Silence for the Dead (27 page)

“Right,” said Jack. “Go get her. We'll set up her mattress downstairs with the others.” His blue gaze was steady on me. “And for God's sake, Kitty, be careful.”

H
e'd been there before me. Of course he had. In the pit of my gut, I was starting to know that so far we had always been a step too slow, waiting to see what he'd left behind. This time it was Nina.

She lay on the floor of the nursery, where she'd been undressing to go to bed. There was blood on her temple, as if she'd been struck, but her face was flushed and I could see the rise and fall of her chest. For good measure, Creeton had taken a stocking from her drawer and tied her wrists to the foot of the brass bedstead.

“Nina.” I fell to my knees, pressed my hand to her forehead and her temple. She didn't move, didn't groan. She was out cold. I had no idea what to do, of course, if there was anything to be done. But the stocking I could take care of. I lunged for my own bed and felt under the mattress.

My knife wasn't there.

Cold steel touched my throat. “Looking for this?”

I froze.

“Interesting,” said Creeton. “One of our own nurses was armed. I guess you were a little bit suspicious of us.”

I glanced over my bed. All of my things had been rifled through, my bedding disturbed. Martha's and Nina's things had been searched as well, their undergarments taken from the drawers.
Practical Nursing
lay facedown on the floor as if someone had shaken and dropped it. I'd noticed none of this when I'd come in; I'd seen only Nina.

“What do you want?” I managed.

I was still crouched beside my bed, my hands on the mattress. Creeton shifted behind me, and I could hear his heavy breath. “You know what I want. I wrote a little note and put it on Yates's pillow. You've all found it by now.”

“‘Eliminate the weak,'” I quoted.

“Do you hear it?” said Creeton. “He's telling me. I can hear it in my head. Only at night at first, but lately it's been stronger and stronger. There. I can hear him now. Can you?”

I heard nothing but the pounding of my own heart. “He isn't real. It's this place, Creeton. I told you.”

“In my mind, he's real. But then, I'm mad, aren't I?” The knife drew tighter against my throat. “I'd like to try killing you. You've never liked me and I've never liked you. But you aren't the
assignment.
You're a means to an end. So was the other nurse.”

“What end?” I choked out. “For God's sake, what do you want?”

“The key to the west wing,” said Creeton. “I've tried to get in there but all the doors are barred. Just one is locked. I want the key, and I want my Luger. I want the combination to the safe where it's kept.”

“I don't know of any safe.”

“That's a nice lie,” he said. “But I already questioned the other nurse, and she told me that's where it is. But she didn't have the combination. I was finished with her.” He leaned closer, exhaling in my ear as he spoke. “I think you have it. I think you have both.”

I thought frantically. There was no point in stalling him; everyone was busy with the patients two floors down, and no one was coming this way. If I screamed, how quickly would they come? And would he kill me before they got here?

Creeton pressed the tip of the knife harder into my throat. “Don't scream. I can see you thinking about it. If you try, I'll cut you with this, and then I'll cut her. I swear it.”

“Jack Yates has the combination to the safe,” I choked. “He has your gun.”

“Another lie.” His face grew red, and then he sneered. “Oh, perfect Jack, your little lover. Snuck into his room at night, did you? I know all about it. Has he had you yet? Does he know what you are?”

I was blinded by white-hot anger. “You can stick it, you disgusting pig.”

He laughed at that. “You're not one of the weak. Not you. I'll get my gun from him; never worry. Now give me the key to the west wing.”

Again, I could have put him off. Only the orderlies had the keys to the west wing, but I still had the ring of keys I'd taken off Paulus's belt the night before. At least, if I gave Creeton the key, I'd be able to tell Jack where we could find him. “It's in the pocket of my apron,” I said.

“Don't reach,” he said. “Keep your hands on the bed where I can see them. I'll get it myself.”

He took his time about it, putting his beefy hands into my pockets, making sure his fingers grabbed and pinched me through the layers of fabric. He finally found the right key ring and held it out in front of me. “Is this it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good girl.” He laughed low and put his hand down again, this time grabbing my backside the way he had the first day. “Very nice.”

Tears stung my eyes. “You can't hurt me,” I said to him. “I've been hurt by worse than you, and he's dead now, or dying.”

He dropped his hand. “I would have done it, you know. That day. I could have saved everyone a lot of trouble. I'm one of the weak. My father knows it, and so do I. It would have been best if I'd gone that day, because it's best if the weak are eliminated. But now I have an assignment to carry out. It's the only reason he hasn't had me kill myself already.”

“Then go do it,” I spat, “and leave me alone.”

“Business first. Put your wrists together.”

He pulled out another of Nina's stockings. I couldn't do it; it was foolish perhaps, but I'd given in too many times in my life, and all my instincts rose up. I fought him as he grabbed my wrists. I thrashed hard and I screamed. He swore and stuffed the stocking into my mouth, then grabbed another as I choked on it, and he yanked my wrists again.

Still I fought. It was a grim struggle, the two of us on the ground, I trying to kick him or jab him with my knees, Creeton using his big bulk to pin me down. I was bruised and straining by the end of it, the stocking thick and foul in my mouth, sweat running down my forehead and onto my temples, tears flowing down my face. But he won. He finally wound the stocking around both of my wrists and tied me to the leg of my bedstead, just as he had done to Nina.

He stood, panting, and looked down at me. “You're lucky you're one of the strong ones,” he said. “And you're lucky I'm out of time. Otherwise I'd use these, just as I did on your friend.” He reached into his pocket and held up the bottle of Jack's pills.

I screamed past the stocking, and it came out a pitiful, muffled sound. If he'd given those pills to Nina, she was as good as dead. I was so bloody helpless. I felt more tears on my face. I kicked my legs, but he stepped easily away.

“I only gave her three,” he said. “I made her take them. I didn't want to kill her any more than I want to kill you, but she'll sleep a good while, I think. She won't be much use to anyone even when she wakes up. I was saving the others for you, but I can tell you won't swallow them, even at knifepoint. And I don't want to take that stocking out of your mouth and hear you scream again.”

He put the bottle in his pocket. He looked down at me, and in my haze I wasn't sure whether he spoke again. And then he was gone, and I was tied up on the floor, alone.

Seconds ticked by like hours. Time blurred. The rain pattered on the window. No one else came. Nina was still.

I closed my eyes. Something was happening downstairs; I was sure of it. I hoped Jack and Mabry were ready for it. I hoped the patients had been moved. I thought, incongruously, of Syd, the way he'd looked on the day he came to see me, in his wool suit and new hat. The way he'd smelled. My own brother, who I'd thought dead, coming to get me. Hitting me. I lay back and felt the bitter sting of the stocking in my throat and wept, there on the floor. My anger had faded into black helplessness. It seemed I would always be fighting with men, always wondering when they'd pin me down to get their way. Only Jack touched me with gentleness. And why would Jack ever love someone as worthless as I was?

There was nothing but the sound of the rain on the window, the numbness in my hands, the tight pain in my wrists, and the ache in my arms. My lower back hurt, and my elbow from where I'd cracked it fighting Creeton, and my ribs and legs ached. After I stopped crying I was just this, a body, a collection of varying aches and pains, my heart pushing blood through me as I waited.

Then I heard a creak in the corridor, and a quiet footstep.

I stayed still at first, listening. If it was the shirtless ghost of Mikael Gersbach, I didn't want to see it. I would stay still, and maybe he would go away.

Another footstep, closer this time. Someone had come through the door of the nursery and was crossing the floor toward me.

I didn't feel a flash of cold, and I didn't hear the pipes begin to moan in the walls. I opened my eyes and craned my neck, but the angle was wrong and I couldn't see who was approaching. It was someone tentative, almost tiptoeing. That meant it couldn't be Jack or Mabry. Creeton had finished with me and left. Who was tiptoeing around Portis House?

I heard a rustle of skirts, and gooseflesh broke out on my arms.

She came into my line of vision at last. She was wearing the same dress I'd seen her in before, though it was dusty and bedraggled. Her blond hair was pulled back into a simple braid. She was thin and pale, but she was real, and she was alive. It was the girl from the picture in Maisey's locket. She came forward and knelt next to me.

“Hush,” she said. “We must be quiet.”

I blinked up at her, amazed.

The girl pulled out a pocketknife and motioned toward my ties. “I'm here to help you,” she said. “My name is Anna Gersbach.”

•   •   •

“
I
don't even know where to start,” I said when she had pulled the stocking from my mouth.

“I'm sorry,” she said. Her accent was flavored with French and something upper class and Continental. “I don't mean to startle you. I'm one of the family who used to live here.”

“I know who you are,” I said, watching as she sawed the blade of her pocketknife against the stockings around my wrists. Up close, I could see that her hair was coming loose from its braid and her fingernails were caked with dirt. A sour, unwashed smell came off her. “I'm Kitty Weekes. I've seen you before. Outside. You aren't dead.”

“No,” she said simply, straining as she cut.

“What about your mother?”

“She is dead,” Anna replied. “Just three weeks ago.”

“Three weeks? Where have you both been all this time?”

She glanced at me. “It is a long story. I don't know if we have time to hear it now.”

“I believe I know most of it,” I replied.

She gave me an assessing look, then returned to work on the stocking. There was something removed about her, something a little unnerving, as if she were looking at you through the glass of a lens you could not see.

The stocking gave way and I slumped to the floor. It felt as if someone had shoved wires into my arms. I lay gasping for a long moment, tears of pain rolling down my face, and then I slowly rolled to my side and looked at her again. “Why are you here?” I asked her. “What do you want?”

“I will help your friend,” she said as she moved over to Nina and started cutting again. “This man,” she said as she worked. “With red hair. He is mad, of course, but it is more than that. Perhaps you'll think I'm mad as well, but my father has him. My father's ghost, that is. He's taken the man's mind.” She glanced at me. “I realize this makes no sense.”

I lay on my side and felt regular sensation gradually return to my arms and hands. “You would be surprised at what I think makes sense,” I said. “What about your brother? Mikael is here, too.”

She stopped her work and looked stricken. “Mikael.” For a second she seemed close to tears; then she turned back to Nina's bound hands. “Yes, he's here, too. But he's a prisoner, just like these other men. He wants to be set free.” She bit her lip, swallowed her grief. “It was what he wanted in life as well. What we both wanted.”

I sat up.
What we both wanted.
I didn't want to think about what those words meant. I knew the possibilities too well. “Did your father kill Mikael?”

“Yes. Out in the grass by the library. He executed Mikael with a rifle.”

“And you hid with your mother.”

“Not here, no.” Nina's ties gave way, and Anna looked down at Nina's sleeping form. “What happened to her?”

“He forced her to swallow drugs, and then he hit her.”

The answer didn't seem to affect her. She touched Nina's neck. “Her pulse is strong, but she is asleep. We'll have to leave her here. He'll be downstairs by now, trying to kill the others.”

“I don't understand it,” I said, struggling to my feet. “Your father was a murderer. He killed Mikael in cold blood. Why did you run? Why are you here, in hiding?”

Anna stood and faced me. “Because if I'm found, I'll be hanged. I'm a murderer, too. After Papa shot Mikael, I took his gun and I shot him myself.”

C
reeton was armed, and he could be anywhere by now; we needed to hurry. Still, I sat on the floor and stared at Anna Gersbach, the shock of her words washing over my body like hot water. “What did he do to you?” I managed. “Your father.”

Her face was closed, diffident. “We must go.”

“Wait,” I said.
That was me,
I wanted to tell her.
That was me, too. Did you tell anyone? Did you cry?
I wanted to know. I needed to know. “What did he do to you?”

Her gaze only glanced over mine, then moved away again. “Enough,” she said finally. “He did enough. Now, please get up. We have to move quickly.”

We crept down the staircase; we heard no sounds. “Creeton is after the patients,” I whispered to Anna. “He'll go for the common room.”

She looked at me quizzically, and I realized she didn't know what room I was talking about. What had the room been when the Gersbachs had been here, with all their beautiful furniture? A drawing room? A parlor? I had no time to find out. I pushed past her and led the way.

“How long have you been here?” I asked her as we moved down the stairs.

“A few days,” she said. “I think. I don't know. We were in Switzerland, and Mother died. They gave me money . . . They told me I could go to France, or anywhere I wanted. But I have no home in France. My only home is here, and I thought it was empty. So I made my way here.”

So she'd been in hiding. How had she thought she could come home and live in Portis House as if nothing had happened? “You must have had a bit of a surprise when you arrived.”

“I suppose so.”

I frowned and glanced back at her, keeping my voice low. “You said
they
gave you money. Who is ‘they'?”

“Men in suits,” she replied, shrugging. “Lawyers, perhaps. I don't remember.”

I glanced back at her again. For the first time it crossed my mind that Anna Gersbach, who had grown up with a father who had done “enough” to her, watched her father kill her brother, then killed her father herself, might not exactly be in her right mind. This was how she dealt with all of it, I thought: by keeping her distance, as if none of it was happening.

The men had been moved out of the main hall. It stood empty, but for a few crumpled blankets and a left-behind pillow. The light coming through the windows was chalky gray. Was it my imagination, or had the rain eased off a little?

I slipped down the corridor, Anna moving silently behind me. I started to run when I saw what stood in the doorway, pushed off-kilter. It was an empty wheelchair.

The furniture in the common room had been pushed aside, and mattresses had been placed on the floor. The sick men had been placed on them; some were sleeping, one was thrashing, and one groggily asked for water when he saw me. Douglas West sat on the floor twenty feet down the corridor, the halves of his legs flexed upward. He was walking slowly, very slowly, on his hands, pulling himself along the floor toward the door and his chair. He looked up at me. He had blood down one arm and the front of his shirt.

“Don't worry,” he said as I rushed to him. “Most of it isn't mine. I don't think so, anyway.”

“Are you all right?” I asked stupidly. I squatted next to him. I had no idea how to get him into the chair; that was usually a job for Paulus. What happened?”

“They put me in charge of sentry duty,” he said. “That red-haired bastard came along, as we knew he would. He had a knife in his hand. I wheeled out as he came my way and jumped him, grabbed at the knife. He bloodied my lip, but at least I nicked him before I fell.” He stopped his strenuous progress long enough to wipe his forehead. “I got him in the shoulder, I think.”

“Do you need help?” Anna came forward. “Perhaps two of us can lift him.”

Douglas looked up at her. “Oh, hullo,” he said, taking in her unkempt dress and hair. “You're a bit of all right, aren't you?”

“This is Anna Gersbach,” I said.

“You don't say? You're pretty, but I have to say your family's a bit of a muck. I don't like to be the bearer of bad news, but your brother's been haunting my nightmares for three months.”

Anna had been about to take one of his arms as I took the other, but she blinked at him. “My father is doing it,” she said. “He torments Mikael. I'm very sorry.”

He grunted as the two of us lifted him. I'd never known a man could be so heavy with muscle. “It's all right,” he said, ever the gentleman. “I was already barking mad.” He looked at my face as we settled him into his chair and wheeled him back to the doorway of the common room. “Don't fuss, Nurse Weekes. I'm terribly hard to kill.”

“What do we do now?” I said to him. “Where do we go? I thought he would come here to kill the patients.”

“I thought so, too, but he didn't. I don't know where he was bloody going. When he shook me off, he headed in the direction of the stairwell.”

I thought of what Creeton had said when he attacked me. He had wanted the key to the west wing, and he had wanted to get his Luger. “He may have gone to Matron's office,” I said. “He's looking for a way to get into her safe.”

“He won't find it,” said a voice.

Behind us, inside the common room, one man had sat up on his mattress. It was Archie, hugging his knees, watching us. I hadn't seen him move.

“Archie,” I said gently, “are you all right?”

He looked past my shoulder to Anna Gersbach. “He knows you,” he said to her. “The man that comes. He knows you.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you here to stop him?” he asked her.

Anna stepped forward, looking down at him, sitting so thin and vulnerable on his mattress. “I was hiding,” she told him. “I was afraid. But Mikael—Mikael came to me this morning. He begged me to help. He told me I was the only one who can.” She swallowed, but no tears came down her face. “He told me Papa is getting stronger, that he's going to kill someone. He told me to stop it and set him free.”

Archie looked up at her from his sunken eyes, all traces of his stutter gone. “I see his face in my dreams,” he said. “I heard his thoughts last night. They were in my head. If that was your father, I am truly sorry.”

Her mouth opened, but she did not reply. She seemed to have lost her words.

“Do you know how to stop him?” Archie asked her.

Still speechless, Anna shook her head.

“He wants a sacrifice,” Archie said. “He's tried, and he's come close.” He glanced at me, then looked back at Anna. “But he's never succeeded. If he gets his sacrifice, he will go.”

“That means someone has to die,” I said.

“Perhaps,” said Archie, “and perhaps not.” He looked at me again. “Creeton won't get into the safe. The Luger isn't in there anyway. You told him that, didn't you?”

I'd told Creeton that Jack had the combination, but Creeton hadn't believed me. “Yes,” I said. “Archie, how—?”

“It's logic,” he replied. “I know what he was after. I know he tried to get it from you. Creeton won't get into the safe himself, so he'll move on. He'll go to the west wing.”

“Why?” Douglas asked.

Archie's eyes glittered. “Because the one he wants is there. The one he's going to kill. He's going to eliminate the weak.”

My breath came short. Creeton hadn't killed Nina, and he hadn't killed me.
You aren't the assignment,
he'd said to me. I'd thought that meant he was coming to kill the other patients. But it hadn't.

“Jack,” I said. “Jack is in the west wing. And so is Mabry.”

“We need to hurry,” said Anna.

I turned to Douglas. I reached into my pocket and took out a folded rag. Anna and I had made a stop on our way downstairs from the nursery; there was something I'd needed to retrieve from the nurses' night duty desk.

I unfolded the rag and pulled out one of the needles I'd taken from the desk drawer and assembled. “If by any chance Creeton comes back, stick him with this.”

Douglas took it from me. His expression was as unsettled as if I'd handed him a live grenade. “I recognize this,” he said quietly.

Of course he did. Every man at Portis House could get the needle if he got out of hand. “It'll do the trick,” I told him.

He squared away his unease and set the needle gingerly on his thigh, his hand cupped over it. “If he comes back, I'm ready,” he said, determined. “Go.”

•   •   •

“
T
hey've closed off the west wing,” I told Anna as we climbed the west servants' stairs. “There's only one door.”

“Actually, there's a door through the cellar,” Anna said.

“What?”

“It was how I got into the house, through the cellar. There is an outside door and the wood was rotten around the lock. I got in that way and used the connecting tunnel through the cellar to hide in the west wing, where no one would find me.”

“I don't understand it,” I said, hushed. “I don't understand where you've been, why you came back.”

“After I killed Papa, Mama was hysterical,” Anna said. “She didn't know what to do. I was in shock. I barely remember. Papa was going to kill us, too—that was why I did it. I still know it, that he would have killed us. But how can I prove that? He'd hurt us for years, but no one outside the family ever knew. He kept it so quiet, so hidden.”

“Even from Maisey Ravell,” I said.

For the first time she expressed emotion as she flinched in pain. “Maisey never knew. I hope to God she did not. I hid the bruises. Papa said that if I ever told—”

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

She glanced at me thoughtfully, and then her face returned to its usual impassiveness. “He hurt Mama, too. He hurt all of us. Then Mikael came home disgraced as a coward. It was too much for Papa. He said we would never live down the shame, that we should not live at all. He said he would execute Mikael the way the army should have. He pulled Mikael from his bed one night and did it. He said it was only just. He took Mikael outside. I heard Mikael pleading with him, and I heard the shot, and when I came out I saw Mikael on the ground. So I grabbed the gun from Papa and I shot him.”

“Dear God, Anna,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“Mama was hysterical,” she said, as if I hadn't spoken. She had gone back into her strange trance, distant from the world. “She telephoned the magistrate and he came.”

“Maisey's father,” I said.

“Yes. I remember he came, and he told us he would take care of it, that there need be no scandal. I had thought I would go to jail, that I would be hanged. But Mr. Ravell said that if we did exactly as he said, it would all go away.”

“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.