“And what did he tell you to do?”
“Leave,” she said. “He helped us book passage back to Switzerland under assumed names, with assumed passports. He told us he would see Mikael and Papa buried, and no one would know.” And make himself a nice profit, I thought. Anna continued. “Papa had dismissed the servants, because he’d planned very carefully to kill us. There was no one to gossip. Mr. Ravell gave us money and told us to go. I was terrified of being hanged as a murderer, so I took Mama and I went.”
We reached the landing and she paused, looking out the small window at the marshes. “We stayed in Switzerland until Mama got sick. When she died, all I wanted was to come home. I thought the house would be empty, that it would still be ours. When I saw that wasn’t so, I should have run. But where would I go? I had come into the country on an assumed passport. I wasn’t supposed to be in England. Someone had always taken care of us, even in Switzerland, but not now. If I’m found, I’ll hang as a murderer. So I broke into the cellar and hid.”
I pushed past her and led her out into the deserted corridor, toward the gallery that connected the west wing with this one. I thought of Martha’s report to Matron on that first day, of how the orderlies wouldn’t go into the cellar because they heard footsteps. “You’ve been here for days,” I said.
“I didn’t know what to do. I stole some food from the kitchen. I realized the house was full of madmen. I was going to leave. And then, that first night, I heard Papa.”
We’d reached the door. It was unlocked and ajar. I looked at Anna, and another piece fell into place. “That’s why his ghost is so angry,” I said. “Because you’re here.”
She swallowed. “I heard his voice. I saw him. It was as if I’d never killed him at all.”
We both fell silent for a moment. I tried to imagine what it had been like for her, seeing the ghost of the man she had shot, the man she had thought could never hurt her again. Finally I slipped through into the darkness, Anna behind me.
The smell was the same, that dusty, rotten, wet smell, but it seemed worse. We picked our way down the corridor, stepping over the dust and the fallen debris from the ceiling. I strained my ears, focusing on every sound. At first I thought the rain had grown heavier; then I thought perhaps it was just louder in this part of the house. When we turned the first corner, I realized my mistake. The sound of water was caused by a leak somewhere in the ceiling, and rivulets of dirty rain were trickling down the walls.
I glanced back at Anna. This was her family home, falling apart. But she had seen it already, and her face showed nothing.
Something scurried past us, and I flinched. Where was Jack? Where was Mabry? Had Creeton found them already?
“These men,” Anna said to me. “The men that the red-haired man is looking for, that my father is looking for. Are they weak?”
“No,” I replied. “Never.”
She nodded, and the set of her jaw became grim. “I thought perhaps that was so.”
“What do you mean?”
But she grabbed my forearm, her grip hard and cold. “Do you feel that?” she whispered.
I closed my eyes. Inhaled air that was suddenly frigid. “He’s here somewhere,” I said.
“Mikael,” she replied. “I feel him. It’s Mikael.”
The hair stood up on my arms, but it was easier now. Anna had known him, loved him. Sweet Mikael. He had deserved nothing that had happened to him after all. I opened my eyes again. “We have to go forward, Anna. They need our help. Mikael needs our help.”
She hesitated, then nodded. But she didn’t let me go.
The west wing was now utterly decayed, like a tomb centuries old. “I’m not certain where we are,” I confessed. “I came here once before, with Jack. We found all of your old belongings.”
“In Papa’s gallery,” she replied. “It’s just to the right. I thought all of our belongings must be there. But it’s locked, so I couldn’t go in.”
We came to the door and I tried the handle. It was locked. I patted my pockets, and then I remembered. The key to this door was on the orderlies’ key ring—the one I had given to Creeton. “I don’t have the key,” I told her. “Only the orderlies have them. We have to keep going.”
“Kitty,” Anna whispered, “I don’t hear anyone.”
“Neither do I.” It worried me. What if everyone was hiding? Or dead?
The back of my neck prickled with cold, and then it was gone. My skin felt warm and humid again, clammy with damp from the rain and from my own fear.
Where did ghosts go when they left?
And then, from below us, I heard shouts. Two voices. Three.
I turned back to Anna. “Where is the nearest staircase?”
“This way,” she said, and she disappeared around a corridor without me. I followed, taking as much care as I could not to step on a nail or a mouse or a patch of rotten floor. I kept Anna’s figure in sight and only looked forward.
We had just reached the stairwell—the door was rotten, warped in its frame, and it took both of us to pry it open—when we heard a single gunshot. “The Luger,” I said, pushing past her, running down the rotten stairs that bowed and groaned under my weight. I’d spent enough time on servants’ stairs to last me a lifetime. I came out the door at the other end and ran in the direction where I thought I’d heard the sound. Shouts came from before me, and another somewhere to my right, voices echoing off the strange corridors. One of them was Jack’s.
I turned toward it, but another sound was closer to me, to my left. It was a groan of pain. I’d lost Anna now, but there was nothing I could do about it. I followed the sound and found Roger lying half inside a closet, his legs out in the corridor, his right arm and torso slicked with blood.
“He shot me,” he said without preamble as I knelt beside him. “He’s got the Luger. Shot me in the shoulder when I grabbed him. I think it’s broken. Good God, it hurts like the goddamned devil—”
So Creeton had found his Luger, then. “I don’t know what to do,” I said to Roger. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Give me a strip of something and we’ll tie it off. Who the hell is that?”
Anna had appeared over my shoulder. “Do you have something?” I cried at her. “A cloth of some kind. Something!”
She stared at me helplessly. I grabbed the hem of my apron and ripped a strip from it, my arms straining as the thick fabric nearly refused to give way. I handed it to Anna. “Follow his instructions,” I told her, “and tie it off. I’m going to find the others.”
“In the ballroom,” Roger said. “To the left.”
And then I was gone, racing down the corridor toward the big, grand double doors that had once led to the ballroom.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I had seen the ballroom from outside that day I’d sat on the lawn with Archie, what felt like years ago. From inside, it dwarfed both the common room and the dining room in size, and probably could have held both of them easily. The floor was marble, the walls accented in gold leaf that carried across the ceiling. Electric lights were installed in the walls, as well as sconces for lamps. It had been a beautiful room once.
Now the gold paint was peeling, the plaster was crumbling with damp, and the floor was slick with leaves and rain. The high windows were crusted with dirt, and the light they let in was murky. I saw a lone figure on the floor, on his knees, his head down.
At first I didn’t recognize him. And then I stopped short, just as I approached him, and stared at him in shock.
It was Creeton.
He looked up at me. The anger, the violence were gone from him, and the look he gave me was almost pleading, though he did not speak. He was bloodied on one shoulder, the blood running down his arm. He wasn’t holding a gun. We stared at each other for a long moment, in that huge, rotting room, as the rain fell outside and leaked through the ceiling.
“Where is it?” I said to him.
“What?”
“The gun. Your Luger.”
He shook his head.
“I mean it,” I said. “It’s over, Creeton. Give me the gun.”
“I was supposed to kill him,” Creeton said. “That was the assignment. But I couldn’t even do that. I failed. And now . . . now he’s gone from my mind. He left me alone at last.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “You didn’t fail. You just shot Roger.”
But he shook his head again. “I’m sorry, Nurse Weekes. But it isn’t over, not yet. I never got my Luger. He always had it. You told me he had it, but I didn’t believe you.”
My stomach sunk, hard. “If you’re saying Jack Yates just shot Roger, then I’m calling you a liar.”
“Not Yates,” said Creeton. “Mabry. He’s the one who took the gun from the safe. He’s the sacrifice. And he never even needed me. He’s gone to do it himself.”
Mabry. Mabry, who had seemed so ill, who had stared at the slip of cloth that held the combination to the safe with such fascination. And then I remembered that Roger had never said a name. He shot me. “You’re saying—”
“He doesn’t have to take just one of us,” Creeton said. “That’s his power. He can be inside all of us. In our dreams, in our waking nightmares. In this whole house. He can be in more than one mind at the same time.”
I looked to the other end of the ballroom, where a large set of double doors opened onto a corridor. The corridor to the library, where men might retreat from a crowded party to smoke or play cards.
“Yes,” Creeton said. “He’s gone that way.”
“You should have stopped him,” I said, accusing.
But Creeton shrugged. “I’m finished now,” was all he said. “I’m free.”
It was hard to run. I felt as if I’d been awake for years, as if I’d never rest again. But I left Creeton behind and I ran to the double doors, and down the corridor to the isolation room.
Nothing in there had changed: not the narrow bed, the cracked nightstand, the mildewed walls. Mikael’s message was still on the wall, staring down at me accusingly. At the other end of the room, the door to the outside had been opened. Jack stood silhouetted there, looking out into the rain.
“Jack,” I whispered, not wanting to surprise him.
He did not turn his head. Behind the doorframe, he lifted a hand briefly in acknowledgment. I approached him and looked over his shoulder.
Captain Mabry stood in the grass in front of the isolation room, swaying in the rain.
He had his back to us. He carried a handgun, his arm down at his side. It was a slender, alien-looking thing I had never seen before. The Luger. Mabry’s body leaned slightly to one side, and then to the other, as if he was not entirely in control, but otherwise he did not move. Rain sluiced unnoticed down his body, soaked his clothes. He was not looking at anything that I could see.
I looked at Jack. His profile was hard, his gaze unwavering. It was the same as on the day I’d stood in the clearing with Creeton. Too slow an approach, and it would all be over. The gun was lowered, but Mabry’s hand was confident on the grip. It would take only a second.
“Andrew,” Jack said, gently. I had never heard anyone use Mabry’s first name before. “You shot your bullet.”
“There were two,” Mabry replied, not turning. The rain carried part of his voice away. “There’s a second one in the chamber. You know that, Jack.”
“Don’t do this,” said Jack. “This isn’t you.”
For a second Mabry paused, and then his shoulders sagged. “Don’t worry. It will be a relief. It will.”
I opened my mouth, took in a breath, but Jack’s hand touched my arm. Wait. He pointed a finger to the ceiling, turned it in a circle. He meant someone was circling around to the other side of the clearing, probably Paulus. I nodded.
“Andrew,” Jack said. “Just listen to me.”
“I can’t,” Mabry said. “I can only hear him. Can’t you? You can’t help me, Jack. No one can. It’s over.”
Do you think you can help me? Creeton had said to me. With your caring? With your concern? You can’t help any of us.
Mabry raised his head, as if he heard something. And from the gloom Mikael appeared. He was shirtless, his naked torso impervious to the rain. He was walking slowly, the way he had been when I had last seen him in the stairwell, pulling one foot forward at a time. He was looking at Mabry, coming toward him, the cold coming off him so powerfully I could feel it from where I stood.
Mabry pivoted on his heels and faced Mikael. “What do you want?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what do you want?”
Mikael stopped, held out one hand.
A sob came from Mabry’s throat. “I can’t help you. I can’t. I can’t even help myself.”
I heard an intake of breath, and I turned to see Anna standing beside me. She was looking at Mikael, and her expression was cracked to pieces with grief and love for the brother she had suffered with, the brother she had been unable to save. In one hand, she held a rifle.
“Mikael,” she whispered.
Jack turned his head, took her in, his thinking clear in his handsome blue eyes. I wondered whether he recognized her from the time we’d seen her in the clearing.
“Anna Gersbach,” I said softly.
He nodded, as if the reappearance of Anna were just another piece of information. His silent gaze went to her rifle.
Anna held the rifle out to him. “Take it.” She looked at me. “It was in my father’s rifle cabinet. In the gallery with our other things. The orderly had the key.” She turned back to Jack. “It’s me my father wants. It’s me who can end this. It always has been.”
He took the rifle from her with sure hands and nodded.
She stepped to the doorway, looked back at him. “If he doesn’t shoot me, promise you’ll do it,” she said. “Promise me.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I promise.”
Anna stepped out into the rain, her arms at her sides, her hands open. “Papa!” she cried.
Mabry turned.
Next to me, Jack cocked the rifle as quietly as he could, but the sound was still loud, even through the muffling of the rain.
Anna had moved out into the clearing, toward Mabry, who was staring at her, dazed. “Anna,” he said.
“Don’t take him, Papa,” she said. “Take me.”
“He’s one of the weak,” said Mabry.
She moved closer to him. Mikael still stood, one hand outstretched, as if he did not see her.
“I don’t have a clear shot,” Jack whispered to me.
“Don’t shoot her,” I said through the lump in my throat. “Not yet.”
“He isn’t weak,” Anna said to Mabry, her voice shaking now. Rain had soaked her braid, her bedraggled dress. “I am. I always have been. Shoot me, and then you can go. I’m the last one left, aren’t I? The last one to bear the shame?”
Mabry’s hand raised the gun slowly, unsteadily, aiming it at her. Blood had begun to trickle sluggishly from his nose. “Anna,” he said.
And then it all happened at once. Paulus Vries appeared at the other side of the clearing; he shouted. Mabry jumped. Mikael moved, his eerie form sliding toward his sister. And Jack raised the rifle, sighted it, and fired.
Two shots went off; the noise was deafening. Mabry’s leg buckled and he fell. At the same time, his finger squeezed the trigger and he shot at Anna Gersbach with the last bullet in the Luger.
Anna screamed and fell. Jack ran forward into the rain, rifle still at the ready, and Paulus came from the other direction. I followed, my boots squelching in the mud.
Mabry was moaning, his leg drawn up to his chest. “Hold him down!” Paulus shouted, pinning his arms. Mabry had already dropped the gun and lay bleeding
into the wet grass, unresisting. I swung a leg over him, straddled him. His spectacles had fallen off, and when he looked up at me, I was reminded of the first day I met him, when he had lain bleeding in my lap. From the look in his eyes, I knew he remembered it, too, and I knew I was looking at the real Andrew Mabry, the kind, gentle captain with the Roman nose and the family he adored and the old-fashioned sense of honor.
I pulled one of the needles from the pocket of my skirt and grabbed his arm. “Sorry,” I said, and I stuck him as quickly as I could.
When he fell slack, I turned to Jack, who had dropped the rifle in the grass and had knelt beside Anna. She pulled herself up, wiping water from her face. She had no blood on her at all.
“She wasn’t hit,” Jack said to me.
“It was Mikael,” Anna said to my incredulous expression. She wiped water from her face again, and I realized there were tears mixed in with the rain. “He pushed me. I felt him. Kitty, he’s gone.” Her breath hitched. “Saving me freed him. He’s gone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The sun was just breaking over the horizon, and the day was going to be warm. The rain had stopped as night fell, the hem of my skirt sodden as I walked.
Portis House receded behind me. A single, rutted road led from the front door, over the low hills and through the huddle of trees, and eventually to the bridge to the mainland. I could have followed the road, but each pothole and rut was now a puddle deep with rainwater, and the grass actually seemed the drier path. I had never been this way, except for the day I’d arrived here in the hired car. I swung my arms and inhaled the fresh summer air, thinking of that girl I’d been as if she were someone else.
I turned a final curve and stopped, staring. I’d come here in the fog, and nothing had prepared me for how beautiful it was. This was the low part of land, opposite the high, rocky cliffs, the part of land that tilted down into the sea. Long grasses waved on the slope in the early-morning breeze; they finished in a brief, rugged strip of rocks, dark sand, and driftwood before the land vanished into the ocean. The water was choppy, a dark, dangerous blue, with a froth of whitecaps appearing and disappearing, some of the surface slick with fronds of seaweed. Built over this was the bridge, narrow and wooden, launching off over the unsettled water toward the smudged line of the mainland.
Silence for the Dead Page 32
