Elizabeth Webster and the Court of Uncommon Pleas

by William Lashner

  “‘Save me, save him,’” said Barnabas. “That’s what the ghost said when we served process with the alder stake. ‘Save me, save him.’ We thought the ‘him’ was young Henry, but maybe the ghost was talking about your father, Mistress Elizabeth.”

  “Your father needs your help, Lizzie,” said Natalie.

  “But what can I do?”

  “Be a Webster,” said my grandfather. “The Websters are lawyers, so that is what you must be. As lawyers, we have the power, and more importantly the duty, to help the beleaguered and raise the misfortunate. That is what strikes fear in the heart of evil. It is up to you to move forward in those never-ending tasks, and the ghost of Beatrice Long has illuminated your path.”

  “You absolutely must help us find that head, Lizzie,” said Natalie. “You must.”

  “Not too much pressure,” I said.

  “I know you’re scared,” said Henry Harrison. “We’re all scared, but Natalie and I could really use your help. What do you say, Webster? Are you in?”

  What could I say? My insides were still quivering, my failure in court still stung, and there was a fallen angel from the other side who was animating a twenty-foot hunk of metal so it could rip out my guts. And then of course there was my mother. All of this was enough to send me scurrying home to hide in my room until everything passed, including maybe my youth.

  And yet there was Henry Harrison, pulled out of his self-absorption through a love for a girl long dead. And there was my grandfather, with an absurd belief in me just because I was his granddaughter. And there was Barnabas, who had just placed himself between me and the Pilgrim, ready to pay any price to protect me. It was hard to figure the right thing to do.

  Then I looked at Natalie and it came to me as quickly as that. In her eyes I saw nothing but faith in me and a courage that shamed. I had underestimated her all this time. Maybe I had been underestimating myself, too.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m in until the end. Let’s find that head and save my father.”

  “That a girl,” said my grandfather.

  “Very good, Mistress Elizabeth,” said Barnabas before rising to his feet and wiping the dust from his now-ripped pants with his long, pale hands. “I will be of whatever assistance I can.”

  “We’ll get on it tomorrow,” I said. “But first can you get me out of this locked courtyard? It’s time to go home and face the music.”

  “Waltz?” said my grandfather.

  “More like a funeral march.”

  “Mozart?”

  “Mom.”

  At the south entrance, Barnabas pulled one of the gate-posts out of the ground. The raised post allowed him to swing open a piece of the lower portion of the gate, creating a small gap. We all ducked to get outside, all except my grandfather, who was short enough and bent enough to make it through the gap with his normal tap of the cane. We said our good-byes before Barnabas and my grandfather headed to the office and Natalie, Henry, and I made our way around City Hall to the train station.

  On the ride out of the city, the three of us plotted our next moves. We had a story to discover and a head to find, and we had to do it quickly. As we talked, Natalie and Henry seemed to treat me differently—more seriously—because of what had happened to me in that courtroom. But then I began to think that maybe they weren’t treating me any differently at all—maybe I just felt differently about myself, and that made all the difference.

  It was a peculiar sensation, feeling good about myself for once, and it lasted the whole ride out of Philadelphia and into Willing Township. In fact, it lasted until the moment I walked into the kitchen of our house and saw my mother sitting at the table, her hands crossed over my note, staring at me with eyes iced in anger.

  “Sit down, Elizabeth,” said my mother, her voice flat and cold. The kitchen was all in shadow except for a cone of light from the fixture over the table where she sat.

  “Maybe I should stand,” I said. There was an anger flowing from her that seemed to wrap around my throat, something as alive and as real as Beatrice’s ghost.

  “Sit,” she said.

  I slumped into a chair as if my mother’s anger had grabbed me by the collar and flung me down.

  “I’ve been thinking all evening of what I should do about our problem.”

  “So that’s what I am, a problem to be solved?”

  “Well, aren’t you? Didn’t I tell you that regarding Webster and Son there is no debate? I will not allow you to have any involvement with that firm. I know things you don’t know. And if I must do something drastic to get you away from the world in which your father operates, I will. I know of a boarding school in Massachusetts where you would fit in wonderfully.”

  “I suppose it’s filled with misguided freaks just like me,” I said.

  “You’re not a freak.”

  “Just misguided.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s your answer. Shuffle me off to boarding school so I can no longer infect your new family with my Websterism.”

  “Maybe we’ll go up this weekend and take a visit.”

  “Don’t you want to know where I was tonight?” I said. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

  “It’s enough that you are back and safe, at least this time. I can imagine the rest.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “What does that mean?” snapped my mother. “And what did you mean in your letter when you said that I, more than anyone, can understand your desire to help that boy?”

  There was so much about my mother I didn’t know, more than I could ever have imagined before I first stepped into my father’s office. I stared at her for a long moment. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but in my mother’s eyes the shades were drawn.

  “Dad’s missing,” I said.

  “He’s been missing from your life for years. What’s new about that?”

  “I think he’s in trouble.”

  “He has been in trouble since the day I met him.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  My mother flinched, as if a wasp were coming near. “It’s not important now.”

  “I’ve been asking for years, and all you do is smile,” I said. “Maybe now it’s time for some truth.”

  “You’re asking me for the truth? Don’t you find that ironic?”

  “I kept what I was doing a secret because I knew how you’d react. I’m sorry for that. I left the note with Peter so you would know that I won’t lie to you anymore. But I’m not the only one who’s been hiding things. You kept my father’s business, his office, and my grandfather from me. My grandfather!”

  “I would have eventually told you everything.”

  “When, Mom? How old would I have to be to learn the truth about myself?”

  “This isn’t about you.”

  “I heard that Dad is a hero. I heard that he goes to the other side to save people.”

  “The other side of what?” she said. “You don’t even know.”

  “That’s the point. I don’t know. But you do.” And that’s when I went fishing with a little worm that had been crawling around my brain. “How did Dad save you, Mom?”

  She shook her head, but the startled look on her face gave her away. “I won’t talk about this now.”

  “Why not? Isn’t that as big a part of my history as the divorce and Stephen and Petey? Don’t I have the right to know?”

  “Sometime, maybe. But not now, not when you are in the middle of all of it. Later, when you are away and have a better perspective.”

  “When I’m in my boarding school.”

  “Maybe then, yes.”

  I reached into my bag, took out my newly won credentials, and slid the scroll across the table. She stared at it for a moment as if it were a snake writhing in front of her, before she untied the ribbon and rolled it open. I thought she’d be impressed by the fancy legal language and careful calligraphy. I thought she’d see me in a new light. I thought she’d be pro
ud of me for once.

  Instead, she burst into tears.

  And as if her tears were infectious, I started crying, too.

  We cried together for a bit, until we stopped, too embarrassed to look at each other. But somehow, the anger of the moment had vanished. She was my mother, not a warrior princess. And I was her daughter, not a barrister before the Court of Uncommon Pleas. And there we were again, in the months right after the divorce, when my mother and I sat together at the kitchen table and pretended that we weren’t alone and lonely and scared. I understood now what Henry meant about not wanting to grow up. If I could have gone back to that time when I was so close to my mother, when I felt so lost yet still so safe in her arms, I would have, like a shot.

  And just remembering made it clear there was no way I was going to some stupid boarding school in Massachusetts.

  “It’s just that I don’t want this for you,” she said.

  “I don’t know if I want it for me, either,” I said. “It was a little crazy in that courtroom, let me tell you. But for now, I need to help Henry, and maybe Dad, too. I think Dad’s imprisoned somewhere on the other side.”

  “And you have to be the one to save him?”

  “Who else? Is that what you taught me, to sit back and let someone else do the hard work?”

  “You don’t know the cost.”

  “But I’ll find out. On my own. And when it’s time to decide whether to keep doing this law stuff or not, I’ll let you tell me all the reasons to say no.”

  “You won’t,” my mother said. “You’ll be swept up in it like your father was swept up in it.”

  “I won’t. I promise, at least not before letting you tell me everything. You can tell me then how you and Dad met. And you can also tell me all the reasons I shouldn’t follow in his footsteps.”

  “That’s a long talk.”

  “We’ll go out for ice cream.”

  “I do like ice cream,” said my mother, wiping at her damp eyes.

  “But right now,” I said, “I have to take care of this thing with Henry’s ghost. And I think Dad sent me a message of what I need to do to save him, too. But I can’t do it if I’m fighting with you the whole time.”

  “Is there anything I could say to change your mind?”

  “No.”

  She looked at me like she was looking at me for the first time. She was looking at me like Henry and Natalie had looked at me on the train. “Maybe I can help,” she said finally. “I’d like to help.”

  “If I need you, I will tell you. I promise.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So what is it you have to do to save everyone?”

  “I have to find a dead girl’s missing head.”

  “Oh,” said my mother, the briefest smile flitting like a sparrow across her lips. “Only that.”

  After a session of bizarro night court with a talking ram, a raging Pilgrim, and a red-eyed judge, things were a little weird the following day. I felt kind of nervous around Natalie and Henry, and I sensed they were just as nervous around me. Sometimes, when you go through something so intense, it’s hard to slip back into normal life.

  At lunch, Henry was camped out at an eighth-grade table, leaning back in his chair and laughing with his buddies while Natalie and I sat quietly together, barely glancing at each other. Across from us, the Frayden twins were talking on and on and, yeah, on.

  “You should have seen the debate competition yesterday,” said Charlie. “Doug had this one girl near to tears.”

  “I did, yes I did,” said Doug.

  “Whenever she made a point, he had the same comeback.”

  “Indubitably,” said Doug.

  “She didn’t know how to respond.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “It just got into her head. He said it over and over, and every time he said it you could see her cringe.”

  “Indubitably.”

  “Eventually she just sat down and put her head in her hands.”

  “That seems about right,” I said. “What were you debating about?”

  “International politics or something,” said Charlie. “It doesn’t matter. The point is to win the argument.”

  “Don’t,” Natalie said, pointing a finger at Doug.

  “Don’t what?” said Doug.

  “Say that word.”

  “I wasn’t going to say it,” whined Doug. “I wouldn’t do something like that to you, Natalie. I just wouldn’t.”

  “Indubitably,” said Charlie, and they laughed and laughed. Then the twins looked up and their laughter died in their throats. Henry was standing behind us.

  “Hey, Webster,” said Henry. “I’m, uh, still having some trouble with the math. I wondered if we could work tonight?”

  “Maybe we can meet up at the public library,” said Natalie.

  “You’re helping Henry with math, too?” said Charlie.

  “Sure, why not? I have skills.”

  “Indubitably,” said Doug. “But not math skills.”

  “The library works,” I said. “There’s something I wanted to look up anyway.”

  “We like the library, Henry,” said Charlie. “In fact, we were thinking of going there tonight, weren’t we, Doug?”

  “Were we?”

  “We were going to work on our math, too.”

  “Oh, yeah. Math,” said Doug.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Oh, it’s a splendid idea,” said Charlie. “And maybe, while you’re working, we can bring you guys sodas from the Wawa down the road. What do you say about that, Henry, I mean Mr. Harrison, sir?”

  Henry looked at one Frayden and then the other Frayden and then back to the first. “Do you guys know if they have old county newspapers at the library?”

  “They have microfilm!” said Charlie, as if he had just pulled a rabbit out of his hat. “It goes back like a hundred years. Doug and I did a report on the Vietnam War once.”

  “That didn’t go so well,” said Doug.

  “The report?” said Natalie.

  “The war.”

  “Think you guys could help us look something up?” said Henry.

  “Sure we can,” said Charlie. “What about?”

  “Just some historical research,” said Henry. “About a murder.”

  “Murder?” said Doug. “How intriguing. Anyone we know?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But give it time.”

  “What are we supposed to do with this?” said Natalie, after Charlie dropped a red brick of a thing on the long wooden table at the Willing Township Public Library.

  “It’s an old information device,” I said.

  “But there are no buttons,” said Natalie.

  “Funny,” said Charlie. “That’s funny.”

  “Not that funny,” I said.

  At first, we had tried to find what we could about Beatrice online. The web archives of the local newspapers went back only so far. When we plugged in “Beatrice Long” we found her on a list of murder cases that remained unsolved. Along with her name we found the date of her death, almost fifty years ago to the day.

  “This is the newspaper index for the year that you asked for,” said Charlie as he tapped the cover of the thick red book. “The articles you want will be listed inside.”

  “And then?”

  “Write down what you want to see and then we go to the microfilm.”

  Natalie and I paged through the book and discovered that Beatrice Long had her own entry. We jotted down the dates and pages of the articles. Doug found the drawer with the relevant roll of microfilm and wound the roll, about the size of a grapefruit, into a rickety machine with a big screen. It was sort of fun, doing this by hand without the computer, like we were archaeologists digging in the Egyptian desert for some long-lost city.

  When Doug switched on the reader, the front of a newspaper appeared unfocused on the screen. He fiddled with the lens while I read out the first date we needed, and then he started spinning
through the roll. Suddenly there it was, an article dated a few days after Halloween, talking about our very own ghost.

  WILLING GIRL MISSING

  by Delores Baird

  The Willing Police have reported that Beatrice Long, of 213 Orchard Lane, has gone missing. Miss Long, fifteen, the daughter of Forrest and Sandra Long, is a freshman at Willing High and a junior varsity cheerleader. Miss Long is five feet three inches tall with curly red hair. She was last seen Saturday at a Halloween party. Miss Long was wearing a fifties costume, with a pink sweater and a poodle skirt. Anyone with any information is asked to contact Officer Derek Johansson of the Willing Police Department.

  “Hey,” said Charlie, “isn’t that your address, Henry?”

  “How do you know my address?” said Henry.

  “We just learned it in passing,” said Doug. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “What are you doing?” said Charlie. “Researching your house for a history assignment?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “That’s it exactly.”

  “Cool,” said Charlie. “The only interesting history in our house is when Doug found that wasps’ nest in the attic.”

  “Ouch,” said Doug.

  “His face blew up like a beach ball,” said Charlie.

  “What’s next?” said Natalie.

  I started reading out the dates and Doug forwarded the film. The following group of articles repeated the facts as the search for the missing girl grew ever more desperate. There were leads going nowhere. There was a five-thousand-dollar reward, then a ten-thousand-dollar reward. There were rumors that a boy had broken up with Beatrice and the girl, upset, had fled to California. While reading the articles of the continuing search, I couldn’t help but hope, along with the Long family, that Beatrice would be found alive and well, eating a hot dog on the Santa Monica pier. But I knew what was up, I had seen her ghost. And then on the microfilm came the confirmation.

  BODY OF GIRL DISCOVERED

  by Delores Baird

  The body of a young woman was found yesterday afternoon along a deserted section of Whistler’s Creek by a hiker and his dog. Police were called immediately and a search commenced for evidence in the area that includes sections of both Willing and Upper Pattson Townships. Police will not confirm the identity of the deceased, but sources say they believe it may be the body of Beatrice Long, the Willing Township girl who went missing just over two weeks ago from a Halloween party. The condition of the body has made identification difficult, but the clothes on the young woman match the costume Miss Long was wearing. Police have labeled the case a homicide and have already questioned a suspect. Also questioned about her disappearance was a classmate of Miss Long, Anil Singh. A police department spokesman stated the department will provide more information as soon as it becomes available.