Silence for the Dead (17 page)

I didn't, but I nodded anyway. Jack had stretched his legs out and was leaning back in the grass, listening.

“Then the war came,” said Maisey. “Anna barely noticed it. The Swiss were neutral, but the Gersbachs spoke French, and Mr. Gersbach saw himself as an English lord. He said the Germans were butchers, and that if he had been young enough, he'd go fight them himself. As for me, I waited until I was of age, and I told my parents I wanted to be a nurse.”

“So you really are a nurse?” I broke in.

“Yes, of course.” Maisey looked puzzled.

I felt myself going red. “It's just—the book.”

“Oh, that. I knew they would only be shell-shock cases at Portis House, not casualty cases. I didn't want my skills to get rusty, that's all. Of course I'm a nurse. You can't pretend that sort of thing—that would be mad.”

I said nothing, but I thought I saw Jack smile.

“I left for London in the spring of 1916,” Maisey went on, “to train. Anna and I wrote each other nearly every day at first; I was horribly lonely in London, and of course she was at Portis House with no companionship at all. We told each other everything. She wrote that Mikael had joined the army and was being sent off to Belgium, that he hadn't wanted to go, but their father had told him he had no choice. He said his son would do credit to his adopted country and family name. There seemed to be some sort of awful scene over it, though Anna didn't really explain. She was even lonelier after Mikael left. She seemed depressed. She said it was awful here. I asked her if there was anything else wrong, besides her worrying over Mikael, but she said no. She wrote me less and less often, but still she wrote. And then she stopped.”

“Stopped?” I said.

Maisey bit her lip again, her eyes worried. “Just stopped. Suddenly there was nothing. After all those letters, after years of confidences. Nothing.”

“So they moved,” said Jack.

“Moved?” said Maisey. “Mr. Gersbach built this place. This was his English estate, he called it. They'd lived here for only ten years. She would have told me something big like that. And she knew where to find me. Why didn't she still write me?” She shook her head. “I wrote her letter after letter, but she never answered. That's when I knew.”

“Knew what?” I said.

“That something had happened to her. If Anna could have written me, if she was physically capable of it, she would have. The fact had to be that she
couldn't
write me.”

Jack pushed himself back up into a sitting position, drawing up his knees again. “All right. I'll admit that's strange. What do you think happened?”

“I don't
know.
” Now Maisey's voice conveyed real anguish. “Her last letters hadn't concerned me overmuch at first, but when I reread them, they're so horribly downcast and gloomy, as if something was wrong. Papa wrote me that the Gersbachs had left, but I heard that no one had seen the trucks move out.” She stopped, went on. “He said they were opening a hospital here. I was working in London by then—the war was over. I took a few days' leave and came back to see for myself. There it was, clear as day: a hospital moved into Portis House. I couldn't believe it. Everyone thought it curious, but the Gersbachs had been standoffish, even snobs. They kept to themselves; they never made friends. Half the town thought they must be German. No one much cared what had happened to them. Except me. Anna was my friend, my true friend. Something had happened to her. Something horrible.”

Maisey was close to tears. I remembered the face in the locket. That must have been Anna, a keepsake given to her friend. I wondered what it felt like to have a friend like that, a girl who was like a sister. It must be wonderful. And what would I do if I had such a friend and she disappeared? The answer was obvious. “So you applied for a job at Portis House,” I said, “to find her.”

Maisey nodded. “Matron took me on. I resigned my position in London, and Papa sent for my things. I told Papa the war was over, the men were coming home, and someone had to help the shell-shocked ones.”

“He didn't want you looking into Anna's disappearance,” Jack said.

“No. We fought over it. He said it was over, the Gersbachs had left somehow, Anna had forgotten about me, and that was all. She was just a girl, and girls forget. He thinks girls forget their best friends.” I'd never had a friend like Anna, but even I knew that was wrong. “So I pretended I'd let it go for a while, and then I told him I wanted to work at Portis House. He never suspected. He was just happy I wanted to work somewhere close to home.”

I leaned forward on the bench. “Maisey, have you heard anything about ghosts at Portis House? Anything at all?”

Her eyes widened. “Never,” she said. “Not until I started working there. I had spent many nights at Portis House, you understand. It wasn't haunted. We never even joked about it. But after I came back . . .” She looked down at her lap, where she twisted her gloved hands together. “The staff talks, you know,” she said. “And the house had changed. They'd closed off the west wing. Mr. Gersbach's library was an isolation cell. The gardens were overgrown. The entire house is—it's
rotting
in some weird way. It was never like that before. It was a new house. There was never as much as a scratch in the paint when I stayed there. Now the plaster is falling from the ceiling in the west wing. And the feeling is different. As if there's something wrong. I asked about the Gersbachs—I tried to be subtle—but no one knew anything. And then Matron put me on night shift . . .”

“What did you see?” I asked.

“There were sounds in the lav,” Maisey answered. “There was something awful about it; I didn't even want to go in. I started thinking about Anna, wondering how she would feel if she saw her home like this, if she were here to see it being used as a madhouse, falling apart, a place of so much misery and suffering. And I started imagining that Anna really still
was
there, in the house somewhere, watching me.”

She stopped and dashed at the tears that had started in her eyes, then continued. “It started to feel real, as if she was trying to tell me something. I thought if she was haunting the place, it meant something terrible had happened to her, something unthinkable, and now she couldn't rest. Then Mr. Childress had that awful nightmare, he started screaming, and—” She pressed her hand to her mouth again. “I know he didn't mean it, but it was so terrifying. And on top of everything else I was thinking, I didn't know what to do. So I lost my nerve. I packed a bag and got on my bicycle and went home.”

I leaned back on my bench, my shoulders sagging. She hadn't actually seen the ghosts, then. “That was two weeks ago,” I said.

“Yes.” She sighed. “I've recovered now, and I've had time to think about it. I realize my imagination got away from me, and I'm no further along than when I started. But when you wrote me, I thought . . .”

“You thought Kitty could continue the investigation,” Jack said.

Maisey blinked. She seemed surprised he'd spoken, but then I realized she'd noticed the use of my first name. “I don't know. I just know that nothing has been answered, and now I've gone, and perhaps—perhaps if you heard anything, if you found any answers, you could tell me. Perhaps they got sick? All of them?” She looked at me with pathetic hope in her eyes. “It could have happened. But then, who buried them? If Anna is dead, I want to pay my respects to her grave.”

“I don't know,” I said. “I heard that Mr. Gersbach dismissed all the servants.”

“What?” Maisey shook her head. “I didn't know that. Would he have done that if the family was ill?”

“He told the servants they were moving.”

“Then why didn't Anna tell me?” She looked helpless. “When I came home I heard that Mikael died in the war, that he was shot in some horrible way. Sweet, kind Mikael. Then I heard another rumor that he came home after all. I don't know which one is true. Anna never wrote to me about it. If Mikael had died, it would have devastated her.”

“I promise, if I find out anything, I'll let you know.”

“If
we
find out anything,” Jack said. He was still sitting in the grass, listening, looking at me.

“Jack,” I said, “it's too risky. You said it yourself.”

“And you talked me out of it, remember?” He turned to Maisey, who sat tongue-tied. “Nurse Ravell, if I gave you some letters, would you take them to the village and post them for me?”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Maisey said, “Yes, sir.”

“And if the replies were sent to you, could you keep them hidden and bring them here to me somehow?”

“No,” I said.

Jack turned to me. “Mikael Gersbach,” he said. “If there's a record, no matter how secret, I can find it.” His blue eyes sparked. “England's fallen hero is owed a few favors.”

“I could bring the replies here,” said Maisey. “To this spot. I could come early in the morning and leave them tucked under this bench here, where no one will see them.”

Jack stood, brushed the grass from his clothes. “I'll check the spot on my morning run. I'll put my letters out tomorrow morning. If you bring me a reply, wait two days and come again in case I have another.”

She sat up straight, her tears drying. “Yes, sir.”

“I hope it isn't too much trouble, on that bicycle of yours.” He turned to me with half a grin on his face. He knew exactly what I'd been thinking.

“This is a terrible idea,” I protested.

“That's too bad, because it's yours.” He looked down at me, the sun changing the shade of his dark hair, the wind tousling it against his temples. “Besides, it's no worse than what you're planning.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” How did he
know
everything?

“Yes, you do. And if you're going to do it, you'll need my help. Don't try it without me. And now,” he said with perfect solemnity, “exercise is over. Paulus said there'd be fresh pears at tea this afternoon, and I want to know if he was lying. Nurse Ravell—” He nodded good day to her stunned expression, and jogged back off through the trees.

“He seems . . . rather well,” Maisey said. “I don't think he was like that when I was here.”

“Oh, God,” I replied. I'd just given a mental patient access to a bicycle, an accomplice, and private mail.
Just because a man has lost his sanity does not mean he is incapable of subterfuge. In fact, they have no moral qualms at all.
“What have I done?” I said to her. “I've enlisted a madman to help me. Now what should I do?”

“I think you should let him help.”

I stood and walked the way Jack had taken, peering through the trees. As he approached the house, Paulus Vries appeared, and another orderly, and another; they'd been looking for him, then. They fanned out in a tense semicircle around him. Jack paused, and then he spoke. One of the orderlies answered. Jack spoke again, and one orderly laughed, and then another. The tension vanished and the four of them walked back to the terrace. Just like that.

I'd enlisted him, but it didn't mean I could control him. Matron couldn't control him; neither could the doctors. Jack Yates followed only the rules he chose to follow, and only when it suited him.

And now he was working for me.

“
S
leeves,” said Matron.

Martha, Nina, Boney, and I stood before her in a line. As one we held out our arms, clothed in the long sleeves we'd fastened on that morning, rows of starchy whiteness hanging parallel in the air.

Matron walked from one end of our short line to the other. Her brow was tensed, her gaze malevolent, a look that meant she was seeking something to criticize. It was another inspection, but this one was not in honor of the doctors.

We'd been hard at work since six that morning—even Nina, who had been given permission to finish night shift at two o'clock and get four hours' rest. We had scrubbed, polished, straightened, hauled linens, dusted, aired every man's room and changed his bed linens—all nineteen of them. My legs were shaking with exhaustion, but it didn't seem quite as bad as when I'd first started. Perhaps I was getting stronger.

“This is an important day,” Matron announced to us, Henry V rallying his battle-worn troops. “This is visitors' day. The day in which members of the outside world come to the inner confines of Portis House. The day in which we make an
impression.
”

Behind her, something clanged in the kitchen and someone cursed.

“I cannot express to you,” Matron continued, ignoring the sound, “the importance of our conduct today. There will be no breaks. No socializing. Any breach of the rules absolutely will not be tolerated.” I thought perhaps her gimlet gaze rested on me as she said this. “Sloppiness is inexcusable. Rudeness is inexcusable. You will speak to our visitors only when spoken to, and only in polite tones. The patients who do not have visitors may be unhappy and may misbehave. It is your duty to see that any such displays are kept from sight and sound of our visitors. If this is not followed, Mr. Deighton will hear of it. Do I make myself clear?”

We stood silent. I swallowed past a lump in my throat.

“You are experienced nurses,” Matron said. This time she did not look at me. “Be aware. Be vigilant. These men are our patients, but they are also insane. The insane can be crafty and mischievous, especially on days like these. The orderlies are also on extra guard. You know what to look for. Be sure you recognize it.”

“Yes, Matron,” said Boney.

“Very well. This is the list.” Matron took a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolded it, and read to us the list of men who were to have visitors that day. “Mr. Hodgkins. Mr. Derby. Mr. West. Mr. Creeton.” She folded the paper and put it away again.

“Thank goodness it's Creeton this time,” Martha said to me in a low voice as we walked down the corridor after dismissal. “He's always the worst to make trouble on visiting days.”

“I don't quite understand Creeton,” I ventured. Creeton was, without exception, the patient I avoided as much as possible. “He doesn't seem quite insane to me. Just angry.”

“You haven't seen how angry he can be,” said Nina. “I heard that at the casualty clearing station they had him in, he shot at one of the doctors with a gun he stole from the Germans.”

“He what?”

“He missed,” Martha put in. “But he had a gun he'd taken from a dead soldier, and he shot it sure enough. I heard it from another nurse I know. She said he had a breakdown after his squadron was attacked with liquid fire.”

I'd heard of liquid fire, petrol sprayed through hoses and lit. It didn't bear thinking about. “And his family hasn't visited him in all this time?”

Nina shrugged. “Most of the families don't. They're too ashamed. Except for Mr. Derby—his fiancée comes every time.”

Derby was the patient who slept on the floor of his room, as if he were in a trench. If he had a fiancée, she was in for a bit of a surprise on their wedding night. “I hope they have a competent laundress,” I said, and I half meant it, but Martha stifled a giggle, and even Nina looked away quickly, as if to hide a smile.

Breakfast had finished, and the men waited in the common room. The French doors had been thrown open and a warm breeze came in, wafting on kind rays of sunshine and making the air fragrant. “The motorcars are coming,” Martha whispered to me, and she and Nina went to the great entry hall at the front of the house to greet the visitors as I stood duty over the men.

“We should be allowed suits,” Creeton complained loudly from his place on one of the sofas. He seemed to be speaking to no one, or to the room at large. “A suit for just one damned day. I have to see my own father while I'm wearing pajamas.”

He was keyed up, his face tight, and the other men didn't look much better. I was in charge of a powder keg, and I looked for the familiar form of Paulus, leaning on the wall outside the door in his usual position. He gave me a nod.

A hand touched my arm, and I looked down to see Tom Hodgkins looking up at me from his place in a chair. “Is someone coming today?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said. His name had been on the list. “Your family.”

Confusion crossed his face, and then his expression resolved itself. “I'd like to see my mum,” he said. “I think I've been away.”

I had no idea whether his mother was coming, so I simply said, “Perhaps you will.” This pleased him, and I looked around again. There was one face I did not see.

“Good morning,” said a voice behind me.

I turned my shoulders just enough to glimpse Jack standing a few feet away, holding a five-week-old newspaper as if it utterly engrossed him. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, hooked one foot behind the other, and did not look at me.

“Good morning,” I whispered back, and turned away.

“Creeton had a nightmare last night,” he said.

I glanced at Creeton again. He was staring tensely at nothing, waiting to pick a fight. He had thick hands with blond hairs on the backs, with thick fingers that could curl into beefy fists. I realized he reminded me of my father. Elementary, perhaps, and rather pedestrian, but there it was; you don't normally see these things until they are right in front of you. I was glad I had Jack standing vigilant behind my shoulder, and I recalled he'd managed to position himself there the night before as well, as the men sat in the common room after supper. It must be intentional. He was either guarding me or watching me.

“Is it always like this?” I asked him. “Visiting day?”

“I don't know,” he replied, “but I know it's complicated. You want to see your family more than anything. It's the thought of it that keeps you going day to day. You'd go to hell for it. But you don't want your family to see you like this.”

“And what about you?” I said.

He turned a page in his newspaper. “I have no family. No one cares if I'm alive or dead, really. Including me.”

The voice held no bitterness, only a sort of blankness. This, then, was Jack in a pensive mood. “Perhaps you can get well,” I suggested.

“Perhaps I could get my pills back.”

“No. I told you, I destroyed them.”

“I was hoping you were lying.” He sighed. “It's all right. I didn't sleep too badly last night, considering I had to be up early to deliver my letters.”

My heart skipped. “So you did it, then.”

“Of course. But now I'll be tired when you pull the stunt you're planning.”

“I'm not planning anything.”

“Let me see.” He slowly turned another page. From the front hall I could hear a far-off murmur of voices. The visitors would be offered tea and refreshment before the visits began. “The Gersbachs are gone. We know there were no moving vans. If I were looking into it, as you are, I would conclude that their belongings must still be somewhere in Portis House. All that furniture, all that artwork from the walls—where did it go?”

I said nothing. I kept my gaze on Captain Mabry, who was looking blankly out the window. He had no visitors, either, of course. The thought made me feel hollow.

“If the furniture is still in the house,” Jack continued, “where could it be? The only answer must be the west wing, which is kept locked and uninhabited. Am I correct?”

I sighed.

“And the nurses,” he said slowly, “have the keys to the west wing.”

Damn him. “No, we don't. I'm not sure who has them. Matron, I think. And Boney—Nurse Fellows.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw him glance up. “Boney?”

“Don't ask.”

“All right, then. So you'll have to lift the keys. I'm curious to see how you do it.”

Captain Mabry had looked down at an open book on his lap, but he never turned a page. “I'm not doing anything.”

“Tonight, then?”

“I'm not telling you.”

“Right. Tonight it is.” He paused for a moment, and his voice was deadly serious. “I mean it, Kitty. You're not going into the west wing alone.”

“If you want to help so badly,” I said, “tell me what the men dream about.”

He paused in the act of stuffing the newspaper into his pocket. “Beg pardon?”

“I think the dreams are a clue,” I said, “but I don't know how. I don't know what they dream about exactly. None of them will tell me, because they think I'll tell the doctors.”

He thought it over for only a second. “All right,” he said. “I'll see what I can do.”

•   •   •

M
r. Derby's fiancée was a pretty black-haired girl in a well-tailored suit of pastel green with a high lace collar who arrived alongside Derby's mother. Martha put them in the garden, where the women sat on either side of the patient on one of the garden benches, patting him with their gloved hands and discreetly wiping the perspiration of the rapidly sweltering day from their faces. For his part, Derby pulled out a piece of paper and shyly read the girl a poem he'd written, smiling when both women gently praised it.

Nina wheeled Mr. West onto the terrace. There his parents came and sat with him, his father in a suit and formal derby hat, his mother in flowing pink as if dressed for church. Both parents looked not much older than West himself, as if they'd been adolescent when he was born. The three of them sat silent, not catching one another's eyes, presumably pretending West hadn't lost both his legs and his fiancée.

Tom Hodgkins's visitor was not his mother but his cousin. She was a stout woman of twenty-five, dressed in a suit and high-collared blouse and a hat with a feather on it, carrying a handbag as hefty as a brick. “I didn't even know he was here,” she told Boney. “My mother is his aunt, his last living relative except me, and she never said. When I found out, she said she was too ashamed. Ashamed! I don't care what he is—he's blood. I got married last year and we have plenty of room. I've come to see him for myself. Blood shouldn't be in a hospital like a piece of nasty laundry.”

I fought the urge to kiss her. “He doesn't remember anything,” I said. “And he might think you're his mum.”

“Well, bless him—I'm the spitting image of her, so if it makes him happy, it doesn't matter much to me,” she said as Boney led her away.

That left me with Creeton.

Creeton's father was visibly mortified, his face red under his heavy whiskers, his eyes flitting uneasily about the room. When he glimpsed the other patients, he looked away, pained, as if every man was disgustingly naked. He cast a single, horrified glance at the bruises on my neck and looked resolutely away again. His wife trailed behind him, hard faced and grim, with the locked posture and determined jaw of a woman attending a funeral. It was not going to be an affectionate reunion.

I put them in the small parlor near the front hall. It had been emptied like the other rooms and now contained a table and three ratty chairs, the window looking out at the dry, mildewed statue of Mary on the front drive. I brought Creeton, who was visibly sweating, into the room and left as quickly as I could, stationing myself outside the door and partway down the corridor. Staff instructions had been clear: We were to give the men privacy for their visits while staying close enough to interfere if there were signs of trouble. I could hear voices from the parlor, but no words.

Boney came down the corridor toward me, tailed by Roger. “Is everything under control here?” she asked, her voice lowered.

“It seems to be.”

She nodded, then sighed, crossing her arms. “Visiting day is always the worst. We've never had one go so smoothly.”

“Someone always ends up crying,” Roger piped in. “Or we have to sedate 'em.”

“It's very difficult,” said Boney. “A shame.”

I looked at her. Something about visiting day had put her in a softer mood. She didn't seem in her usual hurry to get away from me, so I said, “I'd like some advice, if you don't mind.”

A thin veil of suspicion came over her gaze. “What is it?”

“Matron told me the men might try to deceive me. In order to escape.”

“Of course they will,” she answered instantly.

“I'm starting to see that. And it made me think that I need to know better what to guard against. If a patient wanted to escape, he'd need to steal things first, wouldn't he? Are the men's belongings locked up?”

“It depends,” she said. “When a man comes here, most of his belongings are kept in a locker downstairs. Money and valuables are kept in a safe in Matron's office. Only Matron and Mr. Deighton have the combination.”

“What about keys?” I said. “I worry a patient could steal a set of keys, you know, and escape.”

“I'd like to see a single one of them try,” Roger snorted.

Boney ignored him. “Kitty, these are madmen, not criminal geniuses. A patient who stole my keys would get into the linens and the store closets. Then what would he do?”

Not Boney, then. “What about the narcotics? Or the west wing?”

“Yes, I suppose he could get into the narcotics, though I don't see how they would help him escape. As for the west wing, I suppose he'd have to get hold of an orderly's keys.” She frowned at Roger. “No one wants to get into the mouse droppings and dust sheets, as far as I'm aware. If he's terribly determined, he's welcome to try.”