Lost Among the Living(90)

“He told me,” she snapped. “The Forsyths owed us. That horrible old woman dismissed him, and he had no references. When he came home from the war, there were no jobs, and no one would take him. He wrote Martin for money as a fellow soldier, but Martin said no. They could have given us something. We have a little boy.”

“And how, exactly, was he mixed up with the family?” Alex asked again.

She paused. “He wouldn’t tell me all of it. He was very down after Martin wrote that letter—it got bad. He drank too much, stayed out all night. I didn’t want him around our son. Then one night he came home with a smile on his face, though he was still drunk. Said that he’d won, that the Forsyths would be the making of us yet.”

“The making of you? What does that mean?”

“I guessed it meant money, but George was cagey about it. He said he had one task to do, and then we’d have more money than we’d ever thought possible.”

“What was the task?” I asked.

Alice Sanders looked at me, taking in my decent clothes and my new hat and gloves, and looked away again. “He never said.”

“But you know.” I stepped closer to her.

“I told you, he never said.”

I stepped closer again. A queer sort of anger was rising at the back of my throat at the thoughts that were crossing my mind. “You know,” I said, the wind carrying my words away, over the ocean. “Someone paid him to kill Frances Forsyth, isn’t that it? Someone offered him a lot of money for it. You knew it then, and you know now. You even condone it.”

“I didn’t know then,” Alice shot back at me. “I only knew when she died. That was when I figured it out. You can look down your nose at me all you like, but at least I don’t belong to a family that would pay someone to kill one of its own.”

“No,” I said, fighting anger. “You belong to a family that would do the killing for money.”

“It was a mercy.” Alice Sanders’s voice was cold as ice. “She was mad anyway. What kind of life was she ever going to have? She couldn’t marry, have children. She’d just end up in an asylum, like the rest of them do. What kind of life is that? My George would have done it quick and painless, and she’d never know a thing. A mercy, like putting a dog down, and we’d have money for our son.”

“Except it didn’t quite go as planned, did it?” Alex asked. The restrained anger in his eyes reflected my own. “He went to the woods to do the job, but something killed him instead. The dog didn’t get put down.”

“It’s unnatural, that’s what it is,” said Alice. Her cheeks were flushed despite the cold wind. “That girl was not only mad, but she was some kind of witch. She summoned a beast to kill my husband. When I read about what had been done to the man they found—what kind of wounds he had—” She stopped, swallowed. “He was in pieces. Something ripped him open from head to toe. They never identified him, but I knew it was him. He got a telephone call early that morning, and then he left without a word, and he didn’t come home. At first I didn’t realize what had happened, but when I saw the article in the newspaper, I knew. The Forsyths killed my husband.” She looked at my shocked, outraged expression, her eyes tired and hostile as the wind tried to tear the scarf from her hair. “That girl jumped. Maybe she felt guilty about George. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that George is gone, and the money never came. I can tell by the look of you that you don’t have a child. If you did, you’d think differently of me.”

“Enough,” Alex said calmly. “We don’t have more time to waste. Mrs. Sanders, we need to know exactly who hired your husband. Who contacted him and promised him the money? Who made the telephone call that morning?”

But she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

It was the truth. If Alice Sanders had known who to blackmail, she wouldn’t have contacted Martin. She’d likely tried him because of George’s letter, and she thought he’d be the easiest touch now that he was home.

Alex must have known the hopelessness of it, but still he pressed her. “George gave you no clue?” he asked. “There’s nothing you can remember?”

“There’s nothing,” she replied coldly. “It was you yourself, for all I know. Everyone in that family is the same to me. I have to go back inside now. What are you going to do about my money?”

“I will speak to the Forsyths about it,” Alex told her. “I’m their representative in this matter. You’ll be hearing from me very soon.”

We made the miserable walk back to the inn in silence, clamping our hats down in the wind, hunching beneath our coats. Rain had begun, but our lack of an umbrella made no difference—any umbrella would have been turned into useless metal and cloth within minutes. There was no way we could talk easily in such weather, and in any case, neither of us wanted to discuss what we’d just heard. What Alice Sanders had told us was too upsetting to speak of.

We arrived cold and wet back at the inn, and found that we were the only patrons. The innkeeper had built up a hearth fire in the main room, and we took off our coats and hats and pulled up two chairs, soaking up the dry warmth. My hands were chilled through despite my gloves, as were my knees and my feet. We refused food, but the innkeeper brought us each a brandy, which he set on the small table between us before leaving us alone.