Lost Among the Living(83)

I let my skirt drop, picked up my underthings from the floor. “We shouldn’t do this again.”

“I very much disagree.”

“I could have a child.”

He paused, and I knew I’d wounded him. “You used to want a child,” he said.

“I did.” I straightened and finally faced him again. “I do. But not here. Not in this place.” The thought of a baby in Wych Elm House was flatly horrifying.

“Then we’ll leave.” Alex strode toward me. “I have money now, Jo. They gave me plenty for the work I did. We don’t have to stay here. We can go anywhere.”

“We can’t leave,” I protested. “Not now. Martin is deathly sick, and Dottie and Robert’s marriage is a disaster, and someone murdered your cousin. We can’t walk away.”

He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Very well. But I’m going to Torbram tomorrow to see this Alice Sanders woman. Are you coming with me?”

I paused. Dottie was expecting me to work for her tomorrow, promptly at eight o’clock as usual. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll come. And there’s a woman in the village we should visit as well. A servant who worked here until Frances died.” I searched my memory of my encounter with the Bainses at the post office. “Petra Jennings is her name. The postmistress mentioned her to me. She says the girl was dismissed after Franny died, and she never speaks about it. She thinks the family threatened her with something.”

“We’ll talk to her, too, then,” Alex said. “Torbram is several hours’ drive, and the weather tomorrow will not be good. We’ll have to stay overnight.” He watched me, his expression under control now, impassive.

It would mean yet another day off from my duties. “I’ll come.”

That night, I showed him the sketchbook. He leafed through it, taking careful note of the pages torn from the spine. I showed him the photographs, the handwriting on them, the shadow in the sketchbook that matched the shadow in the picture of Martin and Frances. He looked all of it over, missing nothing, and told me gently that anyone could have taken the picture from my trunk and written the notes to scare me. He thought the shadow in the window was a trick of the light.

I made him sleep on top of the covers again. And I dreamed of a door in a thick, overgrown wall, the lock black with mold. I tried to pry the lock open, my fingers slipping on the metal, my knuckles beginning to bleed. I’ve changed my mind, Alex said from behind me. Give me the gun. I’ve changed my mind. Then the door was gone and I stood on the top turret of Wych Elm House, watching dead leaves swirling before me, the wind cold on my face. And when the hands pushed me and the cobblestones rushed up to meet me, I did not have time to scream.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE



I meant to ask Dottie for leave the next morning, but when I came downstairs she was not in the morning room as usual. Instead, I found her in the large parlor, sitting with Colonel Mabry.

I stopped in the doorway. My horror may have shown in my expression, but Dottie did not notice. She wore one of her supremely sour looks, which said that something had displeased her.

“Manders,” she said, “Colonel Mabry has come to see you.”

I forced myself to look at him. He sat upright in his place on the sofa, his hat on his lap, his bright, relentless eyes on me.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

Dottie’s tone was almost disgusted. “He wishes to tour the works in the upstairs gallery, and he has asked for you to be his guide. Please take him and show him the pieces he is interested in.”

Again I looked at the colonel. He knew that Alex had come home. Yet here he was, asking to see me, not my husband. I set my shoulders. Perhaps the colonel wouldn’t like everything I had to say.

“Certainly,” I managed to get out between gritted teeth. “Colonel, please follow me.”

“Mrs. Manders,” he said softly as we ascended the stairs, “please excuse my intrusion. The small deception was necessary. I wish to speak to you most urgently about a certain matter.”

“Is that so?” I asked, my hand on the railing and my gaze trained at the top of the stairs. “I can’t imagine what that might be.”

“Actually, I believe you know very well.”

One of the maids passed us, and we were quiet until I led him into the gallery. The staff had been busy yesterday, tearing down the decorations from the engagement party, and the gallery was restored to rights, the strings of lights and the raised dais gone. Dottie’s art lined the high walls. I could not quite believe that the engagement party had been a mere two nights ago.

“I have nothing to say to you,” I told the colonel as we stood unseeing before the paintings on the first wall. “You lied to me, Colonel. Repeatedly. Did you think I would just forget about it?”

He was not in the least disturbed. “Some mistruths are essential, Mrs. Manders.”

“Pretending you never knew my husband? Showing me his file as if you didn’t know he was alive?”

He stood tall and straight beside me, his hat in his hand. “I would very much like to know,” he said, “how much Alex has told you.”

“Is that why you came here today and performed this silly subterfuge?” I strolled to the next wall of paintings. My anger was steady, like a small jet of water leaking from a massive dam. “To ask me that?”