“Wh-what? You can’t possibly m-m-mean—!” Mr. Cummings blubbered. He’d lost his Book of Common Prayer in a tussle with an unmentionable and had taken, for the sake of comfort, to clutching a book he’d picked at random from the baron’s library: Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised by the Marquis de Sade. “It’s unnnnnnnnthinkable!”
The doctor shrugged. “If it’ll keep me from starving to death, I’ll do more than think it.”
“It’s not actually starvation I was thinking of, Doctor,” Mr. Bennet said. “We have another, more immediate problem.”
A look of discomfited surprise came over Dr. Thorne of the type that’s common among people who find that the previous minute’s conversation should be, and would if it could be, unspoken.
“Oh?” he said limply. “Do tell.”
Mr. Bennet obliged, explaining that the dreadfuls were capable of taking the house apart stone by stone and had, in fact, begun to do so. Many gasped at the news, and Mr. Bennet paused a moment, waiting for their clamorings and murmurs to fade before carrying on again.
“They will get through. It is inevitable. So, as time is not on our side, nor are numbers, we must press the last advantage we have.”
Lord Lumpley scoffed. “I wasn’t aware we had any in the first place.”
“I believe the advantage my father alludes to doesn’t apply equally to all of us,” Elizabeth said, and she quoted an observation Dr. Keckilpenny had once made to her about the unmentionables: “They’re thick as bricks.”
Mr. Bennet nodded. “We can safely assume they have no idea how many people are in this house. If we let them overrun it—or think they’ve overrun it—they might well wander off again never knowing they left survivors behind.”
“And where will these supposed survivors be?” Dr. Thorne asked. “Hiding in the cupboards?”
“Something like that.” Mr. Bennet turned to the baron. “Tell me—how extensive is your wine cellar?”
“Vast. I have the largest selection of clarets, ports, and brandies in the Home Counties.”
“That’s not quite what I meant,” Mr. Bennet said.
Belgrave appeared at his master’s side as if stepping out from behind a mote of dust. “The cellar has been permanently sealed. Remember, My Lord?”
“What do you mean, it’s been sealed?” Mr. Bennet asked.
“It flooded,” said Belgrave.
“It caved in,” said Lord Lumpley.
One or the other might have been believed if they hadn’t spoken at the same time—and if someone else hadn’t spoken up, as well.
“It did nothing of the kind!” declared a woman guarding the front doors. She was a stout old cook from the baron’s own kitchens, and in one hand she held a frying pan splattered with brains and chips of bone. “The cellar was always kept under lock and key, but the other day someone broke down the door. That’s why his nibs there had it boarded up. Flood. Ha!”
“When was all this?” Mr. Bennet asked.
“Why, right after that Z-O-M-B-Y got into the house.”
“Belgrave, sack this woman at once,” Lord Lumpley said.
“You are dismissed, Mrs. Hutchinson.”
“Ho! Like I care now!” The cook looked over at Mr. Bennet while waggling her pan at Belgrave. “Always it was this one alone who was allowed down there, and then all of a sudden the cellar’s shut up altogether? And kept that way even with a swarm of bogies at the door and no better place to hide? If you ask me, there’s something tricksy about the whole thing.”
“She’s right!” one of the baron’s dressers called out.
“Ask them why the cellar’s sealed!” added another.
“Ask why the door was broken down!”
Other servants joined in with “Yes!” and “Ask them!”
“What is this, the damned French Revolution?” Lord Lumpley roared. “Mind your place!”
Belgrave looked like he wanted to slip behind another mote of dust.
“I’m with them,” a man said, and as he stepped into the entrance hall, a dozen hushed voices whispered his name.
Jonathan Ward.
Emily Ward’s father.
“What’s in the cellar . . . My Lord?
“Or is it more a question of who?” Elizabeth said. She wasn’t looking at Mr. Ward or Lord Lumpley or Belgrave. She was looking at Jane.
Her sister was standing just behind and to the right of the baron, still playing the faithful bodyguard, staying true to their father’s pact with the nobleman even after all they’d been through. On her face now, however, was a look of horror equal to the one she’d worn when she first saw Emily Ward dragging her rotting carcass from the water.
Another monster was being revealed to her: the one directly before her. And she wasn’t the only one seeing it for the first time. A wave of angry mutters and exclamations of dismay spread first through the foyer then down the halls along each wing, until it seemed the whole house was abuzz.
“This conversation has become highly insulting, not to mention utterly insane,” Lord Lumpley said.
Mr. Bennet shook his head sadly. “Once again, I find I am a fool. I ascribed to mere lechery what should have suggested a far deeper flaw. In your case, a deeper evil.” He turned to Mr. Ward. “I examined your daughter’s body the day she . . . returned. I would prefer to say this privately—or not at all, ever—but I think it should be known: Emily Ward was with child when she died. I didn’t get to see the girl dreadful who attacked my daughter here the other night—it was burned before I could do so. But I suspect I would have found her condition the same as poor Miss Ward’s.” He pointed an unblinking stare at Belgrave, and with his cocked head and cold eyes, he took on the look of a bird of prey watching something soft and furry scurrying through the grass. “And I presume there were others? Buried down in the cellar before you simply started throwing them in the lake?”
“This is madness!” Lord Lumpley bellowed.
Belgrave edged away from him, mumbling under his breath.
“What was that?” Mr. Bennet demanded, taking a step toward him. “Pray, speak up!”
“He told me to do it,” Belgrave said, jerking his head at the baron. “Whenever another one popped up to make trouble.”
“What rot! I never told you to kill anyone!”
“You said to get rid of them. Permanently.”
“Yes! Exactly! That’s not kill, is it?”
“You knew.”
“I most certainly did not! I just knew they stopped pestering me.”
“Yes—until the next one came along. There was always a next one.” Belgrave glanced past the baron. At Jane. “There always would be. You couldn’t help yourself.”
Elizabeth could hear no more. She moved toward Lord Lumpley not knowing if she intended to simply strike him or break his neck, though either would be preceded by the Fulcrum of Doom.
Mr. Ward started stalking the baron’s way at the same moment.
“They’ve lost their minds!” Lord Lumpley cried. “Jane—protect me!”
He took a step back, starting to put himself behind his guardian angel. He was stopped by something long and straight and slick red that shot from his body just above the pelvis.
It was a katana, coated with blood. The blade jerked upward, into the baron’s belly, then zigzagged down again.
Lord Lumpley blinked.
“Jane . . .?”
Then he slid forward off the sword and was dead before he hit the floor.
Though the zombies kept moaning and banging away outside, every living thing was hushed and still. Only Jane made any noise, first with her heavy breathing, then the moist shhhhhhhhhhh as she slid her katana back into its scabbard.