by Shannon Hale
Charlotte found Mrs. Wattlesbrook working at a desk in the morning room.
“Mrs. Wattlesbrook, do you have a moment?” she asked.
The woman gestured to a seat and put on a patient face. An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween. Charlotte decided to speak quickly.
“Last night while we were … um, playing … Bloody Murder …” Charlotte almost whispered the last two words. For some reason, they filled her with shame. “Well, I was alone and I stumbled into a room without a real door on the second floor, and I just wanted to make sure you were aware of its existence.”
“Of course I am aware. This house has been a part of my husband’s family for generations. The Wattlesbrooks have always been eccentric. Some ancestor probably had the room’s door disguised as a good joke. I use it for storage.” She sniffed. “I assure you that the rest of the house is kept properly and am sorry you were exposed to our less-than-regal side.”
“No, it’s fine, really. I mean, I’m not a stickler for well-ordered drawers.” She tried to smile companionably, but the woman didn’t return it. “Oh, I meant ‘drawers’ as in the things you open, not, like, underwear, because clean and tidy underwear is a passion of mine!” Really, Charlotte? she thought. Is it really? Is that a statement you want defining you? Charlotte cleared her throat and looked down, begging herself to shut up. This ghost-hand business really had her flustered. “Have you been there recently?”
“Not in a month at least, I should think. Why?”
“It’s just, when Mr. Grey and I went in this morning—”
“You should not be alone with any gentleman in a closed room.”
“But he’s my brother.”
Mrs. Wattlesbrook sniffed. “Quite.”
“So … so when we were there, I realized that something wasn’t there anymore.” What could she say? I wonder, Mrs. Wattlesbrook, if you find yourself missing a corpse this morning? Do you perhaps know if someone was recently murdered and stashed in your storage room? Perhaps you could count heads and take pulses amongst your staff and see if anyone happens to be dead?
She met Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s eyes and said boldly, “I can’t be sure, but I might have seen a dead body in there last night.”
Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s look turned white hot. Charlotte cringed. Then, even worse, Mrs. Wattlesbrook tried to smile through her rage. It was like watching an alligator make a kissy face.
“I let Colonel Andrews indulge in his games because my guests seem to find them amusing,” she said slowly. “But let me be frank: I prefer not to take part.”
No concern over the implication of a murder in her house? The woman was often severe, but this morning she seemed beyond. As Beckett would say, Who peed in her Cheerios?
“Mrs. Wattlesbrook, are you all right?”
Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s forehead creased, but she looked back at her papers. “Quite so.” She began to write.
Charlotte felt invisible. She whispered something that might have been “thank you” or “I’ll just go now,” or possibly “Moses supposes his toeses are roses.” She curtsied as she left, though no one saw.
The gentlemen and ladies were in the dining room, chatting over breakfast. Mr. Mallery watched her enter, his expression unreadable. Charlotte smiled and hurried to the sideboard, looking for something without grease. Her stomach couldn’t take it today.
“You gave us all a fright last night, Mrs. Cordial,” said Colonel Andrews. “With your dead body and screams fit to wake it. I say, you put a twist on old Bloody Murder. Well done.”
Charlotte smiled politely. He glanced around, as if to check that no one was observing him, and then winked at Charlotte. Winked as if they were in on the same joke, and gave her a little conspiratorial nod to boot.
Charlotte sat as realization descended on her like an alien’s tractor beam. Of course. How could she be such a doofus? It had been part of the mystery of Mary Francis! Mrs. Wattlesbrook said it was the colonel’s game and she didn’t want to take part. Colonel Andrews had hinted about clues on the second floor. She had discovered the room. There would be clues inside. The rubbery hand had been part of a fake corpse, and he’d carried it off before she could examine it by light of day and see just how phony it was.
But it’d been a fleshy dead body, not a skeleton, so Colonel Andrews hadn’t intended for her to believe it was the corpse of Mary Francis centuries later. This was an entirely new mystery perhaps.
Whose body was it supposed to be?
None of the players, of course. Mallery, Andrews, Eddie, Miss Charming, and Miss Gardenside had all been in the drawing room when she went upstairs. And Mrs. Wattlesbrook was accounted for this morning.
“Is Mr. Wattlesbrook still around?” Charlotte asked.
Someone at the other end of the table clattered a dish. Charlotte looked up but couldn’t tell if it had been Mr. Mallery, Mr. Grey, or Miss Gardenside.
“No,” Colonel Andrews said, frowning. “I have not seen him. Have you, Grey?”
“Not since yesterday,” Eddie said a little stiffly. “Perhaps he went to town.”
“Nothing to keep him here.” Mr. Mallery was busy with his bread and butter. “He was as useless for society in the drawing room as he was for fetching game in the hunting field.”
“Unlike you, old boy, right?” Eddie said. “A fair prince of the drawing room, conversation to dazzle and delight.”
“Lydia, you’re looking well,” said Charlotte.
“Thank you. I am feeling on the mend.”
“Perhaps your nurse, Mrs. Hatchet, is to be praised?” Charlotte asked slyly. “I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning.”
Silence hung over the table, stronger than the aroma of the just-cooked sausages still sizzling on the sideboard.
Miss Gardenside did not look up as she said, “Mrs. Hatchet is no longer with us.”
Charlotte gasped. “What?”
Now all eyes were on Charlotte. Perhaps she’d voiced her shock a little dramatically.
“I sent her home,” said Miss Gardenside. “Since I was feeling better.”
“Oh. Right.”
After breakfast they put on boots and went outside, sloshing through the swampy grass and along the muddied path, breathing in the wet air. As it turned out, the sky is blue in England, from time to time. The rain-scented air, the sunshine, Mr. Mallery on her arm—there was a deliciousness to the moment she could almost appreciate.
“I can see your freckles,” said Mr. Mallery, staring straight ahead.
“You cannot,” she said.
“You taunt me with them constantly.” He snapped a rosebud off a bush. “Come riding with me today. Just the two of us.”
“Um …” Danger, danger! She couldn’t be alone with this man. She’d have to let go and figure out what to feel and think and wasn’t there something she needed to do? “There’s something I need to do.”
As the group meandered through the rose garden, Charlotte made her way over to Eddie.
“The hidden room is part of Colonel Andrew’s mystery,” she said.
“Is it?”
“Yes—it’s his clue on the second floor. The body was a fake, and I wouldn’t wonder if this second mystery will tie into the Mary Francis story somehow. Did he tell you who was supposed to be the new murder victim?”
“I would not tell you if he had,” said Eddie. “That would spoil the fun.”
“I think it’s Mrs. Hatchet or Mr. Wattlesbrook. Colonel Andrews would pick someone obvious. I need to figure out if they’ve really gone or disappeared under mysterious circumstances, that sort of thing.”
“Have you been reading Gothic novels, Charlotte? You know what Mother would say. Women should not indulge in dark fantasies. It disrupts the proper workings of the womb.”
Charlotte snorted and coughed at once, she was so surprised. “The proper workings of the womb?”
Eddie was trying very hard not to laugh. “Indeed.”
&
nbsp; “Never fear, protecting my womb from Gothic novels is my first priority.”
“I am much relieved.”
“So, how do you propose we figure out if Mrs. Hatchet or Mr. Wattlesbrook was done in?”
“You are morbid. I never knew. Well, the eyes of Pembrook Park belong to Neville the butler.”
Charlotte gave Eddie a scheming smile and headed back to the house. Mr. Mallery’s gaze followed her, and she almost regretted her quick departure, but Colonel Andrews was going to be so impressed when she solved his mystery!
She found Neville in the dining room, setting the grand table for dinner. She peered through the inch of open door, observing how carefully he placed the utensils, measuring the distance between each fork. As carefully as if he were building a bomb.
“Excuse me,” she said as she entered.
“Oh! Is something the matter with Mrs. Wattlesbrook?” he asked.
“No, um, not that I’m aware of. She didn’t send me. I just wanted to ask you something.”
He straightened up, his hands held behind his back as he waited for her to speak. His whole attention seemed directed toward her, but a slight fidget made her wonder if he wasn’t dying to get back to his table. Maybe he lived for a neat place setting, she considered. Maybe if she gave tidy tableware a fair shot, her life would be complete.
“I understand Mrs. Hatchet has left Pembrook Park?” Charlotte hesitated before speaking on, but reminded herself that lying wasn’t really lying here. “I lent her my handkerchief one day, and I never got it back. She probably didn’t realize it was my grandmother’s and has sentimental value. Do you know if she took all her things with her?”
“I believe so, madam.”
“Oh.” Charlotte fiddled with a fork at the nearest place setting before catching herself. Neville sniffed almost imperceptibly. He’d have to remeasure that one now.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to mess up your work.”
“You may do as you please, madam.”
“Well, I might just check her room, in case she left it for me.”
“I will send Mary to look for you.”
“Don’t bother. I can go. Um, where was she staying?” she asked innocently.
“Just west of Miss Gardenside’s chamber,” he said with some reluctance.
“Thanks. And thanks for making my stay so nice here. It’s a really beautiful house, and you all keep it up so well.”
“It is my pleasure to do so,” said Neville, sounding as if he meant it.
She paused before the doorway and asked, as if it were no more than an afterthought, “Do you expect Mr. Wattlesbrook to come back?”
Now Neville’s cool exterior cracked. The slightest emotion dominated his face, just as any action above a slow walk made his skinny frame look like a crazed marionette.
He composed himself, but not before Charlotte understood Neville’s opinion of the man Wattlesbrook.
“I never expect him to return, Mrs. Cordial,” he said. “Yet he always does.”
Well. “Did you see him leave?” asked Charlotte.
“I did not.”
“So you don’t know what time he left yesterday or if he stayed the night?”
“I do not believe he stayed the night. When Mr. Wattlesbrook is in the house, he generally makes himself known.”
Neville’s voice was becoming strained. He was going to bottle up. Charlotte decided to apply some well-timed truth.
“I was just wondering because … well, he makes me uncomfortable.”
This Neville could easily believe. “Mrs. Wattlesbrook would want to know of any discomfort you have during your stay, madam.”
“I know, but I don’t want to complain. I worry she has enough to juggle.”
“Mrs. Wattlesbrook is a very capable woman.”
Aha! His face lit up, his hands clasping earnestly in front of his body. Oh yes, Neville felt quite the opposite about the woman Wattlesbrook.
“She’s the best,” said Charlotte, dangling the hook.
“I am happy you see her truly, madam.”
She smiled at the butler and made again to leave, but asked on her way out, “Oh, by the way, how did Mr. Wattlesbrook arrive here?”
“He generally comes in his own … vehicle.”
Of course he would drive a car. This was not a man who cared about keeping up Regency appearances. “And is that ‘vehicle’ still around? I just don’t want to see it, if you know what I mean. I’m trying to be immersive!” she added gamely.
“I noticed it gone, madam. That is why I am certain the gentleman is gone as well.”
Charlotte thanked him and went upstairs to investigate Mrs. Hatchet’s room. The drawers and wardrobes were empty, but there was an ominous-looking trunk at the foot of the bed.
A dead body could fit inside there, she thought.
But it was empty too. She wished Colonel Andrews would be more obvious with his mystery. She left the room just as Miss Gardenside was entering her own.
“Charlotte! What were you doing in my—in Mrs. Hatchet’s room?”
“I was looking for clues to Colonel Andrews’s mystery.”
“The Mary Francis affair? In Mrs. Hatchet’s room?”
“Yes. Well, Mrs. Hatchet did disappear, and I thought maybe it was just a hoax.”
Complete bafflement registered on Miss Gardenside’s face.
“She went home,” Miss Gardenside said.
“Okay. I guess I just got carried away.” Charlotte made her halfhearted smile.
“Why would you think my mother would be involved?
“Mother?”
“Did I say ‘mother’? Odd, I don’t know what I meant.”
Miss Gardenside shrugged prettily and went through her door.
Charlotte remembered her mentioning that her mother bore scars on her knuckles from nuns’ rulers, which must mean she’d attended a Catholic school. And once she’d seen Mrs. Hatchet cross herself—forehead, heart, shoulder, shoulder—an unconscious gesture, the reflex of a lifelong Catholic. Mrs. Hatchet was pale and blonde, but Miss Gardenside could have a dark-skinned father or be adopted. So, Mrs. Hatchet was her mother. And she had sent her away. Or something.
In the safety of her own room, Charlotte started to dress for dinner, but the excitement of the mystery made her too antsy to do up the hooks, and she didn’t want to ring for Mary. Mary—she had the same name as Mary Francis. Maybe that was a clue?
Stop it, Charlotte! She lay on her bed and tried to thrust the crumbling abbey and Mr. Wattlesbrook’s car from her thoughts. Obviously she was getting way more into this than Miss Gardenside and Miss Charming were.
You’re doing that thing you do whenever you’re supposed to relax, she told herself. Hunting out any old problem just so you can solve it.
Yeah, you totally do that, added her Inner Thoughts. So why didn’t you figure out the million clues pointing to James’s affair? How can you be so hawkeyed and yet so dense?
Her Inner Thoughts could be a real downer. Charlotte put her arm over her eyes. No more unraveling just to avoid leisure. She exhaled slowly and cleansed her mind of this Gothic mystery. Done.
Other thoughts promptly swooshed in to take their place:
Lu: “I’m done with you.”
Justice: “Beckett called me ‘Mom’!”
Charlotte opened her eyes and welcomed the all-consuming mystery to take back her brain. It really wasn’t such a bad preoccupation when compared with others.
Home, eleven months before
“I’m worried about what this is doing to the kids,” Charlotte confessed to James when he stopped by the house to pick up Lu and Beckett for the weekend. She peered out the kitchen—the kids were in the living room watching television. She lowered her voice. “Beckett hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s anxious … about you. About us.”
It was weird talking to James about the kids after everything they’d been through. They’d spent thousands of hours speaking as partners in the past, bu
t now … well, it was like trying to eat amazingly realistic rubber food. But who else could she talk to?
“I don’t know,” said James. “They seem fine to me. And it’s not as if divorce is uncommon. Over fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. I’m sure at school they’re just one of the crowd.”
Could that statistic really be true? Among Charlotte’s acquaintances, about 10 percent of the marrieds had divorced. Before James had left, divorce had seemed distant and improbable. Besides, statistics felt as irrelevant as a nice wool blanket in the vacuum of space. Let’s look at a mother who is standing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor telling her that her child has died from a rare disease. Is it a comfort for her to hear that only one in five million children contract it?
Some postdivorce statistics:
• James saw the children 75 percent less than before.
• He missed 85 percent of their afterschool woes.
• He was absent for 99 percent of their family dinners.
Screw statistics. One hundred percent of Charlotte’s marriage had ended in divorce, and for her, that was the only number that meant anything at all.
Austenland, day 6, cont.
Charlotte reached behind her and tried to do up twenty-seven buttons. This mad world. It had all been very real for Austen, for her characters. Their clothes, their manners, their marriages—all absolute survival. But for Charlotte, in the twenty-first century, it was like eating Alice’s mushroom and shrinking a couple of centuries.
She was playing dress-up, playing pretend, playing hide-and-seek and chase and kissing tag. Does play belong exclusively to children? How does one be an adult in a child’s world? Well, for one thing, she would dress in her fine pink silk. Her hair still looked decent, so she stuck in some pearl clips and called it good. She got up and headed to the hallway, but she saw Mr. Mallery rounding the stairs and hurried back into her room.
Why was it that just thinking of that man made her aware of every cell in her body? And the state of her lipstick. She wasn’t proud of this fact, but when Mr. Mallery was around, she became increasingly concerned with the general appearance of her lips.
There was a knock, and Mary entered with some towels. She curtsied when she saw Charlotte in the bathroom reapplying lipstick and then went about her business. Charlotte felt the lack of a “Do Not Disturb” sign. She forgot her lips and started downstairs.
