Summary: Part XI

A letter from Dr. Jordan’s mother arrives, asking him for news and once again dropping hints about her wish for him to return and get married.

Dr. Jordan dreams that he’s in a house, upstairs where the maids live. He opens a door and suddenly finds himself in the hospital where he once studied medicine. He knows he must perform a dissection, and he sees the outline of a female corpse under a sheet on a table. Underneath the sheet lies another sheet. He unfurls layer after layer, but he never finds a body. He feels like a failure.

He dreams that he wakes up and that Grace is standing over him. He pulls her down to him and begins to have sex with her. But then Dr. Jordan realizes he isn’t dreaming and that the woman he’s having sex with is not Grace but Mrs. Humphrey.

The narrative shifts to Grace’s point of view, and she explains that Dr. Jordan has left for Toronto and she doesn’t know when to expect him back. She expresses that if he fails to return she will feel sad and empty.

Grace considers what she will say to Dr. Jordan when he returns. She could tell him that the authorities arrested her first, then McDermott, and ferried them back across Lake Ontario. McDermott persisted in denying his involvement in the murders, and Grace cheered herself with the conviction that she would not be hanged for something she didn’t do.

When they arrived in Toronto the authorities put Grace and McDermott in jail. Grace recalls that those who questioned her held her sense of calm against her and thought her callous. At the same time, had she wept, she suspects those same authorities would have taken her emotional display as a sign of guilt.

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