“Really? Where?”
My mind spun. It must have been Octavia that Gloria had seen the day before she died. But I didn’t trust the man across from me, so I made something up. “It was—written on the blotter on Inspector Merriken’s desk when he interviewed me yesterday.”
Fitz assessed that, his bloodshot gaze traveling over me. “Well, I don’t know what they’d want with Octavia. She wasn’t there that night.”
“Neither was I, but they interviewed me.”
He shrugged, accepting it at last. Behind his shoulder, Ramona moved, a strange sliding motion. She was coming closer to him, inch by inch. Suddenly I felt sick, my stomach rebelling at the fear and the horrible sight and the awful smell of her, at the pain that kept her here in my kitchen, at the throbbing pain in my head. I wanted to stand up and scream. In an overwhelming rush, it suddenly seemed I’d spent so much of my life in the company of the dead that I’d never lived much of a life.
“I can’t help you,” I said to both of them.
It was Fitz who answered, of course. “Ellie, for God’s sake. Haven’t you been listening to me?”
“I’ve advised you already,” I said. “I think you should go to the police. Perhaps you’re in danger, or perhaps not, but they’re the only ones who can help you.”
“Ellie—”
I flicked my gaze to Ramona. “I can’t help you. I’ve tried. I have. But I simply can’t.” She gave no indication that she’d heard me; her gaze stayed fixed on Fitz.
“I’m wasting my time here, aren’t I?” Fitz pushed back his chair and stood, angry and convincingly hurt. “I should have known better than to ask you for help. Don’t disturb Ellie’s quiet little life—that’s the rule, isn’t it?”
I looked back at him, tired of him, tired of everything. “You have no idea.”
“If I’m dead, it’s your fault,” he said sullenly, like a child, and then he was gone.
I pressed my hands to my temples. Ramona had vanished, but a lingering smell remained. When I heard the front door slam, I got up, reluctantly walked into my sitting room, and peered around the edge of the curtain. Fitz was shambling off down my street, his hands in his pockets. I saw no ghosts.
I sat at the window for a long moment, invisible from the street, looking past the curtain, watching. I saw nothing move, saw no one pass. The houses facing me across the street were still and quiet. And yet I felt certain that someone was watching the house; why not? It could be George Sutter’s man, or Inspector Merriken’s man. It could be the man who had killed Ramona and sent her into her hellish half existence, watching my doorway and waiting for his chance.
The pain in my temples throbbed, lighter now. I left the window and went upstairs, where I washed, changed my clothes, and put a few belongings into an old messenger bag of my father’s. I chose one of my older dresses to wear, a soft shirtdress with a lace collar and a narrow belt. When I’d finished, I looked around my bedroom—the room that had been my mother’s bedroom and now was mine. I looked at the dressing table, the mirror, the silver-backed hairbrush. I opened the closet door and looked at The Fantastique’s beaded dress hanging there, waiting for my next session. I ran my fingers gently down the sleeve of the dress, feeling its cool perfection, listening to the faint sound it made. I took the head scarf from its hook on the back of the closet door and wound it around the hanger, letting its ends dangle over the dress, and then I closed the door.
Pickwick waited for me in the front hall, sitting up, his ears alert. He was not exactly exuberant, but he watched me with a bright, calm expression, his intelligent brown eyes following me. Again he thumped his tail once, a gesture that seemed to say, Yes, here we are. You’re not my master, but at least you’re something. It was an improvement over his dejection of yesterday.
“I should leave you here,” I said to him, shouldering my bag. “I should call my daily woman again. I have no need for a dog, and this way you’d be out of danger.”
Pickwick made no move, and in my imagination he chided me. He was a collie, after all, bred to run through fields and herd livestock, not to sit decoratively in a London sitting room. I looked around at the silent, ordered house I had lived in for three years now without moving or changing a single piece of furniture.
“Are you a guard dog?” I said to him, thinking of the danger I would face today.
Thumps of the tail, and a patient expression.
I sighed and took up his leash, which my daily woman had left by the door. “All right, then, but don’t blame me if you get tired. I suppose I’ll put up with you.” When I bent to attach his leash, he pressed his nose to the inside of my elbow, as if he knew perfectly well that I was relieved to have him along, that the vision of his master that we’d both seen made me feel like kin to him. “We’re going to Kent,” I told him conversationally, “but we’re making a stop at Harriet Walk first. I have questions for Octavia Murtry. The police are coming to Kent as well, and so is James, but we won’t see them because they’ll be out of sight. So don’t let on, all right?”
Pickwick seemed to be in agreement. I took a deep breath, gathered my courage, and left my house for what felt like the last time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“I have no time to talk,” Octavia Murtry said to me. “The taxi is leaving.”