Melody Bittersweet and the Girls' Ghostbusting Agency

by Kitty French

  ‘Melody,’ Isaac’s paper thin voice comes from behind me on the attic stairs.

  ‘Melody Bittersweet!’ a second voice barks my name from below too, more forthright and loud.

  I turn to see Isaac standing behind me, and his face tells me that he’s probably been there for long enough to overhear much of what’s been said.

  ‘Isaac, I’m so sorry,’ I say, laying my hand over my heart. ‘I’d like to have come upstairs and let you know all of this properly.’

  ‘I came to warn you that they’d arrived,’ he says, and I frown. It becomes clear who he means a moment later when Donovan Scarborough storms up the stairs towards me with Leo and the fembots in tow.

  ‘Out!’ Scarborough yells. ‘Key, and out! I hired you to clear this place, simple, and by the sounds of the last few minutes you’re hatching some hair-brained outrageous scheme to try to discredit my entire family and challenge my ownership! Who the hell do you hokey-kokey people think you are? This isn’t fucking Heir Hunters!’

  He’s proper livid, purple in the face from having clearly listened to the majority of our conversation just now.

  The twins are behind him nodding earnestly throughout his speech, and I catch Leo’s eye and find his expression impossible to read. The fact that he’s sporting a tweed eye patch over the shiner he gained from the flying book incident doesn’t help me, frankly.

  ‘Heir Hunters is my mum’s favourite TV show,’ Artie says, in that untimely, unintentionally fabulous way that only he can.

  ‘Popeye, you’re officially re-hired,’ Scarborough blusters. ‘You lot, get out!’

  I look at Isaac, stricken. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, and he shakes his head violently.

  ‘Find him, Melody. Find Richard.’

  I swallow, and glance quickly towards Leo because he’s the only other living person here who will have heard Isaac’s words. Once again, his good eye is curiously impassive.

  I look at Marina and Artie and shake my head imperceptibly, willing them not to argue with me.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We’re done here. We need to leave.’

  I hand Donovan the back door key as we file past him, and Leo puts his arms out to his sides in front of the twins as if he’s protecting them from us as we go by. I’m not so sure, but I think he’s making sure they don’t stick a delicate ankle out and try to trip us up.

  * * *

  As we pull away from Scarborough House I take a last glance up at the attic and as expected, I see Isaac standing there, watching us leave. He’s just found out so many poignant things he didn’t know; his only son was a casualty of the Second World War, and the woman he loved never remarried or had any more children. I hope she wasn’t unhappy for her whole life. It’s so awfully sad to think how many people’s lives were affected by Douglas’s murder.

  ‘We’re not really leaving it there, are we?’ Artie says as he drags his seat belt across his body.

  ‘Not a prayer,’ I say, dogged.

  Marina starts to laugh as we rumble along, breaking the tension.

  ‘Your mother called you ‘sausage’!’

  ‘Hull’s a long way from here,’ Artie says, tipping his head to the side to study the map on his screen.

  We’re back in the office and have spent the afternoon going over everything we know, writing all of the births, deaths and marriages and possible scenarios up on the whiteboard until we all reached the same inevitable conclusion. We need to go to Hull.

  ‘I hope Richard isn’t frail,’ I say, worried. I don’t want to be responsible for the demise of Isaac’s grandson. My great hope is that once we fill Richard in, and possibly his daughter, Jojo, on all of this, they’ll agree to come back to Brimsdale Road and meet Isaac. I know. I know. We’re going to rock up on their doorstep in Babs from the other side of the country, flash our shaky ghost-hunter credentials, and then tell them that their ghost-relative needs to see them urgently so he can pass over, and hey, good news, they might be in line to inherit half of a rather grand old house if we can find the murder weapon and prove that Lloyd killed Douglas. It’s rather a lot to take on board, isn’t it? At least we’ll have a long car journey to plan how best to break it to them, more than three hours, according to Artie’s map app.

  ‘Is there anything we need to remember to take with us?’ I ask. ‘Beside Nonna’s biscuit tin, obviously.’

  ‘I’ll get Mum to print out the family tree so we can show them,’ Artie suggests, and I nod. That’s good.

  ‘Agnes’s diaries?’ Marina suggests. We’ve read all but the last one and discovered nothing further to help us.

  ‘It’s a pity we don’t have any family photographs or birth certificates, that kind of thing.’ It strikes me that physical evidence will be helpful in convincing Richard and Jojo that we’re not on day-release from an institution.

  ‘Oh, my mum’s probably printed all of that off already. She’s organised like that.’

  ‘God, Artie Elliott, we got lucky with you,’ I say. He just shrugs it off as nothing, as he always does if we compliment him.

  ‘Right.’ I put the cap on the whiteboard pen as Marina shoves Nonna’s empty tin in her bag ready to be replenished. ‘So we’re going to meet here at six in the morning and get on the road before the rush hour.’

  Artie stands up and hands Marina her jacket. As they leave she winks at me, and then gives Artie one of her serious looks.

  ‘Hey, sausage. It’s going to be a long trip in a confined space, so no egg sandwiches, okay?’

  He looks temporarily crestfallen, and then brightens. ‘But I can still bring my jar of pickled gherkins, right?’

  * * *

  After they’ve left for home I consider my options for the rest of the evening. I could always go and eat with Mum and Gran, but if I do they’ll want to know what’s happening with the case and I honestly don’t think I’ve got the energy to retell it. Besides, I’m sure Mum would have a whole lot to say about us trekking across the country in Babs and I can’t deal with another dressing-down today. I could, in fact I should, go upstairs now, eat alone, and hit the sack. This is the sensible plan, because tomorrow is going to be a long and unusual day even by my standards. If I can come at it bright-eyed and bushy tailed, it’ll help. Just the driving alone is going to make for a long day, and that is the bit of the day that worries me the least.

  Am I a sensible person? I think you probably know by now that the answer is that, much as I’d like to be sensible, I’m prone to doing the opposite. That’s probably why I reach for a pair of latex gloves and lay Agnes Scarborough’s final diary on the desk in front of me and start to read.

  * * *

  Holy fucking hell, Batman. Sorry to blaspheme, but this situation warrants it. Agnes found the murder weapon.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In November, 1922, Agnes Scarborough discovered the knife used to murder her youngest son. She found it quite by accident one day, hidden inside the body of Lloyd’s most beloved stuffed teddy bear, itself hidden in the attic. He’d recently become a father for the first time himself, and she’d had the wonderfully sentimental idea to patch up his childhood bear for him to pass on to his new baby. The discovery of the bloodstained knife wrapped inside Lloyd’s monogrammed handkerchief had caused her immense agony; she couldn’t countenance the idea that she’d accused the wrong son of murder. It was of course possible that Isaac had planted the knife there to frame his brother, but the re-stitching of the bear troubled her greatly.

  The fact was that Lloyd was pernickety in every sense, most tellingly with his wardrobe. He’d even flirted with the idea of becoming a tailor in his artistic youth, and it had gone as far as a family friend securing him a training place with one of Savile Row’s finest tailors. He’d left for London full of pomp and self-importance, only to return from the capital within a few months because all of that infernal needlework had turned out to be a terrible compromise on his fingers, which he couldn’t entertain the idea of because he was of co
urse destined to become the next great English playwright. He hadn’t held the trainee tailor position long enough to be able to do anything useful like make himself a pair of slacks, but he’d learned more than enough to be able to mend a shirt, darn a sock, or stitch a murder weapon inside a stuffed toy so meticulously well that it could go unnoticed for over a decade.

  And so, some eleven years after Douglas was murdered, Agnes Scarborough realised that she’d got it horribly, awfully wrong.

  What could she do? She’d lost all trace of Isaac, and even if she could find him she knew she could never apologise enough to make him forgive her. Lloyd was all she had left, and the new baby symbolised a fresh start for the family after so much heartache. He might not be her first grandchild, but he was the first grandchild she’d be allowed to see, or to love. It was for him that she decided to wait, to hide the bear and allow her eldest son Christmas with his new family while she decided his fate.

  The diary ends abruptly a couple of days before Christmas, which strikes me as odd, and then I feel as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach, because Lloyd Scarborough’s scathing words about his mother come back to me.

  ‘She killed herself on Christmas day, 1922.’

  Two days after she wrote the last entry in this diary. Jesus. She hid the bear, and then rather than tell the authorities what she knew, she took her own life in one final, desolate act of desperation.

  I close the final diary with the heaviest of hearts and text Marina.

  ‘I know exactly where the knife is.’

  ‘I was only joking about the gherkins,’ Artie says bright and early the next morning, stashing his lunch in the cool box Marina staggered in with five minutes ago. She’s approached the idea of the road trip like a true Italian; food first. There’s enough food in there to throw a street party when we get to Hull.

  ‘Where’s Lestat?’ She checks around the floor for the dog.

  ‘I’ve just settled him down in Mum’s kitchen with his bed, his bowl and a note saying I’ll pick him up tonight. I was too chicken to ask them to babysit in advance in case they said no and we had to bring him with us.’

  I go through my rucksack once more. Artie’s mum has come up trumps on the evidence side; he came in this morning armed with a clutch of photocopied birth certificates, printed photos and newspaper details from the time. I haven’t had time to go through it all but it’s more than I could have hoped for; I can only pray that Isaac’s grandson is convinced too.

  ‘This is exciting!’ Artie’s eyes gleam as we load the stuff into Babs, quietly so as not to rouse the neighbours, and, chiefly, not to rouse my family before we can belch off towards Hull in a cloud of smoke. Artie’s right; my stomach is full of nerves and apprehension, but also the tantalising prospect that we might just pull this off. There are so many things that can go wrong, this plan has more holes than a watering can, but alongside all of those possible pitfalls is the possibility that everything could go right. When I think of it that way it suddenly feels like I’ve taken up gambling; I just hope that in this instance the house wins. Scarborough House. I don’t want to see it knocked around by a faceless corporation intent on bleeding as much money as they can out of every square inch of the place. I want to see it become a gorgeous, noisy family home again, and for the family who’ve lived in it so unhappily for so many years to finally rest easy.

  We’ve been on the road for over an hour and we’ve hit the morning snarl-ups. To the untrained eye we must look like we’re on holiday or going to some kind of geeky fan convention in our tricked-out van; all three of us are wearing sunglasses and Babs is still sporting her pretty Hawaiian garland hanging from the central mirror. She’s doing a valiant job, backfiring and juddering every now and then, but we’ve got 80s’ music thanks to Artie’s phone and the sun is warming the cab and our cheeks.

  The mood inside Babs, however, is anything but carefree, because I’ve just relayed the contents of Agnes’s final diary to the others.

  ‘So Lloyd did it after all,’ Marina says, shaking her head. ‘The Scarboroughs don’t know you know yet, do they?’

  ‘Nope. They will before the end of the day though, all being well.’

  ‘Poor Douglas,’ Artie says softly. I think he has a soft spot for the younger brother as they’re not that far apart in age. ‘Do you know why Lloyd did it?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not yet.’ I’m really hoping that we get to find out the answer to that question before the end of the day, too.

  ‘Has this case really only been three weeks long?’ Marina sighs, cracking open a bottle of water. ‘It feels like about six months.’

  She’s right, I feel the same way. My head has been so completely stuffed full of the Scarborough family history that I’ll almost miss them when the case wraps up. The Scarborough I’ll miss least is the only living one I’ve met. I don’t like Donovan Scarborough one little bit, which is another reason it feels as if we’re racing against the clock. If his buyers back out before they sign on the dotted line, I seriously think he’s crazy enough to hire a digger and take a wrecking ball to the house himself.

  Hull, when we finally get there just after 11.00 a.m., seems to meld into the by now monochrome skies overhead. It’s slate-grey and determinedly bland as we leave the motorway, the same kind of urban, concrete jungle that typifies most industrial cities around England.

  Marina has her phone out for satnav, so we’re once more at the mercy of Sharon Osbourne to guide us accurately to our destination. She always seems a bit overemotional and diva-like to me, I’m not convinced she’ll send us in the right direction if she’s in the mood for mischief.

  ‘Can’t you choose someone else for this? David Attenborough or someone like that, somebody with a bit of gravitas and authority?’

  ‘I like Shazza,’ Marina says, defensive. ‘She’s always shrieking at me.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing?’

  ‘You know my family. We shriek and shout at each other. It’s our way.’

  ‘So you have Sharon Osbourne because you find her comforting?’

  ‘Look. They offered me Sharon Osbourne or Darth Vader, and you know how I get with scary movies.’

  ‘Star Wars is not a scary movie,’ I say, taking a second to smile sarcastically and make the universal sign for loser on my forehead at a load of guys piled into a minibus who’re leering at us in the next lane.

  ‘It so is,’ Marina shivers. ‘That outfit gives me nightmares.’

  Marina is so fierce most of the time, her fear of scary movies is almost cute.

  ‘Feel the force,’ Artie growls, and Sharon Osbourne lets rip, making Marina nod with approval.

  ‘See? She’s nice. And she likes dogs. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I don’t think Darth Vader would be a fan of Lestat.’

  ‘Marina,’ I say. ‘No one is a fan of Lestat. I’m not. You’re not.’

  ‘I am,’ Artie chimes in in Lestat’s defence.

  ‘Good. He can come and live with you then.’

  Artie makes his ‘well, that’s rather difficult’ face. ‘It’s Pandora. She’s territorial. It said “unsuitable around young children and best kept as an only pet” on the tank when we bought her.’

  ‘What he means is she’d probably eat Lestat,’ Marina says, matter-of-fact as always.

  Artie nods. ‘She’d have a good go.’

  I let myself imagine it for a second, a Lestat-shaped bulge in the python’s belly. It’s not as satisfying as I’d hoped, which in itself is cause for concern. Please God don’t let me go and get attached to Lestat; he’s my deadly rival for Nonna’s biscuits, my bed, and for my slippers, not to mention that he got to third base with Fletcher Gunn and I only made second.

  I’m rescued from the disturbing possibility that I’m developing affection for Lestat by Sharon Osbourne yelling at me to get off the motorway sharpish at the next exit. I switch off all dog-related thoughts and give my full attention to steering Babs safely through the back street
s of Hull in search of Isaac Scarborough’s grandson and great-granddaughter.

  ‘Remind me how we’re gonna play this?’

  We’re sitting in one of those out-of-town shopping-centre car parks eating Nonna’s Italian banquet while we go over the plan. We’ve had a reccie at the house already, it looks to be a fairly innocuous, narrow end terrace in a tall, grey Edwardian row.

  ‘Let me do the talking,’ I say, wiping my chicken-greasy hands on a thick white cotton napkin. I’m speaking mostly to Marina, because Artie isn’t likely to contribute much around strangers where as she might get shirty if they don’t believe a word we say.

  ‘I’m expecting them to take some convincing,’ I say, laying the groundwork. ‘I mean, think of it from their point of view. We’re a bunch of ghost-hunters turning up in Babs, which puts us firmly in camp wacko from the outset. Then we’re going to tell them that I see ghosts, that Richard’s dead grandfather would like to meet him, and that if they could come back to Chapelwick to do it today it would help us out a lot. Oh, and we’re going to try to resolve his great-uncle’s murder while we’re there, too.’ I pause to draw breath and reach for a bottle of water. ‘It’s pretty out there.’

  ‘Good job we didn’t bring Lestat,’ Artie says, eating an individual tiramisu with a silver spoon; it’s that kind of cool box. ‘He might have tipped them over the edge.’

  ‘Because ghost-hunters, messages from beyond the grave and murdered uncles isn’t enough to do that,’ Marina deadpans, and I groan and scrub my hands over my face.

  ‘It’s going to come down to what sort of people they are,’ I say. ‘Coming from the background I have, I know that there are two types of people. Open-minded, and closed. You guys, for instance, are open-minded,’ I say, by way of example. ‘Fletcher Gunn’s mind, on the other hand, is closed to any such possibilities. He sees the world in black and white, he point-blank refuses to look up at the whole gorgeous rainbow that’s there over his head because he’s so bloody determined that he’s right and I’m wrong all of the time. He sticks rigidly to his small and perfectly-formed beliefs even though they put him at direct loggerheads with me, which makes anything other than combustible sex out of the question.’