The Ghost of Christmas Past

by Rhys Bowen

  “He was a good friend of the family, was he?”

  “Mr. Cedric’s best friend when they were young men at Princeton together. Such a pleasant young man too. We were all very fond of him.”

  “You say he hasn’t visited for years—was there a falling out?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I ever heard. Of course we don’t know so much what goes on in their part of the house when we’re stuck in the kitchen. We have to rely on the maids to report back to us. But no. I never heard there was any kind of falling out between the master and Mr. Henry. At least not here.”

  I waited for her to go on, and at last she said, “That’s the way of it, isn’t it? Young men go their separate ways, get jobs in far-flung places. Marry. Settle down and lose touch.”

  “Was he staying at the house that Christmas—when the little girl disappeared?” I asked.

  She frowned, then shook her head. “He wasn’t. Not that year.”

  “And were there other guests in the house?”

  “The night when the child…” She couldn’t say the rest of the words. “Not houseguests like yourselves. No. They were planning a big party for the next evening. That was why we servants had our party on that night, because we’d have no time to celebrate over the actual holiday. But people were just invited to dine and dance, mind you. Nobody was going to stay overnight.”

  “So it really was just family and servants in the house when Charlotte vanished?”

  She paused and smiled. “Charlotte. Little Lottie. Yes, that was her name. I had almost forgotten. It hasn’t been spoken in years.”

  “And I was wondering. You said all the servants were at the party. Could anyone have left the ballroom for a short time and not been noticed?”

  She frowned. “I suppose so. We were all having a good time, laughing and eating and drinking and putting the finishing touches to the decorations. I don’t think we’d have noticed if anyone slipped away for a few minutes. But I told you, ma’am, those servants were all good people. Most of them I’d known all my life. Not one of them would have harmed Miss Charlotte.” She gave me a sort of sideways glance. “If I were you, ma’am, I’d leave well alone. No good can come of bringing up the past. It won’t bring her back.”

  She shook her head and I saw tears in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But my husband is a police officer. I just wondered if there was any stone that had been left unturned, you know.”

  “I understand. We all wished we could make it right for Mrs. Van Aiken.” A thoughtful look came over her face. “That’s funny, now you come to mention it. The only person I did see leave the party that night was Mrs. Van Aiken herself. I heard her telling the master she had a headache and needed to take one of her powders.”

  I left her then and went to my own breakfast. Cedric was at his most amiable. “What did I tell you?” he said to Bridie, who was trying to be invisible as she worked her way through a big plate of eggs and ham. “I promised we’d build a snowman and now look. The perfect day for it. Everyone get bundled up and we’ll go out at eleven.”

  Bridie was almost as excited as Liam. He was saying “Noman?” at regular intervals as she buttoned him into his winter coat and hood. The older ladies turned down the invitation to join us and Winnie was nowhere to be seen. I hoped she had not taken to her bed again on the eve of Christmas. That would make the holiday celebration extremely awkward. So it was Daniel and I, Bridie, Ivy, and Liam who set out across the untouched expanse of whiteness.

  “We’ll go toward the back of the property,” Cedric said. “There’s a bit of a slope there where we can roll balls down the hill and make our task easier. It’s where I always used to make snowmen when I was a child.”

  “Is the hill big enough for sledding?” Ivy asked.

  Cedric looked at her with surprise. “Have you ever been sledding?”

  “No, but I’ve read about it. It sounds like fun, going so fast.”

  “Yes, it’s fun,” he said. “I think there are still the old sleds in the attic, but they haven’t been used for years. I’ll have one of the staff see if they can locate them for you. I might even have a go myself, if I’m not too heavy now.”

  He grinned and she responded. I stared at her with surprise. She had seemed such a timid little thing and here she was, exchanging grins with the master of this big estate. Maybe she was just realizing the possibilities of her life now that she was no longer in the orphanage. I found myself wondering if Daniel’s mother would be able to keep her a maid rather than a companion after this exposure to the finer things of life.

  We stomped together through the snow. Liam insisted on walking to start with but found it such heavy going that Daniel had to pick him up, much to his annoyance. We came to where the stream crossed the property. Snow covered the rocks, but the water still splashed and gurgled unhindered.

  “You’d think it would have frozen over, wouldn’t you?” Ivy whispered to Bridie.

  “Perhaps it’s not cold enough yet,” Bridie answered.

  At last we came to the gentle slope that led up to the trees at the back of the property. Daniel put Liam down. Cedric started to form the first ball and to roll it down. Liam was enchanted as it grew, gathering speed. Then we all pitched in and pushed it over and over until it was an impressive start for a snowman. We had just gone up to the top of the slope to repeat the process when we heard a bloodcurdling scream coming from among the trees.

  Seventeen

  Daniel plunged ahead. I turned back to Bridie. “Hang on to Liam,” I shouted and struggled through the snow in pursuit of Daniel. But he could move so much more quickly with his trousers tucked into his boots than I could with all those layers of petticoats and skirts, already weighted down with wet snow. Bushes snatched at me and held me back. I fought myself free, following Daniel’s fleeting figure. We had just reached the boundary of the estate where a low wall divided Greenbriars from the adjacent property when the screams came again. My heart was pounding now. I came, gasping, up to the wall. Daniel was scrambling over. It was a little above waist high and I was in no position to join him without displaying more of my undergarments than would have been considered proper. Normally propriety wouldn’t bother me, but I reminded myself that Cedric was right behind me and I had to set a standard for those girls. So I had to wait.

  It didn’t take more than a few seconds, however, before one of the screamers came into view. It was a young woman, dressed in a dark green cape, running toward us through the trees on the other side of the wall. Something came whizzing past my head. I heard it thud into a tree just to my right. My first thought was that someone was shooting at her and a bullet had just missed me. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d been shot at. Then in hot pursuit were other young women, their hoods thrown back, their hair flying loose and shouting with laughter as they threw snowballs.

  Daniel had come to a halt and turned to me with a look of disgust. “Snowball fight,” he said. “And to think that I…” He didn’t need to finish. I had had similar thoughts. And now as they were closing in on us I recognized the women. Sid and Gus’s group staying at the Briarcliff Lodge. Sure enough Sid and Gus were among them.

  Sid spotted me and waved. “Look, Gus, there is Molly. And Bridie and Liam. How splendid. They can come over and join in.”

  “We thought something was seriously amiss,” Daniel said, frowning as the women came toward us. “We heard screams.”

  “Yes, that was me, I’m afraid,” admitted the young woman who was being pursued. “I didn’t want a snowball down my neck. I’m sorry if I alarmed you.”

  “We were re-creating our favorite game from our Vassar years,” Gus explained. “The snowball war between dorms. We had a ceremonial snowball fight every year, and our dorm always won. We were merciless.”

  “They still are,” the woman who had been chased agreed, while attempting to brush snow off her back. “I have been pounded and hounded.”

  “We should ge
t back to the others and our snowman,” Daniel said impatiently.

  “Oh, don’t Bridie and Liam want to come and join us?” Gus asked.

  “Not now. They were having fun building the snowman,” Daniel replied before I could speak. Actually I thought the snowball fight might have been a lot of fun.

  “Then maybe we can come over and help build too,” Gus suggested.

  “I think it might be better if…” Daniel began, but Cedric had joined us now.

  “Of course. Why not? Delighted. If you can scale the wall, of course. A tad tricky with skirts on.”

  “These are our neighbors in New York and their friends from their Vassar days,” I said.

  “So I heard. Come on then, let me give you a hand.” He helped them gallantly to scramble over the wall. The women threw themselves with enthusiasm into snowman building and I watched them with amazement and a tinge of envy. These were women of my own age or a little older who had no responsibilities of husband and family, who had enough money for a comfortable life, and thus they still knew how to play. They still thought that having fun was important. And I realized how bleak my last few months had been. Would I ever learn to enjoy myself like that again?

  As we worked at our snowman Sid came up to me. “So this is the husband, eh, Molly? He seems jolly enough. But we were told in the village that he seems something of a recluse, that the family has shut themselves off from most social contact.”

  “What else did they tell you in the village?” I whispered back.

  “Nothing too revealing. They hardly ever saw the child and probably wouldn’t have recognized her if she had been taken to the station. But they confirmed that the gardener, Harris, was a reputed bad lot. His wife had left him or he had left her, I’m not sure which. He liked his drink and he was involved in some shady deals. Also”—she paused, glancing around at where Cedric was now sticking two pieces of coal onto the snowman’s face—“apparently Harris was seen by the carter who delivers beer barrels the night after the child disappeared. He was already quite drunk but had not been to the bar in town. He said he wouldn’t need the carter anymore as it was going to be whiskey every night from now on. And he wouldn’t stop to talk. He said he had to see a man about a dog.”

  “About a dog?” I was puzzled.

  “It’s a saying, isn’t it? ‘I’m going to see a man about a dog’ means I’m off for a secret meeting with someone important. But he was walking away from town, not toward it.”

  “Interesting,” I said, “and chilling too. If he was on his way to deliver a ransom note, for example, and fell down drunk in the snow first, then that note was never delivered.”

  “But the kidnapper would surely have sent a second note,” Sid suggested. “He would have been stuck with the child.”

  “And might have killed her in desperation,” I pointed out.

  We walked back to join the others, a somber couple amid riots of laughter.

  We parted ways soon, my friends having received an invitation from Cedric to stop by for a cup of cheer tomorrow. Our luncheon was awaiting us, a splendid affair with oyster soup, roast leg of pork, and then apple dumplings. Winnie was present and quite cheerful. She pointed out that we were having such a heavy midday meal because it would be a simple supper, so that we could decorate the tree and sing carols.

  After our meal we went upstairs for a rest. I lay on the bed, my thoughts still a jumble of worry. There was nothing I could do, I told myself. I suspected that Harris the gardener held the key, that he was somehow involved in the kidnapping of the little girl, and I could only imagine the worst about what happened to her afterward. Maybe Winnie also had the same thoughts and that’s why she was so depressed.

  We had an early supper—a simple beef stew and a bread pudding with vanilla sauce, then Cedric ushered us all into the front hall to decorate the tree. He handed delicate glass-blown ornaments to the two girls to hang on the lower branches, then invited us to join in. There were birds with real feathers in their tails, tiny trumpets that really blew a note, violins, angels, and animals. We attached them carefully to the branches, taking care not to disturb the candles. Then Cedric climbed a stepladder and fixed a star to the top.

  “Come on, Liam, we can touch the star for good luck,” Ivy said, leading my son up the stairs.

  “Don’t lift him over the railing,” I said rapidly.

  “Oh, no. You can touch the star if you reach through,” Ivy said and showed him. The star was just the right height for him.

  “Now we light the candles,” Cedric said. He was handed a taper by one of the watching servants and one by one the candles were lit, filling the foyer with soft flickering light. Liam was entranced. I moved unobtrusively up the stairs to rescue him from Ivy. I didn’t think he could slip between the railings, but I didn’t want to give him the chance to try. I took his hand and we walked down the stairs, one by one. We had just reached the bottom step when there was a knock at the front door.

  “Now who could that be?” Aunt Florence asked. “You didn’t invite anybody to join us, did you, Cedric?”

  “Of course not,” he said, frowning.

  “And not a tradesman at this late hour.”

  “Let one of the maids answer it,” Cedric called, putting out a restraining hand to Aunt Florence. One of the maids, who had been watching the proceedings from the passageway that led back to the kitchen, smoothed down her apron and straightened her cap as she hurried across the foyer. She opened the front door. We heard her say, “Can I help you, miss?”

  And a small voice outside said, “Is this Greenbriars?”

  “Yes, miss,” the maid responded.

  Then the voice said, “Then I’ve come home.”

  “Home, miss?”

  “Yes. Would you tell them that I’m Charlotte?”

  Eighteen

  Nobody moved. Then a girl, her face still hidden beneath the hood of her cloak, stepped into the front hall. She was covered in a dusting of snow. She took off her mittens and her frozen fingers trembled as she tried to undo the clasp at her throat. She was tall and thin for her age, with mid-brown curls and a delicate, pointed little face like a china doll. She looked around from one face to the next, then her eyes lit up. “Oh, the Christmas tree. You have the Christmas tree in its usual place. How lovely.” She started to walk toward it.

  “How did you get here?” Cedric’s voice was harsh. He ran to the front door, opened it, and stared out into the snowy darkness. Then he took in the one set of footprints leading up to the front door, shook his head in disbelief, and came back to the girl.

  “I walked up from the train.” She turned to look up at him. “It’s a long way in the snow. I hadn’t realized how far it was. I was scared I wasn’t going to make it.” She let her cape fall and then swayed as if she was going to fall herself.

  Winnie gave a sobbing cry and burst forward. “My child. My little Charlotte has come home to us. It’s a Christmas miracle, Cedric. A miracle.”

  She took the girl’s face in her hands and peered at it, trying to picture the three-year-old in those features.

  “Mother?” the girl said tentatively. “Are you my mother?” She was staring at the face with wonder in her eye. “Yes, I do remember you. You haven’t changed at all. And look at me. I’m almost grown-up.”

  “Yes, you are. Quite a young woman.” Winnie was stammering, finding it hard to get the words out. “Isn’t she, Cedric? Our daughter is almost grown-up.”

  “Hold on, Winnie.” Cedric came forward now and put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “How do we know this girl is our daughter? This could well be a cruel Christmas prank, or the girl could have been set up to do this by someone wanting to make money from us.”

  “Papa?” The girl turned to him. “Don’t you remember me at all? I remember you, but you didn’t have a mustache, did you?”

  “Quite right. I grew it after—”

  “After I went away,” she said. She swayed again. “I need to sit down,” s
he said. “I’ve had nothing to eat all day.”

  “Of course, my darling,” Winnie said. She turned to the maid who had picked up the cape. “Elsie, bring a bowl of soup for Miss Charlotte.” She took the girl’s hand tentatively as if she was afraid she’d break, or vanish again. “Come through to the fire in the gallery.”

  “Where is the gallery?” Charlotte looked around as Winnie led her away from the rest of us and into the large room. The electric lights had been switched off so that we could appreciate the glow of the Christmas tree, and Winnie flicked the switch to flood the room with light.

  Charlotte hesitated in the doorway. “I don’t know this room. It’s different. Where’s the little cozy room with the fireplace? And the fireplace had pictures on it?”

  “Yes, it did. Delft tiles,” Cedric said. “We took down some walls and made one big room with a bigger fireplace.”

  “You used to love those tiles,” Winnie said. “You liked the ladies dancing.”

  “And the wolf,” Charlotte said. “Wasn’t there a wolf peeking around a cottage?”

  “There was.” Winnie looked up at Cedric, her eyes shining. “She’s come home. Now surely you can’t doubt any longer.”

  Cedric was still frowning. “My dear child, where were you all these years? What happened to you?”

  Winnie sat on the sofa by the fire and eased Charlotte down beside her.

  “I came from Boston just now,” Charlotte said. “We lived lots of other places before that, but the last few years we were in Boston.”

  “Who are ‘we’? Who were you with?” Cedric’s voice was still harsh.

  “My mother,” Charlotte said.

  There was a gasp from Winnie and the rest of us. “Your mother?”

  Charlotte went red. “Well, I know now that she wasn’t my mother.” She stammered to bring the words out. “But that’s what I’d always called her. I thought she was my mother until she told me the truth.”

  “Was she the one who took you from us?” Winnie was holding both the girl’s hands in hers, staring at her face as if she wanted to imprint it on her mind forever.