The Haunting of Maddy Clare (26 page)

“I was wandering.” I felt that dark gaze move to me again. “I heard noises. Didn’t you?”

I thought of the door slamming I had heard right before I dropped to sleep, the shuffling in the hall. “I heard a maid.”

Matthew shook his head. “There was no maid.”

“How do you know? She had linens, I thought. I wanted to ask her for a blanket.”

“Because it was cold.”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “In my room, too. Cold, like a sudden draft had blown in. A door slammed, and I thought it was you. I thought—” He broke off, his voice bitter. “No matter. Like an idiot, I went to my door and opened it.”

I raised my head and stared at him. For the first time, the tatters of the nightmare began to fall away. He’d thought it was me, coming to his room. I wished for more light in my room, so I could see him. My mind began to spin. “Maddy,” I said.

Matthew said nothing.

It came together now. “You saw her,” I said. “She was in the hall.” I swallowed my fear, thinking of the sounds I had heard, the soft shuffles and thumps, of how I had thought it was a maid. “You opened your door and saw her there.”

Still, he said nothing.

“Why you?” I asked. “Why only you?”

He grunted. “I don’t know.” The bitterness was stronger now, tempered with anger. “I don’t bloody know. It isn’t something I want, believe me.”

My heart tripped in my chest. “What—what was she doing?”

“What does it matter?”

I frowned. “Matthew—tell me.”

He had stiffened, and even from where I sat, I could hear the reluctance in his voice. “She was standing in the hall.”

“Yes.” He didn’t want to tell me, and I could guess why. But I would have it out of him. “Go on.”

Matthew sighed. “She was—outside your door. At your door.
God, she’s so—strange-looking. I can’t describe it. I could hardly see her in the shadows. But she reached out both her hands—I saw that, clearly. Those long hands of hers. She reached them both out and put them to your door, like she was feeling the door with her palms. I didn’t think. I just reacted.”

Pieces of the dream fell away again, and I remembered how quickly I had fallen asleep. I must have gone under just about then. “What did you do?”

“I stepped out of my room. Into the hall. And just like that, she was gone.”

“Did you see—where she—” I could hardly say it. Had she disappeared? Or had she gone through the door, into my room?

“I didn’t see,” he said. “I walked down the hall, up and down. The cold was still there, in places, but I didn’t see her. I went downstairs and looked. The cold wasn’t as bad there, and I didn’t see anything, so I came back upstairs. I thought then she must have gone to your room, so I went to your door and opened it.” He shook his head. “You were gone. You must have been fast, and quiet; I wasn’t downstairs long, and I was listening all the time. I went back out to the hallway and I noticed something out the window, the one at the top of the stairs. It was you, in your white nightdress, heading for the trees.”

“And so you followed me,” I whispered.

“You were damned fast,” he said. “Once you got into the woods, you were harder to keep up with. I kept calling your name. If it weren’t for the white nightdress, I’d likely have lost you.”

“I was so afraid,” I said. “I thought—Maddy thought—you were going to kill me. She told me to run. I can’t tell you how terrified I was.” I shook my head. “I didn’t hear you calling me. I swear it.”

“I know,” he said.

I thought of what had happened when I crossed the path. “It felt as if there was something else—another presence there. Did you feel that, too?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t feel anything except certainty that you didn’t know what you were doing. I didn’t notice anything until I found you by the riverbank. Then I saw there was someone in the trees.”

My gaze flew up to him. “What?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sure it was there. It was clear, just for a second. Watching us on the riverbank. Then it disappeared.” He looked at my shocked face. “A person, I’d swear it. A man, unless I miss my guess.”

My mind raced. So there had been something—someone—on the path. There had been someone else in the woods, someone besides Matthew, watching me. Waiting. For what?

I held back a shiver. I had the sudden idea that I had come very, very close to something much more dangerous than Matthew. Someone had been warned off only by his presence. If I had been alone…

“What was in the river?” Matthew asked me.

“Didn’t you see it?” I rasped, thinking of that pale arm floating in the water.

“No. There was nothing, Sarah. It was just a muddy bank. Nothing in the reeds. I checked. But you were screaming. You nearly kicked me to death. You saw something in your dream. What the hell was it?”

I pressed my hands to my face. “I’m too tired,” I said. “I don’t want to think of it now. I can’t. I’ll tell you in the morning.”

I heard him move, felt his presence come closer to the bed. He took my hands from my eyes and I looked up as he leaned over
me. For the first time that night I saw him clearly, the exhausted lines around his eyes, their dark pain and uncertainty. He looked ragged and run-down, his skin leached of color. I pictured him striding the halls, looking fearlessly for Maddy, and I wanted to put my hands on his face and feel the rough stubble of his skin.

“You need to say it,” he said, his gaze never leaving mine. “It’s tearing you apart.”

I swallowed. Something was coming loose in me; perhaps it was exhaustion, or the aftereffects of the nightmare terror. “It wasn’t real, what I saw,” I told him haltingly. “But it felt real.”

He said nothing and waited.

I could not fight anymore, and I realized I did not want to. Tears began to course down my face before I even began. “I lived with my parents. The three of us,” I said.

Matthew waited.

“My parents—I suppose they got along all right. We all got along all right. What child notices how her parents get along?” My throat was rasping and dry, but I kept speaking. “My father got the influenza in ’nineteen. It was sudden. We took him to the countryside, to a house that belonged to a friend of my mother’s. She’d gone to America on a trip. We thought it might make my father get better. Mother and I nursed him. Neither of us slept. We were exhausted.”

“Yes,” said Matthew softly.

The words were coming out of me now of their own accord, as if I could not have stopped them. “On the fourth morning, I went to the market. It was June, and the strawberries were just coming into season. Mother and I had worked so hard. I thought to buy us some strawberries and cream, the first of the year, as a treat.” I thought of that morning—the bright golden sunlight, the crisp air that was not yet warm yet promised to be—and something
stabbed me on the inside, hard. I felt my features crumple as new, hot tears came down my face. “I thought we could cheer ourselves up—oh, God.”

I looked down, but Matthew put his fingers gently under my chin. “What happened?” he asked.

I took a breath. “When I got home, the house was quiet. I didn’t want to call out, in case Father was sleeping. I went upstairs and I didn’t see anyone. I got to Father’s room and—” I bit my lip. “He was in bed, and he had—passed away. He was lying quietly, as if he’d just gone to sleep. I couldn’t find Mother anywhere.”

His hand still on my chin, Matthew waited.

“I looked all over the house—the cellar, the attic. Mother was gone. I called for the doctor to come for Father. I didn’t—I didn’t think to call for the police. I was so distraught. Finally it occurred to me to ask the neighbors. The woman next door said she had seen Mother behind the house, walking toward the ravine.”

Matthew’s dark eyes blinked in understanding. “Ah,” he said. “Sarah.”

A sob heaved from my chest. I bit down on it, but still it came. “They found her two days later,” I said. “In the river. She had been dead all that time; they could tell. Father had died and she had simply stood up and walked into the river.
Just like that.
” Another sob came, but I choked it back. “I was—I was gone less than an hour. I still can’t stand to think of it. She could have waited fifteen minutes for me, Matthew.” I looked into his eyes. “
Fifteen minutes.
I would have been home. I could have comforted her. We could have comforted each other, stood it together. But she just left.” I blinked as tears washed down my face. “I think that’s the worst thing about it. It tears me apart, and at the same time it makes me so horribly angry. How can I be angry at my mother?”

Matthew lowered his hand. It had been only the slightest touch, but I missed it. “Sarah,” he said again, on a sigh of such sorrow that I knew he, of all people, somehow understood in a way I could not fathom. The bed creaked as he sat beside me. He rifled in a pocket. “Do you know, I think I will never cease being ashamed of my first thoughts of you?”

I dashed tears from my face. “What do you mean?”

He produced a handkerchief—white and spotless, vintage Matthew—and handed it to me. “I thought you timid and soft. I thought you wouldn’t be able to stand hardship.”

I thought of the life I had been living in London, the life that was not really a life. “Yes,” I said softly. “I thought so, too.” I took his handkerchief, and I dried my tears.

E
vangeline Barry was unmistakable, even in the foggy mist of early morning. I watched her tall figure emerge, lithe and careless, from the gloom. Her fashionable hat was pulled low over her forehead in a stylish rakishness, and her little dog’s leash was looped over one slim, cashmere-covered arm.

She approached me where I stood waiting for her in front of the inn and stopped. As before, I found I could not read her features. Was it concern I saw there? If so, was it for someone else, or only for herself?

“I’ve come every morning,” she said after a moment, when I did not speak. “I’m glad to see you here.”

I said nothing. I could not make myself look away from her: the way a dark lock of marcelled hair wisped under the corner of her jaw like a line drawn in ink, the flawless tone of her skin that I could not detect as powder. It was rude, but I couldn’t help it. I shrugged deeper into my nondescript wool sweater against the early-morning chill and looked at her.

She looked away with a sigh, as if it were a normal thing for people to stare at her without speaking. Her profile was perfect in the gray light. “How is he?” she said.

“What have you heard?” I said.

“That he’s ill,” she replied. “A mental breakdown of some kind. That he went into the barn at Falmouth House and came out…”

“Mad,” I supplied.

“I’m not sure I believe it,” she said. “It isn’t like him. And you were there.” She looked briefly at me, then away again. “And his assistant. And neither of you were affected.”

I coughed a humorless laugh, thinking of last night’s nightmare. “Sometimes I think I might be mad after all. That I just don’t know it yet.”

“What is the truth?” Mrs. Barry looked at me, and for a second I saw an avid look in her eyes. “Will Alistair be all right? Did you see—her?”

Her gaze held mine. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, unsure of how to answer. “No, Alistair will not be all right,” I said. “And it isn’t just about seeing Maddy. You—experience her.”

Uneasiness flickered behind her eyes, and something else that looked a little like fear. “She talks to you?”

I tilted my head, thinking. I realized suddenly that despite how inferior I always seemed to feel around Mrs. Barry, I was in control of this conversation. She was hoping for something from me—I did not know what, but I sensed her waiting, willing to follow my direction.

I didn’t want to talk about what Maddy had said to me.

“Do you know Mr. Jarvis?” I asked.

She blinked in surprise, her manicured brows rising a fraction. “The sexton?”

“Yes.”

She shrugged and looked away again, disappointed. “Of course.” She reached in her pocket for her cigarettes. “Everyone knows everyone in a town as small as Waringstoke.”

“What do you know about him?”

She placed a cigarette between her lips and lit it. “He lives near the churchyard. His wife left—oh, years ago now. She said he had a temper, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. The last I heard, she moved to Scotland with another man.”

I thought of the empty house I had seen, its bachelor’s mess and frilly furniture, and nodded.

“It doesn’t surprise me, really,” Mrs. Barry went on. “Helen was always flighty—completely unsuited to him. How they got on as long as they did I’ll never know. Is that what you want to know about? The sexton?”

“You can talk about Alistair if you prefer.”

She blinked down at me from under her dark lashes. “Well, then.” Her voice was lower. “Are you in love with him?”

I sighed. “Everyone is a little in love with Alistair.”

She drew on her cigarette. “Yes. I suppose so.”

“It isn’t what you think. I knew when I saw him with you.”

She looked at me for a long moment in the silence. Nothing moved around us; though we stood by the narrow courtyard, and the country road beyond, no one moved. At the moment, we were alone, unheard, as if we stood on a deserted theater set.