from the mirror, the color high in her cheeks. “To protect me from my own husband? If he is as sick as you say, why should you feel the need?”
He had no ready answer. She smiled, and lightly touched his wrist with her gloved hand.
“I am not afraid,” she repeated. “Besides, it would not do, a married lady in my position entertaining a gentlemen without my husband present. What would people think?”