Lost Among the Living(51)

Lies, lies, lies.

“Jo.” Martin laid a gentle hand on my arm. “I know the past years have been very traumatic for you. But I think this meeting today can be useful. I think perhaps it may help you to finally let go.”

I felt the muscles tense up my back, across my shoulders; felt my neck tighten and my jaw begin to grind. He was being kind and considerate, and in that moment he had no idea that I could have slapped him.

“I have been living with my own grief for him,” Martin continued. “I loved Alex. But today has made me see that perhaps there are no answers. We may have to accept things, just as all the other families of missing soldiers have had to do.” He paused, and from the deepening of his breathing I knew that the day had exhausted his few resources. “Do you know, I found Franny’s death easier, ultimately, than Alex’s. Franny was sick, and she chose to take her own life. There is a sort of finality to that. Alex’s death just never felt final. Until today.”

My eyes were like hot coals in their sockets, my temples pounding. I made myself open my eyes, made myself breathe. I should tell him. About Alex’s lies, about my suspicions that Frances had been murdered. About the photographs, the leaves, and the open door to the roof. I should tell him all of it. But Martin was already sick, exhausted, shouldering the burden of incessant pain and his addiction. I couldn’t open my mouth to form the words. And what if Martin knew more than he was telling me? This was my problem alone.

My thoughts were halted when we pulled up the drive to Wych Elm House. Another car was here already—an expensive Daimler, sleek and black. I felt Martin tense at my shoulder.

“Who is it?” I asked him.

He did not speak. The gentle, concerned expression had gone from his face. He looked pale and stiff, his skin pallid, thin as tissue paper.

I followed him as he got out of the car and entered the house. I did not remove my hat or my coat—I could barely keep up with him and forgot I was wearing them.

We had walked into an occasion, like the day I had come home to find Martin waiting to be introduced to me in the small parlor—but today’s occasion was much grander than that. This one was in the large parlor, the formal room used by Dottie for meetings with her rich art clients. I had been in this room only as an invisible tea pourer, and I had never seen the rest of the family use it at all.

The tableau in the large parlor now could have been a painting itself. On one side of the room, nearest the window, sat Dottie and Robert, Dottie in a fine suit over a formal blouse with a high lace collar, Robert in one of the more expensive pieces in his well-heeled wardrobe, his hair slicked back and his expression blank and obedient. I hardly recognized either of them—Dottie looked like she’d borrowed the Gibson Girl’s wardrobe, and her face was gentled, her posture subdued. Robert did not even look at me, and instead of sprawling on his chair, he sat like a well-trained dog, his hands in his lap.

Aligned along the other side of the room were a man and a woman I had never seen before. She was middle-aged, pale, her ash blond hair mixed liberally with gray and worked into a formal knot on the back of her head. The man was obviously her husband, seated next to her in the chair mirroring Robert’s, mustached, with thinning hair and a paunch that strained his waistcoat. He, too, sat with his feet and knees together, only the reddish tinge of his neck betraying how uncomfortable he was.

The center of this awkward tableau—and the focus of everyone’s discomfort—sat on the small sofa in the middle of the room, like the Queen of Sheba among her attendants. In this case the Queen of Sheba was a girl of approximately twenty-three, with a birdlike figure and wide gray eyes, wearing a blue-and-white shepherd’s-check suit and black Mary Janes, her golden-brown hair bobbed, its soft curls feathering her neck.

I held back in the corridor, outside the door, watching. Martin barely paused, but strode into the room, still wearing his overcoat, folding his hat under his arm.

“Good afternoon,” he said. I wondered if anyone else recognized the vibration of strain in his voice.

“Martin.” Dottie rose from her seat, a warm smile on her face like no expression I’d ever seen on her before. “Here you are. We were just about to have some tea.” She turned to her guests. “I’d like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Staffron. And this is their daughter, Cora.”

I watched, invisible and forgotten, from the hall.

Martin stepped into the room, and over his shoulder I could see the face of the blue-and-white shepherd’s-check girl, Cora Staffron. She raised her gray gaze to his and gave him a wide smile. She wasn’t a particularly beautiful girl—she had a thin and bony physique, a slightly blotchy complexion, and a long neck like a baby bird’s—but she had nice upturned eyes, and the smile she gave him was brassy and bold, yet somehow genuine, like that of a girl who could not be trusted not to break Dottie’s china.

“This is my son, Martin,” Dottie said.

“Well,” said the girl in a trumpeting voice that ricocheted through the room. “Aren’t you handsome!”

I could not see Martin’s face from where I was standing. But I saw him take a brief, formal bow just before a maid brushed past me with a tea tray and closed the parlor doors behind her.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE



Events moved quickly after the Staffrons arrived. They were acquaintances of Dottie’s through one of her art connections; he was a banker, the kind of new rich that was Dottie’s exact kin. Some of the wealthy aspired to marry their children to old titles, but not Dottie. All she wanted was more wealth to pile atop her own.