Emily stared in confusion at the mountain of boxes. “Is all of this to go?”
“Well, it can’t stay here.” The housekeeper turned and looked at Emily askance. “I told the lad at the charity shop, I couldn’t handle bringing it all down to him. He assured me you guys could handle it.”
“Of course.” Emily gave a determined nod and stepped into the airless room. “I’ll just need to make a few more trips than I thought.” She grabbed hold of the box nearest her and lifted. It weighed ten kilos or more and her back demanded she immediately drop it back onto the floor. “I don’t suppose you have a trolley or something, do you?”
“How old are you, love?”
“Fifty-two. I’ll be fine once I get started, I’m sure.”
The woman didn’t answer, just snorted. “Hang on a minute.” She walked away, her rubber soles squeaking on the polished floorboards. Emily’s heart pounded in her chest, though whether from the short exertion or the strange atmosphere of the house, she couldn’t decide.
At the base of the main staircase, the woman stopped and yelled, “Gregory, get down here. We need a hand moving your mum’s boxes.”
“Oh, are you sure?” Emily stepped out of the room, picking at the loose skin of her throat. “I don’t mean to disturb—”
“He does nothing else. About time we got him to lend a hand doing something useful.” The housekeeper gave a sniff and moved up one step. “Gregory! I said to get down here. I’m not going to stand here yelling all day long.”
A door slammed up above and the woman turned, a satisfied smile on her face. “I’ll stick around to direct operations if you don’t mind. Otherwise, the lad’ll just slink off back into his bedroom to play on his console. Lazy as sin, he is.”
“I suppose if his mother’s just—”
“Always been that way,” the woman said, sweeping past Emily to stand at the doorway to the storage room. “From the moment he was born. Couldn’t even be bothered to cry out when he was hungry. Just waited around until someone remembered to check.”
A man in his early twenties slunk down the staircase, his feet barely making a sound. The housekeeper gave an exasperated sigh. “Put your shoes on, Gregory. Her car’s not parked inside the house.”
Emily just had time enough to glimpse a flapping blond fringe above bloodshot hazel eyes, then the lad turned and began the laborious task of walking back upstairs.
“He’ll be an age. You want a cup of tea while you’re waiting?”
The woman didn’t stay long enough for her to answer, trotting off toward a room on the other side of the house instead. After a moment of hesitation, Emily followed along, shooting a glance up the massive staircase.
“My name’s Hilda Mainstrop,” the housekeeper said as Emily took a seat in the light and airy room. Judging from the spacious windows, the kitchen was a late addition to the house. A suspended pot rack hanging above the marble-top bench offset the high ceiling.
“I’m Emily Curtis.”
“You new in town?”
Emily nodded. “I arrived back a few weeks ago. My parents lived here for a while when I was younger, but I haven’t been back since I was a teen.”
“Happens a lot around here,” Hilda mused. “The young ones go off to study for their degrees and never come back. Only the ones too lazy to do that stick around, and who wants that?”
Not knowing what the correct answer was, Emily stayed silent. She presumed the speech was another dig at the young man upstairs but, without knowing him personally, it felt rude to join in the attack on his character.
“Have you been working for the Pettigrew’s a long time?” she asked instead, already knowing the answer courtesy of Pete.
“Since I was in my early forties.” Hilda lifted the kettle, ready to pour the hot water over the tea leaves, then stopped. Her face blanked of expression as she stared out into the side garden.
“It must be nice to have a career with the same employer all that time.” Emily shifted on her seat, remembering her own role as an accountant. She’d joined the firm straight out of university, working her way up to become a managing partner. Now she couldn’t even recognise numbers, let alone tally them.
Hilda shook herself and gave another derisive snort. “It’s not like I have a choice. Work’s short around here unless you’re into farming. I suppose I was lucky to get a job doing the same stuff my husband always expected me to do for free, but it rarely feels like it.”
“But Mrs Pettigrew treated you well?”
“Hardly.” The housekeeper began wiping down the countertop with furious strokes. “She didn’t even like me to take sick days, and they’re government regulated. A few months ago, I got terrible vertigo and she just said I could sit on a chair to clean.”
Emily clenched her hands together, feeling out of kilter. “I guess at our age, at least retirement’s just around the corner.”
Although she presented the information as though it was a relief, Emily couldn’t stand the thought of not having a job. Even with her brain injury, the Protestant work ethic that had prodded her conscience out of bed since she her first day of work was still on duty.
Again, Hilda shook her head. “Some of us can’t afford to do that. The superannuation will come in handy on top of my income but giving up work’s a long sight further off than that.”
Emily decided keeping her mouth shut might be a better choice. In a minute, Hilda placed a cup of tea in her hand and that ended her compulsive need to converse.
“What’re you doing in here?” Gregory slouched against the door to the kitchen, looking aggrieved. “I thought you wanted to move boxes.”
“It’ll be a great help,” Emily gushed, getting in her thanks before the evil twinkle in Hilda’s eye could unleash a tirade. “I’m sorry about your mum.”
“She wasn’t my mum.”
“Gregory! Cynthia looked after you for the past fifteen years. How dare you say such a thing?”
“It’s the truth.” Gregory jerked his head back to flick the fringe out of his eyes. “My real mum’s been dead so long I can barely remember her.” He stared with open curiosity at Emily, his eyes tracing the path of her scar along her forehead and down the side of her face.
She clenched hold of her teacup, refusing the urge to raise her hand up to shield the damage. If the teenager wanted to be rude and stare, let him. It was long past time she stopped feeling embarrassed by the twisting line of healing tissue.
“How did Mrs Pettigrew die?” she asked, then bit her lip hard. None of your business, she reprimanded herself before anyone else got the chance.
But Gregory didn’t appear bothered by the question. Instead, his eyes lit up with delight. “Head injury,” he said, licking his lips after the statement. “Her skull just burst open like a ripe tomato.”
“Get into the storeroom,” Hilda exploded, her cheeks bursting into flame. She slammed her cup into the saucer with such force it cracked. “Try helping someone out for once in your life.”
She pulled a tea towel from the oven handle, twisting it around her hand. The young man’s eyes widened, and he backed out of the room. Emily stood and followed him a moment later, not wanting to stay in the same place as such fury.
“My car’s parked out by the creek,” she said as she walked into the storeroom. “I’ll carry a box and lead the way.”
“Don’t be silly.” Gregory’s face was pale apart from a blotch of colour high on each cheek. “The last thing I need is that old witch coming in here raging because you strained your back lifting something. Just hold the doors open and I’ll sort out the rest.”
She did as he asked, holding the entrance open until he’d passed through with two boxes stacked on top of each other. Just watching the muscles on the young man’s arms working made Emily glad she’d left the job to him.
Once he was clear of the front door, she hurried ahead—Ignoring the gnashing teeth in her hip to get to the car before Gregory did. With a double beep, the r
ear unlocked, and Emily lifted the hatchback door.
The boxes didn’t fit at first, but the boy manhandled them, crushing the tops and sides until the door could slam down and click.
“I hope there’s nothing too expensive in there,” she said with a smile, but Gregory just scowled back at her.
She opened the passenger side door, where they might fit another box and the boy jerked back, his eyes widening. While Emily stared on in confusion, he opened his mouth and screamed.
Chapter Three
“I’m so sorry,” Emily said as Hilda helped her move Gregory to a chair. The boy’s weight had almost collapsed her on the trip back from the car and his legs folded as soon as his rear end perched above the seat. “I forgot all about the painting.”
“The silly boy’s just putting on a show.” Hilda’s mouth twisted into a sneer. She clicked her fingers underneath Gregory’s nose. “Come on, lad. Wakey-wakey.”
He roused enough to push her hand away, but Emily saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. For all his play-act at not caring earlier, it appeared his stepmother’s death had affected him. If the circumstances had been different, she’d have been relieved.
“Why d'you bring that horrid thing back here, anyway?”
Emily turned to Hilda with a gasp of surprise. “It’s a lovely painting. I thought someone might’ve put it in the chest by mistake.” She chewed her lip as the housekeeper stared back at her impassively. “Often people like to hold onto portraits as a reminder.”
“Not that one.” Hilda sounded adamant. “I swear, the eyes follow you around the room. It used to be up in the master’s study and every month I went in there to dust, she’d stare at me like I was doing something wrong.”
“She looked sad to me,” Emily said, remembering the hint of despair trapped in the oil painting’s eyes. “Mrs Pettigrew was a beautiful woman.”
“To look at, maybe.”
Gregory gave a gasp and Emily stepped forward, hand out to steady him. He shook his head, closing his eyes. “When we read Dorian Gray at school, I tried to get into Dad’s study for a week to see if the same held true for Cynthia.”
“Don’t call her that.” Hilda put her hands on her hips. “Show some respect.”
“She’s dead. She doesn’t need my respect.” Gregory met the elder woman’s eyes for a moment, then his fell to the floor. “Fine. I thought my stepmother’s painting would be all haggard and ugly.”
“I didn’t mean to startle anyone.” Emily’s hands wrung together no matter how much she tried to force them to her sides. “I just needed to verify it hadn’t gone out by mistake.”
“Don’t you worry.” Hilda put a hand on Emily’s shoulder. “You did a nice thing, bringing it down here to check. It’s not your fault the younger generation is made of jelly. How about you take the loaded boxes back to the shop and I’ll see if I can scare up Abraham Greening to give you a hand instead?”
At Emily’s blank look she explained, “He’s the gardener.”
“That’d be lovely.” Emily backed up to the door and had to resist the urge to run as soon as she stepped outside the house. The sun’s rays already had power behind them, and she wondered how hot the loft at the charity shop would get by the end of the day.
“I can get the next load if you like,” Pete offered when Emily recounted her morning. “If you stay here and watch the till…”
He trailed off, presumably remembering she couldn’t handle that task, and Emily said, “I’m happy to go back. I was just making idle chit-chat. The whole family struck me as odd, but it’s no bother.”
“We see all sorts in here,” Pete said with a gap-toothed smile. “And you never can tell how death will affect someone. Chances are if you went back in a few weeks, they’d be different.”
“I suppose so.” Emily felt her lip turning down at the corners and forced a smile back into place. “Anyway, the housekeeper said the gardener would help out with the next load so at least it won’t be someone so close.”
When she pulled up next to the house this time, a stack of boxes sat on the curb, ready to go. Emily maneuvered them into the back of the car, not seeing anyone. With the new load on board, she drove back to the shop and unpacked.
By the time she got the new boxes upstairs, Emily had forgotten the ache in her hip. A shrieking pain in her shoulders had overtaken it.
Another journey, there and back, and the dream of a hot bath took up the forefront of her mind. The next round-trip, the gardener was standing on the curbside next to the load, twisting a leather hat in his hands. He was a lot younger than she’d expected, maybe mid-thirties but no older. As her eyes swept across his wide-set eyes and strong jaw, she registered he was handsome, too.
“Is this the last of them?” Emily asked, pulling herself out of the car by the roof handle. She gritted her teeth to stop limping as she walked over to him. “There’s been quite a lot.”
“Yeah. That’s all of them, now.”
He stood still, not moving to help as Emily bent to heft up the box while fumbling the hatch open. As the weight inside the carton moved, it slipped out of her grip. The gardener leapt forward to catch it a moment before it fell to the ground.
“Whoopsie-daisy. I’ll load that into the back if you like.” He pushed in the first and turned around to hook the second up with one arm, making Emily feel even more useless.
“I just wanted to catch you before you went,” he said, stepping back to the safety of the curb again. “See, I wanted to ask you to take good care of her things. She put a lot of effort into collecting all those antiques, you know.”
“Is there anything you wanted to grab out of here before I go?” Emily felt for the man who looked utterly bereft.
He scratched the back of his neck as he stared over his shoulder at the house. “Nah. I’d better be getting back to it. I wanted to check the ladyship’s possessions were going to a good home.”
The ladyship?
“I’ll take good care while they’re in the shop and I’m sure whoever ends up with them will treasure the items.”
“Mm.” The man shook himself, then popped the twisted hat on his head. “That’s good to hear. She was a special lady, Mrs Pettigrew. Very special, indeed.”
Emily smiled and held onto the car door for support, uncertain what else she could say. After an awkward silence, the gardener nodded as though she’d just said a final goodbye. “I’ll be seeing you, then.”
He turned and crunched up the gravel driveway, splitting off the main path to walk around the back of the house, and out of sight.
If Emily’s mother had lower standards when raising her, she would have cursed under her breath as she pulled up outside the local rehabilitation centre.
Although every muscle in her body informed her loud and clear she’d worked out more than enough for one day, Emily still forced herself to walk into the session. It had taken her too long to find the physio to just blow off an appointment due to being tired.
“You seem stiffer than last week,” Joanne Ardue commented as they worked through the routine. She smelled of musk and spice, like the Tabac deodorant one of Emily’s beaus had used a long time ago. A very long time ago. “Has something happened?”
“I started my new job,” Emily admitted after a short inner tussle. She lifted a medicine ball, the piece of equipment she hated most in the gym. Already, her arms trembled, and the ball eased too far to her left side. She squatted, her knees popping with such an alarming crack they sounded like they’d broken clean in two.
“Doing what? Manual labour?” Joanne frowned while Emily tried to remember which muscles would get her back to a standing position.
“I just lifted a few boxes.”
“Okay. Take my hand.”
Emily ignored the offer for a moment, then sighed and grabbed hold. Joanne lifted her to her feet.
“I’ve warned you before about overtaxing yourself. It might seem like the quickest way to return to your full physical fitness,
but it’s far more likely you’ll end up doing permanent damage.”
“Yes, Miss.” Emily hung her head, biting onto her lower lip to stop the sudden well of rage that bubbled up inside her. This girl was half her age, maybe not even that. To think she had the temerity to lecture a woman of years.
“And don’t pull that passive-aggressive nonsense, either,” Joanne continued with a frown. “You’re better than that. Owning your recovery means owning your mistakes as well.”
The rage seeped away again as soon as it had come. “I’m sorry.” Emily raised a hand to comb her hair back from her eyes and was appalled at how much it shook. She lowered it to her side again, hiding the evidence. “This is just turning into a terrible day.”
But Joanne didn’t accept the excuse. Her bull-headedness had been part of the reason Emily chose her. “Next time, stop it becoming a bad day by asking for help when you’re asked to do something outside your physical comfort zone. It’s okay to push yourself in here, with my supervision, but do it out in the real world and it could turn nasty.”
Emily accepted the reprimand with a nod. “It was my first day, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’ll ask for help in the future.”
The lie, meant to appease Joanne, worked better on herself.
“How is it?” the physio asked. “Being back at work?”
“It’s nice to be around people again. Even though I see you every week and the doctor once a month, I miss having people in my life. I thought about getting a pet to help with the loneliness, but my neurologist said it would be too much responsibility.”
Joanne smiled. “Did he tell you to start off with a plant and work your way up from there?”
Emily frowned and shook her head. “No. Why? Is that something you recommend?”
“It’s the advice given to people in addiction recovery to avoid stressing themselves out with too much too quickly.”
“I’m not an addict!” Emily drew back, appalled.
“Not saying you were, just that the advice might be sensible for you too. Start off small and work your way up. It’s easier to remember to water a plant once a week than feed and water a pet every single day.”
Charity Shop Haunted Mysteries Page 2
