An Inquiry Into Love and Death Read Online Free PDF

had made me willfully pretend Toby’s profession didn’t exist? A little, yes. I wanted the girls at Somerville to think I was normal, to like me. My academic pedigree through my parents was something my fellow students understood.
    But mostly, the reason was fear. I’d never been able to piece together the man I knew with the pursuit of the dead. I’d never seen a ghost myself, but Toby had believed in them. Either Toby had been a lifelong madman, or he’d truly seen spirits. I didn’t want to contemplate either possibility.
    Sometime after I turned fourteen, Toby stopped coming, and he never visited again. At the mention of him, my mother’s lips grew tense, and a tired look came into my father’s eyes. I was never told why. I slid the watch into my pocket.
    I took my valise up the narrow stairs to the second floor, abandoning the idea of food. I was too exhausted to do anything else tonight, and the morning’s gruesome appointment had left me depressed. The first bedroom I found was Toby’s. I couldn’t bear to go in, to sleep on his pillow, there among his sweaters and underthings. I found a second bedroom across the hall instead, furnished with only a bed and dresser.
    I rummaged through a nearby closet for linens, which were vaguely musty-smelling, and made up the narrow bed. When I finished I peeked out the window past the yellowed lace curtains, wondering whether I’d see any other sign of life in Rothewell.
    Nothing presented itself. There were no neighbors in this direction, only the back garden, surrounded by a stone wall, and beyond that, the darker ink of the line of trees. I was beginning to miss the familiar, if incessant, sounds of my small student flat: the shouts and laughter from the square outside, the chatter of other girls in the halls, the whistle of a teakettle in the communal kitchen. Someone was always awake, even late into the night after curfew, and one could always find the yellow under-door light of a midnight study session.
    That night, as I slept, I had vague, uneasy dreams. I seemed to be awake, though I knew I was asleep; there was cold sweat on my neck, and my hair was damp. My neck hurt from the tight clench of my jaw, and my shoulders ached as I lay on my side on the hard bed. I wanted to move, but in the unbearable logic of dreams I could not, and lay frozen where I was, panting in panic.
    I may have dozed uneasily again, but in the next dream something scratched at the window behind my turned back.
A tree branch
, I said to myself in the dream, and I tried again to move. I was still stuck, listening to the sound behind me—a long sound, inexorable, like something being dragged slowly across the glass from one side to the other. I ground my teeth and flinched in my frozen place, listening to it go on and on.
    When dawn came, I awoke stiff and more exhausted than when I’d gone to bed. My nightgown was damp with sweat. I lay staring at the ceiling and felt the vivid details of the night wash over me. For a long time, the fear stayed with me, even in the morning sun. But as dreams do, it began to fade, and eventually I pulled myself out of bed.
    The dream had seemed real, but as I stretched my shoulders and rubbed my aching neck, I knew it was all a fiction. For through the lace curtains, I could see that there was no tree outside the bedroom window. There was nothing there at all.

Four
    I washed and dressed, scrubbing away the sweat and grogginess of the night, the floors cold and dusty beneath my feet. From my valise I pulled a comfortable shirtwaist dress and an old dark brown cashmere cardigan, a favorite garment I’d bought at a men’s shop. It fell to midthigh, and the cuffs were rolled. After a moment’s consideration, I left off stockings and shoes. This was the outfit I usually chose for studying; it was unfashionable and a little scandalous, but most of the girls in my boardinghouse had something similar they wore when hard at work, with no chance of one’s