When they were gone, Lucien took her hand again. Judging by the expression on his face, he did not approve of her new plan. “What makes you think they can uncover information you could not?”
“They’re natives of Plummerville, each and every one of them. It might make a difference, when they start asking questions.” She patted his arm.
“I just don’t think it wise to send those amateurs out to question a possible murderer.”
She had never considered that what she’d asked of her friends might be dangerous. “Oh, dear. Should I try to round them up and call it all off? I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“It’s too late, I imagine,” Lucien said. “Even if you did try to call them off, I doubt they would comply. The Plummerville Ghost Society is made up of a group of very stubborn folks.”
“I wasn’t thinking that they might get in trouble,” Eve said, her eyes searching over his shoulder for a sign of her friends. Apparently she saw nothing. She bit her lower lip. “I just thought that maybe… maybe…”
“They should be fine,” Lucien assured her. “We have so little information to go on, where the murder is concerned, there’s not much chance that their questioning might stir up the murderer. If he’s even still alive and in Plummerville.”
Eve nodded. “I know. I wish they could uncover something, though. Something… helpful but not too dangerous.”
“Does it really matter as much as we believe it does?” Lucien asked kindly. “Our purpose all along has been not to uncover a murderer, but to send your ghosts on. Alistair and Viola are free, now. She knows he didn’t kill her, and that’s what held them here.”
“You think,” Eve said stubbornly. “We won’t know for sure until tonight. Will we?”
“I suppose not.” Lucien nodded, and even sighed in resignation. “I noticed you didn’t ask any of your friends to speak to Reverend Younger.”
Eve lifted her chin. “No. I plan to speak to him myself.”
Lucien would never admit that he hated the idea, but she felt a tremble pass through his hand.
*
Like most preachers, the Reverend Younger didn’t care for Halloween. But his mother, who had moved to Plummerville ten years ago after the death of her husband, and his wife, who had once been the most sought-after girl in town, were having a wonderful time.
Lucien didn’t like Reverend Younger, but then he admitted to his own prejudice. He’d had too many run-ins with fire-and-brimstone preachers to have much use for this one.
Eve could be relentless, and when it came to Viola she was like a soldier, determined and unyielding. The Reverend Younger didn’t have a chance.
“You know more than you’re telling me,” Eve said, leaning in close to the reverend.
Standing outside the general store, while his wife visited with neighbors and munched on pumpkin bread, the preacher went pale. “Let the past go, Miss Abernathy,” he said. “Viola is gone and has been for many years.” He glanced sharply at Lucien. Did he wonder if all he’d heard was true? Did he wonder if Lucien could truly talk to the dead? “Let her rest in peace.”
Eve pursed her lips. She knew too well that Viola had not been resting in peace. “You said Viola wanted a child, and I know she went to desperate measures in order to have a baby.”
Reverend Younger went so pale, Lucien wondered if he should move so he’d be in a position to catch the man, if he fainted.
“How do you know such a thing?” he whispered.
Eve glanced at Lucien, and he saw the surrender in her eyes. She’d given up on her desire for a normal life, thank goodness, but was she ready to tell all her friends and neighbors that her home was haunted? He nodded once, in encouragement. She knew how he felt about telling the truth, no matter what.
Eve turned her curious eyes to the reverend once again. “She told me.”
The preacher blinked several times. “She… told you?”
“She came to me in a dream,” Eve said softly.
All at once, a hint of color crept into the reverend’s face. He breathed what could only be a sigh of relief. “A dream.”
“Ghosts do visit the living in their dreams,” Eve explained sensibly.
“I’m sure they do.” The reverend regained his smug facade. “Miss Abernathy, anything Viola Stamper told me, no matter how long ago, no matter how important or insignificant, was confidential and will remain so. I suggest you turn your back on the notion that ghosts visit the living in their dreams.” He gave Lucien a cutting glance. “Or in any other manner.”
Eve was not discouraged. “I understand you and your wife married just months after the Stampers’ deaths. Did she know Viola?” Eve glanced at the plump Alice Younger. “I’ve spoken to many people who knew Viola, but I never did speak to your wife. Perhaps today…”
“Leave my wife out of this,” the reverend warned. “She doesn’t know anything. She barely knew Viola Stamper.”
Eve smiled, sensing that she had won a small victory. “I imagine you can tell me anything she would.”
The reverend’s lips thinned. “I imagine I could, but not here, Miss Abernathy. There are too many people about.” He glanced at his wife and sighed. “My office in the church, at dusk.” He shook his head. “Please think about what I said. I do hope that before that time arrives you will come to your senses and decide to leave the past in the past, where it belongs.”
The reverend collected his wife and guided her well away from Eve and Lucien, pointing with enthusiasm at an elderly couple down the street.
Lucien took Eve’s arm. “Well, I’d say he’s anxious to get away from you, my dear.”
“He knows something,” she whispered. “Do you think he’s the man Viola committed adultery with, hoping to have a child?”
“Perhaps.”
Eve leaned in close and lowered her voice. “He definitely didn’t want me speaking to his wife.”
Lucien watched the children running on the street, children who played with a carefree abandon he had never known. “If the Reverend Younger did indeed lie with and then murder Viola Stamper, meeting with him at dusk is risky. Maybe you should leave that meeting to me.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to question him, one more time. I don’t want to go alone, though, so I’m hoping you’ll be with me. And I imagine we should have Buster and Garrick posted close by, just in case.”
“My life in the hands of a hick farmer and a grinning fool of a drunk.”
“Garrick isn’t drunk,” Eve said softly. “Not today.”
Lucien pulled Eve closer than was proper, since they were in public. He didn’t care. Miss Gertrude had already branded him a scoundrel. The preacher was spreading word that he was a swindler. So what? He’d been called much worse.
“You are the most magnificent woman,” he said.
Eve smiled up at him. Had she always been this beautiful? “And you…” she said softly, “you are definitely not ordinary.”
“Disappointed? “
“Never.”
“Then perhaps you’ll allow me to question the reverend on my own.”
She shook her head slowly. “Absolutely not.” All around them, life went on. Children ran and laughed, women gossiped, men talked farming and business and horses. The day was bright and beautiful… and he saw only Evie.
“Once we’re married, will you continue to be so relentless?”
Her grin was brilliant as she answered. “Yes.”
Chapter 19
“Nothing,” Katherine said in disgust. “Just when I thought Mrs. Melton might tell me something interesting about the Stampers, Gerald Porter came along and interrupted to ask us if we needed any yard work done.” She sneered. “After that, the old woman clammed up. She was talking a mile a minute until Gerald stopped her and gave her time to think.”
Five members of the Plummerville Ghost Society, everyone but their president, gathered in a quiet spot at the end of the street. Games continued all around them, but
it was getting late in the afternoon and the air was cooler than it had been before. Almost time to meet with the Reverend Younger.
“Old Mr. Snyder, he claimed to remember the Stampers, but then he started acting very strange, like he didn’t remember them at all.” Daisy screwed up her nose. “My first assignment, and I failed miserably.”
Lucien glanced at Buster, who just shrugged his shoulders to convey that he, too, had learned nothing.
Lucien was not disappointed, not really. He hadn’t expected the amateurs to find anything. He suspected Eve was not overly disappointed. She’d been trying to keep her friends busy. Either that, or sending them out searching for information she’d missed had been a last desperate attempt to solve the mystery before the anniversary of the murders, tonight.
So far, the secret society was finding their work dull, not nearly as exciting as they’d expected. Soon after sharing their lack of information, they wandered off in three different directions. Perhaps they could enjoy what remained of the Halloween activities.
Lucien and Eve started walking toward the church, which awaited them at the opposite end of the street.
“Sorry,” he said gently. Solving this particular haunting was important to Eve. More important than it should be. But Lucien knew, better than anyone, that when you got yourself involved with a restless spirit it was tough to let go until you’d done all you could to repair the damage life had done to them.
“I suppose I should be satisfied that Viola now knows Alistair didn’t kill her, but… it’s not enough. The person who killed them should be made to pay!”
“It’s been thirty years. The killer might be dead. He might have moved on years ago.”
“But he might be right here in Plummerville.”
Their conversation ended when Garrick Hunt sidled up alongside Eve. His usual smile was missing. He didn’t even try to make Lucien jealous by placing his arm around Eve or telling her she was especially beautiful today.
“I spoke to my mother,” he said bluntly.
“Did she remember anything odd about that time?”
For a moment he was silent. “I imagine she did, but she refused to tell me about it.” He reached into his inside jacket pocket for a flask and uncapped it, but he did not drink. After a moment, he capped the flask and returned it to its place, without ever tasting a drop. “She’s been bedridden for as long as I can remember,” he said. “When I was younger she did have good days when she came downstairs and perhaps even walked in the garden, but… it’s been years.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Eve asked gently.
“Everything, apparently,” Garrick answered darkly. “She’s delicate. Always has been. My birth almost killed her, or so she has always told me. You cannot imagine how guilty I used to feel…” He stopped speaking suddenly, shook his head as if to throw off the burden. “She told me, when I asked, that Viola Stamper was a lovely woman and her death was a terrible tragedy.” Garrick looked directly at Lucien. “Is there another kind of tragedy? A wonderful tragedy, perhaps, or a funny tragedy?” He waved a hand, dismissing the aside. “She talked about how awful it was, how tragic.” His eyes narrowed, his nose wrinkled. “And damned if I didn’t know the whole time that she was lying through her teeth.” Garrick stopped walking, and so did Eve and Lucien.
“For some reason, my mother dearly hated Viola Stamper. She didn’t say so, but I could see it in her eyes. I swear, I could almost smell the hate. Why would my mother hate a woman who’s been dead thirty years?”
*
He had intended to ask Buster and Garrick to stand guard at the church doors while he and Evie questioned the reverend, but on second thought the precaution seemed silly and unnecessary. They walked toward the church without anyone to watch over them.
After all, Reverend Younger was an older, frail-looking man. Evie could probably best him in a fair fight.
“Maybe Douglas Hunt was the man who slept with Viola and kept pressuring her for more,” Eve said as they approached the church. “I sensed all along that he loved her.”
“You sensed all along that every man she met loved her. Alistair, Douglas Hunt, the good reverend…”
“She was very beautiful…” Eve said defensively.
“Men might lust after beauty, but only a fool falls in love with a woman because she has a pretty face.”
“Men are fools, sometimes,” Eve countered.
Beyond the church doors, all was dimly lit. The last light of day filtered through the stained-glass window and the two clear windows to the north. A touch of light broke through from the back of the room, where the entrance to Reverend Younger’s office was located.
“Hello?” Eve called in a tentative voice as together she and Lucien walked down the aisle. “Reverend Younger?”
When they received no response, a warning prickle danced up Lucien’s spine. The reverend knew something. Perhaps he was involved in the thirty-year-old murders and perhaps he was not, but he certainly knew more than he was telling. If the real murderer was still in Plummerville and had seen them talking to the reverend, was Younger’s life in danger?
“Hello?” Eve called again as they approached the office door. Just beyond the opened door they saw the desk, piled high with papers. Another step, and they caught sight of the reverend sitting in his chair with his head resting on the desk.
“Wait here,” Lucien ordered, stepping in front of Eve. He would not allow her to discover a dead body! Not even that of a sour preacher who was, at this moment, her prime suspect in the murders of Alistair and Viola Stamper.
Very slowly, the reverend’s head lifted. “No. I imagine you should both come in,” he said.
Lucien breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t care for preachers, for the most part, and he definitely didn’t like Younger. But they didn’t need a dead preacher on their hands for Halloween.
They sat where they had on their first visit, in the two chairs facing the desk and Reverend Younger.
“Viola came to me in confidence,” he said, not wasting anyone’s time with more protests. “It pains me to break that confidence, even now, but if that’s what it takes to make you cease this tireless investigation before things go any more wrong than they already have…”
“I want what’s best for Viola,” Eve interrupted.
“So do I,” the reverend said softly. He took a deep breath. “She wasn’t from Plummerville, you know.”
“I had heard that. Alistair met Viola in Savannah, married her, and brought her home.”
“Yes. Word was that she came from a family who was in shipping, but her parents had both passed on, and she had no siblings.”
“I did hear that, also,” Eve said.
The reverend gave Eve his full attention. “Lies. Every word. Oh, Alistair Stamper did meet Viola in Savannah, and as far as I know he died believing the stories about her family. But… it wasn’t true.”
Lucien saw the heartbreak on Eve’s face, even though she said nothing. She had come to like Viola, and only wanted to believe the best. “Why would she lie?”
“Did you ever wonder, Miss Abernathy, why Viola would risk taking another man into her bed on the mere possibility that she might find herself with child? I suggested that perhaps she was the one who had not been blessed with the ability to have a child. That perhaps it was not meant to be. On that afternoon she told me that she had a child. A boy, the son of a man who had kept her as his mistress for two years. She did live in Savannah, that part of the story was not a lie, but a harsh life and dire circumstances forced her to…” His face hardened. “It was not a life she would have chosen for herself. She was desperate.”
“What happened to that baby?” Eve asked softly. “Did he… die?”
“No,” the reverend said sharply. “The father took the baby into his home and passed him off as his wife’s own child. Viola knew it was best for the boy, but it broke her heart to see this child she could never claim as her own.”
“See hi
m?” Lucien asked sharply. “Are you telling us that the child was raised here in Plummerville?”
“Yes.”
“Who?” Eve asked. “Who was it?”
The preacher’s eyes narrowed; his chin quivered. “I can’t tell you that. Think of what you’re doing! If you continue to stir up this old story, eventually that secret will come out! People in this town know bits and pieces of the truth. If they ever put all those pieces together…”
“Does your wife know?” Eve asked. It seemed she held her breath. “Is that why you didn’t want me to question her?”
Suddenly the preacher looked tired. Older. “Alice suspected that there was more between Viola and me than was made public. I was young. Rash. I grieved too much and too openly, I suppose, after she was murdered.” He shook his head. “No, she doesn’t know Viola had a child. Her suspicions were always more common than that.”
“She thought you loved Viola.”
“Maybe I did,” he said beneath his breath. “A little.” His eyes grew stronger. “I did care for her enough to keep some of her secrets, even now. It would do no one any good to reveal who her son is, after all this time. What’s done is done.”
Eve looked like she wanted to press the issue, but recognized the futility of such an effort.
An effort which was unnecessary. “We know who Viola’s son is,” Lucien interrupted.
“We do?” Eve turned her attention to him.
“We know because the father of this child came to your door one day and told you that he was the one who introduced Viola to Alistair.”
“Garrick!” Eve brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh, my. No wonder his mother hates Viola, still.”
“He doesn’t know,” Reverend Younger said in a low voice, as if someone might be listening beyond the open doors. “If you have any decency at all within you, you won’t tell him or anyone else. What purpose would it serve?”
“Reverend Younger,” Lucien began, “you said you cared for Viola.”
“Yes.”
“That perhaps you even loved her, a little.”
“Perhaps.”
“Were you the man she came to asking for assistance when she decided to…”
Shades of Midnight Page 22
