‘I managed to drag you into the clubhouse without anyone seeing, then scrubbed the library floor clean of your blood. You stayed here in a locked room for a few hours, then when you started to come around, I pushed you back out through the library exit and hoped you’d find your way back to your dorm. That’s why your library card provided you with a time-stamped alibi. The police don’t know about this secret room.’
Several small mysteries were solved, but not the question I’d originally asked. ‘Right. But what happened to Poppy?’
Mordue’s head was in her hands, shoulders quaking as she sobbed silently. Everything about the last twenty minutes had turned my stomach, and it was all I could do not to throw up.
‘By the time I got you into the clubhouse and cleaned up the blood, Vanessa had gone. I’d left her waiting too long, and the darkness had taken over. She went up to the Observatory, where we used to have our Society meetings. By the time I sprinted up there, Poppy’s body was crumpled at the bottom of the tower. I helped Vanessa back down here – with great difficulty, as she was near feral at this point. By the time the ritual brought her back to herself, she couldn’t remember a thing.’
So there it was.
Poppy’s final moments, the unbelievable fear as she was shoved over the window ledge, her last fleeting thoughts before she went into freefall. The starburst of shattering pain as she hit the ground. Had she died on impact? Or had she lain there on the cold ground and suffered before the life in her eventually blinked out?
I shivered, goosebumps flickering up my arms and down my spine. With its stone floor and no natural light, the clubhouse was freezing. Something deep in the belly of the building dripped incessantly.
‘What was Poppy doing in the Observatory to begin with?’ I whispered.
‘Investigating,’ Mordue croaked. ‘She must have stolen a key from somewhere. The next morning I found her notebook stuffed in my pocket. It was full of notes on the North Tower murders.’
‘What happened to the notebook?’
She sniffed, wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. ‘I burned it.’
‘You didn’t give it to the police?’
‘What, and incriminate myself?’ Her tears had dried, and her words prickled defensively. ‘As much as I’d love to come clean, what would happen to us then? We can’t go to a general prison with our souls still split like this. We could kill our cellmates, or our guards. We’re too dangerous.’
‘So go to solitary,’ I snapped, struggling to keep the heat from my voice.
She shook her head wildly. ‘Without the tincture, it’d be a life of eternal suffering. Can you imagine that pain, day in day out, with no escape, no way to end it for good? Literal purgatory. And it wouldn’t bring Poppy back.’
‘But you told Lottie there were security cameras,’ I said desperately. ‘Surely the police saw all of this on the footage.’
Mordue looked at me almost sympathetically, and realisation dawned.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘There were never any cameras.’ Something else Lottie had told me weeks ago reared in my mind. ‘But the police found a suicide note in Poppy’s dorm.’ I gritted my teeth. ‘It was typed.’
Mordue grimaced. ‘I planted it. I knew from her student record that she had a long history with depression.’
I felt my lip curl in disgust. ‘How do you live with yourselves?’
‘We know we’ll go to prison eventually,’ Feathering said, soft tone at odds with her harsh appearance. ‘But we need to bring our souls back together first. And for that we need you.’