Lost Among the Living(89)



The taproom was doing brisk business, many of the men from town huddled over their drinks, happy to get out of the windy cold and sit by the fireplace, where a blaze had been lit. I pulled off my gloves as Alex took my arm and led me to the large, scarred bar and helped me onto a stool.

He ordered us each a beer, making sure to request the dark bitter I liked, then turned and gave me a shrug. “It’s been a long day, and I think we’ll need it.”

“I agree,” I said.

He did not take a seat, but leaned on the bar next to me, gracefully propped on one elbow. He removed his hat and ran a hand quickly through his hair. “I’m not entirely sure how to go about this,” he said. “I don’t want to be too obvious.”

“I don’t think she’s in the room,” I told him, sipping the beer that the bartender had slid in front of me. “There’s only one serving woman here, and she’s past forty. Too old to be the wife of a man of army age.”

“Perhaps George Sanders married an older woman,” Alex said, though I could tell he agreed with me.

“Unlikely,” I replied calmly. “Did you find it strange that the innkeeper’s wife knew who the Sanderses were but not that George Sanders has disappeared?”

Alex sipped his own beer, his gaze seeming to rest on me, though I knew there was no detail of the room around us that he’d missed. “Either she hasn’t told anyone, or George Sanders was the kind of man no one cares to ask after.”

I ran a thumb up the side of my glass. “Or a combination of both. It’s possible she hasn’t been very vocal about it,” I said. “People may think he left her.”

He gave me a long look. “Would that also be why she hasn’t reported his disappearance to the police?”

“Perhaps she has,” I replied. “But the police would assume a man like that simply walked away by choice, that she must have done something to provoke him. Women don’t have a great many choices in such situations.”

He looked uncomfortable and a little sad. “I tried to leave you taken care of until I got back, you know. Instead I left you in a hell of a mess.”

I looked up at him. “It’s over,” I said. “And I think Alice Sanders just came into the room.”

A woman had just entered through the door from the kitchen, carrying two bowls of soup. She was thirtyish, rounded and ruddy, her brown hair tied up under a scarf. She could have been any woman in England, except for the bruised pouches of skin beneath her eyes that betrayed sleeplessness. She set down the soup bowls at a table with barely a glance at her customers, then turned away. I thought I might recognize her figure as the one I’d seen leaving our terrace, but I couldn’t be sure.

The woman walked past us, and Alex said softly, “Madam, I beg your pardon.”

She stopped and turned, as everyone did when Alex used that particular quiet tone of voice. “I’ll serve you in a moment,” she said. “Or call the other girl.”

“I believe it’s you I’m here to see,” Alex said, still leaning casually on the bar. “I’ve been sent here on a certain private matter by Mr. Martin Forsyth.”

The woman’s eyes widened, and I knew instantly she was truly Alice Sanders. “I have nothing to say to you.”

Alex shook his head. “I’m not the police,” he said, his voice so low no one could overhear. “I’m Mr. Forsyth’s cousin, Alex Manders, and this is my wife. Mr. Forsyth has authorized me to act on his behalf.”

Alice looked from Alex to me and back again, her features going hard. “Martin Forsyth’s cousin is dead, or so I heard.”

“It’s a common misunderstanding,” Alex said easily. “I’m not dead. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

Alice glanced at the other serving woman, then at the bartender behind the bar, and quickly brushed her palms over her apron. “Meet me out back,” she said. “I don’t have long.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. Alex and I sipped our pints for a few more minutes—I was disappointed to let mine go, as it was bitter and delicious—and left by the front door before walking around the building to the back of the pub. The wind was blowing cold and angry now, sweeping mercilessly off the water, and Alice was huddled next to the kitchen door, her arms crossed over her ample chest, the scarf in her hair flattened to her head, her features set in a hard scowl.

“I said everything I have to say to that man,” she said as we came in range. “I’m owed money, and that’s all. If you’re here to negotiate a lower price, I’ll not listen.”

Alex had put his hat back on, and he maneuvered closer to the wall to avoid the gusts that would blow it off again. “I’m not here to negotiate,” he said in a flat tone he had not used inside. “I’m here to ask how you know it was your husband who died in those woods.”

“It was him. He left that morning, and he wouldn’t say where he was going, and then that girl died and they found a body. He never came home again. It was him.”

“Not good enough, Mrs. Sanders. Not for a thousand pounds.”

She hesitated. “He was mixed up with the Forsyths. That’s all I know.”

“How could he be mixed up with the Forsyths?” Alex asked. “He hadn’t worked for them for years, and Martin Forsyth was at the Front.”

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