I cleared my throat. “I’ve checked the bridge,” I said to everyone. “It’s clear.”
“Thank God,” said Archie. He did not stutter.
“I’ve just been on the telephone in Matron’s office,” said Jack. “The phone lines seem to be up again. I spoke to the hospital at Newcastle on Tyne. It seems all the patients arrived safely. I told them we’ve casualty cases, and they’re sending ambulances as fast as they can.”
“It will take a few hours,” I said.
“That gives us some time,” Paulus broke in. When we all looked at him, he said. “Well? What are we going to tell everyone?”
He was right. “The truth doesn’t sound . . .” I paused, not certain how to word it.
“It sounds mad,” said Archie.
Anna stopped eating and put down her fork.
I pictured it: one of us—any of us—telling the authorities in Newcastle on Tyne that Creeton and Mabry had been possessed by ghosts, and Creeton had tried to kill Mabry in appeasement to the ghost of Nils Gersbach, and Mabry had tried to kill Anna instead, but the ghost of Mikael Gersbach had saved her. “No one would believe me if I said it,” I said. “I’m hardly credible.”
“Neither am I,” offered Archie, gesturing to the prominent lettering on his shirt. “You have the best chance of any of us, Jack.”
“I would, if I hadn’t just spent six months in a mental hospital,” said Jack. “That might tell against me. Paulus or Nurse Shouldice, you’re probably the most credible witnesses here.”
“God, no,” said Paulus. “I need to work, and this place is finished. Who’s going to hire an orderly who believes a story like that?”
“I need my job, too,” said Nina. She was eating steadily, as always; being struck and drugged seemed to have made her hungry. “Here’s the best way. We got hit by the flu. We evacuated as many as we could. The stress got to Creeton and he became aggressive. He attacked Kitty and me, and then Mr. West. Mabry and Yates got the gun out of Matron’s safe to defend us. Creeton fought with Mabry, who shot Roger by accident. Yates shot Mabry in the leg when he was aiming at Creeton and his rifle went off by mistake.” She put another bite of bacon into her mouth. “I think that works.”
Jack had put his fork down and stared at her. “That’s missing quite a few pieces of the story. And I’d never let a rifle go off by accident.”
She glared back at him from behind her spectacles. “You did this time, Patient Sixteen. You most definitely let your rifle go off by mistake. As for the rest of it, no one’s going to know that Mabry shot at Anna if we don’t tell them.”
“It’s not bad,” Paulus said. “I come out of it looking rather good. At least I didn’t shoot anyone.”
“What about me?” said Anna. “Where do I come into the story?”
“Just as you did,” Nina replied. “Your mother died and you came back here. You hid in the west wing. When we found you, we took you in until help arrived.”
“Or she was never here at all,” said Paulus.
“What does that mean?” said Archie.
“Well, we’re the only ones that know she’s here, really. She could disappear again and no one would be the wiser.” He turned to her. “Is that what you want to do?”
Anna looked down at her plate. “I don’t know.”
“It’s going to come out, Anna,” Jack told her softly. “Maisey knows everything, and she can prove it. Whether you’re found or not, it will all come out.”
She nodded, did not look up.
“The story is rather hard on Creeton,” Archie admitted, pouring himself some water with a hand that did not shake. “He did do those things, I know, but he wasn’t entirely in charge of his own actions. Neither was Mabry.”
“What are you worried about?” Jack asked.
“Well, I assume that we patients will all be reassigned to different hospitals, especially when the scandal breaks. It could go hard on him. He might even face criminal charges.”
“I don’t think his family will help him,” I added.
“Still, they won’t want a scandal,” said Jack. He sighed. “I don’t really know what to do. I’ll have to think it over.” He looked at Archie. “Where do you think you’ll go?”
Archie shrugged. “Wherever they assign me, I suppose.” He smiled a little. “Maybe I’ll go to a hospital where they have a gramophone.”
My mind was turning with an idea. “Has Mabry woken yet?” I asked.
“Only briefly,” said Paulus. “He was still groggy.”
I nodded, the idea still going round in my mind. I’d talk to Mabry when he was awake.
There was nothing to do, then, but wait. We went our separate ways. Anna took West his breakfast, and they sat talking quietly. Nina flung herself on the spare mattress set up for the on-duty nurse and was asleep in minutes. Paulus disappeared to his own devices, probably to sleep as well, and Jack went to his room. Portis House was silent, the air changed. There were still cracks in the walls and the cellar was still flooded, but it didn’t seem like a haunted place. It was a big, somnolent house in the summer heat, a rich man’s folly purged of its nightmares, dozing as if already abandoned. I climbed the stairs to the nurses’ bathroom and turned on the taps in the bathtub. I unbraided my hair, took off my uniform. I sat in the bath for a long time, thinking about things. About ghosts. About endings. About beginnings.
When I got out, I didn’t rebraid my hair. I left it loose and clean; it hung to the middle of my back, swaying with my movements in a way I wasn’t used to. It was, I realized, rather a nice chestnut color. I’d never really taken the time to look at my hair in daylight. Perhaps, at almost twenty-one, it was time I did.
I found my cotton nightdress and pulled it over my head, even though the warm sun of midmorning was rising in the sky. Then I padded down the stairs in my bare feet. I made no sound. I saw no ghosts.
Jack’s room was darkened. He’d drawn the curtains, and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see he was lying on his bed, on his back on top of the covers. He’d taken off everything but his undershorts, and he had his fingers linked over his flat stomach as he stared at the ceiling. He went very still when he saw me.
I closed the door behind me, and since it wouldn’t lock from the inside, I propped the room’s only wooden chair against the knob.
We didn’t speak for a moment as my heart careened in my chest. I could hear nothing but the blood rushing in my ears. Courage, Kitty. I took a step forward, took my nerves in hand. “You said you’d go through hell to see me naked,” I told him. “I think you win.”
In one motion, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. “Come here,” he said softly.
I came closer, fighting shyness, fighting all the fears that had held me back. When I came in range he took my wrists and pulled me in until I stood between his knees. He took my face in his hands and kissed me.
It was everything, that kiss. It was the closeness of him, his skin setting a reaction off mine like sparks, even when we weren’t touching. It was the goodness of it, the rightness of it, the fact that I was afraid, and that the fear was right, too. I could be afraid, and I could still do this, still do anything I wanted. It was the fact that he’d come back from that dark, dark place he’d been. It was the fact that both of us had thought ourselves alone in the world, and that we’d both been wrong.