I wasn’t exactly certain what that meant, and in the moment, I hadn’t the courage to ask. I knew James’s strength, his quickness, his intelligence. I knew he’d have expert help. I knew he’d spent several years fighting, experiencing things I couldn’t bear to imagine before coming home. And now he was relentlessly focused—on me. It would have to be enough. We had no better plan.
“Ellie.” James had gentled his voice, as if he’d followed my thoughts. “Just worry about yourself. Stay alert and don’t take chances. I’ll handle Merriken. We’ll be there.”
“And when we get to the house? If no one has come forward? If nothing has happened?”
“Then we do a séance, as you planned. See what Gloria has to tell us.” His brow furrowed as he looked at me. “You’re going to be all right, aren’t you?”
I’d assured him I would, that I could do the séance, that I felt well enough. But my head was already aching as I stood in line at the Victoria Station ticket counter, the heavy smell and sound of the crowds beating in time with my heart.
“You can’t take a dog in third class,” the ticket seller said to me, noting the leash looped around my wrist, the patient collie at my feet. “It isn’t allowed.”
“But—”
“You’ll have to buy a first-class ticket if you want to bring a dog. Those are the rules.”
I swallowed. I couldn’t resist a glance around me, through the dim light and crowds, before turning back to the ticket booth. I didn’t see anyone I recognized, anyone lingering near. I was supposed to stay visible. In the privacy of a first-class compartment, it would take Gloria’s killer only minutes to kill me.
“My sister can’t afford a first-class ticket,” I said, knowing that by looking at my clothes the ticket seller would never believe I was out of funds myself. “This is her dog. I’m taking him to her because she’s sick and wants him back. She’s devoted to him. We’re meeting in third class. I’ll never see her if I’m in first class. He’s a quiet dog. He’s the most well-behaved dog you’ve ever seen.”
The ticket seller, distracted and sweaty, scratched his bald head and glanced at Pickwick, and then he shrugged. “Very well. It’s nothing to me. But if he makes trouble and you’re tossed off, you’ve no one to blame but yourself.”
I bought my ticket, nearly sick with relief, and made my way to the platform. I boarded the third-class carriage, the conductor barely giving Pickwick a second look, and made my way to a seat. I sat with my knees together, my hands folded on my lap, my dog curled again at my feet, lying down now and preparing to nap. A plump woman who smelled of mint settled next to me, and other passengers filled the car, talking, laughing, one man ostentatiously pulling out a thick novel and leaning into the corner of his seat.
Still I did not see any man who seemed to be following me, anyone I recognized. My shoulders were wrung as tight as laundry in a wringer, and cold sweat beaded under my arms and down the back of my neck.
The train began to move, the station pulled away from the window, and I stared out, unseeing, waiting for it all to begin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
After my mother died, I got a single letter from Gloria Sutter. It was a card, hand printed on thick paper, the ink expensive and beautiful. On the front of the card was a drawing of a mermaid perched on a rock, her black hair flowing down her body and into the water. She was pebbled with inky scales, the forks of her tail drawn long and narrow. Her torso, bare and white, was turned toward the viewer, her hair covering her breasts, but the dip of her navel was visible above the line of her fishy waist. She held her arms out, palms up, as if making a deliberate gesture, and her expression was peaceful and almost sad.
On the inside of the card was written only: I am sorry. G.
I knew whose handwriting it was. When I touched the card I knew that Gloria had written it while sitting in a café somewhere on the banks of the Thames, watching the boats go by in the blistering summer heat. I knew that she looked as beautiful as ever, her shoulders pale in a sleeveless white dress, a scarf wound in her hair, her big dark eyes thoughtful for once.
A peace offering, then, if only a small one.
I looked at the front of the card again. Gloria had a painting of a mermaid in her flat, and I’d never had to ask her about it. We both knew. The mermaid, beautiful and freakish, a human woman yet not, a woman unable ever to live a normal human life. The mermaid, who lives her existence as the only one of her kind.
I tore up the card and threw it away, and then I went back to mourning my mother.
* * *
I jerked out of a momentary, uneasy doze. The woman who smelled of mint was gone, and I was alone in my seat. The other passengers in the third-class car to Kent were quiet, many of them sleeping.
The memory of the mermaid card had surfaced, vivid and entire, and I sat horrified at myself. I’d been so angry, so furiously shaken by my mother’s disgrace, her sickness and her death. I’d been nearly choked with grief, the blind unfairness of how my life had been pulled out from under me. How could I have known? How could I have been aware that the people around us, no matter how we feel about them, can be taken from us in the amount of time it takes to thrust a knife through the ribs? After all I’d been through, after all I’d seen, how could I not have known?
I pressed my hands to my eyes, fighting back tears. I took them away and noticed the girl across the aisle from me.
She was dressed smartly in a navy blue coat and hat, and she was in the depths of reading a movie magazine. The magazine hid most of her profile, but I could see the ends of a sleek black bob curling over her ears from under the brim of her hat. She crossed her legs, swinging one leg over the other.
I must have made some sort of sound because she lowered the magazine and looked at me. I swallowed. The girl was thirty-five at least, with a sizable nose and slightly crooked teeth. The eyebrows over her pale eyes were heavy and unkempt.