The Ghost of Christmas Past

by Rhys Bowen

“I suppose so,” she admitted.

  “Good. Then I’ll need the addresses of the places where you lived,” Cedric said, “so that we can start checking.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “I don’t know addresses. We didn’t often go out—at least my mother—I mean Ada Smith—went out, but I had to stay indoors.”

  “Did you never go to school?”

  She shook her head. “No. I wanted to, but Mother—I mean Ada—taught me at home.”

  “So she was an educated woman?”

  “Yes. She could read and write. And Uncle brought books for me.”

  “Uncle? A man came to visit you?”

  She nodded. “Yes. He was very nice.”

  “What was his name? Uncle what?” Cedric demanded.

  “I just called him Uncle,” she said.

  “Didn’t Ada Smith call him by any name?”

  Charlotte frowned, trying to remember. Then she shook her head. “I don’t think so. Sometimes they talked together quietly, away from me.”

  “What did this uncle look like?” Winnie asked, her voice sharp now.

  “He was an older man. Maybe forty or even fifty. His hair was gray at the sides.”

  “Was he tall or short? How did he look?” Winnie asked.

  “Oh, very tall. Very handsome. And he wore such smart clothes. And he spoke kindly to me. Gently. He brought me presents sometimes and he gave us money.”

  “An older man.” Cedric looked across at Winnie. “That’s a turn-up for the books. I wonder who he could be and how he was involved in this?” He turned back to Charlotte. “So you never heard his name? Or where he lived?”

  “In a big house. That’s all I knew. Mother said he lived in a fine house,” she said. “Anyway he stopped coming. Mother said he died, a couple of years ago. And then things were bad for us because there wasn’t any money. And then she got very sick.…”

  She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. Winnie rushed over to her side. “That’s enough, Cedric. You can see you’re upsetting her. She was obviously fond of these people and now they are dead.”

  “We only want to get to the truth, don’t we, Winnie?” he said, looking directly at her. “However painful it may be.”

  Winnie returned his stare. “If you really want the whole truth, Cedric, then I suppose the answer is yes. However painful it may be.”

  Twenty-one

  Aunt Florence rose from her seat on the sofa. “It’s Christmas Day,” she said. “A day of great joy to the world. Let us put this aside for a more appropriate occasion, shall we? Games. We must have games.” She saw the jigsaw puzzle. “Nothing too rowdy, because we have a death in the family and poor Great-Aunt Clara is still lying upstairs.” She picked up the box. “This is what we need to take our minds off unpleasant topics at this moment. Something we can all enjoy.” She tipped the puzzle pieces out onto a table and started to turn them over. The girls came over to help her. The adults clustered around. Cedric motioned to Daniel to follow him. I was certainly not going to be left out of this. I stood up too and started to follow them. Cedric crossed the foyer, into the sitting room on the other side. When he saw that I had joined Daniel he raised an eyebrow, glanced at Daniel, went to say something but didn’t. He closed the door behind us.

  “What do you make of that, Sullivan?” he asked. “Have you ever come across a case like that before?”

  “I can’t say I have,” Daniel said. “Her kidnappers sound like civilized people. A well-dressed older gentleman?”

  “She’s never been out into society,” Cedric responded. “She told you herself that her life has been confined to a series of rooms. So how does she know what a well-dressed gentleman looks like? He might have been a criminal with a flashy kind of style that appealed to a young girl.”

  Daniel nodded. “Quite possibly. But the whole thing comes down to motive. Why did this gentleman pay someone to keep her all these years? For what reason? Not money, because a ransom note was never delivered. Other than that, why would anyone take a child?”

  “They were childless and wanted a child of their own?” I suggested.

  “Surely that would be a deranged person,” Daniel said, turning back to frown at me. “A normal childless couple accepts their fate and gets on with life. A woman may volunteer to work with poor children and orphans. She may keep cats. But her thoughts don’t turn to stealing another woman’s child. No, I was thinking more along the lines of payback, revenge.”

  “Revenge?” Cedric sounded uncertain.

  “Have you ever made an enemy who could possibly have done this to you?” Daniel asked.

  “One does not always get along with everyone one meets,” Cedric said. “But it would take more than a usual slight to make someone do something so heinous and final.”

  “Perhaps it didn’t start out to be final,” I said. “Perhaps on the spur of the moment someone took your child to pay you back for something. Then he saw notices in the newspapers, a reward offered, and realized the terrible consequences. If he confessed to taking the child, he might well be put into prison for life or even executed. And so he paid someone to keep the child safe and hidden away.”

  Cedric brushed back his hair as if it was annoying him. “Plausible, except that I cannot think of any person who might have hated me so thoroughly that he would have done such a deed. Our only hope is to find out more about this Ada Smith. Does what the girl said give you anything to go on?”

  I noticed that he had called her “the girl” and not “Charlotte” or “my daughter.” He still believed her to be an impostor. That was possible, I had to admit. Some cunning person could train a young actress and plant her on the grieving couple’s doorstep on Christmas Eve, and there was a good chance she’d be accepted as their long-lost child. She’d live a good life and in time inherit and pass along some of the spoils to her trainers. Except that she looked like a younger version of Winnie. And she remembered the tiles on the fireplace, and that the rooms were different. She had definitely been in the house before.

  “I could start by doing a search on the name. We can see if Ada Smith comes up in any criminal records. But I doubt it will. I suspect it is an assumed name. Smith, isn’t that what anyone would call herself if she wished to remain anonymous?”

  Daniel looked at Cedric and me for confirmation and we nodded.

  “Apart from that there isn’t much. If we could only have an address to go on,” Daniel continued. “The name of a street. Then I could send men to ask questions of neighbors. There is usually someone nosy enough to have noticed a thing or two. The girl must have seen landmarks, even if they were small ones—the name of a tailor opposite, a church spire. She must have heard sounds—the bell of a trolley, the toot of a tugboat on a river, or the chiming of a particular clock. Maybe Molly or even Winnie could draw those facts out of her in a nonthreatening way.”

  “Good point,” Cedric said.

  A thought had just struck me. “You invited my friends to stop by for a Christmas toast sometime today,” I said. “Miss Walcott is from Boston and well familiar with various neighborhoods. Perhaps she could begin to reminisce with Charlotte and see if she can pinpoint the location where they used to live.”

  “Excellent.” Cedric nodded. “That would be most helpful. I wonder why Boston—was there perhaps a connection between the cities she lived in, or were cities chosen at random?”

  “We must see if she can give us chronological names of places,” Daniel said. “So far we only have Canada and then Boston. Were there others in between?”

  “This is part of my problem in believing her,” Cedric said. “Is it possible to live somewhere and not know where you are? Did she really never go out? Not to church? Not to the market? A whole life locked in a room?”

  “It’s possible,” Daniel said. “If her captors were always in fear that she could be recognized.”

  “But she doesn’t resemble the little girl of my memory,” Cedric said. “I would not have picked he
r out from a crowd.”

  “The resemblance to your wife is quite striking to me,” I said.

  “Perhaps. I don’t see it myself,” he said. “I must admit I am keen to press ahead with this as soon as possible, Sullivan. I don’t want Winnie to become too fond of the girl only to find out she is an impostor. Frankly I don’t know whether her heart can stand to be broken for a second time.” He slammed one fist into the other. “No, by God, it must be nipped in the bud before too much damage is done.”

  Cedric glanced at me. “If we could have a word in private, Sullivan?” he said. “In my study?”

  Obviously I was not wanted or needed. I knew that Daniel would share any information with me later so I said graciously, “I think I left my handkerchief upstairs. I’d better go and find it.” And I made my exit.

  The upstairs hallway was dark and silent. No servants in sight. I decided this was the perfect moment to go and look at Great-Aunt Clara. I wasn’t sure what I hoped or expected to see, but I felt it had to be done. I had often prided myself on my Celtic sixth sense when something was wrong. It had been nagging at me ever since I arrived in this house that something was not as it seemed, that something was being concealed or distorted. This was a house of secrets.

  I wasn’t sure which room was Aunt Clara’s. I had been told that Winnie and Cedric now had rooms at the far end of the other hallway. I tried to remember if I had passed a maid carrying a tray up to the great-aunt? There was nothing for it but a process of elimination. If I were spotted, I’d simply say that my mother-in-law had asked me to fetch something for her and I’d forgotten which one was her room. Perfectly safe. I moved from door to door, opening each carefully. The rooms beside ours were shrouded in dust sheets for the whole length of our hallway until I came to the one closest to the stairs, and that obviously belonged to Winnie’s father. It was in all ways a masculine room and a plaid woolen dressing gown lay neatly across the bottom of the bed, along with large leather slippers beneath it. A faint smell of pipe tobacco hung in the air.

  At the central landing I paused, glancing upward. Was it possible her room was up a second flight of stairs where the old nursery had been and where Ivy now slept? Surely they would not expect an aged woman to climb too many stairs?

  I crossed the central landing as silently as I could and started on the other side. The room closest to me was clearly my mother-in-law’s. I recognized the robe and slippers. The room next to hers had to belong to Aunt Florence. I should have guessed this neat and rather Spartan room belonged to her, even before I saw the book she had been reading on the bedside table.

  Another empty room after that. Then I opened the next door. The heavy curtains were drawn and the room shrouded in darkness. Through the gloom I could make out the bed with the sheet covering what had to be the corpse. I tiptoed into the room, wondering what I would say if I was seen at this moment. I crossed the room and opened the curtains a fraction to give me a little light. Then, holding my breath, I pulled back the shroud. The old lady lay, eyes closed, and looking so peaceful that one could have sworn she was sleeping. What was I doing here? I asked myself. Of course she had died of natural causes. She was almost ninety and her heart had simply stopped. That’s all there was to it. Her skin was so white it almost had a bluish tinge to it. I was about to re-cover her when on impulse I lifted one of her eyelids. I closed it instantly, and hastily pulled the sheet over her again. So my hunch had been right. I had noticed the small pink spots on her eyes. And I knew from past experience what those pink spots meant. It seemed that Great-Aunt Clara might have been suffocated.

  I stood in the silence of the room, considering this. Aunt Clara’s mind was wandering and she was starting to remember things that nobody else wanted talked about. And someone in the house had decided she had to be silenced before she said anything even more incriminating. But which of them: the forceful father? Cedric, whose family ancestry and name meant a lot to him? Aunt Florence, who might want to go to any lengths to protect Winnie, whom she had raised? Or Winnie herself? And then there was the newly arrived girl who claimed to be Charlotte, but who might be much older than she claimed. It was hard to believe it of any of them, but I thought I was experienced enough by now to recognize the signs of suffocation.

  I looked around the room, noting the small armchair placed in the window. The table beside it. And a pen and inkwell on the table, but no notepaper, no diary. Great-Aunt Clara had sat in her window a lot and observed the world outside. I went over to the window and realized that the angle of the chair would not have given her a view of the driveway and the front of the house, but the side, where the outbuildings and the stables were situated, and obviously where there was more activity. But she would also have had a view across the lawns where the black line of the stream cut across the whiteness. Was it possible that she had witnessed the child being taken and someone in the house had been afraid she would blurt out the truth?

  Twenty-two

  I came downstairs without anyone having seen me. Back in the gallery the girls and Winnie were still working at the jigsaw puzzle. Aunt Florence stood behind them, offering suggestions. My mother-in-law was amusing Liam, helping him to prop his new bear into the horse and wagon. Mr. Carmichael sat in an armchair by the fire, watching the proceedings. It was hard to tell from his expression what he was feeling or what his true thoughts were on the girl who now claimed to be his granddaughter. I noticed he had hardly said a word all morning. What was his place in this family home? I wondered. A man of action, a businessman who had made a fortune. He still looked hale and hearty, in peak form, and yet he now had adopted the role of elderly relative in the home of his daughter and son-in-law. Was this the price he had been prepared to pay for moving into a higher level of society?

  The girls had become frustrated and decided to leave the puzzle for a while. There was still no sign of Daniel or Cedric. I was dying of curiosity. I wanted to know what secrets Cedric might be sharing with Daniel in his study, and I was equally dying to share what I had discovered about Great-Aunt Clara. Coffee was wheeled in and an assortment of cookies with it. The younger members needed no urging to go and help themselves. Liam abandoned his horse and cart and sat chewing on a gingerbread man. It was all so ordinary, so civilized. I felt I was being stretched to the snapping point. I wanted to shout out, “Somebody tell me the truth, for God’s sake!” Instead I took a seat beside Aunt Florence and forced myself to make small talk.

  Daniel joined us and perched on the arm of my sofa as he drank a cup of coffee. I looked up at him and he smiled.

  “Did you and Cedric have a nice chat?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “We chatted. I wasn’t able to be much help.”

  “But did you learn anything?”

  “Not particularly.”

  I wondered if he was holding back from me, if Cedric had asked him to keep a piece of information to himself. I tried to wonder what that would be, but couldn’t come up with anything. I was glad when Liam finally became whiny and frustrated when the bear fell out of the cart at the edge of the carpet. I swept him up and suggested that I should feed him his lunch and then put him down for a nap before we had our big meal.

  “You can help me, Daniel,” I added.

  “What?” Mr. Carmichael roused himself. “You can’t expect a man to help with child-rearing, surely?”

  “My son is clearly overexcited in a strange house and his father always has a calming effect on him,” I said.

  Daniel shot me an interested look but didn’t argue. He put down his coffee cup and followed me out of the room.

  “What’s this about?” he asked. “Calming effect, indeed.”

  “I wanted to get you out of the room,” I said. “There’s something I want you to see for yourself before it’s too late.”

  I moved closer to him. “I want you to go up and take a look at Great-Aunt Clara. I just did and I think she might have been suffocated. There are pink spots on her eyes.”

  Daniel look
ed at me in horror. “Are you sure?”

  “I’d like you to confirm it. Go and see for yourself.”

  Daniel shifted uncomfortably, looking around before he spoke. “This is a very serious charge, Molly. We are guests in someone’s house. Why would anyone want to kill a harmless old woman? Not for her money, since she was living as a guest in the house of rich relatives. She was a spinster great-aunt. Of no value to anybody.”

  “I think it was because her mind was wandering. She was saying things out loud that the family had agreed to keep hidden, or at least one person wanted hidden. Or she may have seen something from her chair in the window. Either way she had become a threat.”

  Daniel glanced up the stairs now. “But I can’t just barge into her room. What if I am seen?”

  “Then you say that you were sent up by your mother to fetch something from her room and couldn’t remember which one it was.”

  “You are devious, you know that?” He actually smiled. “But I’m glad to see the old Molly coming to the surface again.”

  “Oh, and there’s one more thing you can do while you are there,” I said. “Close the drapes again. I think I left one half-open.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll do it while they are all occupied.”

  I went on with Liam through to the kitchen, where he enjoyed a good meal of mashed vegetables and gravy followed by stewed apples and custard. Then I carried him upstairs, and put him to bed. He was overstimulated and clingy, tossing around and saying, “No. No sleeping.”

  So I was more than glad when Bridie appeared. “I thought you might have trouble making him lie down,” she said. “I wanted to put away my cape anyway. Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “It is,” I agreed. “I’d have loved one like that when I was your age.”

  “I wonder if they wear such fancy things in Ireland.” Her voice was wistful.

  “No doubt in the cities they would. Perhaps your father will decide to settle you in Belfast or Dublin and you can show off your cape in church every Sunday.”