Lost Among the Living(92)

“She’s gone,” he said to me when he got back into the motorcar, bringing a breath of icy air with him. “The place is packed up. The clothes are gone from the kitchen, the iron and board, everything. It looks like she plans to be away for a while.”

I stared at the dark cottage, my dread increasing. What had made Petra Jennings pack up over the course of a single night and leave her home? Where had she gone? Had something frightened her? Had she even left by her own choice? I glanced up her quiet street and saw a curtain twitch in one of the neighbors’ windows.

“Please, Alex,” I said. “Let’s go.”

He only nodded and started the motorcar again.

The road to Wych Elm House had lost the last of its autumn luster and turned from the final red-brown tints of fall to the defeated gray, drained of color, that signaled the waning half of November. The storm had blown through here, too, stripping the trees of their last leaves and exposing branches stark to the bleached sky. As I watched the landscape, my heart started a slow acceleration in my chest, a mix of horrid anticipation and fear. I half expected to see Frances Forsyth appear from a swirl of leaves, her massive dog following at her heels. These were her woods.

“You told me that first night,” Alex said, reading my mind, “that you’ve seen the dog.”

I blinked and saw the beast’s horrid underside as it leaped over me, reeking of blood. “His name is Princer,” I said. “He protects her.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Martin spoke of it,” he said. “That first night I was back, after I left you. Frances wrote to him about Princer, how he came through the door to protect her. He burned the letters.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he is not sure how long he will live, and he didn’t want anyone to find the letters in his belongings after he’s gone. He felt that the things Frances told him in her madness were private.”

So that was why he had burned them, then. I wondered if he would tell Cora. “Everyone believes Frances imagined Princer,” I said, “that she conjured him to make herself feel safe, especially after her experience at school. But she summoned him when I was taking pictures in the woods. I saw—something. Him.” I blinked and turned away from him, staring hard out the window. “It felt very real,” I said. “Perhaps I’m as mad as Frances was. But I saw it. I smelled it.”

Alex did not argue with me this time. “Why?” he asked. “Why did she call him that day? Was she trying to hurt you?”

I shook my head. “I thought so, but no. Princer—he was faster than me. He could have caught me. But he didn’t.”

“That’s a mercy, then,” he said, and I knew he was thinking of what Alice Sanders had said. Something split him open from head to toe. “If he protected Frances from George Sanders, Jo, perhaps he was protecting you as well.”

“From what?”

He shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

The family motorcar was not parked in front of the house, and when we came through the front door, we found it dim and quiet, echoing with the emptiness of an unused place. The air was chill, and neither of us removed our coats. I followed Alex down the hall, past one empty room after another. We did not encounter a servant or hear any sounds of people. There was no sign of Martin or Dottie anywhere downstairs. Like the village, the house echoed as if everyone had left.

I paused at the door to the library, then stepped inside. The air in here held a faint fug of cigarette smoke, as if Dottie and her cigarette holder had been here, but it had a stale feel to it. Dottie usually smoked one cigarette at a time. By the smell of the library, something had made her sit in here and smoke one after the other.

The desk was the same mess it had been when I’d left the day before, but lying on top of the pile was a letter, unfolded, the edges dented and crumpled as if it had been well handled. I picked it up.

Mother,

This letter is going to distress you, and I beg to apologize for it, but please read it through and consider before you pass judgment on me.

I have gone to Cora. I have taken the train, and I will be in London by the time you awake and receive this. We will also be married, because we plan to do it by the first arrangement when I get to the city.

Mother, I have told Cora everything. I have told her of all that happened to me in the war—things I never told even you or Father—and of the addiction that has dogged me since I was first treated for my injury. It turns out, Mother, that she is the best sort of girl. The strongest sort. The kind who can help me, the kind who will help me. And, Mother, I need help. Without it, I’m going to leave Cora without a husband and you without a son. I thought I didn’t care overmuch about this. But when I read Cora’s letters, when I hear her tell me over the telephone that it isn’t over yet, it turns out I do care.

She is taking me to her cousin, the doctor on Harley Street, who says he has new ideas for how to treat my pain. He is also an up-and-coming success and knows a great many of London’s best surgeons. It’s possible, Mother, that the surgeons in Switzerland after the war did a hurried and inexact job, and with testing and treatment a new surgery could remove the last of the shrapnel inside me and repair the damage over time. I could be well and whole. Cora and I have the money, and now we have the will. I have decided for her sake that I am going to do my damnedest to live to a hundred.