“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.”
? ? ?
Mr. 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.