Popcorn and Poltergeists

by Nancy Warren

  “He seemed very nice.”

  “And Rafe liked him. I know he did. He brought up me going to St. Mary’s. How I’d pretend to be a friend of his come for the weekend.”

  “That’s great.”

  Her face clouded over. “Mabel thought we should pretend I was his sister. I wasn’t having any of that. I said I should be his girlfriend. But Carlos said it would be better if I just was his friend. I guess that’s better than nothing.”

  “Much better. You always want to go from friend to girlfriend, not the other way around.”

  “That’s a good point, Lucy. I always forget you’re smarter than you look.”

  I laughed, even though I didn’t think she meant it as a joke.

  “When can we go shopping? I was mortified when Carlos showed up. No one told me he was coming. I was only wearing a black sweater and black trousers.” Since her entire wardrobe was black, I didn’t know what she would have chosen to impress him.

  “I have a shop to run.”

  “Can we go tonight?” She was cranky, and I suspected she needed a nap.

  “No. I have plans tonight.” I didn’t tell her that I had a date first with the principal of St. Mary’s College and then with a poltergeist.

  Once more, I found myself riding along with Rafe to St. Mary’s College. The administrative wing was opposite the library. We climbed a wide staircase and walked down a corridor lined with offices. A few were occupied, but at least half were empty. At the end of the corridor were a grand pair of wooden pillars, and imposing double doors announced we’d reached the office of the principal.

  Even though she was expecting us, we had to go through her assistant, a woman whose desk was located outside the imposing double doors. Rafe walked forward with a smile and said, “Good afternoon, Cassandra.” As she glanced up from her computer, I recognized her as the woman I’d seen walking outside my shop with a man the night we began the popcorn knitting class. The night Wilfred Eels had died. “Is she free?”

  Oxford was a small world. I now recalled one of the Miss Watts saying Cassandra Telford worked at one of the colleges. Clearly, she worked at St. Mary’s. She seemed pleased to see Rafe, but women usually did. She pushed her large glasses more firmly onto her nose and consulted a day planner lying open on her desk. “She did say you’d be coming by this afternoon. Let me see.” She peered at the planner and then nodded. “There’s no one with her. I’ll let her know you’re here.” And she phoned through to her boss.

  After a short conversation, she motioned us to a set of chairs beside the wall. “She’ll be with you shortly.”

  I felt like I was in trouble sitting outside the principal’s office and began to fidget on the uncomfortable chairs. Rafe seemed perfectly content to sit in stillness and silence forever.

  Luckily, it was only a couple of minutes before the big doors opened and Amelia Cartwright invited us in.

  Rafe introduced me as his colleague who was assisting him in his research. Fortunately, Professor Cartwright didn’t knit. Or, if she did, she certainly didn’t buy her supplies at Cardinal Woolsey’s, as she was a stranger to me. Still, I was going have to talk to Rafe about making me out to be someone I wasn’t.

  Amelia Cartwright wore her gray hair short and the kind of clothing that never wrinkled and could be packed in a suitcase at a moment’s notice. She seemed like a no-nonsense woman without time to waste. Her skin had that permanently weathered look of someone who spent a great deal of time in the sun. Looking around her office, I suspected I knew the reason for that. Her walls featured pictures of an archaeological dig somewhere hot and sandy, as well as market scenes, mosques, random images of North Africa. On her shelving unit, among books and other paraphernalia, was a pottery jar that, had it not been missing its lid, could have sat in a museum somewhere. I went closer to look at it but didn’t touch.

  “Do you know what that is?” she asked me, one of those educators who was always “on” and who loved a teaching moment.

  “It’s a canopic jar. Used in ancient Egypt to store the organs after death when people were mummified. Too bad it’s missing its lid. That would tell whether this jar was intended for lungs, heart or some other organ.”

  Professor Cartwright’s dismissive attitude immediately vanished. Her eyes brightened, and her lips curved in a sudden smile. “Very good. Most of my own students couldn’t pinpoint a piece of pottery so accurately. Are you a historian?”

  For one moment I basked in the notion that an Oxford scholar believed I might be her colleague. But only for a moment. “Actually, it’s my parents. They’re both archaeologists. They’ve worked in Egypt for years.”

  Now she grew even more enthusiastic. “Lucy Swift. Are your parents Jack Swift and Susan Bartlett-Swift?”

  “That’s right. Growing up, I spent a lot of my summers at various digs in Egypt. Sometimes I even got to help.” I didn’t let on how boring I had found it. Brushing sand that had been piling up for thousands of years away from some broken shard of pottery never seemed to me like the best use of my time. One of the many reasons why I didn’t follow in my parents’ intellectual footsteps.

  “I had the pleasure of meeting them both at a conference on ancient peoples in Morocco.” A sudden chuckle escaped her. “I’m afraid your father drank me under the table when the scotch came out.”

  I could picture the scene. “You’re an archaeologist too?”

  She shook her head. “A historical anthropologist, with an interest in North Africa.”

  “I’ll be sure to say hello next time I talk to my folks.”

  “Please do. Are they in Egypt?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, it is indeed a small world, Lucy. Now you work with Rafe and rare books?”

  I could not lie, especially not now I’d discovered she knew my parents. “No. Actually, I run a knitting shop in town. Cardinal Woolsey’s.”

  Even as her eyebrows rose in surprise, Rafe said, “I wanted Lucy to look particularly at the collection of manuscripts about Victorian handicrafts. Naturally, she has an expertise in that area.”

  Again, I thought that was a big leap, but Professor Cartwright bought it. No doubt because she believed that any daughter of Jack and Susan must be a researcher at heart.

  She looked at me as though she were about to ask me one of those pass or fail trick questions professors love to throw at the unprepared. “I hope you won’t let our resident poltergeist scare you away.”

  I was so surprised I choked on my own tongue and coughed. “You know about that?” So not what I had meant to say.

  “Of course. Officially, we refuse to believe in any such thing. But one cannot work in Egyptology and not be aware that there are forces greater than ourselves. The ancient people used to make friends of the spirits or at least fear them. They would appease them, leave them offerings. But, of course, in our modern world, we ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.”

  Well, she could speak for herself there. Rafe and I were both in that category of creatures that a lot of rational people didn’t believe existed and yet, here we were. I glanced at Rafe, but he was looking at me steadily, obviously wanting me to continue with this conversation now that we’d established this personal connection. “I’ve heard a rumor that the poltergeist has something to do with a former principal here.”

  “Yes. Georgiana Quales. I’m not sure the poltergeist has ever introduced itself to anyone, but I suppose putting together Professor Quales’s connection with that library and her sudden death there, it’s not an unreasonable assumption. I do wish she’d get on her way, though. We can hardly get students to set foot inside the library. All those wonderful resources and they’re relying on Google and Wikipedia.”

  I supposed in comparison to “the dog ate my homework” as an excuse, “a poltergeist prevented me from going into the library” was a step up. Trust Oxford.

  She said, “There’s not much point in operating an expensive library when students won’t use it. Plu
s, since we’re in a precarious financial position, the trustees and I have been wondering whether we’d be better off to sell the collection in order to keep the college afloat.”

  Rafe spoke up now. “I hope that won’t be necessary. I also asked Lucy to help with this project, as she has a knack for finding things. Obviously, if we could locate the missing Shelley and Brontë manuscripts, the value of that library collection would rise exorbitantly.”

  “Oh, there’s no question. But do you think in the last decade we haven’t searched high and low? Every possible place we could think of where Professor Quales might have stored something valuable has been searched and found empty.”

  There was a pause. Rafe said, “I met Professor Quales. In fact, I authenticated both of those manuscripts. I would’ve said she was a woman of integrity.”

  She huffed out a breath, and I could see the fingers of her right hand make a fist as though she wanted to punch something. Possibly the poltergeist. “Yes, that’s what one hears. I never met her myself, but if what you say is true, then why on earth didn’t she leave some kind of message?” She threw up her hands. “People die every day. But without leaving proper instructions, they leave behind a mess. In this case, a deficit that has cost this college dearly.”

  “I’d like to help,” Rafe said. “I’ll evaluate the collection, of course, as you asked me to. But aside from that, on my own time and with your permission, I’d like to see if we can locate the missing manuscripts. It’s a tragedy when valuable and unique works go missing. They are, as you’ve said, irreplaceable. I’d also like to restore the professor’s excellent reputation if I can.”

  She looked at both of us as though suspecting we had a hidden motive and then, with a shrug, said, “Why not? Tell me what you need.”

  Naturally, Rafe was all ready for her. “We’ll need a list of all the places that were searched, the last things Georgiana Quales was working on. Anything you can think of that might help.”

  “All right.”

  He looked around. “Was this also her office?”

  She looked suspicious now. “It was.”

  “Might we search it?”

  Her goodwill was rapidly fading. “You want to search my office?”

  He shook his head and gave her his glinting smile. There were people who would tell you that vampires could make people do their bidding by looking at them a certain way, but I’d always believed Rafe simply had charm. “No. I want to search Georgiana Quales’s office.”

  Her lips quirked in sudden humor. “A bit like an archaeological dig then. Get beneath the personal stamp I’ve put on this office and dig down to anything that remains of my predecessor. Well, I doubt you’ll find anything, but I’ve got nothing to hide. You’re welcome to look. But not, if you please, while I’m working here.”

  “I’m very accustomed to working at night. If you could lend me a key or just leave the door unlocked, we’ll make sure everything is left as we found it.”

  “There’s a wall safe behind that picture.” She motioned with her head to a desert scene of three tribesmen on camels traveling across a gold- and red-colored sand dune. “I don’t choose to give you the combination. Would you like me to open it for you now?”

  He shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

  “You can see why I’m somewhat suspicious of Georgiana Quales. Since there was a perfectly good safe in the principal’s office, why didn’t she put the manuscripts in there if she was so worried about them?”

  “An excellent question. What do you think happened to them?”

  “I’m sorry to say, I believe she may have sold them.” Once more, her hand curled into a fist. “We keep it quiet, but before her death, there was a collector who made several appointments to see her.”

  Rafe was always a master of his emotions, but even he leaned forward eagerly at this new information. “A collector? May I ask who?”

  “Reginald Cameron was his name.” I was impressed that she didn’t even have to look up the name in her records. The woman must have an incredible memory. “There was an appointment in her calendar with this man only weeks before her accident. Mr. Cameron also took her to lunch.”

  “Reginald Cameron, from Arizona?” Rafe asked in his measured way. “The reclusive billionaire and rare book collector?”

  “You know him?” For a second she looked sharply suspicious, then relaxed. “Of course you’d know him.”

  “I’ve met him at auctions. Usually he deals through an agent, but for a rare, very expensive item, he’ll turn up himself to assure himself of the provenance.” Rafe didn’t speak for a moment, and we both waited, as it was clear he had more to say. Finally, we were rewarded for our patience. “We found ourselves bidding for the same lot at one auction.” He didn’t smile, but there was a slight crinkling around his eyes. “The auction grew quite spirited.”

  “What were you bidding for?” I knew Rafe, and he wasn’t one to get a bad case of auction fever and go crazy over a book. Though I guess it depended on the book.

  “Wuthering Heights. It was a first edition and signed by Emily Brontë, but what made it extraordinary was the card that accompanied the book. It was a poem Emily Brontë had written to her admirer. That poem had never been published.”

  “I suspect Mr. Cameron could be very determined,” Professor Cartwright said, her eyes never leaving Rafe’s face.

  “Oh, yes. And I might have let him have the lot were it not for that poem. You see, I don’t believe original works should end up in private hands, in some climate-controlled showroom where a collector hoards his treasures. It should be on display for anyone with a love of Brontë’s work to see. Available to the scholar who would wish to study that poem.”

  “I’m quite agog. How did this fierce battle end?”

  The crinkles around his eyes deepened. “I’m afraid Mr. Cameron found himself outbid.”

  “And where is that manuscript now?” she asked. If Rafe had it in the special climate-controlled library in his own manor house, he was so busted. However, with a gesture a bit like a man handing a woman a bouquet of flowers, he said, “It’s in Haworth. At the Brontë Parsonage Museum.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “If the Brontë museum can afford to outbid an American billionaire for a single poem, they have deeper pockets than I was aware of.”

  “In fact, I was bidding on behalf of a private individual who then donated the treasure.”

  I may not know many things, but I knew that Rafe had bought that book himself in order to donate it. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal to a guy who had more money than he could spend in the hundred lifetimes ahead of him, but his gift still made me happy.

  “Well, I’m worried that the very determined Mr. Cameron may have enjoyed better success with St. Mary’s treasured Brontë manuscript.”

  “I can’t believe it of Georgiana Quales. No doubt he was after the manuscript, but I’m convinced she turned him down.”

  “Then why the luncheon? Why the subsequent meetings? Saying no is a simple affair. One doesn’t need three meetings and a luncheon to declare a single syllable.”

  “You’re certain Georgiana Quales met with Cameron all those times?”

  “Yes. They were in her diary, kept by her executive secretary, whom I inherited from Georgiana Quales.” She let out a frustrated huff of breath. “Three meetings and a luncheon she had with that wealthy Brontë fanatic. If it was up to me, they’d take her portrait down from the wall in the dining hall. We shouldn’t revere that woman. Because of her, this college may soon cease to be.”

  I hadn’t known it was as serious as that. From his expression, I didn’t think Rafe had either.

  She looked down at the neatly ordered piles of paper atop her desk, already thinking about the next task. She sighed as her gaze rested on the central file. “And speaking of people who leave their affairs in a mess, the police want me to contact Wilfred Eels’ next of kin. The poor man who fell down the stairs to his death hasn’t even
been formally identified yet.”

  Rafe said, “He hadn’t been here very long, perhaps not long enough to put down roots.”

  “No. His next of kin is someone named Susanna Morgan. The contact information for her is a Sainsbury’s in Coventry.” She threw up her hands. “I hope when I depart this earth I’ll leave a better trail to my nearest and dearest than the Sainsbury’s in Coventry. I don’t even know who this woman is. Sister? Daughter? Ex-wife? Mother?”

  “You haven’t been able to get hold of her?” I felt so sorry for poor Wilfred Eels, even though I’d never met him when he was alive. Imagine lying there in the morgue and your closest kin not even knowing that you were dead.

  “Her next shift is tomorrow at eleven.”

  Rafe shot me a glance, and I immediately knew what he was thinking. Sure enough, he said, “I have business at Warwick University tomorrow. That’s quite close to Coventry. It would be nice for Susanna Morgan to hear the news in person.”

  Professor Cartwright looked up. “Are you offering to tell this woman that Mr. Eels is dead?”

  “I didn’t know him well, but we used to chat when we were both in the library. It’s not a chore I relish, but I’d be willing to spare her hearing such news on the telephone.”

  I could see her weighing her duty against the convenience of getting rid of an unpleasant task. Expediency won. She said, “Well, I certainly don’t have time to drive to Coventry, and you probably knew him as well as I did. You’re only to say that he died in a fall and the police would like her to come to Oxford to formally identify him. No doubt they’ll have some questions about his past.”

  “I’d be happy to do that. I can even offer her a lift back to Oxford.”

  Professor Cartwright shut the file folder with what looked like relief. “I’m very much obliged to you.”