by Nancy Holder
It wasn’t until Mr. Ferguson had arrived at Cushing Manor to tell Miss Edith of her father’s death that Annie had known that her young lady had left to meet up with a man. Unescorted.
Everything had been so rash, so tumultuous. Alan was not exactly stolid, although he supposed Edith found him so. He would never have compromised her reputation, nor dragged her away from everything she knew three weeks after her father had been bludgeoned to death. There, he had thought it, and it was what he believed.
“Are you sure this is their forwarding address?” he asked the hotel manager, looking down at the written information.
“Sir Thomas and Lucille Sharpe. Yes. In Cumberland, sir.”
He supposed that was all the address you needed when you were an aristocrat. “Thank you,” he said.
He sat on a round settee and made mental calculations about how soon he could travel there. After a short interval, a man—younger than Alan had expected—approached purposefully.
“Mr. Holly?” he asked. Carter Cushing’s intelligence gatherer. As Ferguson had told Alan, Holly was a hard man to locate.
“At your service, sir.” Mr. Holly was deferential but not subservient.
“Do you have the copy of the information?”
“Did you bring the sum?” Holly countered.
Alan handed him a substantial packet of bills, and Holly pocketed it. The man moved closer, speaking in a conspiratorial tone.
“Mister Cushing, God rest his soul, was a loyal and honorable customer, sir.” He leaned in. “I am obliged to demand a satisfactory reason for your inquiry, as I do not divulge a client’s information, even after his passing.”
Alan remained resolute in the face of obvious extortion. “Mr. Holly, I paid you already. That’s reason number one. Reason number two is that the well-being of someone dear to me may be at stake. And finally, you have the fact that I will punch you repeatedly until you do as we agreed, sir.”
Holly briefly considered his reasoning and then handed him a folder. “This is the newest information I’ve obtained.” He also handed Alan a leather folder full of newspaper clippings, which Alan opened. Holly pointed at the front page. “August 1879. People knew Lady Beatrice Sharpe was awful harsh with her children. But no one would ever dare do anything about it. Now this. Front-page news. Quite gruesome. All that blood.”
Alan jerked with great disgust at a pen-and-ink drawing of a butchered woman. She lay with her head slumped forward. An axe or perhaps some sort of sharp knife had cut her head nearly in two. The victim was Lady Beatrice Sharpe, the widow of Sir Michael Sharpe, baronet. Sir Michael had died two years before in a hunting accident.
He read the article; the murder had occurred in the upstairs bathtub at Allerdale Hall—the family seat of the Sharpes. Edith’s new home. This woman would have been Edith’s mother-in-law had she lived. The only other people in the house at the time of the killing were Thomas, who was then twelve, and Lucille, fourteen. However, the paper was careful to say that there were no suspects. Were the children cleared?
Did Sir Thomas disclose this family skeleton to his fiancée before their marriage? Had this horrible scandal shaped him as Edith’s loss of her mother had shaped her? Edith was fanciful, romantic, and possessed of a vast imagination. But what of a young boy who had apparently suffered at the hands of his mother, then lost her in a violent murder?
He simply could not believe that Carter Cushing would allow anyone remotely connected to such a heinous murder to be in the same city as his beloved only daughter, much less invite him to dinner under his own roof.
“Cushing saw this?” Alan queried.
“No,” Holly answered. “It took some time to obtain these clippings. The only relevant piece of information I could hand Mr. Cushing was this civil document here. But it was enough to impede any further relationship between Sir Thomas and Miss Cushing.” He paused to see if Alan was following him. “In other words, one that would have prevented them from marrying.”
Alan was not following. He didn’t know what the civil document signified. It was clearly an English legality, not an American one.
“Why is that?”
Holly pointed to the significant section of the paper. “Because, you see? Sir Thomas is already married.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ALONE IN THE bedroom, Lucille’s fresh tea at her elbow, Edith calmed down her dog, which seemed upset about something, then opened the first of her letters from the depot. It was from Mr. Ferguson:
My dear Edith:
Please be advised that the first transfer of your father’s property has been completed. The remainder will require your signature.
Yours very truly,
William Ferguson, Esquire
Good, she thought, but she felt a strange fluttery sensation that could almost be labeled as panic. This was what she wanted. These were her wishes. But she had to admit that the letter bestowed a sense of finality that tugged at her; she really had left everything behind for Thomas’s sake. She was homesick for Buffalo and her friends. She missed the beauty of her home, and the servants, and all her books.
I shouldn’t have told Mr. Ferguson to sell my books. She frowned. I saved so few keepsakes. I was so eager to fund Thomas’s invention.
She coughed into her monogrammed handkerchief.
A circle of blood appeared and she stared at it in horror. Another one. Oh, God, could it be consumption? One’s lungs became clumped with infection, then one lost weight and coughed up blood… and died. The damp and the miasma of the house could have brought on an attack. It could be the reason she had been feeling so ill.
She needed Thomas to get her away from here. She needed sunshine and clean air, not rot and decay and breezes that smelled of clay.
And ghosts.
She went to the window to observe her husband as he and Finlay worked on his machinery, which jutted into the sky like a jumble of metal pyramids in an oasis of snow. He was so intent, single-minded, working feverishly, though so far with nothing to show for it. Her father had refused to give him funding and eventually the other interested businessmen had withdrawn their enthusiasm as well. If he did succeed, they wouldn’t have to live here. He had to be on-site to oversee the building and refining, but oh, if it worked, they would be free…
* * *
It watched.
It watched the watcher.
The bride had become so engrossed in her thoughts that she no longer heeded the dog, which had moved to the center of her bed and was following, following, the sound of something underneath the mattress. Nose pressed to the blue bed sheets, eyes nearly crossed, sniffing and perplexed. It could not quite understand that it wasn’t something inside the mattress.
It was something underneath the bed.
The bride kept staring out the window.
What if it finally dragged itself out from beneath the mattress, and grabbed her by the ankle?
* * *
Thomas had never been closer to his dream. He could nearly taste victory. And once it was achieved, then he would be a different sort of person. He would employ dozens of tradesmen to restore Allerdale Hall and the Sharpes would once again be known for their wealth and elegance. He knew that when he or Lucille went to the village, people whispered about them behind their hands. There were many who celebrated their fall, and would not cheer to see them rise again.
Not our fault, he reminded himself. His father had been the scourge of Northern England with his whoring and gambling. His mother, confined to the house—
His mother—
He would not think of that. Of what Edith claimed to have seen.
The snow fell gently, coating the dreary landscape in pristine white. Finlay and some laborers from the village climbed all over the harvester like ants. The first snowstorm had passed, but there would be others. Soon they would be cut off from the rest of the world, and they would have to live off Edith’s money until spring with no hope of recouping their investment. “The investm
ent” referring to the machine, of course, and not the trip to America to fetch his bride.
He had planned to court Eunice McMichael, but there were… complications. And once he had met Edith, he had been dazzled by her, as a moth is stunned and lured by candlelight. She was as golden as the sun, and he could not help but turn his face to her.
Finlay pushed on the levers in place of Thomas, who could not do so because of his injury. Oh, let it be successful, Thomas prayed, crossing the fingers of his unburned hand.
How many times had he uttered this prayer? How many fortunes had he spent? All worth it, if it would but work.
It kicked, sputtered. Finlay glanced over at him and Thomas gave him an encouraging nod, indicating that he should try again.
Once more the old man pulled the lever. Thomas chewed the inside of his cheek. A little fantasy flitted through his mind: the machine successful, a visit to the Crown, and letters patent on the machine itself. A knighthood, surely, and they would no longer live in mortifying squalor.
Nothing. No shrill of steam from the escape valve. No grinding clank as gears meshed. Thomas winced as his stomach twisted into a knot. He would not give up. So much depended on it. He gestured to Finlay to try again.
The gods were kind: With a shuddering lurch, the machine sputtered to life. Thomas stood stock-still for a moment, almost unable to comprehend that it was working. He was so used to defeat that he could not quite grasp success. Snow tickled the back of his neck and for a moment he thought that he might begin to cry. Triumph at last! After all these long years.
Finlay and the men broke into grins and there were congratulations all around. He had promised them a bottle of gin and a sovereign if it worked today, and he would be good for his word.
I must tell Edith.
In his elation, he did not notice that his footprints were stained with red, as the brilliant clay leached up into the snow. Red bubbled up from beneath the ground and threw red light against the harvester and the witchlike visage of Allerdale Hall itself. As if the world of Sir Thomas Sharpe were coated in blood.
As if Crimson Peak would reveal itself very, very soon.
* * *
Edith watched from the window, fears about consumption slipping away as she witnessed her husband’s triumph. She heard the thrilling rhythm of the machine, saw the flywheel turning, the men cheering and patting each other on the back. He was not a failure; she had known it all along. All he had needed was sufficient working capital; more money—hers—would mean a chance to improve his invention, and she would sign Ferguson’s document immediately.
She sat down to do so, placing the document on her blotter and preparing to write out her new signature: Lady Edith Sharpe. She would present it to him when he came up to the bedroom to share his good news, which she anticipated at any moment.
Ceremoniously, she picked up the beautiful pen her father had given her and uncapped it. Her hand hovered above the legal form, and then her eye caught the corner of the letter addressed to Lady E. Sharpe. She put down her pen and studied the envelope. The Italian return address made absolutely no sense.
Perhaps it is from Alan, on a Grand Tour, she thought, and banished the tingle of wistfulness she felt. Was it wrong to miss an old friend?
She got out her letter opener and sliced open the envelope. Then she pulled out the letter. It was not from Alan after all. It was written in Italian—and it was not addressed to her. As she had attempted to explain to the postal clerk, it had been meant for someone else.
“Enola,” she read aloud, bewildered. No one had ever mentioned a relative named Enola.
She coughed again into her handkerchief and tried to translate the Italian. She had studied it a little—very little—but she certainly couldn’t translate the letter on her own. Perhaps there was an Italian dictionary on the shelves in the library.
She had deliberately avoided that room since the half-dismembered corpse of Lady Beatrice had ordered her to leave this place. She was afraid if she looked at the portrait, that blazing red monster would step down from it and attack her. She remembered the power of the invisible force that had pulled her halfway across the bedroom. The venom in the rasped edict to leave Allerdale Hall.
She glanced over at her silly dog, which was burying itself in the sheets. Then she left the room and headed for the library.
Moths inspected her as she entered the vast room. Dust motes spun in the blue sunlight like tiny creatures with minds of their own.
She did not look at the portrait of Lady Beatrice.
But she had the distinct impression the portrait was looking at her. That its eyes followed her every move as she found a row of dictionaries and pulled out the Italian one. There was no scandalous picture in the fore-edge—she did check—and she returned to the bedroom, where the pup greeted her with a thumping tail. She picked it up and was about to place it on the floor when it twisted its little body in her arms and wound up on her bed again.
She got out the typewriter Thomas had given her and removed it from its case. E.S. Her initials. But Enola’s, too.
She kept one ear pricked for Thomas’s appearance. Surely he would come soon to announce the successful trial run. She hoped something hadn’t gone wrong on a second attempt.
Doggedly, she opened the dictionary and began to hunt for the proper Italian words and their translations into English.
* * *
It watched.
The bride was so engrossed that she did not see the figure stealthily crawl from beneath the bed and drag itself arm over arm toward the half-open door. The dog hopped off the bed and climbed onto a chair like a person. The bride smiled at it and it barked excitedly. Thus she entirely missed the monstrous, distorted body as it slithered out of the room.
Utterly charmed by her little friend, she returned to her work, and did not notice when the door creaked shut.
* * *
Edith adjusted her glasses as she continued to translate the letter. She was getting a bit of a headache. The dog cocked its head as she flipped through the dictionary. Edith was so glad of its company. She was a tad disappointed that Thomas still had not sought her out to celebrate the maiden voyage of his harvester. But she remembered her father’s habits: Once assured that a project was on the right track, he rarely took time out to enjoy his accomplishment. Instead, he immediately reset the bar and began to work on improvements. Perhaps that had been the secret of his success, and would serve Thomas equally well.
The dog went through a barking spell, then another, which unnerved her, and she looked over her shoulder more than once. After some time, she had managed to transcribe some troubling lines:
Why, dear cousin, will you not answer my letters? My little Sofia is walking and talking by now, and still no word from her favorite aunt.
Ever since you met that man, you have grown distant and away. Your only communications are bank related and only ever so often. Please, Enola, write. You have a family that loves you and wants you to come back.
What can this mean? Edith thought. She determined to find out. She could not deny that she was already uneasy about the duplication of her initials on the trunk down in the pit. She would wait no longer to investigate. She picked up the key marked ENOLA and left the room. Her head pounded and her palms were damp.
As she passed the bathroom, she thought she heard a clink. Her stomach clenched. She determinedly walked on by. She wouldn’t have the key forever—even though it should be hers by rights. Lucille was possessive of everything… including her brother. Edith could not understand why Lucille wanted to remain the mistress of Allerdale Hall. There could be no sense of accomplishment, no pride of place, in overseeing this household.
Her pulse raced as she entered the lift and descended, and a wave of vertigo compounded her uneasiness. What was wrong with her?
The lift stopped about two feet above the mine floor. Perhaps it did have a mind of its own. Warily she stepped down and cautiously studied her surroundings. Snow was
falling even here. The cold and damp in a place like this would seep right into her bones. Clay was impermeable, smothering. Being inside the cavern was like being inside the body of a wounded thing, seeing its capillaries, tendons, and skinless flesh.
The sound of dripping water echoed in the blackness and she thought of the inhospitable, grim landscape outside. She examined the tunnel and rails that the miners would have used to push their cars of clay along—little children with bowed backs, their exhausted mothers and their thin-faced, pale fathers. Thomas’s invention would end such human misery.
Sections of the mine pit were dark as a tomb. She thought of the statue she had seen in the room upstairs, it had looked so like a memorial. Had graves been disturbed because of the clay pits? Perhaps the dead roamed the halls of Allerdale Hall because, like her, there was nowhere else for them to go.
Was that their mother’s headstone? Perhaps they had rescued it. Despite Lucille’s apparent dislike of Lady Beatrice, the idea that her children may have preserved her monument appealed to Edith. That would mean that their childhoods had not been too terrible. Her own had been wonderful… just too short.
From what little information she had gleaned, she didn’t think that their father had been at Allerdale Hall when he had died. She wasn’t certain what had happened to him, and she hadn’t asked. It seemed ludicrous now that she hadn’t wanted to pry. As if learning the history of the family she had married into—and the father of her future children—was invading Thomas’s privacy.