Chapter 60
McDuff tried to square his memories of standing in a young girl’s bedroom in Mayfair months ago with what he faced now.
Gone were the pink frills, the hearts and silliness of youth. The walls were stripped down to bare white, with no sign of paintings or other decorations besides a large map of the world. Even her collection of books that had so impressed McDuff on his first visit had disappeared.
The bed and desk were similarly plain, as if he stood in his brother’s room at the asylum instead of in a wealthy home. Or his own dull room at the boarding house.
Gone also was the girl who’d inhabited this space before her sad story came to McDuff’s attention. He’d never met her outside of that lonely hospital room where she struggled to recover from her own poisoned hand.
But h
