by Tamara Berry
At the mention of her uncle, Rachel loses some of her gloom. “Uncle Nicholas is a darling, isn’t he? I checked the family bible once, hoping that he was my real father and everyone just pretended I belonged to mum, but it was written right there on the page, my name underneath hers.”
Although a teenager’s moment of parental crisis is hardly the right time to put the focus back on myself, I can’t help but interrupt. “You’ve seen the page?”
She blinks. “Of course. Until Uncle Nicholas had everything moved to the museum, it was kept in the library. Mum wanted him to throw it away, but he never would. He’s weirdly keen on genealogy.”
He seems weirdly keen on a lot of things, including fake mediums currently under his employ, but that’s hardly the point. “Was there anything about the page that seemed off to you? Something that would make it worth throwing away?”
“I dunno. I mean, it’s not an official record or anything, so the names were sort of jumbled about. But we were all there: Grandmother, Grandfather, Mum, Uncle Nicholas, Thomas, me.”
“Thomas?” I ask, my voice sharp. “Thomas is related to you?”
“Well, no. Not really.” She tilts her head, as if considering. “I think they added him when they were kids—as a joke, you know, because they spent so much time together. The penmanship was different. Scrawly-er. And I don’t think he put in his real birthday, because that was never the day we celebrated. Why does your face look like that? Is it because of the smell?”
Until she spoke, I hadn’t noticed anything amiss—either with my face or with the smell in the room—but the acrid tang of burning rowan berries and dandelion roots assails my nose.
“Ignis fatuus!” I cry, jumping to my feet and pulling the scalding pan off the heat source. There’s just enough liquid in the bottom to slosh over the edge to the floor, the viscous red color not unlike blood.
“Ignis fatuus?” Rachel asks as we watch the mixture seep into the floorboards.
“It’s the light over a swamp, a will o’ the wisp,” I explain. “It also makes for a good swear in a pinch. I’m afraid your room is going to smell like this for a long time. That isn’t going to come out easily.”
“Maybe we’ll be more successful at drawing Xavier out this way,” she suggests.
I eye the mess doubtfully. I don’t know how good my burned summoning draught will be at bringing out the dead, but I can’t regret the other thing it’s produced: a confirmation that I’m on the right track. I have no idea what it is about that bible page that has everyone connected to this castle acting so suspiciously, but I’m more determined than ever to find out.
“Let’s sleep on it and see.” I suggest. Unlike Rachel’s respected Uncle Nicholas, I’m not prepared to promise certainties where I have none. “After all, what’s the worst that could happen overnight?”
Chapter 18
After a declaration like that, it’s only natural that the worst is exactly what happens overnight.
“What time is it?” I ask, sitting up in Rachel’s bed. The lingering scent of burned berries still taints the air, but it’s much less powerful an elixir now. I glance around in hopes of finding the girl asleep on the floorboards, but she’s nowhere to be seen.
Which, to be honest, is only to be expected. From the angle of the sun pouring through the window, I not only missed my chance to break into my room under cover of night, but I slept through breakfast—and possibly lunch, too.
Drat. I guess sleeping in a room that’s neither haunted nor accessible via a stubbornly secret passageway turns out to be a great way to finally get some rest. I’d be delighted if it wasn’t such terrible timing. Lolling about in bed is bad form for a medium trying to lay a ghost to rest; for a medium trying to solve a murder, it’s catastrophic. There’s no telling what kind of events have taken place or how many opportunities have passed while I caught up on my beauty rest.
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I prepare to face the day—or, rather, what’s left of it. It’s only then I remember that access to my room is limited and, with it, access to all my belongings. Clean clothes, underwear, even my toothbrush are out of reach until Vivian manages to unearth that key.
Either that or I need to find the secret passageway and get in that way.
“Well, Winnie,” I say, “now would be a good time to stop by with a helpful clue. I’d even take a hint from Xavier at this point.”
Not unsurprisingly, I receive no reply. I glance down at my spilled summoning draught with something akin to disgust. It’s not as though I expected the darn thing to work, of course. It’s a jumbled mix of half-authentic spells half-heartedly uttered. “But you could at least have given me something,” I say.
Winnie remains stubbornly uncooperative, but Rachel proves to be worth her weight in gold. She’s left me a pair of well-worn jeans and three sweaters with a note to take my pick, since my own clothes are locked up in the yellow bedchamber.
Woolly layers aren’t exactly in keeping with my aesthetic, but I pull on two of the sweaters, making do by layering a hand-knit gray one on the top. I might not look the part of a medium about to make a murder breakthrough, but I have every intention of being one anyway.
I know exactly where I’m going to start, too. Grabbing a pair of Rachel’s shoes and carrying them in one hand to reduce the chances of anyone overhearing me, I tiptoe out into the hallway and down the stairs.
“Hello, Madame Eleanor.” Nicholas is lying in wait for me at the bottom. “I trust you passed a pleasant night?”
I barely stifle my scream in time. If I didn’t know better, I’d say this man has cameras of his own installed around the castle, tracking my every movement so he can arrive where I least expect him, when I least expect it. But surely the police would have found evidence of that.
Wouldn’t they?
“My night was perfect, thanks.” I press a hand to my heart, which gives an erratic thump. For reasons I don’t quite understand, I’m loath to admit that I fell asleep on the job—literally—so I follow up with, “I stayed up a bit late ghost-hunting, so it was nice to catch up on my sleep this morning.”
“Ah, it seems there is the occasional rest for the wicked,” he murmurs. “How comforting.”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but he continues with a bland smile and an even blander “I’m glad I caught you in time. You aren’t, by any chance, attending afternoon services, are you?”
My alarm at such a proposition must show on my face, because he chuckles and takes a predatory step forward. Standing my ground is difficult, but I do it, even when he reaches into his pocket with slow deliberation.
“Mother thought you might,” he says as though we’re two ordinary people having an ordinary conversation. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what we are. He dangles a key ring from one fingertip. “We’re not church-going people ourselves, but she likes to offer her guests the use of the Land Rover if they want to attend.”
“Land Rover?”
He gives the keys a shake. Their cheerful jingle fills the hallway and makes a mockery of my fears. “It’s old and it’s ugly, but it runs. And most of the village is used to my mother behind the wheel, so they’ll steer a clear path when they see you.”
“That’s awfully nice of her,” I say. What I’m thinking, however, is that it’s awfully questionable of them both. Nothing about me indicates that I have traditional spiritual leanings or that I’d make a Sunday sojourn into the village to indulge them. Yet that was the precise location I had planned for the day.
“No, it’s not,” he says with a laugh. “She’s always happy to do anything to get her visitors out the door.”
“And you?” I can’t help asking. “What’s your motivation?”
“At the moment, nothing but the purest chivalry, I assure you. A few days’ residence in this place is a surfeit even under the best of circumstances. Under these circumstances . . .”
It’s not a very good answer. In fact, it sounds an awful lo
t as if he’d like to get rid of me for a few hours. Or possibly forever. I don’t know much about old Land Rovers, but I imagine it’s easier to cut the brakes on one of those than it would be to lure me up to the top of a staircase and give me a gentle shove.
“What time is the service?” I ask.
“One o’clock,” he says. “We have a family pew near the front, but I don’t recommend you sit there unless you’d like everyone to sprinkle salt in an arc around you. You’ll most likely want to sneak in the back. And maybe wear something less . . .”
“It’s not my fault,” I say as I give the sweater a conspicuous tug. “Your mother lost the key to my room. Rachel was nice enough to loan me some of her clothes.”
His lips twitch. “Ah, yes. I heard about that.”
“It’s not funny!” I cry, momentarily forgetting that this man has given me no reason to trust anything he says or does. “Everything I brought with me is in that room. Isn’t there a locksmith or someone you could call?”
“Not on a Sunday, there’s not. This is a very traditional village. We can’t even buy bread.”
“Yes, well. I can’t lay a ghost to rest if my ghost-laying supplies are locked up.” A thought occurs to me. “If Thomas were here, I bet he could find a way to break down the door.”
“Possibly.” Nicholas pauses, watching me. “But as we both know, he’s currently enjoying his weekend away.”
I’m rapidly beginning to lose my patience. “Someone pretended to be Xavier and told your mother to lock that door,” I say. “And they did it either knowing she’d lose the key or with the intention of taking it from her at the first opportunity that afforded itself.”
Nicholas surprises me with his answer. “I agree.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Not particularly, no. Of all the crimes under this roof, locking a door hardly seems like something to get worked up over.”
True. Unless that locked door was designed to keep me from finding the passageway or reaching my personal effects, in much the same way my cameras were smashed. Even my bottles of Carlo Rossi are out of reach—and it’s looking more and more like I’m going to need them, if only to dull the pain.
“But aren’t you even a little curious about why?” I demand. “You’ve got someone sneaking around the house, hiding bones and moving bodies, pushing people down stairs and throwing birds out of chimneys. You’ve also got someone limiting my access to my investigative tools by using your mother as a dupe. At what point do you start to show alarm? At what point do you realize that everyone inside this house is in danger?”
I don’t know the exact point in my speech when Nicholas crosses the floor, but I’m guessing it’s about halfway through. By the time I get the last word out, he has me by the shoulders, though whether he’s pushing me away or pulling me closer, I can’t tell. All I know is that his grip is strong and his eyes are like steel as he scowls down at me.
“You think I don’t know that? You think I’m not doing all that lies within my power to get to the bottom of this? Everything and everyone I care about is currently residing under this roof.” His voice, which had been showing a tendency to rise in both volume and severity, lowers to a growl. “For crying out loud, Eleanor, I hired a con woman masquerading as a psychic to help me. I put my trust in a beautiful stranger who can manipulate people with wind machines and a smile. Believe me, it doesn’t get any more desperate than that.”
For a brief flash, I think he’s going to kiss me again—another one of those hard embraces that will leave me feeling more confused than sated—but he doesn’t. He just holds me there, staring down at me until I nod.
Nodding seems inadequate a response, but it’s all I can do. Being called beautiful and manipulative in the same passionate breath will do that to a girl.
“Be careful in the village today,” he says as he releases me. It’s like being dropped from a pair of shackles, both literally and metaphorically. Gone are all signs of his anger and distress; he’s back to his usual controlled self with no more than a blink. “I’ll see what I can do about your room, but I can’t make any promises.”
It’s not the response I’m looking for. What I’d like is for Nicholas to break his reserved façade, to kiss me or kill me or do whatever action he’s nursing deep inside that chiseled bosom of his.
Unfortunately, all I get are the keys to the Land Rover and a polite, chilly smile. In other words, we’re back to business as usual.
* * *
I don’t, as Nicholas suggested, head directly to the village church. Nor do I take the Land Rover. There’s somewhere I want to stop first, and I’d prefer not to advertise my destination to the entire neighborhood.
I’m wrapped up in a men’s mackintosh that flaps around my knees and smells of the earth. Given its well-used condition and that alarmingly familiar scent, I’m guessing it belongs to Thomas. I grabbed it from the foyer closet as I made my way out the door, hit with yet another reminder that the man who owns it seems to have left in a mighty big hurry.
It’s strange, wearing a coat that belongs to someone who may or may not be missing, but it was either this or a mottled fur that had equal chances of belonging to Fern or Vivian. Fern because no one else could make that monstrosity work, Vivian because she wouldn’t care that it made her look like a half-ravaged wolf.
Unfortunately, the jacket ends up providing little protection against the biting November wind. By the time I cover no more than a mile of the rocky landscape and shivering scrubby bushes of the countryside, I’m halfway frozen and no closer to a solution than I was when I left the castle.
One of the hallmarks of both Occam’s theories and my own is that the simplest solution to a haunting is the most likely one. Yes, it’s possible that the ephemeral remnants of a long-dead human can wreak havoc on the material world; however, when compared with things like rats and faulty plumbing and people who can’t be trusted to take you seriously when you show them a drawing of a dead man, that likelihood becomes very, very small.
And that’s the problem. There is no simple solution to the Castle Hartford haunting. This is no teenage girl trying to get rid of her mother’s lover. Rachel is no more capable of dragging bodies through thin air than I am. And this isn’t a real estate developer trying to score a sweet deal on a piece of land, either. Even Cal would have figured out by now that no amount of bumps and moans in the night will convince Nicholas to sell.
No, this ghost is something else, something seriously disturbing. But I can’t, for the life of me, put my finger on what that something is.
It doesn’t take nearly as long as I expect to get to the Hartford cemetery. When we had driven by, those huddled lumps and weathered tombstones had seemed a long way out, but that’s one of the deceptions about a place like this. The winding country lanes make all the landmarks seem much more distant than they really are. By foot—or by way of how the dove flies—almost everything around here is connected.
The cemetery is everything I expect from a family plot that’s served multiple generations of highly esteemed Hartfords. There’s enough ancient stone to erect a druid ruin, and it’s in that quintessentially British condition where wild overgrowth and painstaking upkeep meet.
Unlike the files at the museum, however, there’s no real order to the layout. The area in the center of the cemetery appears to be the oldest, with headstones so worn down by time and rain that it’s difficult to make out the inscriptions. With the help of a piece of paper and a rubbing pencil, however, I do make them out. There are Charleses and Williams in abundance; Marthas and Abigails abound. But there’s nary a Xavier to be seen.
Ah, well. It was a long shot to begin with. And I didn’t really come out here with the expectation of finding anything related to the ghost.
Then why did you come, silly?
I whirl, even though I know by now that I won’t find anyone behind me. I don’t bother answering, either, since I’m fairly certain Winnie already knows
.
I came because this place is important to Nicholas. I came because it’s the one location where the dead are already at peace.
“Oh, dear.” I blink at the sight of an incoming form in the distance, unsure if I’m seeing things. The weather is hardly conducive to creating a mirage, so I’m forced to conclude that fate is playing yet another cruel trick on me. “What’s he doing here? Even a Land Rover with its brakes cut would be preferable to this.”
“Well, well, well. Just the woman I’ve been hoping to see.” Inspector Peter Piper doesn’t pick up his pace as he approaches, the ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his fingertips as though he hasn’t a care in the world. “Don’t tell me. You sensed my plans to visit the cemetery today and came to meet me?”
“I’m afraid not,” I reply with a tight smile. “No offense, but you’re about as spiritually blocked as they come. You’d never be able to get a message across that way.”
He takes a long drag, sucking down all that nicotine without so much as a blink. A neat series of smoke rings escape his lips, and he stands admiring them for a moment before speaking again. “Spiritually blocked, huh? That sounds like something my doctor would say.”
I match my nonchalance to his. Since I don’t have a terrible smoking habit to fall back on, I pretend to adjust the sleeves of my coat instead. “Actually, I think it would be more accurate to attribute that statement to your ex-wife. Although I imagine she interpreted it more as an emotional blockage than a spiritual one. Women often do. How long ago did she leave you?”
The tiny puffs of smoke stop leaving his lips.
“Don’t look so surprised. I’m psychic, remember?”
He tosses his cigarette onto the grave of a venerable Hartford ancestor and crushes the butt under his heel. His lack of tidiness and respect for personal property leaves much to be desired, but I take pity on him anyway. Maybe it’s because what I do isn’t so far removed from the work of a detective. Perhaps it’s because being on the good side of the law is something I should actively seek right now. It might even be that my sympathetic cords are struck at how forlorn he looks at the mention of an ex-wife. Whatever the reason, I let him in on my secret.
