Lost Among the Living(95)

I looked up. Standing in the doorway to the staircase, the doorway I’d just tried to run for, was Dottie. She had had the same thought I had. In one hand, she held a kitchen knife. The look on her face as she stared at her husband was thick with hatred and fury, her lips drawn back, her cheekbones hot and red.

“You killed her!” she cried. “My daughter!”

Robert swung the pistol. I kicked his forearm and the shot went wild, lodging in the corridor wall. Robert wrenched himself from me, stood, and sent his heavy arm out in a long arc, the grip of the pistol connecting with Dottie’s temple with a sickening sound. She barely had time to raise her hands before she crumpled to the floor.

I got my feet under me again, sobbing. I ran for the morning room door this time, thinking to get out to the terrace, to run. But again Robert caught me, and again he wrestled me to the floor. He pinned down my hands, pressed a knee hard into my lower back, sending arcs of pain up my spine and down my legs.

“Poor, unbalanced Alex,” Robert panted in my ear when I went still, gasping with agony. “The war unbalanced him, I think. I came home to find he’d killed his aunt and was violating his lovely wife, so I shot him. A veteran losing his reason is all too common a story these days, I’m afraid.” He bent closer. “I always did like you, Mrs. Manders.”

I screamed. I couldn’t move, couldn’t get away from him, and no one would come—but I screamed, screamed for the death of Frances, for Dottie, for Alex. I screamed in terror and an echoing, horrible despair. I would die here, on the floor halfway through the doorway of the morning room of Wych Elm House, staring at the flowered wallpaper.

Then, on the terrace outside, I saw Frances.

She was watching us. Her expression was impassive and almost sad, her blue eyes beneath the slashes of her brows intelligent. She wore the familiar gray dress and pearls. She was not looking at me. She was looking at her father.

I felt Robert go still on my back. It was cold, I realized, my nose and lips chilled. Outside, I heard the wind.

“Frances,” I said.

“No,” Robert said. “It can’t be.”

There was a crash behind us, and I turned, my cheek pressed against the floor. Alex had come out of the library and up the corridor. He was on his knees, his face ashen, his eyes on me. Blood soaked the front of his shirt and the waist of his trousers, soaked his sleeves and the palms of his hands.

“Jo,” he said. He leaned forward, swung his arm, and something skidded along the floor toward me, sliding across the carpet. A knife. The knife Dottie had been holding.

“It can’t be,” Robert said again, still frozen in surprise, and I wrenched my wrist from his grip, grabbed the knife, and jammed it into his thigh.

He roared and lost his balance. I squirmed beneath him, heaved him from my back, and crawled across the floor toward Alex, who had crumpled to the ground. Behind me, I heard the soft click of the French doors unlatching, the quiet creak of the doors opening. A chill wind blew into the room. Carried on it, over the sound of Robert’s screams of pain, came a high, shrill whistle.

Alex was ghastly pale, but I could see his chest rise and fall. He was breathing. His eyes were half open, watching me come toward him. When I was close enough, I grasped his icy hand and glanced behind me.

Robert had staggered to his feet. I had hit him on the outside of his thigh, and the blade was still lodged there, the handle of the knife protruding grotesquely, slicked with blood. He could barely stand, but still he pawed at the knife handle, trying to pull the weapon from his body, his hands too slippery to gain purchase. Blood spurted down his leg and onto the floor, soaking his expensive wool trousers. Past him, through the French doors, his daughter still stood at the edge of the terrace. Dead leaves were kicking up around the hem of her skirt, blowing upward, swirling around her in a blur. Behind her, a massive shape emerged from the edge of the trees, hulking and muscled, its long fur wet with filth. It trotted up behind Frances, twice her size, and I glimpsed a pair of hideous eyes before she raised a hand and I looked away.

Perhaps he is protecting you, I heard Alex say.

I crawled to Alex and cradled his head. “Don’t look,” I whispered, my breath pluming in the icy air. Behind me, there was a smell of blood, the heavy scrabble of something on the terrace tiles, the sound of breath that I knew was hot and rancid, and very soon Robert stopped screaming.

? ? ?

I curled up against Alex in the silence that followed, pressing my body heat to his. He had begun to shiver.

“I have to go to the telephone,” I told him, not wanting to let him go. My own hands were shaking, and my stomach churned. I tried not to think of the dragging sounds I’d heard on the terrace. Robert was gone.

Alex found the strength to grip my waist with one bloodied hand. “I already did,” he said. “They’re coming.”

I stroked his temple and pressed my cheek to his. Alex, who solved problems even after he’d been shot. Alex, who had taken every risk in order to come home to me. Alex, who had done everything only because he loved me.

“Don’t leave me,” I said to him.

He gripped me harder, winding his hand in the fabric of my blouse as if holding on, and then he closed his eyes.





CHAPTER FORTY



In the end, my husband refused to die.

It was a close thing, so close that at my lowest moment I sagged against the wall of the hospital bathroom, where I had just dry-heaved the contents of my empty stomach, and sobbed without restraint. My stomach and chest were dark with bruises from where Robert had kicked me, and my knee was twisted in pain. I had worn the same dress for days. I stared at the bleach-scented tiles through burning eyes and told myself I simply couldn’t survive his death again. But afterward, I got up and went back to his bedside and held his hand through another night.