“Juliet?”
Juliet scooped Key off her shoulder and set her on the desk in the middle of a stationery set then joined Peter across the room. “Where’d the chief go?”
“Other business.” Peter looked like a little boy with a secret. “He was showing me what they all found in the keepsake box.”
That piqued her interest. “Did you find the pocket watch?” That wasn’t the reaction Peter was expecting, so she elaborated. “I owe it to a Fei. I smashed his whole hoard.”
“I should have known. Yes, and the second locket. We also found these two letters.” He handed her the first. “This one is in the code. We thought it’d be easiest for you to read first.”
Juliet examined it with curiosity, though she knew this wasn’t what put Peter in a state of suppressed anticipation. It was dated the same day as when the orphanage opened. The letter had two seals. One had been sliced through with a pen knife and the other had been hastily broken, ripping the edges of the paper.
The letter contained the story Father Fredrick had left out of the music box letters. Much of it Juliet had already guessed. It told of how Betty went to Freddy and confessed that her daughter never died of the wasting fever epidemic. As the only way to get Coral the treatment she needed, Betty had given her child over to the father’s family, and they immediately cut off all contact to her. Unable to face her decision and clueless to her daughter’s fate, Betty told everyone that Coraline Cassedy died, her body burned with the other epidemic deaths.
Years later, Coral came back into her life as a young woman. Betty never found out the reason, but she suspected that Coral had run away and was engaged in unscrupulous work. What Beatrice was certain of was that she had returned for the collection, and meant to own it by whatever means. There was viciousness in her obsession, and Betty began to fear for Jo’s safety if Coral ever discovered the collection was to be passed on to her. She went to Father Fredrick, knowing he was prepared to do anything to protect Jo—even if it meant breaking his oaths. He offered many times over to help somehow with Coral, but Betty insisted that her daughter was her sole responsibility. Father Fredrick thought she blamed herself for the way Coral had become.
Then Coral, who Betty once thought was devoid of the talent, showed a sudden and alarming proficiency for magic. Although she had hidden the collection away, Beatrice suspected Coral had found it and had used the brooch to draw her talent out. She decided the best way to protect the collection was to break it up. She kept the circlet always with her and gave the brooch to Father Fredrick. The fake circlet she let Coral have under the presumption it was real. Father Fredrick worried about the repercussions of deceiving Coral and again offered whatever assistance he could. Again Betty refused.
The letter ended there but for a single line of postscript. It was barely legible and written in a deeper shade of black, as if it were added years later.
Coraline Cassedy murdered her mother.
