by Lucy Banks
“Yes, but the problem is that we have the reputation for being a small-time agency,” Serena emphasised. “If we could build our reputation, as I’ve said a thousand times before, we would be able to get the better contracts, no problem. After all, it’s not like we don’t have the talent.”
“Yes, but how can we build our reputation, when we cannot even handle very simple jobs?” Ribero growled back. “Look at how we’ve performed recently! Even that Japanese spirit was more tricky than we thought, right? And as for this Green Lady painting, ah, don’t even get me started! A simple case, we thought, yes? But now, we are no closer to finding the solution, and we’re wasting valuable time!”
“Not to mention money,” Mike added.
Kester stuck his hand up, then remembered he wasn’t in a classroom and put it down again. “I found something out,” he said. “Something that might help us.”
Ribero’s head jerked round, as though magnetised in his direction. “Seriously?” he asked incredulously. “But I thought you were just going to read at the library, I didn’t think you’d actually do anything useful.”
“Thank you very much!” Kester squeaked indignantly. “Actually, I’ll have you know that I did a lot of research, and I think I’m on to something.”
“Something that’s actually going to be of genuine use, or something completely irrelevant that we might just find interesting for five minutes before forgetting about it entirely?” Serena enquired, raising an eyebrow to emphasise her scepticism.
“Something useful!” Kester retorted. Well, I hope they think it’s useful, he added silently. Now that I’m wilting under Serena’s scornful gaze again, I’m not so sure.
“Yes, it absolutely is,” Pamela confirmed before nudging him forward. Kester told them everything he’d found out the previous day. He hoped they’d be as impressed as he wanted them to be.
“Well now,” Ribero said, scratching his chin. “That is very interesting. So it seems you’ve solved a little mystery about our enigmatic Ransome and Constance. Well done.”
“I wonder why our Green Lady was so fixated upon them?” Miss Wellbeloved mused, leaning on her elbows. “Obviously those two people were important to her. If Ransome is a painter, as you suggest, then he may be the one responsible for creating the painting in the first place.”
“That’s what I thought!” Kester said. “I wondered if Constance died, and was angry with Ransome, then took revenge by entwining herself in the painting.”
Serena laughed. “Spirits aren’t dead people, idiot. They come from an entirely different world.”
Miss Wellbeloved shot a warning look in her direction. “It’s a common misconception,” she said. “Humans are an entirely different matter, and they’re not the same as spirits at all.”
“So it’s not Constance doing the haunting then?” Kester felt disappointed. He was sure he’d been on to something.
“No, definitely not,” Miss Wellbeloved said, frowning up at the ceiling. “It’s difficult to conclude anything with the limited information we’ve got. But it’s a good start, a surprisingly good start.”
Kester beamed. He couldn’t help himself. He was delighted at the prospect of being regarded as something other than a useless creature who kept puking and passing out. Pamela gave him a wink before switching her computer on.
“Yes,” Serena persisted, “but how is that information actually useful?” She waved her hands in the air, anticipating the protests before the others had a chance to open their mouths. “Look, it’s impressive that Kester found that out, but still, I don’t see how it helps us. So we know that the guy’s name was Robert Ransome and that Constance was his wife. That still doesn’t tell us how they relate to this cow-bag of a spirit, does it?”
“Give me time, and I might be able to find out more,” Kester said.
Dr Ribero leaned on the doorframe with a sigh, like a gallant hero in a silent movie. “Time is the thing we do not have,” he said softly, looking around the room. “We are in trouble. Big trouble. If we do not get a successful case under our belt soon, we may as well close our doors, right?”
“That’s probably true,” Miss Wellbeloved agreed reluctantly. “And that cannot happen. This company was set up by my great-grandfather. My grandfather made it flourish and my father turned it into one of the finest agencies in the south. We cannot let it go under.” She flushed, bringing unusual colour to her thin cheeks, and her eyes blazed. “I won’t let it,” she concluded.
“How much time do I have?” Kester asked.
“A week?” Dr Ribero suggested. “Less, if you possibly can?”
“Blimey,” Kester said, puffing out his cheeks. He took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt. “Well, I’ll do my best. After all, that’s all any of us can do, right?”
Miss Wellbeloved suddenly smiled. It changed her appearance entirely, bringing a glimmer of beauty to her stern features, like a ray of sunlight through a cloud. “You sounded just like your father when you said that,” she said with surprising fondness.
To his surprise, the comment made Kester feel oddly proud.
“Tell you what, you have my computer,” Pamela said, unfolding herself from her chair and gesturing to the unoccupied space. “I can easily busy myself in the storeroom, there’s a few reports I need to write up, plus I need to phone Infinite Enterprises to arrange our next inspection.”
“Oh Christ, I’d forgotten about that,” Mike groaned, clapping his forehead. “Last time was a disaster.”
“Well, just make sure your equipment doesn’t blow up when you switch it on,” Pamela replied, bustling across the office. “If you can manage that, I’m sure we’ll pass inspection this time. Anyway,” she said, turning confidingly back to Kester. “You do your thing. Internet’s a bit slow, but it should do the job.”
“Okay, I’ll do my best,” Kester promised. “Leave it with me.”
After only a few minutes, he swiftly realised that Pamela hadn’t been exaggerating about the internet. It trudged through pages with the speed of an arthritic mole digging through particularly hard soil, which was rather frustrating.
To begin with, Kester focused his searches on Robert Ransome, then Constance Ransome, though neither brought up anything of particular interest. He tried to find out more about the history of 10 Coleton Crescent, though again, he failed to find anything that would help them. Eleven o’clock came and went, and he felt his frustration begin to rise. Come on, he thought. There must be more information out there somewhere, it’s just a matter of locating it!
After a while, he reached for his phone, bringing up the brief notes he’d made the previous day. He tried a search based on Ransome’s date of death, but couldn’t find anything new. Obviously, this artist wasn’t particularly well known, he concluded, otherwise there would be much more on him.
His finger hovered over the notes, lingering on one in particular. “Italy, Lake Garda, four years, back 1845.” The book had suggested that Ransome had lived there, before returning to get married to his childhood sweetheart, Constance.
I wonder what he was up to in Italy, he pondered, rapping the keyboard rhythmically with his pen.
He typed in “Robert Ransome, Lake Garda, 1841.” The first entry on the list made him lean backwards in his chair, omitting a low whistle of surprise. “By Jove,” he muttered. “That looks like something interesting.”
“What have you found, mate?” Mike asked, peering round the side of his computer. He was only just visible amidst the usual pile of messy electronic equipment. “Something good?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Kester said, clicking through to the link. “I’ll let you know in a minute.” Or make that five minutes, he thought in exasperation, as the website struggled to load.
Finally, the page appeared, a website dominated by stark black, complete with pale, ghostly fonts and spectral images
floating around the perimeter.
“Fantasmi del Lago di Garda,” he read out loud. Fantasmi. That sounds suspiciously like Phantom. Quickly, he hit the translate key in the corner.
“What’s that?” Mike asked, standing to get a better look.
“Hauntings of Lake Garda,” Kester said. He hit his fist on the desk in excitement. “Hauntings of Lake Garda! I don’t believe it!”
The others looked at him blankly.
“Well, as long as it’s exciting to you, that’s the main thing,” Mike said as he returned to his seat. “Because I’ll tell you now, that doesn’t mean a thing to me. Is that a lake in the Peak District or something?”
“No, you ignoramus, it’s in Italy,” Serena snorted. “Why is that relevant, Kester? What has Italy got to do with anything?”
“It relates to Robert Ransome. Let me dig around a bit more, I’ll update you properly in a minute.” He scanned the page swiftly, too excited to pause his investigations. It was a vast, unwieldy webpage with a wall of text, so he had to scroll through the content. The web page featured a series of ghost stories from the region, each complete with its own small image and brief blurb, which, when clicked on with the mouse, took him through to the tale in full.
Towards the end of the huge document, he finally found what he was looking for. The title of the story was “The Haunted Studio,” which mentioned Ransome directly in the introductory paragraph. Yes! he thought, clicking through, and sighing with frustration as the page took its usual five minutes to load up.
“Listen to this!” he announced, waving for attention. “This is it! This is what I’ve been looking for!”
The others gathered round. Even Ribero emerged from his office, still smoking the remainder of a cigarette. They formed a silent semicircle around the desk, gazing at the screen.
“The haunted artist’s studio at Gardone Riviera was a tale that fuelled fear among the locals and is still told to this day,” Kester began to read, feeling his heart stir with a thrill. “Even now, investigators of the paranormal claim to feel energy in the building, and some say that the cries of a woman can still be heard, late in the night, when the moon shines over the neighbouring lake waters.”
“Oh, I really do hate people who call themselves paranormal investigators,” Serena said, clicking her tongue in exasperation. “They’re always complete charlatans.”
“It’s a bit of a waffling story, isn’t it?” Mike said, with a hint of incredulousness.
“Remember it’s been translated from Italian,” Kester said. “Sometimes the translation isn’t terribly smooth. Shall I carry on?”
“Yes!” everyone cried in unison.
He coughed, pausing for dramatic effect, before continuing. “The small property, situated on the grounds of the Palazzo Grassi, was once the home of the groundsman and his family. In 1841, an English painter, Robert Ransome, took up residence, using the building as both a place to live and a painter’s studio. Local accounts claim that Ransome was a handsome young man, only in his early twenties, who swiftly charmed the people living close by, not to mention their daughters. He was fluent in the language and was initially very welcoming, allowing people to see his work. Ransome had patrons in the area who commissioned him to paint large landscapes. However, one day, everything changed, and Ransome painted landscapes no more.
“Ransome started work on a portrait, a portrait he referred to only as ‘my lady’. He claimed that he was inspired by a great muse, a beautiful creature who visited him nightly, helping him create his finest work. However, when pressed, he refused to show the painting to anyone. Locals said he became obsessed with the image, hiding it in the attic of the building, where it could not be seen. People walking by the property began to report strange noises, a whispering sound that floated down to the lake waters. Some said they saw blue lights glowing in the windows, quite unlike the lights of an oil lamp or candle. Soon, people began to believe the artist’s studio was haunted.”
“My word, are you all thinking what I’m thinking?” Pamela said excitedly.
“That portrait sounds rather like it might be our Green Lady, doesn’t it?” Miss Wellbeloved added, squeezing Kester’s shoulder in an uncharacteristic show of emotion. “Goodness me, I never would have thought it would have come all the way from Italy. This is quite remarkable, well done for finding it.”
“Let him carry on, will you?” Mike said, squinting at the screen. “Go on, you were doing a good job of telling it.”
Kester smiled. “Okay, I’ll get on with it,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“Soon, people began to believe the artist’s studio was haunted,” he repeated. “Ransome himself, who had been so popular in the community, was seldom seen. Instead, he was only briefly glimpsed, peering behind the shutters of his windows, or pacing silently in the gardens at midnight. Those who did see him described him as a changed man—wild-haired, wild-eyed, and muttering strange incantations. They believed him to be possessed. The baker, delivering bread one day, heard him calling out a woman’s name—Mary. He cried, ‘I dare look in the mirror no more, I see her there . . . Mary! She is there.’ After a year or so, Ransome moved away, leaving the house in a state of terrible disrepair. On inspection, the owners found that mice and rats had taken over the building, red paint covered the walls like blood, and that there were scratch marks across the walls and doors. Every mirror in the property had been smashed.
“Nobody knows what happened to Robert Ransome during his time at the house on the grounds of Palazzo Grassi. However, there are enough strange events associated with the building to believe that he was haunted by a terrible spirit, who still haunts the house to this day.”
He finished with a flourish, and they all stared at the screen in silence.
“Well,” Pamela said, in awe. “That was a bit of a ripping yarn, wasn’t it?”
“So I think we have a much better understanding of our painter, don’t we?” Dr Ribero said, stroking his moustache. “And a few clues about our spirit too, it would seem.”
“Yes, I think it might be worth using her name, if indeed the story has it right,” Miss Wellbeloved said. “Knowing a spirit’s name is a powerful thing and can assist with negotiations. If I refer to her as Mary, it may well help.”
“If the story is right,” Serena raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive detective work, Kester. But most of it could be made up, for all we know.”
Kester nodded. “It could be,” he acknowledged, scrolling through the page to check there were no more details. “As a researcher, it’s always important to mistrust your source, unless you know it to be 100% reliable. But it’s certainly interesting, isn’t it?”
“Interesting, but not much else to go on,” Serena said. “I guess when we go back there this afternoon, we can try using the names Mary and Ransome, see what her reaction is. But that still doesn’t tell us how to get her out of that sodding painting, does it?”
Kester puffed out his cheeks, leaning heavily against the comforting coolness of the leather chair. “There’s something about that story that’s bugging me,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know what though. I’ll need to have a think.”
“I know what you mean,” Pamela said. “It’s a bit like there’s more to it, I’ve just not noticed it yet.”
“Yes, exactly!” Kester agreed. He spun round on the chair to face the others. “What time are you going back to the house?”
“After lunch,” Dr Ribero declared, looking at his watch. “It is inconvenient, as I will have to miss my siesta, but we need to get moving with this project as soon as possible. If we do not generate results soon, the government will start questioning our ability to do the job.”
Kester looked up. “Who exactly in the government oversees your line of work?” He couldn’t imagine the Prime Minister calling Dr Ribero, asking why he hadn’t
fulfilled his quota of supernatural investigations for the month.
“Bernard Nutcombe,” Ribero replied.
“Don’t you mean Lord Bernard Nutcombe?” Mike added. “Let’s not forget his title, eh?”
“His name rings a bell,” Kester muttered. “Don’t know why though.”
“He’s MP for Scunthorpe, and was involved in a bit of a scandal with public spending a few years back,” Mike said. “He looks like a melted candle with a black loo brush glued on top.”
Serena laughed. “That’s a pretty good description, actually.”
“He’s MP for Scunthorpe, and also Minister for the Supernatural,” Dr Ribero concluded. “Though obviously, he keeps his official title quiet, yes?”
“So what does he actually do then?” Kester asked. “How does it all work?” It was all fascinating to him, an entire ministry that he had no knowledge of until today.
“Well, his team basically monitors all supernatural activity,” Miss Wellbeloved explained patiently. “It’s often the police who are first called out if something supernatural happens. They contact the government, who get the supernatural agencies to sort out the problem.”
“So the police know about the supernatural too?”
“Of course,” Serena said, “it’s part of their basic training.”
“How the heck do you all keep it a secret, with that many people knowing?” Kester couldn’t get his head round it.
“It may seem like a lot of people,” Miss Wellbeloved explained, resting against the window ledge. “But actually, it’s not that many at all. For every person who knows about the spirit world, there’s about ten thousand who don’t.”
“And if someone does start opening their mouths and talking about the supernatural, no one believes them,” Mike concluded.
“It’s all very odd,” Kester said, stretching with a yawn. “The whole idea that there’s all these supernatural things, happening all over the country, and most people are completely unaware. It’s weird.”
