Midnight in Austenland

by Shannon Hale

  So what now? She was standing in the hallway looking at the ceiling when Eddie came up the stairs.

  “What does this determined expression on your face mean?” he asked.

  “I was psyching myself to go back up to the secret room.”

  “I see. Have you always been so tenacious?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, little sister, I am honored to witness this unexpected growth spurt. But I think I ought to be with you whenever you engage yourself in these diabolical investigations. You may need my protection from phantasms and assassins.”

  The secret chamber was not an easy place to look for clues, heaped as it was with furniture and boxes and stacks of things. She combed the sofa, looking for any telltale hair or ripped cloth, drops of blood or hidden daggers, maybe a convenient letter of confession from the pretend killer. But there was nothing obvious. Why did Colonel Andrews make things so hard?

  “Are you sure Andrews meant for you to investigate this room?” Eddie asked, playing with the fencing foil again behind a tower of chairs. He scooted back and forth in lunge position.

  “Wow, you look deadly,” said Charlotte.

  “Really?” He wore a hopeful smile.

  She snorted. Eddie was more friendly dog than ravenous wolf.

  “Laugh at me, but someday I will be the world’s greatest swordsman, and you will come to me in tears. ‘Dear brother, forgive the insolence of my youth! I see now that you are indeed a deadly and formidable man, and I was so wrong to scoff.’ ”

  “I bet you haven’t changed much in the past twenty years,” she said.

  “So you have forgiven and forgotten my dastardly, selfish youth? Wonderful news. But truly, what do you expect to find here?”

  “I don’t know.” She was examining various dust collectors on a small table. A black Chinese vase with a lid seemed to scream, I HOLD A CLUE! but it proved empty. “Colonel Andrews hinted to look on the second floor, and after I discovered this room, he confirmed that a key to his mystery is in here.”

  “He said that?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” She couldn’t remember now his exact words, but she’d had a very strong impression. “Why else would he lead me here?”

  Eddie shrugged and made a few more thrusts and parries. “Never can tell with Andrews.”

  “Well, he’s written—or rather, he’s discovered—a detailed mystery surrounding Mary Francis. I don’t see him as a sloppy guy.”

  “He does dress with care.”

  “Surely the secret room and the body are part of that mystery, and uncovering clues to one will help solve the other, all neat and tidy. I think he’s being so secretive, though, because he used this room without Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s permission and he doesn’t want to upset her. But really,” she said, gesturing to the mess, “he could be just a teeny, tiny bit less opaque. I can’t find the needle for all this hay.”

  She briefly thought, Well, maybe the body was real, but then scoffed the thought right out of her head. Dead bodies don’t show up then disappear; murders don’t cross her path in real life. Of course this was all part of the game—just as was Mr. Mallery’s amorous confession from the night before. She would not get unduly sucked in. She would not allow her fancy to run wild, imagining murders in the dark and handsome actors genuinely falling for her. She was never the type of child to jump off the garage roof believing that a costume cape could make her fly.

  “Perhaps the fake dead body was the only intended clue in this chamber?” said Eddie, slightly out of breath from ducking under his imaginary opponent’s swing.

  “Maybe. But he went to all the trouble of stowing the corpse in a secret room. Once a secret room is introduced in a mystery story, it always comes back into play. Besides, I don’t know where else to look for clues.”

  Eddie rested the tip of the foil on the ground. “Why does this matter so much to you?”

  She shrugged, then laughed. “I came to get lost in a story, I guess, and ironically the make-believe mystery and murder story seems safer than … than whatever I’m supposed to accomplish with Mr. Mallery, and a lot more hopeful than the news from back home.”

  “Are your children all right?” he asked.

  “Oh yes. They seem to be great, actually. Now that I’m …” She slumped down on the bodyless sofa. “Never mind.”

  “Ah, but you need never ‘never mind’ me, Charlotte dear. You may always tell me anything.”

  Charlotte’s eyes were on the floor. Was there something peeking from beneath the sofa? She got on her hands and reached under, pulling out a yellow rubber glove, like the kind one wore when washing dishes. She shook her head.

  “Found the corpse, did you?” Eddie asked.

  Was this what she had seen? No, the hand had been gray for one thing. Then again, night and lightning would drain the yellow into gray. But she couldn’t have confused a rubber glove for a fleshy corpse hand. Could she? Well, she had been pretty freaked out.

  “I give up.” She dropped the glove on the floor.

  “Ha-ha!” said Eddie, bounding forward, his foil raised. “You surrender to my skill with sword and derring-do. Very well, I accept.”

  He presented her the foil, handle first. It was amazing how much more confident she felt with a weapon in her hand—even a useless, blunt-tipped play sword. Eddie took its partner from the box, and they dueled badly until lunch.

  Tables and shade were set up on the lawn, refreshments sparkling in glass pitchers and silver trays. The day was radiant, the sky blaring the news that it was summer and to please take notice and act accordingly. Everyone was dressed in clothing as bright as the garden flowers. Mr. Mallery gazed at Charlotte, an invitation to come hither and fall in love. It was as idyllic a scene as artist or poet could e’er express! And yet Charlotte’s thoughts wandered a dark alley.

  The glove/hand thing confused her, so she set it aside and seized instead on the question of the murderer. Neville the butler and Mary the maid seemed like juicy suspects, but she’d never seen Miss Gardenside or Miss Charming speak to Neville, and Mary was Charlotte’s personal maid. Surely Colonel Andrews would design a game not just for Charlotte but for all the lady guests and so would choose one of the central characters to be the villain.

  It’s a universal truth that nothing spoils a postlunch game of croquet like suspecting the other players of murder.

  That evening in the drawing room, Mrs. Wattlesbrook brought out large pieces of paper and charcoal. They dimmed all the lights except one hooded shade pointed at the wall and took turns drawing each other’s silhouettes. Charlotte proved the best for the task, and soon all were sitting for her, Miss Gardenside’s piano music providing the soundtrack for the evening.

  She enjoyed tracing the mounds of Miss Charming’s hair, the sleek line of Colonel Andrews’s nose, the brave forehead of Miss Gardenside, that wonderful chin Eddie bore so well. There was an intimacy in the process, and she fumbled as she traced Mr. Mallery’s lips.

  “What I said last night … I made you uncomfortable,” he whispered.

  “Don’t speak,” she said. “I mean, you move when you talk. You have to hold still.”

  She didn’t want him to say anything to make her heart all frantic like that again. It was much more intense in person than in a book, even if this was a game. She dragged the charcoal over the shadow of his bottom lip, plumper than its twin, and caught herself contemplating what it would be like to nibble on it.

  “Ha,” she said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing, just thinking about you.”

  It was an odd exercise. While she worked, he was free to gaze upon her, but she could only observe his shadow. She supposed that was always true—he saw her, the real Charlotte, while all she knew of him was the shadow of himself, this character he played. The thought gave her a shiver.

  She traced his jaw and neck and thought, He’s not an easy person. He seems to cherish his own opinions better than anyone else’s, and some
times he plain isn’t nice. Remember the tourists with the camera?

  But then, maybe nice was overrated. Besides, she wasn’t really dating Mr. Mallery. She was just playing, and of course she expected nothing real would come of it. Right? So why be so afraid?

  After filling in the outline with solid black, she displayed it to the room.

  “I say, Mallery,” said Eddie, “you are not a bad-looking fellow when you are sitting still like that and not pounding one with your glare.”

  Charlotte dusted off her hands and looked over her work. Mr. Mallery’s shadow certainly looked the most lifelike of all those she’d drawn. Did that say more about him or about her? She taped it to the wall beside the others—six profiles displayed like Wanted posters.

  That’s a weird comparison to make, accused her Inner Thoughts.

  Charlotte didn’t sleep well that night. It may have been the dry thunderstorm that crackled outside and the periodic booming of unproductive thunder. Or it may have been the electric storm in her brain, her buzzing synapses using nighttime to piece together the colonel’s mystery.

  It did seem odd that Colonel Andrews would lead her to a body then provide no other clues, except perhaps that kitchen glove, which really told her nothing. And honestly, how could a recent murder tie into his ancient tale of dead nuns? What if … (stop it, Charlotte) … but what if it really … (you’ll make a fool of yourself) … really was … (oh, go ahead—it’s safe to think it in the darkness, where we’re free to explore our most foolish imaginations) … What if it really was real? What if she’d discovered a genuine murder victim, and the murderer had returned in the night and hidden away the body? Then the murderer was someone at Pembrook Park, most likely someone who had been up playing Bloody Murder and who would know that Charlotte discovered the crime scene: one of the lady guests, gentleman actors, or perhaps Mary. Everyone else had been in bed. But then who was the victim? Should she go to the police with a half-baked suspicion? Here, after midnight in her room, she couldn’t believe her discovered corpse had been nothing more than a rubber glove. But without a body, how could she prove it?

  It turns out that it’s not always safe to think things alone to oneself, even at midnight.

  After forming that needling dread into a thought, Charlotte had to get up a few (or twelve) times to peek outside her door and make sure there wasn’t a murderer lurking in the hallway, preparing to come in and kill her in her sleep. No murderer would find her sleeping, by golly! If a murderer wanted her dead, he/she would have to face her like a man/woman and just go ahead and kill her to her face! Because that’s a much nicer way to die. Awake and aware, so you can really experience the whole nauseating horror of it.

  Oh, go back to bed, Charlotte.

  Home, before

  More than anything, Charlotte wanted not to take up space. She longed to sit in a corner of the world, inconspicuous, being harmless and pleasant. Cheery. People could come to her when they needed a hand or a friend or a loan, but otherwise not trip over her in passing. Nice Charlotte. Clever Charlotte. Out-of-the-way Charlotte.

  Austenland, days 8–9

  Charlotte pushed her breakfast around on her plate, thinking of the many poisons Agatha Christie’s murderers employed. There might be arsenic in her eggs, strychnine in her sausages, or cyanide in her cider. (Her glass actually held orange juice, but “cider” was alliterative.) Why couldn’t she let this go? Did she want there to be a murder? Didn’t her brain have anything better to do, like, say, contemplate Mr. Mallery’s lower lip again?

  She looked around the table. Who’s a murderer? Who drew the short stick?

  After breakfast she paced the gallery upstairs, thinking about rubber gloves and real bodies, British police and the fears that crawled over her through the night.

  That’s when she saw it. A painting of a girl in a dark hallway holding a candle, opening a door, her eyes wide with fear. The title plate on the frame read, “Catherine Morland.”

  It took her a moment to place the name—Catherine Morland is the heroine of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, who is so carried away in the horrific pleasures of Gothic novels that she imagines murder where there is none.

  “I am Catherine Morland,” Charlotte whispered.

  Charlotte looked at herself in the corridor window and laughed. When the laugh faded, she didn’t look away. Her reflection was that of a stranger. This was not the woman who had discovered a brow wrinkle in the bathroom mirror at home. This was a woman of stature. Her height, which at times in her life had proved awkward, now seemed designed for these long gowns. Wearing her hair up changed her face—her blue eyes seemed brighter, her lips fuller. She felt descended from Amazons, from Greek goddesses. Why, she was practically formidable.

  Beyond the pane, one spot in the sky had cleared to a misty blue. Mr. Mallery crossed the lawn alone toward the stables. Charlotte put on a riding frock and boots and ran to meet him. She was breathing hard when she caught up.

  “I’d like to take that ride with you now, if you don’t mind.”

  Mr. Mallery smiled.

  She was not going to be the haunted waif in this story. She was going to take pretend romance by the horns and wrestle it into submission. She was going to be noticed.

  “You have been absent of late,” Mr. Mallery said, ducking under a wet branch as they rode their horses into the trees. “Even when you are here, you are not completely here.”

  “You’re right. I was getting caught up in what wasn’t real to escape what was real—or wasn’t technically really real but was more real. That makes no sense. Anyway, I’m determined to live the story. Now I’m undead. Or alive. Or back, anyway.”

  Why couldn’t she speak like a human being with this man? It was easier when she wasn’t looking at him. His gaze made her feel naked.

  Mr. Mallery pulled his horse short. “Look,” he said, pointing.

  A red fox sat on a fallen tree. It stared back, its tail swished once, then it turned and loped off.

  “Do you hunt them?” Charlotte asked.

  “It is a gentleman’s sport. If left alone, foxes breed like rabbits and make their own use of chickens.”

  “But they look so smart. How can you kill something that looks as if it knows you and what you want to do?”

  “My conscience is clear. Ridding the countryside of foxes is a boon to the Wattlesbrooks’ tenant farmers.”

  He probably didn’t really kill foxes. He probably was just speaking as Mr. Mallery the character. She told herself this but didn’t believe it, because she couldn’t imagine that Mr. Mallery was anyone but who he seemed.

  “You bewitch me when you go silent, Mrs. Cordial,” he said.

  Even when he said stuff like that? And looked at her like that?

  “Is it too much? Am I too forward to desire an intimacy with your thoughts?” he said. “I wish you would speak, and jealously, I wish you would speak only to me.”

  “I don’t think my thoughts are interesting enough to repeat.”

  The corner of his mouth ticked up. “I doubt that.”

  “Well, I was wondering who you really are.”

  “I am as you see me. I am not a man given to artifice. I am Thomas Mallery.”

  “Nephew of the Wattlesbrooks.”

  He inclined his head. “Though my estate is in Sussex, this land is a second home to me. I spent many holidays here, exploring the grounds, the house. I know Pembrook Park better than any, I believe. No matter that my grandfather lost the deed to his brother. In ways the law cannot understand, she belongs to me.”

  There was such conviction in his voice that Charlotte wondered if he sincerely felt that way, but about Windy Nook. From the photos she’d seen at the inn, he’d been in that cast for ten years.

  “I wonder about you as well, Mrs. Cordial. Sometimes at night, I do not sleep for wondering.”

  Why did this make her blush? How could she have a genuine, uncontrollable physical reaction to a line from an actor? She laughed at herself
, and at him too.

  “Clearly we’re thinking too much about each other! But now you must ask me what you’re wondering about.”

  His lips held a slight smile. “I dare not ask, or you would call me no gentleman. Yet I do not mind the mystery. I will enjoy uncovering you, layer by layer.”

  Again with the blushing. Even if her head knew she was really Charlotte Constance Kinder playing dress-up, her cheeks bought into the whole deal. Naughty cheeks.

  Mr. Mallery looked over the scene. “Dismount and come sit with me.”

  “I think I’d rather keep riding.”

  He raised an eyebrow as if curious why but nicked his mount with his heel and moved forward.

  Why was she still afraid? Come on, Charlotte, it wasn’t like he was going to murder her or threaten her maidenhead here in this sequestered, dark, fox-infested wood. He was an actor, and there were Regency rules of etiquette to be adhered to, my lady!

  But she rode on. And briefly imagined what might have happened if they’d stopped. Briefly.

  They traveled to the inn, where Charlotte dismounted.

  “I have some business here. Could you take my horse back, please?”

  She reached up, handing him the reins. He took them, holding her fingers for a moment.

  “I am your servant in all things.”

  She watched him ride away before sighing and going inside. She retrieved her phone, a nervous flutter nudging her stomach. Charlotte had called the kids at James’s house yesterday at the appointed time. There’d been no answer.

  Message #1: “Hi guys, it’s Mom … um, Charlotte. I just wanted to check in, see how you are. Maybe you’re all still asleep? It’s not raining at the moment, which is my big news. Anyway, I miss you all. I’ll call again later.”

  She’d come back a few hours later to try again.