Popcorn and Poltergeists

by Nancy Warren

  I felt my eyes widen in shock. “You don’t mean?”

  He nodded, looking extremely pleased. “Letter one. To Mrs. Saville, England. From St. Petersburg December 11 17—

  “You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.”

  If I was going to make flowers out of human hair, I’d have evil forebodings too, but I strongly suspected we’d moved on from that. He looked at me. “Lucy, come on. Where is your knowledge of one of the greatest horror stories of all time?”

  “Are you telling me that Frankenstein starts with a series of letters?” How embarrassing. I’d never known that.

  “I am indeed. I’ll have to test the paper and do further analysis, but I think this might well be the missing Frankenstein manuscript.” He fished out the cotton gloves he was never without and carefully began to turn pages. He let out a cry of triumph. And then he showed the page to us. We could see the crossing out of lines and additions in cramped writing where Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley had made some corrections to this manuscript.

  Silence didn’t seem to know whether to be pleased that she’d discovered the missing Shelley manuscript or annoyed that she’d never find out the final instructions on how to turn someone else’s hair into a flower.

  I started to laugh. “So when the poltergeist told me the manuscripts were taken, she was trying to say that we’d taken them.”

  To my surprise, Rafe joined in. Silence looked from one to the other of us as though we’d lost our marbles. “She must have hidden the manuscripts among these old craft manuscripts for safety.”

  “One wonders why she didn’t lock them in the safe that was in her office.”

  “I don’t know. It would be interesting to find out who else had access to that safe. Remember, she talked about betrayal. There was someone she didn’t trust. She tucked those manuscripts where she could reach them. She wanted them to be safe at the college but not readily found. She felt she needed to be devious.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I made the next obvious jump in logic. “But if we have this one, then the Brontë manuscript might be hidden behind some instructions on how to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

  Silence gave me a strange look. “To make a silk purse, Lucy, you need silk. However, a sow’s ear can make a very nice change purse. You would need to treat the pigskin, of course. I’ve always heard it said—”

  Rafe was already standing, and I quickly followed suit before I got any further instructions on pig’s ear change purses. I followed him down the hall to his workshop, my cocoa forgotten. Silence followed behind us. When we got there, he asked her to identify which of the bound books she’d already worked her way through. There were four remaining. We took one each, and Rafe told us to turn the pages very carefully in case the Brontë manuscript was there. He handed me a pair of cotton gloves. “Remember, Lucy, you could be handling something virtually priceless. Please take care.”

  I nodded and forced myself to go slowly page after page when I longed to flip through the brown leather-bound manuscript. I sat there for half an hour reading. I can tell you right now that I am never taking up lace-making.

  “Aha,” said Silence, sounding so unusually cheerful that I looked up. Had she struck gold twice in one day? “Did you find it?” I asked her eagerly.

  “I have indeed, Lucy. You wrap the hair around wire, you see. And you can use tiny shells as vases.”

  “You found the rest of the instructions on making a hair flower bouquet,” I said faintly. I would never understand Silence Buggins if I lived as long as she did. “You haven’t found that Charlotte Brontë manuscript?”

  She was so busy reading that it took her a moment to realize I’d been speaking to her. She glanced up then. “Oh, no. But if I find the novel, I’ll be certain to inform you of the fact.” And then she went back to her reading.

  I took myself back to the world of lace-making. I was almost envious that she got to read about hair flowers. They genuinely sounded more interesting.

  I began to speed-read, knowing that I was bound to recognize Jane Eyre even if I didn’t catch it right at the first sentence. And so it was that I was speeding along before I realized I had just seen the name Currer Bell.

  I hadn’t read Jane Eyre since high school, but I recalled now that the Brontë sisters had taken male pseudonyms. I turned the page, my heart beating quickly, and there it was. Chapter One. I read first to myself, and then aloud. “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.”

  Rafe turned to me and raised his brows in a silent question.

  I gestured like a magician. “I think I found it.”

  He was on me in a second, reading over my shoulder. He reached past and turned the pages very slowly. “Congratulations, Lucy. This is Jane Eyre before it was ever published. Look at her notes, and the drawings.” I felt as proud as though I had written the novel myself.

  I settled back into one of the comfy armchairs he kept in his workshop/study. My work was done and now his would begin, trying to authenticate these two manuscripts.

  “Well, at least that mystery is solved,” I said. “Can you imagine how happy Amelia Cartwright will be? This will save St. Mary’s.” I looked at Rafe, knowing he had a personal reason for wanting to find the manuscripts too. “And it will restore the damaged reputation of Georgiana Quales.”

  Rafe seemed pleased but not as thrilled as I was. “But don’t forget, Lucy, we still don’t know how Professor Quales died or who attacked Fiona and possibly killed Wilfrid Eels.”

  “Do you have to be such a buzzkill? At least let us enjoy our triumph for five minutes.”

  His lips twitched. “Very well.”

  “And now that you actually have the manuscripts, you should do what I suggested earlier. My plan’s even more brilliant now.”

  “Yes. Here are the letters written to a former teacher of hers.” Then he glanced up. “What plan is that?”

  “The plan where you put out the word that you have the original manuscripts in your possession and see what we can shake out of the woodwork. You wouldn’t even be lying. It’s true.”

  “In my experience, when one shakes woodwork, it’s vermin that come out.”

  “Do you have a better idea of how we can flush out a possible murderer?”

  “Have you forgotten what Georgiana Quales said to you, Lucy? You could be in grave danger.”

  There was that. I wasn’t any more eager to throw myself into danger than the next person, however, I had to state the obvious. “She told me I was already in danger. Maybe now that we’ve found the manuscripts, by putting it out there that we have them, I won’t be in danger anymore.”

  It seemed reasonable. “I shall need some jet beads,” Silence said.

  We both stared at her, and she glanced up. “For the centers of my pansies. Jet beads. I wonder where one could procure some.”

  “I’m pretty sure Sylvia has jet beads,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t very nice of me to throw Silence over to Sylvia, but I had helped Sylvia and Gran out by not sending the Victorian chatterbox on the road trip with them. I figured they owed me.

  When Silence headed off on her errand, I suggested once more that Rafe should drop some very strong hints in the right circles that he had these manuscripts.

  Before he could argue for my safety, I reminded him, “I can stay here. That way you can keep me safe. I’ll only be in the store during the day, and I have Violet and Scarlett assisting, plus a whole nest of vampires sleeping below. I’ll be fine.”

  I could tell he was wavering. Finally, he admitted, “It would give me satisfaction to see whoever killed Georgian
a Quales brought to justice.”

  “And over a book, too.”

  He looked horrified. “Not a book, Lucy. Two original manuscripts of important feminist fiction complete with the authors’ thoughts. That is not just a book.”

  And a pansy made of human hair wasn’t just a flower. Really, people and their passions.

  Since I was yawning and I could tell he was itching to begin confirming that these were, in fact, the missing manuscripts, I said good night and took myself off to bed.

  As I was drifting to sleep, I could have sworn I heard the word, “Danger.”

  Chapter 17

  The next morning while I enjoyed eggs Benedict and fresh fruit salad courtesy of William, Rafe came in looking grimly pleased. “I took your advice, Lucy, dubious as it was. I threw out some heavy hints about the manuscripts being in my possession. I’ve already had inquiries from around the globe.”

  “Really? Who knew bibliophiles were such an eager bunch.”

  “One of them is flying in to meet me.”

  Oh, he’d really shaken the right cages. “Let me guess. It’s a certain billionaire from the United States? I can’t wait to meet him.”

  “You will stay here until I’ve met with the man.”

  I did not wish to get into a fruitless argument, so I thanked William more graciously than usual when he refilled my coffee cup. “What are your plans for the weekend, William?”

  “Actually, I’m catering a private dinner tonight and a very small wedding tomorrow.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “How about you?” he asked, equally polite.

  “I’m going home and catching up on my sleep. Maybe go to the gym to work off some of these calories.”

  “I think you should remain here,” Rafe said, as polite as William but more firm.

  My fork clattered against the plate as I put it down a little too hard. “Rafe, I am not a child, and I’m not stupid. I can’t stop my life because a poltergeist wrote a warning on a wall. Besides, you know Gran and Sylvia and the rest of them will be right below me if I need them.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  I didn’t like having a vague warning from a poltergeist hanging over me either. But I couldn’t hit the pause button on my life.

  “Did you have any luck authenticating those manuscripts?” He’d obviously spent the night working on them.

  “I have every confidence that when I have completed all my tests, these will turn out to be the missing manuscripts.”

  My annoyance disappeared, and amusement took over. “So that’s a yes then.”

  His ready sense of humor lit his eyes. “That’s a yes.”

  I felt like doing a fist-pump in the air. I’d grown to care about the fate of the former ladies’ college, and I’d become invested in the idea of Georgiana Quales’s reputation being restored. The thing about communicating with a ghost was that it made a person realize that the things we did in life had consequences that went long past the moment of our death. Georgiana Quales had spent the latter part of her career and, as it turned out, her life, promoting and protecting St. Mary’s College. Her untimely death had not only prevented her from continuing her work but had thrown her reputation and legacy into question. Of course, Georgiana Quales had clearly been an overachiever and maybe took things a little bit far by refusing to move on even after her death. Still, she’d used the only tools she had to hand, and in her way, she’d been successful. She’d led us to the truth in her own peculiar way.

  Rafe drove me back to Harrington Street and, on the pretext of needing to speak to Theodore, came into the shop with me. He knew I’d throw a fit if he said he wanted to come in and make sure nothing dangerous lurked in either my shop or my home, but I was not fooled. Still, it was kind of nice having a powerful vampire on your side when a cranky poltergeist was handing out warnings. So after we’d both had a good look around the shop, where clearly nothing was missing or disturbed, he said, “I think I may have left my black cashmere sweater upstairs in your flat. Do you mind if I look?”

  Really? He was five hundred years old and he couldn’t come up with a better excuse than that? But I didn’t call him on it. He wanted to make sure there were no monsters hiding under my bed, and frankly, I was happy to let him. I’d back Rafe against any bogeyman.

  I followed him up, and to neither of our surprise, he hadn’t left his sweater there. My flat also looked undisturbed and as I’d left it. There were no monsters hiding under my bed, only Nyx, sprawled out on my quilt with her head on my pillow. She’d chosen not to come to Rafe’s the night before, and I secretly thought she quite enjoyed having the flat to herself and stretching out on my bed without me taking up any of its comfortable real estate.

  When she saw us, she stretched and yawned and then flipped onto her back so she could have a belly rub. Not the actions of a cat who is alarmed, so any lingering nervousness I’d felt immediately dissipated.

  While I was there anyway, I put on a pot of coffee. I was well caffeinated thanks to William Thresher, but I liked to start my day at work with a cup of java, and I was in the habit of greeting Violet with a fresh cup when she started.

  “Remember,” Rafe said, “even though we have the manuscript safe, someone very dangerous is still out there. I want you to be on your guard.”

  I nodded. Yes, he was overprotective and annoying, but I always knew that he and my undead friends downstairs had my back.

  In spite of me feeling slightly jumpy, the day passed relatively uneventfully. Judith Morgan showed up with Hester. They both said they wanted to join the popcorn class on Monday. This would take my class size to ten, but I thought Alice would be all right. Judith looked happier than the last time I’d seen her. “Lucy, this is my friend Hester. She knits too. We decided we’d both take your class. I hope that’s all right.”

  What could I say? I was the one who’d encouraged her to come, not knowing then that she’d be bringing a teenage vampire with her, one who couldn’t always control her moods. I said, “sure” with as good a grace as I could muster, then suggested that Violet help Judith to choose her wool while I helped Hester. I pulled the teenage vampire away from the other two and whispered, “Why are you doing this?”

  “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  I was more worried that Hester would forget herself and knit an entire sweater in the time it took mortal knitters to manage a single row. I warned her to knit at human speed, and she rolled her eyes at me and walked over to see what her new friend was doing. She’d chosen a rich blue wool. “I’m going to make a sweater for Dad. Graham. My stepdad,” Judith said. She looked at me with heightened color. “I wasn’t very nice to him. Or Mum.”

  “You’d had a shock. I’m sure they understood.”

  She looked truly ashamed and hung her head. “I told the police I’d seen him that day. You know, the day my real dad died.”

  “I remember you said he’d come up to you in the hallway when you were talking to Wilfred Eels.” She’d related the incident in Amelia Cartwright’s office, the day before she had found out that Wilfred Eels was dead, and today she learns that the deceased caretaker had been her father.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but it seemed like the right thing at the time.”

  “You were also in shock,” I reminded her.

  “That’s what Hester said. We only just met, but already she’s a good mate.” Hester beamed at this news. “Thing is, he could have got into a lot of trouble.”

  “The police followed up, then?”

  She began winding wool around her finger, then unwinding it. “Yeah. Turned out he did go to the library and confront my real dad that night. Course he’d recognized him. He only pretended not to.”

  That can’t have looked good to the police. “What happened?” Fiona McAdam said she’d heard raised voices in the library. Two men. She hadn’t been hallucinating then.

  Her face looked blotchy, like after a good cry. “It was awful. They took h
im to the police station. Mum was frantic.” As you would be if your husband killed your former husband.

  “Thing is, he’s always been so good to me, and he’s not even my real dad.” She lined the balls of wool up on the counter. “He’d do anything for me. I want to show him I’m sorry.”

  And the sweater would keep him warm in the winter if he was sent to prison.

  “He’ll love it.”

  “But tell Lucy the good news,” Hester said.

  “There’s good news?”

  “Yes. Dad said they’d had a row and he told Wilfred Eels to stay away from me. I think he might have made some threats, but no one ever tells me everything.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Hester moaned.

  I was surprised I hadn’t heard of an arrest, but then Theodore had been away and Rafe busy with the manuscripts. “Where is Graham Morgan now?”

  She looked up as though wondering why I’d ask. “At work, I imagine. Why?”

  “So the police didn’t detain him?”

  “Oh, no. It looked bad for him at first. He swore Wilfred Eels had been alive when he left St. Mary’s. Luckily, he stopped for petrol on the way home. They found the CCTV footage, and it proves he’d left the library before Wilfred died.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Yeah. I still feel bad, though. So I’m going to knit him a sweater.” She looked up. “He shouldn’t have had a go at my real dad, but he did it for me.”

  “I really think he’s going to love that sweater. I bet he wears it everywhere.”

  “If Mum likes it, I’ll make her one next.”

  Hester looked on, then said, “Do you think Carlos would like a sweater in that blue?”

  Judith’s pensive expression was replaced by a teasing one. “Ooh, knitting him a sweater, are we? I thought you were just friends?”

  With giggling and pushing each other, they looked as though they’d bonded pretty fast. I only hoped Carlos wasn’t overwhelmed by Hester’s sudden appearance in his life. She’d known him a couple of days, and now she was knitting him a sweater.