Lost Among the Living (27 page)

I stood from my chair and, without regard to anyone who might come into the room, I sat in his lap. I hooked my legs over his long, strong ones and put my arms around his neck, leaning my shoulder in to him and letting my cheek drop against his collar.

His hand touched my back, but I felt his body tense beneath me. “Jo,” he said, “do not tease me.”

I raised my head and spoke into his ear, holding him tighter and turning my body to press more snugly against his. “Fine,” I said. “I won't. Just tell me whether Hans Faber had any girlfriends.”

He sighed in surrender. “No, you idiot,” he replied, pulling pins from my tangled hair. “He lived like a monk.”

“I know you,” I said. “That sounds difficult.”

“It was easy.”

I paused at that as my heart skipped a beat. Then I gave him a succession of soft kisses along his jaw. “I think we should go and make proper use of our room,” I told him, the taste of his skin on my lips. “That is, if you remember what to do?”

He turned my face to his and kissed me, slowly and thoroughly, until my blood was singing. I knew all of Alex's kisses, and this one was full of very serious intent.

We went upstairs. It turned out that neither of us had forgotten a thing. And for all the hours afterward, as the storm blew in from the sea, we pretended we were the only two people in the world.

W
e set out for Wych Elm House the next morning, over roads strewn with branches and ruts puddled with rain. The sky was sleek gray, the wind nasty and chill, and even in Alex's modern motorcar we could not get entirely warm, the winter cold creeping into our hands and feet.

We were silent during the drive. It was one of those long-married stretches of quiet during which there was no need for us to speak. Alex kept his gaze on the road, watching for the next obstacle through the gloom. I sat with the map unfolded and unread in my lap, my hair tucked under my cloche cap, my gloved hands idle as I watched the landscape out the window.

I was happy—of course I was happy—but I couldn't help the dread that settled on me the longer we drove. It was like the feeling I'd had at the engagement party when I'd noticed that all of the family was gone from the room. As we followed the winding road bringing us closer and closer to Wych Elm House, I couldn't shake the instinct that something was terribly awry. Alex seemed to feel the same way, and as we traveled, his expression grew more grim and he pressed the accelerator, pushing the car to go faster.

We arrived in Anningley around time for luncheon, but neither of us wanted to stop and eat. “Let's press on,” I said.

“I'd like to make one stop,” Alex replied.

He drove us to the little cottage that belonged to Petra Jennings. Anningley was strangely quiet, and we saw only a handful of people,
as if everyone had decided to stay inside out of the cold. The effect was eerie, and only added to my alarm. Perhaps Alex had additional questions for Petra Jennings. Whatever his aim, I hoped he would do it quickly so we could continue up the road.

But he did not get to perform his plan at all. When we approached Miss Jennings's cottage, we found it shut and dark, the curtains drawn over the windows. Alex got out of the car and I watched him knock at the door, then make a quick circuit of the building, looking through the cracks between the curtains.

“She's gone,” he said to me when he got back into the motorcar, bringing a breath of icy air with him. “The place is packed up. The clothes are gone from the kitchen, the iron and board, everything. It looks like she plans to be away for a while.”

I stared at the dark cottage, my dread increasing. What had made Petra Jennings pack up over the course of a single night and leave her home? Where had she gone? Had something frightened her? Had she even left by her own choice? I glanced up her quiet street and saw a curtain twitch in one of the neighbors' windows.

“Please, Alex,” I said. “Let's go.”

He only nodded and started the motorcar again.

The road to Wych Elm House had lost the last of its autumn luster and turned from the final red-brown tints of fall to the defeated gray, drained of color, that signaled the waning half of November. The storm had blown through here, too, stripping the trees of their last leaves and exposing branches stark to the bleached sky. As I watched the landscape, my heart started a slow acceleration in my chest, a mix of horrid anticipation and fear. I half expected to see Frances Forsyth appear from a swirl of leaves, her massive dog following at her heels. These were her woods.

“You told me that first night,” Alex said, reading my mind, “that you've seen the dog.”

I blinked and saw the beast's horrid underside as it leaped over me, reeking of blood. “His name is Princer,” I said. “He protects her.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Martin spoke of it,” he said. “That first night I was back, after I left you. Frances wrote to him about Princer, how he came through the door to protect her. He burned the letters.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he is not sure how long he will live, and he didn't want anyone to find the letters in his belongings after he's gone. He felt that the things Frances told him in her madness were private.”

So that was why he had burned them, then. I wondered if he would tell Cora. “Everyone believes Frances imagined Princer,” I said, “that she conjured him to make herself feel safe, especially after her experience at school. But she summoned him when I was taking pictures in the woods. I saw—something. Him.” I blinked and turned away from him, staring hard out the window. “It felt very real,” I said. “Perhaps I'm as mad as Frances was. But I saw it. I
smelled
it.”

Alex did not argue with me this time. “Why?” he asked. “Why did she call him that day? Was she trying to hurt you?”

I shook my head. “I thought so, but no. Princer—he was faster than me. He could have caught me. But he didn't.”

“That's a mercy, then,” he said, and I knew he was thinking of what Alice Sanders had said.
Something split him open from head to toe.
“If he protected Frances from George Sanders, Jo, perhaps he was protecting you as well.”

“From what?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

The family motorcar was not parked in front of the house, and when we came through the front door, we found it dim and quiet, echoing with the emptiness of an unused place. The air was chill, and neither of us removed our coats. I followed Alex down the hall, past one empty room after another. We did not encounter a servant or hear
any sounds of people. There was no sign of Martin or Dottie anywhere downstairs. Like the village, the house echoed as if everyone had left.

I paused at the door to the library, then stepped inside. The air in here held a faint fug of cigarette smoke, as if Dottie and her cigarette holder had been here, but it had a stale feel to it. Dottie usually smoked one cigarette at a time. By the smell of the library, something had made her sit in here and smoke one after the other.

The desk was the same mess it had been when I'd left the day before, but lying on top of the pile was a letter, unfolded, the edges dented and crumpled as if it had been well handled. I picked it up.

Mother,

This letter is going to distress you, and I beg to apologize for it, but please read it through and consider before you pass judgment on me.

I have gone to Cora. I have taken the train, and I will be in London by the time you awake and receive this. We will also be married, because we plan to do it by the first arrangement when I get to the city.

Mother, I have told Cora everything. I have told her of all that happened to me in the war—things I never told even you or Father—and of the addiction that has dogged me since I was first treated for my injury. It turns out, Mother, that she is the best sort of girl. The strongest sort. The kind who can help me, the kind who will help me. And, Mother, I need help. Without it, I'm going to leave Cora without a husband and you without a son. I thought I didn't care overmuch about this. But when I read Cora's letters, when I hear her tell me over the telephone that it isn't over yet, it turns out I do care.

She is taking me to her cousin, the doctor on Harley Street, who says he has new ideas for how to treat my
pain. He is also an up-and-coming success and knows a great many of London's best surgeons. It's possible, Mother, that the surgeons in Switzerland after the war did a hurried and inexact job, and with testing and treatment a new surgery could remove the last of the shrapnel inside me and repair the damage over time. I could be well and whole. Cora and I have the money, and now we have the will. I have decided for her sake that I am going to do my damnedest to live to a hundred.

Please don't follow us. I am in the very best hands. I know we've cheated you of a grand wedding, but I think when your temper cools and your unassailable logic returns, you'll see this is for the best. Cora is my wife, her children will be your grandchildren, and if God and the doctors of London will it, I will be your son for a while longer.

This is all your doing, Mother. Thank you.

Martin

Alex gave a low whistle as he stood next to me, reading over my shoulder. “That's a shock,” he said. “Aunt Dottie must be livid.”

She would be, I knew. She would also be hurt, though it would come out as her usual brisk anger. “She followed him,” I said. “That's why the house is so quiet, and that's why the motorcar is gone. She followed him to London.”

“The house is too quiet,” Alex said. “Where are the servants?”

“I dismissed them.”

We turned. Robert Forsyth stood at the entrance to the library, watching us. He was dressed in an expensive suit of thick wool, as cleanly put together as ever, his hair combed back, a smirk on his face. He walked toward us, his hands in his pockets.

“Why?” Alex asked him.

“Because I don't want them here,” Robert said. “Because I don't want anyone here. Once Martin left and my wife took off after him like a bloodhound, I saw my chance. I was always good at that.”

Alex turned to him. My hands went cold. “Your chance at what, Uncle?” Alex asked.

Robert gave him a curious look. “My chance to get rid of both of you,” he said, and pulled his hand from his pocket. I had time to see that he held a pistol before he pulled the trigger and shot Alex once in the chest, the sound deafening in the still air of the library, except for the echoing sounds of my screams as my husband fell.

A
hand gripped the hair at the back of my head, knocking my hat off, jerking me backward so I almost overbalanced. “Shut up and stop screaming,” Robert said in my ear.

I stared at the ceiling as he bent my head back, the sound choking in my throat. From the floor at my feet came a sound, a hideous liquid gurgle.

“Do you hear that?” Robert said to me. “No, don't look. That's the sound of the life bleeding out of my dear nephew, your husband. The fine fellow who has tried twice now to ruin everything I've done.” His grip in my hair squeezed. “And you know all about it, don't you? What a sight he is now, my dear. We'll have to move before the blood soaking into the carpet gets on our shoes.”

“Please,” I begged.

“
Please,
” he mimicked. “I can't look at him anymore, but I'm not quite done with you yet. Come with me.”

“A doctor,” I begged him as he dragged me from the room, his hand still gripping my hair, his other holding the gun with his arm
around my waist. “Just call a doctor—please—I won't tell—” There was a gasping sound from behind us as we left the library, softer now, and I felt the scream in my throat.
“Alex!
”

Robert threw me forcefully to the ground. I hit the floor of the corridor, my knee cracking, and screamed again. He swung one leather-clad foot and kicked me hard in the ribs, then stood over me, the pistol dangling at his side. His face was mottled red, his slicked-back hair mussed, his gaze angry as he stared down at me.

“You have no idea,” he said, “what I've had to suffer.”

Pain throbbed in my knee, but I pushed myself along the polished wood of the corridor, away from him. I had to think of something—had to do something. The telephone was in the library, where Alex was, but Robert would never let me use it. “Why?” I asked him, my voice raw, buying time. “Why did you take the sketches?”

“Why do you think?” Robert said. He took a casual step forward, following me as I tried to move away from him. “Money. You of all people should understand that. I am so very tired of living off my termagant wife. Of letting her control me.” He took another step, and the pistol swung by his side. Behind him, I heard no more sound from the library, and I choked back a sob. “Franny, my sweet girl, liked to sketch. I found her book one day with the drawings of the military base. The navy was using it during the war. The drawings were very detailed, and it was all perfectly innocent. She was oblivious. I had some connections through friends of mine, and I made inquiries. It seemed my daughter's pictures might be worth an excellent sum. So I arranged to send them.” He shook his head. “You see? It was so simple. I'd make my money, and no one would get hurt.”

“You aided the enemy,” I said.

He swung his foot and kicked me again, painfully, on the sternum. “There is no enemy except poverty,” he growled. “No enemy but disappointment and lack of pride. Hasn't my wife taught you the value of money during all those months you spent as her lapdog?”

I tried to get up, gasping in pain, but he put his beefy hands on my shoulders and shoved me down. “I like you better down there,” he said. “Listen to me. I'm not going to save your husband. He's a liar. He didn't spend the last three years in any prison camp. He didn't come back here in 1917 for a visit to his dear old aunt and uncle. I'm not stupid. He came here looking for me.” I tried to move again, but he only stood more closely over me, aiming the gun down. “I sent off the sketches, and what happened? I heard that Alex was suddenly coming for a visit. I had my suspicions, but I couldn't be sure. There was no way he'd learn anything from me, of course, and Dottie knew nothing. The only one who could innocently let on to dear Alex that her daddy took her drawings was Franny.”

“So you found George Sanders,” I said.

“No. He found me. He wrote Martin first, begging for money. When Martin said no, he wrote to me. A private letter. He was desperate, he said. So I drove to Torbram.” Robert smiled, his teeth glowing white in the dim light of the corridor. “I went at night—Dottie and the servants are used to my being out all night, and they never asked questions. I drove to Torbram, I found George Sanders, and I told him that if he was looking for money from the Forsyth family, I knew just how he could get it.”

“You had to kill her?” I shouted at him. “You couldn't quiet her some other way, send her away?”

“We'd sent her away already, and she came back,” Robert said. “Her mother would never agree to send her anywhere again. As for silencing her some other way, no one would ever believe the ramblings of a mad girl like Frances. No one except someone who knew her well and was willing to listen to her ravings. Like Alex.”

“How could you possibly know he was coming because of the sketches?” I said.

“I tell you, I didn't. I merely ascertained George Sanders's interest
and told him that if I needed him to act, I would telephone him. I told him to be ready in case I needed him, and he agreed.”

My mind was racing. There was no one within screaming distance to hear me. If I could get my hands on a weapon, I could disable him and get to the telephone—get to Alex. Dottie had a pair of scissors, but they were too small to do any damage, and they were back in the library. I pushed my way down the corridor toward the staircase that led to the kitchen. If I could make it to the kitchen, I could possibly arm myself with a knife before he caught me.

“Alex asked questions,” Robert said, following me. “I threatened Frances, told her to stay in her room and plead a stomachache. She complied, but she was always difficult to control. I knew she wouldn't stay afraid of me for very long, and when she talked to her beloved cousin Alex, she'd tell him. Still, it bought me some time. Then I overheard Alex asking a servant about the sketchbook, and I knew he'd been sent here to ferret me out. I also knew my sketches had been intercepted and I'd never get my money for them. I was out of time, and the punishment for treason is execution. So I made the telephone call.”

I could see the door to the stairwell now. I'd have to get my feet under me quickly and make a dash for it, shut the door behind me. “Your own daughter,” I said to him. “She loved you. Worshipped you.”

“Oh, yes, I know,” Robert said. “It's easy to sit in judgment when you're not her father. You don't know what it was like, to raise a child like Frances. To listen to her screaming, to hear her delusions. To lie awake at night wondering. To know that she was never going to be well, would never marry, would be a burden for the rest of my life. I don't think you
understand.
” He was breathing heavily now. “I couldn't do it myself. George was a stranger; he had no connection to the house or the woods. He was to do it quickly, without causing her pain, and then disappear again. No one would ever know. It would be assumed
she was killed by a vagrant, perhaps, or had an accident. She'd be at rest and my secret would be safe.”

I had the doorway in my sights, but I turned and looked up at him. “And what happened?”

Robert blinked, remembering, and for a moment his focus was so distracted that I thought I might be able to make a grab for the pistol. I kept very still.

“I don't know,” he said. “I made sure to be out of the house, visiting friends, so no suspicion could fall on me. I walked—I used to walk then, but I hate the woods now, and I never do anymore. I approached the house from the back, expecting to see that the place was in turmoil. Instead, Frances came around the house from the front, running toward me. She was crying. She flung herself into my arms and told me that a man had attacked her in the woods, but Princer had saved her, had killed the man. It was awful, and she'd run and run, and she didn't know what to do.”

“Oh, my God,” I said softly.

“Can you imagine it?” Robert gave a small smile. “She flung herself at me and called me
Papa.
She was so shaken—she wanted me to save her, to fix things, as if she were a little girl. I held her tight and said everything would be all right, and she should come into the house with me.”

I could feel tears on my face now, though my cheeks were numb with fear. “She trusted you,” I said, my voice a croak.

“Of course she did. I was her father. I took her up to the roof and asked her to point out the direction in the woods where she'd encountered the strange man. I told her I wanted to see where it was without her having to lead me there. She stood on the edge and pointed, and I pushed her. Then I crept back down the stairs and out the doors of the morning room, and pretended I had just walked home through the trees.”

“You're vile,” I said. Then I kicked his knee as hard as I could,
turned, got my feet under me, and made a dash down the corridor toward the staircase to the kitchen.

Robert shouted behind me. My knee was a knot of pain, and it barely held me, but I pushed it, expecting the pistol to go off, expecting to feel the bullet hit between my shoulder blades. Instead, he launched at me and landed on my back and I fell to the floor again.

I screamed, trying to pull myself from under him, but he held me fast in his grip, his thick, sweaty body on top of mine. Then I felt his focus shift, his weight move off me, and he scrambled for the pistol.

I looked up. Standing in the doorway to the staircase, the doorway I'd just tried to run for, was Dottie. She had had the same thought I had. In one hand, she held a kitchen knife. The look on her face as she stared at her husband was thick with hatred and fury, her lips drawn back, her cheekbones hot and red.

“You killed her!” she cried. “My daughter!”

Robert swung the pistol. I kicked his forearm and the shot went wild, lodging in the corridor wall. Robert wrenched himself from me, stood, and sent his heavy arm out in a long arc, the grip of the pistol connecting with Dottie's temple with a sickening sound. She barely had time to raise her hands before she crumpled to the floor.

I got my feet under me again, sobbing. I ran for the morning room door this time, thinking to get out to the terrace, to run. But again Robert caught me, and again he wrestled me to the floor. He
pinned down my hands, pressed a knee hard into my lower back, sending arcs of pain up my spine and down my legs.

“Poor, unbalanced Alex,” Robert panted in my ear when I went still, gasping with agony. “The war unbalanced him, I think. I came home to find he'd killed his aunt and was violating his lovely wife, so I shot him. A veteran losing his reason is all too common a story these days, I'm afraid.” He bent closer. “I always did like you, Mrs. Manders.”

I screamed. I couldn't move, couldn't get away from him, and no one would come—but I screamed, screamed for the death of Frances, for Dottie, for Alex. I screamed in terror and an echoing, horrible despair. I would die here, on the floor halfway through the doorway of the morning room of Wych Elm House, staring at the flowered wallpaper.

Then, on the terrace outside, I saw Frances.

She was watching us. Her expression was impassive and almost sad, her blue eyes beneath the slashes of her brows intelligent. She wore the familiar gray dress and pearls. She was not looking at me. She was looking at her father.

I felt Robert go still on my back. It was cold, I realized, my nose and lips chilled. Outside, I heard the wind.

“Frances,” I said.

“No,” Robert said. “It can't be.”

There was a crash behind us, and I turned, my cheek pressed against the floor. Alex had come out of the library and up the corridor. He was on his knees, his face ashen, his eyes on me. Blood soaked the front of his shirt and the waist of his trousers, soaked his sleeves and the palms of his hands.

“Jo,” he said. He leaned forward, swung his arm, and something skidded along the floor toward me, sliding across the carpet. A knife. The knife Dottie had been holding.

“It can't be,” Robert said again, still frozen in surprise, and I
wrenched my wrist from his grip, grabbed the knife, and jammed it into his thigh.

He roared and lost his balance. I squirmed beneath him, heaved him from my back, and crawled across the floor toward Alex, who had crumpled to the ground. Behind me, I heard the soft click of the French doors unlatching, the quiet creak of the doors opening. A chill wind blew into the room. Carried on it, over the sound of Robert's screams of pain, came a high, shrill whistle.

Alex was ghastly pale, but I could see his chest rise and fall. He was breathing. His eyes were half open, watching me come toward him. When I was close enough, I grasped his icy hand and glanced behind me.

Robert had staggered to his feet. I had hit him on the outside of his thigh, and the blade was still lodged there, the handle of the knife protruding grotesquely, slicked with blood. He could barely stand, but still he pawed at the knife handle, trying to pull the weapon from his body, his hands too slippery to gain purchase. Blood spurted down his leg and onto the floor, soaking his expensive wool trousers. Past him, through the French doors, his daughter still stood at the edge of the terrace. Dead leaves were kicking up around the hem of her skirt, blowing upward, swirling around her in a blur. Behind her, a massive shape emerged from the edge of the trees, hulking and muscled, its long fur wet with filth. It trotted up behind Frances, twice her size, and I glimpsed a pair of hideous eyes before she raised a hand and I looked away.

Perhaps he is protecting you,
I heard Alex say.

I crawled to Alex and cradled his head. “Don't look,” I whispered, my breath pluming in the icy air. Behind me, there was a smell of blood, the heavy scrabble of something on the terrace tiles, the sound of breath that I knew was hot and rancid, and very soon Robert stopped screaming.

•   •   •

I
curled up against Alex in the silence that followed, pressing my body heat to his. He had begun to shiver.