Lost Among the Living (15 page)

I closed my eyes, shutting out the woods as they passed the window. Alex had lied to me; I was more than certain that Colonel Mabry had, too. It was not standard procedure to put a man's passport photograph in his War Office file. And the note made next to Alex's training record—
skills very promising, naturally suited for this kind of work
—had been signed by his commanding officer, the name blacked out. Except that even as a simple, foolish woman, I could see that the ink was fresh. Colonel Mabry himself had inked it over.

Lies, lies, lies.

“Jo.” Martin laid a gentle hand on my arm. “I know the past years have been very traumatic for you. But I think this meeting today can be useful. I think perhaps it may help you to finally let go.”

I felt the muscles tense up my back, across my shoulders; felt my neck tighten and my jaw begin to grind. He was being kind and considerate, and in that moment he had no idea that I could have slapped him.

“I have been living with my own grief for him,” Martin continued. “I loved Alex. But today has made me see that perhaps there are no answers. We may have to accept things, just as all the other families of missing soldiers have had to do.” He paused, and from the deepening of his breathing I knew that the day had exhausted his few resources. “Do you know, I found Franny's death easier, ultimately, than Alex's. Franny was sick, and she chose to take her own life. There is a sort of finality to that. Alex's death just never felt final. Until today.”

My eyes were like hot coals in their sockets, my temples pounding. I made myself open my eyes, made myself breathe. I should tell him. About Alex's lies, about my suspicions that Frances had been murdered. About the photographs, the leaves, and the open door to the roof. I should tell him all of it. But Martin was already sick,
exhausted, shouldering the burden of incessant pain and his addiction. I couldn't open my mouth to form the words. And what if Martin knew more than he was telling me? This was my problem alone.

My thoughts were halted when we pulled up the drive to Wych Elm House. Another car was here already—an expensive Daimler, sleek and black. I felt Martin tense at my shoulder.

“Who is it?” I asked him.

He did not speak. The gentle, concerned expression had gone from his face. He looked pale and stiff, his skin pallid, thin as tissue paper.

I followed him as he got out of the car and entered the house. I did not remove my hat or my coat—I could barely keep up with him and forgot I was wearing them.

We had walked into an occasion, like the day I had come home to find Martin waiting to be introduced to me in the small parlor—but today's occasion was much grander than that. This one was in the large parlor, the formal room used by Dottie for meetings with her rich art clients. I had been in this room only as an invisible tea pourer, and I had never seen the rest of the family use it at all.

The tableau in the large parlor now could have been a painting itself. On one side of the room, nearest the window, sat Dottie and Robert, Dottie in a fine suit over a formal blouse with a high lace collar, Robert in one of the more expensive pieces in his well-heeled wardrobe, his hair slicked back and his expression blank and obedient. I hardly recognized either of them—Dottie looked like she'd borrowed the Gibson Girl's wardrobe, and her face was gentled, her posture subdued. Robert did not even look at me, and instead of sprawling on his chair, he sat like a well-trained dog, his hands in his lap.

Aligned along the other side of the room were a man and a woman I had never seen before. She was middle-aged, pale, her ash blond hair mixed liberally with gray and worked into a formal knot on the back of her head. The man was obviously her husband, seated next to her in
the chair mirroring Robert's, mustached, with thinning hair and a paunch that strained his waistcoat. He, too, sat with his feet and knees together, only the reddish tinge of his neck betraying how uncomfortable he was.

The center of this awkward tableau—and the focus of everyone's discomfort—sat on the small sofa in the middle of the room, like the Queen of Sheba among her attendants. In this case the Queen of Sheba was a girl of approximately twenty-three, with a birdlike figure and wide gray eyes, wearing a blue-and-white shepherd's-check suit and black Mary Janes, her golden-brown hair bobbed, its soft curls feathering her neck.

I held back in the corridor, outside the door, watching. Martin barely paused, but strode into the room, still wearing his overcoat, folding his hat under his arm.

“Good afternoon,” he said. I wondered if anyone else recognized the vibration of strain in his voice.

“Martin.” Dottie rose from her seat, a warm smile on her face like no expression I'd ever seen on her before. “Here you are. We were just about to have some tea.” She turned to her guests. “I'd like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Staffron. And this is their daughter, Cora.”

I watched, invisible and forgotten, from the hall.

Martin stepped into the room, and over his shoulder I could see the face of the blue-and-white shepherd's-check girl, Cora Staffron. She raised her gray gaze to his and gave him a wide smile. She wasn't a particularly beautiful girl—she had a thin and bony physique, a slightly blotchy complexion, and a long neck like a baby bird's—but she had nice upturned eyes, and the smile she gave him was brassy and bold, yet somehow genuine, like that of a girl who could not be trusted not to break Dottie's china.

“This is my son, Martin,” Dottie said.

“Well,” said the girl in a trumpeting voice that ricocheted through the room. “Aren't you handsome!”

I could not see Martin's face from where I was standing. But I saw him take a brief, formal bow just before a maid brushed past me with a tea tray and closed the parlor doors behind her.

E
vents moved quickly after the Staffrons arrived. They were acquaintances of Dottie's through one of her art connections; he was a banker, the kind of new rich that was Dottie's exact kin. Some of the wealthy aspired to marry their children to old titles, but not Dottie. All she wanted was more wealth to pile atop her own.

They were on an indefinite visit, and they were installed in my corridor, Cora's bedroom across the hall from mine and her parents' at the end. Though we passed one another regularly, I spoke to the Staffrons but little. Mr. and Mrs. Staffron were polite and well bred; Cora was noisy and exuberant, her laugh too loud, her jokes just a shade too racy, her clothes too fast, her lipstick not quite the right color. She was friendly enough to me, but treated me like a schoolteacher she had to behave herself in front of. Considering she was only three years younger, it made me feel positively ancient. What Dottie thought of Cora's dreaded modern bob or her pert ways—or of her social duties entertaining Cora's parents—she did not say.

I reported to Dottie every morning as usual, but after briskly
assigning me a day's worth of tasks, she would disappear with the Staffrons. I was left alone to type her correspondence and send it, as well as open the incoming mail—she had given me back this responsibility, now that she was no longer conspiring with the Staffrons in secret—and sorting it for her. I dealt with her telephone calls and made copies of her records, all in the library, my typewriter keys clacking into the silence.

I slipped easily into my role as Wych Elm House's forgotten inhabitant. My nights were as sleepless as ever, and it was a relief to be free of the responsibility to be friendly to Dottie's art buyers. I was soured on the task since my meeting with Colonel Mabry. I brooded over the lies Alex had told me, the hopelessness of my situation, the memory of Robert's hand on my face. I had not told anyone of that encounter—what purpose could it serve, except to muddy the family's courtship of the Staffrons? I had already sunk Martin's marriage prospects once; I could not do it again by making a complaint about his father while the Staffrons were here.

The weather cooperated with my mood, the days dark and chill, rain coming down in angry fits. Whether I was waking or sleeping, Frances Forsyth was never far from my mind. I remembered the anguish in her expression that last time. I believed she had appeared to me in the woods for a reason, that she had sought me out. I found myself looking for her—in the corridors, the parlors, the kitchen. Everywhere I went, I thought I caught the chill of mist and a sickly sweet scent.

It was not healthy, spending my time alone, searching for a ghost. But I could not stop myself; I had no desire to. Frances felt close to me, as if she were around the next corner. I had no one else.

I looked up from my typing one afternoon to find Dottie standing in the middle of the library staring at me, smoking a cigarette. I'd had no idea she was there.

“Manders,” she said. Her feet in their oxfords were placed apart,
her body braced on its short, narrow legs beneath the practical suit she wore. “You sold one of my paintings.”

“Yes,” I said dully. “Two days ago. Mr. Bergeron wished to purchase it, and you were not at home. His men will be here tomorrow to remove it.”

She puffed her cigarette forcefully, pinching the holder and removing it from her lips. “
Dutch House,
or so I hear,” she said, naming the painting.

“I left you a note,” I said. “It's on your desk.”

She grunted; we both knew perfectly well she'd read it already. “How much did you get for it?” she asked.

If she didn't already know the answer to this, I'd eat my hat, but still I answered. “Six hundred.”

“Hm.” She puffed the cigarette again. “Acceptable, I suppose.”

“It was more than you discussed when you met with him.”

“Not
much
more. I'd have negotiated harder.”

“You would, if you'd been here,” I said. “As it is, I employed as much avarice as I could muster.”

To my surprise, that seemed to amuse her. “You're not a completely lost cause,” she commented. “I suppose I've been busy of late. However, your work is not at an end. Martin and Cora are becoming acquainted, and I will need you on chaperone duty.”

“You can't be serious,” I said. “They are both over twenty, and her parents are staying here.” The last thing I wanted to do was play chaperone, like a spinster from the last century. I may as well begin planning my own dusty grave.

“I agree that it's stupid,” Dottie said in her usual blunt way. “Martin is hardly going to debauch the girl. However, her parents want the proprieties observed, and I am determined that the thing should be done right. And you will help me.”

“I suppose I'll do it if I have to,” I said. “I'm the nearest dried-up old widow in the vicinity.”

Dottie walked to the ashtray on her desk and doused her cigarette. “Manders, you are glum. It does not suit you. Please don't tell me what's bothering you, because I have no interest, as you may have guessed. Just accompany the young lovers whenever I tell you to. Is that clear?”

I had to admit that it was.

I awoke that night from another dream, the sheets twisted around me, my face flushed and hot. My heart raced in my chest, thudding in my ears, and my hair was damp with sweat.

When cold air trickled over my face, I forgot to be afraid. I closed my eyes and inhaled it, savoring the harsh surprise of cold on the back of my throat, breathing it deeply into my lungs. My sweat went cold and gooseflesh rose on my arms and down my stomach beneath my nightgown.

“Frances?” I said.

The wind blew against the panes of the window. My nose and cheeks grew cold, and even my closed eyelids felt chilled. When I rolled over on the damp mattress, my hand touched something under the blanket next to me.

I jerked upward, coming awake. Whatever it was had been tucked into the bed with me, resting almost against my body. The bedroom door was closed; nothing else in the room had been disturbed. I swallowed and pulled back the cover.

It was a book. A large, flat book, the hard cover gleaming in the moonlight through the window. I touched it tentatively, found the texture of the paper rough. The pages inside were thick, some of them warped, so the top cover did not sit exactly level. I scooted over on the bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and opened it.

From the first page, I knew it was a girl's sketchbook. The subjects were domestic: a vase of flowers, leaves on a checked tablecloth, a cat in the old stables behind the house. There was a profile of Dottie, her head bent over her work at the library desk, and another of Martin in
his war uniform. All of them were detailed and clearly rendered, as if the artist had taken the time to catch every detail.

I turned the pages. There was a portrait of Wych Elm House, taken from the woods. Another of the vista that rolled down from the edge of the woods to the village, where I could see the spire of the church and smoke rising from some of the chimneys. I pictured Frances—for this was most certainly her work—sitting on the stile in the lane I'd passed only that day, perched for hours, drawing and drawing until her hands cramped and her feet lost all feeling. I could see it so clearly in that moment, it was as if I'd seen her again.

I tilted the page with the sketch of the village toward the light, looking more closely. From behind the hedgerow leading to the village she'd drawn a shadow, stretching long and dark, that did not fit with the rest of the scene. A man, perhaps? Or something else? I turned back the page to the picture of the house again and looked at it, too, under the light. There was a shadow breaking away from the main shadow of the house, difficult to see at first glance. And in an upper window, on the third floor, was the shadow of a face in the smudges of pencil, two deep-set black holes of eyes in a white oval.

She complained of a face that would appear at that very window. A man begging her to let him in.

It watches me.

Was it a man? It was impossible to tell. Was this the face Frances had seen in her nightmares, one of the many faces she claimed wouldn't leave her alone?

Strangely excited, I leafed through all the pages of the sketchbook. Some of the pictures had shadows in them; some did not. The drawing of Wych Elm House was the only one that featured a face. Some of the book's pages had been torn out, the jagged edges visible in the spine of the bound book. From outside my window, the dog with the low, throaty voice barked until the sound trailed off in a whining growl.

I slid my feet over the edge of the bed and opened the drawer in the nightstand, where I'd put the photographs I'd taken from Frances's room. I picked the photo of Fran and Martin standing in front of Wych Elm House. Then I turned the sketchbook to the drawing of the house and placed it side by side with the photograph under the light.

It was there, in the photograph—the same shadow in the upper window, behind the children. Two pinpoints of black in a larger shape. I hadn't seen it before, or perhaps I'd assumed it a natural shadow in the window glass. But now, putting the sketch next to the photograph, I could see what it was.

It watches me.

“Frances,” I said softly into the darkness, “is this what you want me to see?”

There was no answer.

I gently closed the book, placed it reverently on the table with the photograph inside, and turned out the light again.