Evergreen Falls

by Kimberley Freeman

  “No!” she screamed. “Please, no!”

  Then it stopped, swinging slightly in the cold night air.

  * * *

  The door to Sam’s room opened a crack, and Flora looked around to see Tony standing there, his face grim in the lamplight.

  “I thought I might find you here,” he said.

  “Go away.”

  “Florrie . . .”

  “You shouldn’t have taken him out there.”

  “It was for the best. Before anyone else saw him dead.” He walked over to her, stroked her back gently through her dressing gown. “Come on. Come to your bedroom. It’s horrible in here.”

  She sat up and looked around. He was right. Clothes strewn about, sour odors, a chair upended, objects overturned: the evidence of his last, horrific few days.

  Then her eyes lit upon a green wallet, unfolded, near the bed. Flora bent down to peer at it. A medicine bottle. A syringe. “Tony, he took something.”

  “He did?”

  She held the syringe up to the light. “There’s blood on it. He took something. That’s what killed him.”

  “What did he take? How did he get it?”

  “I don’t know.” Had Sam killed himself? Had the pain and distress been too much for him?

  Tony took the syringe from her, wrapped it with the bottle and other implements in the green pouch. “We’ll have to get rid of this, too.”

  She snapped. “Have you no pity? Is the cover-up all you’re interested in?”

  She watched Tony fight down his first response, which she imagined was an impatient one. Instead, he lifted her gently to her feet and said, “You need to get out of here now. He’s gone, and lying here in his filthy bed won’t bring him back.”

  Flora let him lead her out into the cold hallway, then up the stairs to the ladies’ floor. As they passed Violet’s door, Flora thought about knocking, to tell Violet the terrible news. At least that way Flora could cry with somebody who loved Sam as much as she did. But Tony seemed to sense her hesitation, and propelled her past the door with firm hands.

  “To your room, Florrie,” he said. “You need to rest. You’ve had a horrible shock.”

  Then she was sitting on her own soft bed, surrounded by her own things. The last time she’d looked at these things—her letter-writing compendium, her inkwell, her shoes, her brolly—Sam had been alive; her life hadn’t yet been tipped on its axis.

  Tony fished in his pocket for his hip flask and gave it to Flora. “Here. Take a few belts of whiskey.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Just do as you’re told,” he snapped. “You’re no help to anyone, including Sam and his legacy, in this state.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Drink. Now.”

  She lifted the flask to her lips and poured some of the scalding liquid into her mouth. Swallowed. Took another sip. Tony indicated with his hand she should keep going. Another gulp. Another. Then her stomach began to burn, and she handed it back to him.

  Tony pulled her chair up beside her bed and sat on it, knees apart, hands reaching out to hers. He squeezed her fingers too hard.

  “I’m sorry, Florrie. I wish there was something I could do to make it better.”

  “There is. We need to go out there, as soon as we can, and retrieve his poor body and give him a proper burial.”

  Tony was already shaking his head before the end of her sentence. “No, we can’t.”

  “He shouldn’t be out there in the cold and the rain! He should be properly buried, properly remembered. He’s my baby brother. We need his body, and we need to find a doctor who will tell us how he died and—”

  “Listen carefully,” Tony interrupted. “We can never tell anyone what really happened to Sam.”

  “But we don’t know what happened. That’s just it.”

  “He either died from illegal drugs or his own hand. That’s what happened. Either way, if your father finds out, nothing but bad things will come next.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Do you not see? All that is irrelevant now. I don’t care what Father does to me.”

  “You should.”

  “Why? We’ll have enough money, won’t we? Please tell me this isn’t about the money.”

  Tony shook his head. “No.”

  “Then, what is it?”

  He sat silently for what seemed like an age, considering her in the lamplight. Overhead, the rain grew harder. Finally, he said, “It’s not my intention to marry into family scandal.”

  “What?” Confusion made it impossible to follow, but she suspected he was saying something momentous and awful.

  “My father will be just as shocked and angry as yours.”

  “These things are so meaningless as to be laughable. My brother is dead.”

  “One of the reasons the marriage is so advantageous on our side is the Honeychurch-Black name. My father is one generation out of the working class. You have no idea how much it means to him to be married to that name.”

  A stone dropped on her heart. “And you? Do you care that much, too?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not unimportant. Florrie, don’t look so shocked. I’m just being practical. You and I, we’re both practical, aren’t we?”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” Flora’s head seemed filled with the sound of mad birds’ wings beating.

  “It’s just easier this way. We don’t have to explain anything to anybody. No criminal activity has to be reported, and Sam dies leaving behind only memories of him being a young, slightly fey but ultimately upstanding man. Your father is happy, my father is happy, life goes on.” He paused for effect, then said, “Sam would have wanted it this way.”

  She snorted derisively. “Sam would have been appalled. He abhorred such snobbery.”

  “No, he didn’t. He was as bad as the rest of us. Rude to the servants, chasing after waitresses. Lord, he’s been dead less than an hour and you’re already canonizing him.”

  The effects of whiskey and grief confused her. Was he right? She lived in such a rarefied world of money and privilege, all earned at the cost of individuality and personal freedom. There was no doubt that a death as sordid as Sam’s would damage the family’s reputation. But how cruel of Tony to bring it up now, to tell her how important a role her name played in his decision to marry her.

  “What do you say, Florrie?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said. “Leave me be. I need to cry and to sleep and to . . . think everything through. Life without Sam.” She shook her head. “I can’t even imagine it.”

  “Imagine it sensibly,” he said. “You’re a sensible girl.” He leaned forwards and kissed her cheek. “You know where I am if you need me.”

  The door closed behind him, and she had a strong urge to shout after him never to come back.

  * * *

  The rain came down.

  Violet sat, her knees uncomfortably jammed up under her chin, her back hunched over. Shivering and shivering. The shivers started at her skin, under her uniform and her stockings and her singlet and bloomers, and then spread deeper and deeper inside her. Her blood shivered. Her muscles shivered. Her marrow shivered. Her guts shivered. The rain seeped in through a top corner of the box and trickled out through a bottom corner, after it had run behind her back, leaving a damp patch on her skirt. The box smelled of iron and dirt and blood—a reminder that it had been used many times to transport quartered pig carcasses and sacks of potatoes.

  She had screamed for an hour, but her little voice out here over the valley was no match for the rain. With the rain, though, came warmer air. Now and again, a huge gust would spring up, carrying the cold off the snow and howling around her metal prison, but mostly she was able to keep herself from freezing by staying curled in a ball, her head tucked down.

  After an hour she stopped screaming and started to pray. She prayed that Clive would wake up in the morning and stubbornly come down to fix the flying fox. That
he wouldn’t listen to her admonitions to stay in bed. That his sense of duty would win out and he would come and find her and take her to the police, where she could report what had happened to Sam and what Sweetie and Tony had done. She had to get somewhere safe; she had a baby inside her, Sam’s baby. If she survived this, and she was determined to survive this, she vowed she would do whatever was in her power to give this child the safest, happiest life possible.

  These thoughts turned over and over in her mind as the night wore on. She sometimes dozed on her knees and sometimes she woke and remembered where she was and what had happened and then cried all over again. All the while the shivers continued. Not from cold, nor from fear, but from grief. The remorseless shivers of somebody who has lost the very thing they love most in the world, irrevocably and forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Flora woke with pain stinging every muscle of her body. She looked around groggily. She was lying on top of her bed, still in her robe. The events of the night before came back to her, and she realized what had caused the pain. Sorrow. Her whole body was grieving.

  She sat up and checked the clock beside the bed. It was six in the morning, still gray outside the window, with rain falling steadily. She stood and peered out. The snow was melting to dirty gray mush. Today, if they wanted to, they could get out. Go to the village. Perhaps the trains would be running.

  What was the point of getting out now, though? Getting out to go where? Home without Sam? Her wedding without Sam? The rest of her life without Sam?

  Heavy feet dragged her to the bathroom, heavy limbs pulled on her clothes for the day, then with a heavy heart she set out to do what she knew she must.

  Flora knocked softly on Violet’s door, tensed against discovery by Tony. There was no answer. She knocked again, a little louder, a little bolder, and said, “Violet? I need to speak with you.”

  But of course, Violet would be downstairs helping prepare breakfast. The poor girl had barely had a moment off since the snow had come down. Flora went down the stairs, stopping at the bottom to listen. Everything was quiet. So quiet. She headed along the hall and towards the kitchen. Empty. The stove had gone cold.

  The first delicate tendril of worry touched her heart. Where was Violet? She supposed Violet might be anywhere in the building, as big and rambling as it was. But she would have to come to make breakfast. So, Flora pulled out a chair and sat down to wait in the cold kitchen. Her stomach growled. How she longed for the days of the bustling dining room, the heaped plates of hot food, the bottomless pots of hot tea.

  She longed for the problems she used to have, when Sam was just a man who smoked too much opium, but was still warm and breathing.

  Her own breath left her body again, and she had to force it back into her lungs. This wouldn’t do. She couldn’t keep letting the shock knock her down. He was dead. Now she had to do the right thing, starting with telling the mother of his unborn child.

  But Violet didn’t come.

  At last, she heard footsteps in the hallway and she stood, ready to face Violet. Yearning to share tears with her. But the person who appeared at the door of the kitchen wasn’t Violet. It was the handyman who drew the pictures. Mr. Betts.

  “Ma’am?” he said, surprised to see her.

  “I’m looking for Violet.”

  “I haven’t seen her this morning. I suspect she’s still in her room.”

  “She’s not in her room.”

  He frowned. “She’s not?”

  “Is she with Miss Zander?”

  “I’ve just come from seeing Miss Zander. She’s still too ill to get up. Violet wasn’t there.”

  Flora put her hand over her mouth. Sam was dead, Violet was missing. Had they made some foolish lovers’ pact?

  “What’s wrong, ma’am?”

  She took a step towards him, dropped her voice low. “Mr. Betts, what I am going to tell you may alarm you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Last night, my brother died.”

  His face fell. “Miss Honeychurch-Black, I am so sorry for your loss. Please, sit down. Can I get you tea? Perhaps the snow has melted enough for me to go for the village doctor—”

  “Listen. I’m worried about Violet. She and my brother were . . .”

  “I know,” he said, simply but meaningfully.

  “Sam dies, she disappears. I’m worried she’s . . . done something foolish.”

  She sensed the anxiety flexing through his rangy body. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “They were young and in love. I don’t want her to die, too, Mr. Betts. She has something . . .” She started to cry again, but then stopped herself. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself.”

  “It’s been a terrible shock, ma’am. To happen at a time like this when we can’t call outside help is the worst kind of luck. Now, you’re not to worry about Violet. I’m sure she’s around here somewhere, and when I find her, I’ll send her to you for the . . . news.”

  “Would you?”

  “In the meantime, let me bring some breakfast up to your room. I’ll let Miss Zander know about your brother, and as soon as ever we can, we will fetch the doctor. Take care of your brother. Do what needs to be done to get him back to your family.”

  His sympathetic words scorched her fragile heart. This man, as low born as she was high, knew the right thing to do better than did her fiancé. “I . . . give me some time. You can’t let Miss Zander know. I shouldn’t have even told you. Can you forget it?”

  “Ma’am?”

  She put her hands around her temples, and it was all she could do not to scream. “Mr. Betts . . .”

  “Clive,” he said. “Please call me Clive.”

  “Clive, I have never been so unhappy nor so unsure in my life. Could you let me deal with my people, and you deal with yours? I’ll take care of what happens to Sam. You find Violet.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  “Flora,” she said. “My name is Flora.”

  She hurried back along the hallway and up the stairs. Clive was right. She had to talk to Tony, convince him that they needed to go back and retrieve Sam’s body. She wouldn’t leave him out there like wildlife. She wanted to do as Clive had suggested: tell Miss Zander, call the doctor—Will would come. Will would know what to do.

  At the top of the stairs, she paused. She heard voices coming from Sam’s room. His door was open. A horrible shudder came over her, as she remembered Sam’s hallucinations about the dead man come back to life.

  But it was Tony’s voice, and Sweetie’s. She listened long enough to realize they were clearing evidence from his room.

  “All the pipes,” Tony said. “The lamp, too. All of it.”

  No, not Sam’s precious things. She steeled herself to march in there and demand they stop, but then she took a moment to consider.

  Tony would not stop. Sweetie would not stop. They had no empathy for her or for Sam. They were used to getting their own way, and eventually they would wear her down with their refusals, their combined will. Tony only cared to avoid a scandal, to keep her in her father’s good favor. He seemed at once a stranger, a handsome man with no heart who hid his callous nature under a veneer of practicality. Her fiancé? She would expect an enemy to behave as he had, not an ally. Her abject aloneness made her shudder.

  There was only one person who would listen to her, who would tell her the right thing to do.

  Flora went to her room to dress as warmly as she could for the walk through the snow to Will Dalloway’s house.

  * * *

  Violet struggled to keep her mind and her body together. Her backside was numb, her spine ached, and her joints burned from being cramped in the same position for hour upon hour. The dampness that had collected in the bottom of the box had turned icy. Her fingertips were so cold that she had to suck on them to keep them from going numb. Even the thinnest fragment of relief was denied her. The night passed, the rain sheeted down, and she remained locked in her miserable prison with her
fear and her sorrow and her hunger, wondering if anyone would ever come for her.

  Sometime around dawn, though, she drifted into a half-waking, half-sleeping state, in which strange dreams of haunted corridors drifted through her mind. She had no idea how long this nebulous doze lasted, but she woke with a jolt to the first glimmer of daylight through the cracks in the box. Her mind no longer bent out of shape with tiredness and fear, she began to wonder if she could break out of the box with brute force. The only thing holding the door was a latch on the outside: a simple latch to stop the door falling open as produce was hauled up the mountain. Dead pigs and sacks of potatoes didn’t try to escape, so it didn’t need to be the strongest latch ever made.

  Violet shuffled backwards, so her back was against the metal. Now she was sitting directly in the damp spot, and the icy water penetrated her clothes in moments. It allowed her, though, to unfold her legs a fraction of an inch, relieving the cramping pain in her knees. Then she retracted her legs tightly and kicked out hard against the door.

  Bang!

  The noise seemed deafening, and the flying fox swung wildly. Violet’s heart raced and she sat very still for a few moments while the box came to rest. When she looked, she discovered she had managed to bend the bottom of the door nearly an inch. She could see daylight, and dirty melting snow below, a long way below.

  Once again, she coiled her legs up like a spring and—bang!

  The swinging was more violent, but the corner of the door was now bent out nearly ninety degrees. She shrugged and struggled, catching her clothes on the metal walls, turning herself over so she could put her face close to the gap she’d opened. She was at least thirty feet above the ground. Even if she did break the latch, she wouldn’t be able to jump out. Should she just wait? Somebody would come eventually. Clive would come to fix the flying fox.

  She put her mouth close to the gap and started shouting with throat-tearing force. “Help! Help me!” This time, instead of her voice being trapped inside the box, she could hear it echoing out over the valley. Surely somebody would hear her.

  Violet shouted for as long as her voice could hold out, then she leaned her head on the door and cried helplessly.