The Death of Jane Lawrence(29)

“Mr. Purl ought to stop coming ’round to bring me home, when I can walk just as well,” Mrs. Purl was saying. “He’s going to get himself lost or thrown some night, with these rains. And you know, just last week, I was already in bed when he rides in over the hill between here and there, smelling like whiskey, and asks me about the ‘red-eyed woman.’ I kept telling him there is no woman, or if there is he’d better not tell me about her.”

“It’s a spirit,” Mrs. Luthbright said, all solemn sobriety. “He should wear his shirt inside out when he comes by, so as not to be bewitched by it.”

“It’s a spirit, all right.” Mrs. Purl snorted. “A spirit made of barley. He says he went to knock at the front door here, but the lights were all out, so he turned to go. And then there she was, looking at him. But, I ask you, if there was a spirit living in the house, wouldn’t we have seen it? In these past three months, I can honestly tell you I haven’t seen a single thing, here or on the path back home.”

Jane did not believe in spirits, and yet she had to suppress a shiver at the thought.

“Truly, it must be a ghost,” Mrs. Luthbright said. “Don’t you remember that nice carriage that came by here two years ago, a few months before they closed up the hall?”

“There were always nice carriages back then,” Mrs. Purl responded, slowly. “So no, not as such.”

“A young woman moved into the house. From Camhurst.”

Jane frowned. A young woman from Camhurst. A sister, perhaps? Or a cousin? Perhaps even one of his schoolmates, a fellow surgeon.

“And how do you claim to know this?”

“Mrs. Young reminded me of it, just last night.” Mrs. Luthbright’s voice dropped low, and Jane crept closer to the doorway, drawn as a moth to fire. “A few months after the woman moved in, the undertakers came up the lane, but there was never any funeral. And then the doctor’s family up and left, and boarded up the hall.”

A young woman, undertakers, no funeral.

The pit of her stomach filled with ash. It meant nothing at all, and yet the dread was back, sevenfold, all the relief of her work dashed.

“I’ve never heard of any of this,” Mrs. Purl said. “I think Mrs. Young is just trying to scare you.”

Mrs. Luthbright said nothing for a long stretch, the only sound the soft tap of silverware being set out. “I did see something, once,” Mrs. Luthbright finally confessed.

“When?” Mrs. Purl demanded, sounding eager.

“But it wasn’t a woman.”

“Of course it wasn’t a woman,” Mrs. Purl scoffed, but Jane could picture her leaning in, thrilled by this old-world, superstitious talk.

“It was more like a shadow,” Mrs. Luthbright said. “That time I stayed a bit past sundown, because the doctor wasn’t home yet and I didn’t want to leave the soup cold on the stove. I was in the dining room for just a minute, putting out the candlesticks I’d polished. There was something there, in the hallway.”

“No!”

“Truth, Genevieve. Absolute truth. I saw it with my own eyes. It walked past the door, and I thought maybe the doctor had come in quietly, but then he rode up a few minutes later.”

“Did you tell him?”

“And be discharged? Don’t be silly.”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

“Can never be sure.”

“True enough.”

Their voices faded and she heard the kitchen door swing shut. Jane tried to remember how to breathe. The stories—they were haphazard. Half-truths, rumors, ramblings of drunken men. None of the pieces fit together, and the environment did tend to influence one’s thoughts. A crumbling house, alone on the hill, was enough to make isolated women given to wild imaginings, herself included.

But then she thought of Augustine, afraid she wasn’t real, frightened by the storms.

All that meant was that it affected them all in similar ways. She had slept well last night, but how many times, in the past, had she woken up disoriented and anxious, with her thoughts tumbling with numbers, sums that made no sense and ledgers that rearranged themselves? There was nothing for it but to wait for the unsteadiness to pass, as he had.

Dinner was quiet and simple, baked eggs with gravy. As she ate, she heard the rattle of Mrs. Purl closing the house up for the night. Strange, that the night before it had been left unlocked, but she assumed the two women must have been in a hurry to get home.

By the time she was finished, the dining room had grown dark, with long shadows stretching across the table, the gasolier suspended above not turned up bright enough to illuminate the whole room. Jane rubbed her brow as she stood.

She was halfway to the door when something moved in the corner of her eye. Jane turned to find nothing, save for her reflection in the darkened window. But for just a moment, her reflection looked short, hunched perhaps, and Jane frowned, stepping closer.

Her reflection had red eyes.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


WHEN JANE BLINKED, her reflection was her own again.

She took a deep breath. The servants’ ghost stories had clearly frayed her nerves. She was not normally so given to jumping at shadows, and she would do well to stop it now, before it could worsen. Work; work was still the antidote to her girlish frights. Numbers, sums, and organization would set her right.