An Inquiry Into Love and Death

by Simone St. James

  “I’m twenty-two,” I said bitterly. “How long was he going to wait?”

  “Ah, well. I can’t really comment on that in too much detail. But that had more to do with your parents than with Toby.”

  I had a cold stone in my stomach. My parents—my adopted parents—had not wanted me to know. “He wanted to tell me,” I said slowly, “and they said no.”

  “More than that, actually,” Mr. Reed replied. Overhead, a lark flew up from its perch in a tree, crying. “He wanted to take you back and have you live with him. Your parents refused outright. They fought rather bitterly over it, and it ended with Toby being forbidden to see you at all.”

  “That was why he disappeared from my life when I was fourteen.”

  “Yes, it is.” He sighed. “It’s a very difficult issue. Your parents were doing what they thought best. Toby was . . . eccentric, as you know. He had no intention of giving up his unusual living, even if he took you back. He wasn’t entirely the best candidate to raise a girl.”

  I pictured myself being taken from place to place, year after year, looking for ghosts. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They should have told me. I should have been given the choice.”

  “You’ll have to talk to your parents about that.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll pop over to Paris and do just that.”

  He ignored my rudeness; he must deal rather often with people upset beyond anything they’d ever imagined, and took nothing personally. “As it happens, your parents are currently in London.”

  I turned and stared at him. “London?”

  “Just for tonight, mind you. Your father has a speaking engagement at the Royal Society, and then they’re back to Paris. They’re at the Savoy.”

  Mr. Reed didn’t look at me as he spoke; he turned his gaze down into his lap, as if speaking directly to his briefcase. He knew that he was only making it worse by admitting he knew my parents’ schedule when I did not, but this was—finally—a time for honesty, and he would honor it. “Thank you,” I said, “for the information.”

  He nodded at his briefcase. “You’ll need to read the letter. And then we’ll go over the will.”

  “What happened?” I said. “Can you tell me?”

  “Toby came here as a young man. He stayed for a time, investigating accounts of this Walking John.” Mr. Reed raised his head and gazed around the yard, then looked down again. “He met Elizabeth Winstone while he was here, and they fell in love. I don’t know very much about the relationship except that he was deeply in love with her, and he never stopped. She was the only woman he ever loved in all his life.”

  Oh, Toby, I thought. “Go on.”

  “Well, they were young, I suppose, and when he left she was pregnant. She wrote and told him. She was terrified of losing her position, of raising a baby alone while trying to live as a servant. No one would have hired an unwed mother; no one would still, in fact. She had no family and no other way to support herself. But she did not want to get rid of the baby.”

  He glanced at me and reddened, but gamely continued on. “Toby was, as I say, not a good candidate to care for an infant. But Charles and Nora wanted a child and couldn’t have one. Toby came to them, and they agreed to take you.”

  “Why didn’t Toby marry her?”

  “I believe he would have, but she refused.” Mr. Reed reddened again. “Toby never said much about that. I believe it was particularly painful for him. It had something to do with the fact that she did not want to leave Rothewell. And then she had, er, another offer.”

  “The butcher,” I said. “He wanted to marry her.”

  “I believe she did marry, yes.”

  “So she threw Toby over.”

  I was being most unfair, requiring this poor man, who was only doing his hired job, to explain the many sins of my parents. I couldn’t seem to help myself. “I’m not certain,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I think, if you look at it when you are calmer, you’ll see that her choices were rather limited. But I never knew her, so I’m not entirely qualified to say.”

  “And before anything could be made right,” I said, “she died.”

  “Yes, she died soon after, in childbirth. Toby tried to stay in your life, as much as he was able to. But he found it difficult being around you. He did the best he could.”

  “Mr. Reed,” I managed after a moment, “you’ve turned my life upside down.”

  “I have,” he agreed instantly. “I do apologize. Perhaps you’d like to read the letter now.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Shall I leave you alone?”

  I took the envelope he handed me. “There’s no need.”

  “I’ll just sit here, then.” He reached down and rubbed a hand along Poseidon’s back, and the dog raised his head, giving him a pleased look.

  I looked at the envelope, its unremarkable cream paper, my name in Toby’s distinctive handwriting on the front. There’s nothing for it, I thought, and I tore it open.

  Dear Jillian,

  If you are reading this, then I am dead, and someone has told you, probably Reed. I’m very sorry we lied to you. For we all did—Charles, Nora, and I. All I can say for us is that we did what we thought was best, from what we could see in our limited vision. Perhaps we were right, and perhaps we were wrong. It’s too late to do anything about it now.

  Reed is a decent sort, so just in case he’s fudged it in an effort to save your feelings, I’ll put it bluntly: I fathered you when I was a young man, with a woman who was even younger, and as we didn’t know what to do, and as neither of us was much fit to give you any kind of a life—and as my brother and his wife wanted you, and couldn’t have children of their own—we gave you away. Thus in one neat transaction your father became your uncle Toby, and your uncle Charles became your father. It sounds very tidy when I put it like that, when it wasn’t tidy at all.

  As I write this, you are nearing the age of twenty. That is already three years older than your mother was when she had you, and one year younger than I at the time. If you think of it that way, perhaps what we did will make some small amount of sense. The fear we felt at the time was monstrous. I was perfectly unfit father material—I had no money, no permanent home, barely any possessions, and a disreputable career. Charles was always the responsible one. Your mother was a serving maid in a local home. I believe she was even more afraid than I, for she had even more to lose.

  She looked exactly like you, and she remains the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

  You know what I do for a living. I saw it in your face when you were thirteen, though of course Charles and Nora wouldn’t talk to you about it, and you were too shy to ask me. (That’s my fault—I know nothing about children, and so our visits were always conducted in utter silence, which on good days I fool myself into thinking you enjoyed.)

  I don’t know what to tell you about ghost hunting, or why I do what I do. I remember swimming in the river with Charles when we were children, the two of us immersed in the cold water on a sweltering hot summer day. We dunked each other under the water, and when we came up I saw a girl at the edge of the trees. She was barely seven or eight, if that, and her ribs showed under her ragged shirt. There were bruises under her eyes, and she looked at me. Then Charles dunked me under the water again, and she was gone. That was the first one I saw.

  I’ve seen a great many ghosts since then. It’s a sensitivity, I suppose, the way some people have a wondrous sense of smell. I don’t see them often, or I would have jumped in the Thames long ago. But at certain times, in certain places, I am aware. There is something about me that’s visible to them, and sometimes—the good times—I can find what it is they want, what they’re seeking that will lay them to rest.

  None of them thanks me as they go, but it doesn’t matter. I never saw the girl on the riverbank again. She was certainly murdered,
and just as certainly whoever had done the atrocities that made her look as she did that day walked away with no one the wiser.

  That is why I do what I do.

  But I am nearing forty now, which is not so old, but on most days I’m beginning to feel over eighty. I realized at some point some years ago, after your mother had died, after watching you start to grow into a person rather miraculous and unexpected, as I suppose children do, that I have spent more of my life with the dead than with the living. It has made me weary beyond words. And so, selfish monster that I am, I asked for you back. Charles and Nora—I don’t know why I ever thought differently—said no. And so I did great damage to my relationship with my only brother. We may not have had much in common, and he may have thought me a fool for much of his life, but he was my brother, and only after I lost him did I understand how much it truly mattered. I say this because you’ll be angry with Charles now, and I advise you not to make the same mistake I did. Life is better with Charles than without him.

  I’ve gone on and on in this letter, and I haven’t told you much about your mother. I keep every memory of her close to me, folded and tucked away, jealously hoarded and unable to be shared. It seems odd to you now that I ever loved anyone and that anyone loved me. But she did love me, and it remains the only gift that has ever been given only to me, for me alone. My gift with the dead is only a duty.

  What came after doesn’t matter, not really. She wouldn’t marry me, and she had to make her choices. She had to make a life for herself in Rothewell.

  Rothewell was her place. It’s a haunted place—that’s what first drew me there, of course. I came across a ghost I didn’t understand, and a place that was, perhaps, impossible to understand. Elizabeth could barely even read, but she understood it.

  Rothewell is by the sea, and one day we sat there, on the rocks by the water, just sitting together. It was her half day off, and she had left work for the afternoon. She wore a pale blue cotton dress with a lace collar, her “good” dress, and her dark hair was tied back in a braid. She sat on the rocks in her low-heeled boots, her work-worn hands curled in her lap as if to catch something. She lifted her head and closed her eyes, and smelled the salty breeze with such a look of perfect, serene satisfaction on her face that I was almost jealous.

  I asked her then why she stayed in Rothewell, where she cleaned up after a stranger’s family, where the ghosts walked at night and scared the children. A place full of half-seen shadows and half-heard voices, creaks just around the corner, the faint thump of footsteps. Even then I knew there were too many ghosts in Rothewell, even for me.

  “Because it’s beautiful,” she said simply, and then she opened her eyes and looked at me. “This place dreams,” she said. “It dreams.”

  Well, there. I’ve given you one of my memories of her after all. You should have one, at least; please take care of it. The rest I will take with me when I die.

  I’m sorry I can’t leave you more.

  I haven’t the strength to read this letter over again, but if it sounds self-pitying, it isn’t meant to. It’s strange to think of you reading this after I’m dead. I don’t know how I died in the end, but I do already know why I was alive in the first place. I did some good in my life, and I eased some suffering, and I had you. And I find that is more than enough to justify all of it.

  Respectfully,

  Toby Leigh

  Twenty-nine

  I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope with numb fingers.

  Mr. Reed, seeing me finish, patted his pockets and produced the same clean handkerchief he’d offered me once before. I was about to refuse it when I realized that I did, in fact, need it this time. I dried my face and handed it back to him.

  “Is there anything else?” I managed.

  “There’s the will,” he said, folding the little square of fabric and carefully returning it to his pocket. “He’s left you everything he has, as it happens. It isn’t much. It may be for you to dispose of, as much as anything. But he did have some rather expensive ghost-hunting equipment, which is also yours.”

  “What am I to do with a galvanoscope?” I asked.

  “Um. That is rather a good question to which I don’t directly have the answer. He had a sum of money in the bank, no stocks or bonds, and no capital property. I don’t want to give the impression that you’re about to become an independently wealthy young woman.”

  “I understand,” I said. My adoptive parents had always been perfectly able to take care of me—part of the reason, of course, why they had raised me in the first place.

  “There is a photograph,” said Mr. Reed. “This was specifically placed with the will.” He held out another envelope. I opened it.

  In the photograph it was a summer day, the sunlight bright on the two captured figures. They stood in a field somewhere—off behind the church, perhaps, though I couldn’t be sure. Toby stood on the left, young and slender, his hair combed fancifully back, wearing a tweed coat and vest and a cap with a peaked brim. He squinted a little into the camera, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He was leaning toward his companion, his shoulder barely brushing hers, but his entire body slanted in her direction, as if she drew him like a magnet. The smile on his face was purely happy.

  Elizabeth Winstone was wearing a faded dress with a Peter Pan collar and a line of pretty ruffles on the bodice, a dress she had likely hand-sewn for herself, and it fit her perfectly. She had thick dark hair, pulled back in a loose braid from which curls escaped in the warm wind. Her hands were clasped demurely in front of her waist, but the camera had captured the second her attempt at a dignified expression had given way, and her features had just loosened into the beginning of a laugh. Her shoulders were flexed up slightly as if trying to keep it in, but her big eyes were alight with joy and her beautiful mouth was breaking into a headlong smile. Toby, I think, had just said something funny, and she simply couldn’t help it.

  I looked at her for a long time, trying to peer into the mystery of her. I was beginning to make peace with the fact that Toby was my father; I had known him a little, after all, and I’d always considered him blood. But this young woman, this seventeen-year-old near-illiterate maid, was a mystery, and she always would be. What had she wanted? What had been her hopes and dreams? Had she ever regretted giving up her child? Perhaps the only thing I would understand about her was her tie to this mysterious place, which seemed so alive, as if it had a will of its own. This place dreams.

  Mr. Reed was polite, but he was also human, and he was looking discreetly over my shoulder. “Miss Leigh, if I may offer some advice, I do suggest you talk to your parents as soon as you can. Find the nearest telephone and try to reach them. I think it will lay a lot of your trouble to rest if you do it.”

  I laughed, and it came out sounding less bitter than I thought it would. “Which parents? I have too many. I’d like to talk to all of them. I can’t talk to these ones, but with this place, you never know.” The thought triggered something that made me stop. “Wait. Wait a minute. Toby’s journal.” I looked up at the solicitor. “He mentioned her name.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes. He said . . . He said he had to admit that Walking John wasn’t the only reason he came back. And then he wrote her name.”

  Mr. Reed blinked, trying to follow. “Are you saying he thought that perhaps . . . her ghost?”

  He had never forgotten her; perhaps part of him had always worried about her, even in death. What if she was trapped here like the others and needed help to finally lie at rest?

  But she wasn’t here. Walking John still haunted the bay, unable to sleep. But Elizabeth, with her curly braid and her illuminating smile, was truly gone. It must have cost Toby dearly even to come here.

  Mr. Reed took the photograph from me and looked at it thoughtfully for a long moment. His expression grew solemn, his gaze distant as he stared at the small square of pape
r. He seemed to collect himself before he handed it back. “My wife died in Malta in the war,” he said. “She was nursing. She was killed by a shell. It was a week before I even knew.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, thinking of the first time I had met him, when I’d assumed he’d be going home to his wife and children. Assumptions are always so very, very foolish.

  The solicitor nodded. “Nancy, her name was. She was so excited to go. Even after she’d seen war, cleaned up the bodies and lived in a tent with no water and driven ambulances through the mud—even then, her letters home glowed with purpose, an understanding of why she’d been put on this earth. I was stuck in an office in Athens at the time, of all places, trying to get supplies to our men in North Africa. I thought perhaps I’d get leave and we’d see each other. But it wasn’t to be. At least it was quick, or so I’ve been told.” He smoothed his hand along the crisp seam of his trouser leg. “I’ve often thought of going there since. Not to look for her ghost specifically, but for some trace of her. Anything at all. Just something of my Nancy. So, as strange as it is, I believe I understand why your uncle came here.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He looked at me and managed a smile. “We’ll be in touch when you get back to Oxford, then.”

  “All right.”

  He rose and strode back through the debris to his motorcar, and I watched him go as I held the letter in one hand and the photograph in the other.

  • • •

  I couldn’t find anything to tie around Poseidon and use as a lead, but I didn’t need one. When I started down the lane toward William’s house, calling softly to the dog, he obediently got up from his spot in the garden and trotted along at my heels. I stuffed my hands in the pockets of the coat I’d put on and trusted him to keep following.