The doctor sighed. “There’s nothing more I can do here, and I have other patients to see. I’ll check back this afternoon, as I said. I have no idea what’s gone on here, and Mrs. Clare refuses to say anything. I don’t suppose either of you would like to fill me in?”
We said nothing.
The doctor grunted. “I thought so. Well, it’s no matter to me—I’ll let the police sort it out when they show up. Dear,” he said to me, not unkindly, “make sure you get some rest. Don’t strain yourself. And eat something—you’ll need it, though you won’t feel like eating. As for you”—he turned to Matthew again—“I have my hypodermics in my bag. I can give you an injection if you like.”
“Fuck off,” rasped Matthew.
The doctor turned to me again. “Soldiers are the worst to treat,” he confided, as if Matthew were not sitting three feet away. “Surly and usually ungrateful, but I can’t bring myself to blame them. It’s a right mess we put them in, if you ask me.” He snapped his bag shut, picked it up, and headed for the door.
After he left, Matthew and I sat in a long moment of silence. My head was spinning, my stomach still nauseated. The house was quiet around us, but for the murmurs of voices from outside, down the path to the barn. I pressed my palms together, then squeezed my hands between my knees, trying to regain my composure. I watched Matthew run a shaking hand through his hair.
“You’re not all right,” I said, worried.
I thought perhaps he would swear at me, but he didn’t. He only stood and paced to the window. “What a bloody mess this is,” he said hoarsely. “A bloody mess. I need to think. I didn’t know it would hit me like that. It’s been five years. I didn’t know it would—” He trailed off, pressed his palms to his eyes.
I waited. It was none of my business, I knew, and yet I couldn’t pull away. I couldn’t give him privacy. I sat there with my hands between my knees and watched him.
“All right,” he said after a moment. He dropped his hands and looked out the window at nothing. “All right. Listen. We were in France. We had dug in. I was positioned near the back of the line. I’d had six weeks at the front and they were giving me a breather before sending me forward again.”
I listened, my breath stilled.
“There was a sniper nest,” Matthew went on. “Somehow they’d got into position. They were picking us off. The air strikes kept missing them; we could hardly show our heads. We knew well enough where they were, but they had too much cover. I was sent in a detachment with three other men to reconnoiter and, if possible, to take care of the problem.”
The voices outside had died down. I wondered if the crowd had dispersed. I prayed no one would come in the room before I had heard the end of this. I did not think Matthew would ever tell me this again.
“We hiked all day,” he said, “and found them. We took care of it, like we’d been ordered, and started back. But night was falling, and one of the men had a fever. We found an abandoned barn and bunked down to sleep for a few hours.
“I woke up to an explosion. Fire everywhere. We’d been bombed; or the barn had, though no one knew we were in it. God knows why. Target practice, maybe, or a pilot letting off the last of his shot. We had just enough time to hear it coming—ten seconds, maybe less. I flew four feet when it hit. The place was on fire and all of the others were dead. I ran out of there and kept running.
“I was twenty feet into the woods before I realized the back of my uniform was on fire. I dropped, tried to put it out. I couldn’t get the flames out. I lucked into some mud, still wet, only about an inch or two deep. Still, I rolled in it. That’s the last thing I remember.”
He turned and looked at me. I was thinking of him, running back into the burning barn to get Mrs. Clare. What that had taken of him.
His gaze darkened. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Sarah,” he said. “Don’t. I don’t feel one bit bad about it. I was in the hospital for six months, and every time I felt sorry for myself, I remembered that not three hours before it happened, I blew out a German sniper’s brains as he looked me in the eyes and begged me for mercy.”
“That isn’t fair,” I cried. “It was war. What were you supposed to do?”
He crossed his arms. “I don’t know if you’re naive, or just hopelessly foolish. There is no fair, Sarah.”
“There is,” I insisted, dashing the tears from my eyes. “Everyone just lost sight of it. We all lost sight of it for years. But the doctor was right—we put everyone in that situation. It was impossible. The sniper was killing people, too. He was doing it because he was under orders; so were you. You can’t blame yourself when every aspect of it was madness. And now you’re so angry with me, just because I saw your scars! As if they’re shameful. I don’t give a—a damn about them.”
I broke off, too embarrassed to go on. Perhaps he was right, and I was just a fool. It wouldn’t do me any good to confess how I felt about him, how badly I wanted him, that he seemed a hero to me. Matthew didn’t believe in heroes, and he wouldn’t want a naive girl who saw something in him he didn’t believe existed.
But he was frowning, as if I’d said something to confuse him. “I’m not angry at you,” he said.
“You’re furious with me,” I answered. I knew as I said it that it was the truth. “You can hardly stand to look at me. You think I’m naive, that I have a soft shell—yes, I heard you say it.” I ignored his look of shock as he realized I’d overheard him say that about me to Alistair. “You hardly spare me a glance and then at night you come to my room and—and—”
He looked stricken. “Sarah…”
“No.” I jumped to my feet. Perhaps with the shock I was a little hysterical, but the words tumbled out of me nonetheless. “If you say you’re sorry, I’ll never forgive you. Never. I’m not sorry. If you have regrets, please just keep them to yourself and don’t insult me with them. I’d rather be deluded and think that you spent at least a few moments with me without wishing you were somewhere else. That’s all I want. I don’t care if it makes me stupid. And now I don’t want to talk about this anymore. We need to talk about Alistair—and Maddy.”
Matthew looked at the floor for a long moment. His arms were still crossed. He was still, thinking, as impenetrable as ever. “You’re right,” he said at last. “We need to be rational. Because it seems we have a very large problem.”
“You certainly do,” said a voice from the doorway. A tall man with a drooping mustache stood there, one hand on the frame. He wore a dark wool uniform. The police had finally arrived.
Chapter Nineteen
“It’s a downright mess.” The big policeman moved into the room, his hat under his arm, and looked at us from his deep-set eyes. “And I’m puzzled over it, I don’t mind saying. But you two look relatively sane. Perhaps you can help me make heads or tails of this.”
My heart tripped in my chest. What were we to tell the police? We had a story about ghosts of maidservants attacking the living from beyond the grave. We’d sound like madmen. Matthew and I had been so busy arguing we’d had no time to discuss it. And now time had run out.
I shot a glance at Matthew, but he was not looking at me. He was standing unmoved, his arms still crossed. He looked the policeman steadily in the eye. “Sane is a relative term, sir,” he said in his voice of deep gravel. “But we’ll help you if we can.”
The policeman chuckled and held out his hand to Matthew. “Constable Moores, sir. A bit tardy, as I had to come from Spires-church.”
Matthew shook his hand blandly. “Matthew Ryder.”
“Ah, yes.” Constable Moores turned to me. “You must be Miss Piper, then.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering how he knew my name.
The big man’s eyes twinkled, though the keen intelligence there could not be missed. He did not look dusty, so I guessed my surmise about the bicycle had been incorrect. “According to Mrs. Clare, you’re the ghost hunters, then.”
At that, Matthew and I did trade a glance—his inscrutable, min
e undoubtedly nervous. So we did not have to explain ourselves to him, but how must the situation sound to a policeman’s ears?
The constable eased himself onto one of the fussy flowered chairs and set down his hat. “Now, then. Please start from the beginning. And please, I beg you—make some sense.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but Matthew covered the gap. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at the constable. “All right, then. You know that Mrs. Clare charged us with getting rid of her ghost.”
Moores nodded. “She said as much. The less said about that, the better.”
Matthew reddened. “We are not charlatans, sir. We don’t take any pay. And Falmouth House does indeed have a ghost.”
“Yes, I know of it.” Moores looked uneasy. “I knew Mr. Clare when he was alive. He was the magistrate in these parts. I remember he wrote me, asking if I had any girls gone missing. Said one of them had turned up on his doorstep, unable to speak. Described her.” He shrugged. “I had no answers for him. Then the girl died, and Mrs. Clare thinks she haunts the place.”
“She does,” I said.
Constable Moores blinked at me, as if he had forgotten my existence. Then he waved a hand. “Go on, then. Tell me about the barn. It’s the fire I’m concerned about.”
“We were in the barn,” Matthew said smoothly, “attempting to make contact with the manifestation. Mrs. Clare came into the barn while we were there. She was very upset, agitated. She said she’d had enough, she wanted the ghost to be gone. Then she broke an oil lamp and set the barn on fire.”
“Hmm,” said the constable. “Well, she said as much to me. Admitted she burned her own barn down. Right convenient for you, I daresay.”
“Is she in trouble?” I asked.
Moores shrugged. “We’ll see. Hard to charge someone for destroying their own property, you know. I could fine her for mischief, perhaps—public endangerment. If any sparks had caught on the neighboring buildings, we’d have a serious mess on our hands. However, the Clares are a respected family in these parts. And it didn’t happen.” He rubbed a hand on his forehead. “It’s the rest I can’t make sense of. I’m hearing stories of birds on the roof—crows, to be exact. You see those?”
“Yes,” said Matthew. His former shock had disappeared, and under the constable’s gaze he was strong, confident, and perfectly clear. I marveled at the strength it took. “There were birds on the roof, nesting, it seems. They flew away when the fire got going.”
“A large number of them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You ever recollect seeing crows in such large numbers before?”
“No, sir.”
“Is it true you went back into the barn to rescue Mrs. Clare?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You staying at the inn across the way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Planning to leave town soon?”
“No, sir.”
“Your friend up there.” Constable Moores jerked his chin vaguely toward the stairs. “I hear he’s had a bit of a breakdown. Is that so?”
Matthew crossed his arms again. “I suppose,” he said.
“Ever happen to him before?”
A muscle twitched in Matthew’s jaw. “Not that I’ve seen.”
“Know him well, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’d call him stable—overall?”
“Yes. Sir.”
“Ah, well.” The constable rubbed his head again and stood. “I hear he was rambling about attack formations. My own son was sick for a year after he came home. We had to send him away for a time. Your friend had a bit of a shock, then?”
The questions were so subtle, so quick, it was impossible to see how the constable was leading the conversation. “A bit of a shock, yes, I suppose,” Matthew said.
“So, it was there, then.”
“Pardon?”
“The ‘manifestation,’” the constable quoted. “The ghost. You said you were trying to contact it. Looks like you succeeded, or at least your friend thinks you did.”
Matthew was quiet. “Does it matter?” I asked.
Again the constable looked at me as if I’d just come in the room. “I’m just trying to piece the story together, young lady.” His voice was flat, but his sharp eyes took me in. “Did you see this ghost, then?”
“No,” I said, truthfully.
“Ah.” Constable Moores turned back to Matthew. “What about you, son?”
The two men looked at each other, a challenge between them. Something dark passed over Matthew’s eyes. “I didn’t see it,” he said at last.
The constable looked at Matthew for another long moment. “So—perhaps your friend was deluded, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Matthew.
“All right, then.” Constable Moores stood, his shoulders drooping as if admitting defeat. He picked up his round hat. “Don’t leave town, son. You either, young lady. I may need to talk to you again.”
As we ascended the stairs to Alistair’s room, I grasped Matthew’s elbow. “The policeman,” I said. “Perhaps he could help us.”
He paused and looked at me. “I don’t see how.”
“He knows these parts,” I said. “He knows all the people. He may be able to fill in the gaps—find out what happened to Maddy.”
He shook his head. “He won’t help us. He’s more likely to have us locked in a madhouse or a jail before helping us with anything. As far as anyone knows, Maddy simply killed herself. There was no crime.”
“What about the attack before she came to the Clares’? That was certainly a crime.”
“Which they tried to investigate at the time. But when the victim won’t speak, there isn’t much to go on.” He saw my expression. “Sarah, whatever she may have told you in that barn, we can’t go to the police with it.”
“All right,” I said. “We’re on our own. Let’s see if Alistair is awake and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Alistair was awake, propped up against his pillows. He looked groggy and tired, but when he turned his eyes to us, they were his eyes—Alistair’s eyes—we saw. I let out a deep breath of relief. He had come back from his world of delusions.
“Jove,” he said. “My head hurts.”
I sat on the edge of his bed. Matthew pulled a chair near and sat on it, leaning forward. “You all right, old man? It was rather rough back there.”
“I think so.” Alistair rubbed his forehead absently with his fingertips. “I remember the barn—the fire. Was there a fire? Things got all jumbled at that point.”
“There was,” I said. “Everyone is fine.”
“The barn is gone, though,” said Alistair to me. It was not a question.
“Yes,” I said.
His eyes brightened with the old obsession. “Fascinating. If the barn is gone, then where is Maddy?”
I exchanged a look with Matthew. Where, indeed? “I don’t know,” I admitted.
Alistair looked at the ceiling, his eyes calculating, as if he could find answers there. “A dilemma. If the place haunted is destroyed, what happens to the manifestation? Is it tied to the place, or independent of it? Does she leave, or haunt a pile of charred wood?”
“Alistair,” I said, touching his wrist. “We must think quickly. Maddy spoke to me in the barn. She told me things.”
Alistair’s eyes were focused on me now, bright and interested. “What did she say?”
I took a breath, and tried to paraphrase what Maddy had said in her dark, disturbing language. “We know that when she came to the Clare house she was—injured,” I said.
“Yes, yes.”
“She told me she had been”—I reddened, for I had never spoken of such things before, but I pushed the words out—“violated. By—by three men.” Three of them on me, she had said.
Alistair and Matthew were silent now, both staring at me. “Did she name them?” Matthew breathed.
“I don’t think she knows,” I said.
Find them, I heard Maddy say. “She told me to find them. Did you not feel it? The anger? I thought it would choke me.”
Alistair looked bemused, but Matthew looked shocked. “Yes. I felt it. That was her?”
“Yes. She told me to find the men. As for the rest of it, I think—” I bit my lip. “She kept saying, Poor little dead girl, staring at the sky. I think it means to find—where she is buried.”
Again they both looked at me in surprise. “She’s not in the churchyard?” said Alistair.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She’s given me glimpses—visions of it. Very brief.” I looked from one to the other, watched them realize I had been keeping this from them. “It is only a snapshot—a place in the woods from which I can see a redbrick chimney over the tops of the trees.”
Alistair and Matthew exchanged glances. Matthew shook his head, once. Alistair turned back to me. “It doesn’t sound familiar. You say she’s buried in this place? How do you know?”
“How do I know anything?” I answered. “I don’t—not truly. I can’t prove anything in a court of law. But she showed me this place, and she asked me to find it. She’s furious that she has been buried somewhere. She wants us to right what is wrong.”
“And if we don’t?” Alistair asked, softly.
I looked steadily into his eyes. “She wants you. She told me she’ll—take you, unless I do as she asks.”
“You mean she’ll kill him?” said Matthew.
“I don’t know. I’m afraid it will end up that way, whether she intends it or not. But, Alistair, she seems to be able to—affect your mind. You said things were jumbled. Do you remember anything after the fire?”
“I hardly remember the fire at all,” he admitted. “Everything was mixed up. It was like in dreams, you know, where time has no meaning, and nothing makes sense.” He blinked, remembering, and I saw a look of fear cross his eyes. “She can do that to me, then? Why? Why, in God’s name?”
The Haunting of Maddy Clare Page 15
