“I know,” I said, the words pricking my skin like needles as I thought of Mother.
“It was always something.” The words seemed to have come loose in him. “She’d have one of her spells, and the doctors would come. She’d break valuables, shout nonsense at the servants. And sometimes—the screaming.”
I had come home one day, at fifteen, to find that Mother had pulled all of our belongings from the closets and cupboards and piled them in the middle of our tiny flat. She had convinced herself that our landlady watched us somehow, listened to all of our conversations through secret telephone wires she’d laced through the walls, and we needed to move. It had taken days for me to undo the damage and put everything away. I let Martin talk and said nothing.
“She was desperate,” Martin said. “It was part of what made it so hard. Beneath it all, she wanted love so badly. Mother’s, of course, though Father was her favorite. He didn’t speak to her much—Father doesn’t like to deal with difficult things—but Fran would have shined his shoes if he’d let her. As for me, she would throw her arms around my neck, and all I’d be able to think about was that she hadn’t bathed since the last time the nurse had made her do it. Do you know, when I first heard she’d died while I was in the hospital, the second thing I thought was, Thank God it’s over.” He glanced at me. “Not very brotherly, is it?”
I remembered the monument Dottie had bought for her daughter, expensive and overweening. “What was the first thing?” I asked. “The first thing you thought when you heard she was dead?”
He swallowed. “Well, I was very ill, and it was a shock. I’m afraid I wept a little more than is considered manly. But the first thing I thought was, Fran wouldn’t do that. I wonder if someone did her in. I didn’t know the circumstances, you see. I thought maybe one of the village children—they hated her. But she died here, at home, so it wasn’t possible.” He shook his head. “Enough morbid talk. Let me continue the tour.” He moved ahead of me and began to climb the stairs.
In the hall behind us, a door slammed.
I was still at the foot of the stairs, Martin several steps up. I felt a chill—as if a hand had touched me—and I took a step back, my feet quiet on the carpet, and looked down the hall. There was no one in sight. A servant is about, I told myself, changing linens or cleaning . . .
“Martin, did you hear that?” I asked softly.
There was no sound from him. I stood frozen. The air grew thick, hard to breathe.
“Hello?” I called.
Near the end of the hall, my bedroom door swung open in a silent motion. I did not hear the click of the latch. The door hung open like a gaping mouth, dark and somehow obscene, for a long moment before another door in the corridor swung open in exactly the same manner. And another, on the other side of the hall.
A bead of cold sweat ran down between my shoulder blades. I opened my mouth, wanting to call for Martin—for anyone—but I could not make a sound. I forced my feet backward and nearly stumbled onto the staircase, turning and looking up.
Martin had sunk down onto a step, his body sagging. His hands gripped his knees and his head hung down, as if its weight were too much to carry. He was breathing heavily. With the lowered angle of his head, I could not see his face.
I climbed the steps and approached him. “Martin?” I whispered.
He raised his face to me. It was ghastly in the dim light of the stairwell, his eyes sunken, his cheekbones stark. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and his temples. His jaw sagged.
“I’m afraid I cannot show you any more of the house,” he said to me in a voice that was nothing but a low rasp. “I don’t feel quite capable.” Behind me, I heard soft footsteps, and one of the doors in the hallway snicked closed.
Martin blinked. “I’m sorry,” he said.
I reached out and grasped his arm. It was thin as a matchstick inside his sleeve. “Martin,” I said.
But he was already gone, his eyes rolling back in his head, his body falling gracefully on the jagged steps.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Wych Elm House fell silent after Martin’s collapse. Dottie called it an attack of nerves, as if her son were merely anxious instead of wasting away to nothing, incapable of taking a walk around the house and back. Doctors came and went for a few days, and then Dottie declared that what Martin needed was rest and absolute quiet. Her rule was law, so everyone, servants and family alike, took to tiptoeing silently around the house, speaking only in whispers and low tones.