Lost Among the Living (3 page)

“You're not listening,” she said. If she noticed that I had used the past tense when talking of Alex, she did not let on. “No man is ever yours, not entirely. You must make an
effort.
” She glanced around the room. “Goodness. What time is it?”

I looked at my watch again, my heart sinking at her absent tone. “Four o'clock.”

“Oh, dear. I'm terribly sorry, but I must cut our visit just a little short. The viscount is coming, you see.”

“Today?” I said in dismay. “Now?”

“Yes. He'll be here any minute.” Her eyes had gone blank again, just like that, looking at something I couldn't see. “He's taking me to Egypt. It's going to be a grand adventure!”

The viscount—he'd never been given a name that I'd heard—was one of Mother's favorite fictions, a wealthy man who was always on the verge of arriving and taking her away. He usually made an appearance when Mother was stressed or confused, or when she simply wished to exit a conversation. Once he was fixed in her mind, she would talk of nothing else for hours, sometimes days. It was a trip to Russia with the viscount that caused Mother to steal the fur stole from the ladies' shop when I was eighteen.

The brief glimpse of Nell Christopher was gone, and I wasn't sure I would see it again. The thought was painful and almost a relief at the same time.

“Mother,” I said, knowing she would not hear me, “the viscount is not coming.”

“He is!” When she was happy, she glowed with beauty. “He will be here soon. I'm not dressed properly. Where are my maids? I have to get ready.” She pulled back her sleeve and, right there before my eyes, she dug her nails into the soft skin of her arm just below the wrist and dragged them, putting red grooves into the white flesh as her gaze stayed far away.

I jerked out of my seat, shocked. I called for the nurse; she took Mother away, letting her believe she was going off to prepare for the viscount's arrival, giving me an apologetic look. “This has just started,” she said quietly to me. “It's been reported to the doctors. A spell of rest seems to help.”

I stared at Mother's retreating back in its faded gingham dress. “I'll come back . . .” I meant to say
soon
, but I realized that I was traveling to Wych Elm House tomorrow and had no idea when I'd be back again. “I'll come back.” Mother did not acknowledge me.

Outside, I turned my steps toward the small hotel where I always stayed during my visits to Mother, erasing the hospital smells with the brisk outside air and listening to the birds chatter their end-of-day conversation. I had gone several blocks when a wave of sweaty, nauseated feeling came over me, so fierce it made me dizzy, my eyes burning with tears. I stopped and sat on a bench, sagging like a wilting plant. I was twenty-six, and in that suffocating cloud of sadness I felt that I had no fight left in me. I felt like an old woman.

Surprisingly, it was Dottie's face that came into my mind, her eyes narrowed, her mouth expressing disgust with only the slightest movement of her thin lips.
Pay attention, Manders. Look sharp. No girl ever got anywhere by sitting and moping on a public bench.
I made a low sound of self-pity, but I straightened and leaned against the back of my seat, watching the few passersby and taking a deep breath. What was there to do, after all? Quit being Jo Manders,
nee
Christopher, of
no fixed address? There was no way to resign. One's mother went mad, and one's husband leaped from a plane into thin air, and one simply got on with it.

I went back to my hotel, where I drank a cup of tea, lay on the narrow bed in my underwear, and read D. H. Lawrence by lamplight until I fell asleep. The next morning, I took the train to London.

Dottie met me at the station, wearing a new suit—an olive green skirt and matching coat with gold buttons, like a military uniform. She gave me one of her hard, appraising glances, taking in my gray wool skirt, my cream blouse with its wide collar, the light gray cardigan trimmed with satin that I'd tossed over it. Her gaze narrowed on my dark curls, which escaped from their knot no matter how hard I tried, my scrubbed-clean face, my impassive expression. She nearly dismissed me as usual without comment, but almost grudgingly, something made her say, “She is well?”

I hid my shock and shrugged. “As well as can be expected.”

Something thoughtful flickered across Dottie's gaze, but she shut it down quickly and looked away, snatching up her handbag as if I'd made to steal it. “Come along, Manders,” she said. “The car is waiting.”

D
ottie had a car and driver to take us to Sussex. I must have been more exhausted than I thought, because I fell asleep almost instantly, the warmth and the hum of the motor sending me into oblivion. I awoke slouched into the corner of my seat, my arms crossed, hugging my cardigan to my body. Dottie was sitting upright, a leather notebook across her lap, going through a stack of papers with a pen in her hand.

“We will be at Wych Elm House in just under thirty minutes,” she said to me as my eyes opened, though she had not looked at me. She checked the watch on her narrow wrist and reconfirmed to herself. “My husband, Robert, will be there. He has come home for Martin's return.”

I sat up in silent surprise. In the months I had traveled with Dottie, she had never mentioned a husband. Logic dictated she must have one, of course, since she had children, but he had never once figured in the conversation, even in passing. I had assumed him long dead.

Dottie stared at the seat back in front of her, searching in her brain for something. Her jaw flexed and her hand twitched on the pages. “I cannot emphasize enough, Manders,” she said slowly, “that you must behave properly at Wych Elm House.”

I rubbed a hand over my eyes, wondering what in the world she was getting at. “I always behave properly,” I replied. “I've never given you cause to complain.”

“Don't be a fool, Manders,” she snapped. “We are not in Europe anymore.”

I stared at her, trying to parse her meaning. Was she implying I had loose morals? People sometimes did, because of Mother. I opened my mouth to protest, offended, but stopped, watching her.

She dropped her gaze to the papers again, signed one of them with a flourish. “He will tell you that his behavior does not matter. Do not believe him.” The page disappeared with a flick of the wrist, and another replaced it. “It does not matter that you were Alex's wife. If you give Robert even the slightest encouragement, I will dismiss you and you will no longer be connected to this family.”

It was absurd, insulting—that she thought I would somehow misbehave with her husband under her roof. But I could see the misery carefully disguised in the lines of Dottie's face. It pained her, humiliated her, to speak of this at all. She had become more tense and unhappy the closer we traveled to her home. This homecoming, I realized, was not exactly going to be the joyous one she'd likely described to Mrs. Carter-Hayes as we crossed the Channel. It gave me a jolt to think that hers might be a family even unhappier than my own.

“I understand,” I said.

She signed another paper, flipped the page again. “Martin arrives tomorrow morning.” Again, her voice was grim, so unlike the cloying tone she'd used when she'd shown her son's photograph on the boat from Calais. “He had a health problem that affected his nerves after the war and has been in a spa in Switzerland.”

So the husband was a lech, and the son was a madman fresh from the asylum. No wonder Dottie had been sparse with details until now, when she had me captive in the motorcar, unable to run screaming. And I still knew nothing about queer cousin Fran. “It's nice that he's coming home,” I managed.

“I do not want any distressing subjects raised in the presence of my son,” she said as if I hadn't spoken. “The war is not to be mentioned. Alex is not to be mentioned—Martin liked Alex a great deal and found his death upsetting. If he asks you about it, I expect you to deflect him and change the subject.”

“All right,” I replied, unable to think of anything more repellent than discussing my husband with a man who had lost his senses. The conversation with Mother had been more than enough. I studied my thumbnail, scraping a fingernail along it and rethinking my decision not to live in poverty in London. “What exactly will my duties be?”

She glanced at me for the first time, then directed her gaze back down to her papers. “You are to accompany me throughout the day and assist me. I expect you to report to me at eight o'clock every morning, at breakfast. I will be meeting with artwork buyers and negotiating with them. You are not expected to make conversation—in fact, the less you speak, the happier I will be. Your job will be to serve tea and help me manage my correspondence. I understand you have typing skills.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I can type. But I have never served tea.”

She gave me a glare that plainly said I was stupid. “It isn't hard, Manders. Just try not to spill it.” She leaned back in her seat. “Aside from selling the pieces I've bought, I will also be busy planning Martin's engagement and wedding.”

I frowned, confused. “Who is Martin engaged to, if he's been in a spa?” If she wanted to call it a spa, I would go along with it.

“He is not yet engaged. I believe I have mentioned that he is coming home to marry.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. The sequence seemed backward to me. “I thought you needed a fiancée in order to have an engagement.”

Dottie dismissed this detail with a flick of her hand. “I will take care of it,” she said, and as I sat gaping at her, she picked up her pen and continued. “There will be some afternoons when I will not require you, and you will be released for free time. After six o'clock, unless I have a special requirement, your evenings are your own.”

I looked out the window at the woodland passing by, thinking about long evenings alone as the autumn stretched into winter. “It seems isolated.”

“There is a town less than an hour's walk away,” Dottie replied.
“It's possible you can use the car and driver, if they are free. There is a lending library, I understand.”

It was a generous offer, most unlike Dottie. I turned to her, ready for once to be friendly, but she wasn't looking at me. She was staring ahead, her papers forgotten. She pulled out her long cigarette holder, attached a cigarette to it, and lit it, right there in the motorcar, creating a foul fug of smoke. She had forgotten me, and she had certainly forgotten the driver, who had never registered to her at all. Her gaze clouded, and something about the look on her face chilled me.

The Dottie I had spent three months with in Europe had been disagreeable, but she had been energetic and edgy, unable to sit still. I now saw that that woman had actually been the happier version of herself—marshaling her luggage from train platform to train platform, negotiating with hotel clerks, clipping briskly down cobblestoned streets with a map in her hand and a cigarette between her lips, haggling for hours over works of art. In her way, she had seemed to thrive. This still moodiness, this introspective unhappiness, was new, and it made me uneasy, because clearly something at Wych Elm House was the cause of it.

In silence I followed her gaze, tearing my own gaze away from her profile. She was staring past the driver and through the front windshield, where, as the thick trees parted and we juddered along the unpaved drive, a house was coming into view.

Dottie took a long, slow drag of her cigarette, exhaling smoke like
a dragon. She blinked slowly, the lines of her face settling into tension, and when she opened her eyes again, they were shuttered, impenetrable, whatever had been on the surface sinking back into the depths again.

“Well, then,” she said to no one in particular. “There it is. Home.”

I
t just looked like a house to me. Big, with buttery yellow brick and gables and large, double front doors at the head of a circular drive. The center of the building, above the entrance, was crowned with a high gable, thrusting upward through the canopy of trees. It was not one of those rolling, manicured estates you saw in newsreels of the royal family, the kind of place that had been there for centuries, attended by throngs of gardeners. Instead it was an expensive house built in a tangle of woods, dappled by the encroaching trees that tapped the roof, surrounded by browning thickets of brush adorned with dying flowers. It had a forlorn air of emptiness to it. The house itself worked to impress with its rich blood, but if a gardener had been here, it wasn't for a very long time.

The driver helped me from the motorcar, and as I straightened, a full breath of brisk country September air hit my nose. It smelled like dead leaves and brisk sap, and it was strangely cold. I was used to the woolly heat of a European summer mixed with the stale air of travel and the eternal stink of London. I took another breath and fancied I caught a whiff of the sea.

Dottie, papers clutched under her arm, discarded her cigarette and marched up the steps to the house. She vanished inside without a backward look at me. I followed her, hurrying to keep up, and came through the front door with an ungraceful clatter. I had nothing but my handbag with me, as our luggage was following in a separate van.

The front hall was dim, the only light coming indirectly from the
high windows in the adjacent room, to which glass doors were thrown open. I glimpsed an umbrella stand, a sideboard, floors of dark wood covered with clean, matched rugs, a few mediocre paintings of landscapes on the walls. It was dusted and tidy, the air smelling close, with the pungent edge of cleaning vinegar. There were no coats thrown carelessly over hooks, or hats hung by the door, or any other signs of people coming and going. I realized that with Dottie in Europe, her husband God knew where, and her son in a hospital, no one had actually lived here for some time.

I followed the sound of Dottie's clunking oxfords down the corridor, past a sitting room and a study, a small parlor with uncomfortable antique chairs squeezed into an awkward arrangement, where a maid, bent over with a dusting cloth, looked up surprised as I passed. The furniture everywhere looked immaculate and new, even the pieces in antique style, and each room seemed filled with expensive bric-a-brac—lamps with glass shades, ornate vases filled with expensive flowers freshly arranged, clocks and shepherdesses and brass lions and painted silk screens placed just so in corners. Dottie's acquisitions, I guessed, accumulated over the years. I had seen her in action, and she was very good at buying expensive things.

There was no time to stop and gape. Dottie would charge full speed wherever she wanted, then expect to turn and find me at her shoulder; she was like clockwork. I hurried faster.

I watched her spindly frame stop at the entrance to a dining room, pausing only a moment before she plunged over the threshold and inside. “I see you made it,” I heard her say.

I followed her and found a man sitting alone at the dining table, a plate of beef and a glass of wine before him. He was fiftyish, trim, with light brown hair cut short and curling naturally. He had blue eyes in a face that made a fair attempt at handsome, though there was a tinge of dissipation around the edges of his features, like a piece of paper that has been foxed over time. He wore a suit of tawny brown
that had been expertly tailored to his frame and a silk tie that gave a dull gleam in the electric light.

He did not rise, did not even put down his knife and fork, when Dottie came into the room. “Hello, Dottie,” he said, his voice melodic and uninflected. He put his knife to the slice of beef. “I arrived barely an hour ago. Had the cook put something together, as I'm completely ravenous. Luckily she already had something nearly ready.”

Dottie took another step into the room, so she was no longer standing in front of me. She was not wearing a hat or gloves, having dispensed with them in the car in order to work more comfortably, and now she looked lost, wishing for something convincing to fidget with. Her hands twitched on her papers. Her cigarette holder had already been slid back into her pocket. “I take it your journey was uneventful?” she asked, her gaze fixing on the man before her, then tearing away. “You were in Scotland, I believe.”

“Hunting with some fellows, yes. We were having a good time until your wire interrupted it. And the journey was a bloody nuisance.” He raised his gaze and saw me. “I beg your pardon,” he said, still not lowering his eating utensils or standing. “We have not been introduced.”

“This is Manders,” Dottie said before I could speak. “My companion.”

“Jo Manders,” I broke in, just this once not wishing to hear myself spoken of as a last name, as if I had no identity of my own. Dottie gave me A Look, her eyes glaring like a spooked horse's, but I ignored her.

The man seemed to think over the name, going through possibilities in his head. “Alex's wife?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

His gaze flickered over me, up and down, his eyelids drooping carelessly, and I knew I'd just been categorized. My breasts, my hips, my waist, the length of my legs. I watched him note my unfashionably long hair, my unstylish clothes, until his gaze rested on my face, the
blue eyes sharp and thoughtful. “You did not tell me you hired a companion, Dottie,” he said. “Mrs. Manders. I'm Robert Forsyth, as my wife has neglected to tell you. It's nice to meet you. A little excitement is welcome, and we've always been curious here about the woman who ran Alex to ground.”

“Is the house ready for Martin's return?” Dottie interrupted, her voice sharp, as I fumbled for a shocked reply.

Robert glanced at her and shrugged. “There's a housekeeper somewhere.”

“When did she report? I asked her to begin work two days ago.”

“I've no idea, do I?” Robert asked. “I've just arrived. Housekeepers are your domain.”

“Martin docks tonight and takes the first train tomorrow. I told her which rooms to prepare. And there should be three maids as well.”

“Then it's likely done,” he replied, turning back to his slice of beef. “If there's a newspaper somewhere in this backwater, please have it brought to me. I'd like to know a little of what goes on in the world.”

Dottie stood in strangled silence. Months apart, and her husband already found his plate more palatable than his wife. I could almost feel sorry for her. But then she turned to me, her cheeks flushed, and barked, “Why are you standing here? Go find the housekeeper and make sure everything is done, for God's sake.”

I turned on my heel without a word and retreated down the hall, to the room where I'd seen the maid. She was not there. Instead, sitting in one of the chairs was a girl. She had dark blond hair tied up neatly at the back of her head, the pins of which I could see clearly, as she was angled away from me. She wore a dark gray dress and a string of small pearls around her neck. When I approached the doorway, she turned and looked at me through calm blue eyes. Her face was long, her forehead high, but she was strangely attractive. She looked about seventeen.

“Oh,” I said in surprise. “I beg your pardon.”

“Miss?”

I turned. The maid stood in the corridor behind me, duster in hand.

“Is there something I can assist you with?” the maid asked me, tilting to look over my shoulder.

“Yes, I just—” I turned to the girl in the chair again, confused, but the girl was gone. The chair stood empty, as did the rest of the room.

“Miss?” the maid said again.

“Where did she go?” I asked. “The girl. The one who was just here.”

“I'm sorry, miss. I don't know quite what you mean?”

The room was certainly empty. So was the corridor, when I spun on my heel to look. There was no sound of footsteps. But I had
seen
her.

“I don't—” I stuttered. “I—”

“Perhaps you mean me, miss?” the maid asked. “I was dusting in that room not long ago.”

I paused. It hadn't been the maid I'd seen—there was no question. I could still see the girl's face, the expression in her blue eyes beneath the high forehead as she regarded me. But to insist on it would make me sound like Mother, talking of her imaginary viscount. So I said, “Perhaps that's it. I'm sorry.”

“It's nothing at all,” the maid said, and she gave me a smile that was tentative and curious at the same time.

I pushed what I had just seen forcefully from my mind. “I'm Jo Manders, Mrs. Forsyth's companion,” I said. “Can you tell me where the housekeeper is?”

Her smile relaxed a little. “Mrs. Bennett is in the kitchen, I believe, dealing with the wine. She was there half an hour ago.”

“Are there other maids here besides yourself?” I asked, shakily remembering Dottie's directive.

“Two others, ma'am. All of us arrived the day before yesterday.”

So there was no constant staff of loyal servants kept on at Wych Elm House while the family was not in residence. The entire staff seemed to be newly hired. I thanked the maid and found the door that led downstairs to the kitchen, but as I approached it, for some reason I heard the maid's steps behind me. I turned to tell her there was no need to follow me, but I found she was gone, and there was no one there at all.

In the kitchen I came upon two women over sixty, one of them sorting through a box of wine bottles and the other sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. When I entered, they dropped silent in embarrassment, and the seated woman made to rise.

“Please,” I said. “I'm only Mrs. Forsyth's paid companion.”

The woman promptly sat back down, and the two exchanged a brief look of surprise. It seemed Dottie had not bothered to tell anyone about me. As it was, I was stuck halfway between being a servant and a member of the family, which made everything awkward.

The woman with the wine bottles was Mrs. Bennett, the housekeeper, and the woman sitting down was Mrs. Perry, the cook. Both had tidy hair under caps and strong, rough hands. They were women of England's servant class, brisk and unshakable, who had likely been sweeping and dusting and pounding dough into pie crusts since they were thirteen. A class that was quickly vanishing into a world of tinned suppers and carpet-sweeping machines. They were wary at first, given my uncertain status, but since I had no desire to go back to Dottie after the nasty scene in the dining room, I pulled back a chair and sat at the kitchen table instead.

“I suppose you know Mrs. Forsyth very well, then,” Mrs. Bennett said to me. Her tone was casual, but I knew she was fishing for information.

“Yes,” I replied, thinking that as of today, I did not know Dottie at all.

“I've heard she can be a difficult mistress,” Mrs. Perry said bluntly. “It doesn't frighten me. I've dealt with difficult mistresses before.”

“So have I,” Mrs. Bennett said. “In my last place, the mistress lost two children, one after the other. Both died at birth. She was never the same after that. It hits them hard, some women harder than others.”

“I suppose,” I said. She must be referring to queer cousin Fran.

“I'll never believe the things they say.” Mrs. Perry lifted her chin disapprovingly. “I don't take to gossip.”

Mrs. Bennett closed the box of wine bottles and made a dismissive shushing noise. “Tales to frighten children, that's all it is.”

“What tales?” I asked.

Again the two women exchanged a look, but this time their professionalism overruled the need for gossip. “As I said,” Mrs. Bennett repeated, “silly tales for children.”

“Please,” I said, suddenly ravenous to know. “Mrs. Forsyth never speaks of her death, and my husband wouldn't tell me.”

It was Mrs. Perry who finally answered me. “The girl was mad,” she said, her voice tight with disapproval. “They kept her locked up, out of sight, until one day she escaped her room. Jumped from the roof, she did, from the gable right up at the top of the house. She wasn't but fifteen.”

For a long moment, I could not speak. The room receded. I remembered getting out of the motorcar, looking up at the high gable.
Walking across the cobblestoned path beneath it.
Dottie,
I thought,
no wonder you were unhappy to come home.

Mrs. Perry broke in again, her voice grim. “A man died in the woods that same day,” she said. “Some said the girl must have done it, though he was ripped to pieces, so I don't see how she could have done such a thing, mad or not. As I say, I don't take to gossip. They shut up the house after it happened, and all of them left. But now they're back, and we're to expect the son, who's been in a hospital. I hope he isn't going to be any trouble.”

“If it's shell shock, he might be quiet as a lamb,” Mrs. Bennett supplied. “I had one of those two employers ago. Barely said a word, the poor boy.”

I pushed my chair back and stood. “I should go,” I said. “Mrs. Forsyth will be looking for me.”

“Tell her the rooms are prepared, just as she requested,” Mrs. Bennett said to my retreating back.

I turned back and looked at her. “How many?” I asked, thinking of the girl I'd seen in the parlor, forcing the question from my throat. “How many bedrooms are prepared?”

Mrs. Bennett frowned, as if I were slow in the head. “Why, four, of course,” she said. “For yourself, Mr. Martin, and Mr. and Mrs. Forsyth.” Her lips pursed briefly. “They sleep separate.”

I had nothing to say to that. I turned in silence and left the room.