Murder Under the Mistletoe

by K. J. Emrick

  “Well,” she said, when Maxwell remained silent, “to answer our questions about how each of them really died, we have to turn to Millicent Cussington’s private thoughts here in her journal. She didn’t hold back much when it came to what she thought about her family. But you told me you respect that in a person, right?”

  That got a slow nod from her host. His eyes were still locked with Darcy’s, and he didn’t show the least bit of surprise. Just like Darcy thought, he’d read this before, and she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know.

  “So like I said, she started this journal when she got here, to this mansion. She was here to check up on the health and wellbeing of her daughter, Jennifer, but her first thoughts were actually about Orson. The two of them had started a family lineage that would end with you, Maxwell. Only, Millicent didn’t like him much at all. Did you know that?”

  His mouth opened, and then closed again, and then he pressed his lips tightly together.

  He knew the answer just the same as Darcy did. Probably, he knew it better. The first few pages of the journal were full of Millicent’s thoughts on Orson. None of them were kind. She called him lazy. She called him cold-hearted. She blamed him for taking her daughter away to this empty space in the middle of nowhere. She thought his plans of building a town here, of creating a place that would last for decades, were foolish and unlikely to succeed. She’d been wrong on that last part, but the more Darcy read, the more she came to realize that Millicent’s anger toward Orson was actually based on something very specific.

  There was a problem with Orson’s bloodline. A malady that was genetic and would be passed down from parent to child. From Orson to his children, and so on.

  “In today’s world, we might call what Millicent was describing a family history of dementia. Maybe even bipolar disorder.” Darcy wasn’t sure of that, because she wasn’t a doctor. She only knew that from what Millicent was describing of Orson’s behavior, the man had violent mood swings for no apparent reason.

  Knowing that, she could read between the lines of what Maxwell had said about his great, great, great grandaddy. ‘A hard man…a lot to take for some people…kind man, when he wanted to be.’ It had all been there, but she hadn’t been able to put it into perspective. Not until she sat down and read these journals.

  She had wondered about the scowl on Millicent’s face. The one in the painting, but with her ghost as well. She was still angry, all these years later, over what had happened back then.

  “Millicent was worried that the ‘family curse’ as she puts it had already been passed down to Orson and Jennifer’s sons.” Darcy turned a page and found a paragraph that she had memorized. “Millicent warned her daughter not to marry Orson, because of the family curse. Jennifer had ignored her mother, of course. Now that there were grandchildren, Millicent was beginning to see the same disturbing behavior in them. Mood swings. Angry outbursts. Lashing out at those around them. It’s all in here. But then, you knew that part, too. Didn’t you?”

  After a moment, she was rewarded with another nod from Maxwell. He knew all about the family history. Every single bit of it, including the family history of mental instability. It was passed down from generation to generation…and Maxwell was the last of that generation. Now Darcy understood the reason for his odd behavior. The different accents. The fact that he didn’t even seem to know he was doing it. The way he had gotten suddenly angry when they talked over tea, and then back to his normal, pleasant self. It didn’t mean Maxwell was dangerous. Just disorienting.

  At least, she hoped so, because they still had more to talk about.

  “So at first,” Darcy said, turning another page, “I thought maybe that meant Orson really did kill everyone. Threw his wife out a window. Pushed Swanson down those stairs because he was fooling around with his wife—I’m guessing whatever issues Orson had were getting bad at that point, and Jennifer turned to Swanson for comfort. Orson killing his son, killing his mother-in-law, it all sort of made sense. His mind could have snapped and turned him into a killer. But then I kept reading.”

  She turned another page.

  “And I read about Millicent’s grandsons. Rupert Bylow, and Peter Bylow.”

  The writing on the page was slanted and angry, hard to read at times because of Millicent’s rage, but Darcy had puzzled it out. The family curse had erupted in full force in Rupert by the time Millicent came to visit. The boy would fly into violent rages at the least provocation. Sometimes, at nothing at all. He was so violent that Millicent was worried he would hurt someone.

  When she tried to speak to him about it, he laughed it off. He told her that sometimes he fell short of what God and man expected of him. That was all. Sometimes, he just fell down and couldn’t help himself.

  Sometimes, he said, it wasn’t his fault.

  Those were the words in the mirror. Hearing them as a crazy man’s excuse changed their meaning dramatically.

  “Rupert turned on his father. He turned on his mother. There’s a cryptic entry here about Rupert breaking a bottle over his mother’s head?” She waited for Maxwell to say something about that, but he obviously had no words. “Well. So after I read that, I thought maybe Rupert was the killer. He struck out at his mother, and she fell out the third-floor window. He found out about the affair between her and Swanson and in a rage, he fell short again, and killed Swanson. His grandmother Millicent was there causing trouble, so he killed her, too. But then…I had to wonder, who killed him?”

  Darcy didn’t like to think it was Rupert, because his ghost had seemed so nice. But regardless of that, in life he had been a terror. Afflicted by this mental unbalance, he had become violent and unpredictable. But, like she said, that left his own death to explain. Peter was the obvious answer, the surviving brother. The last man standing. Or maybe Orson, after finding out what his son had done, killed Rupert himself.

  That was a very complicated scenario, and Darcy knew the answer was much simpler

  “I understand now why Peter got sent away. It wasn’t to hide him from the murders he’d committed. He didn’t do it. He was sent away because for whatever reason, the family curse didn’t affect him. They sent him away from the crazy so he could have a normal life. He didn’t come back until years later. He isn’t buried in the family plot. He let his ancestral home be turned into an Inn and wouldn’t live here. Peter Bylow did everything he could to distance himself from this family and their mental problems. But…in the end, he passed it on to his children anyway.”

  She met him stare for stare.

  The family curse was passed down from generation to generation, and Maxwell was the last of his line. She’d hinted at this before, but now she was laying it all out in front of him, line for line.

  It was Maxwell who blinked first, as if Darcy had struck him across the face. When he answered her, it was with a Russian’s bold, round tones. “Do not know what you are talking about.”

  Yeah, you do, Darcy thought to herself. Of course you do.

  “So where does that leave us?” Darcy turned a few more pages, and then a few more, until she was near the end of the book. “Four people died here. History did a very good job of hiding the facts surrounding those deaths, but those facts remain to be seen, if you look hard enough. Orson wasn’t the killer. His sons weren’t the killers, either.”

  Still staring at her, Maxwell’s eyes began to blink furiously. A single tear ran down his face. This time when he spoke, it was with the voice of a little boy, afraid of knowing a truth that was there the whole time. “Then who did it? Who killed them?”

  Darcy turned the old book around to show Maxwell. “The writer of these words. Millicent Cussington.”

  At this point the writing in the journal had begun to wriggle across the page like a snake, rather than keeping to the straight and even rows as it had in the pages before. Millicent had lost all grip on her sanity. She was worried for her grandchildren. She was worried for her daughter. She had plans to convince
her daughter to leave with her, for her own sake. If it didn’t work, she wrote in her final scribbling, she didn’t know what she would do. She had to make Jennifer listen to her.

  She will listen, or she will regret it.

  First, she killed her grandson Rupert. He was mentally unstable. It was the only way she could save him.

  Then Millicent tried to convince Jennifer to leave with her. Millicent had tried to beat sense into her daughter—literally. Things got out of hand, and Millicent pushed Jennifer, causing her to fall out the window to her death. The police had come looking, but Millicent had left by the secret door, leaving the regular entrance locked from the inside.

  Swanson was the handyman of the house. He knew about the secret passage. He would have known his girlfriend wasn’t suicidal. Not even after the death of her son. He would have figured out that Millicent was the killer from the way she was acting. Millicent killed him, maybe in self-defense, maybe in her continuing rage against a family that had torn hers apart.

  Darcy may never know if that’s exactly how things went, but when she talked this out with the ghosts last night, Swanson had nodded along with everything she said. It all made sense. At least, as much as any murder ever made sense.

  But then, the question was, how did Millicent die?

  She turned to the very last page. It was blank, and empty, except for three blotches that looked black until you tilted the page to the light, and realized they were a deep red. Blood. They were spots of blood.

  This was Millicent’s journal. She had it open to the last page, possibly meaning to write something, when she died.

  More specifically, she killed herself.

  There really had been a suicide in the house, but not until Millicent had killed her own daughter, and the others, and then couldn’t take the guilt of what she’d done.

  After uncovering what had happened, Darcy understood the words etched into the gravestones out in the family plot much better now. Orson had been an angry man. He had been unstable, and part of that was from the family curse. A lot of his anger, however, had been fueled by the deaths he had to endure in his own family. None of them were his fault, at least not directly, but each of them had affected him.

  That was also why Millicent Cussington wasn’t buried out in the family plot. She had killed Orson’s wife and son. He didn’t believe she deserved to be buried with them. Little did he know that her spirit would be caught here with all the others for all this time.

  Orson Bylow would eventually pass away from natural causes. Sometime later his son Peter would set in motion the events that would lead to this place becoming the Hideaway Inn. History had been snarled in shadows, and Darcy had managed to shed enough light on it to find out its secrets.

  Maxwell was still sitting there, staring at her. She could see the thoughts racing behind his eyes. His mouth formed words he couldn’t speak. This had been a lot for him to take in. Darcy was forcing him to confront a past that was part of his legacy. Truths that he had tried to bury were being brought to the surface where he couldn’t ignore them.

  Past where he was sitting, in the corner of the library, a shadowy figure appeared. Short and angry, Millicent Cussington glared at the world with a scowl on her wrinkled face. She fixed that look on Darcy.

  Then she smiled. The hate eased away from her, as she faded, faded, and was gone.

  In another part of the room, Jennifer Bylow appeared, standing next to Swanson. They were arm in arm, leaning against each other in an intimate way. Swanson gave Darcy another “okay” sign. Jennifer just looked relieved, as if a terrible weight had been lifted off her shoulders. In a way, Darcy supposed that was exactly what had happened. All these years, and no one had been allowed to know their truth. Maxwell had chased them away with mistletoe to keep them from talking. He’d hidden all these truths that Darcy had dug into.

  Now, someone knew their story.

  Now, they could rest.

  Jennifer turned to Swanson, and kissed his cheek, before fading away, slipping into the afterlife at long last.

  Swanson leaned in to kiss her cheek in turn, but she was already gone. He overbalanced and tripped and fell to the floor, clumsy to the end.

  Laughing, truly happy for probably the first time in centuries, Swanson’s ghost did a slow fade until he, too, was gone.

  Last, Darcy saw the ghost of young Rupert Bylow appear at Maxwell’s shoulder. He put his hand out, placing it gently on top of Maxwell’s head. He seemed sad for this last remaining descendant of the Bylow lineage. Sad, perhaps, that the family curse had been passed down this far. A genetic disorder that had been kept secret, rather than treated. If it had been brought into the open before now, doctors may have found a treatment for it. Pride, and shame for what had happened to this family so long ago, had kept everyone in the family from seeking help.

  Maxwell blinked, and reached up to swipe at the air above him, as if he could feel that ghostly touch. Almost, Darcy thought, as if they really had made a connection between each other. A sort of understanding that transcended time.

  Rupert’s gaze found Darcy’s with a silent plea. She understood.

  “I will,” she told the ghost.

  With that promise, Rupert’s ghost dissolved into wisps of light and energy and memory, and then even those were gone.

  “Will what?” Maxwell asked her, still in his little child’s voice. His hands wrapped themselves together, tight to his chest. He looked afraid now. Afraid that Darcy would hurt him.

  And in the next second, a sudden rage surged in him. His lips twisted into an angry snarl and the nostrils in his overlarge nose flared.

  And then he smiled, and his accent was British again. “You’re up to something, aren’t ya love?”

  “Sort of.” Darcy closed the book and set it aside on the floor. Very slowly, very carefully, she got up, and stood in front of Maxwell. “I thought it was important to finish this mystery. I really did. Usually, finding a murderer means bringing them to justice for their crimes, but not in this case. These murders took place hundreds of years ago. Finding the answer this time won’t bring anyone to justice. That wasn’t the reason. Not this time.”

  It was true. This time the answer didn’t matter as much as the result. Everything that had happened since they arrived at the Hideaway Inn had brought them to this point.

  This time, she got to help someone who was still alive.

  Tentatively, she put her hand on Maxwell’s arm. “The family curse is in you too, Maxwell. You must know that. You know all of this history, just like I do now. You must have seen the signs in yourself at some point. Your mood swings. Your behavioral changes. The way you’re one person one second and another person the next. You aren’t violent. Not yet, not really. But you know that’s going to happen. Sooner or later, you’ll become dangerous. You might do something that you’ll regret.”

  Tears fell in streams down his face now, and his chest heaved in silent sobs. His expression kept changing, anger to fear, smiles to frowns. He was still fighting with himself, trying to hide what he knew was wrong. Darcy’s words were making an impression, but she wondered if it was too little, too late for him.

  She had promised Rupert that she would help Maxwell if she could. Give him the help that Rupert had never gotten from anyone, before Millicent ended his young life. The ghosts of the Hideaway Inn wanted this to be truly over. It might be done for them, but it would never truly end until the family got the help it needed.

  “Maxwell, you need to see someone about your condition,” Darcy pushed him gently. “Please. Let me help you.”

  He looked up at her, with his lips peeled back from his teeth, and his eyes wide with something between terror and a burning hatred.

  And then he blinked, and it was like something inside of him cracked.

  He reached up…

  …and took Darcy’s hand…

  …and nodded as he found his voice. His true voice.

  “Yes, please. I need…I need h
elp. I know I do.”

  It was a plain sort of voice. Not special. Not foreign in its accent and not unusual. It was just…his. This was the real voice of Maxwell Bylow.

  She could hear something inside of it. Something that sounded like hope.

  There were just a couple of days left until Christmas. It seemed like this was the right time for something like hope.

  It was like she’d told Jon from the start. A vacation was just what they needed.

  Chapter 10

  Darcy told Maxwell that she would sit with him until the people from the County outreach team could get there.

  It took a long time for them to arrive after she made the call. It was nearly Christmas, after all, and for all that this was a time of cheer and hope, it was also a time when many people fell under a dark emotional cloud. Depression hit hardest for some when everyone around them was happy, and they couldn’t find a reason to feel the same. Darcy had to wonder what would have happened to Maxwell Bylow if she and Jon hadn’t been here. How much worse would things have gotten for him?

  Thankfully, he would never have to find out. All because Darcy threw herself into a mystery that didn’t seem to matter.

  Jon had offered to come and sit with them, but Darcy was worried that having too many people in the room might spook Maxwell into doing something. He was calm for her, sitting here with her now. That was the best they could hope for. No reason to push their luck.

  She and Jon texted back and forth while she waited, letting him know how things were going. For the most part, Maxwell was silent the whole time. He was nearly catatonic, in fact, tears brimming out of his eyes, mouth slack, hands folded in his lap. She told Jon not to worry. She thanked him for being the wonderful, supporting husband that he was, and for allowing her to be who she was.

  At one point, he texted her a message from Colby, reminding them both of something she’d said the first day they were here.

  A house is made by the people who live there. It’s the people who make it what it is.