Silence for the Dead(103)

“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.

I closed my eyes. Inhaled air that was suddenly frigid. “He’s here somewhere,” I said.