Page 36 of The Journal of a Thousand Years
Mrs. Bristow sat beside a weeping Sally. Her husband, the butler, stood behind her, a hand on his wife’s shoulder. She’d been crying, too, but at that moment she seemed more frustrated than upset. Sally was under her charge, and she must feel as though the girl’s failure to remember was somehow a reflection on her.
I asked Mrs. Bristow to tell me what they already knew.
“Well,” she began, “when Mr. Bristow and I came down this morning, we found Sally in the kitchen, crying.” The Bristows were the only live-in servants. Sally and the others lived at their own homes, and Sally, being the youngest maid, always arrived first to light fires, and perform other chores before the rest of the household arrived or woke. “We asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t answer. She just kept shaking her head, over and over.”
“We thought it was problems at home and she’d tell Mrs. Bristow when she was ready,” Bristow said. “But an hour went by, two, and she still didn’t tell us. Then suddenly, Mr. Bailey and Miss Willie burst in, looking for Mr. Glass. They seemed worried and became more worried when they realized he wasn’t in here. They said he wasn’t in his bedroom and there were signs of a scuffle. The bedclothes were all over the floor as if dragged off. We all suspected the worst had happened. Mr. Glass wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night. Then Sally burst into tears again.”
“You didn’t hear anything during the night?” I asked the Bristows.
Mrs. Bristow and her husband exchanged looks. “We’re a little hard of hearing these days,” she said.
It wasn’t surprising. They must be well into their seventies, perhaps even over eighty in the butler’s case.
“Sally became hysterical when she heard about Mr. Glass,” she went on, her tone rather tart. “That’s when we realized she’dseen something, but she wouldn’t say what at first. Miss Willie finally got it out of her that she’d seen someone, but no amount of encouragement would get Sally to say more. Her memory of it has gone, so it seems.”
Sally merely sat there, sniffling, her head bowed low. She didn’t offer any further information. I understood Mrs. Bristow’s frustration at her lack of cooperation, but unlike the housekeeper, I knew that if I was going to succeed in getting the maid to open up, I had to keep my irritation in check. We needed Sally to describe what she’d seen sooner rather than later. When his kidnappers realized he wasn’t a magician, they would have no further need of Gabe. But they wouldn’t be able to simply let him go. Gabe would be able to identify them.
They’d have to kill him.
I pulled a chair closer to the maid. “Hello, Sally.”
She blinked damp lashes at me. “Hello, Miss Ashe. I know what you’re going to ask me, but I can’t…” She let out a sob. “I can’t remember. I’ve told them…it’s all a blur.”
I peered past her to Mrs. Bristow. “Perhaps Sally and I can have a little chat alone.”
Mrs. Bristow hesitated, but Bristow urged her to follow Mrs. Ling, Murray, Dodson the chauffeur, and the sketch artist into the kitchen. The butler gave me a grim nod of encouragement before closing the door.
I took Sally’s hand. “It can be difficult to think when you’re afraid.”
She teased a wet handkerchief between her fingers and nodded.
“It’s as if there’s a lot of noise and you can’t hear the person opposite you talking, even though you can see their lips move.”
“Yes, that’s it. I’m trying very hard, Miss Ashe, honest I am. But I can’t recall anything.” The higher her voice rose, the further her mouth curved downward.
Before she started to cry again, I patted her hand. “Take a deep breath and release it slowly.” I kept my voice even, my tone soothing, so there was no evidence of my strained nerves. “Good. Now tell me what fear looks like to you.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“For me, my fear looks like a heavy fog. I hate fog. I hate not being able to see what it’s covering. There could be a vehicle advancing toward me and I wouldn’t know, or a hole in the ground that I might unwittingly step into. I hate the way fog deadens sounds, so that if I screamed, I wouldn’t be heard.”
“Oh, that’s awful.”
“But that’s whatmyfear looks like. What about yours? Does it look like a snake? Fire? A sharp object?”
“Water. It looks like a gushing flooded river. I can’t swim, see.”
“No wonder you’re afraid of water, then. Now, I’m going to teach you a technique my mother once taught me. It helped me to become less anxious. Close your eyes and picture a river. Can you see the water flowing fast? There’s debris being tossed around in the churning current. The water is muddy. You can’t see the river bottom.”
She shuddered. “I can picture it.”
“Now draw in a deep breath, and this time when you release it, picture all that water flowing out with the breath. Blow out all the air in your lungs until you have no more breath left in you. Only then will all the flooded water be gone.”
She did as directed, releasing her breath at a measured pace until her chest deflated.
“The river is now just a harmless little brook. The flood has receded, and the water is merely ankle-deep as it trickles over smooth pebbles. Can you picture that?”
Sally nodded.
