by Lila Dubois
Melissa nodded, accepting that, though she didn’t believe in ghosts.
“You think that the owner—Seamus, was it?—knew that there was something bad in there, and that opening it might cause there to be more ghosts.”
“He knew that no one would have done such a thing without reason. Or at least that’s what I think, but I’m sure I couldn’t say.”
“So why was it opened now?”
“Well, that part of the story I’m still working on, but I’ll tell you that Séan Donnovan, a farmer in the area, came to the castle and he’s the one who took it down.” Oren gestured to the remnants of plaster and wood on the floor.
“So this—” she gestured, “—was a wall erected to hide the stone and the door?”
“It was.”
“And did he say why he took it down?”
“He said a few things, but none of them made much sense.”
There was definitely something that Oren wasn’t telling her, but Melissa let it go for now. She was anxious to get into the room.
She took a few steps forward, until she was beside the partially open door, and set down her case. She wouldn’t take it inside, so as to minimize her impact to the scene—plus, that freed up her good right hand. “As far as the police are concerned, what needs to happen?”
“We need to know what we’re looking at. If it’s something natural or something unnatural.”
“You mean how they died.”
“Yes, and we need to know how old the bodies…bones are.”
“Are you prepared for this to become a police matter if they’re more recent than you think?”
“There’s plenty of sadness in our history, and if the bones are very old, they’ll be blessed and buried, no matter how they died. If they’re recent, we’ll open an investigation.”
From the tone of his voice, it was clear that he didn’t want to open an investigation. Squatting, she opened her case and took out a small, lightweight torch.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, but I may not be able to give you a clear answer as to date of death based only on the skeletons. A human decomposes down to the bone at any point between a few months to a year after death. We can use teeth for radio carbon dating, but that’s only accurate for remains older than 500 years and anyone alive after 1955, because the radiocarbon levels worldwide doubled around then due to nuclear testing.
“So if your remains are between, say, seventy and 500 years old, carbon-14 won’t work.”
“Ah, well then.” Oren rubbed the side of his nose.
“Don’t give up yet,” Melissa said as she pulled on gloves and took a mask out of its plastic package. “I’ll gather samples for other tests that might be able to tell us more about when they lived rather than died. We’ll test for polonium-201 and uranium-243. I’ll need you to take the samples to Dublin. The National Museum has agreed to test them, though it may take a while.”
“But they said they didn’t have time for this case.”
“Don’t worry, Sergeant, they know they’re coming.” She’d had to name-drop like mad and call in a few favors, but she’d gotten the museum to agree to run tests.
“So you think you’ll be able to tell me something?” He was taking notes as she spoke, and Melissa had worked with enough law enforcement or military personnel to know that while they might not always understand what she was saying, they liked to put it all into reports.
“With the trace element tests I should be able to at least date the remains to before or after 1900. Anything more precise than that and we’ll be using forensic archeology, not anthropology, because we’ll use the context and artifacts to determine a date, rather than the bones.”
Oren grinned. “So you will give me a date.”
“Yes, I will, but it will be an educated guess, based on multiple factors,” she warned.
“How about I put down that you will give me a date?”
Melissa gave in, now anxious to get started. She put the mask on. “Sergeant, are you joining me?” she asked, voice muffled.
“No, I’ve seen enough for now.” He stopped outside the door, clearly reluctant to go in. “If you need anything or feel anything strange, I want you to call out.”
“Thank you, but I doubt that will be necessary.”
Torch in her left hand, camera in her right, Melissa went in.
She’d set the camera to record. It had a function that would allow her to pull good quality stills from the video. If she were lucky, she’d be able to produce a 3D rendering of the room. She’d purchased several software programs that did renderings after seeing a presentation on the process at conference, but as of yet had only used it a few times.
She was thinking about that—the photos, the modeling, what she would do with the bones—as she stepped over the threshold.
Those thoughts died away as she looked around.
How terribly, terribly sad.
It was a large, bright room, with windows on three walls. The clouds had parted and the setting sun lit the room, but even the golden light couldn’t hide the destruction and sadness here. The walls weren’t exposed stone. They sported what had once been white wainscoting and pale blue patterned wallpaper. The furniture was Victorian in style and well made, though the room was a mess. Only a few pieces were upright, and many looked broken.
The air in the room was close and smelled of decay and dust. There were bits of rotted cloth and broken lumber carpeting the wood floors. Melissa was glad for the mask.
A modest four-poster bed sat near the door on the right hand wall. On the other side of that, within arms-reach of the bed, was a lovely wood crib. Tattered lace was draped over the railings and dust coated it, but the delicate lines of the wood indicated that it was bought for a child who was loved.
Melissa had seen shocking things, horrifying things, and even disgusting things, but this abandoned nursery was the saddest. At first glance it was melancholy rather than gruesome. Or at least it would have been if she didn’t already know there were bodies in here.
There were other, smaller beds on the other side of the crib. The larger bed must have been for the nurse. Shredded white cloth hung from the ceiling over each bed—the remnants of pretty canopies. The scrolled sleigh-style bed frames were beautiful. The mattresses were pulled off, half fallen to the floor, and one was ripped open and leaking horse hair.
The walls were decorated with framed panes of glass with pressed flowers between them, shadow boxes opaque with dust, and delicate illustrations of Bible stories suitable for a nursery—Noah’s Ark, Jonah and the whale, and Christ kneeling among children.
A tipped-over rocking horse lay on a rug in the center of the room. A small table waited there, a vase of long-dead flowers sitting atop it, strangely untouched by the chaos around it.
Across from the beds was a fireplace. It was massive and made of heavy stone, more in keeping with the original structure than this Victorian decor. A fireplace screen was half fallen over, the glass insets broken out.
Beyond the little play area there was a swath of clean floor. A path in the dust and debris showed the dark wood of the floor and led from near the beds across the room to beside the fireplace. Melissa flicked on her torch, examining the clear area. Dark brown dots stained the wood. She crouched and examined them. Without testing there was no way to know what it was, and even that may prove inconclusive.
The beam of her torch followed the path toward the fireplace. Drops and smears of dark brown marked the wood, ending in one larger, massive stain. Beside it was a perfect handprint.
Melissa blew out a breath.
She was willing to make an educated guess that the stains on the floor were blood, and that whoever had been bleeding staggered to this point before dropping or being knocked to the ground.
Melissa held the torch between her shoulder and chin, transferred the camera to her left hand and carefully lay her gloved palm over the handprint to gauge its size. The hand was smaller than hers, but not by much. Given his
torical skeletal sizing, it was fair to say the handprint could have been made either by a woman or a pubescent male.
There was a thick trail leading away from the main pool of blood. Walking in a crouch, Melissa followed the trail, identifying a second handprint, the lines smudged as if the hand had slid sideways.
At the end of the trail, half-hidden by a mounded blanket, were the bodies. Straightening to her full height, Melissa surveyed them.
Three skulls, three bodies—one adult, one juvenile and one infant. The adult skeleton wasn’t fully visible, as it was covered in bits of stained green fabric. The garment was ripped or torn, so ribs and bits of arm bone and pelvis were visible.
Both the juvenile and infant wore white night dresses, which obscured all but the skull, hands and feet.
Melissa had seen enough for now. She knew what she was dealing with and could start on the actual examination in the morning. After getting a close up of each skull and the adult’s pelvic bone, she turned and headed for the door.
Oren was leaning against a wall, his chin dropped to his chest.
“Sergeant?”
He looked up. “Done so soon?”
“Barely begun, but at this time I can definitively tell you that it’s three bodies. Based on the pelvic bone and the less pronounced brow of the skull, one is an adult female. The smaller two are a juvenile approximately age nine and an infant, no older than six months.”
“That’s terrible.” He shook his head. “Terrible isn’t the word. The poor children. And how did they die?”
“I’m not prepared to say until I clean the bones, but right now my best guess is that the adult’s death wasn’t natural.”
Oren shook his head glumly. “I was afraid of that. And the age?”
“Based on environmental and context evidence, I’d say they died sometime between 1790 and 1860. And even that is only an estimate and could change.”
“That’s good enough. They’re at least 140 years old, too old to be a real police matter.”
“And too young to involve the museum.” Melissa pulled off her mask and closed the door to the nursery before removing her gloves. “I’ll get you more information as soon as I can, Detective Sergeant.”
“I’m plenty happy for now.” Together they took the stairs to the first down. Melissa pulled out the key Sorcha had given her. She opened the door to her room and set her case inside.
Oren was looking at her in alarm. “You’re staying here, just below that?” He jerked his head at the ceiling.
“I’ve stayed in far worse places.” She was more tired than she’d realized, and though it was still early, she wanted to lie down for a few hours. Then she’d get her bags, write up her notes and email off some photos to people who might be able to help her. “And they’re beyond hurting now. I’m sure they won’t mind if I stay.”
“It’s not you hurting them that I’m worried about.”
Chapter Three
Rolling his shoulders, Tristan pulled the bandanna from his forehead and scrubbed his scalp with his fingertips. It had been a good dinner service. The specials had sold out early, and one of the newer chefs had acquitted herself well. It had taken nearly two years, but now the kitchen was running the way he wanted and was truly his.
His dream had been a restaurant of his own in Paris, but for now a restaurant in this pretty part of Ireland would do, at least until he figured out where he’d go next, since Paris was not an option.
He said goodnight to the chefs working clean up, confident that they would have the kitchen spotless and ready before he arrived tomorrow. Though he had shared office space in another part of the hotel, he preferred to keep his things here, where his staff did. Going to the back wall, he stripped off his chef’s coat and put it in the bin to be laundered by the same company that processed the linens. Pulling the bin labeled “Tristan” from one of the shelves that served as makeshift lockers, he retrieved his jacket, scarf, wallet and keys.
Once he was ready for the street, he said one final goodbye and slipped out through the restaurant. It was quicker to exit out the kitchen’s side door into the gardens and take the path that led around the pub to the parking lot, but if the volume of orders were any indication, the pub was plenty busy tonight, and he didn’t want to deal with the noise and people right now. He made his way to the foyer, nodding to the sleepy-looking evening clerk who sat behind the antique registration desk.
Sorcha, the guest relations manager, appeared from the hallway on the other side of the foyer. She was pulling on a jacket and Tristan waited, opening the heavy front door for her.
“Thank you, Tristan. How was dinner service?”
“Bien. The specials did well, and wine service was up.”
“That’s wonderful, did the curry…”
Her voice trailed off and Tristan followed her gaze. At the foot of the steps was Glenncailty’s long curved drive, which led past the front door to the parking area. On the other side of the drive was a wild garden of roses, tall grass and old trees. It was made to look as if the forest that surrounded the castle came right up to the front door, though in reality the area was maintained by the gardener.
There was a pretty stone bench just across from the steps. Sitting on it was Séan Donnovan. Tristan looked between the beautiful redhead beside him and the strong, quiet farmer who raised the beef and lamb he served in the restaurant.
It was painfully obvious that Séan was madly in love with Sorcha.
At least it was obvious to Tristan.
Hanging back a step, Tristan grinned and winked at Séan. The other man looked at him briefly before transferring his attention back to Sorcha. It was probably Tristan’s imagination, but he thought Séan blushed.
Moving as quietly as possible, he peeled away from Sorcha and headed for the parking lot. He was tempted to stay, to see if there was something he could do to push the two stubborn Irish people into each other’s arms. It had been painful watching Séan pine after Sorcha for the past few years.
And speaking of stubborn…
The pretty blonde doctor from earlier was walking out of the parking area toward him, a large pack on her back and a smaller bag held in her right hand. Her face was more serious than it had been earlier, with a small line of worry or confusion between her brows. Tristan wanted to see her smile or laugh. Anticipation had him quickening his step as he moved to intercept her.
“You’re here to stay? I will put a lock on my kitchen doors.”
She looked up at his words. Her hair was silvery in the moonlight, her face a study in cool blue tones.
“Chef Tristan. I must thank you again, your food was exceptional.”
“Bien sur. Next time come when the restaurant is open and I will show you what I can really do.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And soon, it seems.” He gestured to the bags she carried.
“Yes, I’ll be staying through the duration of my examination and testing.”
Tristan nodded. “The bones.” It seemed hard to believe that such a pretty woman had such a sad job, but there was strength in her, and intelligence so fierce it practically radiated off her. “You’ve been to see them?”
“Yes, have you?”
“No. I do not need to see them.”
“That’s surprising.” She started walking toward the castle. Tristan considered stopping her to give Séan and Sorcha time, but it was late and she was probably tired. Instead he turned around and walked with her. He took the bag she held in her right hand.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Why do you think it’s surprising I don’t want to see the bones?”
“Most people are curious about human remains. It’s natural—expected, even. I’d assumed that despite the police—I mean, Gardaí—presence, most people who worked here would have snuck in at some point.”
“Some did,” Tristan said with a shrug. As they neared the front doors, there was no sign of Sorcha or Séan. “I care noth
ing for bones. All of Paris rests on bones.”
“That’s very true, and has always been an interesting anthropological study.”
“The catacombs?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been in the catacomb passages many times with my…” Tristan forced a smile. “When I was young and foolish.”
“But you didn’t sneak in here.”
“No.”
“What did they say they saw?” she asked. “The people who went in.”
“A mother and her children.”
“A very good guess, one I’d say is possible, and maybe even probable.”
“C’est vrai?” Tristan shook his head. “I am sorry for them.”
“Yes, it’s tragic, but they are at peace.”
“Really?” Tristan opened the door for her. She nodded in thanks as she entered. “How do you know they are at peace?”
“Because they’re dead and have been for at least 140 years.”
“Death is no guarantee of peace.”
She stopped in her tracks and looked at him. “Of course it is.”
Tristan smiled. “And who told you that?”
“No one told me. I don’t need to be told that once the body dies any consciousness or personhood dies with it. There is no more pain, no more suffering.”
“Life and death are not so simple as that. The soul is greater than both.”
She blinked several times. “You actually believe that.”
“I do.”
“And do you believe in ghosts?”
“Believe in them?” He considered her question. Ghosts were very real, and this place was most definitely haunted. What he believed was irrelevant.
“I do not ‘believe in’ them,” he said. She smiled a little and started walking again, headed for the west wing. “I know they are real.”
“For goodness sake,” she said on a sigh.
“I take it you do not ‘believe’.”
“No, I do not. Let me clarify—I will not. I’ve seen bones marked by the suffering of life, picked pieces of people from pits where they’d been thrown like garbage. Putting aside the fact that ghosts have no basis in science, I refuse to believe that death didn’t bring an end to that suffering.”