Lost Among the Living (18 page)

I could not scream. A whistle of air squeezed through the back of my throat, its sound lost.

I could not see all of the creature in the fog. I glimpsed long, sprawled legs, muscled almost like a human's, and vicious paws like hands. A chest thick as a barrel, covered in a ruff of long, filthy fur. And a long body, leaping over me in my icy ditch in a single, soundless move, the belly passing within arm's reach of my face. Its head was lost in the white mist, though a vicious, drawled growl came from its unseen throat and trailed after it in the air.

I pressed myself into the puddle of water and watched in terrorized silence as Princer's stomach, matted and foul with a coppery stench like blood, passed before my eyes. Of their own accord, my hands gripped the camera pressed to my chest, and my finger clicked the shutter.

Then he landed on the ridge of land at the other side of the ditch, I glimpsed a heavy curl of tail, and he was gone.

I lay shivering as my hands went numb on the camera and the water in the ditch soaked my hair. The fog swirled past my unseeing eyes. It was a long time before I realized that the birds were singing again.

“M
y goodness, Mrs. Manders—what happened?” Mrs. Perry dropped her chopping knife on the counter and came toward me as I stood in the kitchen doorway.

“I'm all right,” I told her. I had pulled off Frances's rubber boots, caked with mud, and left them on the floor of the vestibule alongside the filthy black mackintosh. “I just need a towel, if you please, so I don't track water all through your tidy kitchen.”

She picked a towel from a cupboard and snapped it open. “I didn't even know you were out of the house. Did you have an accident?”

“Yes.” I rubbed the towel over my soaked feet in their torn stockings and avoided the curious gaze of the maid staring over the cook's shoulder. “I was taking pictures in the woods, and I'm afraid I fell. I'm a mess, but I'm not hurt.”

Mrs. Bennett came into the kitchen, spotted me, and joined Mrs. Perry as I explained. “You'll catch a fever,” she proclaimed, her hands on her hips. “You need tea and a hot bath.”

After walking home, soaked, through the foggy forest, I would have married Jack the Ripper for access to either. “Yes, thank you. I'll just go up the back stairs and—”

“Tildy, go with her,” Mrs. Bennett barked at the maid.

“No, please.” I straightened, the dripping towel in one hand, and pushed my hair back from my face with the other. I gave both of them a beseeching look. “I'd rather Mrs. Forsyth not know. She didn't know
I was out at all, and with the engagement party today . . . It was just an accident. More embarrassing than anything, really.”

Mrs. Bennett and Mrs. Perry exchanged understanding looks. “Take the servants' stairs, then,” Mrs. Perry agreed. “I'll put the coat and boots away. Tildy will bring up tea in a few minutes.”

But as I picked up my camera and crossed the kitchen to the servants' stairs, Cora Staffron walked in. “Do I smell tea biscuits?” She looked at me, and her eyes widened at my disastrous appearance. “Oh. Mrs. Manders.”

I sighed. “It was an accident,” I said.

She bit her lip. She was wearing a thick, quilted dressing gown decorated top to bottom with twines of flowers that strongly resembled wallpaper. Her blond bob was carelessly combed, her neck protruding gawky and thin from her collar. I realized that she was just as embarrassed as I was.

Mrs. Bennett came to our rescue, since we were both frozen in humiliation. “The tea biscuits will be ready any minute, Miss Staffron,” she said. “I'll have some sent up to you, along with tea for Mrs. Manders. Will that be acceptable?”

Cora snapped out of her freeze, probably at the mention of biscuits, and gave Mrs. Bennett one of her smiles. “You bet!” she said, and turned to me. “Let's go, Mrs. Manders.”

She was surprisingly sisterly when we got upstairs, drawing me a bath and fetching extra towels from the linen closet. Our corridor was temporarily deserted, and no one saw me hobble to the bathroom, damp and muddy, wrapped in a bathrobe. When I had lowered myself into the water, blessing Wych Elm House's modern, immaculate plumbing, I realized Cora was still in the hallway, on the other side of the closed door.

“I hope your camera can be repaired,” she said. “It looked rather wet.”

“Wet?” It had been out in the rain with me, but I had thought it came through all right.

“Sure it is!” Cora replied. “There's water coming out of it and everything! It looks a mess to me, and I think your photographs will be ruined. It's a shame, isn't it?”

There had not been water running out of it when I carried it. The word came to me unbidden:
Frances.
There would be no photograph of her dog, not if she could help it. The pictures of the ocean would be ruined as well. I pressed my hands to my eyes and tried to calm down.

“Mama wants a Christmas wedding.” Cora chattered nervously through the door. “But that's barely six weeks away. What do you think, Mrs. Manders?”

I dropped my hands and doused my muddy hair in the water.
Keep it together, Jo.
“I hear Christmas weddings are nice,” I replied in a shaky voice.

“Was your own wedding very large?”

The words were automatic. “We married by ourselves in Crete.”

“An elopement!” I heard her clap her hands. “That's so scandalous, like something a movie actress would do.” There was a thumping, shifting sound, and I realized she had sat down on the floor of the corridor, her back against the door. I wondered how nervous she must be, or how badly she wanted to avoid starting her day, to sit on the floor in her dressing gown and talk to me. “Mama says my dress should be satin, but I look so terrible in satin! It never sits right on me. I wonder if Mama will let me wear rouge.”

I looked down at my hands, which were still shaking. Her prattle was actually soothing me, bringing me back from the nightmare I had just experienced and was only beginning to understand. “Will your other relatives be here tonight?” I asked.

“I don't have many,” Cora replied. “I'm an only child. I wish I had cousins my own age, but I don't, just an older cousin who's a doctor on Harley Street. He said he'd come.”

“That's very nice,” I said, using the sponge on my face and neck.

“He is nice,” Cora said. “Mama asked him if the madness in Martin's sister could run in the family, but he said he didn't think it could.”

I sank down in the water, soaping my hair and rinsing it again.
Oh, Frances, Frances. What do you want?
But already I knew. Even through the fog of my terror, I knew.
She wanted me to see. That's why Princer didn't harm me. She wanted me to see.
“Cora,” I said, “don't listen to any rumors about Frances. And Martin is not mad.”

“Oh, I know!” she said with an awkward laugh. “He's a gentleman, isn't he?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes, trying not to see Princer's hideous stomach leaping over me. I prayed she wasn't going to ask for a lesson about wedding nights. “He is.”

“He's kind to me, and he makes me laugh. Everything is going to go swimmingly, I just know it! I just wish he could eat something and rest more. It makes him moody—have you noticed that? He's a little frightening sometimes. Last night I found him in his room, burning his sister's letters in the fire.”

I was wringing out my hair, but I stopped. “What do you mean, burning his sister's letters?”

“From the war,” Cora said. “All the letters she wrote him at the Front. I don't know what they said, because he wouldn't tell me.”

“Why did he burn them?”

“I don't know.” The brassy confidence had left her voice, and for the first time since I'd met her, she sounded unsure. “He never talks about the war, at least not to me. He won't talk about his health, either, and he won't let the doctors answer my questions. He just goes quiet and tells me everything will be fine.”

I stood from the bath and pulled a towel around myself.
Damn you, Martin. Just tell her about the morphine.
“Men don't talk about the war,” I said.

“I just want to help,” she said. “We're going to be married by
Christmas. Mrs. Manders, you've been married before. How do you get your husband to tell you everything?”

“You don't,” I said, and I reached into the tub and pulled the plug, watching the water spiral down the drain.

D
ottie had chosen the upstairs gallery for the engagement party. Tables had been lined along one side of the room, laid with delicacies and flutes of champagne. A string quartet played in a corner, and a raised dais had been set up at the head of the room for announcements. The floral arrangements arrived by luncheon, profusions of gardenias and roses and chrysanthemums, lilies in tall sprays. Workmen had lined the walls with small portable electric lamps that would give off elegant light when the room was dark.

I entered after the first guests had arrived. There were some two dozen people drinking and circulating beneath the canvases we had collected so assiduously on the Continent—Dottie's art and business acquaintances, local gentry who were likely Robert's cronies, the Staffrons, and the members of the Staffrons' circles who had made the journey from London. Every bedroom in Wych Elm House was occupied tonight, as well as several rooms in the area's surrounding inns.

I spotted Cora and Martin near the center of the room, nodding and greeting guests as they approached. Martin wore immaculate black tie and tails, his hair slicked back and gleaming in the soft light. His eyes were bright and his smile was genuine. I breathed a sigh of relief that tonight seemed to be a good one.

Cora was in a dress of striking blue shot with white, puffed at the sleeves and beaded on the bodice. It was almost absurd—she looked a little like Anne Boleyn crossed with a respectable modern matron—yet somehow Cora looked born to it, her hair swept up and her tilted
eyes aglow with demure pleasure. She turned to me with her familiar wide smile.

“Cousin Jo!” Martin said as I approached. “You look a vision.”

“What an elegant dress!” Cora cried.

I smiled at them. My dress had arrived from London the day before; the dressmaker in Anningley had ordered it special for me. It was a simple sleeveless sheath that fell in a straight line from my shoulders to my hips, then down to a jaunty hemline at the knee. It was of deep, rich jewel blue, and peacock feathers adorned the skirt, their soft fronds waving as I moved. The final adornment was a single flower of pink satin sewn to the left hip. A maid had helped me pin my hair up with just a few curls loose over my temples, and I wore black high-heeled shoes. Since I did not own any expensive jewelry, I wore only my wedding ring.

“Thank you,” I said to Cora. “Dottie is going to think it fast, but it's a party, is it not?”

“Mother thinks that anything other than a mannish suit is fast,” Martin commented. “She's hardly the first word in fashion. Do get some champagne, Cousin Jo, since I believe you're the one who had it ordered especially.”

I was. Ordering champagne had been one of my duties. I was just sipping my first glass—the stuff was divine—when a man approached my shoulder. “Mrs. Manders.”

I turned in surprise. “Colonel Mabry.”

He gave me a quick, formal bow, elegant in his dark suit. “Mrs. Forsyth was kind enough to invite me, though I've shamefully put off deciding on one of her artworks.” His gaze moved up the walls, taking in the various canvases. “I believe I'll have to make a decision soon.”

“Yes,” I said, my voice perhaps sharper than I intended. “You should. It isn't polite to prevaricate.”

The look he gave me from beneath his salt-and-pepper eyebrows
was unreadable. He clasped his hands behind his back and gave no answer.

“Tell me, Colonel,” I said, “how long have you been a lover of art?”

“Mrs. Manders, are you quite all right?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said. He began to stroll around the room, and I followed at his side. My exhaustion and nerves had amplified the effects of the champagne, I realized. “I don't think I thanked you, Colonel, for letting me see my husband's file.”

He looked at me sideways, a glance that was speculative and, inexplicably, had a note of dread in it. “It was nothing, I assure you.”

“So much interesting information,” I said. “Even a silly woman like me could learn so much.”

“And what exactly did you learn, Mrs. Manders?” he asked.

I thought it over. The champagne had made me dizzy, my tongue loose in my head. “Do you know, I don't think I am going to tell you.”

“Mrs. Manders.” He stopped walking and faced me. Looking at him was like looking into a shallow pool and realizing that you couldn't see the bottom, could not fathom where it was. “You are upset, and I believe we both understand why. But I feel obliged to give you a warning. Things have been very difficult for you—but they are going to get even more difficult, I'm afraid.”

“What does that mean?” My voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “Tell me.”

He did not reply, and I would have said more, but a hand reached out and grasped me.

“Mrs. Manders!” Robert leaned in and put a heavy arm around my shoulders. “You really must put a sack on your head, my dear, so you don't outshine the bride. How are you, sir?”

I froze. Robert—who had been drinking since before the party started, by the smell of him—pumped the colonel's hand, then led me away, his beefy hand still on my bare shoulder. I swallowed bile. “It's a
party,” he hissed at me through gin-soaked breath. “Act like it, if you please.”

I circulated around the room under Robert's clammy grip, being introduced to strangers, until he stopped us by a pillar, took two drinks from a passing waiter, and handed me one.

“I don't want this,” I said.

“Drink it,” he commanded, taking a long swig of his own.

I sipped the champagne, its sweetness on my tongue now making me gag.

“You must loosen up, Jo,” Robert said, his bleary eyes watching me. “Take my advice. You may be the best-looking woman in the room, but your expression is positively sour. Mrs. Mandel's cousin-in-law is a baronet, and Staffron brought some of his richer banking friends. You'll never catch any of the eligible men here unless you flirt.”

I stepped out of his reach and took another sip of my drink. “What do you care, anyway? You should go paw one of the neighbors' wives.”

“Careful, now.” Robert raised his glass and gestured to the room around us. “I gave you a warning to watch your tongue. I spotted you right away, you know. Making nice with that old stick of a colonel—he could be your father, my dear. Did you know that Wilde, the lawyer, was observing you two?”

“What are you talking about?” I looked around the room, but didn't see Dottie's man of business.

“Quite interested, he was,” Robert said. “Though you could do better, even as a mistress.”

Before I could escape him, the band switched to a jaunty march, and Dottie stepped up on the raised dais, waving her arms to get the attention of everyone in the room. She wore, unbelievably, a jacket and skirt—though these were of curious yellow-green and sewn with glass beads that reflected the light in shards. The suit jacket was
buttoned down the front and sported an Oriental collar that sat neatly in a ribbon around her narrow neck. She wore the same hairstyle as ever.

“My lovely wife,” Robert hissed drunkenly in my ear.

“Shut up,” I said to him, and he laughed.

There were speeches—lots of speeches. Dottie said a few words, clipped yet heartfelt. Mr. Staffron, who I'd barely spoken to since he came to stay, spoke sonorously; then his wife, Cora's mother, came to the stage, babbling and dabbing her tears with a handkerchief. Robert left my side, mounted the stage, and made a few jokes that had the room laughing uncomfortably. I stood and listened, my feet pinching, and instead of the twinkling lights of the party, I saw the leaves swirling upward; instead of the wash of words from the dais, I heard the shrill whistle; and as Cora and Martin climbed the steps, I watched Princer's stomach, clotted and stinking of blood, soaring over me again and again. As I hovered alone and unnoticed, my glass in my hand, for a moment the terrors of the woods were more real to me than the pleasant civilization of this room.

I blinked and tried to focus on Cora and Martin. Martin spoke first, declaring how lucky he was to have found such a beautiful woman. Cora followed, uncharacteristically shy, her few sentences stilted and rehearsed, her thin face frozen in stage fright as she thanked everyone for coming and declared how happy she was. They stood a foot apart and did not touch.

There was dancing afterward; the four-piece orchestra began again, more champagne flowed, and couples began to rotate demurely around the dance floor. I was asked to dance by one of Dottie's art buyers and then Cora's cousin, the doctor from Harley Street. I accepted numbly and moved around the dance floor with each man in a daze, making mechanical conversation. Mabry's words went through my head in time with the music.
Things are going to get even more difficult, I'm afraid.

I took another glass of champagne, wishing I had a watch so I could decide when to leave. The champagne was making me even
more tired, and a pulse in my temples was beginning to pound. The practiced tones of the orchestra sounded like screeching. Something was wrong. It wasn't just my feeling out of sorts—there was a thick tension in the air, as of a coming thunderstorm. I looked around the room and realized that Dottie, Robert, and Martin were gone.

The din of voices and music in the room seemed to grow louder. The backs of my eyes throbbed. Where had the family disappeared to? Why had they left their own party? I spied Cora in the corner of the room, nodding and smiling at someone, the corners of her eyes tired now, her smile clenched and tense. I started toward her, but someone intercepted me—David Wilde, clad in a formal black suit. “Mrs. Manders,” he said. “Please do me the honor of a dance.”

“Mr. Wilde,” I said.

Mr. Wilde smiled at me. He looked handsome and distinguished, with the silver in his hair and his matching silver eyes. He crooked his right elbow in my direction. “I promise I'm adept,” he said.

It was a strangely unbalanced feeling, dancing with a one-armed man. But he maneuvered me expertly around the room, his right hand firm on my waist, as if he danced with women all the time. Beneath my hand, the shoulder of his wasted arm felt bulky and strong beneath his jacket.

“Did you not bring your wife tonight?” I managed to ask him.

“Mrs. Wilde dislikes social functions,” he replied. “Mrs. Manders, I'm afraid I should apologize for the circumstances of our first meeting.”

“You needn't,” I said. “You were tasked with giving your opinion of me as Martin's possible wife, and you gave it.”

“Did Mrs. Forsyth tell you that?” he asked in surprise.

“She never had to. I figured it out from the first minute I got back to Wych Elm House.” My tongue was running away with me, I realized vaguely, and I could not control it. “Since we are at Martin's
engagement party, Mr. Wilde, it no longer figures. I understand what it means to be obliged to do something as part of your employment.”

He was quiet for a moment as the room spun around us. I blinked, trying not to topple, and realized I was clinging to him a little tighter in order to stay upright. He responded by angling his body and placing his hand even more firmly on my waist—not like one of Casparov's nasty old gropes, but a gentlemanly effort to keep me discreetly vertical. “Do you ever wonder, Mrs. Manders,” he said, “whether my assessment of you was positive or negative?”

“No,” I said to him. “No.”

“Perhaps I won't tell you, then.”

“You told her I was respectable,” I said, my loose tongue moving again. “You questioned me about my prospects and concluded that I wasn't after money, so I was probably trustworthy. You told me in detail about Frances to see if I would be shocked or horrified, and I passed that test, too.” I waited for him to protest, but he did not. “But you knew about Mother,” I continued. “You'd already researched my background. I suppose you wondered if the madness in my family would mix with the madness in Martin's, if we had children.”

The silence he gave me after that was appalled—but not, I knew, at me. “It must be difficult,” Mr. Wilde said quietly, “to be such a perceptive woman.”

The dance was winding to a close, and we slowed. “Perceptive or mad,” I said. “Do you ever wonder if they're the same thing?”

The music stopped, and he stepped back from me. “What do you mean?” he asked me.

“I just wonder sometimes,” I said. I swayed a little, and he reached out and gripped my arm with his good hand. “I'm well acquainted with madness, as you pointed out. My mother died. Sometimes I wonder if it's only the mad people who see the truth, or who say it out loud.” I pulled my arm slowly from his grip. “Thank you for the dance.”

A new dance started, and I returned to the sidelines. I drank more champagne. David Wilde danced with a different woman and did not look my way.
Well done, Jo,
I thought.
Now he thinks you're insane.

I looked around and saw that the family was still gone, and Cora had gone, too. My head pounded. Something was wrong, terribly, terribly wrong. The orchestra was playing a lively tune, trying to keep the dancers going, but people were beginning to notice. This was not how the party was supposed to go. I was getting curious looks, as I was the only family member—such as I was—left. I shrank back into the corner, hoping no one would approach me and ask.
I don't know; I'm not really family.
Perhaps the champagne had run out, or there had been an emergency in the kitchen.

I turned and saw Frances Forsyth's face, beneath an arch of flowers across the room. She was wearing her gray dress and her pearls, and for a second she watched me before someone passed in front of her and she disappeared. Had I imagined her? I didn't know. I moved across the room toward the empty space where I'd seen her.

I narrowly avoided colliding with a dancing couple—the woman had her head angled back, her neck showing, as she laughed at something her partner said—and wobbled in as straight a line as I could muster. My heart pounded. I stood in the spot where I'd seen Frances, but she was not there. There was not even a breath of cold where she'd been.