Pru swiped a loaf of bread from the counter and stomped off, rolling her eyes as she went.
“Stupid, bananas woman,” Pru said, clomping up the stairs. “Stupid, bananas house.”
At the top step, she hesitated. Pru looked toward Win’s room. Though his light was on, she didn’t hear the usual smack-ding of the typewriter or the even squeak of his chair. Seton was a vigorous typist, always putting his full body weight into it as he careened his way down the page.
“Win?” Pru whispered.
Perhaps she’d finally have a spot of luck and he’d be sleeping or showering or passed out in his own filth. They wouldn’t have to talk and Pru could leave his plate outside the door in true Dickensian fashion. It was getting awkward, the ongoing dialogue about the book that wasn’t happening. Welcome to the family, Win would’ve said, had she told him how she felt.
“Mr. Seton?” she said.
She prodded the door open. Like everything else in the house, it whined with the slightest tap. As Pru shuffled forward, she noticed Win’s desk was empty, save three flies buzzing around an old, dirtied plate.
“Oh thank God.” Pru leaned against the doorjamb and exhaled loudly. “Maybe you’ve finally decided to bathe. Or put an end to your misery.”
“No such luck,” said a voice.
She whipped around. Win sat on the bed, a bottle of wine lodged between his thighs. Freud would have a field day with that one.
“I … uh…” she stuttered.
“I’m afraid you’ve found me alive and kicking. Don’t fret, Miss Valentine, you’re hardly the first to express such opinion. Come, won’t you join me? Misery loves company. Especially in the form of mysterious young companions of the clinically insane.”
Thirty-five
THE GRANGE
CHACOMBE-AT-BANBURY, OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND
JANUARY 1973
“Oh, hello,” Pru said, heart knocking against her chest. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Obviously.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
Win shook his head and waved her off. She strained to keep her eyes at window level or higher, given the man was in his underclothes, the bottle of wine jutting aggressively from between his legs. Pru noted that his thighs were athletic, ropy, and blanketed in blond hair. Then she promptly scolded herself for noting them in the first place.
“I’m the one who should apologize for my indecent state and vulgar behavior,” Win said. “You know, you’re far too refined to be living here.”
“I’m not even close to refined, which is probably why I haven’t run screaming for the hills as any sensible person would’ve by now.”
“Perhaps ‘refined’ isn’t the best word. You do have a certain, shall we say … ‘womanly dignity of a diminutive order.’”
“Womanly dignity of a diminutive order,” she repeated.
The description was not his. Pru closed her eyes and at once remembered the smell of the book from which the words came.
“Hardy?” she said, and opened her eyes again. “Am I right?”
“Yep.” He nodded, then took a swig of wine. “Said of Bathsheba’s maid Liddy in Far from the Madding Crowd.”
“So I’m the maid?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose that’s exactly what I am.”
“Aw hell, don’t be blue. I’m the resident miserable wretch. You have the dignity, at a minimum.”
“You’re hardly a wretch,” she lied.
“You are the one who suggested I should off myself only moments ago. Good grief, don’t look so plucked. You were right.” He took another drink of wine. “Someone should put me out of my misery.”
Win picked up his voice recorder, which had previously been on the bed.
“This bloody device,” he said. “Do you know what’s on it?”
“Your conversations with Mrs. Spencer?”
“Correct. Otherwise known as nothing. Zed. Sweet Fanny Adams. Here. Let me play a chord.”
He pressed a button.
“The geese,” Mrs. Spencer said, her voice crackling on the tape. “A family of geese lives at the pond. Every night at six o’clock they take flight, right on cue. Together they make one large circle around Banbury and then return home. I like rituals, don’t you, Mr. Seton?”
“Oh yes, Lady Marlborough, nothing grander than geese rituals.”
Win clicked another button.
“Why don’t we fast-forward to another point in ol’ GD’s tales,” he said over the scribble-scratch of the tape.
“GD?”
“Gladys Deacon. Or God Damn. Take your pick. All right, just tell me when to stop. Any place! Any a’tall!” He lifted his finger. “And release.”
“Sometimes I lose count of the chickens,” Mrs. Spencer said. “You probably think I let them run amok, without any sort of tracking system. Well, I do let them run amok. Who shouldn’t be allowed to do that? Alas, I keep careful inventory. I know their names and where each one is at the close of the day.”