“Men who live in close quarters influence each other,” she’d replied. “Once one man had tried it there, I knew the others would follow suit. It becomes a sort of group delusion. Madness makes a man’s mind more susceptible to such influences. Does that answer your question, Nurse Weekes?”
“Yes, Matron,” I’d said.
“Very good. You are dismissed.”
Now I wore only my skirt, blouse, and boots, the long sleeves off. I slid quickly down the corridor in the dark, away from the kitchen, where I could hear Nathan talking, probably to Bammy. The lights had gone off and I had no lamp, but I could make my way to the stairs easily enough.
I had a bit of a bad moment before I climbed the first step. It was dark, and I couldn’t see exactly where I was going. For a long breath I pictured the shirtless man and my heart turned over in my chest. But there was no breath of cold, only a damp, mildew smell. I had to put exhaustion and fear behind me and push forward. I placed one foot after the other and climbed.
This was the westernmost stairwell of the main wing, and I hadn’t had cause to use it before. It was yet another servants’ staircase; the stairs for the family were wide and open and far too exposed for what I planned to do. The rough map of Portis House in my head said that one flight up I’d be at the farthest end of the corridors that held the men’s bedrooms. That meant that, should I open the stairwell door, Nina would see me if she was doing her rounds in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I climbed to the landing and stopped, holding my breath and listening.
“Kitty.”
The breath heaved out of me and my knees buckled, a whistling sound coming from my throat.
“Jesus!” It was a whisper, hoarse and low. “Jesus, I’m sorry.”
I clutched my chest like a heroine in a Victorian melodrama. “Jack.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and he moved out of the dark toward me. I could faintly see his white shirt.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.” He came closer again. “Are you all right?”
“Once I can breathe, yes, I will be.”
“I mean after this afternoon.” I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear concern in his voice. “That wasn’t a very good scene with Creeton.”
I swallowed. “I’ll survive.”
He was quiet for a second, and I wondered whether he was thinking of his own suicide attempt. “I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he said finally. “I wish there had been a way to save you from it.”
“That’s very gallant, but as Matron made clear, it seems to be part of the job.”
“She at least told you that you did well, I hope?”
That surprised me. “Did well?”
“Kept your head. Took action. Kept him talking.”
Even in the dark, I stared at his shadow in amazement. “Matron? No. She said nothing like that.” The topic was making my cheeks burn, so I changed it. “You haven’t told me why you’re waiting for me in a stairwell at night.”
He shrugged. “I waited last night, but you never came. I’m going with you, Kitty—I told you. You can’t get rid of me.”
My nerves jangled, but I had to admit that, after everything, I didn’t really want to do this alone. And yet . . . “How did you know I would come this way?”
“This is the way, isn’t it? The only one left.”
It was. There were multiple doors and doorways throughout Portis House, of course, that would take a person into the west wing; every one of them had been discreetly and tidily boarded or bolted shut with hammer and nails. A safety precaution, as the west wing had become a hazard. The only entrance left was this one, past the stairs and across a gallery, through a door that was merely kept locked.
I listened at the door again, but Jack said, “She isn’t doing rounds. She’s counting linens.”
I turned to him. “What’s going to happen when she checks and sees you gone?”
“She already knows. I told her I couldn’t sleep so I was going for a run.”
“Going running? Now?”
I almost saw his shrug. “I have authorization. I told her I wanted to go now. What is she going to do?”
What indeed? Nina would not gainsay Patient Sixteen.
“I could have put my pillow under the bedcovers to look like I was sleeping,” he said, a grin in his voice. “But she would never have fallen for it.”
No, she wouldn’t. “We’ll have to be silent as we go through the gallery,” I said. “I’ve stashed a lamp in there. I’ve got the keys.”
“Clever and beautiful.”
I stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Let’s go.”
? ? ?
“One question,” said Jack, who was lighting the lamp as I unlocked the door. “Why didn’t you do this when you were on night shift?”
“God, no,” I replied in a whisper. “The night shift nurse has to do rounds and count linens. She can’t get away. And Roger watches like a nanny.”
He raised the lamp, and now I saw him in its globe of light. “This hasn’t been as easy as you thought it would be, has it?”
“Not even close,” I admitted. “What is that smell?”
I had swung open the door to the west wing, and we stepped through, pushing the door shut behind us. Over the smoky odor of the lamp I could smell dampness, mold. It was the smell of the black mold from the men’s bathroom.
Jack caught my hesitation. “It’s just rot,” he said. “Wood and plaster. I don’t smell anything dead.”
He’d know what death smelled like, of course. I thought of the Gersbachs and all that was at stake and made myself square my shoulders and lift my chin. “Give me the lamp.”
“No. I’ll lead. If there’s a hole in the floor, I’d rather go through it myself than watch you do it.”
“Is that supposed to be heroic?”
He grinned. “Follow me.”
We crept along the first corridor. Portis House had always seemed decrepit and unwelcoming to me, but as the only door out of the west wing receded, the rest of the house started to seem like a bastion of comfort. There was no other way to put it: The west wing was falling apart. Plaster crunched under our feet on the warped floorboards. The beams were visible in the ceiling above us, stripes of wet black mold rotting through the plaster, which was gone in chunks. The air was still here, but for the faint sound of the wind and the furtive scurrying of something in the walls. The smell of rot was a miasma. I kept my eyes on the back of Jack’s white shirt, reading the lettering over and over, and focused on where I was putting my feet.
We reached a room with only a single abandoned dresser in it. Jack set the lamp atop the dresser and opened the drawers as I went to the window, which was cracked just enough to let in a draft. I looked over the unfamiliar vista to the west of Portis House, along the coast and the marshes to the rocky shore. I spent a long moment breathing in the faint scent of clean night air and watching the few trees winking in the moonlight. How long had this day been? A year? Two?