The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall

by Catherine Coulter

  “Safe from what exactly I don’t know since he didn’t know anything, but he only shook his head and patted her cheek. She told me she wasn’t about to take any chances with me, so we have to go.

  “Mr. Straithmore, Great-Aunt Clorinda is so old she doesn’t have any eyebrows. She said they’d fallen to her upper lip so now she had a mustache.” P.C. shuddered, then her thin shoulders squared and she looked him right in the eye. “Sir, when I saw you in the village this morning and I recognized you from your picture on your books, I knew you could help us. I remember Grandmama telling the Great he should read your books because you lived here now, and it was only polite. She said he snorted, said who cares if you live here now since you spend your life stringing words together, so long as you aren’t an imbiber and fall off a cliff?

  “My mama and grandmama love your books too. She reads them to me, and then I read them to her, to practice my speech. Mr. Straithmore, Mama and I don’t want to go to Scarborough.

  “And what would become of Grandmama and Barnaby and all the servants? You’ve got to fix what is wrong. You’ve got to speak to the voice and tell it to be clear in what it wants, or I know it’s the abyss for Mama and me, or worse, Great-Aunt Clorinda.”

  “Why does your mama believe the Great knows about this?”

  “She said when he tries to hide anything, his left eye twitches something fierce and he rubs his hands together, like Lady Macbeth, but I don’t know who she is. Mama said he was already writing a letter to Great-Aunt Clorinda telling her of her joy in having us live with her.”

  Barnaby said, “Nobody wants Miz Miranda or P.C. to go to the great-aunt. Suggs is muttering and telling Mrs. Crandle to do something. Marigold, she’s the upstairs maid, and Meg, she sees to Miz Elaine and Miz Miranda, they don’t want them to leave even though Mrs. Crandle said it sounded like P.C. and Miz Miranda had rust in their upper-works. As for Suggs, he thinks it’s a lovely enigma, whatever that is, his words exactly.”

  P.C. said, “Suggs is older than the Great. He’d look like God if he had any hair.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Aye, the old blighter is bald as a river rock,” Barnaby said. “Ah, Old Suggs is the butler. A rheumy eye has Old Suggs, catches me whenever I sneak a pie from the kitchen.”

  P.C. turned on him. “You don’t even know what rheumy means, Barnaby. You’re copying what you heard Mama say.” P.C. smacked him in the arm.

  “Yeow!”

  “You sounded like Musgrave—he was my cat before he died of old age,” she said to Grayson. “Mama said a mouse could ride around on Musgrave’s back and Musgrave wouldn’t even notice, he was just that stupid.”

  “Well, now ye’ve got Musgrave Jr., and he’s as stupid as his ma.”

  Grayson wanted to laugh, but he didn’t, not with those two young, worried faces staring up at him like he was their savior. He looked around and spotted a smooth grassy spot. He took off his greatcoat and, despite the chill, spread it on the ground. “Both of you, sit down.” They collapsed onto his coat, boneless, like Pip, like he himself had when he’d been a child, he supposed. He saw P.C. was wearing disreputable boys’ clothes, probably Barnaby’s castoffs. He couldn’t tell about her hair; it was tucked under a dirty black wool cap. “That’s right. Now, let’s get back to the problem at hand. You said the voice brought the abyss last night. Describe the abyss for me again.”

  “It was this whirling black hole right there in the middle of the entryway. The last time we heard the voice it was coming from that black hole. We slept together with Barnaby, and today Mama wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Mr. Tubbs, he’s the head stable lad, he woke us up.”

  “You’re here,” Grayson said. “Your mama isn’t.”

  The little girl looked down at her feet. “Well, she was tired from packing all our things and was sleeping, and I slipped out. This was important, sir, surely you see that. I don’t want to leave Wolffe Hall.” She looked at Barnaby. “I don’t want to leave him either. He’d wither away without me, Mr. Straithmore. And I’m afraid the voice and shudders will come while I’m gone and Mama’s all alone.”

  “I think yer ma’ll be all right, P.C. I been considerin’, yer inkpotness, that meybe the voice has to rest up afore it puts on another show for P.C. and her mama.”

  “Interesting, Barnaby. The voice, the shudders and quaking, the black hole—it would all require great energy, great power.” Grayson again felt that spark, now more a flame, he realized, burning bright now, making his blood heat, his heart speed up. “I’m not an inkpotness.”

  “Well, ye don’t sing yer stories, do ye? Ye write ‘em down. Ye use ink, don’t ye? Ye don’t try to use spit, do ye?”

  “He can’t spit down the words, Barnaby,” P.C. said. “They’d dry and disappear, and then where would he be?”

  “Well, that’s why the sirness ‘ere is an inkpotness, not a spitpotness. And I ain’t gonna wither, P.C. I’m a boy and boys grow up to be big strong trees.”

  Again, Grayson wanted to laugh, but P.C.’s bright blue eyes were once more fixed on his face like he was the only possible savior of her world. He realized too that he liked Barnaby’s newest title for him. “You said your grandmama’s bedchamber door was locked?”

  P.C. nodded. “Grandmama told Mama she hadn’t locked it and that she was asleep, probably dreaming about Alphonse. She really likes Alphonse.”

  Who was this Alphonse? Not important—he’d find that out later.

  “All the servants are worried, sir. They don’t want to think we’re nutters, but they don’t know. I think they’re afraid too.”

  “P.C. says if ye don’t help, then we’ll all be swept away into this abyss or they’re leaving for Scarborough on Saturday.”

  “Mama doesn’t want to leave her garden, sir. It’s really quite amazing. You do believe me, don’t you? You don’t think I’m just a little kid and I’m making this up? Or that I’m a nutter?”

  “If you’re making this up, you’re far better at storytelling than I am. Who else lives at Wolffe Hall?”

  “Besides the Great, only Grandmama—she’s my daddy’s mama. Her name’s Elaine. She’s a floater, like a fairy whose feet don’t really touch the ground. She spends most of her time in the portrait gallery, standing in front of Alphonse, talking to him. I don’t know what she says, but she never tires of standing there, looking up at him, and talking. I brought her a chair once, but she had Suggs take it away. Mama said Alphonse lived back in Queen Elizabeth’s court and that was about forever ago, and that’s why he’s wearing funny clothes, like a ruff, that’s the name Mama told me for the fancy collar. And he has on green tight pants. Grandmama calls him her darling Alphonse. He’s got a pointed beard and I think his eyes are sly, but Grandmama doesn’t agree.

  “Mr. Straithmore, Mama knows how to shoot, and she put her little gun under her pillow, said she’d shoot into the abyss because who knew what was hiding down there?”

  “Your mama knows how to shoot?”

  P.C. nodded. “She told me since my papa—he died a long time ago when I was little—since he was sometimes involved in fisticuffs, she wanted to learn how to protect him. She fences too.”

  He said, “Your mama sounds fierce.”

  Barnaby snorted and looked disgusted. “If I was Miz Miranda, I’d beat the wickedness out of P.C., but all she ever does is stroke ‘er ‘air and kiss ‘er.”

  “She kissed you once, frog-face, something I’ll never understand. You liked it so much I saw your back teeth you were grinning so wide.” She added to Grayson, “Barnaby is like our barn cat—he doesn’t have a family except for us. He needs us; we can’t leave.” A pause, then, “If it weren’t for Mama, I’d like to be a barn cat too.”

  Even though the lantern light wasn’t all that bright, Grayson could tell P.C. was looking thoughtful. “What is it, P.C.? You’ve remembered something else?”

  “I was thinking about Barnaby, Mr. Straithmore. I hadn’t realized it until now. His grammar is
very bad.”

  Well, he’s a barn cat.

  She snapped her fingers. “I know, after you’ve taken care of everything, Mr. Straithmore, I’ll ask Mama if she can teach Barnaby too. Otherwise, what will he make of himself when he grows up?”

  “I expects I’ll still be a barn cat,” Barnaby said. He pulled up a piece of grass and began to chew on it.

  “Mama and the Great wouldn’t ever let me marry a barn cat. That means you will learn to speak properly.”

  Barnaby looked horrified.

  P.C. patted his bony knee. “I wish we had some bubbly. Sir, you’ll come over tomorrow and fix everything?”

  Grayson said, “Do you know, I wonder why only you and your mother have dreamed anything or heard anything or felt anything? Who is this voice? That’s the key. And what word is whooss a part of?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Wolffe Hall

  Friday, late morning

  A storm blew in heavy, cold rain off the North Sea after midnight and dashed against the windows until dawn. To Grayson’s surprise, the sun came out right after breakfast and was now shining brightly on this glorious spring day. Grayson rode Albert, his gray gelding from the Rothermere stud, who, unfortunately, stopped without fail if he spotted a patch of strawberries. Luckily, there were few strawberries about Belhaven. Grayson breathed in the rich, briny smell of the North Sea only a half mile to the east.

  Ten minutes later, he gently pulled Albert up in the middle of the long drive leading to the hall. Pip was bouncing up and down, pointing. “It’s bigger than our house, Papa, but it’s not like the pictures Mary Beth showed me. There were lots of columns. This one doesn’t have any.”

  “No, it’s not in the Palladian style.” Wolffe Hall stood tall and proud atop a small hillock surrounded by acres of chestnuts, oaks, and larches. The three-story rectangular stone house had aged to a soft gray over the past three hundred years, a handsome property, a dozen well-run tenant farms supporting it nicely. The prosperity, however, wasn’t due to Baron Cudlow, he was told in confidence by the vicar, but rather to his steward, Max Carstairs, the second son of an impoverished knight from Kent, endowed with the patience of Job, more important than brains, it was said in the village.

  Belhaven House was a mere hundred years old. When he’d purchased the property, his parents were surprised he didn’t change the name of his new home, but he admitted to them that the name—Belhaven House—sang on his tongue and tasted sweeter than green grapes from his uncle’s succession house in Sussex. They’d rolled their eyes.

  “Let’s see what’s happening here,” Grayson said and click-clicked Albert forward until they reached the front of the entrance with its romantic ivy framing the portico and a dozen deep-set stone steps. The front door immediately flew open and out ran P.C., wearing a white dress with a bright green sash around her small waist, holding up the skirts as she raced down the steps, showing her white stockings and slippers. “Sir! Mr. Straithmore! You’re here!” She skidded to a stop, pointing. “Who is the little boy? He can’t be a barn cat like Barnaby, he looks too clean.”

  “Hello, P.C. Pip, are you a barn cat?”

  Pip said, “A barn cat—that sounds like fun. Would I have to eat mouses, Papa?”

  “Mice,” P.C. said, frowning at him.

  “I could eat them too. Are they better?”

  “You’re too young to make jests,” P.C. said, rolling her eyes. “Your brain isn’t leavened enough.”

  Pip looked her over. “You’re a little girl. How can you be Barnaby’s mistress?”

  P.C. drew up her full height, threw back her skinny shoulders. “I am the daughter of the house—I’m everyone’s mistress. You may call me P.C.”

  “I’m Pip. This is my papa, and he’s famous.”

  “P.C. and I are old friends, Pip.” Grayson looked around again for a stable boy. “Remember, I told you I met her last night.”

  “Where’s Barnaby?” Pip asked.

  “He’s probably chewing straw and playing with Musgrave Jr.” P.C. eyed Pip, nodding slowly. “Oh, I see, sir. You brought him so the Great would be distracted and more likely to spill his innards to you. You must be careful, though, or Bickle—he’s the Great’s valet—he is always wanting to please the Great, and since the Great is very sad he doesn’t have an heir, Bickle might try to steal him.” She put her fingers in her mouth and whistled, eardrum-shatteringly loud, probably as far as the distant seaweed-strewn North Sea beach.

  Pip was amazed. “I want to whistle like that. P.C., can you teach me?”

  “Your mouth isn’t big enough yet.” She shot Grayson a disappointed look. “I thought you were an unmarried hero.” She added hopefully, “Or perhaps the little boy is your nephew? Maybe a stray neighbor’s boy?”

  Pip said, “My mama lives in heaven. I was little when she moved there.” Pip looked up at the white clouds dotting the blue sky.

  “I’m sorry. You’re still so little I can barely see you.”

  Barnaby came running around the side of the house. “Lawks, it’s yer ‘eaven-sentness, come after all. Welcome, sir, welcome. Ah, and who is this sweet boy?”

  Since Barnaby had already met Pip, Grayson assumed he was talking about his horse. “Good morning, Barnaby. This is Albert. You remember Pip.”

  “Beautiful big boy.” He pulled an ancient, wrinkled carrot out of his pocket and gave it to Albert, who nibbled it gracefully out of his hand. Barnaby wiped his hand on his baggy pants. “Hullo to ye, nipper. I knows ye smuggled the bubbly into yer bed when yer pa weren’t looking last night, didn’t ye, nipper?”

  Pip cocked his head at his father. “I never thought of that,” he said, and Grayson groaned.

  “You’re four and a half years old, Pip.”

  “Nearly five, Papa, well, four and a half. Maybe we can have bubbly for my birthday?”

  “That was funny for someone with as small a brain as you have,” P.C. said to Pip, and she walked to Albert, patted his nose. To Grayson’s surprise, Albert whinnied softly and nudged P.C.’s shoulder, nearly sending her over backward. She kissed the perfect white star on his nose, then held up her arms. “If you will give the nipper to me, Mr. Straithmore, I will carry him into the house.” She didn’t have to add that it would make him look more manly and heroic not carrying a little boy, but Grayson well understood, and grinned at her. He looked at those skinny little arms, felt the weight of his son, shook his head, and dismounted, Pip pressed against his shoulder. “Barnaby, you’ll take care of Albert?”

  “Aye, come along, purty boy, I’ll give ye more carrots from Miz Miranda’s very own garden.” And Barnaby led Albert away, whistling.

  P.C. shaded her eyes as she watched him saunter away. “Surely you agree with me, Mr. Straithmore. I can’t very well marry him if he doesn’t learn to speak Queen Victoria’s English, now can I?”

  “Probably not,” Grayson said, and then he frowned, staring after Barnaby. He realized Barnaby looked familiar to him. He’d probably seen him in the village. No, that wasn’t it, it was something else.

  P.C. nodded. “I will have to see to it. I told my mother you were coming, sir. She wanted to know how I’d met you and I lied, said you’d bought me an ice in the village and thought I was a cute little button. The Great knows you’re coming. I told him. He raised a really thick white eyebrow at me, but didn’t say anything. My grandmama is hovering about the portrait gallery, as usual, talking to Alphonse. My mama’s out pulling up weeds from her garden, one eye on the lookout for the abyss. She said we’re leaving in the morning. She said the Great wouldn’t tell her anything, blast his eyes, because he believed that females were helpless and he was protecting us by sending us to Great-Aunt Clorinda. Mama told him she could shoot better than he could, and he patted her cheek and said he’d shot at least a dozen Frenchies off their horses at Waterloo, and she told him that was all well and good but he couldn’t see beyond his own nose now.

  “Mr. Straithmore, in case you don’t remember, I don�
�t want to leave, I really don’t. I was born here.” And she looked at Barnaby’s retreating back.

  “I will do my best,” Grayson said.

  That earned him a brilliant smile. “Give me your hand, Pip, you don’t want your papa to carry you now, do you? I mean, you’re almost five years old.” Pip immediately pulled away from his father and tucked his hand into hers. “You’ll never be as old as I am, so you can forget it. I’m nearly eight, so that means I’ll be a grown-up long before you.” Grayson noticed P.C. slowed considerably when climbing the deep stone steps beside his small son.

  She didn’t look like a ragamuffin this morning, what with the pretty white dress that was a bit on the short side. She had a mop of honey-colored hair, bouncing curls all over her head, threaded through with a silver ribbon. She had amazing blue eyes, nearly the same shade as Sherbrooke blue eyes, nearly the same blue as Barnaby the barn cat’s eyes, and her face was already turning a summer gold. He wondered about her mother. Miranda. Shakespeare’s Miranda?

  He saw a huge calico ribboning around her ankles. She dropped Pip’s hand, leaned down, and hefted the cat into her arms. “This is Musgrave Jr.,” she said, and kissed the cat until he yowled and leapt away, tail straight up, hopping like a rabbit back into the house.

  And Grayson wondered what he’d gotten himself into. What did P.C. stand for?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Grayson eyed the Great—Colonel Lord Josiah Wolffe, Baron Cudlow—from six feet away in an ancient Louis XVth chair that creaked with his weight. He rose slowly when P.C. brought Grayson and Pip into the room. He was still a large man, shoulders squared, not stooped at all.

  P.C. opened her mouth to introduce him, but the Great said, “I know who he is, P.C. He’s that nearly noble fellow who writes ghost stories to terrify every adult in England.”

  Grayson nodded, hoping it was so. “Grayson Sherbrooke, sir. And this is my son, Pip.”