Lost Among the Living(86)

“Then I’ll help you,” I said, surprising myself even as the words left my lips, “but I won’t work for you. I won’t take your money for it. How does that sound?”

The chair behind her desk creaked as she briskly dropped into it. She lit her cigarette and leaned back, regarding me. “You’re being rather charitable,” she said, her voice gruff with some emotion I could not read. “I know there’s something that’s bothering you besides Alex’s return. You’re a terrible liar, Manders. Just tell me.”

I swallowed. Of course Dottie would know—she could always see through me. I couldn’t tell her about someone pushing Frances from the roof, or the man in the woods, or the trip to Torbram, not yet. Not until there was something concrete to tell. But I owed her something. “It’s Frances,” I said.

Her face sagged for a brief moment, but then she snapped to again. “I told you I don’t wish to speak of Frances.”

“You think I don’t understand her, what you went through, what she suffered. But I do.”

“Is that what you think?” Dottie said. “It is not as easy as that. There is no maudlin connection between you and me because of your mother. The cases were entirely different. The fact that you lived those years with your mother does not mean you understand.”

I watched her prop the cigarette into its ashtray, her movements deliberate. I realized she was shaken. “It isn’t just that,” I said. “I understand Frances because I’ve seen her. Here in the house. In the woods. Her dog, Princer . . . I’ve seen them both. She wears a gray dress and a string of pearls.”

“Is that so?” Her voice was brittle. “You think you’ve seen my daughter’s ghost?”

“I have seen it,” I said.

“Well.” She was reflective for a long moment, her gaze far away. “You know, part of me thought—I thought she might . . .” She shook her head. “She saw the dead so many times. After she died, I started to wonder—it’s why I couldn’t come back to the house until now. How long have you been seeing her?”

“Since the first day,” I said. “Though not constantly.”

“I gave her those pearls for her birthday,” Dottie said. “I buried her in them. Where is she? Where in the house?”

“She appeared in the small parlor,” I said. “As clear as you’re sitting before me right now.”

“I see. Does she look . . . ?” She could not finish the words.

“She looks the same as I’m sure she did that last day.”

That gave her pain, but she swallowed it. “Does she ask for me? I’m her mother. I would know—I would be able to tell what it is she wants.”

She was murdered. Your daughter was murdered, and you’re one of the few people who could have done it. But I only shook my head. “She doesn’t speak.”

“I see.” She seemed to regain herself, piece by piece. “Well, it’s something, I suppose, as mad as it sounds.” She glanced at me. “Go find Alex, and do whatever it is the two of you aren’t telling me about. We’ll discuss the rest of it tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” I said to her. “You’ve been very good to me.”

“Manders, go away.”

I did, but as I left the room, I couldn’t help the feeling that it was for the last time. I glanced around at the desk, the shelves of unread books, my little desk with the typewriter under its cover. Whatever came next, my days as a paid companion were over.

? ? ?

“I don’t like the way she talks to you,” Alex said when we were on the road to Anningley. He had his own motorcar—on loan from the British government, I assumed—and he was driving as I rode in the passenger seat. “Aunt Dottie. She keeps calling you Manders.”

I was watching the landscape, the leaves blowing from the trees in the chill wind that was rising from the sea. “It’s a habit,” I said.

“I’ll speak to her about it.”

“There’s no need. I’m used to it.” I leaned back in the comfortable seat. The motorcar was nice, the seats rich leather. “I rather like it, in fact.”

“Are you going to tell me what the hell Mabry was doing at the house this morning?”

I glanced at him. His gaze was on the road before him, his jaw set in an angry line. “I told you he pretended to be interested in Dottie’s art. Today he pretended he wanted to look at paintings in order to talk to me.”

The idea quietly enraged him, I could tell, from that tired anger he had begun to show. “To you alone? What about?” he said.

“He wanted me to encourage you to go work for him again and fight communism.”

Alex swore. “That’s a fine decision for the two of you to make. What did you tell him?”

“I told him to go away and leave us alone.” I watched him for a moment. “Do you want to go fight communism?”

“I don’t see how I could,” Alex replied. “I know just enough Russian to ask the way to the loo.” He paused. “But to answer the question, what I want is to be my own man. I don’t even know if that’s possible, or for how long, but that’s what I want. Does that make sense?”