James walked at my shoulder, rifle in hand, as I exited the back door of the house. I felt jangled, uncertain, as if I’d been transported somewhere entirely unfamiliar with strangers. The isolation of this house was complete; I could not see or hear the road far up the shaded drive, nor could I hear or see any neighbors. We were in the bottom of a soft hollow cupped by gentle hills, with no vantage point of the surrounding countryside. It was peaceful and undoubtedly beautiful, but in my state of mind it was almost suffocating.
I walked through the neat garden, tended by yet another person who was mysteriously absent, and into the green expanse beyond. A footpath had been created with large, flat stones set into the green earth, and I followed it. The sun lowered toward the hills and the air grew chill with a premonition of twilight.
“Why the telephone lines?” I asked James, when the silence stretched too long.
“It’s a common tactic,” James replied. His voice was tense, the words clipped. “Cut the communication lines if you can. We did it all the time at the front.”
I stopped on the path, turned to face him. His expression was bleak, the strain heavy in his eyes. “James,” I said, “you are not at war.”
“Aren’t I?” he asked. “I’m carrying a rifle and I’m looking at the landscape, wondering where the enemy might come from. You were nearly shot by a sniper. It feels like war to me.”
I put my hands on his face, feeling his rigid jaw. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted my familiar James back, the man I knew, the man who had taken me only last night, surrendered to me in passion as the rain had drummed on the windows. I reached up on my toes and kissed him.
He jumped at first, startled, and then cautiously gave in. I went slowly, exploring him, letting him feel his way back. He put a hand to the small of my back, his body warming to mine by degrees, his chest pressing against my chest, his arm sliding up and around my waist, pulling me to him. He was almost tentative at first, as if he hadn’t kissed a woman in years, but then he remembered, and he kissed me harder.
I let him do it. His touch was ragged and almost needy, his arm hard with the power of his thick muscles, but the harder he was, the softer I became. I ran my hands gently over his shoulders and the tense line of his neck, and then I broke the kiss.
“That did not happen on the battlefield,” I breathed.
He relaxed ever so slightly. “No. It did not.”
But he did not drop the rifle.
We crossed through a thin rope of trees, the smell of water growing stronger, and when we came through to the clearing beyond, we found the pond. I had pictured some sort of wild place in my mind, but this pond was anything but; it was large, obviously man-made, its edges immaculately cut, the grassy verge trim and the water smooth and reflective. A tangle of cattails and tall grass had been allowed to grow along the far edge, likely to add to the pleasing rustic aspect, and three large stone ornamental frogs were placed in a group in the center of the water, two crouched and one leaping, their faces blank and grinning. The sun was lowering behind the hills now, and the air had a decided chill. I tried not to shiver.
“So this is the place,” said James.
I stared at it in a strange sort of dismay. Gloria’s body had been carried—or dragged—here, dumped in this water. She had vanished, and at first no one had even known she was dead. The wind blew again and this time I crossed my arms. The cold was biting, crawling down my neck and chilling me through my clothes. Something dark crossed over my vision, as if a cloud had blotted out the sun.
“Ellie?” I heard James say.
I recalled Octavia’s face as I’d last seen it in front of her house on Harriet Walk, the account she’d given me of that last séance. Gloria weeping, saying, I had no idea. Saying, Good-bye, darling. Octavia saying, I was afraid, because Gloria was afraid, and Gloria was never afraid.
She had left that séance, and then she had left the note for me at George’s hotel. And then she had gone to her death. It had ended here, the strange chain of events, in this quiet body of water.
I felt the chill again, and this time it felt wet. Ripples moving. I blinked. Were there ripples moving in the water?
“Ellie,” James said. “Are you all right?”
Far behind us, back at the house, Pickwick barked. Four quick times in succession, a note of surprised alarm.
James put a hand on my arm, turned me silently to face him. He put a finger to his lips. My heart pounded, but I nodded, telling him I understood. He stepped in front of me and raised the rifle to his shoulder as footsteps approached us through the trees.
“Don’t come any further,” he said, his voice icy calm.
The figure of a man paused at the edge of the trees, startled when he saw the gun. The man raised his hands, palms out, and walked farther into the fading sunlight. His expression was as grim as the first time I’d seen it, days earlier in my sitting room.
“Miss Winter,” George Sutter said to me. “I came to apologize. This is all my fault, you see. Gloria was not supposed to die.”
* * *
Still James did not lower the gun; in that moment I was glad of it. The sight of George Sutter was sinister and unwelcome, even though he was not armed.
“Why are you here?” I asked, moving to James’s shoulder.
George’s expression did not waver. “My man did not check in,” he replied. “The last I heard from him was after you boarded the train for Kent at Victoria Station. I knew something was wrong.”
“He saw me board the train?” I said. “I didn’t see him.”
“Then he was doing his job for once, because you weren’t supposed to.”