“There are rumors in town.”
That made him smile. “Oh, yes. Mad girls in chains, killer hounds, ghosts. It’s quite ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ is it not? Such is the imagination of the English countryman. I admire the locals their creativity, but don’t believe everything you hear. I’m part of the rumor, myself—I believe I play the role of Mrs. Forsyth’s evil accomplice, helping to keep Frances in chains and cover up her murders at the inquest. I don’t suppose you heard that part?”
It was the easy superiority, the cold condescension in his tone, that gave me a chill when he spoke to me. “No,” I said.
He nodded. “A man with a withered arm is born to play the villain, you see. But since you’re attached to the family now, would you like to know the truth?”
“I don’t—”
“Frances was a sweet girl,” Mr. Wilde said. He looked at my expression and smiled. “Does that surprise you, after what you’ve heard? She was certainly intelligent, and I believe she never meant harm to anyone.”
“Yet she was mad,” I said.
He finally took up Dottie’s letter and slid his finger under the flap, opening it. “She was . . . afflicted. There is no other way to describe it.” His gaze stayed on me and not on the letter in his hand. “The spells started in childhood. That was before my time with the family, but by the time Mrs. Forsyth engaged me as her man of business, Frances’s spells had progressed.”
“What type of spells?” I asked.
“Hallucinations,” he replied. “She saw things that weren’t there, spoke to people who weren’t present. I witnessed it myself any number of times, and I questioned Frances—when she was capable of it—as well as the doctors Dottie had called in to treat her. Some of the things Frances thought she saw were benign, and some of them were terrible. But by the time she was thirteen, the hallucinations were pervasive and incredibly real to her. She claimed there was a door that the visions came through. She could describe it to the finest detail if you asked.” He gave me a small smile that was entirely sad. “It took some questioning before she trusted me enough to explain, but I finally understood that the things she saw coming through that imaginary door were dead.”
I gaped at him. My tea had grown cold on the table next to me. I could not think of a thing to say.
“You can imagine,” Mr. Wilde continued, “what a torment everyday life must be for someone so afflicted. Frances believed she saw the dead, waking and sleeping. She often had screaming fits that were terrible to behold—her madness sometimes produced particularly gruesome visions. No doctor could help her, and eventually Dottie would not hear of her being examined yet again. So Frances lived at home instead, in privacy, plagued by her waking dreams.” He looked at me closely with his chilled gaze. “You have a look of pity in your eyes, Mrs. Manders, but not a look of great shock. According to my information, you are well acquainted with madness, are you not?”
I thought of the long, red scratches on Mother’s neck, and the words sprang to my lips, defensive. “It is not the same, Mr. Wilde. Not at all.”
“If you say so. In any case, the rumors you hear are nothing but poison. Frances was never locked up or chained. There was no dog. The vagrant dying in the woods on the same day as Frances was a cruel and gruesome coincidence, that is all. Though something did strike me the day she died.”
“What was that?” I managed.
“I had known Frances for years by then. For all her torment, she had never been suicidal. She had never attempted to take her own life until that day. In fact, because of her hallucinations, she was terrified of dying. The last place she ever wanted to go was through that terrible door, to be with the things on the other side.” He shrugged. “Don’t you find that strange?”
“Yes,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I suppose it is.”
Mr. Wilde flipped open Dottie’s letter at last and read the lines inside. He showed no reaction to whatever they said except for the faint tightening of his jaw. “If you will be so kind as to wait a moment, Mrs. Manders, I will write Mrs. Forsyth a reply.”
I sat in silence as he pulled out a creamy piece of paper and scratched on it with his pen, one brief line, two, three. There seemed to be no air in the room. I wondered if David Wilde had ever seen a strange girl in Wych Elm House sitting in a chair and staring at him. But no, he couldn’t have. The house had been empty since the Forsyths had left.
When he had finished, he sealed the letter and rose. I followed him to the door. “Mr. Wilde,” I said, “I have one question.”
“And what may that be?”
“Why do I feel like you have been assessing me for the past hour?”
He gave me his small smile again and placed the letter in my hand. “Don’t worry about it, Mrs. Manders,” he said. “My duty to the family comes first. Good day to you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN