by KJ Charles
Simon seemed jolted out of his thoughts at my words. “See for yourself,” he said, and handed me a letter. Easier than speaking, I supposed.
The letter was written in an educated hand, from one Mrs. Fontley, of Elphill Abbey. The house had, she wrote, recently become afflicted with a spirit of vexatious nature.
It opens everything, she wrote. Chests and suitcases are found open, preserves have their lids removed, bottles are uncorked, and every door in the house stands ajar. The only area still untouched is the wine cellar, and my husband remains in a state of the gravest apprehension.
I thought I might like Mrs. Fontley.
Naturally we assumed it was human mischief at work, she went on. But all our efforts to trap the miscreant have merely succeeded in convincing us that our troubles are of supernatural origin. Will you aid us in bringing rest to a perturbed and most perturbing spirit?
“She seems very calm,” I observed.
“Remarkably so,” Simon said. “Some people have an enviable ability to accept the world as it is and not to let it affect them.” He rested his head on the seat back and added, lower, “Some people lie.”
Mrs. Fontley gave no impression of being a liar. She was a bright-eyed woman of no more than thirty years, with two tow-headed children clinging to her skirts and a future addition to her family suggested in the roundness of her person. She greeted us in the hall of the beautiful old building with two hands and a welcoming smile. It was cold, as any old stone house would be, with the December night closing in around us, but a fire blazed, and greenery adorned the walls, branches of holly and pine giving a fresh scent to the air. It lacked ten days to Christmas still, but clearly this house was one that relished midwinter.
“Mr. Feximal. I am so grateful for your trouble. And Mr. Caldwell?” She extended a hand and a merry smile with it.
“My most valued colleague,” Simon said, somewhat to my surprise. “Let us hear your problem.”
If the lady found him lacking in social graces, as well she might, she did not show it. She nodded with ready acquiescence, directed a servant to take our bags and bring tea—there were several around, some clad in conventional black and white and some in a more sombre grey—and took us to a cosy, well-lit drawing-room. It was comfortably appointed with deep chairs and cushions, rendered warm by a blazing fire, and hazardous by a scattering of wheeled toys on the floor. It was as close to the perfection of domestic bliss as I had encountered, except that the drawers of the bureau, the case of the grandfather clock and the lid of an ancient carved chest all stood wide open.
“I do wish he wouldn’t,” Mrs. Fontley said, gesturing to us to sit and moving to close the various open doors and lids. “At least he doesn’t open windows, in this weather. But really, it is terribly odd.”
“The spirit opens…”
“Everything except the wine. Everything sealed in the larder. A year’s preserves, ruined. I am cross about that.” She gave an indicative frown. “We have given up on the ice box, not that we need it in this weather. If it has a door, or a lid, or a top, or a cork, he opens it.”
“He?” I asked.
“Oh, I think it’s a he.” She considered. “I don’t know why. I suppose because leaving everything open is such a mannish way to go on. And because he seems so cross.”
“Are you afraid?” Simon asked.
She made a face. “I don’t wish to be. It wouldn’t be comfortable to be afraid in my own home, would it?”
“No,” I said. “No, that is not comfortable.”
“When did this begin?” Simon asked.
Mrs. Fontley launched into her tale without hesitation. “The first thing, I think—I cannot be sure—it happened in summer. We had a terribly hot dry spell. The soil here has a great deal of clay in it, and it was parched and deeply cracked. And one morning we got up, and the earth in the lichyard had burst.”
“In the…?”
“Oh, the old graveyard. This was once an abbey, of course, with Romish monks. Long deconsecrated, and the Fontleys have changed it a great deal, but naturally the lichyard is sacred. Well, I say sacred. We let the children play there, just as my husband did as a boy, but I think that’s right, you know. It’s so very old, and I do think the sound of children laughing would hardly distress the sleepers there, would it? This is a happy house.”
“And the graveyard soil?” I prompted.
“Burst,” she repeated. “Scattered upwards as if…well, really…a trench…” She looked at her hands and up again. “As if something had climbed out of the earth.”
A maid took us to the two adjacent rooms prepared for us. All the doors along the corridor stood open; the maid closed them without comment as she went. Another maid, in grey, slipped off ahead of us. The room given to me was comfortable indeed, decorated in a simple yet pleasing style with a fire blazing in the hearth, but every door and drawer stood open, and my coat lay on the floor before the wardrobe in a heap.
“Well, that’s new,” the maid said, picking it up. “If you’re going to start making a mess, we’ll have words!” That remark was addressed in loud tones to the empty air.
“You are not intimidated by the ghost?” I asked.
“Lord bless you, sir, if I was to run screaming at a few open doors, we should be in a pickle.” She gave a comfortable chuckle, shut the various drawers, observed that she didn’t know why she bothered, and left.
I was just unpacking my few accoutrements when Simon came in. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. The servants and the children seem unafraid, the atmosphere is comfortable. This is really the least alarming haunting I’ve encountered to date.”
Simon scowled. “Or I. Yet the ghost manifests physically, and it is strong. That is great age or great distress. Normally I should recommend the family leave the house, yet there is no sense of threat. Why is there no threat?”
“What sort of thing is this? A boggart? What the Germans call a poltergeist?”
“You have been reading, I see.” Simon sat on the bed. “The graveyard is disturbed, then nothing, then a few weeks later, every door and jar and closed object in the house is continually opened. It does not form a pattern.” He frowned. “I wonder if Mrs. Fontley is concealing something.”
“She seems entirely sincere.” I couldn’t bring myself to care. There was no tragedy here, no pain. A peculiar puzzle only, which meant that my mind was not occupied with anything more urgent than Simon sitting on a bed.
He looked so painfully out of place in this cosy room. His strange, remote air and that beak of a nose…he would have been at home here centuries ago, I thought, his deep-set eyes shadowed by a cowl, walking a path of prayer and penance. If I had lived then, it would have been as a merry monk, the kind who brewed strong ale and could not forget what was under his cassock. I wondered how I would have fared with Simon as my abbot. Poorly, I had little doubt.
He was watching me. “You have thought of something?”
“No. I honestly don’t know what you expect of me, Simon. You know I am ignorant as a child in these matters.”
“I expect nothing,” he said with sudden force. “Curse it, Robert—”
I did not want an argument now. “I suggest we see what Mr. Fontley has to offer at dinner. And in the meantime, if you will excuse me, I must dress.”
Dinner was informal, and very pleasant. The food was good, the company (with the exception of ever-taciturn Simon) excellent. Mr. Fontley was every bit as charming as his wife, a weather-beaten man of good birth but no pretensions. He ran his ancient home as a smallholding, rather than aspiring to society, was deeply content with his life, and seemed only mildly disturbed by the fact that it contained a ghost.
“Are you sure it’s a haunting?” I asked the Fontleys directly. “You both seem very placid about the possibility.”
The couple exchanged a smile. “Quite sure,” Mr. Fontley said. “We took all the usual steps. Flour on the floor, strings and bells to trap a human
actor. We shut everything and waited outside a closed room with no other door, only to find all the drawers open again five minutes later.” He raised his hands. “I can only conclude it is a haunting. And really, a very tiresome one. I live in fear of the day that I find my wine cellar assailed by its work.” The Fontleys chuckled. Evidently this was a long-standing and oft-repeated joke. They had served us a Burgundy of excellent vintage.
“Is it the cellar or the wine bottles that it avoids?” Simon asked. He was not smiling. Obviously.
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Fontley considered the question. “We have not lost any wine to my recollection…”
“Or ale, or my French brandy,” Mr. Fontley added. “Perhaps our ghost is a teetotaller!” And he and Mrs. Fontley laughed together, a merry sound in the dark night.
The drawers and wardrobe doors were open and my coat once again on the floor when I returned to my room. I picked the coat up, wondering what it was that so offended the spirit. The Fontleys had been quite positive that the ghost did not throw things around. I speculated briefly on a natural explanation. Could it be one of the children in innocent mischief, or a light-fingered servant? Well, my coat would be unsatisfying to a thief, since I had not so much as a coin to steal…
Then I stopped, and I stood. I stood, holding the coat that the ghost did not want, feeling shudders crawl up my arms, and I had to force myself to put my hands into pocket after pocket, the sense of dread growing rather than dissipating each time I found one empty. At last I pushed my finger into the little pouch made to hold a fob watch, and touched cold metal.
I dropped the coat as though it were a poisonous snake. “Simon!”
He was in within seconds at my hoarse shout. “What?”
“My pocket. Christ, there’s money in my pocket.”
As cries of distress go, it was not perhaps the most coherent, but Simon has never lacked professional understanding. He picked up the coat, went over it with fingertip thoroughness and took out a single silver coin.
“The ghost didn’t want it in the wardrobe,” I said, numbly.
“I don’t want it in the house,” Simon said. “Open the window.”
“It won’t cause harm to anyone who finds it, will it?” I was ashamed I had not asked before.
“No. It was for you.” I opened the window, and Simon pitched the damned thing out into the garden, with such force I half expected to hear something smash. “How did it get there? Have you met him?”
“I think he put it in my coat at the eating-house. I must have had it all this time. In Fetter Lane.”
“Thank God you did not go out. I should not have wanted you wearing that garment more than you have. Damn the man.”
I wrapped my arms round myself. After all Simon’s care, to have brought Dr. Berry’s foul touch with me into his home…
He saw my distress and put out a hand, but stopped before he quite touched me. “Come, Robert, it is gone now. Let us go to the other room while any influence dissipates.”
I followed him meekly. I felt sickened at the realisation of Dr. Berry’s clammy touch so close to me, but alongside that came a palpable sense of relief, as though some part of the burden I bore was lifting at last.
Simon’s room was in the expected state of open doors and drawers. “Tiresome,” I observed.
“But only tiresome.” Simon shut the wardrobe door. He was in his shirtsleeves, coat and waistcoat removed, and the muscles of his powerful form were evident under the white linen. “I am very rarely called upon to deal with inconvenience. If the spirit were leaving trails of blood or terror…”
“You would feel much more at home,” I completed, and saw his rare smile. I had not seen that at all these last weeks, and it made my heart hurt for my short-lived hopes. “Have you looked in a mirror?”
“Not yet. I was about to. Will you stay?”
Stay, and watch him strip half-naked. And then what? I wanted to cry out, to demand what it was he expected or wanted from me, or if it was nothing, then why I could not simply have gone to my mouldering house for a poor and solitary Christmas rather than stretch this out longer.
I wanted to talk to him, as I had not in weeks. I was not, now, quite sure why I had not.
“Of course,” I said.
His cuffs were unfastened already. I shut the door behind me and locked it as he dealt with his buttons, then pulled off the linen and his undershirt in turn, looking away from me, into the mirror.
Good God, he was an impressive specimen in the candlelight. I was no great admirer of Eugen Sandow’s bodybuilding school, and had always preferred lithe grace to brute strength, and a cheerful attitude to both. Yet Simon’s hulking form, deep-chested and grim-faced, made the wanting clench in my belly, till it was all I could do not to go to my knees here and now. One last time. Could I not have one last time?
I made myself look away from that thick, powerful corded muscle, up to his face in the mirror, and as I did, I saw him watching me.
I did not know what my face had shown, but from his expression, I feared it was everything.
“Robert,” he said hoarsely, and turned.
I backed away, because I wanted to move forward. He looked so powerful, and so helpless. “Simon, do not—”
“How have I offended you?” He sounded lost. “I have done my best to respect your position, not to impose upon you. I have tried—” He made a frustrated noise. “How am I to know what you want?”
“What I want? What about Miss Kay?” I blurted the words, reddening, but they had to be spoken.
“What about her?” he said, blankly.
“Well, are you—is she— You live in her house! What is your relationship with her?”
“May I remind you that her title is Miss.” Simon’s voice was close to a growl. “Miss Kay. If we had the connexion you suggest, her name would be Mrs. Feximal. Great Scott, Robert, you cannot have imagined—”
If I had flushed before I was scarlet now. “What else was I to think?” I demanded. “You live with her, you are scarcely conventional in your ways—”
Simon’s expression was composed of bafflement and annoyance. “Robert, you are as aware of my preferences as any man alive. Of course I do not wish to…to marry Theodosia, and if I did, I should be disappointed, for I assure you she would not marry me.”
“Then what do your domestic arrangements mean?”
“We were raised as sister and brother.” He spoke as though I should have known, as though it were obvious that these two remote, strange, alarming beings should have played together as children, he with moving runes inscribed on his body; she with those extraordinary fingernails.
I opened my mouth. Simon held up a hand. “Listen. I don’t know how to say this. You must know I have very little experience with intimacy. I have tried to offer you my…my friendship, I have tried not to force matters while you are in a position that grieves me and distresses you. I do not ask or wish you to come to me out of obligation, Robert.” He was pushing out the words in a low tone, his whole posture betraying his discomfort. “But…I do not know how to ask for this… If you can only grant me friendship then I shall treasure it, but if you should, if you could want something more than friendship—”
“Excuse me,” I broke in. “Do you mean to say that you have refused to look me in the eye or lay a finger on me for weeks from a sense of chivalry?”
“You have been in a vulnerable position, obliged to live in my house. I could scarcely abuse that.” He looked away from me. “God knows I have wished to speak, but I hope you have not felt any burden of expectation—”
“Good Christ and his angels,” I said with, I think, pardonable annoyance, and more or less jumped at him.
It is fortunate I am the smaller man, as I might have toppled him otherwise. He took my weight with a startled grunt, and I pulled his head down to mine, and then we were kissing, with a passion that set a slow tingle of pure joy burning through me. His lips were urgent, clumsy, and I recognised the
look of startled happiness in his eyes because I could feel it in my own. I laughed against his mouth. His lips curved in return, and then he picked me up by the hips—God, he was strong—and I wrapped my legs around his waist and kissed him soundly.
“Dear God,” he mumbled. “Robert.”
“You should have said.” I shut my eyes against the truth of that. “Damn it, Simon, you should have said.” Or I should have asked. “How was I to know—”
“I did not dare.”
“You, afraid?”
It was meant to be a tease, but he looked at me with those deep, dark, lonely eyes and said, “Yes.”
I stilled. He let me slip back to the ground, against his body, pressed to his bare chest, and I cupped his noble head and pulled it down to kiss him with all the tenderness of which I was capable, cursing myself as I did so, then pulled back to speak.
“I do not like to be weak, Simon. I have not wished to be dependent on you, and I have thought less of myself for it. I should have realised…” Of course he would not treat my vulnerability with disdain. He had seen in it only more reason to treat me with care and consideration.
It had not occurred to him to ask if I wanted care and consideration.
“You are not weak,” Simon said, voice low. “You are remarkable. And remarkably obstinate.”
“And in remarkably urgent need,” I told him. “Can we…?”
The door was locked, and we in a corridor with no other inhabitants. It had to be safe enough. Simon evidently agreed. He kissed me gently, then more urgently, and then pulled his mouth away to growl, “Clothes. Off. Now.”
He was not—never would be—a sophisticated lover, but sincerity can do things sophistication cannot. He stripped off his trousers with haste, then moved to help me with mine, since I was apparently moving too slowly. He more or less threw me onto the bed on my back, and knelt over me, and I had to put out a hand to make him pause while I allowed myself to gaze on his thick torso, and the strange runes in red and black that curled around and over it.
“They’re moving.” I reached a tentative finger to his chest.
