Lost Among the Living

by Simone St. James

  He would have had to look at her, dead on the flagstones, and cover her up until the police came. It did not bear thinking of, but I had to be hard-hearted. “That’s our list of suspects, then,” I said. “Dottie, Robert, the servants, the man in the woods, you. The only person we can rule out safely is Martin, because he was in France.”

  “No,” Alex said. “We cannot rule out Martin.” He glanced at me. “If you can be cold, then so can I. If Martin wished his sister dead from his hospital bed in France, then he could have hired someone. He certainly had the means.”

  “That makes no sense,” I said. “He loved her.” But I remembered Cora telling me that Martin had burned all of the letters Frances sent to him at the Front during the war. Why would he do that?

  “Love and murder go together more often than you think,” Alex replied. “And you have left out one other person. By coincidence, here he comes now.”

  I looked ahead. Approaching us through the rain was a familiar figure, his shriveled arm pinned into the sleeve of his mackintosh. “That’s Mr. Wilde.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I had no chance to ask Alex what he meant, as Mr. Wilde was close enough to hear. “Mrs. Manders,” he greeted me. He turned to Alex. “Mr. Manders. What a pleasure to see you home from the war. Mrs. Forsyth telephoned me this morning with the news.”

  “That was quick of her,” said Alex.

  “I am closely concerned with the Forsyths’ business.” I wondered at the distinct coolness between them as Mr. Wilde turned to me. “Mrs. Manders, you look well this morning. I quite enjoyed our dance last night. You dance elegantly.”

  David Wilde was shorter than Alex, darker of complexion, and older—though the gray in his hair exaggerated the effect, and I had felt for myself his strength when I’d danced with him. With his deformed hand clad, as before, in its gray glove at the end of his sleeve, he looked distinguished, though I noticed that the villagers around us did not look at him as they passed. I recalled how tipsy I’d been in his grasp the night before, his one hand on my waist.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You were very kind.”

  “You seem to be having a leisurely morning,” Alex said to Mr. Wilde. “Not particularly busy today?”

  “I find taking walks refreshing,” Mr. Wilde replied. “My days are very quiet, as I have explained to Mrs. Manders.” He bowed slightly, the tilt of his head almost sarcastic. “It’s good to see a true, honest-to-goodness war hero come home, Mr. Manders. I wish you good day.”

  “What in the world did I just witness?” I asked Alex when he was out of earshot again.

  “How much do you know of David Wilde?” he asked in return, his expression blankly grim.

  “Hardly anything.”

  “Then you know about as much as the rest of us. He’s only been Aunt Dottie’s solicitor for five years, since her last one died and he took over the practice. There are conflicting stories of where he came from, and he seems to have no other clients.” He glanced at me. “He’s a womanizer.”

  I looked at him openmouthed. “You can’t possibly know that. And he has a wife.”

  “I’m a man, so yes I do. And marriage has nothing to do with womanizing, though few people have ever seen the elusive Mrs. Wilde.”

  “Dottie trusts him,” I said.

  “Perhaps she does, but I don’t, and he knows it. He was at Wych Elm House that day, meeting with Aunt Dottie about business matters.”

  I frowned. “But Dottie said she was on the terrace when it happened. She thought she heard a sound.”

  “And Wilde was sitting in the library, waiting for her to return, or so he says. There was no one in the room with him when Franny died.”

  I pressed a damp, gloved hand to my forehead, under the brim of my hat. “This is terrible,” I said. “I thought there would be too few suspects to make a convincing case for murder. Now I find there are too many. I think I am the only person we can safely say could not possibly have murdered your cousin.”

  “I still haven’t convinced you that I didn’t do it, have I?” Alex said. “Do you trust me so little?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that. I’ve known this would happen since I saw your face that day in Victoria Station, when I left you alone, sick with influenza.”

  I recoiled away from him, moving out from under the umbrella and into the rain. I’d never told him about the influenza. “I had a cold,” I said.

  “No,” Alex said, his voice going dark and bleak. “You didn’t. You had influenza. I knew it when I looked at your face, when I felt the fever burning you up.” We had stopped walking, and he stepped closer to me, looked down at me with his features hard and unforgiving. “Do you understand? That is the sort of husband you chose. A man who could walk away and leave you in a crowded train station, suffering from a deadly illness, so he could return to the Front as a German. A man who did not defy his orders to send you a single telegram or make a single phone call to end your misery. No wonder you aren’t happier to see me.”

  “Stop it,” I said. He was in the grip of that icy anger again, the unfamiliar despair that I had seen last night. “You said yourself you’d have been shot for treason.”

  He took my arm, his grip solid, though even in his rage he did not hurt me. “Our business is done here,” he said. “I think we’ve put on enough of a display for the village of Anningley, don’t you? Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  After a quick supper, bolted in the kitchen to avoid Alex and the family in the dining room, I was on my way to the stairs when I heard low, whispered voices. I detoured down the corridor and looked through the open door of the morning room.

  Martin stood framed in the doorway to the terrace, his back to me. The French door was open, and he was leaning out, speaking in harsh undertones to someone outside. I could not hear the words, but the hostility in his voice made me stop, surprised. From the darkness outside, a woman’s voice answered, low and angry.

  “Go,” Martin said.

  I saw a shape through the window—a woman in a dark skirt and coat, retreating. Martin straightened and moved to close the door. I took a step back to turn and leave.

  “Cousin Jo,” he said.

  I stopped still.

  He latched the French door shut and turned to me. The rising moonlight was behind him, casting shadows, but I could see that he gave me an apologetic smile. “Well,” he said, “here we are. I assumed you’d be at supper with all the others tonight, now that Alex is home. But it looks like you avoided it, like me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s quite all right.” He came toward me. “I’m on my way back upstairs, and I’m not feeling well. Do you think you could accompany me?”

  “Yes, of course.” I took his arm, which felt like a matchstick inside the sleeve of the loose sweater he wore. “You should eat something.”

  “Not possible,” he said as we moved out the doorway and down the hall. “I’m not improving, Cousin. That’s the truth of it.” He was quiet for a long moment as we began to ascend the stairs. “I suppose you’re wondering who she was.”

  “It’s none of my business,” I replied.

  “Still, it looks very bad.” He gripped the stair railing with one thin hand and pulled himself up the steps. “The fact is, she’s the wife of a man who used to work here.”

  “I see,” I said, though I didn’t see much of anything.

  “He wasn’t here long,” Martin said, keeping his gaze on the stairs in front of him. His jaw was set tight, either in pain or in reluctance to tell the story. “He was one of the gardeners. He was a drunk, unreliable, given to fits of anger. Mother sacked him after a few weeks.”

  “This must have been some time ago,” I said. The gardens were overgrown now, though Dottie had hired someone to try to tame them since her return.
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  “Near the beginning of the war, yes. The fellow didn’t take it well, but like most of us, he enlisted. He must have heard that I had enlisted as well, because while I was in the hospital he had the audacity to write me a letter, complaining about Mother’s treatment of him and asking for money.” He took a deep breath. “There,” he said as we crossed the landing and started upward again. “I’ve just told you something I’ve never told another soul. I think I might confess all of my crimes before I die.”

  “Stop talking like that,” I said.

  “Come now, Cousin,” he replied. “We both know if I make it to the wedding it will be a miracle. I feel bad for Mother, because she’s putting so much energy into planning the thing. And Cora, of course. But she and I have come to an understanding.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” I said. “The doctors—”

  “I don’t want to talk about doctors,” he interrupted. “Wouldn’t you like to hear the story about the gardener?”

  “All right. Go on.”

  He sighed. “He sent me a letter. He said he’d been injured in the war and been sent home. He could no longer work. Ours was the last job he’d had, and he’d been sacked unfairly, he said, with no references. He appealed to me as a fellow soldier for money. I thought the entire plea was absurd, and I was in my own hell. I wrote him back and said no.”

  “I see,” I said. This was going somewhere, and I thought I could begin to glimpse where. We reached the top of the stairs and started down the corridor to Martin’s room. “And does the story end there?”

  “I thought it did. I certainly never heard from him again. But I just learned tonight that the story didn’t stop there at all.” His breath was rasping from exertion on the stairs; he was in much worse shape than he’d been the day he came home, his features lined with pain. “The man’s wife just paid me a visit, as you see. She says he disappeared after coming home in August of 1917 and she hasn’t seen him since. She believes him dead.”

  I stopped in front of his bedroom door. “The man in the woods,” I said. “The man who died the day Frances did.”

  “Exactly, Cousin Jo,” Martin replied. “Just maneuver me to the bed over there, if you would. I’ll fix the pillows. Yes, she believes her husband died in the woods that day. She’s been waiting for our family to come home so she can make her claim.”

  “Claim?”

  “Money, of course.” Martin eased back on the bed against the large stack of pillows he’d piled against the headboard. “She believes that Franny’s hellhound dog, Princer, tore her husband to pieces, and she blames our cursed family—as she called it—for his death. She wants compensation. She’s starting with me, but if I don’t pay, she’s threatening to go public.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat next to him. He had relaxed onto the bed, fully clothed, his hands on his stomach. “It’s a bluff,” I said. “If she truly wanted to go public, she could have done it any time in the past four years.”

  “I agree. So much simpler to extract money privately from the family, isn’t it? Less publicity and more profit. No risk of ridicule over claiming a fictional demon dog killed your husband.”

  “You’ll have to go to the police, the magistrate,” I said. “Now that you know the man’s identity. The authorities need to be told.”

  “Except I don’t actually know it,” he replied. “I only know his disappearance coincided with the unidentified man’s death. And even for that, I have only his wife’s word.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “Let me take care of it,” came a voice from the doorway.

  We both turned. Alex stood leaning against the doorjamb, listening, his hands jammed casually into his pockets.

  “Alex!” Martin cried happily.

  Alex turned his gaze on me. “You weren’t at supper,” he said.

  “Did you enjoy it?” I asked innocently.

  “God, no. You should have warned me. I had no idea it would be so excruciating.” His voice lowered. “Aunt Dottie told me that your mother died last week. You didn’t tell me.”

  I looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. She also told me you never come to supper.”

  I turned to Martin, and we exchanged a glance. “Martin is ill,” I explained to Alex, “and I’m just the help. We try not to go to supper if we can avoid it.”

  Alex’s voice was quietly angry. “Another fact that you helpfully did not explain to me.”

  “I say,” Martin broke in. “Is everything quite all right between you two?”

  Alex pushed off the doorjamb and came into the room. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Just keen, as your fiancée would say.”

  Martin put a hand to his forehead, like a fainting lady in a film. “Please don’t make fun of Cora,” he said. “She’s a good girl. It turns out I rather like her.”

  “Then you should be happy she went home with her parents. What has gotten into Aunt Dottie and Uncle Robert, by the way? They’re practically at each other’s throats.”

  “They’re worse than ever, I agree,” Martin said. “They’ve never thought much of each other, but Franny’s death seems to have done them in.”

  Alex stood next to my chair, took his hands from his pockets, and looked down at Martin on the bed. “Matty,” he said, “you look like hell.”

  To my surprise, Martin’s chest shook with quiet laughter. “You haven’t called me that since we were boys,” he said, looking up at Alex with the strange, complex adoration I’d seen on his face in that first moment I’d come into the parlor, a mix of love and a bitter sort of pain. “I take it you overheard what I told Cousin Jo?”

  “Enough of it.” I could feel the tension vibrating from both of them. “Leave it to me, Matty. What was the man’s name?”

  Martin seemed to hesitate, looking up into Alex’s face, but finally he spoke the words. “George Sanders,” he said. “That was the fellow. His wife’s name is Alice. She lives in Torbram.”

  “And how much money did she want?” Alex asked.

  “A thousand pounds. I told her I’d think about it. I didn’t know what else to say.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Alex said softly. “Just get some rest.” He studied Martin closely. “You’re not on anything for the pain,” he observed.

  Martin glanced at me, then looked back up at Alex. This time his laugh was bitter. “I’m afraid not, old chap.”

  Alex rocked back on his heels in comprehension. “Is there nothing that can be done?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Martin said. “I don’t care anymore, not for myself, anyway. I just want to stay around for the wedding, for Cora’s sake. She’ll be part of the family then, a married woman, and at least as a proper widow she’ll have some options.” He looked at Alex thoughtfully. “It’s the only reason I don’t ask you to get your pistol and put me out of my misery, Coz.”

  I sat in shocked silence, my stomach turning, as Alex actually seemed to consider the idea.

  “No,” he said at last.

  “You could,” Martin said to him, the words a whisper in the quiet room.

  “I could,” my husband agreed. “But I won’t.”

  They locked gazes for a long moment, and then Martin relaxed back into the pillows and closed his eyes. “Hell,” he said, the word coming out on a sigh.

  He didn’t speak again, and after a moment I felt Alex’s hand close over my wrist. His touch was warm on my cold skin. I let him pull me unresisting from my chair and lead me from the room, closing Martin’s bedroom door softly behind us.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “I can’t believe you,” I said to Alex as he led me downstairs and along the corridor to my bedroom. “That was barbaric.”

  “I said no to him,” he argued.

  “But you thought about it. You actually thought about—
about killing him to make the pain stop. Your own cousin.”

  Alex pulled me into my room and shut the door. “I repeat—I said no,” he said. “But I’d do it cleanly, and quicker than whatever is killing him.”

  “What is the matter with you?” I cried.

  He still held my wrist. He leaned in, and I could smell his scent as I felt my own pulse in my throat. “Go to war, Jo,” he said. “Go to war, and watch a man die in agony, screaming for his mother, and tell me then that death can’t be merciful.”

  I went still in his grip. “Did you kill people?” I asked him. “When you were—a German? Did you fight? Did you kill English soldiers as part of your cover?”

  His grip flinched on my wrist, his fingers flexing without thinking. “No,” he said. “My cover was as a messenger, remember? No, I didn’t fight. Not then. But I can’t speak to what I did before I became Hans Faber, Jo. Don’t ask me. I don’t much like to remember.”

  I looked into his blue eyes and held his gaze. He had always been so good at everything—he’d be good at killing, too, even if he didn’t want to be. “I did go to war,” I said. “Maybe I didn’t shoot guns or parachute out of planes, but I did go to war. I rolled bandages and I bought liberty bonds and I lined up for rationed food. And I read the casualty lists, and I waited, and I wrote the War Office and the Red Cross after the Armistice, and—and I packed your things; I put them in boxes. I—”

  “Sweetheart,” he said.

  I jerked my wrist from his grip. “You can’t understand,” I said, tears burning my eyes. “I did everything wrong, don’t you see? Mother shouldn’t have been in that place. They told me it was best, but I should have fought them. She died among strangers, alone in the middle of the night. And you . . .” I pressed my hands to my eyes as the tears fought their way down my cheeks, desperate and hot. I sat on the edge of the bed, the strength gone from my legs. “I took all of your things—your clothes, your belongings—and I got rid of them. Dottie was—she was taking me to the Continent, and I couldn’t afford the rent on the flat for the three months I would be gone, and I . . .” I heard him sigh, and I took a gasping breath as the words fought their way from my throat. “I should have known,” I said, shame burning me, “you were alive. They never found a body. I should have believed. I should have known. All of your things, I—the shirts you liked so much, the cuff links you got at Oxford, the coat you wore the day we met.”