An Inquiry Into Love and Death

by Simone St. James

  “Liar. All of that ‘where were you’ business. It completely put him off. What was all that about?”

  “Jillian, as a private citizen, don’t question the motives or methods of the police. We know what we’re doing.”

  “I don’t think you do. I highly doubt that man pushed my uncle to his death.”

  “Do you? That explains why you’re you, and I’m me. I suggest you eat your fish before it gets cold.”

  I took a bite. It was delicious. I thought perhaps Aubrey Thorne had touched a nerve when he talked of the war, and that was why Drew had reacted. “And do you really think the local vicar was prowling around my house last night, pretending to be a ghost?”

  “I think that something is rotten in Rothewell, and it doesn’t hurt if I put it into the local wires that I’m here to rattle some cages. By the way, what was that about Toby having been here before? And what else haven’t you told me?”

  “I didn’t think of it,” I admitted. “There’s been too much going on.” I told him quickly of my meeting with William Moorcock and everything we’d said. “William was the one who told me the history of Walking John.”

  “Interesting,” said the inspector. “What else do you know about this Moorcock fellow?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thorne said he’s a veteran. Is he injured?”

  “He didn’t look it. But neither do you.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  I frowned. “Do you know, I have no idea. He didn’t mention anything.”

  “A veteran of independent means,” he mused. “You don’t see too many of those.”

  I stopped eating and stared at him. “You really do suspect everyone of murder, don’t you?”

  “Did you think I was lying? Suspecting people of murder is my job.”

  “And do you like it? Unsettling people with questions and suspecting everyone you meet?”

  For a second, his features relaxed into quiet humor. “The questions, yes, sometimes. The rest of it—well.” He lowered his fish and looked away, serious again. “I’m not sure I chose this job. Most days, it seems it chose me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He considered his words. “I never thought I’d join the police. My father is a barrister, a rather successful one, and I’m his only son. He wanted me to be ambitious, to reach even further than he had—perhaps even to be an MP someday. So I set myself on the course to do the opposite.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

  “I did nothing with myself,” he replied. “Nothing at all. I loafed; I borrowed money; I got in fights with the other boys at school; I mouthed off to my betters. I barely passed my courses. My father was so disgusted he could barely stand to speak to me. Then I made the mistake of actually stealing money from his billfold, and he caught me at it. He told me I either got myself some sort of employment, or he’d report me to the police himself.”

  “Goodness,” I said, trying to picture the scene.

  He glanced at me, then away again. “So I joined the regular police force. I picked the police partly because it horrified my father—it’s far too low-class for his like—and partly because, for whatever reason, they agreed to take me. So I went. I did all right, I suppose; I didn’t get sacked, anyway. Then I went to war.

  “The next thing I knew, I was flying planes. Thorne was right—it was a horrible way to die. You learned quickly not to get attached to anyone, not to ask their last name or where they were from or whether they were married, because most of the men ended up dead. The lucky ones went down behind enemy lines, never to be seen again. The unlucky ones . . .” His gaze dulled. “After a while you went numb to it, and it became a relief.”

  He looked down at his fish wrapper, crumpled in his hands. He seemed inclined to keep talking, and I didn’t interrupt. “When I got home, the police were short men everywhere. I got promoted to Scotland Yard; I wouldn’t have had a ghost of a chance before the war. My first case on the job, the body of a man was left in the road, shot through the eye. He was lying exactly in the middle of the roadway in the country, as if he’d been pushed from a motorcar. But from the blood spatters, we knew he’d been killed on the spot. So someone had pushed him from the motorcar, shot him in the left eye, and driven on.” He looked at me again. “That was my first week.”

  “My goodness,” I said.

  “Indeed. It taught me two things. First of all, that the detachment I’d learned in the war was perfect for a career in Scotland Yard. And second, that despite myself I’d found the only thing I’d ever want to do.”

  I shifted in my seat, disquieted. “You can’t mean that. About the numbness from battle helping you at Scotland Yard.”

  “Why not? I do mean it. Being numb has aided me, I think, in every single case I’ve been a part of.”

  What about your life? I wondered. Your parents? Those girls who left messages at the inn? But instead I asked, “Did you solve it? The man on the road?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth. “The wife did it. Or, more specifically, she hired a fellow.”

  I stared at him, my hand lowered to my lap, loosely clasping the last of my fish, which was forgotten and cold.

  He looked at my expression, and his gaze slowly closed up, the smile evaporating, the lines of his face growing hard again. He took my fish wrapper from my hands and balled it up with his own. “I’ve never told anyone any of that,” he said. “Your uncle found that ghost, you know. And Thorne knew it.”

  “What do you mean? He said he didn’t know what my uncle found.”

  “Certainly. And he was lying.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He seemed surprised by the question. “He simply was.”

  “But you don’t know it. You don’t know when someone is lying.”

  His gaze narrowed on me. “You don’t know there was something at your door last night.”

  Very well. “But it makes no sense. Who would want to lie about a centuries-old ghost?”

  “That’s an excellent question. Now you’re thinking like Scotland Yard.”

  He wandered off to find a trash can. It was noon, the sun high, the wind clear and cool across the rocky beach, the surf pounding in a hypnotic, overwhelming wash of sound. I watched the water, my mind turning over everything Drew had said. I felt I should get up, that we should be moving forward and doing something, but for the moment I wanted only to sit there and breathe the salted air, looking over the water at nothing.

  He returned, and I sensed him as he sat next to me, the large dark bulk of him in the corner of my eye, the faint scent of him on the wind.

  I found, after all, that there was one topic I could not quite leave alone. “Are you going to answer your messages?” I asked him.

  He had taken off his hat, and I could see the tips of his ears grow red, though perhaps it was from the wind. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.”

  “That isn’t an answer.”

  He shrugged after a moment. “I don’t like too many connections. I don’t ask questions; I don’t get details. It’s easier that way.”

  “Inspector—”

  “My name is Drew,” he said.

  Just like that, there it was again, the awareness between us. It ran up my spine, tensed all my muscles. I looked down to my lap. I wondered, to my shame, what it would feel like if he touched me—a man who would want nothing more from me than the feel of my skin.

  “I wanted to go, you know,” I said. “To war.”

  He paused for a moment, following me. “You were far too young.”

  “Yes, I was. I was only twelve when the war started. After the first Battle of the Somme I begged my parents to falsify my age so I could go and nurse. Of course they said no. We had a raging battle; you’ve no idea how dr
amatic a teenaged girl can be. But in the end I stayed home, read the newspapers, and studied.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t go,” he said.

  He was looking out over the beach, over the water. His hair was short, dark brown, and ruffled softly in the wind. He looked at my face, and something in his eyes turned desolate. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t romanticize it. Just don’t. It was nothing like you thought, you know. Nothing. If you romanticize it, you’ll just be like all the other girls, and you’re not.”

  Edith, Genevieve, Mary Ann. I studied him, impolite, unashamed. “You’re lonely,” I said.

  He nearly flinched, but didn’t. “You haven’t been listening.”

  “You are.”

  “Aren’t you? An intellectual girl, at Oxford?”

  It was a fair enough question, but he’d struck a mark, and I felt myself heat. “I have a very good life.”

  “Perhaps. But I’m not blind. You’re an intelligent girl in a world that still thinks intelligent girls are unnatural. You may be at university, but I’ll wager you know very few people who truly understand.”

  My anger and hurt surprised even myself. “I am going to graduate Oxford,” I said fiercely, “and the rest of the world can go to hell.”

  “Yes, you will. And then?”

  “And then I’ll become a don, with chin whiskers and mannish suits, and I’ll teach the next generation of girls to be as smart as I am.”

  He had turned toward me, and for a long, quiet moment, he did nothing but look at me. He was unreadable, unfathomable; I could see a struggle in his eyes and a flicker of feeling, gone before I could analyze it. Then, with ruthless ease and practice, he leaned in toward me.

  He touched my face, his fingertips brushing my cheek. He ran his thumb reverently along my lower lip. My skin sparked and I sat frozen, trapped by the scent of him, the nearness of his breath. The rest of the world fell away.

  His gaze devoured me, fascinated; it lingered on my mouth. My lips parted by instinct, and his eyes darkened, their expression shifting to one of deep, sensual anticipation, mixed with something else I didn’t recognize. His hand moved to cup the back of my neck and my entire body responded; I felt the warmth of his palm with perfect clarity, as if he’d already touched me everywhere. I could see on his face that he was picturing the same thing.

  He leaned closer. I thought he would kiss me. I had been kissed before, but the thought of those kisses now was only embarrassing. Drew Merriken, instinct told me, would know very well how to kiss; he would do it with slow, perfect deliberation, like a man who takes utter pleasure in his work. In that second, I wanted nothing more than to feel it.

  He leaned past my mouth, to my ear. “If there’s one thing I know,” he said softly, his breath warm on me, his lips brushing my skin, “it’s that life doesn’t always turn out as you expect it to.”

  He paused for a moment, as if breathing me in, savoring me. Then he stood, and I was alone in the cold again.

  Thirteen

  17 November 1922. Bains’ house, Southampton. Claims to be haunted by the ghost of a child bleeding from the mouth. Onset of the manifestation recent, within one to two months; appears bedside, making pitiful sounds. No wife to corroborate. When asked about recent deaths of children in the area, he recoils, does not answer; I will set up the instruments and see if I can communicate. . . .

  I put down Toby’s notebook. I was sitting in the library again, with the curtains drawn and the shutters tightly closed outside, as the afternoon drew on. I had opened the book to try to distract myself from the thought of Drew, and so far, it was working.

  Sultana sat before the fireplace, cleaning herself. She had reappeared at my door as I came home and eaten more of my sausage. I had retrieved my silver-backed brush from my bedroom, and she had allowed me to attempt to remove the thistles in her tail; I worked them out as gently as I could, telling her in a soothing voice how wonderful she was. She reversed her ears on her head in endurance and silently agreed, until she informed me with a hiss that the session was finished. She then lapped the bowl of cream I gave her as I quietly stroked her shoulder blades.

  Now she regarded me calmly, the comfort of her beautiful eyes countering the terrible things I read in the notebook. I didn’t want to read any more, but I had to; it must contain the key to Toby’s last days.

  I turned to the last few entries.

  16 October 1924. I have arrived in Rothewell. There is a well-known ghost here that is a local legend: one of the most persistent apparitions I have ever encountered; the legend is rather tragic. I have ever regretted that I was not able to do something for him twenty-three years ago. I am, perhaps, on a fool’s quest to try to rectify this, but if it were not for my memories of this place, I would have come sooner.

  This place looks the same, though I am much older.

  I rubbed my forehead. So, Toby had not been hired, then; he had come here on his own. There was that question answered. I turned the page.

  17 October 1924, Barrow House, Rothewell. Uneasy dreams last night, and scratching at the window. Already something is here. It has not lessened in power in twenty-three years. Seems to be focused on this house as the closest one to the woods. I wonder if it recognizes me?

  11:20 p.m. I have set up the instruments on the desk in the library. All quiet.

  11:50 p.m. All quiet, instruments still. But I am aware of something. Very strong.

  18 October 1924, Barrow House, 12:15 a.m. Galvanoscope acting strangely; cannot understand the readings.

  12:30 a.m. Sounds from the back door; something is in the garden.

  12:45 a.m. Quiet again. I have the feeling I have just been investigated, and it has now gone away. . . .

  I shivered. Something is in the garden. I turned to the next entry.

  19 October 1924, Barrow House. Rothewell has hardly changed since I left it; it is still a quiet fishing town that dozes its way through the days as it has done for centuries, except that now many of its young men have been lost in the war. I have spoken to some of the locals, trying to collect background, including a visit to the vicar’s archives. Though most are very friendly, they tend to avoid the subject unless pushed. I am getting a strange feeling, though perhaps it’s my imagination.

  Yesterday I set up a small table with a bowl of water on it in the back garden, as water has great power over spirits. I also took a ladder and attached several threads around the upper windows. This morning the table was in the same place, turned exactly upside down; the threads were ripped from the windows, though nothing else was disturbed. The bowl of water was missing entirely until I climbed the ladder to look for the threads and found it tucked in the crook of one of the gables, right in my line of sight as I climbed. It was still full.

  Mischievous, I think, and a little hostile.

  This is the Walking John I remember, and he knows I am here.

  20 October 1924, Barrow House. I have blocked off my bedroom windows in an attempt to get some sleep. There is no point in setting up the instruments again, as I already know what they will record. There are sounds, but I sleep through them, though I have bursts of awful dreams. He has overturned the table again, and moved the bowl. I am well aware of him now.

  There were words in my dreams last night, though I don’t know whether they were from the window or from the depths of my own mind. Come out, come out.

  I must be ready.

  21 October 1924, Barrow House. I spent almost the whole of the night outdoors. I set the instruments up in eight different locations, and took readings in each one. Twice I heard sounds that I did not think could be explained by local nighttime wildlife; both times the instruments showed nothing. I wonder if John Barrow’s strength waxes and wanes; or does it strengthen only in certain areas? Did I imagine the taunting in my dreams last night? I must find my research on these kinds of manifestations.

&n
bsp; I have marked each location and will return tomorrow night again.

  22 October 1924, Barrow House. Another night spent in the woods. I have only just come home.

  I saw—

  I cannot write what I saw.

  What do I do?

  It does not escape me that if it were a ghost I had seen, I would have a better idea. I am already familiar with the dead. But it was no ghost. It was a person. A person . . . What does one do about a person?

  There is not enough evidence to tell anyone. At least I was not seen, crouched in the dark, my torch switched off, the galvanoscope shoved in the bushes. But I did not see enough to be sure. My only option is to watch and wait.

  Walking John made no appearance.

  Later. I cannot sleep, so I have distracted myself with research.

  I believe this manifestation is a boggart of a particularly powerful genus, tied to this location, mischievous and mean. These hauntings are unpleasant and difficult to remove. I must find a method. If only this were a simple ghost hunt. . . .

  I have Vizier’s book here. I will read until I fall asleep.

  23 October 1924, Barrow House. Last night the flat of a palm slapped my bedroom window, which of course is on the second floor. The sound did not come again. He wants something of me.

  I did not go back to the woods, but stayed in the house. I wonder if I shall go mad. I should never have come.

  It is time to admit that Walking John is not the only reason I came here.

  Elizabeth . . .

  24 October 1924, Barrow House. The woods are quiet tonight, though something is watching, waiting for me. I believe I have the answer, though I now wonder whether I will ever get to try it.

  As for the other, it was easier than I thought to get information. Perhaps I should have been a spy. I believe I can stop this. I do believe it. I have to believe it. If I could just find it—just find it—it could be stopped.

  It’s growing dark. I have no choice. I am ready—