Christmas at Gravesend

by Amanda DeWees

  Young Mr. Sutton prodded the fork. “That looks like something of my grandmother’s. Eh, father? We don’t use the old silver, though. Do we, Deborah?”

  Mrs. Sutton shook her head. “There aren’t enough place settings for everyone, so I keep it locked up. It looks as though this was somehow separated from the rest.” Picking up the snuffbox, she regarded it thoughtfully. “Didn’t your father collect snuffboxes, Father Jonas?” she asked old Mr. Sutton.

  “I don’t recall,” he said gruffly. Without warning he turned on the two chattering great-granddaughters next to him and barked, “Can’t a man have a bit of peace?” and the subject was dropped.

  Later I was able to draw Mrs. Sutton aside for a few minutes to ask her for more details about the haunting.

  “It’s believed to be a servant who ran off,” she said in a low voice, checking to be certain no little pitchers had brought their big ears to the linen closet where we stood. “The silver you found makes that seem quite likely. Eliza Southgate was a young maidservant who stole some of the family silver and ran away. She was never heard from again—at least, not in the flesh.”

  “People have heard her struggling to breathe, you mean.”

  “Yes, and once in a while she will return one of the silver objects she stole. That is why I believe she means no harm. Clearly it is her remorse that makes her haunt the house.”

  “Why do you think she is gasping for breath?”

  She straightened a stack of table linens. “I’ve had a good many years to mull that over, and I think it may be the force of her guilty conscience. By all accounts she was a loyal and sweet-natured girl, just a young thing, so whatever caprice impelled her to rob the family must have weighed heavily on her breast—perhaps to the point that the guilt became an almost physical weight.”

  Guilt had not been among the emotions I had felt last night, however. It seemed to me that something more desperate was preventing Eliza’s spirit, if indeed it was hers, from leaving the place that had been her home in life.

  “What does your husband say about his family spook?” I asked.

  She grimaced. “He doesn’t believe in such ‘foolishness,’ and my father-in-law refuses to listen to any discussion of the topic. In truth, it’s rather a relief to me to know that you have also experienced it and believe me.”

  Eager for another chance to communicate with the spirit, I was restless and impatient for night to fall. The day did bring one happy interval, when Roderick stopped by on his way to oversee further salvage operations at the wreckage of Brooke House.

  “So you’ve already found a new ghost to lay,” he said after greeting me with a kiss.

  “Oh, you’ve heard about the Suttons’ haunting?”

  “The innkeeper filled me in.” He flashed his devilish grin. Not for the first time I reflected that although Roderick’s crown of dark curls was rather like a halo, his demeanor tended to mitigate any angelic qualities. “You can never resist a challenge, can you?” he teased.

  “You should know,” I said demurely, “being quite the biggest challenge I’ve ever taken on.”

  Conversation after that became more intimate and less verbal, and has little bearing on this account.

  THAT NIGHT I DID NOT bother undressing or going to bed. Instead I sat fully dressed in a chair in the darkened room, illuminated only faintly by the fire banked behind the pierced metal screen, waiting for Eliza. There was little noise from the rest of the house; for such a large family, they seemed to settle down upon retiring with little fuss or delay. Only occasionally did the night cry of some wild creature penetrate the closed windows.

  I first knew I was not alone when I felt a tightening at the back of my neck. So quickly I could not prepare myself, it moved to my throat. The familiar drawn-out rasp sounded as I dragged my next breath into my lungs, and I coughed with the effort.

  “Eliza?” I whispered, relieved that I could still speak on my own behalf. “I want to help you. What is it you wish to tell me?”

  My throat convulsed but no words came forth, only a hoarse gasp. Frustration rose in me. I was here to serve a purpose, but how? Surely it only needed a bit of imagination to determine how I could help.

  “You can breathe through me,” I mused. “You move my lungs. Does that mean you can control the rest of my body? Can you lead me to something that will make clear what you want?” I had heard of automatic writing, though I had not attempted it. If the hapless spirit could guide my hand and put pencil to paper, we might be able to break through this barrier.

  I felt a tentative hope brush across my mind. The idea was promising to her.

  It seemed we had a plan. Taking a deep breath for courage, I stood, resisting the urge to reach for a candle. Eliza might be stronger in darkness. “Guide me, then,” I whispered. “I am your instrument in any honorable enterprise.”

  How can I describe that bizarre nighttime journey? I could scarcely see, so I had to trust the spirit to know how and where to guide me. The sensation of my limbs being moved by another will would have awakened panic in me had I not experienced it before. Even so, it was a strange, off-balance sensation as first one foot, then the other, progressed toward the door, and in the dimness I saw my own hand reach out for the latch.

  We traveled slowly through the dark and silent house. She made no sound any longer; perhaps moving my limbs took all of her strength. My booted feet noiselessly conducted us downstairs and then, to my astonishment, to the front door. My hands worked at the bolt, and then I drew open the door to a shockingly cold gust of night air.

  The first real fear touched me then. How far was the ghost going to take me? What if our journey lasted for miles? I would risk dying of exposure or being set upon by whatever dangers lurked in the wilderness. Too late I wished that I had asked Mrs. Sutton to sit up with me to be a witness.

  The spirit must have sensed my alarm, for in a peculiar gesture of reassurance she lifted my left hand from the door latch and clumsily patted my right hand.

  Very well, I thought, I’ll trust you a bit further. But I was more confused than ever when after guiding my steps down the porch she took me around the side of the house.

  The moonlight glowed eerily on the snow, and the rustle of wind in the treetops served only to remind me of how very isolated I was. Then I found myself approaching a low, arched structure of brick, and even as I recognized it as the entrance to a root cellar my hands were drawing the bolt and opening the door. Without even a moment to prepare myself I was propelled down a staircase that was invisible in the darkness. My footfalls struck hollow echoes from the wooden treads, but soon I stepped onto soundless packed earth.

  The only illumination was the faint glow of moonlight through the open door. My spine prickled uneasily as I realized that I could be surrounded by anything—anything at all—without knowing it. Surely Eliza’s restless spirit was leading me toward something that would expiate her crime, but what was good for her might not be good for me, a corporeal human, and I heartily disliked being unable to see my surroundings.

  Five paces she took me, curling the fingers of my right hand toward my palm, one by one, to count them. Then she raised my hand to place it against what my fingers told me was a brick wall.

  At the first touch of my fingertips against the rough surface, my mind was suddenly flooded with memories and images so horrible that I snatched my hand away with a cry. I backed toward the stairs, appalled. I knew now what had made Eliza restless all these years...and it was not a guilty conscience.

  Gathering up my skirts, I stumbled up the stairs, not even pausing to close the cellar door behind me. I was already through the front door of the house before I realized that my body was my own again, no longer under Eliza’s guidance. But she had communicated what she needed me to know. The rest was up to me.

  I hammered on the door of Mr. and Mrs. Sutton’s bedchamber until the man of the house opened the door a crack. When he saw me in the moonlight that fell through the window on the lan
ding, he blinked drowsily. “Mrs. Lammle? Are you unwell?”

  “This house is unwell,” I said recklessly. “Bring lights. Come at once.”

  “What the devil? At this hour?”

  “Do listen to her, Amos.” Mrs. Sutton joined him in the doorway, drawing on a dressing gown. “Mrs. Lammle would not disturb us were it not vital.”

  Grumbling but compliant, her husband put on a dressing gown and lit a spirit lamp. In my agitated state he seemed to move with agonizing slowness. Sleepy faces appeared at other doors as we passed, and Mrs. Sutton spoke placatingly to send them back to bed, but even so our procession had gained a few more curious family members when we made our way to the root cellar.

  Mr. Sutton glanced at me quizzically when he realized this was our destination, and I grabbed at his sleeve to hurry him. “We’ll need a pickaxe,” I said. “Or something of that nature, perhaps a mattock. Have you such a thing?”

  To his credit, he did not dismiss my disjointed words as babbling, although when he replied “I’m certain we do,” his voice was the soothing tone one would use to placate someone out of her wits.

  “I’ll fetch something,” said his elder son, to my relief, and departed on this errand. I was fortunate that curiosity was strong enough to overcome the natural human desire to dismiss me and return to bed.

  Not until we stood at the place Eliza had led me, with the lamplight casting eerie shadows on the brick walls and arched ceiling, did I realize that old Mr. Jonas Sutton had joined us. “What in blazes is that actress woman up to?” he snapped. “This is pure nonsense, dragging us out of our beds in this fashion!”

  “No one forced you to accompany us,” I said, “so I find it all the more significant that you did. But then, you are the only one besides me who knows the secret hidden in this cellar.”

  “What secret is that?” asked his daughter-in-law, since the old man just glared at me without replying.

  “Eliza Southgate’s final resting place,” I said. “She didn’t run off with the family silver after all. The burglary was just to lend her disappearance plausibility. Isn’t that right, Mr. Sutton?”

  In the lamplight the old man’s features looked distorted, twisted by evil. But my new knowledge of him was coloring my perception; it was actually his inner being that was ugly and warped. His eyes narrowed at me, and a chill raced over my skin as I realized that had we been alone, he might have tried to kill me to keep me silent.

  We were not alone, though—and evidently he felt it was not too late to protect himself from the truth. “Poppycock,” he said roughly. “I don’t have any special knowledge of the matter, Mrs. Lammle. I was a lad of scarcely eighteen when she ran off. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You had everything to do with it.” Emotion made my voice shake. “She was carrying your child, and you wanted to be rid of her. So you told her to meet you in secret with whatever silver she could carry to finance your new life together, saying you would take her away and marry her someplace where scandal wouldn’t follow. And that innocent girl believed you. Her heart was full of love for you right up to the moment when you wrapped your hands around her throat and strangled her.”

  All eyes were on old Mr. Sutton now, and he licked his lips and glanced toward the stair as if gauging his chances of running. But his son stood between him and freedom. “Father, is that true?” he asked in astonishment.

  “It’s rubbish, I tell you! The woman is mad. She’s simply trying to stir up trouble.” His face was venomous when he turned back to me. “I’m no murderer, you lying baggage.”

  “You’re certainly not a very good one,” I said coldly. “You crushed her windpipe but did not kill her right away. So while you were walling her up here, where the cellar was still not quite finished, the poor girl was struggling to draw breath. You could hear her fighting to breathe, fighting to live, almost until you put the last brick in place.”

  An appalled silence was broken when the old man burst into a storm of curses and imprecations. I let him rail at me as much as he wished, but when he made as if to strike me, his daughter-in-law placed herself in his path.

  “You can’t believe this madwoman’s tales,” the old man expostulated. “She made this up out of the whole cloth.”

  “So if we were to tear down this wall,” Mrs. Sutton said quietly, “we’d find nothing to support her story?”

  The old man’s face went sickly white. “I don’t see why that should be necessary,” he stammered. “Why should you credit something so farfetched?”

  “It’s easy enough to settle,” said the elder of his grandsons, producing a sledgehammer. “Give me a little space, and we shall soon see if this is nothing but a wicked slander.”

  On that long-ago night when a young man walled up the body of his sweetheart, he had known precious little about bricklaying. So it was perhaps not greatly surprising that after just a few blows of the mighty hammer several bricks gave way, revealing a dark space...and a glimpse of bone and hair.

  Mrs. Sutton’s hand flew to her mouth, and her husband and son fell back with exclamations of disgust. Then a choking gasp made us all look toward the old man.

  Laboring to draw breath, he clutched at his throat as if to dislodge the grip of merciless hands. His eyes stared wildly as his face slowly turned purple. Then, with a last gasping rattle, he collapsed to the earth floor of the cellar.

  “HEART FAILURE, DR. Carfax said,” I told Roderick the next day. “Evidently his heart gave out when he was faced with the evidence of his old crime.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Roderick said, his hazel eyes grave. “Will Eliza get a proper burial now?”

  “Yes, but they’re keeping old Mr. Sutton’s part in the matter secret.” Shuddering, I remembered how the girl’s body had gradually been revealed as the wall was taken apart, the skeletal hands still holding a moldy leather satchel containing the remainder of the missing silver. “As far as the world is concerned, he lived a righteous life and died in his bed. No one outside the family will ever know that he was a murderer.” I shook my head in disgust. “It scarcely seems like justice to me.”

  Roderick laced his fingers through mine. We had the small back parlor to ourselves while the rest of the household busied itself with funeral preparations, so we could sit as close together on the settee as we wished, and that was very close indeed.

  “But the family knows the truth, which they didn’t before,” he pointed out. “That poor girl’s spirit will be at peace now because of you. Just think if another fifty years had passed and no one came to help her—or no one with your empathy and courage.” Then a thought occurred to him that made him draw back and look searchingly into my face. “If the ghost had been male,” he said, “would you still have allowed it—allowed him—to take command of your body?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Being a medium is still new to me. I imagine I shall be making many decisions on the spur of the moment, depending on the circumstances.” I could see that this answer did not satisfy him, however. “Does it disturb you to think of my being under another man’s control?” I asked.

  His piratical grin flashed. “I’m sure it would...if I thought there might somewhere be a man capable of controlling you.”

  That made me laugh. “You don’t think you will be equal to the task?” I challenged.

  Hearing the trap in my words, he leaned closer and wound a strand of my hair around his finger.

  “I know better than to try,” he said.

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