CHAPTER 15
Turquoise bowls. Cat started back instinctively, averted her gaze. But out of the corner of her eye she could still see them, shimmering, gleaming. And the workshop was solid—no whirling, swirling, dancing was pulling her into the bowls. She dared a look, sideways at first, then full into the depths of the vessels. Nothing happened. The room remained still. Cat breathed a sigh of relief.
She bent closer, letting the trap door over the hole fall back to stay open on its own. The bowls were beautiful. Two of them were stacked together. They were roughly the same size. The lower one had sides that sloped outward with a gently flared lip; the other was wide and round-bellied, its rim narrowing and then flaring again, the upper edge delicate and thin. And the third—Cat drew a sharp breath. The third was the exact match to the bowl which had pulled her from the museum and whirled her into this country. The twin of that bowl—nesting under the floor of the potter’s workshop.
Cat cautiously reached out a hand. Would it be safe to touch? Could she…? She stretched her fingers, reached…
“NO!!!” bellowed a voice behind her.
Cat whirled around.
Guy burst through the door, his face white and contorted, his turquoise eyes blazing with fury.
“Do not DARE touch them!” he screamed, lunging towards her.
Cat threw up her hands in terror and stumbled backwards. Screaming—Filthy Temper—Killed Her—KILLED HER! Hot fear raced over her body, her throat closed up in panic, and tears shot into her eyes. Her back met the wood of the drying shelf, and she flung out a hand to steady herself.
“No, no, don’t!” she forced out through a choking voice, her arm ready to ward off the blow she was certain would fall.
But none came.
Cat drew a sobbing breath; her heart was racing so hard that her whole body pulsed with it. She blinked rapidly. The thrumming in her head slowed, and the red haze of fear over her vision gradually receded. She saw that Guy was holding onto the table, had caught himself as his leg gave out, and was gripping the edge so hard his knuckles showed white. His eyes, huge in his deathly pale face, stared at Cat for a few indeterminable seconds. Then his whole body seemed to go limp.
“Please,” his voice was a hoarse whisper, “please do not touch them!” He staggered and blindly reached out behind him, searching for support. His hand met the chair, and he dropped down onto it. He threw his hand over his eyes. “Please,” he repeated, brokenly.
Cat was trembling, but her rapid heartbeat gradually slowed, and she was able to blink back her tears. Cautiously, she let go of the support of the shelf and lowered her hands, but kept them spread in front of her to show that she was not trying to touch anything. She stepped sideways, giving the open trap door a wide berth.
“Okay,” she said, shakily, “okay.” (Smooth, Cat. That’s the way to talk to a killer.) “Guy? It’s okay. I’m not touching.”
He drew a ragged breath, keeping his hand over his face.
“Guy? I didn’t know. Okay? I didn’t know.”
Guy drew his hand down his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. Not meeting her eyes, he said, “No. No, you didn’t.”
Cat leaned against the table, carefully studying the way her fingertips ran over the weave of the canvas covering.
“Guy—what is it I didn’t know?”
He shook his head.
“They didn’t know either,” he said in a low voice Cat could barely hear, “and it didn’t help them.” His eyes were bleak, and he would not look at her. He was staring blindly at the floor of the workshop, away from the storage hole which held the turquoise bowls.
Cat took a deep breath and felt the adrenaline slowly settle out in her body. This was no longer a deranged killer; here was a man who was as much in need of her help as when he had lain unconscious in the forest, as much as when the pain he was in made him nearly crush her hand. Besides, he owed her some explanations.
She fished under the work table for a stool which she had seen there earlier and sat herself down across the corner of the table from him.
“All right,” she said, her voice gentle, her eyes on his face. “Tell me.”
He shook his head again, hopelessly.
“I don’t know that I can make you understand,” he said. “I don’t really understand myself.”
“For starters, you can just fill me in,” she said. “For example, who are ‘they’? You said ‘they didn’t know, either’—who did you mean?”
He tone was still low, broken.
“My—my wife. And my brother. Sepp. The—the Septimissimus.”
Cat nodded.
“I thought as much. I heard—” She stopped, wishing she had kept her mouth shut.
His head came up.
“What did you hear? From whom?”
“Well, there was a girl, in the village,” she said reluctantly. “Your wife’s cousin?”
He gave a cynical snort.
“Ah, dear Kashinka. I wonder what she had to say about it. She probably thinks I murdered them.”
Oh dear. Cat drew patterns on the canvas table top with her fingernail.
“Does she? She does.” He laughed, hard, without humour. “I wonder how I’m supposed to have accomplished it? Ah yes, I know. I strangled them.” He flexed his long, powerful fingers. “Or perhaps I slit their throats? I’m sure the cutting wire would serve the purpose, it’s strong enough.” A mad gleam seemed to appear in his eyes; Cat felt a tiny frisson of something—fear?—running down her spine. “Of course,” he mused, “I could have drowned them. In the clay pit. Or simply smothered them with a lump of clay; much less messy, that. Ah, no, I know: I poisoned them. With the glazes. They’re highly toxic, you know.” He leaned conversationally on his elbows, looking at Cat as if he was simply telling her a gossipy news story. “And as for disposing of the bodies, nothing could be simpler: the kiln burns extremely hot; there wouldn’t be anything left other than perhaps a little pile of ashes.
“So you see,” his lip curled, bitter, cynical, “I could have murdered them, oh so easily.”
Oh really. Cat was getting a little fed up with the histrionics; for a fraction of a second, she had even believed he was serious. She looked him straight in the face, her brown eyes holding his turquoise, and issued a challenge.
“And did you?”
“Murder them?” His artificial cockiness drained out of him, leaving behind nothing but the bleak brokenness. “I might as well have.”