I leapt through the door, raising my hands above my head, and yelled, “Boo!”
It was childish, but seeing Elinor’s face crumple with terror, before twisting into a mock-angry scowl was well worth it. She tried to swipe me with her bag, but the leather sailed right through me.
“You are three,” she snapped, entering the study and slumping down in one of the chairs.
“Oh, come on. It was funny. I’m dead. I have very little in my life right now. I’m simply trying to make lemonade.”
“I’d rather have a G&T,” Elinor sighed. “I can’t believe I just had the life scared out of my by the ghost of a dead pop singer. For the second time today.”
“Not pop-singer, rock-violinist. You really have never heard of me before?” I hadn’t intended for that to come out sounding so arrogant, but I couldn’t help it. I had been on the Graham Norton show, and done a lap around the Top Gear track. I had played sold-out shows across the world. I am … had been ... practically mainstream.
Elinor shrugged. “I’ve heard vague rumblings. I’m not really into classical music, Eric.”
“Why not?”
“It’s boring.”
I chortled. “That is exactly what someone who’s never heard a classical piece played properly would say. What music do you like, since you’re such an expert?”
“Just normal stuff. House and techno. Tunes you can dance to.”
“Talk about boring.”
“Look,” Elinor dumped her bag down on the desk and plonked herself down into the chair. She seemed to be avoiding looking at me. “I’ve got a lot of work to get through today. My boss isn’t paying me to debate the merits of different musical genres with a ghost.”
“Of course, you’re right.” I felt as if I’d said something wrong, but wasn’t sure what. “So you found the place?”
I floated over to stand beside the fire, deliberately hovering a good three inches above the floor, hoping to unnerve her. Behind me, the flames roared invitingly, and I felt a pang of longing to feel their warmth on my skin again.
Elinor looked up, and gave a thin smile. “I did, and it was a good thing, too, because we were assuming something that turned out to be false. Eric, you were driving the other way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The pictures in the paper didn’t show any landmarks, so we just assumed you were driving toward Crookshollow, but you weren’t. You were headed away from the village, and not back to London, judging by the road I found you on. If I had to guess, I’d say you were on your way to Devon.”
“Is that important?” Did where I was going really matter? What mattered was that I had died, somehow, in that car. So shouldn’t we be more interested in the other car, the one that had run me off into the ditch?
“Of course it’s important. We’re trying to reconstruct your last movements. We’d been assuming you hadn’t yet arrived in Crookshollow—”
“We were?”
“—and now we know you had already come to Crookshollow, done whatever it was you’d come to do, and left. That could be very important, assuming we can figure out what you came here to do. And that’s not all. I even found a clue. At least, I think it’s a clue,” Elinor pulled a small piece of paper from her pocket, smoothed it out against the table, and held it up so I could see it. I leaned in, peering at the tiny words on the faded ticket stub.
“It’s from one of the shows on my tour,” I said. “You can just make out the word “Coppelius” there. Our last album was called Coppelius’s Alchemy, after the character in Hoffman’s Der Sandmann. I wouldn’t expect you to know it—”
“Well, that was condescending.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. I just don’t know many lawyers into obscure German gothic texts, is all.”
“I know Hoffman.” Elinor pushed her glasses up her nose. “I wrote an essay about Die Nachtstücke in university, in the only non-law paper I was allowed to take. Just because I have no idea who you are doesn’t mean I am some kind of uncultured hack.”
I was impressed that this wholesome-looking girl had heard of such an obscure piece of German literature. I just couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard my music.
“I didn’t say you were an uncultured hack, although how you could’ve read Hoffman and not heard my band confounds me. Now, back to this ticket. I couldn’t be certain which particular night on the tour this came from, but I think that might be the logo of the theatre up there.” I pointed to the corner of the ticket, where a faded symbol was just visible.
“I might be able to find out which theatre this is,” said Elinor, lifting a blank sheet of paper off the stack by the printer. She set the ticket down on the table, pulled the lid off a fancy ink pen, and in a few strokes had drawn a pretty accurate representation of the logo.
“Hey, that’s pretty good.” I was impressed. If I’d tried to draw that freehand, it would’ve looked like a squirrel’s finger-painting.
“No, it’s not, but it will do the trick. Here,” Elinor snapped a picture of her drawing with her phone, then plugged the image into Google Search. Within a few moments, she’d pulled up an exact match—the Usher Hall theatre in London.
“That was the last show of the tour.” I exclaimed. “It was the last gig I ever did.”
“This can’t be a coincidence, and I think it proves that your death wasn’t an accident. Whoever ran you off the road was at that show, and they threw this stub out the window as they fled the scene. Any idea whose phone number this is?”
I shook my head. “I’ve no idea, and the handwriting doesn’t look familiar. But that might not mean anything. Who remembers phone numbers these days?”
Elinor frowned at the stub. “You’re right. You only ever write down the number of someone you don’t know. Everyone else you have saved in your phone. Or, in your case, you probably have a secretary who handles all your calls. Do you ever get letters, emails, packages from crazed fans?”
“Oh, all the time.”
“Eric, I’m serious.”
“So am I. I get stacks of that stuff. Women send me underwear. Men send me used condoms. My manager deals with it all. She probably has a list of all the particularly weird ones. I could call and—” I cleared my throat, remembering my problem. “I mean, you could probably call and ask her.”
“That won’t do us any good unless we know who was at that show.”
“There were thousands of people there! I am quite popular, you know. What do you plan to do, use facial recognition software to scan every crowd image from the night and feed them through an MI5 database?”
“We could do that, if you like, but I think I know an easier way.” Elinor thought for a moment. “Theatres have pretty sophisticated booking systems these days, because of all the trouble they’ve had with ticket scalpers. Whenever my friend Cindy and I go to shows or raves, we have to put our names on our tickets. You can’t get in without an ID that matches your ticket. If we can get a list from the ticket agency of everyone in the audience that night, we can cross reference it with your secretary’s list of crazies and see if any names pop.”
“But how are we going to get the ticket agency to give up that list?”
Elinor sighed. “It looks like I have to do everything around here.” She tapped out something on her laptop, then pulled out her mobile phone and punched in a number. As she waited for someone to pick up, she glared at me and rolled her eyes.
“My mother said never to make faces, because the wind could change and you’d get stuck like that.” I said. “Besides, I can think of a much better face for you to be making.”
Just as Elinor snorted in response, I heard someone’s voice chirp on the other end of the phone. “Hello,” Elinor cleared her throat and put on a curt, professional voice. She punched a button on the phone, switching it to speaker. “This is Elinor Baxter at the London firm Greyson, Smithe & Hanley. I have a client involved in the recent Eric Marshell case—”
“It’s so tragic,�
� the young woman on the other end whined. “Eric was so young, and such a talent. It’s just unfair that he’s dead, and crusty old pop singers like Elvis and that guy with the fugly glasses are still kicking around.”
“Yes, of course. It’s one of life’s cruel jokes.” Elinor rolled her eyes, holding her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. “I understand you recently hosted a show on his tour?”
“O. M. G. It was amazing,” the girl gushed. “I got to work backstage that night, and so I was right on the side of the stage during Eric’s performance. He’s just amazing, so intense, so self-possessed, so sexy. The way he throws himself around the stage while playing every note perfectly—”
Elinor looked up at me and rolled her eyes again. I shrugged. I couldn’t help it if this girl enjoyed my performance. I mimed striking my bow against the strings, and took a little bow. Elinor covered her mouth again, but not before a little snort emerged. Her eyes panicked, she gave me a filthy look, and averted her gaze.
The girl was still going, “—and when he performed ‘The Raven’s Revenge’, he was looking right at me the entire time. I thought I might die and go to heaven right there—”
“Right, well, that’s very nice. But I’m going to need you to send me some records so we can proceed with our case. I just need a list of all the attendees at Eric’s last concert. Preferably with contact details, if you have them.”
“Do you think someone at the concert had something to do with Eric’s death?”
“I’m afraid I can’t disclose that information, but I can tell you that there may have been a person of interest to our investigation in the crowd that night. Will you cooperate, or do I require a court order?“
“Sure! Of course, I mean, anything for Eric.”
“And, I don’t need to tell you that it’s very important that you don’t speak about this with the press or the police,” Elinor lowered her voice. “We think there might be something dodgy going on in the police department, perhaps someone there is in on it. Eric’s legacy depends on us being able to conduct our investigation in secret. Do you understand?”
“Of course.” The girl whispered back, clearly pleased to be made part of this covert operation to uncover the truth about my untimely death. “I’ll get you what you need today.”
“If I could get you to email them over, please.” Elinor gave the girl an email address.
“I’ll get right on this!” The girl gushed. “I’m willing to do anything to help. Seriously, if you need a witness to say that Eric was there that night, I can testify. I even went backstage afterward to see if I could meet him, but the man on security was running everywhere yelling into a phone, and the guy in the parking lot told me Eric left in a taxi the minute the show finished. Which was a bit disappointing because there were a bunch of us backstage ready to meet him, but after a performance like that he probably just wanted a cup of tea and a decent sleep. He really is the greatest musician in the world, you know. I’ve never heard anything as deep and spiritual as Coppelius’s Alchemy. It’s just sooooo amazeba—”
Elinor hit the END CALL button with a visible expression of disgust.
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I was listening to that.”
“It’s nothing you haven’t heard before,” she said, making a face. “Besides, I had a suspicion the word amazeballs was about to come out of her mouth, and I’ve had about all of the heart attacks I can handle for today.”
“Thank you for doing that,” I said. “But aren’t you worried about using your company email address? Surely a high profile, prestigious law firm closely monitors all correspondence.”
“Are you concerned about me, Eric Marshell?” Elinor’s head snapped up, and she stared at me with a strange expression on her face.
“I don’t want you to get into trouble on my account. I can’t exactly march down to your office and tell your boss the reason you outright lied to a ticketing office.”
“I appreciate the concern about my legal integrity, but I can handle myself, thank you. I created a new email address. It looks like a legit address, but isn’t in any way linked to my firm.”
“Clever.”
“It’s been known to happen from time to time.” Elinor turned back to her laptop. “Now, I’ve lost the whole morning to investigating your untimely demise. Can you please leave me in peace so I can get to work on your mother’s estate?”
For the rest of the day, Elinor worked through my mother’s files, sorting the papers and typing information into a complex spreadsheet. Every so often she’d hold a page up to the light, frown at it, and then I’d hear the furious tapping of her deleting large sections of her work.
Initially, I left her alone to her work, and floated up to my bedroom to try to grab the handle on my ancient toy chest. After an hour of pushing my hands through my childhood possessions without actually feeling any of them, I floated back downstairs to watch Elinor work. That was much more interesting.
I hovered over a chair by the fire, sometimes offering up titbits of information I knew about the accounts, but mostly just watching Elinor. She was quite something. The work must be tremendously boring, but she toiled away at it unceasingly, her fingers flying over the keys as she added data to her spreadsheet. Every so often she would glance up and glare at me.
“You’re distracting,” she said.
“You don’t look that distracted.”
“Well, appearances can be deceiving. I usually type twice as fast.”
“I know that’s not true. If you typed any faster, you’d open up a wormhole in space. Can we put some music on?”
“Sure.” Without looking up from her files, Elinor leaned over and pressed the button on her iPod. A loud crash echoed across the room, followed by a pulsing bass line that sounded more like a bodily function than a series of musical notes.
“What the fuck is that?” I growled, leaping out of my chair.
“Music.” Elinor replied, her face somewhat irritated.
“That’s not music. It sounds like something crawled into your speaker and died. Don’t you have anything decent?”
“This is decent. It’s Damon Sputnik’s latest album, and it’s what I like.” Elinor shot back. “It’s fun to dance to.”
“How the fuck do you dance to this?”
“You just … you know, dance.” Elinor demonstrated in her chair, flailing her arms out to the sides and nodding her head. She looked like a chicken that had just stood in a glob of bubblegum. “It’s more fun in a club full of people, though.”
“That’s not dancing.” I floated across the room and stood in front of her desk, extending my hand toward her. “Find me a song by Ghost Symphony, and I’ll show you dancing.”
Elinor stared at my outstretched hand in a mixture of intrigue and disgust. “You’re asking me to dance with you.”
“What kind of rock star ghost would I be if I didn’t try and educate you on the merits of real music? Seriously, put on ‘The Hunt’, by Ghost Symphony.”
“But, if I touch you, won’t that make the … weird electrical feeling come back?”
“I can deal with it if you can.” In fact, I welcomed it. I don’t know what had happened to Elinor when I grazed her skin earlier, but it had shocked my body in a strange and not unpleasant way, sending a pulsating warmth through my usually unfeeling limbs. I wanted to see what happened with prolonged contact.
Plus, I really wanted to watch her shimmy around the room in that figure-hugging skirt.
Elinor stared over at the pile of paperwork, then back to my hand. She sighed. “Fine.” She pulled up her iTunes account and searched for the song I suggested. I resisted the urge to sigh with relief when the horrible techno racket disappeared, replaced by the opening notes of a beautiful, rich violin melody. The notes swelled, swirling to fill every corner of the study. After a few bars, the electric guitar came in. Drums began to pound, all snare and toms, powerful and hypnotic.
As Elinor placed her hand on top of mine, her
porcelain skin sank into my fingers, and I felt a burst of fire shoot down my arm and through my whole body. It was so powerful and real that I leapt back, my feet sinking a foot below the floor.
Elinor looked equally shocked. Her glasses slid down her cute nose, revealing wide doe-eyes. She stared at her hand, “What is that? It was even more intense than the first time. Is it the same feeling you got when you touched the lock?”
“No. That just felt normal, like touching any old thing. This … electric thing is something completely different. Maybe it’s just what happens when ghosts and real people touch.” I gestured down at my legs, which were only visible above the knee, the rest of them floating in the floor below.
“It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know what ghosts are made of, but I don’t think touching you is supposed to feel like electricity shooting through my body, is it?”
“I don’t know either. Is it painful?” I felt awful that I’d hurt her.
“No,” Elinor said this quietly. “It’s actually kind of nice. It’s intense, though.”
“Shall we try again?”
“I don’t know, Eric. This might be too much.” Her eyes darted nervously between me and the door. She was uncomfortable. I could fix that.
“Come on,” I said. “The song’s almost over. You’ll hardly have to dance with me at all.”
I hovered back at her height, and extended my arm again. Elinor looked at it for a long time, her eyes darting between my face and my outstretched fingers. The music swirled around us, cymbals crashing and the melody swooping majestically like a falcon ready to attack. Finally, Elinor reached out with her fingers, and lightly brushed the ends against mine. The hot feeling shot through me again. But this time, I didn’t pull away, and neither did she. We held our fingers together, while the strange energy pulsed outward, soaring along my arm and reaching with warm tendrils toward my chest. I felt as if my entire body were glowing.
Elinor moved her hand, so her palm lay flat against mine. It was so odd to see her fingers nestled right inside my body, and even odder to feel them there, not as fingers usually feel, but as a hot ball of energy, emanating heat to a steady rhythm.
The Man in Black: A Gothic Romance (Crookshollow Ghosts) Page 8