She said good-bye to her darling brothers and found she was crying. She remembered nothing about the next few minutes, about getting rid of Octavia and leaving the house; all she remembered was standing on the sidewalk, looking for a figure that had already disappeared, and thinking, I might be in danger. Octavia’s father had pulled up in his Alvis, sitting in the seat behind the driver, and given her a disapproving look. She had no time for snobbery, not much time left at all, so she simply walked up to the motorcar and leaned in. Get her out of England as soon as you can, she’d said to his surprised face. If you love her at all. Then she’d walked away. Either he’d take her advice or he wouldn’t; it was out of her hands.
She’d gone home and gotten into bed fully dressed and drank until the headache faded. Lying there with her dress wrinkling and her makeup smearing onto the pillow, she could no longer see Colin’s strange new face. Davies had knocked, but she hadn’t answered, and eventually Davies had gone away. She’d stared at the wall and thought about what she could do, who she could call on. George knew something about this, but as always he wanted to play games, games in which she was the loser. But there were games she could play, too.
The next morning she rummaged through her things until she found an old handkerchief of George’s. It took nearly half an hour—sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing only a man’s shirt she’d found under the bed and a pair of drawers, the handkerchief clutched in her lap—before the information came, but finally she picked it out of her throbbing brain. Davies knocked on the door again, the sound like gunshots in her skull, but she ignored it. Then she wrote a note and got dressed.
A little sleight of hand trick, leaving the note at George’s hotel. She could simply have sent the note to Ellie, but Ellie might not have opened it, or she might have read it and thrown it away. It was always difficult to predict what Ellie would do.
No, she had given the note to George instead. George would be furious that she’d pulled such a trick after turning down his offer to talk, and he would go to Ellie and push her into action. That would be one good thing—Ellie in action. Besides, it amused her to imagine Ellie and George having a conversation.
But most of all, no matter what happened, eventually Ellie would come. And that made the rest of it almost bearable.
* * *
I opened my eyes to the smell of smoke.
George Sutter pulled away from me, staggering, his mouth open, his face sagging in shock. “What was that?” he hissed. “What did you do?”
“I found Gloria,” I said, part of me wild with sharp, triumphant joy. “I called her. That’s what you hired me for, isn’t it?”
“My God,” he said. “I saw things—heard things—”
A rifle shot cracked through the trees, and then another. Above us on the rise, James fired his own rifle, then lowered it and scrambled down. “Something’s burning,” he said.
He was right. Through the pulsing in my head—slick and powerful, out of my control, the way it had been at Ramona’s séance—I could feel the pungent sting of smoke in my nose, though I couldn’t see any flames.
George tried to pull himself together, looking from me to James. “Colin,” he said. “Instead of coming for us, he’s burning us out.”
“This way,” said James.
More gunshots sounded through the trees. Was Inspector Merriken still alive? Or were the men he had called for reinforcements shooting? There were shouts, but I couldn’t tell what direction they came from. I followed behind James and George, moving as fast as I could as they led me through the still, quiet woods.
“Not the house,” I heard George say. “He’ll burn that, too.”
“I know,” James replied. He was barely out of breath while I was staggering, the smoke growing stronger in my throat. “Do you smell that? Petrol. He’s using accelerant.”
They said something else, their words moving back and forth in sharp measures, but I no longer heard. We changed direction and I followed, watching James’s bent form ahead of me, George’s tall frame loping easily. I started to lag, caught up, lagged again.
We crested a rise and at last I saw the flames. An entire section of the woods was on fire now, the flames sweeping beneath the trees, their light swirling into the darkened sky. The clouds of smoke were thick, and I could feel a wall of heat. We had come the wrong way.
“Goddamn it,” I heard James say. “He’s started it here, too. He’s too bloody fast!”
George said something; then more shots came through the trees. And in a single instant I turned and found that I was alone.
“James!” I cried.
There was no answer, no sound but the crackling of the oncoming fire.
Darling, Gloria said.
I limped back the way I had come, trying to remember the path we’d taken, lost almost instantly. I had a few moments of hideous panic, gasping for breath, before I caught myself and used the tattered remains of my logic. Not the house; George was right about that. But where to go in a fire? To the water. If I could find my way to the pond, I could stay safe from the fire.
I followed the direction I’d heard Gloria’s voice come from. The wound on my knee opened and fresh blood trickled down my shin, but still I kept moving. I saw shapes in the shadows, someone taking even strides, but when I cried out I heard no answer. It wasn’t until one of the shapes passed near me—and I saw he was dressed in full army uniform—that I realized why.
“No,” I said as Harry Sutter walked past me, his handsome face intent on something I couldn’t see. “Gloria, what did you do?”
There were more shouts, alarmed now, more gunshots, and in my ear a sharp bark of laughter. I hadn’t summoned these shapes; Gloria had. I’d summoned her and she’d summoned the ghosts, her power mixed with mine, using it, amplifying it, opening the door to the other side. Someone else walked through the trees—a woman. Davies? Ramona? Who else had she called? I ran and ran, hoping beyond logic that I was going in the right direction as I choked on the smoke and felt the heat rise at my back.
I broke from the line of the trees and found myself in the clearing by the pond. I was at the other side of the water now, staring into the cattails and the tall grass, opposite where James and I had stood earlier. Somehow I had gone all the way around, probably a quarter mile, without knowing it. The woods to my left were ablaze, the flames licking up into the sky, like a nightmare I’d never dreamed could happen, inescapable and obscene.
“Ellie!” came a voice from the woods.
“James!” I cried, my throat tearing, my voice barely audible to my own ears. My eyes watered from the smoke and I could hardly breathe. “I’m here! By the water!”
“I’m coming for you—,” he said, and then he was silent. I screamed his name again, but my voice was no more than a whisper. I started through the high reeds into the water, the shocking cold of it rising to my ankles, the mud pulling at my shoes.
I had gone only a few feet when I sensed someone behind me.
I turned and saw a figure emerge from the woods. A man wearing farmer’s clothes and heavy boots, his cloth cap gone from his dark head. Coming toward me, walking, taking his time, inexorable. In his hands he held a long, thin wire. A living man. Colin Sutter. Coming for me.
“Stop,” I tried to say, but nothing came from my mouth anymore. I sloshed backward in the water, the reeds tangling around my legs and ankles, my hands up as if I could stop him, thinking, This is it—he started the fire to separate me from the others and he succeeded. I was a fool ever to think I could get away. Of course he’d find me—of course. And still he came toward me, not a single word on his lips, because that was how he killed—fast and silent, without a good-bye.
Footsteps sloshed in the water behind me, and Colin stopped.
Something moved to my left, and there was a horrible smell. Another shape moved to my right, coming from deep in the w
ater, making a rhythmic slosh slosh slosh sound. Colin’s face froze in a sort of horror, the shadows of the flames flickering over his features. He gazed behind me in disbelief.
I turned. Harry Sutter stood next to me, tall and still in his uniform, looking at his brother. On my other side Ramona emerged from the water, the drops vanishing off her like air. Her face was sick and intent, her eyes like holes in her skull. Behind her, coming up from the depths, came the man in the houndstooth jacket.
I froze where I was. None of them seemed to see me; all were intent on Colin, who still stood at the edge of the water, the wire drooping in his hands. “It can’t be you,” he said, the first words I’d heard him speak; his voice was raspy with smoke, but beneath that it was deep and melodious. I did not know who he was talking to, as Tommy Sutter had come out of the water now, too, his face so much like his brothers’ but different, wider, with its own kind of handsomeness. Like the others, he made no noise.
I turned back to Colin. I wanted to say something, but suddenly nothing would come. Because there was another shape approaching Colin from behind.
She looked nothing like she had been—and everything like it. I would have known her anywhere, even across the divide of life and death, the divide that she and I had been able to travel, that we now traveled together. She was in the shadows, but still I knew. My mind was sure, and my heart—all of me was certain.
Colin became aware of her as she stood at his back. He stiffened, his expression rigid with new alarm. The ghosts in the water with me stood and watched as a flawless white arm reached out and around Colin’s neck, draped like a lover’s. Another arm came from the other side, the pale hand with its long, perfect fingers touching the side of his cheek, tilting his head. Colin gave a low groan of helpless terror.
Gloria Sutter whispered in her brother’s ear.
Colin dropped the wire.
There was the slick sound of a bolt being drawn, and James was there, leveling his rifle at Colin’s temple. “Don’t move,” he said. He thumbed off the safety, his finger on the trigger.
“No!” George Sutter stumbled from the trees, his knees nearly buckling as he ran the few feet to the water’s edge. “No!” Never had I heard such anguish, seen such pain on a human face. “Hawley, stop! He’s my brother! Tommy, Harry—my God! Stop!”
James blinked, shifted, his fingers flexing. A muscle in his cheek rippled and something moved through his body, something like terrible pain. His gaze flickered to Gloria, still in the shadows, her arms around her brother, and then to the figures in the water. He looked at all of them with a grim knowledge, free of surprise, as if they were part of something he understood all too well. Then he swallowed and lowered the gun.
I was crying, I realized, the hot tears stinging my face. There were more voices, shouts, coming from the trees. I was looking at Gloria’s arms, her beautiful white arms, fading now. Or perhaps it was I who was fading; I couldn’t tell. The world seemed to be closing in on me, becoming a strange, dark circle, a window through which I couldn’t see. I couldn’t breathe, and my body went numb. I saw the flash of her dark hair in the firelight, and I thought, Good-bye, darling, and then the water came up to meet me and I knew no more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I awoke in a hospital room. I was dry and warm, a sheet and a knitted blanket tucked over me, and watery sun was coming in the window.
I pushed myself up on my elbows, blinking.
“Good morning,” said a voice.
Inspector Merriken was sitting next to my bed. He was folded into a wooden chair, one ankle crossed over the other knee. He was wearing a suit and his black overcoat, and dark stubble showed on his jaw.
“You’re alive,” I said to him, glad to be saying it.
“I am,” he agreed, glancing at the clock on the wall. “And so are you, though you’ve been out cold for about twelve hours. Hawley is going to be upset; he just left to get a drink of water. But that’s fine by me, as I get my chance to talk to you. How do you feel?”
My mind was sluggish, my throat sore. “James is here?”
“Of course he is.” The inspector frowned. “He’s been some little use, I’ll grudgingly admit. He got you out of the water seconds after you passed out, and he was strong enough to carry you from the woods unaided. But with you here unconscious, I haven’t been able to get rid of him, and he’s going to evict me the minute he comes back. So you’re going to answer my questions until he does.”
I looked down at myself. My clothes were gone, and I was wearing a hospital nightgown beneath the bedcovers. I ached everywhere, my muscles throbbing, my knee torn. “The fire—what happened?” I pushed myself up farther, ignoring the way my head spun. “Oh, my God—where’s Pickwick?”
“Stop worrying,” Inspector Merriken ordered. He made no move to assist me. “The local brigade fought the fire all night, and it’s almost under control. Nobody died, at least not yet. And one of my men has your dog. He’s become rather enamored of him, and says he wants to keep him.”
“He can’t,” I snapped.
“Very well. Will you answer my questions now?”
“Where were you?” I asked, ignoring him. “We thought you were dead.”
“I found Colin Sutter by the telephone line, preparing to cut it, just as Hawley predicted. I did my best to shoot him, but he got away. He lit the fire while I was still trying to track him. He was very, very good. I really did try to shoot him, even through the smoke and the flames.” He shrugged. “My men arrived and found me, and we made our way to the water’s edge, thinking Sutter—Colin Sutter—might go for the same place. When we got there, we found Hawley in the process of not shooting our suspect. So I obliged George Sutter, since he seemed to think it was important, and I kicked Colin over—forcefully, I admit—and handcuffed him.”
I swallowed, my throat dry. “What about the ghosts?” I said. “You must have seen them.”
Inspector Merriken looked away, and for a moment he looked very tired. “You have no idea,” he said, “how much I hate ghosts. No idea at all.” He turned back to me and changed the subject. “Colin Sutter is alive and in custody, but he isn’t talking. Did he speak to you? At the pond?”
I shook my head, the motion setting my brain in a queasy spin. “No.” He had spoken to the ghosts, but I wasn’t going to repeat that part.
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“It’s very frustrating,” he admitted. “We have a good number of the pieces, but not all of them. With the help of your testimony, we can likely make a case for his murder of Ramona and George Sutter’s man—whose name was John Richmond, by the way. But we have no eyewitness linking him to Gloria’s death. That would have been Ramona’s job, since she saw something from the trees when she left the house that night with Fitzroy Todd—according to the testimony of Todd himself, who turned himself in to us. But Colin murdered Ramona before she could confess. Until I have a clearer case, my original murder investigation will have to stay open.”
“What about Davies?” I asked.
Merriken frowned at me as he watched me struggle to sit up. “What about her?”
“Did Colin murder her?”
“I should say not, since she’s alive. I just talked to her on the telephone from Paris.”
“Paris?”
“Yes. It seems George Sutter sent her there. With Gloria dead, he thought Davies may be in danger, so he gave her fare for passage and told her to leave England for her own safety.”
I shook my head. I’d been sickened, worried she’d been murdered and her body stuffed somewhere. The man who had come to get her at Marlatt’s Café had been George. “Terrific,” I said. “What a prince. I almost got killed, and Davies got to sit around in Paris, all expenses paid.”
“She is rather odious,” the inspector carefully agreed. “It does gall a little.”
&n
bsp; I swung my legs over the side of the bed and put my bare feet on the floor, flexing my toes. “I’d like to help,” I said, “but I don’t know what I can do for you. I don’t think I’ll be much use.”
He sounded almost amused. “You won’t get rid of me so easily, Miss Winter. Scotland Yard is far from finished with you, I assure you.”
I looked at his tired face, a good face, an intelligent face, and on impulse I reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Thank you,” I said to him.
He glanced down at my hand, then politely raised his eyebrows at me.
“Fine.” I sighed. Then I looked at him again, surprised. “Your name is Drew. And she’s not your fiancée. You haven’t asked her yet, because she’s at Oxford and she hasn’t finished her degree.”
Inspector Merriken blew out a put-upon sigh. “God save me from intelligent women. Good day, Miss Winter.” He pulled his wrist from my grip and stood.
“If you ask her,” I called to his retreating back, “she’ll say yes.”
“Who will say yes?”
It was James, coming through the doorway, glancing warily at Merriken and then looking at me. Merriken only touched the brim of his hat and disappeared.
James looked rumpled and exhausted, his jaw dark with an incipient beard, his clothes stained and smelling of smoke. He was in his shirtsleeves, and as I watched he plunged his hands into his pockets and leaned on the doorframe, his gaze careful and shuttered.
The Other Side of Midnight Page 29