Page 31 of All of Us Murderers

Seventeen

Wynn did not appear at lunch. Hawley and Bram were both there, looking frankly shocking, as if neither had slept much.

Bram was pouchy and exhausted; Hawley appeared to be grossly hungover.

Zeb wondered about making conversation, ran through his options—By the way I asked your wife to come to London with me or possibly Why are you the most selfish, greedy man alive? —and decided not to bother.

He and Gideon had moved his things to another room, for discretion, and let Jessamine know there was a small problem with insects.

Zeb retired there now and was sitting on the bed, running the rosary through his fingers, when he heard a knock.

He sprang to the door, hoping for Gideon, and saw the dowdy maid, bearing his evening clothes, cleaned and pressed.

“Thank you so much,” he said, stepping well back as she came in to put them in the wardrobe. “I’m very sorry for giving you the trouble, and changing rooms like this.”

“Sir.”

He wondered if he should go and stand by the window again, but he saw the lines between her eyebrows, the little hints of tension, and the words sprang to his lips. “Is everything all right?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is anyone bothering you?”

She stilled. “Why do you say that? What do you want, sir?”

“I’m not trying to intrude,” Zeb said hastily. “You can tell me to mind my own business and I will do just that. But if, for example, someone ought to tell any of the family to keep his hands to himself, I would be happy to step in. If that would help.”

“Why?” she asked, a rap of a question. “Why would you?”

“Because you look awfully unhappy. I’ve actually just been sacked myself, from a rotten job with a dreadful bully who shouted at me all the time, and I have quite strong feelings about making people miserable at work.

” She was looking at him oddly. He was probably babbling.

“I don’t want to put you in a difficult position, so ignore me if you prefer.

I just thought I should ask if you were all right. ”

She looked at him a moment longer. Then her face crumpled, and she put her hands over it.

“Oh Lord,” Zeb said. “Uh, would you like to sit down?” He grabbed the chair and put it under her, then retreated to the other side of the room, away from the door, so she had a clear path out.

The maid sobbed silently, shoulders heaving.

Zeb put his hands behind his back and leaned on them, rather than give in to the urge to offer a consoling touch.

“I’m sorry for upsetting you. Is there anything I can do?

If you just want to cry in here for a little while, feel free.

I can go away.” He cursed himself internally.

Elise’s remark about Bram pawing the maids had been sitting uncomfortably in his mind, and he’d blurted the thought out, and now look what he’d done.

“Or I really will do my best to help if I can.”

“Can I trust you?” she said into her hands. “In confidence?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise?”

Zeb couldn’t help his jaw tightening. He said, “I will keep any confidence unless there is a true and urgent need to reveal it. I won’t take it lightly, I swear.”

She was silent for what felt like a very long time, then she spoke deliberately. “It was Mr. Bram, sir. He made…advances on me. He insisted. I couldn’t—he would not let me refuse. I did refuse. He didn’t stop.”

Zeb couldn’t reply for a second. He would have liked to deny it, to say his brother couldn’t possibly have done such a thing, but he knew very well that men did. His stomach was clenched hard.

“I’m very, very sorry to hear you say so,” he managed. “Are you hurt?”

“No. No, I—” She gave a sudden, ugly, heaving sob.

Zeb fished out his handkerchief but a quick glance showed it was unacceptable. “Would you like a handkerchief? Er, I will have to walk by you to get a clean one.”

She hesitated, then nodded without looking up. Zeb skirted her as widely as he could, grabbed his last clean handkerchief, and offered it with the longest possible arm. She took it and applied it to her face. “I beg your pardon, sir,” she said, muffled. “You’re very kind.”

“Take your time.”

She sniffled a bit, then looked up, face red and eyes wet. “Thank you, sir,” she said softly.

“I’m so sorry. Can I do anything? If you want me to speak to anyone—”

“No! Don’t say anything, to him or anyone. I don’t want to lose my post, or my good name. I don’t want Mr. Bram to know I told.”

Zeb wished he could say, Of course you will not be blamed or dismissed, and knew perfectly well he couldn’t; even in a normal household, that would not be a given.

He wanted to do something and had no idea what it should be.

The helplessness was enraging. “I won’t do anything to risk your post without your permission.

But at least you ought not have to go anywhere near him. ”

“I have seen to that.” She dabbed at her eyes, recovering her composure. “I beg your pardon, sir, but there is nothing to be done, or at least, nothing for you to do. I told you so you know what kind of man your brother is. That’s all I wanted. Thank you for the handkerchief.” She rose.

“Wait,” Zeb said. “I’m sorry, Miss—what’s your name?”

“Rachel, sir.”

“Miss Rachel. Is there a woman here? I mean, do you have someone you can talk to?”

She hesitated. “Do you think I should tell Mrs. Bram? Would she help me?”

Rather them than me rang in his ears. “I…don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure I’d risk it.”

Her shoulders sagged. Zeb cursed his family, again, and his own uselessness. “Look, I won’t do or say anything unless you want me to. But if you think there’s any way at all I can help, please tell me, and I’ll do what I can. And, for what it’s worth, I am truly, deeply sorry.”

She met his eyes, examining his face in a long, silent look. “Yes,” she said at last. “I think you are.”

***

Zeb could do nothing after that but pace restively around the room.

There was no sign of Gideon, and he kept thinking about Rachel’s wretched tears, Elise’s cold facade breaking with that smile, Jessamine-who-might-not-be-Jessamine.

And of course, Colonel Dash, even now trapped in a dusty room, banging on the door, thirsty, panicking, unheard.

The feeling that gave him—claustrophobic, confined, constrained—made him want to kick off his own skin.

He tried to tell himself that they had no idea what had really happened to Dash. It did no good. Once the thought had come, it wouldn’t leave him, and he ended up prowling the house again, ears straining for cries for help.

He heard nothing. He saw nobody. His footsteps echoed flatly, the mist lay thick around the house, and it felt like the end of the world.

It was past four, the mist-thickened day starting to dim into night, and the twilight cast shadows that gathered in the corners and shifted around him. It would be very easy to imagine them moving as he walked, as Hawley’s living darkness or just a mass of thick-legged spiders.

“Oh, stop it,” he muttered under his breath. He had no need to do Wynn’s work by scaring himself half to death.

He made his way around the west wing as best he could, trying every door he came across, and then went up into the central tower.

He didn’t really think Dash was being kept here—there were only four rooms on Elise and Bram’s floor; they would surely have heard shouts or thumping—but he was trying to be thorough and methodical, and that meant every door.

One led to a stair, and curiosity took him upward, into what was clearly the cupola.

This floor looked unused, with a few old pieces of furniture haphazardly stowed by the walls and a lot of dust on the floor. There were two doors. Zeb opened the first and saw a dark lumber room, cluttered and cobwebbed. He shut the door hastily and turned to the second.

It was locked, but the key was in the keyhole. He turned it.

This room was also dark, but Zeb could just about make out what looked like a bed.

There was no gas mantle, but a candlestick stood on a little table near the door.

He patted his pockets for matches, found a box, and lit the candle.

It flared, bringing the room to life, and Zeb sucked in a breath so hard it hurt.

“What the—”

The room had a single bed frame, a small table, a metal chamber pot, a single window covered by crossed iron bars. That was all. There was no place to put things, and no things to be put.

And there was writing all over the walls.

It went from the floor to a few inches higher than Zeb’s head—perhaps the full reach of a short person on tiptoe—leaving only a strip at the top where the writer apparently couldn’t reach, and every single accessible inch was written and rewritten on, in layer after layer of scrawled pencil or chalk or even carving, viciously dug into the plasterwork with a nail or scratched with a pin.

It was the work of years, Zeb thought as he turned and stared.

Someone had been in this room for years, with nothing else to do but write on the walls.

He moved towards the walls, not wanting to see, compelled to look. It was hard to make out anything in the overlapping jagged scribbles at first, but he held the candle close, and saw the words emerge, horribly and urgently repetitive, like the patterns on the wallpaper downstairs.

LET ME OUT

LET ME OUT

LET ME OUT

There were other words too. Walter, gouged into the walls, and Wilfred. Pig. Die. That was Wynn’s father. And again and again, Laura. Laura. Laura.

Laura’s mother, Walter’s widow, the nameless housemaid. Wynn’s father had called her mad and kept her confined to the house. She had been locked up here for seven years to keep her legacy, Wyckham money, in the family.