“To protect her.”
“From what?”
“Whatever had come looking for her.”
“So they thought it was Mull who’d driven the old man into the woods.”
“Who else? Everyone figured it had to be him.”
“And that he wanted Percy’s daughter.”
“She was the right age. And she’d obviously been through something traumatic.”
“Hiding from him. In the barn.”
Jane Tanner comes to stand directly under one of the basement’s hanging bulbs.
“How do you know that?”
“It was just a story I heard.”
“You mean just a story you wrote.”
“You read my book?”
“Of course. Journalist turns successful novelist. Lucky bastard. You were one of
She goes on to ask if I’m here to uncover the truth behind the bits and pieces of the Percy case I’d used for
“Anything else I can help you with?” she offers, though unconvincingly, her body gesturing for me to lead the way up the stairs.
“Probably not. It looks like I can’t go much further than this.”
“That’s the thing about the past. Most of the time, it doesn’t
I’m about to step around her when Jane Tanner surprises me by putting a hand on my arm.
“Sorry about your boy,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“He’s not why you came to Whitley, is he?”
“I told you why I’m here.”
“Yes, you did.”
She remains standing in the basement even when I make it to the top of the stairs.
“Guess you’ve already spoken to her?” she calls up at me.
I turn.
“She’s
“Still alive, as far as I know. Up the road a bit. A nursing home called Spruce Lodge.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Marion Percy. She might be able to tell you how wrong or right the story you heard is.”
As is often the case with nursing homes, there is little nursing in evidence among the residents of Spruce Lodge. No one checks me in at the front door, and the halls appear empty of all but a couple wheelchairs and their head-slumped passengers, as though paused midway toward a destination they could no longer put a name to.
Things are even more disheartening in the Recreation Lounge. Fluorescent tubes ablaze over a dozen or so jigsaw puzzlers and chin tremblers, nothing on the walls but a taped-up notice on how to perform the Heimlich manoeuvre. The only one who notices my entrance is a fellow standing by the water fountain with his arm down his pants. Spotting me, he releases his grip long enough to take his hand out and offer a welcoming wave.
“You belong to someone here?” a nurse asks after I’ve been standing in the doorway five minutes or more.
“Marion Percy.”
“Family?”
“No.”
“Then the church must have sent you.”
“Is Mrs Percy here?”
The nurse was just warming up—she looks about as lonely as any other Spruce Lodger—but she can tell I’m not in the mood. She points out a woman sitting on her own next to the room’s only window. “That’s Maid Marion, right over there.”
Who knows how old she is. Marion Percy has reached that post-octogenarian stage of life where any numerical expression of age doesn’t do justice to the amazing fact that she is still here, still a blinking, Kleenex- clutching being. A living denial of odds who is at the moment staring out at the tangled woods that surround the rear of Spruce Lodge’s lot.
“Mrs Percy?”
I’m not sure she’s heard me at first. It’s the turning of her head. A twitch that takes a while to become something more intentional.
“You’re new,” she says.
“I’m a visitor.”
“Not a doctor?”
“No.”
“Too bad. They could
She might be smiling. I can see her teeth, anyway.
“I know your daughter,” I say, watching for whatever effect this announcement has on her, but nothing changes in her face. A waxy stiffness that might be a reaction in itself.
“Oh?” she says finally.
“We were friends.”
“But not any more.”
“We haven’t seen each other in a while.”
“Well she isn’t here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“
The smile—if it was a smile—is gone.
“Are you a policeman?” she says.
“Just a friend.”
“So you said.”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“You haven’t. But you’re about to, would be my guess.”
“I’m here to ask about what happened to your husband.”
She looks at me like she hasn’t heard what I just said. It forces me to speak again, louder this time.
“His accident.”
“Accident?” She reaches out to touch my hand. “Would you
Her hand returns to her lap. I step between her and the window. She looks through me anyway. Studying the small square of world outside the window she’s come to memorize in such detail she needn’t look at it to see it.
“Do you believe he was driven into those woods? Mrs Percy? Please?”
“I’m old. Why are you asking me this?”
“I know your daughter, ma’am. I was just interested—”
“But this isn’t about her. Is it?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“My son.”
“Your son?”
