by Nancy Holder
As she considered that, she skimmed a few of the titles of the dozens if not hundreds of books, recalling how she had done the same thing in Alan’s ophthalmology practice. It had crossed her mind a number of times to write her old friend, but it didn’t seem proper. She was certain now that he had entertained hopes, and as such, he was—had been—her husband’s rival for her affections. It would not do to correspond with such a person, no matter what place he had held in her earlier life. It would be disloyal.
And yet, she wished that etiquette decreed otherwise…
“Oratory of a Pilgrim,” she read off the spine of one of the volumes.
Lucille almost grinned. “Sounds quite virtuous, doesn’t it?” She paused as if for dramatic effect. “Have you heard of a fore-edge illustration?”
Edith shook her head, and Lucille took the book. “They are images hidden in the book’s fore-edge, carefully dissimulated as a pattern until you bend the pages so…”
She bent the side of the book so that it curved, revealing a colorful painting of a Japanese couple in flagrante delicto—performing sexual acts upon each other. Edith was nonplussed.
“Oh, my. Are all the books…?” The books that Thomas’s mother had ordered?
“Surely that can’t shock you now?” Lucille said. “Now that Thomas and you…”
Edith shook her head. She was actually beginning to feel close to Lucille. It was good to have another woman to talk to.
“No, no. He was so respectful of my mourning. We even traveled in separate cabins.”
Lucille seemed to brighten at that. Or perhaps she was amused.
“How considerate,” she drawled. “Well, my darling. In time, everything will be right.”
Those were comforting words if they were true.
They will be my lullaby, Edith thought, and smiled at Lucille. But the other woman had returned to her playing, and so did not see the smile. Edith glanced back up at the portrait of Lady Beatrice Sharpe, and was very grateful that so dour-looking a woman had not survived to become her mother-in-law, no matter how uncharitable that was.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LUCILLE CONTINUED HER playing, and Edith went back to the bedroom, to discover that Thomas had dressed and gone out. She put on one of her favorite gowns, a dark green velvet with pumpkin appliques, and put up her hair. It was inconvenient, to say the least, to do without a lady’s maid. She thought of home. Annie already had a new position; all the Cushing servants did. Her family’s residence would soon be sold, and everything in it.
I wish that I had saved my picture books, she thought. Perhaps she could write Mr. Ferguson in time to stop their sale.
Edith settled in front of her typewriter to work on her novel, but the day passed drearily without Thomas and she found herself easily distracted.
As the day wore into dusk, Edith gazed through the window and saw her husband with Finlay and a couple of men from the village at the base of his harvester. She knew what she was looking at. She had grown up around similar apparatus. There were actually several machines on the grounds, quite enormous, the derrick-like poppet head towering over all of them. She made out the drill and the harvester, the several conveyer belts, one placed beside an oven intended to bake the clay into brilliant bricks such as the one Thomas had shown off in her father’s meeting room. The lumpy, industrial chaos was out of place in the yard of the great old house. A hodge-podge. But looks could be deceiving. The chaos reigned in the house. The arrangement of the equipment was actually quite efficient and logical, and would yield the best results once the new clay shales could be extracted.
Thomas was a visionary, a man who could see things that others did not. She reminded herself that he loved her, and that he was her husband, and his duty was to protect her. She would go to him. Perhaps she could make sense of her own visions by asking him about the history of the house.
Alerted by her rumbling stomach, Edith went down to the kitchen and nibbled a piece of bread and jam as she made some sandwiches, helping herself to rye bread that had gone a bit stale, cold ham, and cheese. Her stomach was not much better, and she was beginning to get a headache so she brewed some of the terribly bitter firethorn tea. Steadfastly, she packed a hamper and went outside.
Snowflakes fell gently from the steel-gray sky. The air was briskly chill, and she knew that the hot tea would be most welcome. The dog trotted briskly, bounding into and out of the snowdrifts, and Edith watched Thomas hard at work on the full-scale model of the machine he had demonstrated in Buffalo. Had Father not been so overly protective of her, he would certainly have funded the invention.
“Edith, my sweet,” Thomas greeted her. He was attempting to connect a part of the machine with the rest of it. By the look of frustration on his face, it wasn’t going well. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to see you,” she answered. “I need to talk to you.”
He looked from the machine to her. Finlay appeared to be stoking the engine. They were both very busy.
“Of course, of course,” Thomas said.
“I don’t know where to begin.” She took a breath. “Thomas, has anyone died in this house?”
His answer was a quizzical smile. “Of course, darling,” he said. “What manner of question is that? The house is hundreds of years old. I would venture that many souls have come and gone.”
“I understand,” she said patiently. “But I’m talking about specific deaths. Violent deaths.”
He blinked. “This is not a good moment, Edith. This infernal contraption won’t start. It’s a complete fiasco. We’ve been at it all afternoon.”
He returned to his task. But she would not be deterred.
“Can we take a moment, Thomas?” she said more urgently. “I brought you some sandwiches and a bit of tea.”
“Tea? You made tea?” He made a little face and returned to his work. She recalled a comment he had made while in Buffalo—that Americans had no idea how to make a proper cup of tea. It had something to do with boiling the water or steeping the leaves just so. “What tin did you use?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What tin did you use?” he repeated. “The red or the blue one?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s all the same, isn’t it? Tea is tea.” Well, except for if one was English, she supposed.
“Try it again, Finlay,” Thomas told his man.
Finlay stoked the fire on the steam engine and turned a valve. The machine rattled. Some gears gyrated a little bit but then spasmed violently. Edith was reminded of the bathtub taps and, despite being thwarted in her desire to speak with him, she crossed her fingers that this tremendous racket would resolve. Thomas grabbed onto a valve and held tight.
Work, work, she told the machine.
The rattling increased tenfold, and still her husband did not let go. Then sprays of hot water and steam began to jet from seams between the pipes, then from the valve itself. Thomas held on tightly, trying manfully to hold the machinery together with his bare hands. She could see that it was hurting him. Yet he held it fast. His face was growing red from the exertion. Then a geyser of steam hissed violently, spraying Thomas’s hand; he jerked back, pale face twisted in anguish as he screamed.
* * *
With Finlay’s help, Edith conveyed Thomas to the kitchen. He was covered in red clay that looked like blood and she fought to remain calm as images of her dead father swirled through her mind. Even with the clay cleaned off his right hand, his skin blazed scarlet from his burns.
As was the case in many English country homes, the Sharpes kept a larder of salves and remedies, and Edith dutifully applied what was brought to her to tend her husband. She was reminded of Cook once mentioning to her that back in Ireland, they used honey for burns. In her mind she saw the ants crawling all over the butterfly during their promenade in Delaware Park, and she pushed away that macabre image as well.
“That should do it,” she told her beloved patient as she finished bandaging his hand.
“The machine will never work,” he grumbled. “Never. Why do I keep deluding myself?”
“You shouldn’t give up hope.” She had to be supportive, no matter her fears for him. She believed in him, and when his own belief in himself faltered, she must sustain him.
“Hope?” He sighed. “Edith, hope is the cruelest of feelings. I normally stay away from it.”
And close your eyes to things you don’t wish to see, she thought.
He sat next to her. As ever, his nearness shifted her attention as it fanned a flame of its own.
“But now, something has changed in me.” He gazed at her. “Why did I bring you here?” He searched her face. “Who did you marry, my darling? A failure.”
“You are all that I have.” Caught up in her love for him, she kissed him. She felt him stiffen, as he usually did—mindful of her mourning—and then he… relented. Surrendered. She was thawing his reserve.
Thomas pulled away, eager to get back to work. “The men leave at nightfall and we are racing against the snow.” They both stood and started heading back, and she told herself that tonight, she would make him talk to her.
They walked out to the kitchen and reached the foyer. “Soon we won’t be able to make any progress,” he continued. “That’s when you’ll find out why they call this ‘Crimson Peak.’”
She froze on the spot.
“What did you say?” she asked tightly.
“Crimson Peak,” he replied. “That’s what they call it. The ore and the red clay reach up from the ground and stain the snow. It turns bright red. So… ‘Crimson Peak.’”
Edith stood stock-still as Thomas moved past her. Her stomach cramped again.
I was warned, she thought, stunned. Twice.
But I am here.
Crimson Peak.
* * *
It watched the brother leave the bride’s side. Then he stopped by the foyer, hearing a noise, and turned.
Yes, there was a shadow… and a noise… but there was no one in sight. Turning away, he left.
No one that he could see, anyway.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
FLOWERS ON A grave, in the snow. The Cushing belongings had been packed up, yet for Alan, there was no sense of finality.
Alan placed his bouquet at the foot of the Cushing monument, wondering if the dead rested in peace. Not even a serene death would have prevented Edith’s father from watching over her and protecting her, if such a thing as ghosts existed. Alan remembered how insistent little Edith had been that her mother’s ghost had haunted her shortly after her hideous death. Edith had been nearly hysterical and Alan had pretended to believe her.
But he had been the only one. Her father had soothed his fearful child by reminding her that she possessed a “fevered” imagination, which Mrs. Cushing had fed with a steady diet of fairy stories that they read together. Ghosts were not real, he had insisted, and had bought her books with more sensible themes, such as home management.
“But they are real,” she had told Alan, as they stood together making pretend spyglasses with their hands in their “pirate lair” up in the apple tree in his back yard. “Mama was there. I know she was.” She’d shivered, her face puckering until she nearly cried. “And she was so scary.”
He had listened, and nodded, and tried to make her happy. His mother had advised him that Edith might attempt to call attention to herself with wild stories and concocted illnesses out of sheer misery. It was a fact that her family life was now “imbalanced.” The loving hand of a mother was absent, and girls required a strong maternal influence in order to grow into reasonable young women.
“The damage might be too great,” Mrs. McMichael had speculated and Alan, alarmed, had tried to do all he could to help his fellow pirate mend. He had even secretly played at tea with her and her dollies, much to his shame.
But his sister had laughed at Edith and told all her friends about her ghost story. Girls could be so cruel; at school and church—everywhere, now that he thought about it—Eunice and the others had lain in wait for Edith’s approach, then jumped out at her shouting, “Boo!”
They tortured and bullied her; and finally, one day close to her eleventh birthday, she came to Alan and said, “On the subject of Mama, Alan, I believe I was mistaken.”
For years she did not mention it, and he had almost forgotten all about it. Then she had begun her novel, and he realized that she had only buried the memory. He had shown her those images of spectral visitation as an opening gambit to discuss it, but by then, she had become enamored of Sir Thomas Sharpe. Still, she had peered at the images with acute concentration, and he wondered what had been going through her mind.
If you could come back from the dead, he told Carter Cushing, would you tell me how you died? How did you come to write Sharpe a check for such a vast sum on the night before you left this world?
His musings were interrupted by the crunch of footsteps in the snow. Mr. Ferguson had arrived.
“You asked to see me?” the elderly lawyer asked, as they tipped hats to one another. Then he studied the grave. “Perhaps it all ended well enough. Edith seems to have found happiness, don’t you agree?”
It was clear to Alan that Ferguson was testing the waters. “I haven’t heard a word,” he replied.
“I have. She asked me to transfer all her assets to England.”
She is giving her fortune to Sharpe, Alan realized with a jolt. Which, as a married woman, was of course her prerogative. But he couldn’t help his certainty that it was wrong. And dangerous.
“Are you really?” he asked.
“Every penny.” Ferguson was trying to remain neutral, but it was clear to Alan that he was also troubled. “I’ve sent the papers and await only her signature. She seems to be investing all of it in those clay mines of his, and I have no recourse but to obey.”
With Ferguson’s frank admission, Alan decided to be more direct.
“The manner of Cushing’s death—the impact on his head. He had shaving cream on his cheek. He was likely in front of the mirror. That is inconsistent with the diagonal injuries he sustained against the basin’s corner.” He paused, for now he was about to move into damning territory.
“And the last check was made out to Sir Thomas Sharpe, on the very night he announced his departure. You were there. The night Edith slapped him.”
Something changed in Ferguson’s face; he was dropping his air of impartiality and letting down his guard, as Alan had done.
“If I may confide,” Ferguson began, and he leaned in close. “Before Cushing died, he hired a New York man, a Mr. Holly. Very hard to track down. He digs up unsavory facts, haunts places not suitable for a gentleman.” A blush of color rose in the lawyer’s cheeks. “I am afraid that even I have used him, from time to time. But the very fact that Holly got involved gives me pause.”
Alan was intent. “What are you trying to say?”
“Look, Doctor, Cushing was no fool. And he liked you. Always mentioned you as someone worthy of his trust.” He waited a beat, and then he added pointedly, “And, quite frankly, of his daughter.”
Alan was moved, and conflicted. This mystery was far from over. Yet was he the one who should persist in unraveling it?
“I would love to visit Edith,” Ferguson ventured. “But I am old and tired. A trip like that requires a younger man than me.” He looked sideways at Alan, who gave him a nod.
They were agreed, then. There and then, a pact was made.
And Alan would not fail.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AS WINTER SET in and the days went by, a strange sense of freedom overcame
me. I even started transcribing my novel again, inspired by the secrets Allerdale Hall seemed to hold.
* * *
Something had changed in Thomas, and Edith was glad. She knew he had been holding back affection because of her mourning, but a man had… needs, and this she understood. And welcomed. She wanted to be his wife in all ways. She wanted that closeness for herself. And then, perhaps, she could tell him about the terrifying things that she had seen and heard—although there had been no more of them. It was all over.
And just because I saw them doesn’t mean they were actually there, or that they are still there, she thought. Or that anything is to be done about them. As Thomas had observed, the house was centuries old. Many people had died in this house, and some of those deaths were bound to have been violent. He and his sister had seemed quite dismissive of the shadow she saw upon her arrival at Allerdale Hall, and a part of her was still that little girl who had confided the terrifying encounter with her mother’s ghost to her friend, and been laughed at.
Alan showed me those pictures. I’m not certain he put credence in them. But perhaps he thought of them only as scientific phenomena. Lingering presences, memories. He spoke of an “offering,” an invitation to communicate. But was he truly speaking of that, or of a need to create a state of mind that would open one’s eyes in a special state of receptivity?
Am I seeing things that are really here?
Today she had dressed in shining golden satin and styled her hair much as she had worn it the night of the ball at the McMichaels’. She took a moment before she stepped into the elevator, then climbed in and pulled down the lever. As it rose she surveyed the house. Perhaps the wounded structure was letting its ghosts out just as moths and flies seemed to be emerging from cracks in the walls. In the same way that it breathed, maybe the house was simply exhaling old, poisonous histories that had nothing to do with the modern world.
