Lost Among the Living(99)

“Mrs. Manders?”

I jumped. It was Mrs. Bennett, the housekeeper, standing in the doorway, watching me. Her expression was sympathetic and wary.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you there.”

She glanced around the room. “Mr. Wilde had everything cleaned,” she said politely. “There was a team of servants. I supervised putting the rooms back together myself. I hope it’s acceptable.”

“Yes,” I stammered. “Yes, of course.”

“How are Mr. Manders and Mrs. Forsyth? Is there any news?”

“They are both recovering,” I replied. “Mrs. Forsyth was out of bed this morning, and her bandages come off this afternoon.”

“That’s very good to hear. We’re all concerned about her in the servants’ quarters. We are anxious for Mrs. Forsyth to come home.”

“I’ll let her know you asked.” I did not tell her I suspected that Dottie would not come back here. There was nothing for her here.

Mrs. Bennett said something else, but I didn’t hear her. My gaze had caught on a glassed-in cabinet on the wall, displaying some of the house’s ubiquitous figurines and objects of art. In the case was a figure of Salome, holding John the Baptist’s head in her lap. The figure that Frances had put on my bedside table the day she’d rearranged my bedroom. I had never replaced it, but had kept it in my room.

“Mrs. Bennett,” I said, interrupting whatever she was saying, “how did that figure get into that case?”

She paused, puzzled. “Which figure, Mrs. Manders?”

“The figure of Salome.”

Her gaze followed mine, and she frowned. “That figure has always been there,” she replied.

“Has my room been cleaned?”

She blinked, and I realized I’d spoken almost sharply. “We have changed the sheets as usual, Mrs. Manders, but—”

“Thank you.” I left the morning room—I did not care ever to see it again—and strode to the main staircase, which I climbed briskly, heading for my bedroom.

It was tidy, my clothes placed neatly in the wardrobe. The bed, where I’d sat in my peacock dress talking to Alex, where he’d taken me hurriedly a few days later, where I’d had so many strange dreams and nightmares, was made up like a stranger’s. The figurine was gone from the bedside table. I hurried to the table and opened its only drawer, looking for the sketchbook Frances had left under my pillow, which had the photographs folded inside. The drawer was empty. The sketchbook and the photographs were gone.

I pulled open the wardrobe and found the camera tucked inside, on the lowest shelf. I pulled it out and set it on the floor. It had been placed in its leather case; I could not remember putting it away that day after I’d seen Princer in the woods; nor did I know who had put it away for me. I opened the latches and pulled the camera out, expecting to find the inside of the case soaked with water. There’s water running out of it and everything, Cora had said to me as she’d sat on the floor outside the bathroom door. But there was no water running from the camera now, no water inside the case. I unlatched the camera itself and swung it open, revealing the spools inside, but all of it was dry, unused. There was no film in it.

“Frances?” I said into the still air. There was no answer.

It was all being erased, I thought in a panic as I climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Everything that had happened in this place—it was all being erased as if it had never been. The servants had cleaned; it was their job. But no servant had cleaned the inside of my camera, or put back the figurine Frances had moved. I reached the top of the stairs and went directly into Frances’s room.

It was the same as before. The bed with its pretty canopy, the window seat, the patterned rug on the floor—the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old girl, disused because she was away at school perhaps, or was spending a few weeks with friends. I made a beeline for the bookcases, crouching in front of them, reading the spines of the books in the bright, cold, midmorning sunlight that came through the windows. Well-used children’s books, books of Christmas stories, Girl’s Own Annual—all of these were here. But there was no sketchbook, and next to the World Atlas for Girls there was no packet of photographs. I looked in the wardrobe, filled with Frances’s short lifetime of dresses, and under the bed, but they were not there.

I sat in the rocking chair, staring out the window at the stark branches of the trees. The sketchbook was gone. Robert was gone. Perhaps I truly was as mad as Mother; perhaps I’d wake up one morning, expecting the viscount to come and take me to Budapest or New York. But I found I no longer cared. My mother had loved me the best she could, as much as she could manage. Madness had never stopped that. I understood her better now. I understood what it was like to live in a haze of confusion and fear, and the courage it took to get out of bed every day to face a world that was baffling and sometimes terrifying. I had seen the sketchbook, had awoken with it in my bed. I had touched its pages. I had seen the shadow in the photograph. I had seen Frances in the parlor that day, and watched her pass her bedroom door, and I had seen her in the woods, behind her father’s shoulder, warning me—though I had not listened. I had smelled the coppery stench of Princer as he’d leaped over me, as he’d come through the French doors behind me into the morning room.

Perversely, the thought comforted me.