Lost Among the Living

by Simone St. James

  The taproom was doing brisk business, many of the men from town huddled over their drinks, happy to get out of the windy cold and sit by the fireplace, where a blaze had been lit. I pulled off my gloves as Alex took my arm and led me to the large, scarred bar and helped me onto a stool.

  He ordered us each a beer, making sure to request the dark bitter I liked, then turned and gave me a shrug. “It’s been a long day, and I think we’ll need it.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  He did not take a seat, but leaned on the bar next to me, gracefully propped on one elbow. He removed his hat and ran a hand quickly through his hair. “I’m not entirely sure how to go about this,” he said. “I don’t want to be too obvious.”

  “I don’t think she’s in the room,” I told him, sipping the beer that the bartender had slid in front of me. “There’s only one serving woman here, and she’s past forty. Too old to be the wife of a man of army age.”

  “Perhaps George Sanders married an older woman,” Alex said, though I could tell he agreed with me.

  “Unlikely,” I replied calmly. “Did you find it strange that the innkeeper’s wife knew who the Sanderses were but not that George Sanders has disappeared?”

  Alex sipped his own beer, his gaze seeming to rest on me, though I knew there was no detail of the room around us that he’d missed. “Either she hasn’t told anyone, or George Sanders was the kind of man no one cares to ask after.”

  I ran a thumb up the side of my glass. “Or a combination of both. It’s possible she hasn’t been very vocal about it,” I said. “People may think he left her.”

  He gave me a long look. “Would that also be why she hasn’t reported his disappearance to the police?”

  “Perhaps she has,” I replied. “But the police would assume a man like that simply walked away by choice, that she must have done something to provoke him. Women don’t have a great many choices in such situations.”

  He looked uncomfortable and a little sad. “I tried to leave you taken care of until I got back, you know. Instead I left you in a hell of a mess.”

  I looked up at him. “It’s over,” I said. “And I think Alice Sanders just came into the room.”

  A woman had just entered through the door from the kitchen, carrying two bowls of soup. She was thirtyish, rounded and ruddy, her brown hair tied up under a scarf. She could have been any woman in England, except for the bruised pouches of skin beneath her eyes that betrayed sleeplessness. She set down the soup bowls at a table with barely a glance at her customers, then turned away. I thought I might recognize her figure as the one I’d seen leaving our terrace, but I couldn’t be sure.

  The woman walked past us, and Alex said softly, “Madam, I beg your pardon.”

  She stopped and turned, as everyone did when Alex used that particular quiet tone of voice. “I’ll serve you in a moment,” she said. “Or call the other girl.”

  “I believe it’s you I’m here to see,” Alex said, still leaning casually on the bar. “I’ve been sent here on a certain private matter by Mr. Martin Forsyth.”

  The woman’s eyes widened, and I knew instantly she was truly Alice Sanders. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m not the police,” he said, his voice so low no one could overhear. “I’m Mr. Forsyth’s cousin, Alex Manders, and this is my wife. Mr. Forsyth has authorized me to act on his behalf.”

  Alice looked from Alex to me and back again, her features going hard. “Martin Forsyth’s cousin is dead, or so I heard.”

  “It’s a common misunderstanding,” Alex said easily. “I’m not dead. Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

  Alice glanced at the other serving woman, then at the bartender behind the bar, and quickly brushed her palms over her apron. “Meet me out back,” she said. “I don’t have long.”

  She disappeared into the kitchen. Alex and I sipped our pints for a few more minutes—I was disappointed to let mine go, as it was bitter and delicious—and left by the front door before walking around the building to the back of the pub. The wind was blowing cold and angry now, sweeping mercilessly off the water, and Alice was huddled next to the kitchen door, her arms crossed over her ample chest, the scarf in her hair flattened to her head, her features set in a hard scowl.

  “I said everything I have to say to that man,” she said as we came in range. “I’m owed money, and that’s all. If you’re here to negotiate a lower price, I’ll not listen.”

  Alex had put his hat back on, and he maneuvered closer to the wall to avoid the gusts that would blow it off again. “I’m not here to negotiate,” he said in a flat tone he had not used inside. “I’m here to ask how you know it was your husband who died in those woods.”

  “It was him. He left that morning, and he wouldn’t say where he was going, and then that girl died and they found a body. He never came home again. It was him.”

  “Not good enough, Mrs. Sanders. Not for a thousand pounds.”

  She hesitated. “He was mixed up with the Forsyths. That’s all I know.”

  “How could he be mixed up with the Forsyths?” Alex asked. “He hadn’t worked for them for years, and Martin Forsyth was at the Front.”

  “He told me,” she snapped. “The Forsyths owed us. That horrible old woman dismissed him, and he had no references. When he came home from the war, there were no jobs, and no one would take him. He wrote Martin for money as a fellow soldier, but Martin said no. They could have given us something. We have a little boy.”

  “And how, exactly, was he mixed up with the family?” Alex asked again.

  She paused. “He wouldn’t tell me all of it. He was very down after Martin wrote that letter—it got bad. He drank too much, stayed out all night. I didn’t want him around our son. Then one night he came home with a smile on his face, though he was still drunk. Said that he’d won, that the Forsyths would be the making of us yet.”

  “The making of you? What does that mean?”

  “I guessed it meant money, but George was cagey about it. He said he had one task to do, and then we’d have more money than we’d ever thought possible.”

  “What was the task?” I asked.

  Alice Sanders looked at me, taking in my decent clothes and my new hat and gloves, and looked away again. “He never said.”

  “But you know.” I stepped closer to her.

  “I told you, he never said.”

  I stepped closer again. A queer sort of anger was rising at the back of my throat at the thoughts that were crossing my mind. “You know,” I said, the wind carrying my words away, over the ocean. “Someone paid him to kill Frances Forsyth, isn’t that it? Someone offered him a lot of money for it. You knew it then, and you know now. You even condone it.”

  “I didn’t know then,” Alice shot back at me. “I only knew when she died. That was when I figured it out. You can look down your nose at me all you like, but at least I don’t belong to a family that would pay someone to kill one of its own.”

  “No,” I said, fighting anger. “You belong to a family that would do the killing for money.”

  “It was a mercy.” Alice Sanders’s voice was cold as ice. “She was mad anyway. What kind of life was she ever going to have? She couldn’t marry, have children. She’d just end up in an asylum, like the rest of them do. What kind of life is that? My George would have done it quick and painless, and she’d never know a thing. A mercy, like putting a dog down, and we’d have money for our son.”

  “Except it didn’t quite go as planned, did it?” Alex asked. The restrained anger in his eyes reflected my own. “He went to the woods to do the job, but something killed him instead. The dog didn’t get put down.”

  “It’s unnatural, that’s what it is,” said Alice. Her cheeks were flushed despite the cold wind. “That girl was not only mad, but she was some kind of witch. She summoned
a beast to kill my husband. When I read about what had been done to the man they found—what kind of wounds he had—” She stopped, swallowed. “He was in pieces. Something ripped him open from head to toe. They never identified him, but I knew it was him. He got a telephone call early that morning, and then he left without a word, and he didn’t come home. At first I didn’t realize what had happened, but when I saw the article in the newspaper, I knew. The Forsyths killed my husband.” She looked at my shocked, outraged expression, her eyes tired and hostile as the wind tried to tear the scarf from her hair. “That girl jumped. Maybe she felt guilty about George. I don’t know, and I don’t care. All I know is that George is gone, and the money never came. I can tell by the look of you that you don’t have a child. If you did, you’d think differently of me.”

  “Enough,” Alex said calmly. “We don’t have more time to waste. Mrs. Sanders, we need to know exactly who hired your husband. Who contacted him and promised him the money? Who made the telephone call that morning?”

  But she shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  It was the truth. If Alice Sanders had known who to blackmail, she wouldn’t have contacted Martin. She’d likely tried him because of George’s letter, and she thought he’d be the easiest touch now that he was home.

  Alex must have known the hopelessness of it, but still he pressed her. “George gave you no clue?” he asked. “There’s nothing you can remember?”

  “There’s nothing,” she replied coldly. “It was you yourself, for all I know. Everyone in that family is the same to me. I have to go back inside now. What are you going to do about my money?”

  “I will speak to the Forsyths about it,” Alex told her. “I’m their representative in this matter. You’ll be hearing from me very soon.”

  We made the miserable walk back to the inn in silence, clamping our hats down in the wind, hunching beneath our coats. Rain had begun, but our lack of an umbrella made no difference—any umbrella would have been turned into useless metal and cloth within minutes. There was no way we could talk easily in such weather, and in any case, neither of us wanted to discuss what we’d just heard. What Alice Sanders had told us was too upsetting to speak of.

  We arrived cold and wet back at the inn, and found that we were the only patrons. The innkeeper had built up a hearth fire in the main room, and we took off our coats and hats and pulled up two chairs, soaking up the dry warmth. My hands were chilled through despite my gloves, as were my knees and my feet. We refused food, but the innkeeper brought us each a brandy, which he set on the small table between us before leaving us alone.

  We sat contemplating the flames for a while as the wind howled in the windowpanes. I patted my hair, which was coming disastrously loose from its pins, then gave up hope and put my hands back in my lap.

  “He could have done it,” I said at last. “George Sanders could have come into the house and killed her, then been killed while he was escaping. Dottie heard a sound at the back of the house. It could have been him, entering or leaving.”

  “It’s possible,” Alex said. “His body wasn’t found until hours later. There’s no way to pinpoint exactly when he died.”

  “It could have been after Frances died, then,” I said.

  “Or we’re both wrong, and she jumped,” he replied.

  “No,” I said. I thought of the things rearranged in my room, the photographs, Fran walking to the door to the roof, the sketchbook in my bed. It had been terrifying at the time, but now I saw that it was desperate and sad. “She didn’t jump.”

  Alex turned to me. “We have to face it, Jo. If she didn’t jump, someone close pushed her from the roof. Her mother, her father, David Wilde. Someone she knew well enough, trusted well enough, to follow all the way to the roof without screaming for help.”

  “She may not have followed willingly,” I said. “She could have been threatened, drugged, or knocked unconscious.”

  “It was all so bloody fast,” Alex said. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “What a mess,” he said. He rubbed his hands over his eyes, and I saw that he was more tired than even I’d realized. “I’ll find a way to solve this.”

  I looked at him for a long time. Even tired and ragged as he was, even after everything that had happened, it was a pleasure to contemplate Alex. He had removed his jacket, and I watched the curve of his back as it flickered in the firelight, the line of his shoulders, and once again I knew what I had first understood that day in 1914: I was horribly, irrevocably in love with him. This time, the thought did not bring the same pain.

  I stood from my chair and, without regard to anyone who might come into the room, I sat in his lap. I hooked my legs over his long, strong ones and put my arms around his neck, leaning my shoulder in to him and letting my cheek drop against his collar.

  His hand touched my back, but I felt his body tense beneath me. “Jo,” he said, “do not tease me.”

  I raised my head and spoke into his ear, holding him tighter and turning my body to press more snugly against his. “Fine,” I said. “I won’t. Just tell me whether Hans Faber had any girlfriends.”

  He sighed in surrender. “No, you idiot,” he replied, pulling pins from my tangled hair. “He lived like a monk.”

  “I know you,” I said. “That sounds difficult.”

  “It was easy.”

  I paused at that as my heart skipped a beat. Then I gave him a succession of soft kisses along his jaw. “I think we should go and make proper use of our room,” I told him, the taste of his skin on my lips. “That is, if you remember what to do?”

  He turned my face to his and kissed me, slowly and thoroughly, until my blood was singing. I knew all of Alex’s kisses, and this one was full of very serious intent.

  We went upstairs. It turned out that neither of us had forgotten a thing. And for all the hours afterward, as the storm blew in from the sea, we pretended we were the only two people in the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  We set out for Wych Elm House the next morning, over roads strewn with branches and ruts puddled with rain. The sky was sleek gray, the wind nasty and chill, and even in Alex’s modern motorcar we could not get entirely warm, the winter cold creeping into our hands and feet.

  We were silent during the drive. It was one of those long-married stretches of quiet during which there was no need for us to speak. Alex kept his gaze on the road, watching for the next obstacle through the gloom. I sat with the map unfolded and unread in my lap, my hair tucked under my cloche cap, my gloved hands idle as I watched the landscape out the window.

  I was happy—of course I was happy—but I couldn’t help the dread that settled on me the longer we drove. It was like the feeling I’d had at the engagement party when I’d noticed that all of the family was gone from the room. As we followed the winding road bringing us closer and closer to Wych Elm House, I couldn’t shake the instinct that something was terribly awry. Alex seemed to feel the same way, and as we traveled, his expression grew more grim and he pressed the accelerator, pushing the car to go faster.

  We arrived in Anningley around time for luncheon, but neither of us wanted to stop and eat. “Let’s press on,” I said.

  “I’d like to make one stop,” Alex replied.

  He drove us to the little cottage that belonged to Petra Jennings. Anningley was strangely quiet, and we saw only a handful of people, as if everyone had decided to stay inside out of the cold. The effect was eerie, and only added to my alarm. Perhaps Alex had additional questions for Petra Jennings. Whatever his aim, I hoped he would do it quickly so we could continue up the road.

  But he did not get to perform his plan at all. When we approached Miss Jennings’s cottage, we found it shut and dark, the curtains drawn over the windows. Alex got out of the car and I watched him knock at the door, then make a quick circuit of th
e building, looking through the cracks between the curtains.

  “She’s gone,” he said to me when he got back into the motorcar, bringing a breath of icy air with him. “The place is packed up. The clothes are gone from the kitchen, the iron and board, everything. It looks like she plans to be away for a while.”

  I stared at the dark cottage, my dread increasing. What had made Petra Jennings pack up over the course of a single night and leave her home? Where had she gone? Had something frightened her? Had she even left by her own choice? I glanced up her quiet street and saw a curtain twitch in one of the neighbors’ windows.

  “Please, Alex,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  He only nodded and started the motorcar again.

  The road to Wych Elm House had lost the last of its autumn luster and turned from the final red-brown tints of fall to the defeated gray, drained of color, that signaled the waning half of November. The storm had blown through here, too, stripping the trees of their last leaves and exposing branches stark to the bleached sky. As I watched the landscape, my heart started a slow acceleration in my chest, a mix of horrid anticipation and fear. I half expected to see Frances Forsyth appear from a swirl of leaves, her massive dog following at her heels. These were her woods.

  “You told me that first night,” Alex said, reading my mind, “that you’ve seen the dog.”

  I blinked and saw the beast’s horrid underside as it leaped over me, reeking of blood. “His name is Princer,” I said. “He protects her.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Martin spoke of it,” he said. “That first night I was back, after I left you. Frances wrote to him about Princer, how he came through the door to protect her. He burned the letters.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because he is not sure how long he will live, and he didn’t want anyone to find the letters in his belongings after he’s gone. He felt that the things Frances told him in her madness were private.”

  So that was why he had burned them, then. I wondered if he would tell Cora. “Everyone believes Frances imagined Princer,” I said, “that she conjured him to make herself feel safe, especially after her experience at school. But she summoned him when I was taking pictures in the woods. I saw—something. Him.” I blinked and turned away from him, staring hard out the window. “It felt very real,” I said. “Perhaps I’m as mad as Frances was. But I saw it. I smelled it.”