“He must be pleased to know that they have their own Parliament,” I commented.
“I’m sure he is.” Nicole led me to the long wall of windows and pointed past the balustraded terrace to an imposing mound of ivy rising from the neglected garden. “Josiah’s mausoleum faces north as well,” she said. “Although he died in Newcastle, he chose to be buried here. Jared wants to cut back the ivy, but I’d just as soon leave it. It doesn’t seem right to—” She broke off suddenly and turned away, a troubled expression on her face.
“Your great-grandfather’s been gone a long time,” I told her kindly. “You won’t disturb him.”
“That’s what Jared says.” Nicole drew a finger through the dust on a map table. “Would you mind awfully if I volunteered to help you?”
I’d hoped to have the library to myself, but sensed urgency behind the soft-spoken request, as if the young woman dreaded the long day stretching out before her.
“You’re more than welcome,” I said. “I’d enjoy your company.”
“I’ll be back directly, then, to light the fire.” Nicole flicked the dust from her fingertip and took a last look at the mausoleum before leaving the room.
I pushed up my sleeves and got to work.
The library ran straight across the back of the house. It was a high-ceilinged, rectangular room, with the fireplace at one end, the rolltop desk at the other. Deep-set Gothic arches framed the tall windows piercing the long north wall. A fine brass telescope occupied the center bay.
The floor was covered with a dozen Turkish carpets, their colors dulled by a half-century of dust. An assortment of tables, map cases, and reading chairs sat in islands about the room, and an unyielding leather sofa faced a pair of leather wing chairs across the hearth.
I stood for a moment beside the brass telescope, gazing past the ivy-colored mausoleum to the desolate sweep of moorland stretching northward. It seemed odd to me that a man who could have afforded the finest tomb in Newcastle had chosen instead to spend eternity in such chilly isolation. As I reached out to brush a cobweb from the stone sill a gust of wind rattled the window, the ivy fluttered like a thousand beckoning fingers, and I fell back a step, my flesh crawling.
I tried to draw the heavy drapes, but they hung, rotting, on warped poles, so I lit the lamps instead, all the while chiding myself for being such a ninny. I’d get no work done if I kept jumping at shadows.
Josiah’s cold gaze seemed to follow me as I approached the roll top desk. His expression was so forbidding that I was tempted to turn the portrait to the wall. I doubted that Nicole would have approved, however—she seemed to have a soft spot for the old devil—so I kept my head down, grabbed a notebook and a pen, and dragged the wheeled steps as far away from the portrait as possible.
I started with the topmost shelf in the corner nearest the study doors, selecting books at random and making notes. As I worked my way along the shelves, I could feel Josiah watching me.
I was halfway through the first section of shelves when the study doors screeched and Nicole came through, carrying a flashlight, a cloth sack filled with rags, and a coal scuttle.
“The Hatches are scandalized,” she announced. “I’m not supposed to do housework.”
“Jared’s orders?” I guessed, from my perch on the library steps.
“He’s terribly old-fashioned,” Nicole admitted, “but that’s why I fell in love with him. He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met, and he knows so much about so many things, not just Victoriana, but life as well…” As she chirruped on about her husband’s manifold charms, she bustled about the room, lighting a fire, handing rags up to me, and winding the silver-and-ebony clock that sat upon the mantelpiece. “Now,” she said, coming to a standstill at the foot of the wheeled steps, “what would you like me to do?”
I put her to work recording titles on the lower shelves and settled back to my private exploration, soothed by the fire’s companionable flicker and the steady ticking of the ebony clock. I was so absorbed in my work that I nearly dropped my pen when Nicole spoke.
“How long have you been married?” she asked, out of the blue.
“Five years,” I replied, gripping the pen firmly. “How about you?”
“Three months.” She made a mark in her notebook before asking, “Do you have children?”
“Two,” I said. “Twin boys.”
“Twins.” Nicole beamed up at me. “How splendid.”
I wondered how long it had been since she’d indulged in a simple round of girltalk. The women in the village weren’t likely to come calling and Mrs. Hatch didn’t seem very chatty. The poor kid was probably starved for female companionship. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of spying on Nicole, but I didn’t mind lending her a sympathetic ear.
“Are you enjoying married life?” I asked, resting my notebook on my knees.
“It’s wonderful.” She lowered her gaze to her notebook before adding shyly, “Though I somehow expected it to be more… tactile.”
“Tactile?” I repeated, hoping for clarification.
“Yes. Well. You know.” Color suffused Nicole’s face. “Jared says that a relationship should be allowed to ripen before it becomes, um…”
“Oh,” I said, clarification having arrived. “Tactile.” I could scarcely conceal my amazement. “You mean, you haven’t…?”
“Not once,” she said softly.
Well, I thought, that would explain the strained look in her eyes.
“I’m sure he’s right,” Nicole added quickly. “It’s important to be friends, to get to know one another properly before allowing intimacy to blossom.”
I dwelt for a moment on my first three, extremely tactile months with Bill before realizing, with a queer twist of dismay, that the face I’d conjured wasn’t Bill’s, but Adam’s.
“It’s unconventional, of course,” Nicole went on, “but Jared’s never claimed to be conventional. Besides, he’s had so much to do, what with furnishing Wyrdhurst and traveling to Newcastle. He’s not a young man, you know. By the end of the day, he’s exhausted.”
I banished Adam’s image from my mind and focused on the present conversation. “How often does your husband go to Newcastle?”
“Once a month,” she answered. “When he’s gone…” She gazed pensively toward the windows, then came to the foot of the wheeled steps, where she looked up at me with round, solemn eyes. She was about to speak when a nerve-jangling screech intervened.
Mrs. Hatch came through the study doors.
“Lunch,” Nicole said. “And, Mrs. Hatch, would you please ask Hatch to do something about those doors?”
We had an informal meal of soup and sandwiches in the dining room. While we ate, Nicole told me that she was an orphan.
“I was an infant when my parents died and Uncle Dickie became my legal guardian,” she said. “Uncle Dickie’s the only father I’ve ever known. I couldn’t have asked for a better one.”
I attempted to turn the conversation back to where we’d left it in the library, but Nicole no longer wished to discuss what happened when Jared went to Newcastle. I didn’t mind. She was so lonely, so unhappy, and so very young that I knew she’d confide in me sooner or later.
After the meal, she excused herself from library duty, saying she had telephone calls to make. I returned to my perch on the steps and carried on alone.
Two hours later, I was exhausted, filthy, and thoroughly dispirited. Josiah Byrd’s taste in reading matter had evidently tended toward the theological. The fine morocco bindings, so enticing from a distance, concealed contents that were as dry as dust, and about as valuable. There simply wasn’t much demand for collections of hellfire sermons and outdated Old Testament commentaries. If the rest of the books in the library proved to be as riveting as those shelved on the east wall, it would be a very long week indeed.
I was sitting on the bottom step, bemoaning the flagrant misuse of fine leather, when a gleam of color caught my eye, a sliver of orange beckoning like
a rainbow in an arid desert. I got up to investigate.
At the far end of the bottom shelf, next to the rolltop desk, sat a slim clothbound volume that seemed to belong in another library entirely. I pulled it from the shelf and all but ran with it to the nearest lamp, delighted by my find.
“Shuttleworth’s Birds,” I whispered, caressing the faded cover. The child’s guide to common English birds wasn’t terribly rare or valuable, but it was charming, filled with painstakingly accurate watercolors and lighthearted, whimsical verse. The title page identified it as a first edition, published in 1910, only four years before the author had been killed in the Great War—the Great European War, as Adam had called it.
I spied an inscription on the flyleaf, written in a youthful hand. It was dated October 31, 1910. Halloween, I mused, pleased by the coincidence: All Hallow’s Eve was only six days away.
“To Claire on her twelfth birthday,” I read aloud, “in fond remembrance of sunny mornings on the moors. Edward.”
Lucky Claire and Edward, I thought, gazing out at the dreary garden. I’d have given a lot for a single sunny morning on the moors, and a friend to share it with.
I looked back at the inscription, wondering why I assumed that Edward was Claire’s friend. He might have been a brother, a cousin, an uncle. Whoever he was, he’d taken pains with the inscription, centering it on the flyleaf, disciplining his sprawling scrawl. It seemed to me that Claire had been written with especial care.
Who was she? I wondered, closing the book. Nicole seemed well versed in her family’s history. Would she know about a girl named Claire who’d been born on Halloween?
I started for the study doors, but before I’d taken half a step, a faint creak sent a shiver down my spine. Startled, I spun around, holding Claire’s book before me like a shield, half expecting to do battle with Josiah’s stern-faced ghost.
But there was no spectral figure hovering behind me. The creak had a wholly mundane source: a section of bookcase beside the rolltop desk had swung away from the wall, leaving a dark void in its place.
“A secret door,” I said wryly. “I should have guessed.”
Hidden doors and staircases were as common as fine china in grand houses like Wyrdhurst. Sometimes they were used by servants, sometimes by family members—I’d never run into one yet that was used by a ghost.
How long had it been, I wondered, since the door had last swung open? More interesting: where did it lead?
I gave the theological tomes a jaundiced glance, brushed the cobwebs from my hair, and decided to explore.
CHAPTER
7
The door opened on a hollow space cut into the stone wall. The air inside was frigid, the darkness almost palpable. I shivered, wrapped my arms around Claire’s book, and switched on the flashlight Nicole had given me. Its narrow beam revealed a steep flight of stone stairs rising into the gloom.
“Hello?” I called. There was no echo. The thick walls seemed to absorb sound as well as light.
I strained my ears for a reply. When none came, I glanced half-longingly at the fire burning cheerfully at the far end of the room, and started up.
With every step, the air grew colder and the darkness deepened. The bitter chill lanced through my lungs and soon my heart was pounding hard, as if I’d run a mile. The effort made my head swim and I couldn’t focus clearly. The walls seemed to close in on me, and a surge of panic gripped me when the hidden door creaked again, as if pushed by an unseen hand.
Then I heard another sound, a soft, deep-throated chuckle that seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere. Claire’s book slipped from my grasp and the flashlight juddered wildly as the evil, insane laughter filled the air. I turned, arms flailing, terrified, and saw hovering in the darkness, not ten inches from my face, a pair of glowing eyes, bright as young suns, that stared, unblinking, into mine. I cried out, stumbled backward in sheer horror, fell, and remembered nothing more.
“There’s no sign of injury, Mrs. Hollander. She must have fainted. Exhaustion, no doubt. Her hands are like ice.”
“I’ll fetch another blanket.”
“Wait. I think she’s coming round.”
Adam’s face swam slowly into focus, his ebony curls backlit by dancing flames. When I opened my eyes, he murmured, “We really must stop meeting like this.”
I managed a weak smile. “Where… ?”
“The sofa in the library,” he said. “I didn’t want to move you further until I was certain you weren’t injured.”
“We found you on the staircase in the wall.” Nicole peered at me over Adam’s shoulder. “The door closed after Mr. Chase brought you out, and we haven’t been able to reopen it. How does it work?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just… opened.”
Nicole eyed the secret door thoughtfully. “I had no idea it was there. I don’t think it’s on the floor plans.” She looked at me. “I didn’t know where you’d gone, but Mr. Chase spotted the book you’d left to hold the door ajar.”
I blinked, confused by Nicole’s words, and Adam interceded on my behalf.
“Hot cocoa, please, Mrs. Hollander. And those extra blankets, if you will.”
“Of course,” she said, and hurried out of the room.
“Don’t need blankets,” I muttered, sitting up. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“That’s what you said this morning,” Adam reminded me. He moved aside so that I could swing my feet to the floor, and I got my first good look at him.
He was wearing a black fleece pullover over skintight cycling pants, and he seemed to be wet through. Raindrops sparkled like diamonds in his dark hair, his pullover had damp patches, and his pants and running shoes were streaked with mud.
“I should take you to task for overexerting yourself,” he said sternly. “But you’ve had a hard enough lesson as it is. If you hadn’t propped the door open—”
“I didn’t prop the door open,” I broke in. “I had a book with me, Adam, and I dropped it when I fainted, but I didn’t use it as a doorstop.”
“Then the book must have fallen where it did by accident.” He pulled the cashmere blanket from my lap and wrapped it around my shoulders. “Fate certainly seems to be on your side. It’s a miracle that you didn’t crack your skull. Those stone steps weren’t designed for soft landings.” He narrowed his eyes. “I warned you not to overdo.”
“I know,” I conceded, “but overdoing seems to be my fatal flaw. Bill never tires of reminding me…” I winced as a sharp pain lanced through my head.
“Lori?”said Adam. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, and decided then and there to say nothing more about what had happened on the hidden staircase. If I started babbling about weird laughter and glowing eyes, Adam would whisk me off to the hospital to have my head examined. “Why are you here, anyway? And why are you so wet?”
Instead of answering directly, Adam reached over the arm of the sofa to retrieve a bicycle helmet from the end table nearest the fire. He cradled the sleek plastic dome against his chest, waggled his eyebrows, and raised his free hand with a flourish, asking, “Do you believe in magic?”
I laughed, taken by surprise. “Sure,” I said.
“Abracadabra,” he intoned, and pulled a rabbit from his helmet.
“Reginald!” I seized my pink flannel bunny and hugged him to me. “Oh, Adam, you are a magician. What on earth have you been up to?”
“You sounded so desolate when you mentioned the little fellow that I simply had to rescue him.” Adam tossed his helmet aside. “Your cell phone was smashed to bits, I’m afraid, but your suitcase and shoulder bag should be in your room by now.”
“How did you get them?” I eyed his bicycle helmet. “And how did you get them here?”
“I cycled to Mr. Garnett’s garage to pick up my car, chucked the bike in the back, did a bit of reconnoitering, spotted the Rover, and retrieved those items I thought you might find useful.”
His nonch
alance was utterly disarming. I reached up to brush the raindrops from his curls.
“Climbed up and down the mountain just like that, huh?” I wagged a dampened finger at him. “Captain Manning won’t be pleased with you.”
“So long as you are.” Adam turned to stretch his hands out to the fire.
“I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” While Adam’s back was turned, I subjected Reginald to a careful inspection and found, to my great relief, that he’d escaped the wreck unscathed. “Oh, Reg,” I murmured, “you just wait till you meet Teddy.”
Adam stiffened, his hands still reaching toward the flames, but when he swung around to face me, he was smiling. “Teddy?” he said. “Do I have a rival?”
I grinned. “No, but Reginald might. Teddy’s proper name is Major Ted, and he’s a very dashing, military sort of teddy bear. I’ve nearly lost my heart to him.”
“How did you meet?” Adam inquired.
“Nicole left him in my room to keep me company,” I replied. “He’s right up your alley, Adam. His uniform is vintage World War I.”
“I hope you’ll introduce him to me.” Adam leaned back against the sofa’s arm and favored me with a speculative gaze, turning his head this way and that before reaching out to wipe a dusty smudge from my chin. “Please forgive me for saying so, Lori, but you look terrible. Why are you down here, working, when you should be in bed?”
I grimaced. “Because I’d rather sleep in the fishing hut than in the room Josiah’s given me. It’s absolutely—”
“Josiah?” Adam interrupted. “Surely you mean Jared.”
“Slip of the tongue,” I said.
“Fatigue,” Adam shot back. He got to his feet. “I prescribe an ample dose of bed rest, to be taken immediately. I really should be going anyway.”
“Please don’t go yet.” Almost without thinking, I reached for his hand and gripped it tightly.
“No need to panic, Lori. I won’t go if you don’t want me to.” He sandwiched my hand between both of his and sat again, much closer than before.
[Aunt Dimity 06] - Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil Page 5
