by Tamara Berry
“You don’t wear a wedding ring, but your thumb moves to your ring finger every time you bring the cigarette to your lips,” I say. “It’s as if you’re trying to play with the band that used to be there, like you don’t remember right away that it’s gone.”
Inspector Piper doesn’t appear particularly surprised or pleased by my confession, but he is interested enough to ask, “How do you know she didn’t die? Or that I wasn’t the one who left her?”
“Because you have deplorable smoking habits. I don’t just mean the smoking itself, but the way you fling the ashes everywhere. You’re thoughtless with them, careless of where they land. A man who’s emotionally available to his wife would have made some effort to curb the barbarism.” I pause. “I bet it drove her crazy, didn’t it?”
He makes a chuffing sound that isn’t quite a laugh but is definitely on the spectrum. “Every bloody minute of every bloody day.”
I splay my hands, a gesture common among street performers and magicians when they want to prove they have nothing more up their figurative sleeves. It means the same coming from me, though I doubt Inspector Piper is aware of it.
“Behold my powers,” I say. “What was it you wanted to see me about?”
He doesn’t look ready to give up talking about his ex-wife yet, but he clears his throat and allows his weasely gaze to land on mine. “I thought you might be interested to know that the bones under the stairs were placed there posthumously.”
I blink, momentarily taken aback. The last thing I expect to find in Inspector Piper is an ally. The man obviously doesn’t believe in the paranormal—or in me—and I doubt it’s standard protocol to disclose the details of a case to the primary suspect. Call me paranoid, but I smell a trap.
“How interesting,” I say in a neutral tone.
“Posthumously and recently.”
Ah, yes. Now I’m starting to understand. “Really? How recently?”
“Based on the field kit results, we’re looking at placement sometime within the last week.” He glances sideways at me. “Probably around the time of your own arrival, in fact. There was no evidence of site decay, either under the stairs or anywhere else in the kitchen. For a dumping spot to be that clean, the body had to have been brought in from the outside.”
“What does that have to do with me?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. Inspector Piper has already drawn his conclusions about who and what I am.
“Possibly nothing, but the timing is rather . . . convenient. Wouldn’t you say?”
On the contrary, I’m starting to find the timing rather inconvenient. “I don’t plant old bones inside houses. Some mediums might not be opposed to such tactics, but it’s not my style.”
“And what is your style, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“You’ve seen it.” I look him squarely in the eyes, holding his gaze in hopes that it asserts my innocence rather than coming across as the calculated poise of a sociopath. “I read a room. I read people. I make educated guesses. The rest is magic.”
He fumbles in his pocket until he extracts his pack of cigarettes. Tapping one out, he sticks it between his lips but doesn’t light it. Like the constant reaching for his ring, it’s a gesture that proves he’s the sort of man who takes comfort in routines, in rules.
I’m half afraid those rules and routines are about to take over—all the way to the jailhouse door, in fact—but he only grunts and asks me a surprising question. “In your magic opinion, how did a body that’s been rotting for fifty years get placed inside the Hartford kitchen without anyone knowing about it?”
“Fifty years? Is that how long the person’s been dead?”
He grunts again. “Give or take a decade in either direction, yes.”
“I have no idea,” I say. “And you don’t have to look so skeptical. I wouldn’t even know where to find a body in that condition.”
He casts a very obvious glance around us, his gaze skimming over the tops of gravestones until it finally comes to rest on me again. “No?”
Horror washes through me as I realize what he’s saying. We’re literally surrounded by corpses in various states of decay, but desecration of that kind goes beyond even my imagination. “You think someone dug up—? But which one—?”
Even though I’ve already done a fairly thorough investigation of the cemetery, I find myself scanning the sleepy graves and fog-dampened blades of grass, looking for any sign of a recent excavation. The soil is loose in places, such as might be caused by foot traffic or an animal scuffling in the underbrush, but I don’t find anything to indicate one of the Hartford ancestors has been recently unearthed.
“We checked this cemetery already,” Inspector Piper says with a calmness I’d like to strangle right out of him. He made me believe one of these bodies was dug up to gauge my reaction, purposefully filled me with disgust as an investigative ploy. “As well as several of the others in the area. Whoever this man is, he’s not a local.”
“How do you know he wasn’t buried in someone’s backyard?”
“Because he’s been embalmed.” Inspector Piper taps the side of his nose. “See, Ms. Wilde? I do know a thing or two about detective work. What do you make of that?”
“Of his having been embalmed, or of you doing your job?”
His only response to that is to stretch and scratch the back of his head. Since he gives every appearance of being willing to stand out here in the middle of a cemetery for the rest of the day if it means getting the better of me, I decide to answer the question for myself.
See, to Inspector Piper and the entire Hartford family, the bones are the real crux of the matter around here. Whether put there by human or spirit, they must have come from somewhere. From someone. And until they know who that someone is, they’re not quite comfortable with their existence.
To me, however, the bones mean very little. They’re a red herring, a side quest. Who cares about a person fifty years gone when there’s someone else inside that house who’s been more recently murdered? When there’s someone inside that house who recently murdered?
“I think the bones are a distraction,” I say, not mincing matters. “You’re investigating the wrong death, Inspector. I know you don’t believe me, but there was a man at the bottom of those stairs.” When he opens his mouth to say the inevitable, I add, “A dead man. I know that as surely as I know you’re alive and standing next to me.”
“A pity your surveillance equipment didn’t capture him,” the inspector murmurs.
“A pity the murderer broke it all after he was done,” I counter.
With that, we reach an inevitable impasse. I’m about to bid him farewell so I can get back to my real work when he surprises me with one last insight. “I did a little research into your profession. Fascinating stuff, spirit work.”
The fact that he’s calling it by its precise terminology does little to relieve my mind. I’d be among the first to say that much of the so-called spirit work out there is nothing more than a sham. “Oh?” I ask politely.
“Seems it’s part of a booming industry for the sale of human remains. According to what I found, it’s much easier for your kind to get a ghost talking if you’re rattling around with his skeleton in your bag. Is that true?”
My horror at this fresh accusation is almost as high as when he’d implied that the bones under the stairs were from this cemetery. I know I’m no saint when it comes to this sort of thing, but if it weren’t for Winnie, I like to think I’d be a nice, normal girl with a nice, normal job. A circus clown, perhaps. Or a chain-smoking detective.
“I don’t sell human bones,” I say, my teeth clamped tight. “I don’t buy human bones. I don’t dig up human bones. In fact, until I came to this godforsaken place, I can’t say that I ever came into contact with any human bones except the ones inside my own skin.”
I have a lot more to say on the subject, but I can recognize futility when it’s staring at me with an unlit cigarette dangling from its lips.
Without waiting for Inspector Piper to respond, I reach into my bag for the picture I’ve been carrying with me ever since Rachel drew the last whisker.
“Take it,” I say. “It’s the dead man. I don’t know his name, but I do know he visited the village museum recently. Benji, the guy who works there, will confirm it for you.”
He doesn’t, as I expect, take the drawing. He looks at it for a long moment and then back at me.
I shake it. “I have reason to believe the man was snooping around the Hartford family files at the museum. He may have even removed some of them. No one I’ve talked to up at the castle admits to having seen him before, but I haven’t confirmed yet with Thomas. I’m having a hard time getting in contact with him.”
That gets the inspector to move, even if it’s only to take the paper between two fingers and let it dangle. “Getting in contact with him . . . through the spirit world?”
“No.” I stifle an indignant snort. And here I thought Inspector Piper and I were finally reaching an understanding. “He’s not dead. At least, I don’t think he is. But he’s not at his house, and no one seems able to tell me where I can find him. You do know he’s the only person at the castle not accounted for the night I stumbled on the body, right?”
Inspector Piper doesn’t answer me, but something about the way his eyes narrow at the edges makes me think he’s well aware of that fact—and as concerned about it as I am.
Huh. Maybe he’s not as terrible a detective as I feared.
I indicate the picture with a nod. “So, are you going to talk to Benji and investigate that man’s death or not? Because if you’re just going to throw the sketch away, I’d rather hold onto it myself.”
“I’ll look into it,” he says and pulls the picture out of my reach.
Sensing that my interrogation—for an interrogation it clearly was—is coming to an end, I add, “And you’ll let me know once you identify who those bones belong to? That’s how this works, right? I give you a lead, you give me one?”
In response to this, the inspector flattens me with a long look before finally moving to light his cigarette. I suspect he’s going to laugh at my effrontery and tell me exactly what I can do with my meddlesome interference, but he eventually shrugs. “Why not? You be sure to keep me apprised of the facts as they become available, Ms. Wilde, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Chapter 19
If it weren’t for the obvious sacrilegious implications, I’d use institutions exactly like the village church for every séance, palm reading, and ghost-eliminating ceremony I hold. The square tower stands as a beacon for miles, tall and rocky and with a black crow perched ominously on top. The weathered stone exterior is pockmarked with moss. The doors are thrown open to reveal an interior that’s dark and gloomy, with wood grain and musty-scented air at every angle.
It’s perfect. Even Castle Hartford, with its rambling decrepitude, can’t match the Anglicans when it comes to setting the mood.
By the time I arrive, the afternoon services have long since finished and the parishioners have disbursed, the timing of which is no accident. Flaunting tradition is something I enjoy as a general rule, but not when I’ve also been accused of being a witch and a murderer in the bargain. I was hoping to make this as understated a visit as possible.
I haven’t spent so much time in churches that I know the protocol for hunting down a religious official, so I approach hesitantly. The echoing emptiness of the antechamber makes me think I may have missed my opportunity for a tête-à-tête with the local vicar, so I’m deeply appreciative when a round, pretty young woman with bobbing brown curls and a tasteful black suit comes around the corner to greet me.
“Hullo there,” she says. “You look lost. Is there some way I can help you?”
“Actually, yes,” I reply, instinctively drawn to that warm voice. “I’m looking for the vicar. Do you know where I can find him?”
The woman smiles and extends her hand. “No, but I know where you can find her. Lovely to meet you. I’m Annis. Annis Brown.”
More out of habit than anything else, I take the hand being offered me and give it a perfunctory shake. It’s only then that I note the woman’s tasteful black suit bears a signature white notch at the throat.
“But you’re so young,” I say, unthinking.
“And female, too.” She laughs. “The nerve.”
“I didn’t mean—” I begin, but I’m not sure how to finish. Mostly because I did mean it. In my head, the village vicar is a crabby, wizened old man shouting fire and brimstone down on everyone’s head. This woman looks barely capable of lighting a match.
“Are you a tourist?” she asks, nothing but polite friendliness in her tone. She shifts from one well-heeled foot to the other. “If so, you’ll want to see my curate, not me. I can discuss Ecclesiastes for hours, but I can’t talk for more than two minutes on the history of this building. Crossbeams and keystones have never been my specialty.”
“Um.” I wince, finding myself at a loss. I’d been fully prepared for a confrontation with the crabby, wizened old man of my expectations—was almost looking forward to it, in fact. This calm, smiling woman is something else entirely. “Actually, I’m here to see you.”
“Oh?”
“To . . . apologize.”
A flicker of understanding moves through her brown eyes, but she doesn’t say anything. Emboldened by that soft look, I explain, “I, uh, may have inadvertently been the cause of your missing sacramental cup. I’m Eleanor. Madame Eleanor. From up at Castle Hartford.”
“But you’re so young,” she says.
It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s joking, her words an exact echo of my own. In fact, I’m still not a hundred percent convinced of it until a smile moves across her face, rendering her even more youthful and pretty than before.
She’s not, it appears, going to run me out the door with a pitchfork. In fact, it’s starting to look as though she might be the one person in this village who doesn’t think I walk with the dead at night.
As if in proof of this, she adds, “I was hoping you’d pay me a visit. Though, to be honest, I was anticipating someone much more . . .”
“Sinister?” I offer.
“Let’s say someone with a harder edge. You’re awfully pretty for a psychic, aren’t you?”
“I might say the same of you.”
“It’s a trial, isn’t it? Such glamorous looks as ours?” Annis heaves a mock sigh. “It’s a good thing we’re such reasonable women, or it might go to our heads.”
I can feel a grin tugging at my lips. “I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being reasonable before.”
“Haven’t they? I don’t know what else one would label a calling like yours. What could be more reasonable than helping people be comfortable in their own homes?”
Her easy acceptance of my profession leaves me somewhat startled. For a moment, I fear that village gossip has misled her somehow, painted a portrait of me that’s much more flattering than I deserve, but reality soon takes over. Annis called me a psychic—and a hard-edged one, at that. She also believes Mrs. Brennigan stole a sacramental cup at my instigation. Nothing dispels illusions faster than premeditated theft.
Like the perfect hostess Vivian has no desire to be, Annis gestures toward the nave, where rows upon rows of wooden pews lie in wait. “Would you care to sit down?” she asks. “We can have a much cozier chat that way.”
Although it had been my intention to ask my questions and get out of here as quickly as possible, I find myself intrigued enough to follow her lead.
“I honestly didn’t know Mrs. Brennigan was going to take your cup,” I say as we slide into the closest pew to the back. The hard wood platform is as uncomfortable as it looks, but I find I don’t mind as much as I might have, had Annis been literally anyone else. “I gave her a list of tasks to perform to help with my, um, spell. But none of them were meant to be harmful, I promise. It’s just little stuff—fun stuff. I was only t
rying to help her regain some of her confidence.”
“Were you? You’ll have to let me know how it works. The poor dear could use some fun in her life. She’s been rather mopish since her youngest went off to university.” She smiles again. “Now. Tell me how I can assist you.”
I glance around, half expecting one of the Hartfords to pop out of the woodwork. Either that or Inspector Piper with a tape recorder in one hand and a pair of handcuffs in the other. “Assist me?”
She folds her hands serenely in her lap. “Yes. You’re not the only one with the power to see beyond the surface, you know. You’re troubled by something.”
I open my mouth and close it again. I’m troubled by many things, not the least of which is the fact that this woman seems to know an awful lot about me. Somehow, however, I doubt that’s what she means.
“Is this your first encounter with death?” she prods.
“You mean the body I found?” I ask, startled. “God, no. I mean—Not God. Just regular no. No. Death and I have been friends for a long time.”
“How terribly sad. You lost someone close to you?”
My pulse picks up as I decide how best to answer her. The situation calls for honesty, but discussing my relationship with the great beyond isn’t something I care to do with a person’s whose literal job is to bestow promises of eternity and rainbows.
“In a manner of speaking.” I finger the frayed bottom of Thomas’s jacket. “My sister isn’t . . . well.”
“She’s ill?”
“In a coma.” I speak with as much matter-of-factness, as much reasonableness, as I can muster. “Until a few days ago, she was able to breathe on her own, but she recently suffered a seizure. Now she’s hooked up to machines, which is a thing I promised her I’d never do.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says simply. “That sounds terrible for you both.”
“It is.” I hesitate, wondering just how far I can push this woman on our first meeting. Feeling reckless, I decide to test my limits. “She communicates with me, you know. Up at the castle. I don’t know what it is about that place, but I can hear her talking to me.”
