An Inquiry Into Love and Death (16 page)

I
arrived at Barrow House. While daylight still held, I went ’round the back of the house and fixed the shutter again. Then I went into the library and closed the heavy curtains. I never wanted to see that window again.

I dug up the stack of textbooks I’d brought from Oxford—I remembered carrying them in from the motorcar in the rain, worrying they’d get wet. It seemed a year ago now. But a stern stab of guilt pierced my conscience. In all my life I had barely gone a week without studying. I had to keep up, no matter what was going on. The thought had a comforting feel to it, as if, by reading by lamplight until I couldn’t prop my eyes open as I’d done so many other nights, everything would go back to normal.

I opened the first textbook and glanced down at the page, but my gaze caught on something at the edge of the desk. A battered book, dog-eared and used. Toby’s journal.

I wasn’t sure how it happened, but the next thing I knew, I had pulled the journal to me and was reading it again, going through it passage by passage, trying to understand the man who had written the lines.

I was utterly absorbed, my textbook forgotten, when a knock sounded on the front door. It was Mrs. Kates, this time without her daughter, inviting me to tea the next day. I accepted, in the torrent of her words hardly knowing what I was agreeing to.

“I am amazed you’re still here,” she said, as usual her insulting words spoken with the best good nature. Today she wore fabric primroses on her hat. “Who would have thought it would take so long to pack up Toby’s things? He didn’t seem to me like the type who had many belongings. He barely had a few cases when he moved in. But then, what do I know, of course. As I said, it’s paid to the end of the month, so take your time—though not to the first, of course.”

“I like it in Rothewell,” I managed, just to get something in, though I realized as I spoke that, despite everything, it was actually true.

She shrugged at that, her brows coming down as if there were no accounting for taste. “It’s all right, I suppose, though of course I married here. We locals are rather close. I positively despair sometimes of Julia’s marriage prospects, but there are a few fellows about. I do my best.”

“Why don’t you leave?” The words were out of my mouth before I could curb their nosy impertinence, but she did not seem to notice.

She pulled out a cigarette. “My dear, where would I go? My husband left me the house, you know, not to mention this place. The rents do help keep us going, though to be frightfully honest we get fewer and fewer tenants. Your uncle seemed such a good prospect. I wish he had stayed longer.”

She sighed, and I stared at her, wondering whether she could have completely forgotten that Toby’s rent payments had ceased because he was dead. I watched her light the cigarette, thinking of the cigarettes Drew had found on the cliff top. She smiled at me, and the idea of this lady, tiny and perfectly groomed, pushing my uncle to his sinister death was almost laughably ridiculous.
That explains why you’re you
, Drew had said,
and I’m me.

Still, if Diana Kates had killed my uncle and smoked a cigarette, she would certainly never have done it without lipstick.

I closed the door after she left and went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As the water boiled, I thought of the silly thing I had said to her—but in a strange way, I
did
like it here. The afternoon had clouded and the house sat under a blanket of quiet, the gray light coming diffused through the windows, and the only sounds the far-off rush of trees in the wind and the call of birds. Despite everything, I saw myself staying here, seeing the seasons change, writing books and papers perhaps, taking long walks, having tea with neighbors. There was something about the air here—the smell of the sea perhaps—that one could never quite get enough of. It was a pleasant moment’s dream.

I took my tea back up to the library. I stopped.

The desk drawer was open. I had been sitting at that desk for two hours before Mrs. Kates came to the door; I knew very well that drawer had been closed until the moment I stood up. But it was now unmistakably open.

Cold crawled up my spine to the back of my neck. I thought back to the conversation at the door with Mrs. Kates, the long moments spent in the kitchen. I had not heard a sound.

My hand shook, and hot liquid spilled on my wrist. I put my cup carelessly on the chestnut sideboard, not looking where I placed it. There was definitely cold in the room now. My nose was chilled, and the sweat on my neck was icy.

I seemed to have stopped breathing, to have become one with the still room, waiting for something to happen. There was not a movement, not a breath of air.

I stepped toward the desk. The journal was open where I had left it, displaying the same page. I took another step, and another, the impetus coming from somewhere deep in my spine, out of my control. When I was within arm’s length I leaned forward and placed my hand in the open drawer.

At first, I found nothing but bare wood; the drawer was empty. I moved my fingers, and a crinkle of paper met my fingers. I choked a sound back down my throat and pulled the paper from the drawer. It was a small slip of notepaper, folded in half. I unfurled it in my hands. It was a handwritten note, and I recognized the writing as exactly the same as in the notebook that lay open before me.

Beware, daughter of Rothewell.

Something came over me. I jumped, dropped the paper as if it burned. I backed away, bumped into something, backed away again.

Now I did make a sound, a pained, strangled gasp, and with clumsy feet I turned and fled the room. I ran straight through the front vestibule and out onto the gravel drive. Even then I couldn’t stop my legs, and they kept going and going, down the road under the soft gray late-afternoon sky.

•   •   •

The kettle sang on the hob, and William wrapped a tea towel ’round his hand to remove it.

“So,” he said. “There is something in the house. Go on.”

I was sitting in his kitchen for the second time that day. Annie was gone, and though I was mindful of her warning, I could think of nowhere else to go. In fact, he’d seemed happy to see me, as if he’d been worried his sister had chased me away.

I was bedraggled and out of breath, my sweater pulled around me, already feeling unreal in the warm yellow kitchen light. “It’s difficult to explain. It sounds mad, actually.”

“Yes, of course. What you’ve experienced is not possible, you worry for your sanity, et cetera, et cetera. I think we’ve established that I believe you?”

The words had a sting, but they were said with humor. I took a breath and stared down into the mug he’d set before me. The prickle of terror still worked in my veins, and the cold sweat was only beginning to dry on the back of my neck, but I felt rationality returning. “Something is in the house,” I admitted. “There have been signs, but I’ve been ignoring them or explaining them away. I think it’s time I told myself the truth. There is something in the house that moves things, that produces cold spots, that leaves items out for me to find when my back is turned.”

William stirred sugar into his own tea, standing by the counter. He did not take the seat across from me. “Interesting. Who do you think it is?”

I shook my head. “I had a theory—I thought it so clever—that Walking John was trying to lure me out of the house because he couldn’t get in.”

“Yes, quite so. Walking John is not in your house, Jillian,” said William matter-of-factly. “He keeps to the woods and the beach; everyone knows that. Did you think Walking John was the only ghost in Rothewell?”

I stared at him stupidly. “I don’t . . . I hadn’t thought of it. Who are the others?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? When I was a child, there was someone—a man, I’m quite sure—who used to whistle for his dog in the back lane by the woods there. Every night around sunset he’d whistle, and none of our dogs ever answered. But they’d always look funny and stand with their tails up, as if expecting something we couldn’t see.” He looked thoughtful. “I always did wonder who that fellow was. I still hear him sometimes. Aubrey had an old rocking chair that used to rock by itself when we were children, no matter where his parents put it in the house. We called that chair the Old Nanny; I don’t know why. Eventually his father took the chair out to the woodpile with an ax and chopped it to pieces.”

I was staring at him, memory dawning on me. I’d heard a man whistle for his dog when I first arrived in Rothewell. And again earlier today. “All those people . . .”

“Forgotten people, Jillian.” He shrugged again. The deepening afternoon light created shadows on his face. “Just as we’re all forgotten after we’re dead.”

My brother is fragile.
I looked at him. He had always seemed cheerful and kindly to me, if a little awkward, but now I saw tired depths in his eyes, the etching of long-ago pain in his features. Perhaps I imagined it, or it was the end of a draining day. But now that I knew what had happened to him in the war, I couldn’t help but see him differently than I had only hours ago.

He didn’t know where he was, or even who he was. It’s just merciful he doesn’t remember any of it now.

Suddenly I was desperately sad, my emotions swirling into a dark abyss of panic. “William,” I said, my voice cracking.

He looked down into his tea. “Yes?”

I swallowed. “We’re friends. Aren’t we?”

He glanced up at me, and his charming smile flitted across his face with an effort. “Well, you’ve visited me twice in one day.”

“No. I mean it. Are we friends?”

The smile dropped slowly, and he nodded. “Yes. Yes, we are.”

“Then listen to me.” I leaned forward across my mug of tea. “I think you should leave this place. I know you grew up here, and I know it’s beautiful, but there’s something . . . there’s something
wrong
with it.” I glanced around me, at the house left him by his dead parents, the kitchen decorated by his dead mother. “This place isn’t good for you. Rothewell, this house—all of it. You can be a schoolteacher anywhere. London, Edinburgh, even the Continent. This is the twentieth century, William. There are wonders of the world out there. You could truly live life. This place—it’s as if it’s stuck in time, looking backward, where everyone lives with the dead. Won’t you leave?”

He was watching me speak, and I couldn’t read his expression. He dropped his gaze to his cup again and was quiet for a long moment. “No one has ever bothered to say that to me,” he said. “That I could go be something. It was Raymond who was going to be something, not me.”

“But you can,” I said. “I realize it’s been difficult—the war. . . .”

“God, no.” He looked surprised. “The war was the only time I was ever happy. It’s strange to say that, I know, but it’s true. It was exciting. Important. When I was fighting, I had a purpose.”

He didn’t remember, then, just as Annie had said. He had forgotten the pain, the sickness, the months in hospital, the delirium. “William, I don’t know.”

“No, I know you don’t. Most people don’t see, especially women. Some men are made for war, that’s all. We’re born for it. I thought I would be a teacher, but it wasn’t until I enlisted—until the moment my feet hit the ground in France—that I knew why I had never really been happy. Even though it was terrible, even though I could have died and saw so many others die—I still knew I had a purpose. After I came home . . .” He frowned, a fleeting look of confusion. “Nothing was the same. Ray was gone, and Aubrey got married. I understood, then, a lot of things I’d never understood before.”

He raised his eyes. At first he looked as he always did, but as I watched, something changed in his face—his mouth slowly drooped; his skin sagged; his lids lowered with exhausted anguish. For a long, endless moment, he looked like a much older man, a man who was gazing upon something he could not contemplate, and it had made him so tired he could barely move.

And then, piece by piece, like a wilted flower that had been watered, his face came into itself again. His eyes regained their intelligent sparkle, his chin lifted, and the smile played across his lips. “It’s nice of you to say those things,” he said, and his voice sounded as it always did. “But you’re seeing it the wrong way. I can’t leave Rothewell. Someday you’ll understand.”

“William—”

“No, no, truly. I appreciate it. But it isn’t quite as bad as all that, really.”

“It isn’t just the ghosts,” I said. “It could be dangerous here. Inspector Merriken thinks there’s something going on in the woods, and so did my uncle. I’m starting to agree with them.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Now, that
is
intriguing. I have yet to meet this inspector, though I’ve heard much about him. Where is he, by the way?”

“Gone to London. The Yard called him back. He left this morning.”

“I see.”

Something in the tone of his voice made me realize I’d sounded too casual, too intimate. I felt my cheeks heat. So much for discretion.

The corners of his eyes crinkled, but he did not quite smile. “Ah, Jillian. Be careful, will you? I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” My cheeks grew hotter, to my chagrin. “There’s nothing to say.”

“There never is,” he said. “Never anything, until it’s too late.”

O
utside, the dark was beginning its slow reach over the water and under the eaves of the trees as the last of the sun slipped toward the horizon. I came out the back kitchen door of William’s house, crossed the small now-dead garden, and let myself out the gate, closing it behind me. From here I could take the path behind the house, along the edge of the trees, back to Barrow House without having to take the main road.

There was no sound in the purpling dusk but for the wayward call of a few early-evening birds. At the edge of the path my step stumbled, my ankle turned, and I nearly fell. I felt my shoe come loose, and I knelt in the cool grass to rub my ankle and refasten the buckle.

As I knelt a sound came from the house behind me, the click of a door and, surprisingly, voices. I halted. William and I had been alone in the house. But it was certainly two male voices, talking low. They seemed to come from around the house, by the front door.

I don’t know what possessed me to stop and make my way back to the garden gate. It was sudden suspicion, prickling and unsure. Perhaps the conversation I’d just had with William had unsettled me more than I realized. But instead of going back to Barrow House I moved quietly through the twilight, trying to get closer to the voices.

I had closed the gate behind me, but I reached over the low wall and unlatched it, letting it swivel open. I slid through the resulting crack and along the shadowed wall. At the garden shed I paused, taking shelter behind it, berating myself for a nosy fool, slinking around like a nighttime thief. I was stuck there now behind the garden shed, with no way of getting out without risking making noise and exposing myself; well, it was only as much as I deserved. With nowhere to go but onward, I peered ’round the shed and found I had a slanted view of the front of the house.

A beam of light spilled from the open front door and onto the stoop. It was broken by a moving shadow just inside the door. The voices were raised in tension and anger now, though they stayed hushed—two men arguing and trying to keep quiet about it. I realized I had come to William’s door in a frightened rush, and he’d not said anything, but William had already had a visitor all along, who had moved into some other part of the house while we’d been talking.

The voices quieted, and a shadow broke from the doorway and resolved into the figure of a man. He stepped out onto the stoop into the light, and I clearly saw the tall frame and long features of Aubrey Thorne. From inside the door, William grasped Aubrey’s arm, and he stopped and turned; apparently their conversation was not quite finished.

I couldn’t hear everything, just a few words. Aubrey was upset about something and kept shaking his head. “Didn’t you hear her?” he said once, and I flushed in my hiding place, knowing he must mean me. William said something, and Aubrey answered: “You’re wrong.” He said something else, related in a fierce whisper, and I heard the words “call it off”—but whether he was asking William to call something off, or arguing passionately against it, I couldn’t tell. He pulled back, William’s hand let go, and then the vicar was gone. The square of light on the front stoop disappeared.

I was alone in the dark now. I detached myself from the shed and moved slowly back toward the garden gate, taking care where I placed my feet. My heart was thumping in my chest. Aubrey had been hiding at William’s for some purpose he had not wanted discovered. And they wanted to—or did not want to—call something off. . . .

I halted my steps when I realized two things. First, the bright yellow light of the kitchen window was shining over my path, and if William looked out just this instant, he would see me; and second, when I’d come back into the garden I’d opened the gate and left it open. If William had heard me close the gate the first time, and if he saw the gate open now . . .

No face came to the window, and there was no activity from the house. I moved a little farther along, and now I could see the back of William’s head as he stood in the kitchen. From where he was placed I guessed he was standing at the counter, rinsing the used mugs of tea. There was nothing unusual about him at all, and I counted my steps, praying that he would not turn and come to the window. Just for another five seconds . . . four . . .

I moved out from the light of the window. He hadn’t seen me. Perhaps he hadn’t heard the gate latch close the first time, or perhaps he hadn’t looked out at the unlatched gate since. If my luck held, I could slip through the gate, shut it as silently as I could behind me, and he’d never be the wiser.

The light spilling from the kitchen windows shut off.

My breath stopped. It was a coincidence; he’d finished in the kitchen and shut off the light as he went. I must not think of the fact that, in the pure darkness, he could be watching the gate from the window even now, and I wouldn’t be able to see.

There was nothing for it. I crouched low like a soldier and pushed through to the garden gate. I slipped through and on the other side I dropped to my knees, reached back, and hooked my fingers through the gate, closing it slowly and carefully behind me.

Despite my precautions, the gate shut with a click that seemed as loud as a gunshot to my ears. I rolled off my knees and sat full on the ground, my back to the cold garden wall, and waited.

The darkness brought a chill wind from the ocean, and I shivered. No one walked the paths; no neighbors appeared, going about their evening business, or shouting for their children, or raking the fragrant leaves. I should simply get up and walk away, as if I were out for an evening stroll.

And yet I couldn’t move. William was observant and sharply intelligent. He would not have called Aubrey out of hiding unless he had heard the gate click shut on my departure. Instinct, deep in my spine, told me he’d seen the open gate, turned off the light, and gone to the window. If he hadn’t seen me in the dark, he’d certainly heard the second click of the latch.

I could nearly picture him standing patiently at the window. I felt as if I could follow his thoughts. There were only two logical possibilities to that click of the gate: It had either been Walking John, or it had been me.

I closed my eyes. I wondered why I was now so frightened of a man whose house I had already come to twice for comfort. But every instinct I possessed told me to be still.

I knew what William would do mere seconds before he did it; our thoughts were that much in tandem. I hoped against hope that I was wrong, but just as I thought it, he opened the back door and let out Poseidon.

I heard an excited
whuff
of breath and the padding of the big dog’s paws. I shrank myself smaller, but there was no hope he would not notice me; his sense of smell was unerring, and after a quick bounce ’round the garden, he headed straight in my direction.

I leaned ’round the wall and looked at him through the gate. He was standing, his ears perked, his tail raised and ready. I made a helpless gesture and shushed him in mime, begging him not to bark.
Now would be a good time for that ghostly man to whistle for his dog.

He didn’t, but luck was with me. Poseidon, it seemed, was not an excitable dog; he took me in with his brown, long-lashed eyes and, having cataloged and assessed me, gave his tail a single wag of approval and turned away, intent on his business. Apparently it had been agreed between us that we would share the garden.

William would be at the back of the house, watching his dog. I rose onto my hands and knees and crawled—literally crawled—on the ground along the garden wall, making my way toward the front of the house. The wall was only shoulder-high, and even a crouch would be risky, so I sacrificed my stockings until I was well away, hoping no nosy Rothewell villager would happen by and see me. I would, I thought, have to learn to mind my own business in the future.

But even as I got far enough from the house to rise onto my feet again, even as I slid into the shadows of the bushes and through them onto the road, my mood sank lower and lower. What a fool I’d been, warning William that it was dangerous here. He’d been lying to me, and so had the vicar. And now, after that little fiasco, William for one would no longer trust me. But I had no idea exactly what I was up against, and until I did, it would be unwise to make a move.

Best to wait for Drew to come back, if he ever would.

I brushed my hair from my face. I no longer looked like a crazed fugitive, only like an innocent—if dirty—woman out for an evening walk. I tried to brush off my skirt and my knees, but there was no help for it. If anyone saw me and noticed my disarray, I’d say I’d tripped on the forest path and fallen.

Barrow House was quiet and dark when I returned. Sultana waited by the front door and slid past my ankles as I entered. The cup of tea was where I’d left it, cold now. The journal was still on the desktop in the library, the drawer open, the crumpled note still lying where I had dropped it on the floor.

I picked it up and read it again. Toby’s handwriting was truly elegant, masculine and clear.
Beware, daughter of Rothewell.

I supposed some part of me had always known, but it was time to acknowledge the ghost in Barrow House.

I cleared my throat. “Toby,” I said.

There was no reply. It had been Toby who left me the pocket watch, Toby who had put the book in the oven. Toby who had rolled the torch down the stairs when the lights went out.

“Toby,” I said again, louder.

Nothing. I glanced at the instruments on the desk, but they didn’t move. Sultana wound around my legs, hoping for food. Walking John terrified her, but of the ghost in the house she had never been afraid; that night on the landing, she had merely looked at it, as if it were fascinating. I wished I knew now what she had seen.

“Who murdered you?” I said into the silence. “Write it in a note. Please.”

I smoothed the note in my hands. I was not a daughter of Rothewell—I was the daughter of Charles and Nora, and I had been born in London. Still, the message was unmistakable. But who, or what, should I beware of?

Walking John was outside the house; Toby was inside. And suddenly I wondered: What if it was Toby whom Walking John was trying to lure, not me? What if it was Toby he wanted? And what could Walking John possibly want of my uncle, alive or dead?

“I don’t understand,” I said aloud. “Help me.”

When there was again no answer, I put the note in my pocket and started for the kitchen, to wash the stinging dirt from my palms.