by Kitty French
It slides into place eventually, and I look at Marina before I turn it because, to be perfectly honest, I’m suddenly terrified.
‘Ready?’
She nods. ‘We’ve got this.’
I draw on her determination and make it my own. I turn the key.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I plan to push the door slowly open, but Donovan Scarborough is faster and rips it back on its hinges the minute I unlock it. He reminds me of Daddy Bear from Goldilocks when he looms up towards us in the doorway, his arms aloft and his eyes wild. Marina and I are so shocked that we duck underneath his arms and make a run for it, ending up behind him in the hall so he swings around in a blind rage.
Leo is sprawled out on the floor with the fembots on their knees beside him, but thankfully from the way he’s batting them off and gingerly feeling his nose to see if it’s broken it’s fairly obvious that he’s going to be fine.
All three Scarborough brothers are here too. Isaac looks mortified, and Lloyd is observing proceedings with an expression of morbid satisfaction. I don’t care if he’s an old man; if he were flesh and blood right this moment, I think I’d actually swing for him to wipe that smug little smile from his face. Only Douglas has the gumption to make a useful suggestion.
‘Hit him with that!’ he shouts, gesturing towards a tall china vase on a side table close to me.
‘Not the Wedgwood!’ Lloyd yells, finally roused out of his smugness as I reach for it. ‘I paid a fortune for it!’
‘Shame,’ I say, as my fingers clasp around the vase’s slender neck. ‘It’s pretty.’
Donovan Scarborough makes a sudden lunge for me and I instinctively swing my arm back and bring it down with a satisfying crack over his head.
He goes down onto his knees like a comedy character in a cartoon, clutching his skull in shock. The vase was pretty dainty really, nowhere near heavy enough to kill him but more than enough to give him a banging headache and me and Marina time to scarper towards the staircase. Even as we’re doing it I’m thinking how only too-stupid-to-live heroines in bad B movies make for the stairs instead of heading for the front door, but it was the nearest option at short notice and Scarborough was between us and the exit.
Besides, we need to get up there to execute the second prong of my hastily cobbled-together plan.
‘Come on,’ I say, half-dragging Marina by the hand. ‘We’ve got a teddy bear to find.’
We make it to the top of the staircase in five seconds flat, running and scrabbling, and when we see Scarborough start crawling up behind us Marina takes one of her shoes off and flings it at him.
‘Just so you know, I’m putting new shoes on expenses,’ she says as she takes aim. I don’t argue. So far today she’s used her skyscraper heels to kick Fletch’s hand when he grabbed me under the bed, knock the key from the cellar door and now to hamper Donovan Scarborough’s progress. The way she’s going she’ll deserve Jimmy Choo’s rather than Topshop.
Lloyd must have heard what I said about the bear, because he’s waiting at the top of the stairs and is no longer the sneering, supercilious ghost of a few minutes previously. He’s reminds me more of his great-grandson than ever; filled with rabid, ugly fury.
If he could push me down the stairs and be done with me, I have no doubt whatsoever that he would.
Isaac and Douglas are here too now, and Donovan is almost at the top of the stairs. His head is a bleeding mess of little cuts and scrapes from the vase and Marina’s heel, he looks like a boxer at the end of a very long fight. An onlooker would be forgiven for thinking that he’d been brawling with Leo, given that he’s in a similar state on the floor in the hallway.
‘I know you killed Douglas,’ I say, staring defiantly at Lloyd. ‘You killed him, and then you stitched the knife inside your favourite teddy bear.’
Douglas is standing completely still, staring at his brother. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? I’ve always known it had to be you.’
‘You can’t prove a thing,’ Lloyd snarls, curling his lips back like a rabid beast.
‘Get out of my house!’ Donovan Scarborough shouts, belligerent and overwrought. He’s lying face-down on the stairs now, clearly exhausted. He looks like a man who has spent too much of his time enjoying the high life and not enough time at the gym. He’s knackered and bleeding, and I’m not sure if he’s shouting at me or the whole lot of us, ghosts included.
‘Oh, I’m going to prove it,’ I counter, jabbing my chin out in defiance at Lloyd. ‘You just watch me.’
I turn to dash down the corridor towards the master bedroom, but I’m stopped in my tracks by the sight of Fletch walking out of that same room.
He’s covered in dust, dirt and disintegrated rubber carpet underlay, and he’s carrying a saggy, dusty teddy bear.
‘Thought I may as well save you a job, Bittersweet,’ he says, casually handing me the bear. I hold it in my hands and, when I press its abdomen, I can feel something sickeningly solid inside it.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’ I’m thanking Fletch, but I’m also thanking Agnes Scarborough for leading me here. ‘How did you find it so quickly?’
He shrugs. ‘Studied the floorboards. One of them looked a bit off, as if a woman had nailed it down.’
Oh, he’ll suffer for that comment. Not right now, but later at some point. We head back to the top landing, back to the Scarborough brothers.
‘Fletch, do you think you could take Donovan Scarborough downstairs? There’s one last thing I need to do.’
‘It’s that gobbledegook bullshit again, isn’t it?’ he asks, and when I don’t answer, he goes half-way down the stairs and stands beside Scarborough.
‘You can get up and walk or I can drag you. I don’t care which.’
When Scarborough ignores him, he sighs. ‘Have it your own way then, fella,’ he says, then yanks Donovan down the stairs by one foot.
‘I think you might owe Fletcher Gunn a sexual favour now too,’ Marina says, as we stand on the wide landing and watch him drag a protesting Scarborough across the tiles and park him against the wall by the front door.
‘Go and find Artie and the others?’ I squeeze her hand. ‘I’ll be out soon.’
She knows what this means, and she casts an uncertain glance in the direction of the Scarborough brothers and raises her hand in a brief, sad, gesture of goodbye. She looks to me, nods just once, and then heads off down the stairs.
As I turn to face the three brothers, I think I can hear sirens in the distance.
‘Oh-oh.’ Douglas rolls his eyes. ‘Someone called the po-po.’
Lloyd and Isaac look confused.
‘Hawaii Five-0?’ I ask, and Douglas laughs sadly.
‘I quite like it. I’ll never know what happens at the end of the series now.’
It seems such an insignificant thing to lament in the big scheme of things.
‘I think it’s time to go, at last,’ Isaac says. It has to be Isaac who releases them; it’s only right and fair after he’s carried the weight of injustice and loss through life and death for so many long, lonely years.
‘Looks like the games up, old boy,’ Douglas says, gesturing towards the bear hanging from my fingertips. ‘Only you could think to hide a murder weapon in such a goddamn childish place.’
Lloyd is shaking with fury. ‘You can’t have her,’ he spits. ‘Not after all these years. Not now, like this.’
Douglas frowns, obviously as confused as I am by Lloyd’s words, and I can’t stop myself from asking the question that’s had me baffled throughout.
‘Why didn’t you just confess after you died, Lloyd? I mean, you got away with murder. You didn’t need to hang around here all of these years, yet still you stayed.’
His eyes widen, and his cold laugh chills me. ‘Because if I stayed here, he had to stay too,’ his eyes flicker towards Douglas for a second. ‘She can’t choose him if he’s not there, can she?’
‘Your mother?’ I say, trying hard to understand.
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‘Of course not my mother, you stupid, naive little girl,’ he whisper-growls, as if he’s fast losing patience with me. ‘My wife.’
‘Maud?’ Douglas sounds genuinely shocked, and Lloyd rounds on him, enraged.
‘Don’t you speak her name!’ he yells. ‘You never fucking got it, did you? She was my friend, but it was always you she wanted. She barely noticed me, because just like all the rest of them, she was always so goddamn starry-eyed over you.’
‘You killed me to stop me from going near Maud, a woman I barely knew and had never shown so much as a flicker of interest in?’ Douglas looks utterly bereft at having lost his life over something so insignificant to him.
‘Everything is always about you, isn’t it, Douglas?’ Lloyd rants, exasperated and almost revelling in his big reveal. ‘Except this wasn’t. It was about me, and about Maud. Without you in the picture she finally saw me. Without you in the picture she finally loved me, and if you think I’m going to let you waltz back into her life looking just how you always did and steal her from me now, you’re . . .’
Lloyd shakes his head, his fists balled tight at his sides. He looks every inch the old, unhinged man that he is; it must tear his still heart out to look at Douglas now, forever young, strong and handsome and to know that he made him that way. Lloyd killed Douglas to keep him away from the girl he loved, and now, in death, he’d created a rival he didn’t stand a chance of beating. I could almost feel sorry for him, except for the fact that it’s Machiavellian and cunning and monstrous.
‘You didn’t confess because you wanted to keep me trapped in this house?’ Douglas almost laughs at the utter depraved absurdness. ‘Do you know how crazy that makes you sound?’
Lloyd seethes, and boils, and writhes, because there is nothing he can do anymore. He’s had a good run, but Douglas was right a couple of minutes ago. After more than a hundred years, the game is finally up.
I can hear a deathly rattle coming from Lloyd as realisation dawns, and I brace myself because I sense what’s about to happen just a couple of seconds before it does.
He stares at me and gapes as if he has something more to say and then, suddenly, violently, he shatters into a million razor-sharp shards. It’s like that sometimes. Urgent and angry, as if he’d boiled in his own temper and vitriol and detonated from the inside. It’s not a nice thing to see, and I look away and close my eyes until it’s over.
When I open my eyes again, Douglas has moved closer to me.
‘Are you okay?’ His eyes search my face, concerned for me rather than himself. It’s easy to see why everyone found him so easy to love.
I nod, and a lone tear rolls down my cheek, because he’s going now too, only this time it isn’t ugly or violent. A shimmer of colour glows warm and welcoming around him, as if he’s walking away into sunshine to take his place on the cricket pitch. Just before I lose sight of him altogether, he presses his fingers against the back of his hand and smiles that dashing smile that must have melted the heart of every girl in town, Maud included.
I press my fingers to the back of my hand too, and I know it’s fanciful, but I can feel his kiss there as he disappears.
I close my eyes for a second and swallow down the scald of tears in my throat, and then I open them again and turn to Isaac.
‘That just leaves me,’ he says with a small, sad smile, and I gaze at him with a heavy, full heart.
‘It does,’ I say. I wish I could take his hands in mine and say farewell properly. ‘Safe travels, Isaac.’
‘Thank you, Melody. Thank you for everything,’ he murmurs indistinctly. Or perhaps he said it clearly, but he’s fading so fast I can barely hear him. I just manage to catch his last word before he fades away completely.
‘Priscilla.’
As I gaze at the empty space he’s left behind, I wish hard that he finds peace now with Priscilla and their boy, Charles Frederick.
It’s a good couple of hours before the police leave. They walked into the scene to find Donovan Scarborough asleep and covered in blood, Leo still being tended to by the fluttering hands of the fembots, and Fletch scribbling furiously in his notebook and snapping pictures on his phone. His favourite shot was of Donovan Scarborough throwing a punch at the police officer who tried to rouse him and subsequently being thrown in the back of a police car and driven off with the sirens blaring.
Jojo and Richard left not long after, for the local hotel they’ve booked into with a promise to catch up again in a day or two when we’ve all slept and caught our breath. Who knows what will happen with the knife now it’s in police hands for analysis, or even what will happen to Scarborough House, but in the end that wasn’t ever the point. What mattered was piecing together the history of a family fractured by jealousy and lies. At the end of the day, as is most often the case in life, what really mattered was love.
* * *
Marina and Artie head off and climb wearily into Babs, and before I follow them I turn back to Fletch.
‘Thanks for coming to my rescue,’ I say. We’re both grimy and blood-splattered, as if we’re actors at the end of a blockbuster disaster movie. He’s Bruce Willis without the grubby vest, and do you know what I want to do? Marina would be impressed, because, Yippee-Ki-Yay, I want to swoon.
‘You know me, Ghostbuster,’ he says. ‘Anything for a good story.’
I laugh softly. I don’t really know him at all, but maybe one day I will. ‘I should go.’
‘Me too,’ he says, holding up his notebook. ‘Story to file.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ I say, and then because he deserves it and I need it, I stand on tiptoes and press my lips against his. It’s been a weird day; terrifying at turns and astonishing at others, but the thirty seconds I spend kissing Fletcher Gunn by the garden gate still count as the most electrifying of all. He holds me, and then he smooches me exactly like that blockbuster movie-ending dictates he should. His mouth is warm, and firm, and he cups my head in his hand when he all too briefly slides his tongue into my mouth.
‘I was wrong the other night when I told you you’re trouble,’ he says. ‘You’re worse than that. You’re a fucking calamity.’
I like it when he swears at me, it just makes him sexier. I wasn’t wrong the other night when I said he was lethal. He should come with a health warning. He presses his mouth fleetingly against my forehead and then steps away from me.
‘Get in your ridiculous van and go home, Bittersweet.’
* * *
Starting the engine outside Brimsdale Road for the final time, I glance up at the attic window. It’s empty, as I’d known it would be, and I hope that Scarborough House will one day be filled with the laughter and chaos of a new family. It deserves its happy ending.
Marina digs in the detritus in the cool box and produces three still-cold glass bottles of limonata. Cracking off the lids, she hands them down the line until we all hold one, and then she proposes a toast.
‘To our very first job well and truly done,’ she raises her bottle and we touch ours to hers.
‘I don’t think he’s likely to pay us,’ Artie frowns, but I just laugh.
‘Sadly for him and luckily for us, Glenda Jackson had him sign a cast-iron legally binding contract. He wanted the ghosts gone, and as of this afternoon, they’re gone. I think that counts as upholding our end of the bargain.’
Marina raises her bottle again in salute. ‘To the unsinkable Glenda Jackson.’
I take a welcome slug of Nonna’s limonata, and then, for what feels about the hundredth time today, I’m choked up with emotion. ‘We did it, didn’t we?’ my voice catches in my throat. ‘We bloody did it.’
‘Today Brimsdale Road, tomorrow the world.’ Marina squeezes my hand. ‘Now pull yourself together and drive us home.’
I don’t think there have been many times in my life when I’ve felt luckier, or looked forward to the future more. I might have a wacko family, a complicated love life and the world’s most annoying pug, but I’ve also
got the best friends in the world and a business with my name over the door. Marina’s right. Let’s go home.
‘Well,’ Artie says, as Babs backfires loudly when I pull away from the kerb. ‘That’s another day at work I can’t tell my mother about.’
It’s been two days now since it all happened, and I’m slumped at my mother’s kitchen table. I’ve just eaten my own weight in waffles and bananas with Nutella, and I’m finally starting to feel more like myself again.
I watch Mum as she pretends to begrudge Lestat the chunk of waffle she’s cooked especially for him. That’s just her way; she’s incredibly generous but she doesn’t like people to see it. A thought strikes me, and once it does it’s so obvious that I wonder why I didn’t realise it earlier.
‘Mum, did you send me a gift in the post?’ I say, sipping my coffee. She has the most wonderful library of rare reference books in the shop and she knows how much I covet them. I’ve probably read them more often she has, and that’s a lot. ‘A book, perhaps?’
She pauses, caught out, and then she rearranges her features and looks at me as if I’m still five years old.
‘Who do you think I am, Santa Claus?’
Gran sighs and shoots my mother a look as if she’s still five years old, then pushes the newspaper across the table towards me with a knowing nod and a glass of champagne.
I glance at the clock and then shrug, pushing my coffee aside even though it’s only midday. ‘It’s five o clock somewhere, right, Gran?’
It’s front-page news, of course. They’ve run with the image of Donovan Scarborough trying to land his fist on a policeman’s jaw, and scandalous, attention-grabbing headlines about murder and intrigue on Brimsdale Road. Fletch’s copy is accurate, and the historical details of the unsolved murder are juicy enough to carry the front page without any reference to the ghost story at the heart of the matter.