Cheat the Hangman
Gloria Ferris
CHEAT THE HANGMAN
Copyright © 2011 by Gloria Ferris. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. And any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
http://www.gloriaferrismysteries.blogspot.com
FIRST EDITION
Imajin Books
August 2011
ISBN: 978-1-926997-21-6
Cover designed by Sapphire Designs: http://www.designs.sapphiredreams.org
Praise for Gloria Ferris
“Gloria Ferris is a storyteller of the highest caliber. Sometimes witty, sometimes dark, Ferris hits all the right buttons in Cheat the Hangman, a refreshing and chilling paranormal mystery you won’t want to miss. Ten out of ten!” ―Jeff Bennington, author of Reunion
“Some families really do have skeletons in the closet. In Cheat the Hangman, Gloria Ferris offers Southern Ontario Gothic at its spine-chilling, provocative, hilarious best…In a dazzling blend of the bizarre and the domestic, horror and humour, nostalgia and intrigue, Ferris enthralls her readers in the most frightening and delightful ways.” —John Moss, author of Reluctant Dead
“Lyris Pembrooke has an ironic, hilarious way of looking at life, even in the direst circumstances. Her witty personality instantly captivates and endears the reader… satisfying and romantic. Cheat the Hangman is an excellent, enjoyable read!” ―Catherine Astolfo, author of the Emily Taylor Mysteries
“Ferris weaves an exciting story demonstrating her work is worth keeping an eye on. Cheat the Hangman is a non-stop guessing game...An intriguing and immensely entertaining read that blends paranormal with mystery and a touch of romance.” ―Midwest Book Review
“Sometimes you just want to sink into a really good mystery. Ferris has managed to blend the past with the present in this Ontario-grown who-dun-it, heading her cast of characters with heroine Lyris Pembrooke, amateur sleuth, armed with latent psychic abilities and a twisted sense of humour. Entertaining and well written, Cheat the Hangman, is a great first book. No wonder it was shortlisted for Canada’s Unhanged Arthur Ellis Award.” ―N.A.T. Grant, author of Race Without Rules
“Women’s intuition, spirit guides, our ancestors crying out to us—call it what you will, Cheat The Hangman says so much about both what we owe our ancestors and the burdens they pass down to us. A mysterious family death long ago sends Lyris on a search for the truth about those who came before her. A powerful, layered story told with clarity, pizzazz, and humour.” ―Eileen Schuh, author of Schrödinger’s Cat
For my special loves: Olyvia, Talia, Dante, Aimee, and Rowyn.
You have enriched my life beyond measure.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my sister/editor, Donna Warner, who not only read and edited this manuscript a dozen times, but encouraged me (sometimes quite loudly) when I faltered. She also came up with the perfect title for the book over a couple of coolers at the cottage.
Thanks also to my first readers: Lara, Alyssa, Pam, Desneiges, Frances, Cheryl, Vicki, Barb, Marlene, John, and Marilyn. Their suggestions and comments were constructive and thoughtful, and many were incorporated into Cheat the Hangman.
Special thanks to Cheryl Tardif of Imajin Books for making my dream a reality and for good-naturedly steering me through the unfamiliar waters leading to publication.
I must also express my appreciation to the judges of the 2009 Crime Writers of Canada Unhanged Arthur Award contest. It was truly an honour for Cheat the Hangman to be short-listed and I thank you all.
PROLOGUE
Hammersleigh House, Blackshore, Ontario
Saturday, July 24, 1943
A faint glow from campfires dotting the field beyond the house barely penetrated the windows of the tower room, but it was more than enough light for the task at hand―one that would condemn a soul to dwell in eternal fire.
With laboured breathing, the thin figure hurried across the floor, the wrapped bundle almost slipping through fingers numb with shock. A storage door set low in the wall opened to expose three wooden boxes. The figure selected the sturdiest one and the jumble of mouldy books inside was upended onto a nearby demilune table.
There is room now.
A voice outside the windows generated a cry of alarm from the figure.
They are already searching.
No, it was just a reveller’s radio―Vera Lynn was singing about nightingales.
Despair welled up, overcoming the fear of discovery. For a moment, a low keening sound echoed through the room. With hasty care, the figure set the bundle in the bottom of the box. A soft object was tucked inside and newspapers were placed on top. The box was returned to the darkest recess behind the door. The other two boxes followed.
Sobbing, the figure pulled a hammer and nails from a pocket and drove four long nails into the casing, one at each corner of the door. Table legs scraped along the wood planks until the half-moon-shaped table came to rest against the closet door. Several books fell to the floor and were kicked aside.
May God forgive me.
The tower room door closed with a soft click. Music drifted up through the windows, the notes filling the dark spaces in the tower room.
Then silence returned. The nightingales no longer sang in Berkeley Square.
CHAPTER 1
Hammersleigh House, Blackshore, Ontario
Saturday, July 9, 2011
The tower room was a sauna and even my toenails were sweating. I knew my hair had kinked into a tangle of witch locks as moisture poured from my hairline and dripped off my earlobes. The rest of me was just as sweat logged, but with Conklin due back any minute, I had no time to take a break in a cooler part of the house. I drank warm water from a plastic bottle and heaved on the window frame to open it.
Not happening. The wood had swelled in the heat and wouldn’t budge.
In the distance, I spotted a series of silver flashes that pierced the stand of pine trees lining the property. Squinting, I identified the flashes as the noon sun flaring off something metallic creeping down County Road 12 toward Hammersleigh House.
“Crap.”
Uncle Patrick’s classic Lincoln Town Car. Even driving his usual ten kilometres per hour under the speed limit, it would take Conklin just a few minutes to turn in at the iron gates and inch his way up the bricked drive to the parking area around back. After finding the perfect shady tree to park under and removing his shopping bags from the trunk, he would enter through the kitchen door and wonder what Madam was doing.
Regrettably, I was Madam.
Turning from the window, I picked up the smelly, one-eyed moose from the floor, planning to shift it to a nearby rattan settee. The moose head was heavy and the fur greasy with age. The single, glassy brown eye stared at me as the head slipped from my grasp and crashed to the floor.
“Goddammit it all to hell.”
One of the antler tips stabbed my left foot. Blood spurted from my big toe.
I hopped around the tower room, trying not to trip over glass cases full of long-dead butterflies and tiny stuffed songbirds. Out of breath, I collapsed next to a spotted leopard, grabbed my foot with both hands and looked around for something to staunch the bleeding. The only thing within reach was a roll of toilet paper I was using to clean the cloying dust off my fingers. Like grimy
snowflakes, wads of tissue dotted the bodies of the hapless creatures surrounding me. Some of the animals were now extinct, all because a gang of Victorian aristocrats thought it was great fun to sit on an African plain and bag trophies to adorn their walls back home.
Way to go, boys.
While Conklin was out paying bills, shopping and visiting his sister, I had spent the morning collecting mounted beasts and songbirds entombed in glass from every room in the house. I’d brought them to the tower room until I could find a permanent resting place where I would never have to look at them again. The antelope waiting downstairs was the last of the herd, but there was no time to fetch it now.
I could have asked Conklin where the attic was, except he’d have wanted to know why, tsk-tsked at my reason and called me “Madam” again. The way I saw it, he could disapprove all he wanted after the fact, but it would be a done deal. Some wise person―I forget who―once said that it was easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission. Worked for me.
I wrapped a strand of toilet paper around my toe and watched the thin tissue turn crimson. No time to wallow in self-pity. Conklin would be entering the house any second and I didn’t want him finding me in the blood-spattered tower room.
I was about to stand when I saw something under the table in front of me. I almost missed it. The demilune table was set against what looked like a solid wall while I was on my feet. Now, sitting on the floor, I was looking at a hobbit-sized door.
“What do we have here?”
I felt a strange tingle between my shoulder blades and shrugged it off. I leaned closer to the underside of the table.
Painted white like the rest of the room, the door was about three feet high. I couldn’t see a knob or handle and even the hinges were painted over, but bits of paint had flaked off to reveal the tarnished brass underneath. A nail had been hammered at an angle into each corner to keep the door from swinging open, but they had popped out an enticing quarter inch.
I forgot about my wounded foot and even about Conklin, who would be wondering why the antelope head was on the hall floor by the staircase and why the rest of the mounted heads and glass cases were missing. I forgot about everything except the anticipation of opening that mysterious door.
Over the years, I have been accused of having a short attention span, being too curious, having an overactive imagination and acting with disregard for the sensibilities of others. This last comment was the opinion of several of my older relatives, who in my view greatly exaggerated. I, Lyris Pembrooke, age thirty-eight and holding up well, was a well-balanced woman, with the standard mix of flaws and virtues.
Whichever characteristic was dominant that day, it was not within my power to walk away and mind my own business. I mean, think of it. A hidden door, nailed shut, set into the wall of a tower room in a century-old house. Who could resist the temptation to pry it open?
There could be ancient family papers or diaries behind that door. Maybe illicit love letters written by a frustrated Victorian nanny to the master of the house. Perhaps there were blueprints that pointed the way to a long-forgotten room and a treasure cache.
Shoving Bullwinkle aside and crawling over the leopard, I stood up. The blood had stopped pumping and if my gore-wrapped toe still gave me pain, I didn’t feel it.
The first thing I did was pull the table away from the door. The top was covered with a half-bald squirrel posed on a branch and some other creature, maybe a mink or a weasel. The table legs screeched as I dragged it away from the wall. A couple of new scratch marks appeared on the wooden floor. I had no chance in hell Conklin would miss those on his next scheduled tour of the house.
I reached for my hammer. Using the claw end, I pried out the nails holding the little door closed, breaking three fingernails and making a few dents in the wooden wall. When I was finished, bloody handprints stencilled the white paint around the door.
I moderated my excitement. The frugal Victorian builder had likely utilized the space where the tower room wall joined the main house by constructing a simple storage closet. I was convinced of this as the door creaked open on stiff hinges, revealing my treasure.
A trio of wooden boxes.
The space behind the door was not deep, maybe two and a half feet, and no rat or other live creature pounced at me. No mouse poop and just a few cobwebs, although clouds of dry, musty air hit me in the face, tickling my nose and making my eyes water.
I reached for the nearest box and uncovered a jumble of mismatched cups, plates and other tableware items. These were utilitarian pieces for everyday use, nothing to pique my interest. The second box contained several pre‑industrial age flat irons and a sinister instrument that might have been used to torture a woman’s hair into ringlets.
The third box, pushed to the back of the closet, looked more promising. It was larger than the others were and so blackened with age I couldn’t make out the lettering on the sides. It could have stored nails or other hardware in the pre-war years―one of the “Big Ones,” like World War II or even World War I.
I pulled it into the light.
Several layers of newspaper, yellowed and disintegrating, covered the top. A local paper―the Blackshore Oracle. I was disappointed to note the date was July 21, 1943, only sixty-eight years ago. I had hoped for something earlier than that.
I set the newspaper aside for later. I was curious to see if any family members were mentioned. Many Pembrookes of that generation, both men and women, served in the military during World War II.
There was a piece of thick fabric under the newspaper.
A box of clothes?
If this was junk, it should be thrown out. The closet space could be used for some of the more hideous stuffed animals, like the elephant foot umbrella stand that had stood in the great hall for the best part of a hundred years―until about an hour ago when I carried it up here.
I opened the cloth. At first, I felt no alarm, merely a mild curiosity. I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was seeing. Then, like a lightening bolt, understanding registered.
“No, no...”
I dropped the cloth and scrambled away.
Wave after wave of primal fear crashed over me, chilling my body, numbing my hands and feet and draining the blood from my brain.
Great-Aunt Clem always claimed I’d inherited her psychic abilities. I wish that talent had kicked in earlier, because if I had felt psychic that day, I would have shoved the age-blackened box back into the closet and walked―no, ran―away. Even a modest flair for precognition might have stopped me from pushing aside the crumbling cloth. But nothing had stopped me. As a result, I let loose a string of events that shaped my future and almost changed the past.
Alone in the tower room, and for the first time in my life, I fainted. Just before the darkness overwhelmed me, a long forgotten childhood memory stirred.
I knew what was in the box.
CHAPTER 2
When I opened my eyes, my head was in the hall and my feet were in the tower room, pressed against the box. I clawed at the carpet and managed to pull my legs out of the room. After several attempts, I got to my feet. It was like one of those nightmares where you are being chased by some ghastly thing, but every step takes forever.
With icy worms of dread crawling through my blood, I exerted great effort and was able to reach out and pull the door closed. I had to pry my stiff fingers from the crystal doorknob with my other hand.
With the door shut on the box, adrenaline at last flooded my bloodstream. I sped down the hallway, making no sound on the thick carpet runner and hearing the pulse beats that filled my head.
The trouble with adrenaline is you can’t turn it off with a switch. In my haste to get to the telephone, I reached the stairs, but couldn’t control my speed. I gained momentum on the way down. By the time I realized I was in trouble, it was too late. My feet missed a step near the bottom and I sailed into space.
And dropped like a stone to the marble floor of the great hall.
/> I stared up at the high ceiling of the great hall, afraid to move.
After a minute or two, I took stock. My arms and legs seemed okay. My ribs didn’t hurt. I slowed my breathing and concluded that the only pain was coming from my toe. Since I was conscious, I probably didn’t have a concussion.
Something smelled. I turned my head and flinched. I was nose to lips with the antelope―and it had really bad breath. I inched away.
The good news was the fall had snapped me out of shock. As a matter of fact, I was so clear-minded that everything seemed more real than usual. I decided to stay where I was until help arrived, even if it was Conklin.
Overhead, the Waterford chandelier sparked white beams of light and seemed to sway. That was odd. I saw the individual crystal drops, thousands of them.
“Boy, am I ever glad I don’t have to clean that.” My voice rang in my ears.
The jewel tones of the stained glass fanlight over the oak entrance doors reflected on the walls and ceiling, and mingled with the white lights of the chandelier. The colours were so bright, my eyes watered. Ruby, amethyst, jade, sapphire, amber. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope.
My stomach burbled and I had to keep swallowing saliva.
“Damn. I don’t feel so well.”
That’s all I needed. Conklin would be displeased if I upchucked in the great hall.
Hoping my stomach would settle, I closed my eyes and sought to think of something, anything other than my discovery upstairs. The ticking of the grandfather clock a few yards away resonated in my head. I switched to yoga breathing and focused my mind.
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