Jane pictures the woman in the blazer at the information desk who’d called upstairs when she was fifteen, a public relations smile on her face. “Helen, Helen Swindon.”
It takes two tries for the transfer to go through and both times as the phone rings Jane can feel her stomach churn.
“William Eliot.” His voice is brusque.
Jane glances at her watch: it’s quarter past twelve so he’s either just back from lunch or trying to head out.
“Hello, Dr. Eliot, my name is Helen Swindon. I’m with the Inglewood Trust Restoration Project—” Her voice goes up airily at the end as if she’s asking a question. “I know you’ve recently written on the Farringtons and I’m wondering if I can ask you a few questions.”
“Where are you calling from?”
Jane doesn’t know how to respond, wonders, irrationally, if he recognizes her voice, wants to know where she is so he can ring the police, have her arrested for assault.
“Are you here in London?”
“No, I’m up in Inglewood.”
“Sorry, I’m just finishing a meeting.” His voice is neutral, efficient.
“If it’s a bad time — if I’m intruding …”
“How pressing is it?”
Before Jane can answer, William moves his mouth away from the phone and she can hear him say, “See you at three.” Then he comes back, says, “Sorry, that was the last interruption,” sounding more relaxed, like the William of twenty years ago.
“I’ve really just one quick question, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Try me.”
Jane presses her forehead against the hallway wall. “Well, the Trust, as you probably know, is currently researching the Farrington archives, and one area I’ve become interested in is the relationship between Inglewood House and the old Whitmore.”
“The convalescent hospital?”
“Yes. I think George Farrington visited there and had dealings with the Superintendent.”
“It’s Helen?”
“Yes.”
William lets out a breath as if he’s trying to remember what he’s read. She can see him in his black leather chair exactly — although she’s picturing him at thirty, not fifty — a plate-sized fern fossil sitting on the corner of his desk with a framed photo of Lily beside it. “Are you asking about the monies Farrington left the hospital, or about something else?”
Jane shifts her position and the notepad drops from between her knees. “There was an incident in 1877 involving three patients who showed up at Farrington’s estate. I’m wondering if you know of it.”
“Not offhand, but I can see what I can locate — most of the material is indexed on my computer at home. What’s the number there?”
Jane looks up at the hallway ceiling, realizing she’s stuck. “We’re in and out of the office mostly during the day. Would it be all right if I call you?”
“Fine.” His voice is muffled and she can picture him tucking the phone under his ear. “What’s your e-mail in case something pops up?”
Jane squeezes her eyes shut. “I’ll send it to you this afternoon.”
“Right.”
“Sorry — William?”
For a few seconds he doesn’t say anything, and Jane realizes with a pang that she shouldn’t have used his first name, that whoever “Helen” is, she wouldn’t have.
“What is it?” He sounds annoyed.
“Do you know anything about a Whitmore patient who died at Inglewood? It’s referenced in Dr. Palmer’s notebook.”
“Yes, that was the man caught trespassing. A Gleeson, I think, something like that. You’ll have to look yourself. The details are in Farrington’s private correspondence.”
Jane parks the Mercedes on the pavement in front of the inn four hours later and sits in the car, resting her head on the steering wheel while Sam thumps his tail expectantly against the back seat. Even though she stopped at the pharmacy on the way back from the records office and downed two paracetamol and a bottle of water, her head is pounding. She’s stunned by the conversation with William and by his assertion that Leeson died at Inglewood. All afternoon, sifting through files and journals, she’d tried to sort out what she was feeling about it, about hearing William’s voice so privately in her ear and about his casual reference to Leeson and the story she was trying to unravel. This is the first time since leaving London that she feels a desperate need to self-medicate with more than wine.
Upstairs in her room Jane finds an envelope addressed to “Helen” slipped under her door. She sits on the edge of the bed and opens it. On a scrap of ruled paper Blake has printed: Meet me at the pub at 8. And beneath that, underlined: please.
We watch Jane fall back on the bed and put her hands over her face, and we debate whether she will meet him. After what happened with the boy we are under strict orders to stay together and that means we have to tag along with Jane. “No more lollygagging,” the theologian had snapped, as we crossed the parking lot outside the records office this morning. He turned to the girl, who was already lagging behind. “That means you, little miss.”
When Jane gets up and starts her bath, we move to various corners of the room. Some of us drop our heads on our knees in an approximation of exhaustion. We have learned a lot today and are trying not to lose any of it. The idea that William has been thinking about us, that he might know something about the Whitmore, about the world we inhabited, feels as strange to us as it does to Jane, even if his interest in us is peripheral.
Jane slides down into the tub and closes her eyes, trying to still her thinking, and in the calm that follows, the room becomes quiet enough for us to hear Sam’s easy, regular breathing and the lapping of the water as it fills the tub.
Leeson, standing in a thicket near the lake, blinked dumbly at Celia Chester. He thought child and then soap, as if she belonged in one of those sudsy advertisements inked onto the back pages of magazines, a thought immediately succeeded by the knowledge that he should not be by the lake or out of the hospital, that he had no experience with children and could not be trusted. Still, he noted the pleasing pink blooms on the child’s cheeks, how her lashes flitted up when she saw him, though the soft expression on her face quickly rearranged itself into wide-eyed terror. Before he could even declare himself she emitted a high-pitched shriek. Leeson, stunned, put a hand out to calm her, but before he could reach her she dashed off into the bush. In the seconds that followed Leeson heard a commotion, heard Celia calling out and others calling back to her. He smoothed the front of his waistcoat, then tapped the flat of his hand to his head. Think, think, think, the hand said, as if he were late for an appointment and only had to remember where he ought to be going. He raised his chin in the direction of the voices — one shouted, “Present yourself!”; another cried, “Edmund!”—and took a few steps toward them. It was clear: there had been a mistake; the girl had been startled; he was to blame. He would make himself known so that he might clarify the situation.
Within minutes the rustling on the other side of the bushes grew louder.
“Show me where!” a man shouted.
The man’s voice was the kind that Leeson imagined men in the military would have: brusque with resolution. Instinctively, he hunkered down beside the hazel thicket the girl had dashed around, debating whether or not he should raise an arm above the foliage or shout “Here!” Instead, overwhelmed by a vision of men in red tunics brandishing rifles, he slipped back into the welt of the marsh grass and moved through the loosestrife toward the mud bank of the lake. He had heard the group early on when he’d first lost his way, and drawn by the resonant voices of the men, the bubbling-up of a woman’s laughter, he’d tried to listen to their conversation through the trees, retreating when he heard a dog bark the way dogs do to announce a visitor who is not threatening. He’d wondered if the laughter was N’s, wondered if he’d remember what hers sounded like, if he had ever, in fact, heard it before.