Chapter one hundred and sixteen

Chapter one hundred and sixteen
Marlowe

The office is no longer neutral ground.

It used to be—four walls, a desk, a filing cabinet, the smell of stale coffee. But now every object seems to resist me. My chair feels hostile, the files mutter when I open them, and the clock ticks as though mocking the hours I’ve lost.

I spread the photographs across my desk again: the museum plans, Edward’s sketches, the candid shots of Vivienne and Emeline I should not have taken. Each time I arrange them, the story rearranges itself. Motives shift. Gaps appear where certainty once stood.

I try to tell myself this is the work—the fog before the breakthrough. But the fog is thicker than it should be.

This morning, I caught myself writing notes in a hand that wasn’t mine. Not sloppy, not rushed, but deliberate. A looping script I didn’t recognize. I stared at the words—She is not herself. Watch the glass. My pen lay heavy in my hand, as though insisting it had moved without me.

I checked the door. Locked. No one had entered. No one but me.

The strangest part wasn’t the intrusion—it was the recognition. As if some part of me understood the message, as if I had written it in another state of mind, another self.

I leaned back, closed my eyes, and pressed my palms to my face. For a moment, the dark behind my lids pulsed, shapes moving like figures behind frosted glass. A girl. A woman. The suggestion of mirrors.

I opened my eyes too quickly. The photographs stared back at me, blank, unhelpful.

And I asked myself, for the first time without hesitation:

Am I losing the case—or am I losing my mind?