Lost Among the Living(60)

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.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE



“My 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.