Calista

by Laura Rahme

  “You must understand,” continued Mrs. Cleary, “I see to it that her tasks are of a less urgent nature. Mary cannot not do anything fast. She’s not a reliable sort. If you get my meaning.”

  “Very well, Mrs. Cleary. Please show her in.”

  It could have been his imagination but he glimpsed a brief annoyance in the housekeeper’s eyes as she left the study.

  Shortly after, Maurice heard barking as Mary walked upstairs. She dawdled like a much younger girl along the corridor, her white Bolognese tagging along behind her.

  As Mary sat across from Maurice, she lifted the dog to her lap and began to swing her legs happily. She was a little plump and like Ellen, her eyes were brown, almost hazel.

  Maurice noted this with disappointment. It appeared it was not Mary who, whether by intention or through a sleepwalking trance, had hammered his bedroom door last night. Then who was it?

  Growing more perplexed, he attempted to recall the gardener’s eye colour. He would have to talk to him again and see for himself but he was certain his eyes were brown.

  Meanwhile, Mary had already helped herself to shortbreads. She piled three on her lap and left the plate empty. She began to hum a song as she spoke to Willy in a maternal voice.

  “You be a good boy today, Willy. A good boy!” she cooed in between the melody.

  “Good morning. It’s Mary, is it?” began Maurice.

  She nodded. She seemed suddenly self-conscious.

  “What do you think happened to Sophie Murphy? We haven’t seen her around here for a while,” said Maurice, his pencil in hand.

  “Sophie was a lovely girl. She would give me caramels.”

  “Caramels, that’s nice.”

  “She died.”

  Maurice flinched at Mary’s bluntness.

  “That’s tragic news. I’m sorry to hear of it.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “Do you remember what you were doing on the day she died?” he asked.

  “Hmm… dusting mostly.” She bit into another biscuit.

  Maurice dreaded that all this questioning might grow painful due to Mary’s limited understanding.

  “Do you remember anything at all on the day when she died? Or perhaps, afterwards?” he asked.

  “No.”

  The insouciant expression on her face jarred Maurice.

  “Alright. What about Miss Vera Nightingale?”

  Mary stifled a giggle and bit her lip.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Maurice.

  “She died too.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Mary was still grinning.

  “Why did you laugh, Mary?”

  “Because I know how she died,” she replied matter-of-factly.

  Maurice frowned. “You…think you saw something?”

  To his astonishment, Mary shook her head fast.

  “I didn’t see anything! I promise!” she protested with pleading eyes. Her expression had turned fearful.

  “You just said before, that you think you know how Miss Vera Nightingale died?”

  To his dismay, Mary turned all her attention to Willy, brushing the dog’s hair with an unsettling nonchalance.

  “Oh, Miss Vera. Sweet auntie Vera. She didn’t much like Willy. And Willy didn’t much like her. Yes, I told you the right thing, Mr. Leroux, I did. I remember it all now,” she said with a seriousness that bordered on comical. “I think Miss Vera was smothered with a pillow.”

  “Smothered with a pillow?”

  “It would make perfect sense, don’t you think?” said Mary with a cheer.

  “Why would you say that, Mary?”

  Mary did not respond. Instead, she took a mouthful of shortbread biscuit. The room soon filled with her loud chewing noises.

  For an instant, Maurice had a vision of Alfred creeping inside the house and smothering Vera with a cushion from the parlour. The absurd image vanished.

  It took some time before he could formulate easily understood questions that Mary could then comprehend, but he eventually got there. He discovered nothing more.

  “Willy likes you, Mr. Leroux,” Mary said at last. Her voice echoed the relief Maurice felt knowing the interview had terminated.

  “Well I’m glad to hear that. You’ve always had this dog, I hear?”

  Mary nodded with a smile. Maurice could not shake the sentiment this stirred. Had Mary’s sudden sense of peace arisen because her questioning had ended? If so, what was she hiding? And did she even understand its meaning?

  “Does Willy help you with house tasks, Mary?” asked Maurice, more and more disturbed by the young woman’s newly found joy.

  Mary abandoned herself to a burst of enthusiasm he had not expected. “Oh yes!” she chirped. “He’s such a good dog. He follows me wherever I go. He’s never far away. We like each other very much. He even helped Mr. Nightingale.”

  “He did, did he? What a clever dog.”

  “Oh, but he was very naughty one day. He disappeared for a whole day. Didn’t you, Willy?”

  Willy had now taken to bouncing joyfully on her lap. It stood on its back paws and nuzzled against Mary’s neck. For the first time, Maurice noted several purple bruises on the girl’s throat.

  “Oh, you silly thing. You were so naughty,” she chided. And then Mary’s youthful expression was suddenly torn from her face and Maurice witnessed an uncanny transformation. With her lips pinched tight, Mary now looked frightfully like Mrs. Cleary. Even the tone of her voice rose, and before Maurice could understand it, Mary’s upper lip twitched and she began to yell at her dog. “Oh, you were nasty that day. We told you never to go into the cellar. And you wouldn’t listen! You were bad, Willy!”

  Outside the room, Maurice heard the housekeeper’s hurried footsteps. The study door flew open. Her face twisted in a rage, Mrs. Cleary burst in and glowered at Mary, but the young girl saw nothing and continued to scold her dog in a loud voice.

  “What a mean dog you were, Willy! Never do it again! Never, never go back to the cellar!” Mary all but screamed at her pet, seizing the dog’s front paws and forcing it to face her.

  Mrs. Cleary’s voice rose above the maid’s hysterics. “Enough!”

  Mary’s mouth snapped shut and she jerked back so violently against her chair that Willy leapt from her lap and niched itself between Maurice’s legs, under the desk.

  Mary looked greatly alarmed. Mrs. Cleary turned to Maurice.

  “Mr. Leroux, are you finished?” she asked icily.

  “I believe I am,” nodded Maurice.

  “Good.”

  She then looked upon Mary with a hardened gaze. “Return to your tasks, miss.”

  Mary stood sheepishly. “Well, I should be getting on with my chores, then,” she said.

  “Not another word. Be gone,” hissed Mrs. Cleary.

  As Mary disappeared with Willy closely in tow, Maurice cleared his throat.

  “I can assure you that she was quite harmless.”

  “Nonsense. That girl is full of ideas. She’s an embarrassment.”

  “Not at all. You were unnecessarily cross with her. She was only distressed at Willy for some past incident, that’s all.”

  Mrs. Cleary’s nostrils flared. “An incident?”

  “Yes, something about Willy accessing the cellar.”

  Maurice fixed Mrs. Cleary, stressing the word, cellar.

  “A figment of her imagination. As I’ve made perfectly clear, Mary is unreliable at best. She confuses everything.”

  “That may be so, Mrs. Cleary, but the cellar is no figment of anyone’s imagination. It exists. And I intend to have a look inside it. I will need you to show me where it is.”

  Mrs. Cleary looked shaken. Her assurance lessened.

  “The cellar…but… has Mr. Wilson not told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Mr. Nightingale made it perfectly clear in his will that we are barred from the cellar for at least six months. Mr. Wilson read the will back in August. Ev
eryone was present. I am afraid it might not be until February until you can enter. What a pity, as I’m sure you’ll have returned to France by then.”

  She almost smiled at those last words.

  “Mrs. Cleary, that is all fascinating. But would you believe that Mr. Wilson also wrote me a letter, upon my appointment, and which I have here.” He retrieved a stamped note from his leather folder and brandished it in front of the housekeeper. “It says, right here, that Inspector Leroux should have access to every room in Alexandra Hall if it is to further his investigation. Now I don’t care what Mr. Nightingale stipulated in his will. That was then. This is now.”

  Mrs. Cleary pursed her lips and stared at the signed attestation. She looked furious but fought to not let it show. Instead Maurice witnessed that all too familiar pulsating throat as the housekeeper’s cheeks reddened.

  “Well that’s unfortunate, Mr. Leroux,” she said at last. “You see, I do not have the key to the cellar.”

  “You do not?”

  “I’ve never had it.” She stiffened, proud to have had the last word. “It seems Mr. Wilson might have kept that key, after all. I imagine he would. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have chores to take care of.”

  Maurice knew the housekeeper was lying. He remembered the lone key Mrs. Cleary had kept with her when she’d shared the set with him. His intuition told him it was the key to the cellar. Why would Mrs. Cleary lie?

  He had to find that cellar. He knew he could not rest nor finalise his investigation until he had visited the place where Aaron worked.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Maurice pondered at the notes he’d written down in his journal along the course of his questioning.

  Aside from his growing mistrust of Alfred and the deluded belief shared by Mrs. Cleary, Shannon and Ellen that the house was haunted, he only had one lead: Sophie Murphy’s newly found happiness. He had observed Shannon’s industrious manner yesterday. Could she have been riled by Sophie’s relative ease and carefree ways? The way she had spoken of her lavish hat… Had Shannon murdered Sophie? One temper outburst was all it would have taken for Shannon to fly into a rage and push Sophie down the stairs, or even club her. She had it in her.

  Mary’s behaviour also disturbed him. Maurice had never met a fifteen-year-old who behaved like a child of eight. Yet, for all of Mary’s mind lapses, he was not convinced the girl invented. In fact Maurice, who in France had often been called upon to interrogate mistreated children, had felt that rather than make things up, as Mrs. Cleary accused her of doing, Mary had remembered something distressing, something so abominable that she dared not speak of it. Instead she’d diverted her unpleasant thoughts towards Willy.

  What if Mary knew something? Worse. What if she had been about to reveal something that Mrs. Cleary wished to keep hidden. But what?

  Something else troubled Maurice: the instant in which Mary’s features had altered to resemble those of Mrs. Cleary. He could not say why, but it bothered him.

  The afternoon saw him burdened by a growing disappointment. Over the course of the interviews, he felt he was no nearer to the truth about Alexandra Hall’s murderer. And yet, he thought, four deaths in one year could not result from a series of accidents. Still deep in thought, and sitting at Aaron’s desk, he toyed with the Aristotle bust. He wondered why there had been so much secrecy around the cellar. What had Aaron and Calista been up to prior to their deaths?

  Overwhelmed by unknowns, he turned to the bookcase, ran a finger across the science volumes without a sense of where to begin. Finding one written by a certain Cuvier, he pulled it out, flicked through it, shook his head, and then returned it to its place.

  Feeling increasingly frustrated, Maurice rose and left the study. He rushed downstairs. Surely he could find that cellar himself if he wished it. It would not be too difficult. While he felt certain he’d opened every door in the house and peered into every room, he might have missed one. Unless…

  As Maurice pushed open the double glass doors of the entrance hall, Willy bounced along behind him. The Bolognese wagged its tail happily, and its little paws seemed to gallop, if only to keep up with Maurice’s determined stride.

  Oblivious to the dog’s presence, Maurice paced the veranda. Perhaps there was an external door he’d not noticed earlier. If he circled the house, he was bound to discover the entrance to this mysterious cellar.

  He ventured first towards the mosaic fountain. Still trotting alongside him, Willy barked for attention. Maurice smiled and picked him up. He was increasingly amused by the dog.

  “And what are you up to, little one? Oh, I see. You want to take a closer look at the fountain. Here you go.” He lifted Willy to his chest and stood by the crystal clear pool. Water roared overhead gushing out of the stone fish’s mouth. Safe in Maurice’s arms, Willy emitted a contented bark. It gazed into the pond, as though fascinated by the mosaics and their vivid portrait of sea creatures swimming in the waters.

  Still holding Willy, Maurice examined his surroundings. As he had noted the day before, there was an underground set of steps but it only led to a boiler. He resumed his stroll, scrutinising every part of the house’s walls for a hidden entrance or a nearby trapdoor.

  Maurice had now reached the other lateral side of the house without finding any sign of a cellar. Where was it? In his arms, Willy had settled and now rested its head in the nook of Maurice’s shoulder. After a fruitless search, Maurice reached the veranda.

  “Alors, mon petit bonhomme, on fait la sieste?” he asked, half-laughing. The dog seemed to be taking a nap against him. “Shouldn’t you be with Mary? Where have you left her?”

  Indeed, it was strange. Where was the young maid?

  Before he had a chance to ponder over this, the glass doors opened and a sullen Mary stepped outside. In silence, she reached for Willy.

  “We were just taking a walk,” said Maurice, handing over the Bolognese. Mary did not answer. She cradled Willy in her arms, averting her gaze. Her eyes were swollen red. She looked as though she had been crying. Without a word, she re-entered the house.

  Madeleine

  AFTER dinner, Maurice took the liberty to speak with Gerard, if only to complement him on his delicious roast. While Gerard blushed and muttered thanks, Maurice noted, much to his disappointment that the cook had hazel eyes.

  The discovery further depressed him. Between the housemaids’ supernatural ramblings, Mary’s confusing statements and the mysterious eye that he could not identify, nothing made sense.

  Maurice climbed upstairs and after freshening up with the clean water Ellen had brought to his room, he took a book from Aaron’s study, and returned downstairs with his journal to sit in the parlour. Relieved to find himself in more spacious surrounds where the walls did not cloy at him, he now sat by the roar of the fire.

  He’d been reviewing his notes for half an hour when a slender girl with her black hair tied in a bun suddenly appeared before him. Fetching as she seemed in her maid outfit, she startled Maurice.

  He recognised her as the maid who had lingered at the breakfast table on his first morning at Alexandra Hall. She had sneaked into the parlour, unnoticed, like a cat. All feline, there was a defiance in her manner. She walked as though flaunting that she went without her white bonnet, unlike the other maids.

  With a daring glint in her eyes and a slight swing in her hips, she passed right by his armchair.

  “Solved any mysteries today?” she asked. She began to dust the mantelpiece, though each of her movements was an act to pre-empt any sudden appearance by Mrs. Cleary.

  “No. As a matter fact, I haven’t.” Maurice put away his journal and opened the large book on his lap.

  “Well, obviously. Sitting there, idling in your comfortable chair. Hardly the manner of a proper French detective.”

  Maurice was astounded by her boldness.

  “Do you have some work to do, Miss…?”

  “Madeleine.” She smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry, have we not met?” she asked
, in an audacious tone.

  “Miss Madeleine, no, I don’t believe we’ve properly met.”

  “Well, Mr. Leroux, given you’ve bothered to speak with everyone in this house except for me, it is hardly surprising. Do they not teach you manners in your country?”

  Maurice stammered. “I…Well, I did not think it pertinent to the case.”

  “Suit yourself, then. And what have you learnt today, Mr. Leroux?” Unlike all the other maids in the household, who spoke with an Irish lilt, Madeleine had a decidedly English accent but right now, she rolled the r of his surname in a flirtatious manner.

  “I do not wish to discuss it. When I work on a case, I like to keep things to myself.”

  “That’s a sensible approach,” she said, turning towards him, just long enough for Maurice to ascertain that her large doe eyes were a deep green and very unlike the eye he had seen through the keyhole.

  “What are you ogling at?” she asked, catching hold of his stare.

  “Given you are here,” said Maurice, “what can you tell me about this place? I’m beginning to think everyone believes it is either haunted or that something out of the ordinary is going on.”

  “Oh, you would like to know what I think. Well that’s a first. Nobody ever asks my opinion. After all, I’m the new girl, right?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Well to be clear, let me tell you that a certain housekeeper is intoxicated out of her mind.” She gave a quiet cackle.

  Maurice looked disapprovingly in her direction. “That’s hardly…ladylike of you…”

  “But it’s true, though,” she whispered. “Don’t be fooled by the stiff act. Oh, I’ve seen what she gets up to. Saw it on my first day. You just sit right there in your armchair and you’ll see it too. Be ready for a surprise with that one. She even sleeps with her eyes open. I ain’t joking. It’s frightening to see. And…” She interrupted her cleaning performance, having just registered his previous words. “Ladylike? Did you say, ladylike? Who do you take me for? Mr. Leroux, let’s talk seriously. What do I have to lose? I know they won’t keep me. T’was in the terms of appointment. Rushed affair, if ever I’d seen one. Let’s see, what was it…? You, young lady, will be replacing Sophie Murphy until we find somebody else,” she added, superbly mimicking Mrs. Cleary’s manner of speech. “Besides, what do I care? I’m only here for a couple of months, then I’ll be off to London to be an actress.”