The Storyteller's Muse

by Traci Harding

  ‘Cross-promotion is the way to go,’ Joe agreed. ‘Back when I was first published, genre writers didn’t get to meet up very often; we were sort of a sideshow at a big literary convention every now and then.’

  ‘A little oddity to be looked down upon by the more serious writers,’ Tamar emphasised, pulling a sour face.

  ‘Until we started out-selling them all ten-to-one.’ Denise grinned. ‘Or in Fred’s case, a thousand to one.’

  Fred did not deny or confirm, he merely chuckled.

  ‘Then we got our own festivals.’ Spooky poured the remains of his whisky into his coffee. ‘And you know, I don’t think I’ve met a speculative fiction writer I didn’t like.’

  They all nodded their heads to agree.

  ‘We’re the “what if” people,’ Tamar concluded. ‘And we’re all lovely.’

  ‘Well . . . you’ve all set me at ease on so many levels,’ Peter admitted. ‘I can’t thank you enough for that.’

  ‘One day you’ll do the same for some other aspiring writer,’ Denise sounded very certain about that.

  Spooky drank down his coffee in one shot and gave a satisfied sigh. ‘So, have we got you all primed to get started on this novel of yours?’

  ‘As primed as I’ll ever be,’ Peter warranted. ‘If I can’t get this bloody novel out now then . . .’ He shrugged, considering there could be no greater motivation for him — he wanted into this club permanently.

  ‘We’ll just have to come and beat it out of you,’ Spooky’s gruff voice made that sound a real threat. ‘So get on with it, ’cause I want to read it.’

  ‘Me too!’ Denise chimed in.

  ‘Me three,’ said Fred, and Peter stopped breathing for a second. ‘If I find it to my liking, I’ll write you an endorsement.’

  ‘We all will,’ said Joe, as everyone nodded to assure him they would do the same.

  Peter was speechless, as ‘thank you’ didn’t really begin to cover it. ‘I think I’m having one of your lucid dreams, Mr Books.’

  ‘Of course you are, Peter,’ he said. ‘What is life but one long lucid dream that we must also learn to consciously master, lest we become a slave to fate?’

  Their group was the last to leave the café, which closed at 2 a.m. As Peter bid farewell to the writers’ group, it felt like he’d known them all for years, and he was already looking forward to the next time they met. Despite how many amazing experiences he’d had since he’d decided to follow the writing path, tonight beat them all! He couldn’t remember ever feeling this high on life, or even really feeling that he had a life to speak of, but the writers’ group felt like siblings to him and their company like coming home. When he’d lost Penelope, Peter thought he’d lost his foothold on his writing aspirations, but clearly Ms Whitman was only the gateway to a whole other world of opportunity and it was high time for him to move through that doorway.

  For the ninth consecutive day Peter awoke from a disturbed sleep — the clock was the first thing he checked and it was past nine. He’d hoped to wake early and get cracking on his book, but due to the late night he’d slept longer than anticipated.

  His thoughts reverted to his dreams. Another night of chasing Em around.

  He didn’t remember much of it, but he did remember being in Em’s company and speaking with her.

  ‘Their attraction to me is not my fault,’ he recalled her saying at one point. ‘And it’s not me they desire but my talent.’

  Peter dwelt on this a moment hoping to remember more of their conversation, but that seemed to be the extent of his recollection.

  ‘I need some of Fred’s techniques.’ He decided he was definitely going to chase that up.

  Peter thought he’d done himself a great favour by splashing out on a new computer to write his first manuscript on, but a good part of his morning was wasted setting it up, and when finally he sat with a blank, open document page before him, Mrs Eddington arrived with lunch.

  ‘How is the masterpiece going?’ she asked before spying the blank page. ‘Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Perhaps some food will help?’ She set the tray down on the coffee table.

  It was a little difficult not to resent her implication — only because it was a touchy subject with him at present. ‘I have more reading to do before I write anything,’ he explained. ‘I have yet to pin down my starting point.’ He’d realised this in only the last few moments. There was a vague idea of how it would start, but he really needed to sit down and finish reading the butler’s tale.

  ‘I’ll leave you be then.’ His housekeeper set his lunch and a cup of coffee on the table and withdrew with her tray. ‘I’ll leave dinner in the oven and you can heat it up at your leisure.’

  ‘Much appreciated, Mrs Eddington, you are a writer’s dream,’ he emphasised his appreciation.

  ‘Well, I had a good teacher.’ Her smile was tainted by sadness for a moment, as Penelope no doubt came to mind, but she cheered almost immediately. ‘It’s wonderful to have a writer back in the house — it just brightens up the energy of the place somehow.’ She shrugged and headed for the door. ‘Coffee’s hot in a pot in the kitchen, if you need any more.’

  Left in the silence of the library, Peter sat himself down on the lounge and took a bite of his sandwich, which was incredibly tasty — some sort of seasoned chicken and salad. Then, brushing his hands clean, he reached for the diary of Henry Chesterfield. ‘Come on, Henry, give me something to work with.’ So far he had nothing. He’d read that the Lord of the Manor, Sebastian Fairchild, had been conscripted to go to war in June 1914, leaving his pregnant wife to run their estate. Peter was hoping that the Lady Fairchild was about to give birth to twins. ‘At least then I’d have a connection. And a plot would be nice.’

  Notepad and pen at his side, coffee in-hand, Peter settled in to pick up the story where he’d left off.

  As afternoon came and went, the pages of Peter’s notebook filled with characters, events, locations, confessions, accusations, horrors and secrets!

  It was only a knock on the door that brought him back to his present reality with a jolt. ‘Sorry to disturb, we’re just leaving for the day,’ Mrs Eddington stuck her head in to advise.

  ‘Is it that time already?’ Peter noted he hadn’t looked up from the journal in five hours! ‘Whoa!’

  ‘Don’t forget to eat.’ She waved through the crack in the door and then quietly closed it again.

  Peter looked through all the notes he’d taken. ‘Woo hoo!’ He was doing backflips on the inside. ‘I have plot, I have drama, murder, deceit, injustice, which may have all actually happened!’ The revelation shot through Peter and made him tingle all over with pins and needles — was this excitement or trepidation that he was feeling?

  The Ems were hiding a secret all right, one that threatened to ruin them, and would have already, if not for the diligent and decisive action of their devoted servant, Henry Chesterfield.

  ‘This is incredible!’ A shocking and compelling tale had just been handed to him on a silver platter. Due to the controversial nature of the material, Peter could understand why Penelope might have delayed writing this story; it was not exactly in her usual vein. It would certainly take him so far beyond his comfort zone that Peter had to wonder, as a first-time writer, if he could do the story justice. Not that he had a whole story yet, only fragments that he would have to link together. Still, the beginning was clear now. Tomorrow, at long last, his writing life would begin.

  A PERIOD PIECE

  All at the manor house were already in mourning the evening that the Lady Fairchild went into labour; a telegram had brought the dreadful news of her husband’s death that very day. With not only the heartbreak of her loss to endure, and the agony of the birthing itself, her Ladyship was under the added pressure to deliver a male heir, lest the estate be ripped from beneath her and her unborn child.

  Over the course of the war the household staff had been trimmed to a minimum. There was one live-in maid who also did the cooking
, a groundskeeper from the village who tended the gardens, and himself, Henry Chesterfield, the once-head-butler of the Fairchild Manor, who now had charge of all the household affairs.

  Chesterfield had been with the young Lord Fairchild since he’d first come into his inheritance four years earlier. He’d been hired for his smarts and been paid well to use them in his Lord’s service. During the war his role as butler had transformed into one that was more of an advisor. In fact, the Lord never referred to Henry as his butler or manservant, only as ‘my man, Chesterfield’ — as if he were a business associate. The Lady Fairchild also referred to him this way, and since she had taken sole charge of the estate, she’d leaned on him heavily for advice and he was proud to be so trusted and held in such high esteem.

  He listened to the supressed, tortured screams emanating from the upstairs master bedroom, and dared not consider what would happen if the Lady of the house perished in the effort.

  The housemaid, Mrs Beech, and a midwife from their little village, Sister Janet Cole, were in attendance. A doctor had been sent for from the next village, but due to the war, the few doctors left in the country had their hands full, and it was doubtful he would arrive in time for the birth. Still, her Ladyship could not have been in better hands as Sister Cole had birthed more children than any one doctor had. She’d trained as a medical nurse, hence the ‘Sister’ in her name — not to be confused with the many religious sisters who were trained midwives at this time.

  The screaming from upstairs suddenly intensified. What was most alarming for Henry was that the screams belonged to Mrs Beech. As he scaled the stairs, compelled to make haste, the sound of a baby’s cries ebbed his panic slightly, but why was Mrs Beech still so upset?

  ‘This house is cursed!’ She was hysterical as he burst through the doors to find Sister Cole swaddling a crying child in a warm blanket. On the bed, the mistress of the house lay dead in a pool of blood.

  ‘We’re all doomed!’ It was the nature of the widowed Mrs Beech to pour on the dramatics; she was a religious, superstitious gossiper who saw the end of the world in everything! But if that child was a girl, her assertion would be quite correct in this instance.

  ‘Mrs Beech, calm yourself!’ Henry insisted, and turned to Sister Cole, who was looking decidedly cooler about events.

  ‘There have been a few complications,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the devil’s work,’ Mrs Beech insisted. ‘We must fetch a priest.’

  ‘Of course we shall fetch a priest!’ Henry bellowed to intimidate the housemaid into keeping quiet; his heart was breaking into pieces to see her Ladyship dead before him. ‘Speak, Sister, is something amiss with the child?’

  Once the situation was made clear to Henry, he knew he had to act quickly in order to preserve the estate, but it was very difficult to think precisely with their housekeeper threatening exposure.

  The sound of a car in the distance made the situation even more pressing.

  ‘That will be the doctor,’ Sister Cole warned.

  ‘Thank heavens.’ Mrs Beech was dying to tell someone of the day’s proceedings.

  ‘I will pay you very handsomely to hide yourself during his visit and not say a word,’ Henry proffered.

  Mrs Beech gasped. ‘I could not in good conscience keep my silence about this!’

  Before Henry could even consider ringing her pious throat, it had been slit by the scalpel of Sister Cole. The housemaid’s blood sprayed all over him as she dropped to the floor, dead. Horrified, Henry looked to the Sister who was still as calm as you please.

  ‘I imagine my silence is also worth a good deal to you and the young Fairchild twins,’ she said.

  ‘Twins?’ Henry was confused. ‘There is another child?’

  The Sister nodded. ‘I know what must be done. I can help you, but that won’t be free of charge.’

  What choice did Henry have, with two dead women in the room, and a doctor on the doorstep? If the doctor discovered the full truth of this day’s events, he’d assume it was Henry who slit the maid’s throat, not the midwife.

  ‘We can’t let the doctor up here,’ he decided, looking down at his blood-stained clothes.

  ‘Of course we can.’ The midwife dumped a pile of bloodied bed sheets over the dead maid and pushed them up alongside the bed where the pile just blended in with the already bloodied decor.

  ‘God help me.’ Henry was revolted by how casual the Sister was about taking a life. Mrs Beech wasn’t his favourite person in the world, but he wouldn’t have wished her any harm.

  ‘Believe me,’ the midwife defended her actions, ‘when the shock wears off, you are going to thank me.’

  ‘But the doctor?’ Henry was still a little hazy on the plan.

  ‘You bring him up here to see your Ladyship, and tell him I have the twins in the nursery. When the doctor wants to see them, you just tell him to wait here and come and fetch me.’ Sister Cole seemed to have it all in hand, but Henry was far from confident that they were doing the right thing.

  It had all happened so fast and was snowballing rapidly. He was an honest and respectable man only a moment ago and now, in the blink of an eye, he was an accessory to murder. Still, if that wasn’t the case then he would be no one at all; he wasn’t a young man any more and there was a lessening need for a butler’s services. Sister Cole’s action meant he now had the opportunity to save the Fairchild estate for their heirs, as Sebastian had made Henry the executor of his estate.

  Henry took pause on the stairs to compose himself. Above all else his duty was to his Lord, to whom he’d vowed to protect the Fairchild family interests, despite what may come. ‘I have this in hand.’ Henry couldn’t even consider the long-term ramifications of their actions this day, all he could focus on was getting through the next few hours.

  When Henry answered the door he immediately apologised for his dishevelled appearance. ‘We are very short on staff at the moment, thus I was called upon to assist.’

  ‘I quite understand.’ The doctor didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I came as fast as I could.’

  ‘Not fast enough to save my Ladyship, I fear.’ Henry closed the door and led the doctor upstairs.

  ‘How late am I?’ The doctor kept pace with him.

  ‘A good twenty minutes. And only today we got word of my Lord Fairchild’s death.’

  ‘Oh dear heavens.’ The doctor was understandably stunned by the misfortune. ‘My deepest condolences, he was such a young man.’

  Henry couldn’t respond but nodded to accept his sentiment ahead of opening the door to the master bedroom.

  ‘Where is the midwife?’ The doctor was obviously concerned by the state in which he found his patient.

  ‘She is in the nursery seeing to the twins,’ Henry explained as the doctor moved to examine the body. ‘Both born healthy, thank goodness. I believe she has already sent for a wet nurse.’

  ‘Twins, what sex?’ the doctor queried.

  ‘I know one is a boy,’ stated Henry, ‘of the other I know not, this all happened so quickly, you understand.’

  ‘Well, I shall have to examine them both in order to complete my records and their birth certificates.’ The doctor checked for vital signs, but determining there was nothing to be done, he covered the Lady Fairchild’s body. ‘We must ensure the young master Fairchild and his sibling receive their inheritance as losing both parents in such short succession is a most grievous tragedy.’

  ‘It is,’ Henry agreed, struggling to contain his own emotions on the matter.

  ‘Is there no other house staff to attend her Ladyship? Where is her housemaid?’ the doctor asked.

  The question struck the fear of God into Henry; he was a straight shooter and unaccustomed to lying.

  ‘She was sent to the village for the wet nurse, and I do wish she’d hurry up.’ Sister Cole entered with one of the twins all cleaned and dressed in a pink gown and blanket. ‘I could use an extra pair of hands at present.’

  ‘Ah.’ The doctor
brightened when he saw the screaming, healthy child. ‘This must be the second twin then?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sister Cole confirmed. ‘The little master is snoozing in the nursery, so I thought I’d bring wee Mistress Emeline to see you first.’

  ‘Well, strip her down and I’ll examine her.’ The doctor moved to a lounge that was not covered in blood.

  ‘I just got her calm and warm.’ The nurse placed the baby on her shoulder, flipped up the nightgown, and pulled down the nappy to expose the child’s vulva.

  ‘A girl, confirm.’ The doctor filled out his paperwork. Then, with the assistance of the nurse, he checked the child over, without the child ever once leaving her arms. All the while they discussed the complications of the birth that had contributed to Lady Fairchild’s death. The doctor knew Sister Cole very well and did not doubt a word of her account. ‘Just having delivered these twins alive is, in itself, a miracle, Sister Cole, you have done the Fairchilds a great service this day.’

  ‘And I was glad to be of service.’ She glanced to Henry, who no doubt appeared as shell-shocked as he felt.

  Satisfied with Emeline’s health, the doctor sent the Sister to fetch the boy child, who, she informed them, was named Emanuel.

  ‘You named the twins?’ Henry was a little perturbed.

  ‘Well they can’t just go around without names until you find the next of kin,’ she said in her own defence. ‘The doctor has to have something to write down.’

  ‘Well, Sister Cole did save their lives,’ the doctor awarded, ‘and she is quite right in saying that having a name from the get-go does avoid complications down the track, especially where estate is involved.’

  ‘Very good,’ Henry conceded that he might have spoken out of turn.

  ‘I shall fetch the young master.’ She exited the room once more.

  Henry was glad of her assistance, but they weren’t through the woods yet, and he was rather relieved not to have to leave the doctor alone in the crime scene.