The Dead of Haggard Hall

by Marie Treanor

  Most of all, I sensed lust, wild and avid, mingled with some contortion of love into an angry, spiteful mess that felt frighteningly malevolent.

  My encounter with Patrick, my urgent, hard-fought desires, must have drawn them to me. With a shudder, I thought last night’s much more vivid dream could have come from them too.

  Struggling, I dragged my barriers into place. I knew from experience, many years before when I’d been a troubled and frustrated young girl, that such spirits could bring me physical pleasure. And they sensed my ambivalence, my temptation, for I caught the wave of mocking laughter that amounted to a sarcastic, “Really?”

  “Really,” I whispered. “Be gone, back where you came from.”

  Of course, whatever anyone tells you, spirits cannot be commanded. They may choose to obey, or just lose interest, or be unable to hold open the torn fabric between their realm and ours. Soulless wisps of powerful feeling were less reasonable than most, and in me they sensed the equivalent of blood, the tear in the fabric, ripe for their mischief. Or their spite. With a wrench, I wondered if there were not some unusual purpose to this onslaught…?

  I couldn’t even consider that frightening possibility right now. With the help of my mother and my late grandmother, who had been a full medium like me, I had learned how to keep such things out. And I needed to. But this didn’t stop them trying.

  A scary consciousness of anger and lust rolled over me, its insubstantial fingers trailing across the pleasure points of my body. But in control now, I wasn’t remotely tempted. I knew they would give up. In time.

  My trouble was, of course, that my barriers didn’t always stay up in sleep. My own lusts were an invitation to their violation. My secret shame. And worse, they didn’t stop me wanting Patrick Haggard.

  * * * * *

  I rose a little later than normal the following morning, since my night had been so disturbed.

  As I washed and dressed in my drab old gown, I tried to banish the feelings left by my barely remembered dreams. I was, mostly, successful, although a memory of Patrick’s face above mine, clouded and contorted with passion, still disturbed me. At least the spirits of the house all seemed comfortably distant once more.

  Although I tried to arm myself with a thick skin and witty rejoinders, I was secretly grateful not to find Patrick Haggard in the breakfast room the following morning. Emily and Arthur were just leaving, preparing to enjoy a morning ride together.

  “Come with us,” Arthur invited in friendly spirit, but even if I had enjoyed playing gooseberry to a newly wed couple, the thought of placing my bruised rear anywhere near a saddle still made me shudder.

  “No, thank you,” I said politely. “I think I’ll just have a quiet breakfast and let you find me, Emily, when you’re ready.”

  So I had only Susan for company while I breakfasted.

  “Don’t you think,” she said, as soon as I had sat down, “that it would be more proper for you to address Emily as Lady Haggard? She is no longer your pupil and you stand now in the position of an employee, not family.”

  “That is very true,” I allowed. I was gazing out the window, where Irene, in her coat and hat, was playing ball with someone just out of my vision. Not Miss Salton, for she was sitting on a bench, watching the proceedings with a benign smile on her flustered face. I added, “I will speak to Emily on this very subject as soon as I next see her. I had the pleasure of meeting your daughter yesterday.”

  Susan, looking slightly baffled by both my response and my change of subject, returned a distant, “Indeed?”

  “You—and Miss Salton, of course—must be very proud of her lively mind and courteous manners.”

  “Of course,” Susan said faintly.

  Outside, Irene chased the ball with peals of laughter as it came from all sorts of odd angles each time until at last her playmate came into view. Patrick Haggard, grinning in a way that made him look at once gentler and more boyish. He staggered in an exaggerated way to the bench and sat down beside Miss Salton.

  I set down my teacup and leaned confidentially towards Susan. “I wonder if I might ask your advice, Lady Haggard? As you know, I have taught in schools, but never as a private governess. It is possible when I leave here, I may apply for such a position.”

  Susan perked, though whether at the idea of her advice being sought or of me leaving Haggard Hall wasn’t quite clear. “I wish you luck,” she said.

  “I am still a little unclear on the duties expected of a governess.” I glanced outside again. Irene was tugging at Patrick’s hand to make him get up again to play. Rather to my surprise, he did so with very good grace. Miss Salton watched them indulgently. I rather thought she was blushing. Oh dear, I thought ruefully.

  Aloud, I continued to address Susan. “For example, would you expect the governess, or one of the servants to see your child into bed each night, or is this a valued pleasure of your own that shouldn’t be encroached upon?”

  “Well, Nanny Grace used to…” She trailed off, a frown flitting across her brow as her lips parted. After a moment, she coughed and rose to her feet. “It is, of course, a matter for individual families. I would advise you to check carefully with your employer exactly what your duties would and would not entail.”

  “Sound advice,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Susan left the room. I hoped she had gone to find her neglected child, play with her a little in the garden, perhaps, and make a few more definite arrangements with Miss Salton. Underneath, I didn’t think she was an unfeeling woman. Despite her manner, I suspected she lacked self-confidence. Emily had described her late husband as a bully.

  I finished my breakfast in solitude, and then, since it wasn’t Milly who arrived to clear away, I went looking for her.

  I tried the ballroom first. But only the housekeeper, Mrs. Grant, was there, directing two footmen as where to hang swathes of scarlet fabric. As I emerged back into the main hall, I saw a bright red head with a white cap disappearing into the library. I followed it across the large hallway, hoping for a conversation with her while she worked.

  But as I breezed into the room, I saw that someone was before me.

  Milly stood in front of one desk, her polishing cloth clutched to her chest, while Patrick Haggard leaned his shapely rear on the table behind.

  I heard him say, “…need to tell me where you were, Milly, because no one else seems to kn—” He broke off as I entered, and Milly’s head whipped round, her eyes wide and desperate with a mixture of fear and relief. She made a movement to begin work, lowering the cloth to the table in the sure but entirely false belief that the conversation she didn’t want would end while I, a stranger, was in the room.

  “If you won’t tell me,” Patrick said with unexpected gentleness, although his eyes, anything but gentle, glared at me repellently, “tell Arthur or young Lady Haggard.”

  Milly closed her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispered.

  I said briskly, “Are you trying to establish everyone’s whereabouts when the accident happened?”

  Patrick nodded curtly.

  “Then I think,” I said apologetically, “you might have to promise Milly not to tell Sir Arthur or Lady Haggard or anyone else. Unless it incriminates her in some way, of course.” I glanced at her. “And it doesn’t, Milly.”

  Patrick frowned. “You know where she was?”

  “No,” I said. “But will you promise her, sir?”

  Patrick stared from me to the maid. “Would you tell me on such conditions?”

  Milly, cornered, darted her gaze from the floor to me, and Patrick and back to the floor, and nodded once, miserably.

  “Then I promise,” Patrick said at once. “Now tell me so we can get on with finding out what happened to Martin.”

  Milly swallowed and closed her eyes tight. Nevertheless, a tear squeezed out of each. “I was with one of the gentleman
guests,” she whispered.

  Patrick cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Bela,” he said at once.

  “Were you pleased about that?” I asked her. “Did you choose it?”

  A whole series of tears chased the first ones down her cheeks from her closed eyes. “He was so handsome and funny and he noticed me, and he was a prince. I was meant to be cleaning the other rooms, but Mary said she’d cover for me for an hour… I knew it meant nothing to him. I just wanted to…to know. Once. Before I settled down with Martin. Oh God forgive me!”

  Patrick sighed. “I’m sure He will, Milly. Although He might well smack Bela. If I don’t do it first.” He eased his hip off the desk and straightened. “So you didn’t go up to the attic that morning, but Martin probably went up there in search of you?”

  “He knew I cleaned up there when Ar…Sir Arthur wasn’t there. I suppose he must have looked everywhere else likely.”

  “Did he know about Bela?” Patrick asked.

  Milly’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t think so. Only Mary said he might have found out somehow and killed himself because of it, but oh sir, that don’t sound like Martin at all! He’d have raged and shouted at me. He might even have got himself turned off by knocking the prince down and not cared a hang for his dismissal. But he wouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t him. You understand me, sir.”

  Patrick’s eyes didn’t leave her face but he seemed to whiten under her words and his expression changed in some way I couldn’t read any more than I could make sense of the confused surge of emotion that flew out from him, joining with Milly’s. What I could recognise was pity.

  Patrick was a complicated man. That intrigued me, even beyond his physical attractions.

  Or perhaps I was just making excuses for those.

  “He didn’t jump, Milly,” Patrick said flatly. “He fell out holding Arthur’s painting smock. I see no reason why he would do so if he meant to kill himself. There’s no suggestion of that.”

  I walked closer to him without meaning to. “Arthur’s smock? How do you know that?”

  “It had caught on the ivy below the window,” Patrick said mildly. “It’s still hanging there. It blends rather nicely, so you have to look quite hard.”

  I guessed he was used to close examination of that particular part of the house. Most people, I suspected, would have avoided the reminders of such a tragedy as his wife’s. But Patrick seemed to meet everything head-on. I liked that in him too.

  Milly was frowning. “What was he doing with Sir Arthur’s smock?”

  Curiosity. A stable lad alone in an incomprehensible environment where a rich man had time to amuse himself. As clearly as if he stood before me, I imagined this young man picking up the smock. He stood in front of the window, from where the sun blinded me, shielding his face as he held the smock to himself in amusement that a gentleman could wear such a thing. With the sun in my eyes, it might have looked as if he were wearing it.

  My heart thudded. I gripped the back of the nearest chair as the terrible suspicion entered my head. Martin hadn’t been meant to die. Arthur had.

  “Mrs. Darke, are you quite well?” came Patrick’s voice, with such a mixture of suspicion and reluctant concern that I wanted to laugh, or feign my own trance for his entertainment. Only this new idea swamped me.

  I nodded and looked directly into his questioning eyes. His brow contracted, perhaps because he saw the horror in my face. I took another step nearer him, my mouth already open to blurt out my suspicion.

  But my brain took over with more questions. Who could have wanted the eminently likeable young Sir Arthur dead? Who could possibly benefit? His heir. And without children of his own, that heir could easily be Patrick.

  A man whose wife had already died under mysterious circumstances.

  Unfair. Unkind. And yet… He was a man capable of anything. I sensed that at our first encounter, before we’d even spoken. Deep, damaged, dangerous…

  And not even here when Martin died. I was being ridiculous. The knowledge made me laugh below my breath, quite inappropriately.

  “Thank you, Milly,” Patrick said, still frowning at me. “We’ll leave you to your work. Mrs. Darke?”

  I started, realizing he was waiting for me to precede him out of the room. I went, since I suspected it would be most relief to Milly. But as he shut the door behind us, he glanced around the empty hall.

  “How did you know?” he demanded.

  I suspect I gawped. “Know?”

  “About Bela,” he said below his breath. And then the mockery was back. “Divination, perhaps?”

  I blinked. “No. I saw them together last night when I was on my way to check on Irene. Milly was weeping, and he was comforting. Whatever the cause, there was clearly intimacy.”

  The frown was back. “Why were you checking on Irene? Where was Miss Salton?”

  “In her own room, I imagine. Emily was worried about the child being afraid of the storm.”

  “Was she?” Patrick asked, apparently curious in spite of himself. “Afraid of the storm, I mean.”

  “Not exactly, but I think she was glad of the company.”

  “Which Emily instructed you, as her companion, to supply?”

  “You think I’m not a good and obedient employee, Mr. Haggard?” I said sardonically. “In fact, Milly supplied the company in large part, while I returned and opened the front door to you.”

  Unexpectedly, his dark eyes lightened. A faint smile curved his lips, causing the butterflies to rise in my stomach once more. “How did any of us manage without you before?” he wondered.

  “I can’t imagine.” Smiling amiably, I would have walked away, only he caught my wrist in his warm, strong fingers, and I had to force myself not to gasp with the shock of sudden, inconvenient desire.

  With difficulty, he said, “Mrs. Darke, I owe you an apology for last night. I offer it without reservations.”

  I felt my eyes widen, while beneath his fingers, my pulse raced. “For what?”

  “Being wantonly callous and unkind,” he said evenly. He looked directly into my eyes. “I thought I saw something in you in earlier and unforgivably, I chose to poke it to see if it was real.”

  I blinked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this conversation, but perhaps I owed him for the apology—if there wasn’t something worse behind it. Or perhaps I just wanted an excuse to stand there a few moments longer, pretending I didn’t notice his hold on my wrist.

  “I can’t imagine what it was you saw,” I said. “Or thought you saw.”

  “Grief,” he replied. “Loss of someone you believed would be your life partner.” His eyes flickered as I touched my tongue to my suddenly dry lips.

  “Such as happened to you?” I asked. There was so much guilt mixed up with his pain that his true feelings for his dead wife were hidden.

  He nodded once, curtly, and that told me more than his words or the jumble inside him. “And so I’m sorry for any pain I caused you on that score. It was unkind and unnecessary.”

  I nodded back. But perhaps he read my new sympathy in my face, and disliked it, for he immediately added, “For the rest, in the interests of honesty, you should know that I will do everything in my power to prevent you harming Arthur and Emily’s interests. I still dislike charlatans.”

  If he expected me to back down, he was wrong again.

  I laughed. “Was that a check, Mr. Haggard? Then you should know, also in the interests of honesty, that I still dislike arrogant fools with closed minds.”

  His lips curved slightly. He leaned his head slightly to one side, considering me. “You don’t mention cads with a penchant for over-familiarity in dark corridors.”

  I flushed, as he’d clearly known I would. In fact, I could only be glad he didn’t know that my whole body heated, inside and out… Except, of course, that he held my wrist, where my pu
lse galloped with the hectic rhythm of excitement.

  But I never give in.

  I lifted my head and smiled serenely. “Of course I don’t. I am a lady.”

  A crack of surprised laughter escaped him, but oddly, it didn’t feel insulting. Instead, I only just stopped myself smiling back, because it was strangely exhilarating to encounter someone who, even if they didn’t like me, understood my humour.

  But enough was enough. I began to extricate my wrist. His grip tightened, and again he surprised me, raising my captured wrist to his lips and kissing it once, softly, just where my betraying pulse beat.

  “I don’t know what you are, Mrs. Darke. But I look forward to our next encounter.”

  Then he dropped my hand as if it burned him and strode away towards the front door. As I walked mechanically towards the stairs, I heard him let himself out of the house. I had to stop myself holding my own wrist, which, like the rest of me, felt burned.

  * * * * *

  A couple of hours later, Emily found me in my bedroom, where I was writing a letter to my mother. Although she wore a bright smile, her eyes were just a little red and heavy, as if she had been weeping.

  “Barbara, will you come with me to visit Martin’s parents this afternoon?”

  “Yes, of course, I will. Is that what’s upsetting you?”

  “Oh, partly, I suppose,” she said, throwing herself down on my bed, where she sprawled in a discontented kind of a way, frowning head in her hands. “He was so young, and I do feel for his family, but I am too selfish a creature to grieve over much for someone I scarcely knew. Am I a terrible person?”

  “No, an honest one. Only don’t be quite so honest to his parents.”