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Chapters (206)
  1. Praise for Maplecroft
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. THESE ARE THE THINGS AN EARTHQUAKE BRINGS
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  12. A DOCTOR, A LAWYER, A MERCHANT, A CHIEF
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  20. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
  21. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  26. BE SURE YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
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  29. I CROSS THE MAGPIE, THE MAGPIE CROSSES ME
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  31. Nance O’Neil
  32. THIS KNOT I KNIT, THIS KNOT I TIE
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  37. AND IF YOU HAVE A HORSE WITH ONE WHITE LEG . . .
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  43. THE WORST IS TO BE JUDGED WITHOUT HOPE
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  46. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  53. BUT NETTLE SHANT HAVE NOTHING
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  55. CUT THEM ON FRIDAY, YOU CUT THEM FOR SORROW
  56. Phillip Zollicoffer, Professor of Biology, Miskatonic University
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  62. HAPPY IS THE CORPSE THAT THE RAIN SHINES ON
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  67. A DWELLING PLACE OF JACKALS, THE DESOLATION FOREVER
  68. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  71. Nance O’Neil
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  84. Emma L. Borden
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  88. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  91. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  93. RIGHT CHEEK, LEFT CHEEK—WHY DO YOU BURN?
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  101. Aaron B. Stewart, Fire Chief, Farthington, Mass.
  102. Emma L. Borden
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  104. Gerald Macintyre, Telegraph Clerk, Western Union
  105. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  107. Physalia, Z. University I Was Not Now
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  109. DEPART, ALL ANIMALS WITHOUT BONES
  110. Emma L. Borden
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  115. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  119. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  130. Owen Seabury, M.D.
  131. Phillip Zollicoffer. Physalia Zollicoffris.
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  137. Christoff Dane, M.D., Ph.D., University of Rhode Island, Kingston
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  139. Emma L. Borden
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  144. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  150. Emma L. Borden
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  153. FAMILY SLAIN IN MAYFIELD
  154. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  165. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  176. Emma L. Borden
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  186. Owen Seabury, M.D.
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  197. Lizzie Andrew Borden
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  205. Inspector Simon Wolf
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Together we walked with excruciating slowness. If I’d urged her any faster I would’ve had to carry her, and that would’ve been embarrassing and painful for us both. Instead we moved at the steady pace that made my aching arms ache all the more, and the bruising at my ribs protested with every step, all the way to my sister’s room.

I drew out the stool at her vanity and lowered her onto it, and I stretched, cringing at the crackle of joints popping, and the dull warmth of strained muscles.

Emma stared quietly at herself in the mirror, and at me. She said, “We’re quite the pair, you and I. The invalid and the murderess.”

I turned away from the mirror and went to the switch on the wall. I pressed it, and the room came alight with the glow of the wall lamp. Its pretty shade was made of frosted glass, so the light was diffused and softened. It was kind to us, or so I saw when I returned to the vanity seat and began to undo Emma’s hair.

One by one, I pulled the hairpins gently free and laid them on the table. “The scholar and the warrior?” I tried. “Let’s say that instead. I like the sound of it better.”

She laughed. I think it was genuine. It’s hard to tell, with eyes like hers—too wise to find many things funny. “Another set of lies, sister. Nicer ones.”

“But you are a scholar. And tonight I’ve slain a dragon. Of sorts.”

“True and misleading. I’m not Professor Jackson, and you’re no Saint George, nor an Amazon, either.”

“Says you.”

I tugged at the final hairpin, the veritable lynchpin of her coiffure’s architecture. It slipped free, and her hair came down in a jagged cascade, unfurling and unfolding in a marbled mixture of brown and silver down her back. I took a brush and began to smooth it. I told her, “No one ever needs to know.”

And likely, no one ever would.

Emma Borden, consumptive spinster . . . masquerading as Doctor E. A. Jackson—retired professor of biology and chemistry. The venerable mythical doctor had authored dozens of papers published in journals as far away as France, on everything from seaweed blooms and ocean temperatures to parasitic infections in crustaceans of the northeastern Atlantic.

Who would even believe it, if we announced it? We could put an advertisement in the newspaper, and no one would consider it possible.

She mused, “Someday, someone is bound to learn some secret or another. Yours, or maybe mine. Someone could come here, looking for me.”

“Someone?” I knew her too well. She had someone in mind.

“There’s a fellow upstate, at Miskatonic University.”