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.” She stopped and passed a hand across her brow.“What am I saying? Of course he didn’t suspect.Why should he? None of them had ever hurt him, or me.Not even when I was a child who played with whatever took my fancy—he wouldn’t let me touch anything dangerous, of course, nothing sharp or breakable.I whispered secrets in the gargoyle’s ear, even used to kiss it, and it was that gargoyle—” She stopped, her hand to her mouth.I waited for her to go on.“It was in the wrong place, too near the stair.I thought perhaps, when the maid washed the floor, she’d pushed it out, but she insisted she never did.Yet it was not where it usually was, and that’s why Archie stumbled against it, and wrenched his ankle.“It happened again, just a few days ago, to Will.He fell over it, and if I hadn’t caught him, he might have struck his head, might have been killed, just like Archie!”“Someone moved it,” I said, trying to inject a note of reason.“If not the maid, then your guardian, or a mysterious stranger.And if Mr.Randall’s stumble had resulted in a serious injury, even death, that would have been an accident; no one could possibly call it murder, even if someone moved the gargoyle.“But that stick.I really can’t imagine that a stick, in Mr.Adcocks’s possession, could have caused his death without the intervention of another person.If you think your guardian was controlling it, willing it to strike—”“No! Why would he do that? Even if he had the ability, why would he want to kill my fiancé when he was looking forward to seeing how I would cause his death?”She had gone white except for two hectic splashes of red in her cheeks.I shook my head.“I don’t understand.”“Of course not.Because you don’t understand that I, too, am a deodand.I am the gem of his collection.My early history explains why he took me in.I killed my entire family before I was two years of age.”I gripped her hands.“Miss Bellamy—”“I am utterly sane,” she said calmly.“I am not hysterical.These are the facts.Being born, I brought about the death of my mother.”“That’s hardly—”“Unique? I know.Listen.Nine months later, my father was taking his motherless children on holiday when we were involved in a railway accident.In the crash, my brother, a child of two, was thrown to the floor, as was I.I landed directly on top of him, a fact which may have saved me from injury, but caused his death.I have never known whether he died of suffocation, or if my weight broke his neck.”“No one could call that your fault,” I said, trying not to dwell on the image.“I know that,” she said, pulling her hands away.“Believe me, I am not such a fool as to think it was anything other than extremely bad luck.I have had many years to come to terms with my past.I do not require your pity.I tell you this so you may understand Mr.Harcourt’s interest in me.“My father was injured in the accident.Some months later he was still in an invalid chair, needing a nurse to help him in and out and wheel him about.We’d gone out for a walk—when I say ‘we’I mean my father in his chair pushed by his nurse, a young man, and I in my pram, pushed by mine, a pretty young woman.We stopped at a local beauty spot to admire the view.My nurse put me down on a blanket on the grass, near to my father, who was dozing in the sun, and then I suppose they must have stopped paying much attention to anything but each other as they fell to flirting.I hadn’t yet learned to walk, but I was getting better at standing up, and as I hauled myself to my feet, using my father’s chair as support, somehow I must have let off the brake—maybe the nurse hadn’t properly set it—and as he rolled away, I just watched him go, picking up speed, until I saw the chair carrying my last living relative go over the edge of the cliff, and carry him to his death on the rocks below.”I made no more efforts to comfort.“So Mr.Harcourt considers you some sort of loaded weapon in his possession? Ready to go off when you are loved?”“He has never said as much, but that’s what I’ve understood by a gleam in his eye, and a quickening of interest, once I became of marriageable age.It was he who contrived to introduce me to a number of wealthy young men, until Archibald Adcocks took the bait.And he pressed me to accept, although I was inclined to wait [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]