I took a step towards my own room to collect my cloak and bonnet, before common sense whispered in my ear. I didn’t know that this note came from Patrick. I wanted to believe that it did. And if it did, I didn’t know that he was innocent of the crimes against Arthur and Martin. My instincts were to trust him, but whoever was behind these things was trusted by the whole family.
Even hesitating, I was aware I would go. If my investigations had already drawn out the killer—although I didn’t quite see how, yet—all to the good. I would go prepared. And if it truly was Patrick’s note, as I very much wanted to believe, then I needed to discuss my growing suspicion with him. Between us, we could surely trap the killer.
And I did so want to be in his company…
Shame on you, Barbara Darke, I told myself silently. Damaged, deep, and dangerous, remember? He’s not for you.
Last night he was for me, I answered back. So much of my life was taken up by the dead, particularly since Gideon’s passing, that I had to remind myself of the importance of living. Since first encountering Patrick, I’d felt alive again and even in this difficult situation, that was intensely sweet.
I compromised. Combining sense with personal desire, I walked back to Emily and Arthur’s door, knocked, and went back in.
The couple gazed at me expectantly from the big, canopied bed where Emily sat by her husband’s side.
“I’m going out for a walk with Mr. Haggard,” I said casually. “Just to the woods behind the summer house, so I shouldn’t be long.”
Arthur grinned, somewhat to my surprise, but Emily’s eyes widened and she shook her head emphatically. I shut the door on her “Barbara—” and heard Arthur laugh. I hurried away before I could distinguish any more, and Arthur clearly prevented her from following me. But I thought I’d done all that was reasonable to protect my safety, and I had to trust that what was left of my reputation, after Miss Salton finished with it, would be safe in their hands.
I all but ran up to my room, a new spring of excitement in my step. Once I had rebrushed and pinned my hair and washed my face again to be sure of removing any smuts from the morning’s dusty searches in the schoolroom and nursery, I put on my bonnet and my cloak. At the last minute, I set the note on my dressing table under the hairbrush, then picked up my letter opener in its little felt cover and slid it into my sleeve. It had served me well over the years, this little knife, when my mother and I had fallen on hard times and stayed in rooms we didn’t feel safe leaving. With cause.
Feeling covered for all eventualities, and trying to calm my anticipation, I hurried to the door, just as a knock sounded.
I opened the door to discover Miss Salton’s severe person gazing at me.
Damn. Had she come now to discuss what she’d seen outside Patrick’s room this morning?
“Miss Salton,” I said in surprise, lifting my chin just to show I wasn’t afraid of her judgment. “I thought you were at church.”
“I was. I didn’t feel well and came home early. Irene is with her mother, but they can’t be very far behind me. Mrs. Darke, I need to show you something in the old nursery—will you come?”
“What have you found?” I asked, intrigued.
She glanced up and down the passage and came closer to me. “Proof,” she said harshly. “Of what happened to the stable boy, and to Sir Arthur. The family will close ranks, so I need another witness.”
I didn’t hesitate. My heart drumming, my stomach churning with dread, I stepped into the passage, and closed my bedroom door. Miss Salton’s pace was rapid, which suited me well enough. When I tried to ask questions, she waved me to silence with more than a hint of nervous impatience. Intrigued, yet keeping wary watch all around me, I followed her to the old nursery door.
I’m not a fool. I let her go in first and kept a decent distance between us, comforted by the feel of the sharp letter opener in its felt sleeve against the skin of my wrist and forearm. I even clasped my hands together for quick access.
Miss Salton walked straight inside to the wall at the left of the door and to my amazement, jumped in the air, bringing her feet down sharply. Something “spanged”, like a released spring, and a panel in the wall creaked open.
Whatever I had expected, it was not that.
I took a step into the room as Miss Salton pushed the secret door fully open and bent down. The next instant, she spun around and I saw that she held a thick plank of wood. Before I could feel anything other than surprise, she swung it viciously and struck me. The side of my head exploded in pain, and a surge of blinding lights that all went out at once.
* * * * *
A hammer thudded inside my head, every blow a sharp pain that combined with the overall ache. Although my head was worst, everything hurt, as if I’d fallen down stairs like Arthur…or been dragged.
Some hazy memory tried to get past the pain: bumping down damp, dank stone steps in the darkness; the heavy breathing of exertion, not mine; my ankles in some hard grip that dragged me down and down, back into unconsciousness where the demons waited.
I swallowed with difficulty, for my throat was dry and even that simple action seemed to make my head throb more acutely. My hands were tied behind me with something that dug into my wrists. I couldn’t move them.
The demons were here too, waiting for me to wake—a swarm of nasty spirits all eager to invade me. Some were new to me, entities that seemed to be bound only to…wherever this was. Others, I recognized from this afternoon or earlier. Individually, they couldn’t harm me. I could keep most of them out even while asleep. But I had never encountered so many spirits in one place before, certainly never that amount of malevolence. Perhaps it was my weakness after being attacked, but the sheer number of them frightened me, and I sensed at once that they knew it.
But I was my mother’s daughter, and I would control whatever was going on here. At least I knew I was the only person alive in the vicinity. Miss Salton was a much more serious threat than the mindless spirits and confused ghosts, and she was not present. Preparing for worse pain from the light, I opened my eyes and found no discernible difference, just more darkness, deep and impenetrable.
Panic surged, threatening to overcome me. The blow on my head had blinded me…
With difficulty, I forced back the panic, tried to sense by other means where I was. I smelled damp, dank stone. And I could feel the hardness beneath me and behind my bound hands. I was in a cellar, a musty area beneath the house with no windows, no cracks of light, just very old air. Which meant, probably, that I wasn’t blind after all.
Except in so far as I’d been blind to Miss Salton’s attack. Although I’d suspected her and imagined I was being careful, I’d walked into her trap, simply because I hadn’t expected the governess to be quite so brutal. Of course she was brutal if she’d already killed at least one person and tried to kill another. My being still alive was only one curiosity in all of this.
As the sickness subsided, I tried to ignore the chill made worse by the dark spirits and to concentrate on my own physical state. Although my hands were tied, I was sure I could still feel the hardness of the letter opener within its sheath in my sleeve, pressing into my skin. I began to wriggle my hands, pulling them apart to get even a little room to manoeuvre my fingers to my sleeve. If I could just cut myself free, I could at least investigate my surroundings by feel. I might find a light, or even an exit. At worst, I would at least be ready when Miss Salton came back.
If she came back. What if she’d just left me down here to die? Since she hadn’t gagged me, I could only assume no one would hear my screams. I saved my breath for now.
While I worked my hands, I drove back the annoying sprits with my mind. Through them, I called to Rose as the only spirit I’d encountered in the house who might be prepared to help me if she could.
To my excitement, I caught a hint of her distant presence quite quickly, though s
he was reluctant to come any closer.
“You’re not frightened of them, are you?” I coaxed. “They can’t harm either of us. Please, Rose, I need your help. Patrick needs your help.”
I felt her conflict, the rush of her love for her husband all mixed up with a determination not to be involved or even think about something. What I had done with him? Had she seen? Did she care?
Did Gideon?
My stomach plunged with sudden new anxiety, but I had to focus on the present situation. My wrists were raw where I’d strained them against the bindings, but I could now reach my finger and thumb into the sleeve of my other arm, which I shook until the handle of the letter opener fell down between my fingers. Drawing it free of its felt sheath with considerable difficulty, I tried very hard not to fumble and drop it.
“Rose,” I pleaded, and caught my breath as she simply walked through the wall. Far more than the other wispy, insubstantial presences, most of which were little more than disturbances of air no one but I could feel, she shone in the darkness, not exactly lighting up my surroundings, but at least giving off a glow that revealed a hint of glistening, black stone walls and a few odd shapes like barrels in front of her. I wondered if this had once been a secret cellar for hiding brandy from the excise man. So surely there would be another way out of here, one that led outside the house?
Rose glided towards me. The cacophony of spirits around me quietened as they all backed off from her more powerful presence. Something in me ached, because even in the illusion of the simple white shift covering her ghostly body, she was beautiful.
Still clinging to the paper knife, I opened myself to her, and she came in, with much less of a jolt than last time.
“I saw her,” Rose blurted. “I saw her take you. She’s evil.”
“Yes, I think she is,” I agreed. I’d managed to turn the letter opener into position and began to saw it against the twine around my wrists. Inside me, Rose didn’t interfere, though she seemed distantly curious. “Where is Miss Salton now?”
“In the house.”
“She mustn’t be allowed anywhere near Arthur,” I said urgently. I fumbled the letter opener, recovered my grip and began again.
“I have no way of stopping that,” Rose replied. “Or of helping you. No one but you ever sees me or hears me. I can’t touch your world or influence it.”
“There are ways,” I told her. “You can disturb the air so that candles flicker and go out—like you did the night Patrick arrived.”
She was silent, surprised, I think, that I’d noticed, or perhaps that she really had done such a thing.
“I didn’t mean that,” she said ruefully. “I was just pleased to see him back, and yet upset because the boy died like me and I knew how it would affect him.”
“Martin,” I pounced. “You did see Martin die?”
“No, no, but I knew. I couldn’t stop it.”
“But you can stop this, Rose. You can frighten her, you can blow on the back of her neck so the hairs there stand up. Disturb the air any way you can.”
She was silent, then, as she seemed to fade and slide away from me. More faintly, she said, “How would that help Patrick? She won’t hurt Patrick.”
“If we can stop her, it will clear his name,” I said just a little desperately, but even as I spoke, I sensed what she already had—the intense and chaotic emotions of Miss Salton, coming closer.
Then, without warning, Rose pushed herself farther inside me. Her being overwhelmed me, chilling my bones well beyond the ability of the damp of this cellar. I felt everything she did, the peace just out of her reach in her dead world, the tendrils of intense feeling left behind in this one.
I always found this a bizarre kind of experience. On one hand, sharing such intensity of emotion tugged at my heart strings and my tears; on the other hand, there was such an isolating gulf between those remembered feelings and her current, distant, almost dispassionate state that it was somewhat frightening.
Besides which, although in that moment I knew Rose as well as I knew myself, she now knew me too. I was never comfortable with that, even with the dead. And in this case, my relationship with this spirit’s husband added to my distress.
In this state, inevitably, I lost my grip on the letter opener, which had almost cut through the last strand of twine at my wrists, I jerked my wrists apart, repeatedly, but the twine held firm and my muscle were so tired that when I tried to reach for the blade again, they cried out in protest. Something creaked in the room that I couldn’t see. A pale candle showed me the tall, thin figure of the governess advancing upon me, dragging with her even more nasty, dark fusionless things than had already gathered down here. It was as if they fed off her. Some had even been made largely from her. The strength of her emotions had given rise to several of the ugly sentient creatures including the lust bag. No wonder she’d seemed familiar when I first met her, and yet I’d never made the connection between the decadent spirit which had disturbed me those nights and the staid, self-effacing Miss Salton.
And I hadn’t even broken free of my bonds. This was no way in which to meet her. Unexpectedly, my hands jerked down without my instruction. I barely suppressed a cry of pain, but I managed to grasp the letter opener again, twisting it into position with Rose’s help, and then she slid out of me. I saw her semitransparent body glide towards Miss Salton, but the governess didn’t see her.
The letter opener sliced through the last of the twine, releasing the pressure on my wrists. I flexed my aching fingers behind my back, changing my grip on the little knife. Miss Salton halted several yards away, lowering her candle until its dim light flickered over me, blinding me for an instant. With an effort, I stopped myself dashing my hand up to cover my eyes and instead twisted my head away from the light.
“So you did wake up,” Miss Salton said irritably. “I was hoping you would just die quickly. Whore. Slut.”
Although I suspected the gesture would be lost in the poor light, I lifted one sardonic eyebrow. “Why should whores and sluts die more quickly than anyone else?”
“You’re not even ashamed, are you?”
“No,” I agreed. “Is that what this is about? My morals? Who made you God, Miss Salton? I’m sure it wasn’t the Lord himself.”
“I never pretended to be God,” she snapped, swatting at her ear where Rose appeared to be blowing the air with all her might. “The world as a whole is not my concern.”
“Actually, my morals are not your concern,” I pointed out. “But if you really want me gone, I’m sure a few words in the ears of all the Ladies Haggard—or even just one of them—would have sufficed.”
Irritably, she waved the hand that held the candle and grunted as hot wax fell on her wrist. The candle steadied. “Gone isn’t good enough,” she said irritably. “Not when he could find you. I thought you could be left here safely to die, but they all seem to know about the passages now, and he might find you here.”
The understanding I’d been struggling for all morning began to slide into place. More than that, I was sure I felt him close by. Patrick. Imagination or not, I hugged the mind-image of him to myself, much, I suspected, as Miss Salton was doing, judging by the fierce tenderness that emanated from her in waves.
“Patrick,” I said. “It has all, always, been about Patrick. You want him to have Haggard Hall, so you’re trying to kill Arthur. You pulled over the statue. You pushed Martin out of the attic in mistake for Arthur, and you set the trap to trip him on the stairs.”
“I did more than that,” she said smugly. “I scared George to death, induced the heart attack that killed him.”
“Pretending to be ghosts again? Sudden noises through the chimneys and behind the wall? Did you really imagine those things would damage a healthy young woman like Emily?”
“I hoped the state of her nerves might be such that it would prevent her conceiving,” Miss S
alton said casually. “Or if she did conceive, that it would make her miscarry.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then: “I’m not a sentimental woman,” I said slowly, “but your callousness is truly breathtaking. Did you kill Rose too?”
“Dreadful, silly slut of a creature,” Miss Salton uttered with bitter contempt. Her candle flickered wildly as Rose flapped and dived in the air like a lively fish. But I felt her distress as if it was my own. Part of Rose would always stay with me, now.
“So unworthy of him,” Miss Salton said, staring in bafflement at the candle which was threatening to go out. “She betrayed him with that awful Cartwright man. She deserved to die. She had to die, to free him.”
Rose’s ghostly arm swung back and struck Miss Salton with a very human-like blow that would have knocked her to the ground if only Rose had been made of anything worldly. As it was, Miss Salton shivered, looking rather wildly around her until her gaze came back to me, and widened.
“Are you doing this? Is it some trick?”
“Doing what?” I asked, staring back at her. “What did you mean when you said Rose had to die to free Patrick? Free him for what?”
Even in the tiny glow from the candle, I could see the blush staining her cheeks, almost like a schoolgirl whose secret infatuation has been discovered by her fellows.
But the puzzle had fallen into place for me. I saw again the image of Patrick in the garden with Irene and Miss Salton. Something had bothered me about that scene, and I had put it down to the troubled emotions of the neglected Irene. Which said it all, really. I’d found it easier to believe in the uncontrolled malice of a child than of her governess. Even when I’d felt someone’s rush of violent love for him at the ball. No one had truly seen the invisible Miss Salton. Probably even Irene spent most of her time wishing her governess’s presence could be replaced with her mother’s.
The Dead of Haggard Hall Page 20
