“She didn’t drink much,” said Alistair. “He was willing to help us.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Matthew took a sip of his beer. “He was willing to help himself. And you know I’ve no use for politics.”
“A friendly gesture doesn’t hurt. Not that I’ve ever been able to get that into you.”
“You can’t take me anywhere.” Matthew’s tone was almost nasty. “I guess your hired help needs better manners.”
“That’s uncalled for. I told him he was out of line.”
“Funny, I didn’t hear it.”
“Stop arguing,” I broke in.
They both looked at me.
My cheeks burned, but I went on. “Alistair, you could have stood up to him. Matthew is right—he was bullying us. It was a show in front of the rest of the town, though I have no idea what for. You were too flustered because he’s Evangeline’s husband.”
“What?” said Matthew. He leaned back. “That was Evangeline?”
I watched the two of them exchange a look—so Matthew knew all about Evangeline, then. I pressed on. “And you,” I said to Matthew. “Whatever you think of Tom Barry, you could have remembered that we’re in public here, and we’re strangers to these people. You’ve just made a lovely story that will be all over Waringstoke, if it isn’t already. You yourself told me that we’re already news in a small town like this. Now you’ve made a very nice stir.”
I had never made a speech like it in my life before. For a second the three of us, including myself, sat surprised. Then Matthew spoke.
“I didn’t know that was Evangeline,” he said. He looked at Alistair. “Did you know she was in Waringstoke?”
“No.” Alistair sounded tired. “Not until I saw her when we arrived.”
“And now you’ve met her husband,” Matthew said with sympathy. “Lucky you.” He looked at me. “We should interview Evangeline.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think she’ll see us. She approached me in the dress shop. I don’t think she can get away from him except when she’s walking her dog.”
“She approached you in the dress shop?” Alistair rubbed his forehead. “Sarah, what are you saying? Do you think she is afraid of her husband?”
“I don’t—” I bit my lip. “I don’t know.” I couldn’t sort it out. Which had been the real Evangeline—the frightened wife, or the woman who had walked out with her husband? Had the scene in the dressing room been an act to get information from me?
“All right, then,” said Matthew. “That’s a dead end, at least for now. I’ve been doing some digging this morning. There are other avenues we could take to investigate.”
“Investigate?” said Alistair. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re ghost hunters, not detectives. I’ve no intention of doing an investigation.”
“You have to,” I told him. “You promised Mrs. Clare you’d try to get rid of Maddy. How are you going to do it if you don’t know why she’s here, or what she wants? Nothing about her story adds up. Where did she come from? What happened to her before she reached the Clares’? Why did she kill herself? Why does she haunt the barn?”
“Sarah,” said Alistair, “it could be nothing to do with any of that. Do you understand? Maddy may just be a random phenomenon. Some ghosts are simply a concentration of energy, nothing more.”
“But some ghosts are more,” said Matthew.
Alistair looked from Matthew to me. “Ah, well.” He leaned back in his chair. “I know when I’m outvoted. Very well, we’ll try it your way and see.” He crooked an eyebrow at me. “Sarah, since it seems you are in charge—what do you propose we do next?”
I ignored the tease, and pondered the question. “I noticed the churchyard as we came into town,” I said at last. “I’d like to see her grave.”
“Do you know,” said Alistair as we entered the quiet, lonely churchyard, “I’m not even certain she’s buried here?”
“Where else would she be buried?” Matthew asked.
Alistair shrugged. “I never asked.” He slanted a look sideways at me. “It seems I should have let you run the interview.”
We had stopped partway down the path, and I glanced around, wondering where to start in the overgrown grass, where gravestones both new and old poked through next to the Queen Anne’s lace. A hot breeze blew against my legs and breathed across my sweaty neck. “I’m sorry about my outburst,” I said now, meaning it. “I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I also shouldn’t have pried about Mrs. Barry. I apologize.”
Alistair put his hands in his pockets and looked around along with me, while Matthew strode ahead of us down one of the paths and began to peer at stones. “You meant well,” he said softly. “I had no idea you were so emotional.”
“Neither did I,” I replied. I caught his eye and nodded toward the church, where a figure was emerging from a side door and coming toward us. “Who is that?”
Alistair turned and followed my gaze. “My guess is the sexton.”
The man came closer, and I was surprised to see that I recognized him. He was over sixty, the creases in his face deeply set, his sparse gray hair combed back from his browned forehead. He greeted Alistair with only a brief nod. As Alistair introduced us, and the man reluctantly told us his name was Jarvis, I finally placed the man in my mind. I had seen him in the taproom at the inn on my first night in Waringstoke, glaring at me in disapproval. He had been wearing a blue coat at the time. He wore an old sweater now, patched at the elbows, sagging over trousers that were none too clean, and work boots caked with mud.
His expression today was nearly as hostile as it had been that first night, especially when he directed it at me. “Help you with something?” he asked us, terse.
“Maddy Clare, the servant girl,” Alistair said. “Is she buried here?”
The man grunted. “Back corner.” He looked away, toward the trees. “Why they paid to bury a servant girl here is more than I know.”
“They were fond of her,” Alistair said mildly.
Mr. Jarvis grunted again.
“Did you dig the grave yourself?” I asked him.
Mr. Jarvis looked at me briefly again—the hostility in his eyes was unmistakable—and said, “I dig all the graves in Waringstoke, missy.”
“Now, hear,” Alistair chided him, but we were interrupted by a shout from Matthew. He was standing by a gravestone near the edge of the yard, where the trees began.
“She’s here,” he said.
Maddy’s grave was untended and overgrown, though this was also true of much of the graveyard proper. There were tangled weeds around her gravestone—a simple lozenge set into the earth that proclaimed her name and date of death. We stood looking down at it, Matthew and Alistair and I, as the birds sang in the overhead boughs of the trees.
Finally I knelt in the prickly grass. I brushed the leaves and stems from the stone, cleared it all the way to the edges, feeling a twinge of pity that those who put this stone here had never known her birth date, or even her true name. They had had to do the best they could.
I thought perhaps I would get one of the vivid images in my mind, the way I did when the strange bruises on my arms were touched. I had no idea what those images were—or what the red chimney and the treetops were supposed to mean—but I felt they were significant.
But the silence stretched on, and nothing happened. I stayed kneeling, waiting. The men behind me were silent.
“Nothing,” I said at last, with regret.
“It isn’t surprising,” said Alistair. “Haunting of grave sites is actually very rare. Most people are not emotionally invested in where they are buried, so their energy does not concentrate there after death. Actually,” he said with wry humor, “if one wants to avoid ghosts, the graveyard is one of the safest places to go.”
But still, I thought, the grave could have yielded something. Some echo of the person beneath. Even a quiet sense of stillness, of sleeping peace. I touched the gravestone again. My parents’ graves
had seemed sad to me, the only time I had been able to bear to visit them. There had been a quiet sorrow about the two graves, side by side, that had reverberated through the air as if reflecting the way they had died. Or had that been my imagination—my own mood, based on my memory of that horrible day in the summer of 1919?
I sighed and stood again. I caught sight of the sexton, Jarvis, retreated most of the way back to the church now, watching us. I remembered Mrs. Barry’s belief that I was some sort of “ghost specialist” brought in by Alistair. Mr. Jarvis, perhaps, suspected the same thing. It would explain his interest in me. But did it explain his hostility? What did he think I was learning from my visit to Maddy’s grave?
We turned to leave. We had left my packages at the pub, and we were to pick them up, and start the walk back to the inn while the afternoon held. Alistair said he needed time to go through his notes; he was undecided as to whether I should be sent back into the barn, or when. He was torn between the obvious danger to me and the incredible firsthand research I provided each time I encountered Maddy. He was still bent on documenting the haunting, and if I was indeed to be sent back into the barn, he needed to decide what equipment I might bring.
And so, Alistair planned to spend the evening studying. Matthew was to spend the evening trying to fix the sound recorder. And I, after the terrible excitement of having my room broken into the night before, was to be given the evening off. That I had no idea what to do with an entire evening, and that I was afraid of being alone, were not taken into account. I sighed. Perhaps I would find a book to read.
As we left the graveyard, we passed one grave that was immaculately kept. It was a large family monument, in pristine white stone, and the grass around it was trim and carefully tended—the only plot in the entire churchyard that was so. As I walked by it, I took in the name inscribed on the stone, and though I had not been able to help my curiosity, I found I was not surprised. The name on the pristine white monument, the only one tended by the greedy sexton, who was no doubt paid extra for the service, was Barry.
Chapter Fourteen
Alistair went to his room after supper. Though I knew he was going to study his notes, he also looked tired. His leg was paining him after the long walk. He was also, I believed, more upset by the encounter with Evangeline Barry and her husband than he let on. I was more convinced than ever that she had hurt him. Whether she had ever returned Alistair’s feeling at all was a mystery. But she was married, and so it was impossible. I could only feel terribly for Alistair, and hope he could someday find some more worthy object and move on.
Matthew had gone to our small private room and shut the door, likely to repair the sound-recording machine as he had promised. Tired myself, and not wanting to venture out of the inn, particularly alone, I picked up the only book I could find—one of Alistair’s books on ghosts—and began to read.
Alistair’s writing style mimicked his personality: vivid, smooth, interesting, and fun. The book was filled with story after story of English hauntings, told in great detail, complete with interviews with survivors and witnesses, histories of the houses and the ghosts seen, diagrams of some of the interiors with locations of sightings marked with an inked X, and many photographs from the very camera I had learned to use. Some of the photos were clear pictures of the houses, interior and exterior, lit in broad daylight; others were dark, blurry renditions taken during the supposed hauntings in an attempt to catch the ghost on film, just as I had done with Maddy.
I had never been interested in ghosts before taking the job with Alistair, but now I found myself fascinated. I went back and forth through the pages, both admiring and puzzling over the body of work of these two men I had so inexplicably met, both of them so strong-willed and intelligent, yet so damaged, and pursuing such a strange line of work.
I found I had more questions at the end of the book than I had had at the beginning. I told myself I did not want to bother Alistair, that he needed rest, and study. I told myself that I needed some company, and perhaps even some protection, as my room had been violated the night before. I told myself that social interaction had never done anyone any harm. These were the excuses I made to myself for going down to the private room, knocking gently on the door, and approaching Matthew Ryder.
He was indeed repairing the recording machine. He was seated at the table, the machine in front of him, its side panels dismantled, its wires exposed. Parts lay on the table around him. He was looking up in angry disapproval as I came through the door, but when he saw it was me, his expression changed. I could not read it. There was some tiredness there. A careful control, for certain. And yet he watched me as I came in the room, his eyes never leaving me as I pulled out a chair and sat down.
He had washed. He was wearing a clean white shirt—I was starting to notice that Matthew’s clothes were always impeccably clean, as if he was fastidious about it—the sleeves of which were rolled to the elbows, the better for him to work. The button at his throat was undone. His strong, muscled hands became still, and he watched me from his deep, dark eyes, with their dark lashes.
Before I could help myself, I glanced down at his bare forearms. The right was scarred worse than the left; this was the arm on which the scars traveled all the way down to the wrist and even the back of the hand. But the flesh on the left was mottled as well, partway down the forearm, even on the tender flesh of the inside of the arm. I could not imagine how painful that must have been. I jerked my glance away and looked back up into his face, caught him watching me steadily with unreadable calm.
I felt myself redden. After I’d been so bold as to intrude, my usual shyness came over me again. “Please don’t let me interrupt you,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I have just come in for some company. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You’re wearing one of your new dresses,” he said.
I touched my collar, self-conscious. I was indeed wearing one of the dresses Alistair had paid for—another shirtdress, serviceable like the one I had lost. The ladies of Waringstoke, it seemed, were much more impervious to fashion than the sharp ladies of London, and the dress was fitted for comfort, tapered in a little at the waist and sewn with enough room in the bodice. I had no need to flatten my chest or wear a confining girdle underneath. It was a relief, to simply wear something that fit my body as it was. It made me feel a little attractive, even though I was sure no one else would find the navy blue fabric with its pattern of tiny blue flowers more than modestly pretty.
“Yes, I am,” I said to Matthew.
“It looks nice,” he said.
I paused in surprise, and he looked away, dropping his gaze back down to the recording machine. He began to work again, his forearms flexing as he fitted two pieces together, and I tried not to feel too much shock—and happiness—at the compliment. Instead, I put my book on the table.
“I’ve been reading one of Alistair’s books,” I said. “It has Alistair’s name on it, but I suppose you wrote it, too.”
“I don’t write,” he said.
“Still.” I watched his hands move. “The illustrations. They are your work, I think?”
He stopped in surprise again and looked up at me.
I shrugged. “A guess.”
He grunted and returned to his work.
“I found myself wondering as I was reading,” I went on, “why you and Alistair do what you do. What is so fascinating to you? What would possess you to travel the countryside, looking for what Alistair calls manifestations? It appears on the surface like a lark. Alistair has money, and it’s easy to see him as an eccentric.” I traced my finger around the edge of the book, thinking aloud. “But I’ve met both of you and it isn’t a lark at all. You’re both obsessed by it, looking for something in it. Why do you do it? Why don’t you go home and start families and jobs like all the other soldiers did?”
It seemed the longer I stayed on this assignment, the bolder I was. But I wanted to know the answer, and I had nothing to lose. All Matthew had to do w
as tell me to go back to my room.
I thought he might, at first. He slid a piece into the recorder, picked up a small screwdriver, and began to secure it. “I suppose I could go home,” he said at last, in his gruff voice. He did not look at me. “My father has a shop—men’s tailoring. In a small town called Kingscherry, about an hour from Bath. Mother helps him, when she’s well. We never got along, and I left home early. Still, that means nothing now. He’d like me to come home, take over the shop from him. I could have done that when the war ended.”
He paused, thinking, and I nearly held my breath, hoping he would go on.
“Alistair has no one close—not really, you know. He inherited a big old house that he has no interest in—sloping grounds, ponds, a swimming pool. Not much fun if you’re alone. He finished fighting and he just wanted to bang about. You can’t imagine how hard it is to come home from hell and be expected to pick up the threads of a life. Apply for jobs, go to a factory, punch in, punch out. Put your lunch in a bag and get on the omnibus every day. Like nothing happened. Nothing.”
His eyes took on a faraway look—faraway and unpleasant. I knew he had gone somewhere I could not follow.
“Alistair was interested in these ghosts, even before the war. It was a lark then. Like a bunch of fools sitting around a séance table, pretending not to rap with their knuckles. Then we all went to France and ran for our lives through the mud with death at our heels. No parlor game—just death, breathing down your neck day and night. At first you’re sick and then you’re used to it, which is worse. And one day during one of those battles that never seemed to end, I started thinking about Alistair’s ghosts.”
He looked up at me, though I could tell he was seeing me from afar, as if he were looking through a lens. “There’s a theory that when a person dies in great emotion, great unrest, or with something important undone in life—that is when a manifestation occurs. People come back, or their echoes. Alistair wants to know if it can be proven. And I stood to my thighs in mud as the shells flew overhead, and I thought—this battlefield should be full of ghosts. There should be thousands of them here. These lives are all cut short. Every one of them left things undone. Thousands at Ypres, thousands at Passchendaele. This field should be overrun. Why isn’t it?”
The Haunting of Maddy Clare Page 11