The Haunting of Maddy Clare

by St. James, Simone

  “Tell me,” I said. “Did you know?”

  She parted her lips and said nothing.

  “All this time,” I continued, “did you know? Would you even tell me the truth if you did?” My voice rose and I knew I should fight to control it, but somehow I had lost the will. “How could you not have known? Your own husband? How could you have let her suffer so? Did you think she was dead, like everyone else?”

  Her eyes were wide with alarm now, and something that looked like fear. “For God’s sake—be quiet.”

  “My God, you did know,” I said, shocked, for despite myself I had hoped it wasn’t true. “Perhaps you were even there.”

  “Be quiet!” She grabbed my shoulders in a tight, painful grip. “Please, for God’s sake! Someone will hear, and they’ll tell him. He’ll kill me if he thinks I know. You don’t know him. He’ll kill me. I swear to God he will.”

  I stared at her, uncomprehending.

  She pulled me aside, down an alley next to the post office, and dropped her grip. When she looked at me, her face was filled with despair. “Tom did something to that girl, didn’t he?” she said. “Something terrible.”

  I watched her eyes, her face, but if she were not sincere, then she was a better actress than Greta Garbo. “He attacked her in 1914,” I said cautiously. “He and Bill Jarvis and Roderick Nesbit. They—” My throat nearly closed on the word. “They raped her in the woods and left her for dead. Roderick Nesbit just confessed it all to me.”

  Her head dropped forward and she cradled it in her hands, her palms over her eyes. “Oh, my God,” she said softly, and then, as if she could not stop, “Oh my God, oh my God. Oh my God…”

  “You suspected something,” I said.

  “Not until a year ago,” she said into her hands. “When she killed herself. He grew so strange after that. He started to terrify me.”

  “That’s because, until that day, he thought she was dead,” I said. “But Roderick Nesbit saw her at the Clare house, and told your husband she was alive.” I took a step away from her, remembering Nesbit and his rifle, remembering Alistair and Matthew. We had no time. “Your husband is a monster, Mrs. Barry. You can claim you don’t know it, but he is.”

  She dropped her hands. “I don’t claim any such thing.” The pain in her eyes was real when she looked at me. “You have no idea, young Miss Piper. You simply have no idea what a hell my marriage has been.” She wiped the dampness from her cheeks. “In the fall of ’fourteen, I was at my mother’s house. I told Tom I was going for a visit, but I never intended to come back. I stayed there for over four weeks. But my mother convinced me I was being unreasonable, and sent me back home to him.” She looked blankly over my shoulder. “That must have been when it happened. I hated my marriage even then. From the first week, I hated it. But since you and Alistair arrived in town, it has all started to change. I’ve realized that I simply can’t take it anymore, no matter what my family says. And Tom…” She shook her head. “Tom laughed at first, when he heard you had come to exorcise that girl’s ghost. He said you were fools and charlatans. And then he got angry, and said you should be stopped.”

  The man watching us from the woods; my room, torn apart. It had been Tom Barry all along. “And you thought—”

  “I started to suspect something,” she said. “He was so livid. He talked of you endlessly, and of this ghost. Of whether this ghost could talk to you, as the rumors said. Of what she would say. He didn’t believe it at first, but he started to become convinced. And I started to wonder what he was so afraid she would reveal.”

  “And so you came to me in the dress shop,” I said.

  She looked at the ground. “I’m the worst sort of coward.”

  “What about that scene in the pub? You weren’t afraid then.”

  She made a short sound. “When I am in public with him, Miss Piper, I am more afraid than ever. I can’t show even a hint of what he thinks is disloyalty. If he’s displeased with me—” She bit her lip. “I make certain he’s never displeased with me.”

  “And Alistair?” I said.

  She looked up at me again, her features softened. “Alistair,” she repeated, the word gentle in her mouth. “Alistair taunts me with his very existence. He shows me what I could have had if things had been different. If I had been brave. Alistair is the most wonderful man I have ever met, and I don’t deserve him even in the slightest.”

  “It was you,” I said, though part of me had already suspected. “Who hired the nurse. Who spoke to the innkeeper. Who arranged everything for him. It was all you, wasn’t it?”

  A tear rolled freely down her perfect cheek. “It’s amazing what money can do. Money is all I have. It’s the only thing I know how to use. Please tell me he’s doing better.”

  It was my turn to grasp her shoulders now. “If you love him, even a little—if you have any good feeling for him at all—you’ll help him now.”

  Her gaze focused on me. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Call for Constable Moores,” I said. “Tell him everything you’ve told me. All of it. Tell him that Roderick Nesbit has confessed to me, and is in his house right this moment. Tell him that Matthew Ryder has gone to see your husband. And tell him I’ve gone after him.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t do that.”

  “I’m going.”

  Her eyes met mine. “He’s dangerous. Haven’t you been listening? He knows you have discovered something. He’s an animal trapped in a corner. Your Mr. Ryder may already be injured, or even dead.”

  My heart lurched, but I was more resolved than ever. I dropped my hands. “I’m going. Matthew needs me. It’s the only thing I can do. I know where Maddy’s grave is, and I have to take her there. It’s the only way to end this.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I shook my head. “Just find Constable Moores, as I said. Then find Alistair. He’s at the inn. He needs you—he has always needed you. I wonder now if you could have helped him from the first.”

  She nodded. “I’ll go.”

  After she hurried back into the post office, I started off again. It was so random—a chimney gone rotten, and rebuilt, and Matthew and I had missed everything. What if we had found Maddy’s grave last night? Roderick Nesbit would not be fighting for his life right now. And what was happening to Matthew?

  I couldn’t linger on it. I had to hurry now, as fast as my low heels could take me, my shirtwaist dampening with sweat. If Maddy followed me to the Barry house, then perhaps she would leave Roderick Nesbit alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  The house was quiet as I approached, this time walking up the long drive. I ached to go inside, to find Matthew. But my first business was well away from the walls of the house; and I turned my steps off the drive, through the trees, the weeds stinging my legs, and made for the well.

  My arms throbbed where Maddy had gripped me. I stopped, well in the shade, and looked in the direction of the house. From here I could see the gray chimney jutting from the rooftop, visible over the tops of the trees. I stood for a long moment, entranced, as the crickets sang in the weeds around me and the wind blew quietly. I had been here; the feeling was so strong, it simply held me paralyzed as time stretched out unseen. I knew this place. It lived in my memory. I had seen it behind my eyelids, time and time again. My heart thudded slow in my chest. This was a place where something terrible, something truly evil, had happened.

  I returned to myself slowly, as the bitter scent of the wildflowers on the warm breeze brought me back to the moment. I was choked with terror, and I found it difficult to breathe. I was risking death here. I cannot do it, part of me cried. I cannot do this. But still, I stood rooted to the ground.

  I felt myself in a dream, as I had been the night I had run through the woods. I remembered that feeling of dread. I remembered the thing that had awaited me on the path. In my mind’s eye I could see the path again, but it was not shrouded in darkness anymore; it was bathed in re
ddish late-afternoon sunlight, and the birds cried in the trees. I saw a young woman on the path, her black hair braided neatly down her back. She was twelve years old, and her family—always hungry, she’d said—had sent her away to service. Her hands had begun to become roughened, and she’d filled out a little with regular meals. Only she’d been dismissed—a petty theft, perhaps? An insolent word in a fit of temper? The mistress of the house watching where her husband’s eyes followed?

  Where would such a girl go? Home, to her shame, to hunger? Or forward, somewhere far, where no one would know her former employers, in hope of getting another position? I did it until they bade me go.

  I saw three men, all armed, block her way. I saw one of them step forward.

  I turned and made my way toward the well. It was a dark smudge at the edge of the clearing. In the dream in my mind, the girl knew. I saw her turn and run, agile as a rabbit. I saw her small cloth bag drop to the ground, saw her legs pump, terror giving them speed, her feet take the uneven terrain off the path as fast as they could, running for her life. And I saw the three men run after her.

  I was running, myself, now. I was getting closer to the well. Six feet from the well, Roderick Nesbit had said. But in which direction? In my mind, the men caught the girl, and she fell hard to the ground. She opened her mouth to scream. I was weeping.

  Where would be an ideal place for a grave? Not in the open, certainly. Not to the left, where the land sloped downward, became rocky and hard. To my right was a stand of fir trees, outcropped from the forest proper, their trunks dark and dense against one another. No space to dig a grave there. But pinpoints of sunlight showed between the black trunks, like delicate holes of lace. I walked toward it.

  This is the place, I thought as I came through the trees.

  It was dim, unassuming. A small, natural clearing, perhaps twenty feet square. Two rotted stumps here, where old trees had fallen. Clumps of weeds, thick and forbidding, filling in a depression in the ground, the right size for a human body. The right size and shape for a grave dug years ago, since filled in by nature. A place no one would ever find.

  I closed my eyes, searching for Maddy’s presence. This is it, I said to her in my mind. I’ve found it, as you asked. Come. I focused on this small, quiet place, under the afternoon sun. It felt as if there should be more here, some mark of what a terrible thing had taken place in this spot. But nothing happened; only the birds sang endlessly in the trees. There was no eerie, throaty call of a carrion crow.

  Could I be mistaken? Was there another place here, the right place that would call Maddy and ease her grief and confusion? I lifted one foot from the ground to take a step into the clearing, to gain a closer look.

  A metallic click sounded next to my ear.

  “Don’t do that, my dear,” came a soft voice behind me.

  I froze, put my foot back to the ground. My head buzzed.

  “That’s it,” said the voice. It was a man. “Curious, aren’t you?”

  I opened my mouth, but my tongue was too dry to speak.

  “You’re looking for something.” The man was amused, his voice as dangerous as acid. “There’s nothing to find. Or haven’t you heard?”

  It was Tom Barry’s voice. “Please,” I managed.

  “Shut up,” he said, as if he were discussing the weather. “You’re the second person today who has come here, poking into my business. Someone is very, very bad at keeping secrets. Turn around.”

  I did. I was shaking, my legs hardly obeying me. Somehow, I managed to move.

  He stood before me, his dark-lashed blue eyes looking at me with unwavering malice. He wore a chambray shirt under a tan tweed jacket, the casual attire of a country gentleman. Tom Barry, by any standards, was a reasonably handsome man. He had once caught the eye of a young woman named Evangeline. The kind of man who could catch the eye of any young woman at all—except for the fact that he held a long, lethal rifle in his hands, and he was pointing it directly at me.

  He smiled. It was the same odd-shaped smile I’d seen at the pub. Perhaps it was only terror making me see things. I was shaking with fear.

  His gaze moved down me, then up again. “Now, now.” His voice was soft. “You are trespassing on my property, you know. At least the other fellow came to the door.”

  My stomach dropped. Matthew. “Where is he?”

  Tom Barry was frowning now. “It’s bothering me. Who talked to you? It has to have been either Rod or Bill.” He took a step closer, touched the end of the rifle to my sternum, just below my breasts. “It was probably Rod, that coward. But Bill hasn’t been reliable since his wife left—he drinks too much, you know. It could have been either.” The conversational tone of his voice was belied by the rifle pressed to my body. He gave it a small, unmistakable shove. “Who was it?”

  I took a breath, somehow found my voice. “It’s too late. You can’t do anything to them now.”

  The smile returned. “Bill, certainly. They found him in the woods a few hours ago, did you know? Keeled over dead in a clump of weeds. Not a mark on him. Some sort of seizure, I’m sure. A shame. But he could have talked to you before he died. And the last I heard, Rod was still alive. The other fellow wouldn’t say either.” He shrugged. “And now I can’t ask him again, as he’s not exactly talking.” He noted the expression on my face with pleasure.

  But fear had brought everything into clearer focus, and now I noticed details I hadn’t seen before. The sleeve of Barry’s jacket was torn at the shoulder, and—more tellingly—he had a dark red welt on one cheek, an injury too new to have deepened into a bruise. His hair, combed close to his head, was awry over one ear, as if he had smoothed it down and missed a place.

  “He gave you a fight,” I said.

  The amusement left his face and his eyes narrowed. He jabbed the gun into me. “Walk.”

  I did, trying not to show my fear, my despair. If Matthew was dead—dear God, dear God, if Matthew was dead—at least he had given a fight at the end. I felt my spine tighten. This man would see justice. My life meant less than nothing. I would take any chances I could, pounce on the first mistake this man made even if it meant my own death. I would see justice done for Maddy, for Alistair. For Matthew.

  Tom Barry steered me toward the house. The chimney came closer and closer through the trees. My upper arms throbbed, and I remembered my visions of this place. It had always been this place, if only Matthew and I had found it in time. If only we hadn’t put everything together too late.

  Maddy, Maddy, this is your place, I thought. Come and at least one of us can be at rest.

  The house came up before us, expensive and serene, but my stomach would not stop turning at the sight of it. I had suffered too many nightmares; I was too close to the real nightmare that had happened here.

  My thoughts went briefly to Evangeline. What had it been like for her, to live here with this man? Perhaps I had misunderstood her, or judged her too hastily. She had been living in a hell of her own for years. I felt a little ashamed, and I wondered if she would be able to find help in time, before I myself died here.

  For I was certain I was about to. Alistair was helpless; Jarvis was gone; Nesbit was a prisoner in his own yard. And Matthew, despite a fight as valiant as that of any knight, had fallen. There was no one left. Constable Moores would come, perhaps; but whether that would be in time to find me, or to collect my body, remained to be seen. Tom Barry was not interested in leisure.

  He jabbed me in the back with his rifle, prodding me up the steps to the house. “I knew, that day in the pub,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “You’re supposed to be a ghost expert,” he went on. “A medium. Eh? Called in special. Well, I could see it just by looking at you. I’ll tell you what you are. You’re a swindler, that’s what, just like the man you came with. Just like this one here.”

  I stopped where I was, in the front corridor, looking into the front sitting room. I had stopped listening to him. I heard nothing but t
he blood rushing in my ears, and the beat of my broken heart in my chest.

  Matthew lay facedown on the sitting room floor. His arms were raised by his head, elbows bent, as if he were about to catch a ball. I couldn’t see his face, which was turned away from me; I could see only the blood pooled on the thin carpet under his head, spreading in a dark brown stain. The sitting room was a mess—a table overturned, a chair thrown back against the wall, smashed glass on the mantel. Barry had invited Matthew into the sitting room for a conversation; then, once he suspected what Matthew was about, he must have surprised him. It was the only way. Matthew was half a foot taller than Tom Barry and a great deal bigger; but if Barry had surprised him…if he had used a weapon…

  Matthew was so very still. I willed him to move, willed him to breathe. A sound escaped my throat, and a small convulsion wracked my chest.

  The hard prod of the gun in my back brought me back to the moment. “Move,” said Barry.

  “Is he dead?” I had to ask.

  “I hope so. If he isn’t, I’ll soon take care of it. Move.”

  I didn’t want to move; I didn’t see the point. It all seemed so hopeless, for a long moment. Matthew was lost to me, alone in this awful house; before him, Maddy had suffered here, too. And now I would die, before Constable Moores even put down his teacup and got in his motorcar to come for me—that was, if Evangeline Barry, this monster’s wife, had found her courage and run to fetch him at all. Perhaps she had lost her nerve, stripped by years in this terrible place, trapped in a marriage with this nightmarish man. Perhaps she was silent even now, afraid to raise the alarm. Perhaps no one would come until it was too late, if ever.

  I felt a deep wrench of pain. There was no one to regret me amongst the living, and that itself was painful, almost as bad as missing someone would be. There was no one except Matthew, who I wasn’t sure even lived; without him, there was only Alistair—who would be saddened, I was certain, but would not mourn too deeply. I sensed he would not let himself. He liked me; we were friends. But he had lost so many friends already.