Silence for the Dead (26 page)

“Are you certain this is the right closet?” he said.

I looked down at the keys in my hand. “No.” I began trying them in the lock, a welcome distraction from thinking about the execution that had taken place on the grass outside the library.
Kneel, he says . . .
“But I think it is.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know Matron,” I said. I held up a finger. “First, she would take the keeping of the patients' personal belongings very seriously. Second, she would keep them meticulously organized, labeled, and stored somewhere locked. But not in her office, because she does not need to access them every day. So in a closet nearby. And she would keep the key herself, without giving a copy to Boney, because she would see it as her responsibility alone. Each man's things will have an itemized and dated list included. I'll wager it now.”

He was watching my face. He always knew what I was thinking. “She'll be all right,” he told me gently. “You'll see.”

“Yes, well.” I swallowed my worry.

“There was nothing in those papers about you, you know.”

I looked up at him. “What?”

“The envelope you gave me. The incident reports you asked me to read for you. I did. And there was nothing in there about you.”

“What are you talking about? My brother—”

“Is not mentioned. There is an incident report stating that a visitor arrived on a day not set for visiting and created a commotion. It says the nurses tried to eject him and the patients became disturbed. That was her word, ‘disturbed.' It states that the orderlies were late in arriving, and by the time the visitor was shown off the grounds, the patients were very upset. She claims full responsibility for the incident. Kitty, you're never mentioned at all, and neither are the other nurses.”

“What about the other incident reports?” I said. “The one in which I went to your room without clearance. And the second time, the night Roger told on me. And the night when Archie attacked me.”

“There's one about the attack. I suppose she had to write that one. But it's brief and carefully worded. Matron seems to be an expert in writing a report that doesn't give much away. I have to admire it.”

“And the others?”

Jack shook his head. “Nothing. Just those two reports. Nothing else.”

My stubborn brain wouldn't take it in. “That can't be right, Jack. She told me she was writing incident reports. She told me Mr. Deighton would read them, and there was nothing she could do. Are you saying she was
lying
?” My face felt hot and tingling. “Oh, my God. She was trying to frighten me all along. She never meant to have me dismissed. When I see her again, I'll kill her myself. I've barely slept, I was so worried.”

Jack's voice was thoughtful. “I'm starting to think, perhaps, that Matron puts on quite a good show of being frightening. But a show is what it is.”

“She's practical,” I replied. “She can't afford to lose a nurse, that's all. It certainly wasn't out of affection for me.”

“You may be wrong about that,” Jack said.

I shook my head.
I know her,
I was about to say again, but then I remembered that Matron had had a husband, and a son, and I had never guessed. Perhaps I didn't know her as well as I'd thought.

“Fine,” I said finally. “We'll leave it. But I know I'm right about this closet.”

I was. One of the keys worked, and the door swung open to reveal neatly kept shelves. There were a few small suitcases, and boxes tied with string; there were also a few parcels wrapped simply in brown paper. I realized that these were the belongings each man had come here with, the things of his own life he had surrendered. Some men had come with suitcases, others with a box of beloved items. And some men had come with nothing.

Each item had a paper tag attached to it, with Matron's large, looped handwriting.
SOMERSHAM, WILLIAM. D.O.B.: 16 APRIL 1898. ADMITTANCE DATE: 7 JANUARY 1919.

I studied the tags one by one. Jack was silent next to me, looking over my shoulder. It seemed he couldn't find words for those few long moments, as if the sight of that closet had temporarily robbed him. I finally put a hand on the brown paper parcel with his name on it.

I slid it off the shelf, held it in my hands for a moment. It weighed nearly nothing; Jack had come here, it seemed, with the clothes on his back and little else. I turned to him, the small parcel between us, and the ceremonial pose of it, I with an item in both my hands, presenting it to him, struck me with deep truth.

I raised my eyes and looked into his. I could not fathom what I saw there, could not truly understand what this moment would mean to a person who had suffered what he had. He didn't speak; it seemed he couldn't. And yet he put his hand on the parcel and took it from me, and then he ducked down and kissed me swiftly on the lips, his touch telling me more than words ever could.

He stood back and untied the string. The paper fell open to reveal a folded shirt and trousers, a pair of suspenders, a watch, a wallet, a wool jacket. When Jack Yates had checked into Portis House, wishing to kill himself, he had not even worn a tie.

He let out a sigh, a great whoosh of air as if a weight had been lifted from him. He picked a piece of paper from the top of the stack of folded clothes and held it up to me with a half smile. “You should have wagered money,” he said.

It was Matron's list of items in the parcel, of course. I smiled back at him.

Jack released the parcel and it dropped to the floor. I blinked in surprise, but before I could recover, he grabbed the bottom hem of his hospital top and wrenched it off over his head in one quick movement. I was left gaping at his bare chest, unexpected and utterly fascinating.

“What are you doing?” I managed.

“These are my clothes,” he said simply. He sounded almost happy. He kicked off his shoes. “I'm putting them on.”

“Right here?”

“Come, now.” He looked up at me and grinned fully, watching my reaction. Too late, I realized he was distracting me as he yanked the drawstring of his hospital trousers and dropped them to the floor. “You're a nurse,” he said. “Surely at some point you've seen one of us in the altogether?”

I stood there like a ninny. He wasn't in the altogether—he wore drawers, of course, and at the moment he showed no signs of removing them. But he wore nothing else.
I should turn my back,
I thought stupidly, but I did no such thing. His body was lean, the flat muscles sliding under the skin hypnotic. He had small whorls of hair on his chest, a shade lighter than the hair on his head. His hips were narrow, his legs long and strong, smaller whorls of hair on his thighs and farther down. I stared.

He bent and picked up his trousers, the knobs of his spine moving under the flawless skin of his back. He shook the trousers out and stepped into them, and I felt a short stab of disappointment that I couldn't look at his legs anymore. He fastened the trouser buttons, the movement strangely intimate. He was enjoying the fact that I was looking at him. There was something in my gaze, I realized, something I had not consciously put there, that he was soaking up like a sponge.

He picked up the shirt next and slipped it over his head, and I could see the tufts of hair under his arms as he raised them, the soft, firm undersides of his biceps, the play of skin over his ribs. Then the fabric fell and he tucked the shirt into the trousers as I felt the slow pulse of my heart at the base of my throat.

He attached the suspenders next, slid them over his shoulders. The trousers were a little roomy on him now, but not much; even before he'd come here and gone on a hospital diet, he'd been slim. I saw him now as if through a glass; I could see the patient he'd been, and the man he was, at the same time. They had always been the same person, at least to me.

He put his shoes and socks on and straightened, looked at me.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

He rolled his shoulders, one and then the other, then both at the same time, the movement making the fabric of his shirt play over his skin. Then he stilled and looked at me, his expression dark. “Come here.”

I took a step closer, knowing only that I wanted to be nearer, to be as close as I could. He put his arm around my waist and pulled me to him, flush against him. Then he kissed me again.

This kiss was different. He held me tight, and even through layers of fabric I could feel every sinew of him, the beat of his heart and the heat of his hands on my back. I put my arms around his neck and touched his hair with my fingertips. His hips were flush against mine. He teased my mouth open and I let him, the taste of him, mixed with the smell of his skin, overwhelming me. He had kissed me before with need, and the need was still there, but it was tempered with passion that made me ache, made me rise up and open to him as much as he would let me.

He broke the kiss and ran a thumb along my lower lip. He did not let me go. “That's better,” he said, breathing hard. “I wanted to kiss you as a man.”

“You are a man,” I said.

He rubbed my lip again—the sensation of it was raw, as if I had no more defenses—and kissed the corner of my mouth, my jaw, the tender spot on my neck. Then he stopped, holding me, his head dipped to the spot beneath my ear, breathing me in.

I touched his face, ran my fingers along his jaw and his cheekbones. I knew every line of them, every contour, though I'd never touched them before, not like this. The feel of him beneath my hands sent a spark of something through me, dangerous and heady and wonderful.

“Jack,” I said after a long moment.

“Hmm?”

“Are you kissing the nurses just to get newspapers?”

When his body shook against mine, I knew he was laughing.

T
he rain had not stopped. Though it was morning, the clouds were so thick we needed the electric lights in the patients' hall in order to see through the gloom. The light thrown by the electric bulbs wasn't as strong as the light from the paraffin lamps, and Nina kept a lamp lit as she worked.

“No one's died yet,” she told me bluntly when I came to relieve her. “It's well there's only five. It makes it easier.”

“Six,” I said.

She passed a glance to Archie, who lay still on his blanket. “Yes, well, I meant five infected. I've tried feeding them, but no one will take anything. Did you make the breakfast in the kitchen? Thank God.” She stared over my shoulder as Jack came up behind me. She took in his change of clothes and was momentarily speechless.

“Good morning,” Jack said.

“Blimey,” said Nina.

“I think we ought to regroup,” I cut in. “We put the patients on the floor here for evacuation, but the rain hasn't stopped, and we may not get help for another day yet. The floor isn't the best place for them.”

“I agree,” said Nina. “They should be in their rooms, in bed.”

I turned to Jack. “Let's find Paulus and Roger. And Captain Mabry. Let's see if we can move these men back upstairs.”

Paulus and Roger were in the kitchen devouring much of the breakfast I'd cooked. We sent them upstairs to prepare the six bedrooms and get a stretcher. Then I put a plate together, poured a cup of hot tea, and brought a tray to West.

He was in the common room, looking out at the rain. He didn't thank me when I gave him the food, but I could tell he was famished. I took a seat in one of the rickety chairs and looked out at the rain as he ate.

“It'll lighten up by tonight,” he told me. “And then we can get help.”

“How do you know it will stop?”

“I feel it in here.” He pointed dismissively to the stumps of his legs. “I felt it coming, and now I can feel it going. Coming is worse. It nearly made my teeth hurt.” He took another bite of bacon, didn't look at me. “I'm not useless, you know.”

I was surprised. “I never said you were.”

“I nearly had that scrawny bastard last night,” he went on. I thought vaguely that my patients had long lost any awareness of swearing in my presence, if they had ever had any in the first place. “I learned my choke holds in the army. Another few seconds and I'd have put his lights out, but he fell out of his chair and got away from me.” West looked at me. “I'm just saying I don't have to be a drain. I can be of use.”

“Very well, Mr. West,” I said. “I'll keep it in mind.”

“Lieutenant Douglas R. West, First Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, at your service.” He gave me a quick salute, then smiled. “Call me Douglas.”

“There you are,” Jack said, coming into the room. Captain Mabry followed. “Morning, West.”

West looked him up and down. “Out of your pajamas at last, Yates?”

“Something like it.”

“The look suits you. Though you must be disappointed you're not one of the team.” He motioned to the lettering on his shirt.

Jack shook his head. “I've resigned.”

“Well, by God.” West, cheered up, rubbed his hands. “Brave Jack is here. It's raining, we're stuck here, we're dropping like flies, there's a ghost, and Jack's going to lead us over No Man's Land. I'm game. This ought to be good. What's first?”

Jack pulled up a chair and shrugged. “Mabry's got news. Go ahead, Captain.”

Captain Mabry nodded politely at me. He looked pale, and gray shadows hung under his eyes. I hoped to God he wasn't getting sick, but before I could ask him, he began. “The generator's low on fuel. The fuel is kept in the cellar, apparently, so I went to get some, and I found two problems. The first is that the cellar is completely flooded, and getting worse as we speak.”

I straightened in my chair. “You're saying we can't fuel the generator?”

“We can't. Sorry. I mucked through as best as I could, but the water's over a foot deep and the fuel container wasn't airtight. The whole supply has watered to nothing by now.”

“All right,” said Douglas. “Lamps it is.”

“The other issue,” Mabry continued, “is that I saw evidence that someone had been there. On a shelf was a blanket and two opened tins of meat stolen from the kitchen pantry. The remains in the tins weren't rotten. Someone had been down there recently, camping out. They likely left when the flooding started.”

“Creeton,” I said.

Jack nodded. “We know where he spent the night, then. But we don't know where he's gone. Or why.”

I didn't understand it. Why go into hiding, away from everyone? Creeton hadn't been the same since the awful day of his suicide attempt; he'd been alternately hostile and silent in turn, his comments, when he bothered to speak, almost frighteningly vicious. But he'd been present and aware of his surroundings. His hiding spoke of delusion. Something had pushed Creeton over the edge.

Nina came into the doorway. “Kitty, am I needed to help move the patients? I'm dead on my feet.”

I stood. “I can take over. Moving them shouldn't be complicated.”

“You may want to rethink that,” said a voice from behind Nina.

Paulus and Roger came into the room. Paulus was pale, his expression more grim than I'd ever seen it. I wondered whether he'd recovered from the night before.

“What is it?” said Jack.

“I'm not sure those fellows should go to their rooms after all,” Paulus said. “Come take a look.”

•   •   •

“
H
ow did he do this?” Captain Mabry said. “We didn't hear a thing.”

We were standing in the bedroom of George Naylor, one of the patients who was currently downstairs lying in the hall. Naylor, a quiet twenty-two-year-old with a gap in his front teeth and a fragile constitution from having been gassed, was a neat and orderly patient. But his meager belongings had been pulled from his dresser drawer, his socks and underthings shredded, his pillow reduced to a pile of fabric and feathers on the floor, his mattress sliced. A single picture frame, the only personal item Naylor had been allowed, lay facedown on the ground.

“This room is just one of them,” Roger said. “There are others like this, too.”

I glanced at Jack. Creeton had done this while we were downstairs at breakfast, while I had been giving Jack his clothes back. Creeton must have come up past the back servant stairs—it was the fastest way. He'd been passing the stairwell door as Jack and I had stood in the corridor.

Jack's face was stony, impossible to read. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked from the room.

He was going to Jack's own room, of course. We all followed him, clustering in the doorway as he stood looking around the small, dim space where he'd spent six months alone. Creeton hadn't damaged it, not the way he had George Naylor's room. He had littered it with pa- pers, all of them lettered in dark, square writing, the lines close and thick. Pages were strewn across the floor, the window seat, the bed.

Jack picked up one of the pages, scanned it. “His dreams,” he said, handing the page to Captain Mabry.

Mabry glanced at the sheet and winced at what he read there, as if it were shocking or painful. “Didn't he give you these when the rest of us did?”

“No.” Jack's attention had been drawn to the bed. “He refused.”
Go fuck yourself,
the exact words had been.

“Well, it looks like he wrote his dreams after all.” Mabry looked around at the dozens of pages littered across the room. “Creeton always denied he had nightmares.”

“You all denied it,” I said.

“Wait.” Jack walked over to the bed, and I could see a single piece of paper placed squarely on the pillow. It was not covered in writing like the others, but had a single message on it that I couldn't read from where I stood. Jack picked up the paper. “Bloody hell.”

“What does it say?” said Paulus.

Jack held it up.
“Eliminate the weak.”

We all digested that for a second. Roger spoke first. “I don't like the sound of that.”

I thought of Archie telling me,
It's too late. I'm sorry.
The ghost of Nils Gersbach. Creeton going over the edge into delusion at the same time. “The sick men,” I said. “Downstairs.”

“Archie Childress,” said Jack.

“You think he means to harm them?” asked Mabry.

“I think we can't take the risk,” Jack replied. “We know he's been in the kitchen, and he sliced Naylor's mattress with a knife. So he's armed himself. He may have found other weapons by now, too. If he's got this idea fixed in his head—”

A sound came from the walls. A low groan, deep and vibrating. By reflex I put my hands to my ears; I knew that sound all too well. It was followed by a hollow
clang
, and then another.

“The lav,” I heard Paulus say.

It came again, and from down the corridor, toward the men's lav, we heard a wet gurgling sound. I pressed my hands harder to my ears, but I couldn't block it. I could see the mold in my mind; I could smell it. I could see how it had smeared as I mopped it. And I heard the words in my head, the ones that always presented themselves unbidden.
He's coming.
I opened my mouth to shout it, prepared to run. I had no courage to face it anymore.

And then it stopped.

We looked at one another in the silence.

“By God,” said Paulus hoarsely at last. “I hate that bathroom.”

“That's the loudest I've ever heard it,” Jack said as I reluctantly took my hands from my ears. “Something's happening.”

The air was thick—anticipation, fear. I didn't know what it was, but my back ached with tension and my jaw felt stiff. Somewhere, a shutter banged in the rain.

Roger cracked his knuckles. “Let's find this bastard. I don't care about ghosts. Just let me lay my hands on Creeton.”

“We need to guard the patients,” Jack replied. “If he's planning something, he'll come to them—we won't have to go anywhere.”

“They're too exposed in the main hall,” Mabry said. His voice was shaky and he looked even paler. “It's dark, and he could come from too many directions.”

“I agree,” said Jack. “Where should we move them?”

Mabry thought about it. “The common room. There's only the one doorway.”

“But it has the French doors to the terrace,” I replied. “He could come through there.”

“Not without someone seeing him,” Mabry replied. “They can be barred. And they let in light. If the generator goes, we want to be in the best-lit room in the house, at least during daylight hours.”

I turned to Jack. “Can we move beds in there? I don't like having patients on the floor.”

Paulus answered me. “We've no folding beds, but we can move mattresses down. How many would we need?”

“Seven,” I replied. “We've five sick men, and Archie. And a mattress for the attending nurse to use.”

“Do it,” Jack said to the orderlies.

“We'll be quick.” Paulus was even paler than before. “I've no desire to be up here longer than I have to. Not after that.”

Jack, Mabry, and I descended the stairs to the main floor. “I wish I had a weapon,” Mabry said. “I don't like how he's creeping around the house behind our backs. We should be armed.”

“I agree,” said Jack. “A handgun would be best. Too bad they don't keep them in madhouses.”

I halted on the stairs.

The men stopped and turned. “What is it, Kitty?” said Jack.

I looked at them uncertainly. “Is a Luger a handgun?”

Jack and Mabry exchanged a glance. “Yes,” Mabry said. “It is.”

“Then we have one,” I said. “At least, I think we do. It's Creeton's.” I bit my lip. “He told me they took it from him when they checked him in here. There's a safe in Matron's office where she locks up the men's valuables, the things she doesn't keep in the main cupboard.” I glanced at Jack. “Boney told me about it. If she confiscated Creeton's gun, she wouldn't have discarded it. She would have locked it up.”

The men considered this. “And how,” Jack said slowly, “would we get into Matron's safe?”

I pulled out the key ring I'd taken from her cardigan pocket. It held the key to the cupboard where I'd found Jack's clothes, but there was a scrap of cloth attached to it as well. I'd noticed it when I'd first grabbed the ring, but I hadn't paid it much attention. Now I did. Because Matron would have kept the two things together—the key to the men's belongings and the key to the valuables, two things that were her responsibility alone.

“I think this is it,” I said.

Jack reached for it, but it was Mabry who took it from my hand. He stared at it with what seemed like fascination. Numbers were inked onto the scrap of cloth. Six numbers. A combination.

“The safe,” I said, “will have any valuables the men brought in. Money. Watches. Gold. Passports.” I bit my lip. “All of it.”

Mabry closed his hand around it. He really did look tired, I worried. “Well,” he said quietly. “I believe it's official. The inmates are now running the asylum.”

“Take it,” I said. “But be aware. Creeton's going to want the contents of that safe. And he's going to want his gun.”

“We'll get it, and we'll help the orderlies move the sick,” Jack said. “Then we'll scout the west wing for signs of Creeton. Roger has a key.” He looked at me. “And where are you going?”

“I'm going to find Nina,” I said. “She was exhausted. I think she may have gone to bed.”

“Upstairs in the nursery?”

“Yes. She doesn't know what Creeton's been up to. I don't want her up there alone.”