by Evelyn James
Clara rose and closed the window to the terrace. She examined the handle and lock. As Genevieve had stated the lock was broken and the doors could not be fastened. Anyone could open the door from the outside and wander in.
“I suggest we take a look about the house,” Clara said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
Richard nodded, he looked white as a sheet. Clara had forgotten that the young man took the possibility of his uncle’s return from the dead very seriously.
They made a circuit of the hall, going floor-by-floor. They left the servants’ quarters alone in the hopes that, firstly, there were enough eyes and ears down there to spot an intruder, and secondly, because it was unlikely the trespasser would go that way. He was after the family, by all accounts.
The ground floor proved empty, however, on the first step of the staircase in the great hall, Clara pointed at something. They were lighting their search by a torch Richard had taken from an old cupboard in the guard room. Now, as its beam stretched across the staircase, Clara noticed something. She moved forward and crouched down. Here was more mud, but this time a clump of it, fallen perhaps from clothing rather than placed there. The intruder had left a trace of himself by accident instead of design.
“He went upstairs,” Richard was beginning to look like a man about to face his executioner.
Clara tried to reassure him.
“Someone went upstairs. I don’t think it was a spectre, but a very real man. A burglar perhaps.”
This did not console Richard. He would not be dissuaded from the idea that his uncle had crawled out of his grave to hunt the family. Clara felt it was best they just press on. She went up the stairs and they conducted a careful search of the first floor as they had the ground floor. Signs of the interloper had disappeared again. They crept past the family bedrooms trying not to make a sound and disturb anyone. They came to the corridor outside Angelica’s room and Clara put a hand out to stop Richard walking any further forward. She directed him to shine the torchlight on the floor and there, on the runner outside Angelica’s door, were more of those extremely careful footprints.
The footprints came down the corridor as if headed from the stairs and then turned and stopped outside the door. There were only five of them, but each was carefully defined and the last two were side-by-side indicating that the culprit behind them had stood outside the door.
Richard was dumbstruck. Clara was worried. Since she did not believe in the supernatural, it seemed plain to her that the person behind these footprints was intending to leave a message. That the footprints were only in two locations, remote from one another, told her that they had been put down for a purpose and were not caused by someone carelessly walking into the house with muddy feet. She crouched by the footprints and took another look. They were very dark and the details smooth. When a person walks mud into a house, as Annie would quickly tell her, they don’t just traipse in a stain, but also dirt, bits of grass or fine gravel. The result is that the stains are gritty, you can see grains of soil or sand in them.
These had none of that. They were a very dark brown, but there was no trace of grit or dirt or gravel. Clara guessed someone had used ink to create these footprints. Which meant someone had very deliberately walked up here, covered their shoes in ink and made these marks. She guessed that if she returned to the footprints downstairs she would see exactly the same.
“We ought to check Angelica is safe,” Clara stated to Richard, who was still pulling a face.
Clara knocked lightly on Angelica’s door.
“Mrs Howton?” she paused and then rapped again. “Mrs Howton, sorry to disturb you but there may have been a break-in.”
Angelica pulled back her bedroom door sharply, she glowered at them both.
“No one has broken into my rooms!” she snapped and slammed the door in their faces.
“Well, at least she is unhurt,” Clara shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t think the intruder is still in the hall. I suggest we go back to our beds and try to get some sleep before unravelling this puzzle further in the morning.”
Richard seemed unconvinced that the puzzle was possible to unravel, but he was glad enough to retreat to his bedroom where there was a stout lock on the door. He was so upset by the night’s events, he did not even offer to escort Clara back to her room, only gave her the torch as he locked himself in.
Clara wandered the long corridors back to her room. She was in no rush as her mind was whirring with fresh thoughts. Why were the footsteps outside Angelica’s door? What was the significance? What message was their man from the dead trying to express? If Angelica was a target, why?
Clara reached her room and locked herself in, despite having reassured Richard that the intruder was long gone. She lay down in bed and pondered over everything. Mysterious midnight footsteps were all well and good, but how did they fit into this curious game?
She could only hope morning would bring new answers.
Chapter Thirteen
“It makes my blood run cold!” Lady Howton stared at the now closed door to the drawing room terrace and the footprints leading away from it. “To think, my home invaded by a monster!”
“Mother!” Genevieve scowled. “This man is a tramp or a nuisance maker, not a monster! If you would just let me get…”
“Not the shotgun, Genie,” Lord Howton said rapidly.
Genevieve placed her hands on her hips and pulled a face.
“What do we do now?” Diana whispered in a trembling tone.
“Get the lock changed,” Clara said, feeling there was a desperate need for someone to be practical. “Anyone could try the door and come in with the lock broken. Any burglar, for instance. Get the lock changed and you can sleep peacefully in your beds.”
“What if the new lock won’t stop him? What if he can pass through locks?” Lady Howton looked wide-eyed at those around her.
Clara felt like giving a loud sigh of frustration.
“Locks are locks. And the man outside is just a man. Change the lock and he won’t get back in.”
“You think we are all fools,” Richard Howton turned to Clara. “You think we are spouting nonsense, that we have taken leave of our senses.”
Clara said nothing, even a denial would sound false right at that moment. She was growing impatient with the whole affair. Had the family taken the man for what he was, a prankster, they would have already changed the lock on the door and no one could have walked in to leave footprints. Instead, they were so immobilised by this notion of a man back from the dead that they could do nothing but lie shaking in their beds.
“Does no one even care that the footprints stopped outside my bedroom door?” Angelica spoke up.
It was unusual for her to say anything, and certainly to complain. She was usually as mute as a nun, quietly getting on with her unhappy existence. But the night’s events had taken their toll.
“My son came back to me last night,” she said, her voice taut with unshed tears. “He stood outside my door, and it was locked so he could not enter.”
“You would not have wanted him to,” Lady Howton said rapidly. “You would not want to see him like that.”
“How do you know?” Angelica snapped at her. Her sharp tone was such a surprise that nearly everyone jumped. “How do you know what I want?”
Betty was standing to one side and she gave a low moan. Clara glanced at her, sensing that she was imagining her dead husband returning to her and it was enough to nearly have her drop down into a faint.
“My son came back to me, and he will come again!” Angelica now rose from her chair and confronted the family. “You will not change the lock on that door! My son must be able to enter this house and come to me! I shall welcome him with open arms! He wants to speak to me, impart a final message for me, I shall not allow you to prevent that!”
Clara felt like screaming. Yes, someone had come into the house, but whether that person was Harvey or not, they were certainly not dead or trying to impar
t some final message. She feared they were up to something sinister, but what would Harvey or an imposter gain from scaring Angelica?
“I can’t have a dead man wandering about my home!” Lady Howton protested.
“And what about my home?” Angelica squawked back. “This is my house as much as yours! I was the lady here before you!”
Clara had had enough. She left the two women rowing and went to find Oliver. He was in his makeshift dark room again, processing the photographs from the previous evening. Clara was not expecting any great revelations from the pictures, but she hoped they might prove to the family that the ‘monster’ was actually a living, breathing person.
Clara knocked on the dark room door.
“Just a moment.”
There was a clatter inside and Oliver muttered under his breath. As much as Clara was fond of the man, his sheer clumsiness, accompanied by a pathological ability for untidiness, drove her mildly crazy. Oliver opened the door and thrust out a dirty plate. Clara glanced at it, then raised an eyebrow at him.
“Oh, sorry, I thought you were the maid come to collect my breakfast plate. They were good enough to bring my food to me,” Oliver smiled at Clara and brushed a strand of loose hair off his face. “I expect you want to see my photographs?”
“I do,” Clara agreed.
Oliver pushed the door to the cupboard wide open, so Clara could see what he was doing. There was not really room enough for her to climb in, so she hovered in the doorway. Oliver took two large pieces of paper off a washing line strung across the room. He passed them to Clara.
“This is the picture I took from inside, and this the one from outside.”
Clara examined the two images. The first had been taken from an angle, to try and prevent the flash of the camera glaring off the glass of the window and obliterating the image. The photo showed the man at the window. He was looking directly into the room and Clara felt his face would be recognisable to anyone who happened to know him well. If this was really Harvey Howton, she could ask the family to identify him.
The second picture had been taken from outside, by the camera in the bushes. It had captured a clear profile image of the man. He had been distracted by the flash of the camera inside and had not noticed that another flash had come from the bushes beside him. In this photo there was no doubting the appearance of the man. To Clara the individual looked hale and hearty, he did not appear to be a walking corpse.
“I am going to take these to the family,” Clara said. “Well done Oliver, looks like Lord Howton finally has his proof.”
Oliver beamed with delight at the praise.
“What is your verdict on the condition of the man?” he asked, his eyes twinkling mischievously.
“He looks alive to me,” Clara said plainly. “And you?”
“From the photographs he looks pretty alive,” Oliver admitted, slightly shamefaced by his earlier convictions. “I’ve photographed quite a few corpses for the police. You can always tell from the picture they are dead, even the ones who are in their beds seemingly asleep. But, you have to believe me Clara when I say the man I saw that night was something else. The maggots, the smell, the way he moved!”
“All props to make you believe,” Clara said gently.
Oliver shrugged his shoulders.
“I would like you to be right. It was dark that night and I was already on edge, expecting to be confronted by a monster.”
“Exactly,” Clara reached out and touched his arm, trying to alleviate his embarrassment at being so fooled. “You saw what you had been primed to see. Like a magic trick in the theatre. Nothing to be ashamed about.”
“Only, you were not fooled,” Oliver pointed out.
“The difference being I don’t believe in the supernatural, or even the possibility of it, so I could not be fooled. If you know a man cannot make a dove appear out of thin air except by trickery then, no matter how clever the act, you will not be made to believe in magic.”
Oliver nodded.
“I see your point.”
“I am going to take these to the family and see what they make of them,” Clara said. “In the meantime, might you do me a favour and take a few photographs of the footprints outside Angelica Howton’s room? Some from a distance and some close up. They seem odd to me, rather like more set-dressing, and I would like a record of them.”
Oliver agreed to do that. Clara left him to his work. She wandered back to the drawing room where she was not surprised to find the family still arguing over the best thing to do. Angelica was still stubbornly refusing to have the lock on the door changed, in case it prevented her son from coming to her. Lady Howton seemed appalled at the idea that she might wish to see her son risen from the grave. Clara had to admit the idea seemed rather ghoulish to her too, but Angelica would not be swayed.
Betty was huddled in a chair to one side, looking pale and frightened. She seemed more like a child than a married woman in that moment. Clara guessed she was regretting coming to the hall. Clara knelt beside her and passed over the photographs.
“Is that Harvey?” she asked her.
Betty examined the two pictures.
“These were taken last night?” Betty asked. She fingered the photographs, tracing Harvey’s face as if caressing it. “That is Harvey.”
“If I was to see these pictures without knowing the context, I would say that Harvey looks pretty alive,” Clara said bluntly. She pointed to the second picture, the one taken from the bushes. “He doesn’t look like someone who has been dead several weeks.”
“Who is to say how these things work?” Betty whispered breathlessly. Some colour had come back to her cheeks. “I was struggling to believe it, now here he is in black and white. Harvey, come back from the grave!”
Clara was stunned. She had meant the photographs to prove her conviction that the man outside was a living person playing a stunt, not to convince Betty that Harvey was a dead man walking!
Clara ran a hand over her face, feeling despondent. Could people really be so incredulous?
“Surely it makes better sense that he is actually alive?” she tried again.
“Why?” Betty asked her innocently.
“Because…” Clara found the simplicity of the question unsettling, “because it is more likely that a person is alive and has pretended to die, than for a man to come back from the dead.”
“So you say, but Harvey believed in dark magic. He had this spell cast over him.”
“I heard about that,” Clara nodded. “An Indian Fakir worked magic to prevent him from dying.”
Clara spoke in a dull, disbelieving tone. Betty didn’t seem to notice.
“He was triumphant about it,” Betty said. “He told me how the spell had worked. How a bullet had whistled passed his ear, he heard it! How he had just avoided being blown up by a shell! How every man around him had died but he remained!”
“Then why did he drown?” Clara pointed out.
Betty blinked fast, her mind working faster.
“But, but he didn’t drown. He is out there still.”
“But not alive,” Clara indicated, playing on Betty’s logic.
“The spell prevented death, that’s all. I suppose making a bullet miss is one thing, preventing a man from drowning is a lot harder. So, the spell worked another way. It resurrected him.”
Clara tried not to groan. Betty was twisting and turning ideas to suit her preconceptions. None of it made sense, but Clara saw that arguing this was not going to work. Betty had convinced herself of the reality of this fantasy, of a man rising from his tomb, and she was not going to be dissuaded easily.
Clara took the photographs back off her and rose to her feet. She thought about showing them to the others, but what would be the point? If Betty could see hard evidence of the supernatural in the pictures, rather than realising they actually demonstrated the opposite, what were the chances the others could be swayed in their opinions? Clara had hoped to demonstrate that Harvey was alive,
now she saw that certain members of the family were too far gone in their delusions to see anything but what they expected. The dove would appear from thin air and they would think it magic.
Still, she had proof for herself and potentially for the police if matters became more complicated. Fortunately, so far, no crime had been committed. Perhaps there was no intention of a crime occurring at all. Perhaps this was just a great joke designed to make the Howtons examine their consciences and to regret their failures towards Harvey. Perhaps… Perhaps…
Genevieve approached Clara.
“What do you have there?”
Clara handed over the pictures. Genevieve examined them both carefully, her brow wrinkling into a frown.
“That is Harvey, for certain,” she said, giving back the photographs. “It seems it is him behind this.”
Genevieve pressed her lips together into a thin line.
“That means we have to assume he faked his own death.”
Her statement jerked Clara back to reality. She had become so obsessed about proving Harvey was alive and not a spectre that she had forgotten that there was a real mystery at the bottom of all this. Harvey had died and been buried in the mausoleum. If none of that was true, which must be the case because he was lurking outside the house, then there had to have been a conspiracy to fool the family. It meant that what Clara had suspected early on, that Harvey had accomplices, was correct.
“Remind me, Genevieve, about the way Harvey died?”
Genevieve shrugged.
“He drowned in the lake,” she said.
“But who told you that?”
Genevieve’s frown deepened.