Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James

the—” He swallowed. “Not the library.”
    I frowned. “So the patients go in there?”
    â€œNo.”
    What was he getting at? I glanced at the library again, but it sat silent. None of the patients, not even wandering Tom Hodgkins, had gone anywhere near that lonely door. I opened my mouth to speak again, but Archie swiveled toward me now. The sullen mood was gone.
    â€œSometimes,” he said, “when I’m out here, I imagine—I imagine going that way.” He lifted a hand and pointed, shaking, in the direction of the woods. “I imagine there’s a pub just past those trees. And I go in and—I go in and order bangers and mash and beer.” He smiled at the thought, then looked at me and tapped his temple wryly with a trembling finger.
    I sat fully on the ground and pulled my knees up, hugging them. “What’s over there?” I asked Archie, pointing in a different direction, toward a sloping hill.
    â€œThe thea—the theater,” he said promptly. “It’s a—a comedy. Very—very good.” He smiled at me again. “Don’t worry. I won’t go. There’s nowhere to go—nowhere to go, is there? Not really. It’s why they don’t bother with fences. We could walk away, but we have no—we have no money, and no one will help a man wearing one—wearing one of these shirts. We all know it. You’ll find us—find us very well behaved today, by the way. The doctors come tomorrow and we—and we have to be well.”
    I thought this over and frowned at him. “Be well for the doctors? Archie, I don’t understand.”
    He shook his head once, and for a moment his contented expression fell away again and something very bleak, very sad, replaced it. “That’s because—that’s because you’re not a patient here.”
    I swallowed. For a long second, which seemed to stretch on forever, he’d left me. It took a moment before his expression turned back to normal, but in that moment I suddenly wondered what had happened to Archie in the war.
    â€œTell me,” I said, when he had come back to me, “about this part of the country.” I gestured around us at the landscape.
    He looked at me pleasantly. “What do you know?”
    â€œNothing.” My laugh was quick and held a note of bitterness. “I know the streets of London, and that’s all. I know nothing about this place.”
    And so he told me about how the hills and the trees gave way to marshes in one direction, and in the other direction, where the land sloped upward, were the rocky cliffs going down to the wild sea. How this entire section of land sloped like a piece of pie, with Portis House sliding down it. He told me about what birds nested here, and which ones migrated through. He told me how the wind blew off the frozen sea in winter, turning sleet into ice on the windows and the branches of the trees. How the bridge to the mainland was often flooded over in rainstorms, and they’d had to wait for the water to come down before getting another delivery of supplies.
    I listened, fascinated despite myself. And even as he spoke I couldn’t help letting my gaze drift upward, to the wall of the house behind us. On the second level was a distinctive window, where our final patient stayed inside, alone in his room. From here I could see the window seat. There was no one looking out at us, but the curtain moved, and I knew someone had disturbed it.

CHAPTER TEN
    I awoke to the howl of warm, damp wind against the panes of the nursery windows. I scrubbed my face and looked out over the dark marshes under lowering clouds, the lonely clumps of trees bowing, the air as dense as cotton wool with oncoming rain.
    â€œHurry,” said Nina from behind me. “Get dressed or we’ll be late for inspection.”
    She was in some kind of tizzy, and she pulled off her spectacles and polished them