Lost Among the Living

by Simone St. James

I fled down the corridor, making my footsteps as soft as I could, as if the dead girl could hear me. I was on the landing leading to my room before I realized I was still holding the photographs. I had turned to the third picture, but I hadn’t looked at it. I looked at it now and stopped, a soft sob of agony in my throat.

  It was the picture from my London flat—the one Alex had seen when he’d come to my place that fateful day, the one of me posed for Mother’s artist friends in nothing but a draped Greek chiton. I had last seen it when I’d packed it in my trunk on my way to the Continent. As far as I knew until this moment, it was in that trunk still.

  I turned it over. On the back was a now-familiar lettering in pencil.

  Where is your Mother?

  I put the photographs in my pocket quickly, unable to look anymore. That picture had come to this house when I did—and yet I had found it on Frances’s bookshelf, tied with a ribbon, inscribed with a message. It was tangible, real.

  From downstairs, I heard voices—the Forsyth family had finished dinner and were going their separate ways. I listened as one door closed and then another. When I heard Martin’s steps slowly ascending the stairs, heading for his bedroom, I went into my room and closed the door.

  But for Frances, I was alone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Robert was right about one thing: Something had Dottie excited. It wasn’t just the fact that she sold two paintings over the next few days—at a considerable profit, as I was in a position to know—though that was part of it. “You see, Manders,” she said pointedly as she entered the amounts in her massive, detailed accounts book, “this is the benefit of a little avarice.”

  She was gleeful about the money, of course, but there was something else she wouldn’t tell me. She’d give me her suspicious, narrow-eyed looks and dismiss me early: “We’re finished, Manders. Go away.” I was no longer allowed to go through her correspondence, and once I even caught her using that most hated instrument, the telephone.

  “You can tell me, you know,” I said to her, exasperated at last. “I’m quite capable of being rational.”

  “In good time,” Dottie said. “Things are delicate at the moment, and I must handle them myself.”

  I couldn’t help it. “Is she pretty, at least?”

  She pressed her lips together, but she considered the question. “Men put far too much importance on beauty,” she said at last.

  “Oh, no.” I groaned. “Please tell me that money isn’t the only factor you’re considering. Tell me she’s kind. He deserves someone kind.”

  “Then you should have married him yourself,” Dottie snapped back. “It would have been perfect. You had every opportunity.”

  I stood and put the cover over my typewriter, since she had dismissed me for the day. “I’m already married,” I said.

  “Manders,” she said, in a tone that warned me I was going to hate whatever came next. “You are capable of thinking clearly from time to time, but in this matter a more sentimental idiot I have never known. If the War Office never gave you a death certificate, you should have pressed them to give you one. A sensible girl needs a widow’s pension and the freedom to marry another husband, or she may as well walk into the Thames.”

  “Thank you for the insight,” I said coldly, “but I’m afraid I’m not capable of avarice when it comes to my husband’s disappearance.”

  “That makes you poor, not morally superior,” Dottie replied, “as I’d have told you from the first if you’d asked me.”

  I left without saying much further, but I wondered—was that what Dottie wanted? For me to ask her advice? I dismissed the idea as preposterous. I was her paid companion and favorite outlet for her disappointments, nothing more.

  I wrote Colonel Mabry, care of his hotel in the village, and made my request for Alex’s records. I received a brief reply stating that he would do what he could for me, though he feared I would be disappointed in the results. It seemed he thought a lady had no use for a war record. I thanked him and asked him to write me when he had an update.

  That night, when I finally slept, I dreamed again, vivid and wild. I was in the woods, in the cold, the frost cracking beneath my feet. My hands and toes ached; my lips would not move. Through the trees, splitting the black, cold air, came a whistle: high, faint yet disturbingly shrill. She’s calling him, a voice in my mind said. She’s calling him. It’s time to run.

  I turned, though I did not know which direction to take. Still, I tried to move, my legs pushing slowly as the whistle died off far behind me. Something would come now, something would move through the trees, large and vicious—her dog, her protector. Princer. I tried and tried to run.

  But the footsteps that approached behind me were human.

  Look at me, Jo, said Alex.

  I put my hands to my ears to block him out, kept my gaze forward. Still I could hear his footsteps, his voice.

  Martin was wrong. Alex’s voice sliced the frigid air. There was blood in the cockpit. Blood and brains. Turn around, Jo, and look at me.

  I could not shake him. I tried to run harder, but my motions slowed as if I stood in quicksand. I tried to sob, but only a dry sound came from my throat. And somewhere off in the woods, the trees shook. Something large was coming.

  Look at me, Jo, Alex said again and again as the thing came closer. Look at me. Look at me—

  I jerked awake, gasping for air, my hands over my ears as I lay in bed. I was cold, horribly cold, my fingers and toes numb as they had been in the dream. A clock chimed downstairs, the sound distant and dreary. Far off outside the window a dog was barking in a deep, throaty voice that echoed through the trees.

  Gripping my twisted blankets in fingers that could not feel, I turned to my side and drew my knees up. My hair was damp and chill. I’m tired of this, I thought dully. I’m so tired of the fear, of the pain.

  Forget.

  Where is your Mother?

  I blinked as my eyes discerned something in the darkness. Alex’s camera case stood in the middle of the bedroom floor, shrouded in shadow, its lid open. When I had gone to sleep, it had been in its place against the wall next to the wardrobe, closed.

  I stared at it for a long time, my eyes aching and dry.

  Come back to me, Alex.

  He never would. He would haunt me for the rest of my life, tearing me apart by day and stalking after me, bloody and broken, in my dreams.

  Come home.

  Dawn light began to tinge the room, and I sat up, swinging my stiff legs out of the bed. I needed to move. Anything would be preferable to this.

  I dressed quickly, then closed the camera case—the surface of the leather was chilled—and picked it up. I picked up the tripod in my other hand.

  In for a penny, in for a pound.

  I left the house and walked into the woods.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Thirty minutes later, I stood on a tree-lined lane to the east of Wych Elm House, adjusting the camera on the tripod. There was frost on the ground and the wind bit my skin, but the sting of the cold had helped dissipate the nightmare and settle my mind.

  I had found a pretty view on a back road on the border of the neighboring property, a rustic path beneath a proscenium of thick autumn trees. I had set up the camera on the tripod and was tinkering with it, trying to get the best view before the sun rose too high. It was six thirty in the morning, and I was due to report to Dottie at eight.

  I had not forgotten that the children of Anningley were afraid to play in these woods, claiming that Frances and Princer haunted them. I had seen a mist under the trees from my window, and I had sometimes heard the throaty bark that did not sound exactly like a dog. Yet still I was here, alone, as the sun came up and traced an edge on the night’s chill. It was an act of desperation, an act of exhaustion, and something of a dare. There was no safety from ghosts in the house, after all, and t
he woods fascinated me, drew me. When I was outdoors, my stifling thoughts lost some of their stranglehold on my brain.

  To my surprise, the faint hum of a motorcar broke the silence, the only man-made sound in the quiet of dawn. I pulled myself away from the camera’s viewfinder and turned toward the sound, which came from somewhere near the house. The motor stopped, and after a moment I saw a figure approach me, coming down the lane. I recognized it instantly, and I watched with wariness as it came closer.

  “Good morning,” Robert said, his long wool coat flapping in the autumn wind. “I saw you from the bend just over there, through a gap in the trees as I drove by.”

  I did not reply. He wore the same suit as last night, now rumpled. I knew that he’d left shortly after the family finished dinner. So he hadn’t been to bed, then—at least not his own bed.

  “You look disapproving,” Robert said. In the growing light, I could see the harsh lines of dissipation on his face, the pouchy aftereffects of a night of drinking. “Don’t act such a prude, Mrs. Manders.”

  I turned away and looked through my lens again.

  He seemed to take this as an invitation, and stood behind my shoulder. I could smell stale smoke on him. “Do you know, Mrs. Manders, that you’ve been living at the house for weeks, yet this is the first time we’ve been alone together? When I saw you just now, it occurred to me that this is an excellent opportunity for you and me to talk.”

  I thought of Dottie’s words to me on the drive here. He will tell you his behavior does not matter. Do not believe him. I recalled the misery on her face in that moment. Robert had not made advances on me, but we had never been alone together, and his wife knew him better than I did. “I don’t see what we have to talk about,” I said. “I’m your wife’s paid companion.”

  “Oh, but you’re so much more than that. Where did you acquire the camera, by the way?”

  I pressed the shutter and captured a photo. “It was Alex’s.”

  “Was it? It’s a midwar model, unless I miss my guess. Curious that a man would buy such an expensive hobby item, then take off to fight,” he said. “Though it seems Alex had a pattern of acquiring beautiful things and leaving them behind, barely used.”

  That made me stand and stare at him, color rising to my cheeks.

  He laughed a teasing laugh. “You’re so easy to rile, you know.” He stepped closer, and I stiffened. “Are you worried, Mrs. Manders?” he asked, amused. “You needn’t be. I can see you’re truly Dottie’s creature. So am I, in fact—my nighttime wanderings are just my childish way of asserting my independence. But as you depend on your salary, so do I.”

  Dottie would tan my hide if I played into his game, and I wouldn’t blame her. “Your marriage is none of my business,” I said, choosing my words carefully and wishing he would go away.

  “Do you think I should divorce her?” he asked. I didn’t answer, and he shook his head. “Lots of people do. I admit it’s tempting, but she wouldn’t give me a penny if I left. It’s how she keeps people dancing to her tune.” He looked away, and his expression tightened. “There was a time she thought I was the handsomest man on earth. Did you know that? Even Dottie was young and foolish once. Nothing is the same as it used to be.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but I stopped as the hair on the back of my neck stood up. The wind shifted in the trees, the sibilant sound overhead suddenly loud in my ears. Behind Robert’s shoulders, a handful of leaves on the path flew upward, kicked up by a spiral of wind.

  “Here’s my advice, Mrs. Manders,” Robert said to me, his voice barely carrying against the wind and the rush of the leaves. “You’ve done well enough by marrying into this family, just as I did. The only difference is that you didn’t have to spend the next twenty-five years in misery with Alex for your pay. Now you’ve latched onto Dottie instead—a wise move. But there’s no future in it. Dottie won’t keep you past another few weeks. A smart girl like you would think ahead, take her pretty face and find another man to pay her bills—married or not.”

  It was an outrageous speech, but I barely heard it. I stared over his shoulder at the path behind him, rooted to the spot, my blood gone cold.

  Frances stood there, in the spot on the path where the leaves had kicked up. She wore her gray dress, her hair pinned up. The familiar loop of small pearls was around her throat. She watched us from the dark hollows of her eyes, her expression no longer calm, but somehow wretched with anger and despair. Her hands were loose at her sides, her buttoned boots still on the forest floor. Overhead, the wind blew the trees into a frenzy, but her hair and her dress did not move.

  “Frances,” I said, the word taken from my lips on a cold breath of wind.

  “What did you say?” Robert demanded.

  I tore my gaze from Frances to answer him, to warn him, and I saw the twisted fury and pain in his expression. And then his hand was on me, his fingers digging into the soft flesh below my jaw. There was sick exhaustion in his eyes, disappointment that ate at him like acid. “Don’t you speak her name,” he said to me, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath, the soft and pitiful degenerate gone. “That name does not pass your lips. Do you hear me?”

  I jerked back, startled. “I’m—I’m sorry—”

  He pushed me, his hand shoving me backward in a single motion that snapped my head back and sent me stumbling. I nearly unbalanced into the camera and tripod, my feet seeking purchase on the uneven path. I righted myself with a wrench and felt a stab of pain through my back and up my side.

  “That was a warning,” Robert said darkly. “I’ve half a mind to do more, but I’m too tired this morning. If you say her name again, whatever I do is your fault. Remember that.”

  I put a hand to my face and looked past his shoulder, but Frances was gone. I stood shivering on the path, my breath burning in my throat, as he turned and walked away from me, unseeing, striding directly through the place where his daughter had stood not a minute before.

  I stood on the path for a long time, the camera forgotten, until the sun was high overhead. When I stopped shaking, I gathered the camera and put it in its case. The leather felt like cold skin under my fingertips; I barely wanted to touch it, and I thought I might never use the camera again.

  I folded the tripod and pressed my hands to my eyes. Ghosts, I thought. I am living with ghosts.

  Eventually, I picked up the equipment and walked on shaking legs back to the house, getting myself together so that Dottie would not see my fear.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I hope you haven’t wasted your time,” Colonel Mabry said. “I did warn you that this might be a futile exercise.”

  We were in the small sitting room at the inn in Anningley, where a serving girl was laying out a tray of tea. It was early in the afternoon, a week after my encounter with Robert, and the taproom of the inn was deserted. Still, the colonel had taken a private room for us, which was furnished with a table, a few overstuffed chairs, and a mismatched cherry sideboard. Colonel Mabry was dressed in a three-piece suit of formal gray, his white shirt crisp, his tie knotted to perfection, and his distinguished hair brushed back from his temples. It was the immaculate appearance of a career military man.

  I glanced at Martin, who had accompanied me. “I’m sure it won’t be a waste,” I said politely. “I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

  Colonel Mabry grunted and gestured for me to sit. “I’ve received a copy of your husband’s file from the War Office,” he said. “It’s very slender, as I suspected it would be. I had them send it to me for you to look at, but I doubt there will be much in it of use.”

  I sat on one of the chairs, fighting to keep my legs properly crossed as I sank into the cushions, and pulled off my gloves. “May I see it?”

  Martin broke in as he claimed the chair beside mine. “Mrs. Manders is rather impatient, as you can imagine, sir,” he said. “I’m sur
e you’ve dealt with widows before.”

  The colonel looked at Martin, taking in every detail in a glance. He did not see me bite back a retort to Martin’s condescending remark. “You served, Mr. Forsyth.” It was not a question.

  “Yes, sir.” Martin wore a suit today, a jacket of checked wool over a stylish waistcoat, but his painful thinness altered the effect of the clothes. He had slicked down his hair and combed it back from his forehead, which made him look disconcertingly adult, like a man instead of a boy just out of his sickroom. Yet his chair nearly swallowed him, and his knobby hands gripped the arms.

  “Air, ground, or sea?” the colonel asked.

  “Ground, sir,” Martin replied. “Artillery. I spent most of my time on the Marne.”

  “Difficult fighting there,” the colonel commented. He picked up a leather briefcase and opened it, taking his time, my female presence completely forgotten in this male exchange. “I traveled through there in May 1916, and again just before the end of the war. It’s still abandoned, or so I hear.” He glanced up briefly. “Did you take an injury?”

  “Shrapnel, sir.”

  “I see. To the stomach?”

  Martin looked surprised. “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel shook his head. With what seemed excruciating slowness, he found a particular envelope in his briefcase and began to extract it. “I don’t have second sight, Mr. Forsyth. I’ve just seen the effects of shrapnel wounds to the stomach a number of times. You’re lucky you survived. Most of the men I saw with such an injury lived barely a week, and it was a mercy by the end.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I resisted the urge to fidget in my seat. Martin was only doing his part; I had known that military small talk would make the meeting go more smoothly. But still I wished they would get on with it. I looked at the envelope in the colonel’s hand—Alex’s file—as if I could read through the thick, creamy paper.

  “How much do you know of Mr. Manders’s death?” the colonel asked Martin.