The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

by Louise Penny

  He visited the doctor’s house often. He tried to get Haven to reminisce about the past. The doctor was always reluctant at first and would plead with him to change the subject, but he would come around if Brooks pressed him hard enough. Sometimes even then he would try to dampen Brooks’s nostalgia with harsh stories about his days as a doctor in a hospital in London’s East End.

  “Terrible poverty,” he said one evening. “Disease.” He shook his head. “Ever see a man die of syphilis? I have. It isn’t pretty. That was part of those days too, remember. You can’t just look at the magazine drawings.”

  But Brooks continued to press him. He wanted to hear about other things, good things. He hungered to hear about them. It was as if he wanted peaceful images of the Victorian old days that he could use to cover over and replace the images of what he’d seen in the trenches, at the front.

  “Were you ever married?” he asked the doctor once.

  “I was, yes. She died young, I’m afraid. In childbed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. So was I. She was a fine girl.” The doctor hesitated, as if uncertain of what he wanted to say next. But then, in an apparent enthusiasm of affection for his remembered wife, he rose from his chair and said, “Here, I’ll show her to you.”

  He got up and went through a door at the far end of the room. The door had always been closed when Brooks was there. As the doctor went through, Brooks caught a glimpse of a four-poster bed in the room beyond. Then Haven shut the door behind him. A minute or two later he emerged with a small photograph in an old silver frame. He handed the photograph to Brooks and stood over him while he examined it.

  “That was her,” Haven said. “That was my Emma.”

  The effect of the picture on Brooks was so powerful he instinctively hid his reaction to it. If he had conjured from his own imagination some perfect icon of old-fashioned beauty and modesty and goodness to soothe away the front’s images of mutilation and savagery and death, this would have been the figure and the face. Emma was lovely, tall and shapely in a light-colored, floor-length dress, sashed at the waist. Smooth-featured, fair-haired, with the kindest and most sympathetic expression that Brooks thought he had ever seen.

  “That was June 1886,” the doctor said. “About a month before our wedding. Almost two years to the day before she . . .”

  Brooks did not want to let the picture go or give it back, but he felt if he held on to it another moment he would give himself away, expose the power of his feelings. “I truly am sorry,” he said again as he returned the photograph to Haven.

  Haven glanced down at the picture himself, and Brooks saw all the longing and desire and affection in the doctor’s eyes that he felt in his own heart.

  “I suppose that’s why you don’t like to talk about the past,” Brooks said.

  “Mm,” Haven murmured. “I suppose so.”

  That night, as Brooks walked home through the village, his thoughts were far away—in the past, as he imagined it—and his mind was still full of Haven’s Emma. As he neared The Chimes, he heard a noise coming from the shadows of the willows by the river. A young woman gave a low, sensual, two-note giggle. Jarred out of his distraction, Brooks stopped short and looked toward the sound. All at once the woman broke out of the dark up ahead of him and stepped out onto the moonlit road. She didn’t notice Brooks standing there but immediately hurried away. Brooks got a good look at her as she passed beneath the lantern above the pub’s front door: dark-haired, husky, blunt-faced, young.

  A moment or two later a man stepped out from under the same trees. He was a rough-looking tradesman, older than the girl, about forty or so. He paused to light a cigarette, his hands cupped around the match. Brooks saw his face in the glow of the flame. He looked very pleased with himself.

  The man ambled back to the pub, and Brooks continued on his way up the road toward the Grange.

  Later, it was determined that that was the night of the murder.

  Brooks found out about it three days later. The doctor came to the Grange to make his rounds, and Brooks noticed at once that he was wearing a solemn, “official” expression.

  “Walk with me,” Haven said.

  They went out into the garden in back of the house. They walked together side by side over the square spiral path that wound among the purple belladonna. Haven had his hands clasped behind his back, his face bent down to watch his shoes moving through the brown dust. Brooks waited for him to speak. He didn’t know why, but he felt a flutter of nervousness. What was the doctor about to say?

  “The constable came to visit me this morning,” Haven said. “A girl’s body was found under the willows down by the river. Police say she was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Brooks’s heart beat faster, so fast he began to feel lightheaded.

  “It was a Land Girl, apparently,” Haven said. “Working at one of the farms nearby. I had to do the postmortem. Someone had taken a knife to her. Butchered her.”

  The horrible image of it flashed into Brooks’s mind, as clear as a memory. A girl lying on her back in the grass under a willow tree, her mouth open, her eyes open, staring, lifeless. Her throat was slashed, her chest mutilated, her blouse soaked in gore. It was the girl he had seen by the river: the girl who had giggled and then run out from under the trees. He wondered, why should he assume it was she who had been killed? But he knew it was.

  “That’s awful,” he managed to answer finally. “Do they know who did it?”

  Still watching his feet, Haven murmured, “Not yet. It’s not the sort of thing that happens around here much.”

  “No, I shouldn’t think it was.”

  “The constable was very keen to hear about the patients up here. Anyone I might have qualms about.”

  “Here . . . ?” was all Brooks could say.

  “Because you’re all strangers. And soldiers. You know.” They walked a little longer in silence, side by side. Brooks felt so weak and unsteady now he wondered if Haven noticed.

  Then, all at once, the doctor turned his head and pinned him with a sharp glance. “How often are you having blackouts?” he asked. Brooks could not hide his stunned surprise: his mouth fell open. Haven went on, “The nurses noticed it. So did I, come to that. I visited you a week back. I could tell you didn’t remember sitting with me the night before. You’d forgot our entire conversation.”

  “I . . .” Brooks began, but nothing more would come.

  “Any other symptoms? Uncontrollable emotions? Sudden bouts of fear or anger?”

  Before he could even think, he had shaken his head no. He had lied.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Of course I’m certain. Why are you asking me?”

  “Don’t go thick on me, Brooks. It’s me asking or it’s the police. I had the devil of a time keeping them away. Practically had to wave the flag and sing ‘By Jingo.’ All the same, they’ll be up here asking questions sooner rather than later, so it’s best you tell me straight out. The murder happened three nights ago. That was the last night you came to see me. Do you remember that?”

  “Yes, yes,” Brooks said irritably. He was feeling persecuted now.

  “Did you happen to see a girl on your way home? Dark-haired girl, broad-shouldered, a bit heavy in the hips. Down by the river near the pub.”

  “Yes. Yes, I saw her. There was a man with her too,” Brooks added eagerly. “Rough-looking chap . . .”

  “Yes, that was Ned Morton. Tradesman from over in Gilesbury. He and the girl had been carrying on a romance.”

  “Well, then . . .”

  “The police are still questioning him. That’s the only reason they’re not here. But last I heard, it seems he couldn’t have done it. Local busybody saw them together. It seems his movements are accounted for.”

  Now Brooks’s temper flared. He stopped and the doctor stopped and they faced each other squarely.

  “Why don’t you come out with it? Are you accusing me?” Brooks said, trying to keep h
is voice even.

  Haven didn’t waver. “Do you remember what happened that night?” he asked again.

  “Of course I remember. I’m not insane. I left your house and walked back here. That’s all. I remember every moment.”

  Haven considered. Then he smiled that sad, wise smile of his, just the corner of his mouth lifting. He gave Brooks a doctorly pat on the shoulder.

  “Good man,” he said. “I had to ask. You understand, don’t you?”

  Brooks drew a deep breath, fighting to compose himself. “Yes. Yes, of course. It’s nothing. It’s fine.”

  But it was not nothing. It was not fine at all. Because while Brooks thought he remembered walking home that night, how could he be certain? If a whole conversation with Haven had vanished from his memory, if even the nurses had noticed what he thought he had hidden so well, how could he be certain of anything?

  He lay awake in his bed that night with fear gnawing at him so relentlessly it was as if he were back in the trenches waiting for an assault. His stomach was unsettled. His skin was clammy. His breath was short, his heartbeat rapid. He stared through the shadows at the Christ ascending. It seemed to him a ghostly and accusatory figure now in the wavering glow of the nightlight just outside the door. Brooks yearned to be able to cry out to the Savior for help, but he felt no connection to him. Ever since his return from the front, he barely felt connected to other people, let alone to God. The world he had known was slipping away from him—he himself, the man he had been, was slipping away—and there was nothing to fill his empty places but darkness and rage.

  The next morning he felt ill and exhausted. All through the day he was worried and sick. He imagined the nurses were casting sidelong glances at him. He expected to hear the police pounding on the Grange door any minute. A sense of dread gathered in him like clouds. And it darkened, like clouds just before a storm . . .

  Then, suddenly—just like that—he was walking through the village with Nancy beside him. It was night, but he could not remember nightfall. He could feel he had had a pint, maybe two, but he could not remember that either. He could not remember anything after the slow approach of sunset beyond the windows of the Grange. He was just suddenly there, just suddenly with her.

  Fear burst in him like a shell, one of those coal-box shells the Huns used that filled the air with black smoke after it exploded. The fear filled him like that. He wanted to turn and run away from Nancy as fast as he could, without even a word of explanation. But he didn’t.

  “This is me,” she said. They had stopped outside a cottage only a few yards from The Chimes. “Thanks for walking me. It’s so close, I know, but after what happened to that poor girl . . .”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his lips, her mouth warm and soft on his. Brooks was taken aback by it. Don’t, he thought. In fact, he almost panicked and said it out loud. Not that he didn’t like the touch of her. He liked it very much. But he was afraid. He had the vague but powerful sense that she was in danger here. She touched his cheek with her fingertips—lightly, fondly. It made him angry somehow. Why did she keep on like this? he thought. Why wouldn’t she stop? What was she trying to do to him?

  She turned away quickly then and opened the door. The cottage was dark inside, quiet, empty. He wanted to ask her where her father was, but he felt certain that she’d already told him back in the pub; he just couldn’t remember. He didn’t want to give himself away, so he stood there, silent, and watched her go inside.

  The moment she shut the door, he hurried up the road as fast as he could, toward the doctor’s house. Enough was enough. He had to tell Haven everything, the whole truth. About the blackouts. About the rages. He thought of the Land Girl, murdered under the willows. Good God, if he was the one who had hurt her . . . Well, he didn’t know what. He would just have to take what was coming to him, that’s all. Maybe the authorities would consider his injuries and show mercy. Maybe they would consider his service and decide not to hang him.

  Maybe they would understand. It was the war. The war had changed everything.

  The doctor’s house was lighted inside, but when Brooks knocked no one answered. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He slipped inside quickly, as if escaping a pursuer. He called out from the foyer: “Doctor. It’s Brooks.” No answer. He was already so agitated, so fearful, that he immediately grew concerned. He stepped into the sitting room and called again, “Doctor?”

  When there was still no answer, he looked around. He saw the door on the far wall, the door to the bedroom that was always closed.

  “Doctor?” he said again, more softly now. He was already moving toward the door. Another moment and the knob was in his hand. He was turning it. The door was coming open. The lights were on in the bedroom too, as if someone had just stepped out and would be back any moment. Standing on the threshold, Brooks saw the four-poster bed, and the dresser with the mirror on it, and the door into the bathroom.

  And he saw the box and the picture of Emma.

  The box was a slatted milk crate, wholly out of place in that setting. It was sticking out from under the bed, as if someone had tried to hide it there in a hurry but hadn’t quite managed to shove it under all the way. The box was stacked full of papers. Brooks could see the photograph of Emma lying on top, and through the slats he could see the yellowed pages underneath it.

  The sense of urgency that had driven him here was immediately replaced by the impulse—the desire—to have another look at that photograph. It was as if he thought he had stumbled on the magic cure for his anxiety and his fear and his anger: her image. Her image to replace the images in his mind, her world to replace this world. Before he even considered what he was doing, he was moving across the small room toward the bed, toward the crate. Just a glance, he was thinking. And then he was lifting the picture of Emma in both hands and gazing down at it, his soul hungry for her.

  But he was distracted by what he saw on the pages beneath, the headlines he saw on the old yellowed newspapers in the crate. The moment he read the words there, they set off a series of associations in him, memories linked to memories. The doctor’s reluctance to discuss the past. The hospital where he’d worked in London’s East End, where men were dying of syphilis. Emma, his beloved wife, who had died in childbirth in the late spring of 1888. And then these newspapers—these headlines—these souvenirs of the spate of bloody, rage-filled murders that had begun only a few weeks later—murders of prostitutes in the East End near the hospital—in Whitechapel.

  Even before the series of thoughts was finished, Brooks was running. Out of the house. Through the night. Back up the road toward Nancy’s cottage. He saw them before he reached the door. Saw their silhouettes in the moonlight moving over the sloping grass toward the river. The woman, rigid with fear; the man, with one hand gripping her arm, the other held out of sight close to her midsection, as he led her away from the road and down toward the trees and the deep shadows.

  Brooks charged them, screaming wildly, as he had charged screaming out of his trench and raced across the dead fields of France. Haven heard the sound and turned and saw him coming. The doctor pushed Nancy aside and brought his arm sweeping up in a vicious arc toward Brooks’s throat, the dagger flashing in his hand.

  Brooks halted fast and dodged back and the blade went by him. Then he stepped in close and blocked the doctor’s knife arm and punched him in the chin. Haven staggered back as Brooks stalked after him, crouched low, fists raised. The doctor’s eyes flashed just as the knife had flashed.

  “You had to bring it all back,” Haven said in a broken whine. “I begged you not to.”

  With that, he turned and ran for it.

  On instinct Brooks took a step after him, but then he remembered Nancy and stopped. He turned back to her, went to her, took her arm, his eyes traveling over her, looking for blood.

  “Are you all right?”

  She managed to nod, but she was crying hard and had no voice. In his relief, Brooks held her to himself and stroked he
r hair. Only after several minutes did she manage to sob out some words. “He came . . . right after you left . . . I thought it was you . . .”

  Brooks didn’t answer. But he understood: The doctor had been watching him. Using him. Using his rages, his blackouts, his confusion. Because Haven knew he could set Brooks up for his own crimes. Gently he held Nancy away at arm’s length. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll go get help, we’ll . . .”

  But something caught her eye over his shoulder, and she cried out, “Behind you!”

  Behind him, up away from the river, down the road, there was a dancing flicker of fire, painfully bright and alive in the darkness. Brooks knew what it was immediately. He sent Nancy to raise the alarm and ran toward the flames alone.

  By the time he reached the doctor’s cottage, it was fully ablaze. He could see the fire inside through the window, like some sort of multi-tentacled creature dismantling and devouring the walls, already starting to reach up through the rafters into the night.

  And there was the doctor, Haven, calmly standing at the window. The sitting room behind him—the room where he and Brooks had talked together—was just beginning to burn. Brooks pulled up on the road outside and stood still, looking through the pane at the older man. Haven was holding the photograph of Emma in his two hands, just as Brooks had held it. He was looking down at her image in a dazed confusion of sorrow and terrible longing.