My Lady Caroline

by Jill Jones

  Instead, there was a raggedy linoleum floor, a table that leaned slightly to one side (too much table tapping?), and a middle-aged woman dressed in beige polyester pants and a man’s long-sleeved shirt.

  “Is it just the two of you?” the woman asked, obviously disappointed.

  “Yes. But we’re willing to pay…” Nicki began, but the woman shook her head.

  “It’s not the money, hon. You see, séances work better if there are more people. Brings in more spirits, you see.”

  “Oh.”

  “I had enough time to run up to the 7-Eleven and get some flowers, though,” she said, arranging a red rose and a pink carnation in a tall glass vase. “The spirits like flowers.” She gestured toward the motley arrangement of old chairs and sofas. “Sit down. Make yourselves comfy. We’ll get started in a minute.”

  Alison looked to see which seat was the least grimy and chose an armchair directly in the middle of the room. With a grimace, she sat down, shooting a disparaging glance at Nicki, who sat next to her. She’d have to think of a way to get even.

  At least the psychic, whose name was Mary, lit some frankincense. So far, it was the only thing that fulfilled Alison’s expectations of what might happen at a séance. Before proceeding further, Mary pulled out a small, ancient-looking battery operated cassette tape recorder and punched the buttons again and again, testing-one-two-three. “Sometimes we can get them on tape, you know,” she said, looking up with a gleam in her eye.

  “Them?” Alison asked.

  “The spirits. They can speak. But only some people, like me, can hear them, and it makes other people, the ones who can’t, not believe in them. So I’ve been experimenting, trying to catch spirit voices on tape. I’ve done it, too!”

  Alison cocked her head to one side. “But when you play the tapes, don’t people believe you’ve made them up?”

  Mary only looked at her, then pressed the “record” button. “Let’s get started.” She lit two white candles and turned off the bare overhead light. “Let us pray. Oh, Spirit, that greater Spirit than us all, be with us and protect us tonight as we make contact with our loved ones who have passed Beyond. Bring to us those we need to hear from, and open our hearts and minds to receive the messages we need to hear. Amen.”

  Mary took a seat in an old rocker opposite Alison and Nicki. “Now, girls, if you will, give me something personal, something with your vibrations in it, like a piece of jewelry or clothing you wear often.”

  Like my diamond pendant…? Alison thought cynically. Now it was sounding more like the séance she had expected. Instead, she removed a small gold stud earring and placed it in the psychic’s upturned palm. But without batting an eye, Nicki took off her sapphire and diamond dinner ring and gave it to the woman. Alison rolled her eyes behind closed lids.

  Mary dealt with sapphires and diamonds first, laying Alison’s earring on the table. “You come from a large family,” she began. “Many still living. Many are in Spirit. I think not all have died easily.”

  Alison glanced at Nicki and was surprised to see her fidget uneasily. “Uh, I don’t know…”

  “Do you want to know?” the psychic asked with surprising bluntness.

  But before Nicki could answer, Mary’s body stiffened, and she began to sway from side to side. Alarmed, Alison wondered if she was having a heart attack or something. And then she spoke in a voice totally unlike that they’d just heard.

  “I thought you would never come,” she chided in a high, childish voice, softened with a slight lisp and shadowed by an English accent. “I have been waiting long for you.” She looked directly at Alison. “You will help me find them.”

  Alison and Nicki looked at each other, startled. Alison smirked at the farce, but shrugged and decided to play along. At least, theatrically speaking, they might get their money’s worth out of this.

  “Find what?”

  “The memoirs,” she replied softly. “And the letters he wrote me.” And then Mary leaned back and emitted a sorrowful keening howl, an eerie sound which stiffened the downy hair on Alison’s arms. “He loved me,” she cried. “He did! I have evidence that his heart was mine!”

  Alison’s heart pounded. She leaned forward, intrigued. Could this be a message from her own father, somehow distorted through the psychic medium? Was he trying to tell her from the spirit world what he’d never said in the flesh? “Who loved you?” she asked hopefully.

  There was a long hesitation, then, “That bastard Byron.”

  It wasn’t at all what either spectator had thought they’d hear in this particular room in this particular part of the world. This woman ought to be on stage, Alison thought, scowling, more than a little abashed at her momentary expectation that this was a message from her deceased father.

  “Who’s Byron?” Nicki asked, watching the woman curiously.

  But Mary, or whoever-it-was, chose to ignore her question. Slowly, dreamily, she rose from the chair and went to the vase on the table. “She is a wonderful woman, is she not?” the voice continued. “She always places flowers here for me.” She touched the petals gently. “A rose and a carnation. Just as Lord Byron sent to me. He said I loved all that was new and rare for a moment.” A girlish laugh was followed by an extended sigh. “I have waited long for you to come,” she said at last, and turned to again look directly at Alison.

  “Me?”

  “You are the one who can help me. Now. In this time.”

  “I…I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Mary, or whoever she was at the moment, plopped like a sullen schoolgirl back into the rocking chair. “Nobody ever understands,” she pouted. “I have tried in the most serious manner, but I cannot get anybody to understand…”

  Something in the woman’s plaintive lament struck a chord in Alison. No one had ever understood her either.

  “I’ll try,” Alison found herself saying. “What is it you want me to do?”

  The woman immediately sat forward on her chair. “You will?” she cried with the eagerness of a child. “You will?”

  Alison felt her face growing hot, and she determined that she would convince Nicki later that her interest was only pretended, in order to get the phony séance over with.

  “What must I do?” she repeated.

  She heard Nicki suppress a laugh and she herself squelched a nervous giggle.

  “It is not difficult,” the woman replied. “Find the memoirs. I hid them long ago, because no one would have believed me then. But now, now is the time for me to redeem my good name, to reinstate my good reputation, and you are the one who shall help me do it.”

  “Who are you,” Alison asked, “and where are the memoirs you are talking about?”

  “He used to call me Caro,” she began, but before she uttered another word, Mary began to shake all over. Her face contorted into an angry frown, and she burst from the chair.

  “Get away from me!” she screamed, and Alison and Nicki both jumped from their chairs and backed toward the door. “Get away, you crazy girl!” Mary opened her eyes and saw her two clients edging away from her, wide-eyed. “Wait!” she cried. “Wait. What happened?”

  Alison did not want to insult the psychic, so she pretended to believe the performance they just witnessed. “I…I think someone, or something, just possessed you,” she said, but she was genuinely nervous.

  “Was it that damned Caroline again?” Mary asked crossly. She went to the light switch. “Sorry. I can’t do any more. She’s ruined it again, like she always does.”

  Alison sat back down. “What do you mean, like she always does?”

  “That woman’s spirit has been taking over my séance room for years,” Mary complained, snuffing out the candle. She picked up the small tape recorder roughly and punched the rewind button. No one spoke as the tape whirred backwards in the machine. But as agitated as Mary was, she placed the player back on the table and signaled for silence. “Listen. Let’s see if she’ll let us hear her voice.”

 
Alison heard the sound of their own voices during the early part of the séance over the static of the recorder. But after the “spirit” had taken over the psychic’s body, there was only a small, muffled sound, almost inaudible, when the spirit-being spoke. Mary stopped the tape abruptly. “Damn it. She always does that.”

  “Does what?” Nicki asked, her eyes shining in fascination.

  “Covers over her voice.”

  “But why would she do that?”

  Mary shrugged. “Because she’s a petulant, spoiled brat. She knows what I’m trying to prove. She messes it up just to spite me.” But she pressed the button again.

  “Who are you, and where are the memoirs you are talking about?” Alison heard her own voice. And in reply, clear as a soft melody floating through the mist, they heard, “He used to call me Caro.”

  Chapter Three

  The writer of the letter he’d found in the old desk had haunted Jeremy ruthlessly since he’d unearthed the astounding epistle. She had come to him again and again in his dreams, and her image stalked his waking hours as well. He saw in his mind her large, limpid eyes. Her pixie-like face. Her russet hair and pale complexion. It was the face of a child in some ways, and yet also the face of a beautiful young woman. A sensuous, desirable woman who knew some rather interesting ways to please a man. He’d awakened on several occasions thoroughly aroused, disconcerted at the vividness of his dreams and his physical reaction to them.

  He knew who she was. Lady Caroline Lamb. Caro. He’d seen photos of numerous portraits of her over the past few days as he hastily researched the possibility that she might have been the author of the pathetic little letter he’d found in the old desk.

  The letter that could set him up for life.

  Maybe that was one explanation for his overpowering desire for the woman in his dreams. He admitted that he lusted after the fortune that would be his if he found the memoirs she claimed to have hidden in the old country house known as Dewhurst Manor.

  Jeremy wasn’t one to let his imagination run away with him, however. He felt a little foolish, impulsive even, to be making this trip based on so little research. His friend from Harrow school days, forensic expert Malcomb McTighe had not yet verified that the letter had been penned by Lady Caroline Lamb. But he’d learned that in this business, the unlikely was sometimes possible and that treasures were often found in the nooks and crannies of antiquities, treasures that had made their way through history heretofore undisturbed. Often, it was the antiquarian who moved quickly who reaped the greatest rewards.

  The early morning mist was beginning to rise above the historical section of Hatfield in Hertfordshire as Jeremy squeezed his car carefully into a too-small parking space on a steep slope in front of the estate agent’s office. He’d been amazed at his good fortune in locating Dewhurst Manor so quickly. And further amazed that it appeared to be headed for the auction block in the near future. If his luck held and he worked this just right, the letter might prove lucrative in more ways than one.

  A small brass bell tinkled as he opened the door to the office, which was located in a cramped building in the heart of the old village. The reception desk stood empty except for a few scattered papers, a telephone, and a bottle of scarlet nail polish, open, its lid tilted to one side. From his pocket, Jeremy retrieved the correspondence which had accompanied the photocopy of the house the agent had sent him, making sure he remembered her name correctly. It was an unusual one for England. Gina. Gina Useppi.

  He envisioned her as an aggressive young estate agent, with dark Italian eyes and coal-black hair. Exotic. Sexy even.

  Perhaps this had once been an accurate description of Gina Useppi, but the woman who hailed him from another room at the back of the office was at least in her early sixties, maybe older. Her thick, straight hair was shoulder length, salt-and-pepper beneath a black headband. She wore a black turtleneck topped by a muted orange vest and matching slacks. She came toward him on shining black boots.

  “May I help you?” Her voice was throaty, and Jeremy surmised she’d smoked cigarettes for many years. He noted that her lips were recently glossed to match the polished nails.

  Well, she was sexy, in her own way, he told himself. “Gina Useppi?” He made sure he admired her openly as she approached. “I’m Jeremy Ryder.” A woman’s age didn’t matter to Jeremy, who knew the value of business flirtations. He saw her hesitate for a slight moment and knew his subtle sexual compliment hadn’t been missed.

  “That I am, Sir. You’re here to see Dewhurst Manor?” She made an attempt to appear all business. “How’d you hear about the place?” she asked, taking a seat behind the front desk. “Receptionist is out for the day. Please…” She indicated a chair opposite her.

  “A…um…friend told me about it.”

  “Well, it’s been on the market for a long time. The owner wanted too much money for it. But she died a few months back. No heirs. The bank wants us to get a good enough price for it, but between you and me, I think we can get them to take any decent offer.”

  “What are they asking?”

  “Five hundred thousand pounds.”

  Jeremy didn’t flinch. He had to convince her he had a legitimate interest in buying the property. It was critical to his plan that he have a chance to take a look around the house that the author of the old letter had described. He wasn’t sure what his next step would be, but he’d think of something. “What bank carries the mortgage?”

  “Coutt’s. In the Strand.”

  Jeremy nodded. His luck just got better. Another of his old school chums would be able to help him out at the bank. He silently thanked his Uncle Clive for making the sacrifices he had in sending Jeremy to a school like Harrow, where alumni were closer than family. He leaned forward slightly. “Do you suppose, Ms. Useppi,” he said, leaning forward slightly, “that it would be possible for me to inspect the property right away?” He laid his expensive-looking business card on her desk. “I can assure you I am no curiosity seeker, and I am in a bit of a hurry.”

  She read his card. “Antiquities, eh? Well, Dewhurst Manor is certainly that. It was built in the late sixteenth century as a rather rustic hunting lodge.” She got up and went to the coat rack. “But as you will see, it’s been added to in a rather, shall we say, eclectic manner over the centuries. That’s why I think it has been so hard to sell. Among other reasons,” she added almost under her breath. She slipped a woolen cardigan over her shoulders. “Well?” She turned and looked at him with a smile. “Shall we?”

  Dewhurst Manor was set back from the highway, secluded in the woods and accessible by only a small lane which ended in a circle drive at the front of the house. Pale gray sunlight struggled through the canopy of spring leaves overhead, dappling the fanciful timbered walls, charging the very atmosphere with a preternatural glimmer. Jeremy’s skin prickled, and he was unable to subdue a slight involuntary shudder.

  “Looks haunted,” he laughed uncertainly.

  “Some people say it is,” Gina replied matter-of-factly, getting out from behind the wheel of the large Mercedes. “I admit, it’s been a problem in selling it actually.”

  “Who’s the ghost?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, a wry smile on her red lips. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Ryder?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “Well, no. No, I don’t. It’s just interesting folklore.”

  Gina inserted the heavy metal key, turned it in the lock, and pushed down on the levered handle. The massive wooden door creaked open with a groan worthy of a haunted house, and Jeremy gave a short laugh. They stepped directly into a large hall with vaulted, timbered ceilings that met at a steep angle high into the second story. A stone fireplace glowered blackly at the far end of the room, and a gallery lined with bookshelves and portraits ran the length of one wall at the upper level. The room was hushed and gloomy, the furniture draped.

  “This is ghastly,” Gina remarked, going to a panel on the wall and flipping several switch breakers with aut
hority. “Thank God the old gal brought in electricity. Think what this place must have been like with only candlelight to see by. Dark as a dungeon.”

  But the modern lighting did little to add cheer to the room. A glow emanated from a single chandelier placed directly in the middle, a large brass fixture with many lamps that in a lesser space would have served well but which in this huge place had little effect. Jeremy looked around. “Is this part of the original building? From the sixteenth century? You said there had been additions…”

  “Oh, yes, this was the original Great Hall of the hunting lodge. You can see the windows have been re-glazed, of course, and repairs made here and there. But you can bet that generation upon generation of families and visitors have warmed themselves by that fireplace.”

  “Any famous visitors?” Jeremy raised a dust cover and glanced cursorily at the stately chair beneath. Good stuff, he could tell immediately.

  “Some more famous than others,” Gina said. “That portrait above the fireplace is of old William LaForge, whose Norman ancestors were granted first title to this land.”

  Old William was very old. And that portrait alone worth a fortune.

  Around him were lamps and clocks and tables and chairs and tapestries and china and glassware…“Does the place come furnished? I mean, does all this go with?”

  “No. It’s to be sold separately. Except for the title. It comes with the property.”

  “Title?”

  “Yes. Lady Julia borrowed quite heavily trying to keep this place up, you see, and since there were no heirs, the bankers who hold the mortgage want to recover as much of their investment as possible. So they are including the title, ‘Lord or Lady of the Manor,’ along with the estate…as if that would make it more valuable,” she added dryly. “Whoever buys it will automatically become the Lord or Lady of Dewhurst, with all duties and privileges thereof.” She laughed. “They are touting the title as a good ‘investment,’ although collecting a dollar per phone pole in revenues is not likely to make it a very lucrative one. It’s mainly for prestige. Traditionally, the biggest responsibility of the Lord or Lady of the Manor is to organize and open the village fair.”