The Haunting of Maddy Clare

by St. James, Simone

  “What have you heard?” I said.

  “That he’s ill,” she replied. “A mental breakdown of some kind. That he went into the barn at Falmouth House and came out…”

  “Mad,” I supplied.

  “I’m not sure I believe it,” she said. “It isn’t like him. And you were there.” She looked briefly at me, then away again. “And his assistant. And neither of you were affected.”

  I coughed a humorless laugh, thinking of last night’s nightmare. “Sometimes I think I might be mad after all. That I just don’t know it yet.”

  “What is the truth?” Mrs. Barry looked at me, and for a second I saw an avid look in her eyes. “Will Alistair be all right? Did you see—her?”

  Her gaze held mine. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear, unsure of how to answer. “No, Alistair will not be all right,” I said. “And it isn’t just about seeing Maddy. You—experience her.”

  Uneasiness flickered behind her eyes, and something else that looked a little like fear. “She talks to you?”

  I tilted my head, thinking. I realized suddenly that despite how inferior I always seemed to feel around Mrs. Barry, I was in control of this conversation. She was hoping for something from me—I did not know what, but I sensed her waiting, willing to follow my direction.

  I didn’t want to talk about what Maddy had said to me.

  “Do you know Mr. Jarvis?” I asked.

  She blinked in surprise, her manicured brows rising a fraction. “The sexton?”

  “Yes.”

  She shrugged and looked away again, disappointed. “Of course.” She reached in her pocket for her cigarettes. “Everyone knows everyone in a town as small as Waringstoke.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  She placed a cigarette between her lips and lit it. “He lives near the churchyard. His wife left—oh, years ago now. She said he had a temper, and she couldn’t stand it anymore. The last I heard, she moved to Scotland with another man.”

  I thought of the empty house I had seen, its bachelor’s mess and frilly furniture, and nodded.

  “It doesn’t surprise me, really,” Mrs. Barry went on. “Helen was always flighty—completely unsuited to him. How they got on as long as they did I’ll never know. Is that what you want to know about? The sexton?”

  “You can talk about Alistair if you prefer.”

  She blinked down at me from under her dark lashes. “Well, then.” Her voice was lower. “Are you in love with him?”

  I sighed. “Everyone is a little in love with Alistair.”

  She drew on her cigarette. “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “It isn’t what you think. I knew when I saw him with you.”

  She looked at me for a long moment in the silence. Nothing moved around us; though we stood by the narrow courtyard, and the country road beyond, no one moved. At the moment, we were alone, unheard, as if we stood on a deserted theater set.

  “I met Alistair before the war,” said Evangeline. “Did he tell you that?”

  I stayed noncommittal. “He told me something of it, yes.”

  She turned away and drew on her cigarette again. “It was in London. New Year’s. I was at a club with girlfriends. It was late; God, we’d been drinking. I went to the bar for more drinks, and Alistair just appeared.” The corner of her mouth quirked in a smile. “He approached me like a torpedo. Just walked right up and started talking.” She laughed a little. “He was so confident, you know? Some would say cocky, perhaps—I don’t think so. Just gloriously confident and sincere. He told me I was the most beautiful woman in the room and he had to dance with me.”

  “What did you say?”

  She looked down, the cigarette burning forgotten between her fingers. “I danced with him, of course. It was—well, I can’t really describe it. We talked and things just fell into place. Before I knew it, we were dancing a second time. He was so open, so honest about his heart. He was wonderful. I wasn’t used to men like that. I’d never met anyone like Alistair.”

  She tossed the cigarette away. “Well. I couldn’t do more than two dances. My girlfriends were watching, and I never knew what would get back to Tom, or how. I was lucky Tom had let me go out without him at all. I didn’t feel like explaining that nothing had happened, that Alistair was a stranger I’d just met, all of that. I should have, of course. But I didn’t. I’ve regretted it every day since, you know. Regretted that I didn’t take the chance and dance with Alistair all night. But I’m just not that woman.”

  I noted that she’d left out Alistair’s proposal of marriage; perhaps she didn’t like to think of it, or perhaps it was a memory kept only to herself, like a secret photograph. She looked up at me. “I suppose I’m an awful wife, aren’t I, to think of another man like that? But Tom and I had been married two years by the time I met Alistair, and I knew what I was dealing with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Barry shrugged sadly. “Tom isn’t much of a husband. I shouldn’t say so, but it’s the truth. He couldn’t enlist in the war—he had a riding accident as a child and his knees are ruined. He’ll be crippled with arthritis before he’s fifty. But I don’t think he was unhappy to be refused. Deep down, he didn’t want to go.”

  “Some of them didn’t.”

  “No, I suppose not. So Tom traded stocks during the war, and he made a lot of money. Sometimes I lie awake at night and think that makes us terrible people. It simply does. He already owned this place. It was empty until he inherited it, and we lived here when we were first married, before we went to London in 1914. I never thought I’d see it again, but we came back from London after the war—he wanted to retire, he said, like a lord. Everyone here loathes us; we don’t fit in, our money is too new, and Tom thinks it makes him better than everyone. I don’t blame them. I hate it here, too, but it doesn’t matter to Tom. He doesn’t notice me much anymore. He’s too busy hunting.”

  “Hunting?”

  “Yes. The woods hereabouts are famous for it, didn’t you know? Tom can’t get enough of it. That’s how I know Jarvis.”

  “He hunts with your husband?”

  She nodded, and a wry smile touched the corners of her mouth. “You wouldn’t think it, would you? Tom, the richest man in Waringstoke, slumming with the town sexton. But Jarvis is a snob. He treats Tom as if he really were a lord, and Tom loves it. Roderick Nesbit is the same, though he doesn’t hunt much with them anymore.”

  I frowned. Nesbit—the man who had been seen at Maddy’s funeral. The man Matthew had not been able to rouse from his home. “Your husband knows Mr. Nesbit?”

  “I told you—everyone knows everyone in this hellish place.” She grabbed the loop of her dog’s leash between her gloved fingertips. “I must be walking. Tom is waiting. If his condition changes—please tell me. I’d like to know.”

  It all spun in my mind. Jarvis knew something about Maddy, and Jarvis knew Tom Barry. He even knew Nesbit. I wanted to tell Matthew everything, lay the burden of it on him, let him tell me what we should do. But I didn’t have the chance to talk to him before Mrs. Clare came to see us at the inn.

  She arrived in the private room, where Matthew was writing notes, his tired forehead propped in the palm of his hand, and I was pouring tea and beginning to speak. We both turned and looked at her as she came in the room so prim and gaunt, Mrs. Macready in tow.

  “They said I’d find you here,” she said. “We need to speak.”

  Matthew stood and wordlessly closed the door behind them.

  I took more teacups and continued to pour. “Are you well, Mrs. Clare?”

  “Well enough,” she said, taking a seat. She turned her arrow gaze on Matthew. “I believe I owe you thanks, young man.”

  Matthew returned to his chair and shrugged. “You’re welcome.”

  “I heard that Mr. Gellis has suffered some ill effects.”

  She tilted her head, as Mrs. Macready handed her a cup of the tea I had poured. “It’s too bad. I had hoped to thank him as w
ell.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  She looked at me. She looked aged even further than the last time I had seen her—frail and bony, her eyes sunken in her face. “Why, for doing what he said he would do. I can’t tell you what a relief it is now that Maddy is gone.”

  Matthew rubbed the back of his neck slowly with one large hand. “Mrs. Clare, I hate to be the one to tell you so, but Maddy is not gone.”

  “She is,” Mrs. Macready put in. “The house is so quiet now, you have no idea.”

  I exchanged a glance with Matthew. Mrs. Clare was so frail. It crossed my mind not to tell her, to let her go home to her quiet house and her burned-down barn. The woman had suffered for a long time.

  But Alistair hung in the balance. And Mrs. Clare had at least some of the answers.

  “Mrs. Clare,” I said as gently as I could, “we need to tell you what’s been happening since the barn at Falmouth House burned.”

  When we finished—Matthew doing most of the talking, as she seemed to believe him more than she believed me—there was a long silence.

  Mrs. Clare sat pale and straight. Her breathing was shallow. We had told her of Alistair, of my nightmare, of Maddy in the halls of the inn last night. Of Maddy wanting to know her burial place.

  “It isn’t true,” said Mrs. Clare softly, looking at no one. “It isn’t true.”

  “Now, there.” Mrs. Macready stood and took her teacup from her. “You need to stay calm. We all need to stay calm.” She looked at us pointedly. “Don’t we?”

  “Maddy was never like this,” said Mrs. Clare. “She was—mischievous. She liked to play pranks. All right—she was unsettled. Angry, even. But never like this…tormenting people, chasing them through the woods…In all the years I’ve known her, she’s never gone further than the barn!”

  It was true. Alive, Maddy had stayed in the house. Dead, she had never strayed from the house or the barn.

  “What could have set her off, then?” said Mrs. Macready.

  Mrs. Clare looked at me, and her gaze was flat. “This started with you.”

  Perhaps they expected me to deny it, but I did not. “Yes.”

  “Miss Piper is extraordinarily receptive,” said Matthew. “Even Alistair knew it. Perhaps it was the appearance of someone Maddy could finally talk to.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” said Mrs. Clare. “That girl is buried in the churchyard. I’ll vouch for that with my life. I saw her laid in there—in that coffin. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t. She’s where that gravestone says she is, and nowhere else.”

  “Hush, now,” said Mrs. Macready, handing her a fresh cup of tea. “It’s all right.”

  “She is, Meredith.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Macready agreed. “She is.”

  So, Jarvis had been telling the truth, then. Still, something was wrong.

  I pulled up a chair and sat close to Mrs. Clare. “Please, let’s go back. I have a feeling the answer is buried somewhere. Can we start at the beginning?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the night Maddy appeared. Let’s start with that. You’ve described the basics of it to us. I would like to hear more.”

  Mrs. Macready took her own seat, next to her mistress. We sat in a circle now, the three of us women, with Matthew somewhere in the room behind us. He stayed quiet, but I knew he was listening.

  “She just appeared at the back door,” said Mrs. Clare. Her eyes started to take on a faraway cast. “It was dark, and pouring rain. She was drenched. She was hardly dressed—just her underthings, really. Her hair was matted. Her hands were filthy, her fingernails caked. All of that was bad enough—but she couldn’t speak. She tried, and tried. No sound came from her, but it was more than that. It was like she didn’t even know how. She had no words.”

  “You said her hair was matted,” I said. “What with?”

  “Dirt,” Mrs. Macready chimed in. “That I remember clear. Her hair was long, no sign of pins in it. It had mud in it, caked from the ends to her scalp. It took three or four baths to get it out, it did.”

  I resisted the urge to look at Matthew. How had Maddy had so much mud in her hair? “What else do you remember?” I asked Mrs. Macready now.

  Mrs. Macready appeared thoughtful. “Well, I already told you how badly she was injured. It was fearsome. We wanted to send for a doctor, but when we did, she started to scream. Not loud—she had near no voice, as Mrs. Clare says—but as loud as she could manage. It sounded like a broken whistle. She screamed and screamed…. God, I still remember it. That was how we knew she understood what we were saying, even if she couldn’t speak herself.”

  I was remembering Alistair’s words from last night. Her feet. Maddy’s feet? “What else do you recall? About her condition?”

  “Well.” Mrs. Macready was warming up now. “We tried to figure out so bad who she could be. She wasn’t skinny—well, she was, but not strangely so. She’d been fed at some point, somewhere. Her hands were a little rough, but not too much. Not a lot of muscle on her, like a lower servant would have. Still, not lady’s hands. Do you know what I mean? Not soft.” She shook her head. “Her underthings were plain cotton and linen, no monograms. Nothing fancy. I’m no policeman, but she was a servant girl if I’ve ever seen one. A little higher than a lower servant, perhaps. A serving maid, or a seamstress.” She bit her lip. “It just makes no sense. We asked everywhere. A servant girl like that would be missed, and no mistake. She would have had training, come with references. No one was missing a servant girl.”

  Mrs. Clare was still. Her jaw hung open the slightest inch, as if she had wanted to speak at some point and had forgotten long ago. She looked stricken, as if she had just seen someone she recognized and hoped never to see again. I continued with Mrs. Macready.

  “Where was she most injured?” I asked.

  “Her neck,” was the answer. “It was red and bruised. And—well.” She glanced at Matthew and blushed. “In female places. You know.”

  “Not her feet?”

  She frowned. “Her feet? No, there was nothing wrong with her feet. They were muddy, of course, but they were fine. Why would you ask about her feet?”

  “No cuts?” I asked. “Did she limp?”

  “No, not at all.” Mrs. Macready looked from me to Matthew. “Why is she asking me about Maddy’s feet?”

  I did not bother to let him answer. What was formulating in my mind was so horrible I wondered if it was even possible. “She had no shoes?”

  Mrs. Macready was getting annoyed now. “No, nor stockings neither. I told you, she was hardly clothed. I’ve told you all I know.”

  From his place at the table behind us, Matthew stood. “I think what Miss Piper is getting at is that if she had been running through the woods for miles, it’s strange her feet were not damaged. Don’t you think?”

  Mrs. Macready looked at him. Mrs. Clare had gone utterly still, ignored by all of us, still stricken with horror. I thought perhaps what had occurred to me had occurred to her as well. As a matter of fact, it had—but not in the way I thought.

  Mrs. Macready, for once, was not noticing her mistress. Her eyes were narrowed in concentration as she looked at Matthew. “You’re right. She hadn’t run miles at all, had she?”

  “No,” said Matthew.

  “She hadn’t run from a neighboring town at all. What happened to her happened here—in Waringstoke somewhere. In our woods.”

  “Who in Waringstoke has servants?” I asked.

  “There are a few left. But I told you, no one was missing anyone.” Mrs. Macready looked at her employer and her features fell. “My lady—are you all right?”

  Mrs. Clare’s gaze stared straight ahead, unwavering, as if she were seeing something we could not see. “My God,” she said. “Edward was right. My husband was right. All these years—”

  “My lady?” Mrs. Macready rose from her chair in alarm. She took the teacup from Mrs. Clare’s hand before it fell to the floor. “You loo
k ill.”

  Mrs. Clare looked up at her. “She came from the woods, Meredith. Our woods. But no one knew who she was. You remember?” Her gaze searched the other woman’s face. “You remember what Edward said about her?”

  “No. You mustn’t think it.” Mrs. Macready put the cold teacup down. “You just forget about that.”

  “What did he say, Mrs. Clare?” Matthew came forward.

  She looked at him. “My husband—you have to understand. Maddy hated men, but she tolerated my husband. It took me some time to understand why. He never went near her, never spoke to her. It was the way she liked it, but that wasn’t the reason. He was afraid of her, you see.”

  “Afraid of her?” Matthew frowned.

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Macready broke in. “It was nonsense, I always said.”

  “Mrs. Clare.” I spoke gently, and she turned her fragile attention to me. “Please tell me. Why was your husband afraid of Maddy?”

  Tears began to course down her cheeks. She seemed hardly aware of them. “He always said—he always said that night she came, she looked like she’d been buried. She looked like she’d come from a grave. My husband believed Maddy was dead before she even came to Falmouth House.”

  There was a long silence. I knew my mouth hung open; I tried to think what to say, but my mind was white. I had no words.

  I looked at Matthew, hoping he would scoff, would make things sensible again, but he was only frowning. The thought was insanity, but wasn’t our entire situation insanity? With Alistair upstairs in a dreamworld, and me exhausted from a running nightmare in the woods? For a dark, spinning moment, anything seemed possible.

  Mrs. Macready broke the silence. “Nonsense,” she said, with such force I turned to her and saw a dark red flush coloring her neck and cheeks. “It’s nonsense. That girl was no such thing.”

  “She wasn’t right, Meredith,” said Mrs. Clare. “You know she wasn’t. The way she looked at us—the way she behaved. She was never right. She came from somewhere in the woods with dirt in her hair. That girl was never right.”

  “She was a girl!” Mrs. Macready looked at us, pleading and disgust on her face. “Was it a dead girl who got those terrible ear infections the first few years? Was it? A dead girl I nursed with those fevers, who sweated and cried out in her bed? Was it a dead girl who liked to eat plums and hated the taste of my Christmas cake? A dead girl whose hands chapped from the lye soap, whose hair I cut every six weeks, who got her first courses the spring she came to us?” She glared at all of us, forgetting even to be embarrassed to mention such things in front of Matthew. “I gave her her first linens and taught her how to use them. That was no ghost. I’ll lay my life on it.”