True, I hadn’t got the hang of this spirit guide thing yet, but I couldn’t get past the mental image of Leander engaged in a rousing game of racquetball or attending a rock concert with headliners John Lennon and Jerry Garcia. Or Elvis and Michael.
“How am I going to learn all the rules, Aunt Clem? I don’t even understand this world. How will I ever understand the other, up there, wherever?”
“I will help you as much as I can, Lyris, and you must also talk to Leander. After all these years, I am still learning myself, and none of us here can ever know all there is. Leander is your guide and your teacher too, for as long as you are in your present form.”
“Aunt Clem, you were here when Tommy disappeared. You must know what happened. Aren’t you the logical person to make sure the truth is uncovered? So Tommy can rest.”
“I know some of it, certainly. What makes you think that Tommy needs closure? His soul was born into an earthly body for two short years. That was his plan and he may already be back in this world in another form, or perhaps waiting. He may even have finished his journeys and been elevated to another level.”
She was confusing me. I didn’t want to think about reincarnation right then. My brain felt like it was going to burst with concepts most people never needed to think about. Maybe I could find a way to get rid of Leander and carry on like before, oblivious to any other level of existence.
“So if it isn’t Tommy, who can it be? Maybe it’s just simple human curiosity—mine. I should forget about the whole subject and let the past die.” At this point I meant every word. I was so sick of everything and just wanted to take a two-week Alaskan cruise.
“There is no going back, Lyris, once the cosmic energy has stirred for you. I will tell you what I know, but not what I believe, and you must discover the rest for yourself. Just remember, you may never know why you have started down this path. Those of us who have been granted the gift of heightened intuition are not always privy to the reasons.”
We were silent for a moment while I finished off the sandwiches. I jumped when Aunt Clem spoke again.
“Perhaps this has something to do with Wisty. She suffered a great deal for most of her life, and it could be that someone else will benefit if the cause of her suffering is revealed.”
“Or maybe,” I said, surprising myself, “maybe it’s because of Thomas himself. Following your logic, since his involvement in Tommy’s death was not according to plan, he may have wanted to ensure the truth was finally recognized, maybe so the plan could get back on track.”
What I had just said made no sense to me. I needed to stick to my own plan.
“You say you know part of what happened, Aunt Clem. Why don’t you know it all? You said your psychic gift didn’t reappear until after the reunion when you went back to your war job, but why don’t you know the rest now.”
“As I mentioned before, Lyris, we are told only what we specifically ask. And I never asked anything about that weekend I didn’t already know. I never asked because I didn’t want to know. It appears you have been chosen now to reveal the rest.”
“Do you think you can tell me your part now?”
“How much do you know about what happened?”
“Aunt Wisty’s husband was at Hammersleigh that weekend, wasn’t he? And she and Uncle Patrick were in love.”
Her face showed no emotion, and it was as though her disembodied face floated free, watchful and waiting. “The three of us—Patrick, Bruce Wingate and I—were on leave for the weekend. My parents’ house, this house, was full of out-of-town guests, so Patrick invited me and Bruce to stay at Hammersleigh House. Wisty and Tommy came along as chaperones so the proprieties would be observed.”
As she spoke, I fancied Aunt Clem’s face appeared younger, without lines. I saw her as she must have looked sixty-eight years ago, as she looked in my mother’s photograph. Did she, like Gunner, remember that time like it was yesterday?
“We all arrived at the house on Thursday afternoon. Although Bruce had been Patrick’s friend since private school, he was also an agent in training at the Camp.” She looked sideways at me to see if I understood the reference to Camp X.
I nodded.
“He was also the man I loved,” she said. “I knew he was ready to be sent into enemy territory and I was very much afraid for him. That weekend…well, it’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t lived through those terrible years. We knew our time together could be cut short instantly and forever, so we did what young people do under those conditions. And I have never regretted it for one minute.” She looked at me. “I’m telling you about Bruce and me so you will understand that we were absorbed with each other and didn’t realize what was going on in the house until it was almost all over. Bruce and I took every opportunity to slip away, either deep into the wood, or upstairs to the attic floor. The servants’ rooms were unused by then, but still furnished.”
I closed my eyes. It was as if the words I were hearing unfolded into images in my mind. I was seeing all those young people, moving with them, feeling their experiences. The bittersweet love that might end at any moment.
“On Friday morning we were all having breakfast, including Tommy. When Thomas walked into the dining room, we were all shocked. Wisty most of all. There had been no word from him for months, and she had confided in me her fear that he must be dead. To have him materialize like that without warning was indescribably upsetting. His appearance horrified us too. He looked as though he had been through a terrible illness, as we later found out he had been. His uniform was dirty and hung on his frame like it had been made for a much heavier man. But his eyes, his eyes were the worst I ever saw in a war survivor, and I have seen more than a few.”
My skin tightened as I remembered the terrible imprint in the cemetery, those haunted eyes.
“He never explained to us how he had come to find his wife and child at Hammersleigh. No one ever admitted to seeing him in town and directing him there. Indeed, he spoke only to Wisty and asked her if he could lie down as he was very tired. Wisty got up at once and led him away. And that’s the last I saw of him. Dead or alive.”
Aunt Clem paused, and I opened my eyes, not sorry to look away from the sight of that tortured man and the four horrified people at the breakfast table. Or the little boy playing contentedly in his high chair. He didn’t even recognize the tall, gaunt stranger whose dreadful eyes never left his mother’s face.
“I should have found out what was going on in the house after that,” she said, “but I didn’t. Time was passing quickly, and Bruce and I wanted to spend all we had left with each other. It was hot in the attic, so we stayed in the woods most of the time. I enlisted my two youngest sisters to look after Tommy without telling them Thomas was back.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Aunt Clem shrugged. “I don’t know why. It seemed important not to let anyone know. I do remember Patrick looking worried and pacing the hall, looking up the staircase to the second floor, where Wisty and Thomas remained all of Friday and Saturday. I let everyone know that Wisty wasn’t feeling well. The one time she came down was Saturday afternoon for the reunion photo. If she wasn’t there, my mother would think she was seriously ill and insist on seeing her. So Wisty came for the picture, then went straight back to Thomas.”
Her eyes held that faraway gaze as she stared past me. “There wasn’t a breath of air on Saturday night. At midnight the bonfires were lit in the field and people started singing the tunes that were popular at the time, then some of the World War I songs. Bruce and I stayed outside until all the fires were put out and everyone had gone to bed. We went in through the front door. Patrick was sitting there on the bottom step of the staircase with his head in his hands. He looked up and said, ‘He’s dead. Thomas is dead.’ At first we thought Thomas died from whatever illness he was suffering from. I ran up to Wisty. She was just sitting on the bed, her face blank.”
Aunt Clem looked at me again. “She never came out
of it. Not once in all these following years. And there was no sign of Tommy in his crib. When I asked her where the baby was, she didn’t say anything. And I never knew, not until you found him last week.”
“What about Thomas? How did he die?”
“It was a gunshot wound to the head. Patrick was upset, but he took charge and Bruce had to help him. He called Percy, who was the chief of police then, and Marcelle Lavette from the funeral home. Both of those men had been close friends of Patrick’s father.”
“But Thomas,” I persisted, “what happened to him?”
“I never saw the body. The four men took him away and buried him. They dug the grave there on the edge of the cemetery where it wouldn’t be obvious. There was no coffin. Later on, after the war, Patrick had a stone set into the ground. He didn’t put Thomas’s name on it. Still, I didn’t think it was a good idea, but Patrick didn’t want Thomas to lie in a completely unmarked grave. Patrick said that Thomas killed Tommy without meaning to, but he didn’t know where the baby’s body was. He thought maybe Wisty took it away and hid it in the woods, where no one ever found it.”
“She did hide Tommy,” I said. “But not in the woods. She wrapped Tommy in his favourite blanket and hid him away in the turret room with his toy bunny.”
That part had been bothering me since I found Tommy’s body. Either Patrick had no idea the body was in the house, or he did know and was the one who had pounded the secret door shut with nails and caused it to be painted over years later. While I could imagine Wisty in her agony hiding Tommy tenderly away from the world, I didn’t think she was capable of nailing the door shut. Then again, how could Patrick bear to live in the house the rest of his life with that secret tucked away in the turret room?
I would never know this part of the puzzle, not unless I could wring the information out of Leander. The men involved were all dead. And now Aunt Wisty was dead too.
Aunt Clem nodded at me and I realized I had been speaking aloud.
“The men decided to say that someone got into the house and took the baby,” she said. “They launched a search for him. They hoped the searchers would come across the body and at least put an end to the tragedy. But they never did and eventually, Patrick went back to his company and I returned to Camp X with Bruce. You know the rest.”
“Did you and Patrick ever talk about that night, Aunt Clem? Didn’t you try and figure out what happened?”
“After the war, with Bruce gone, it didn’t seem important to me. Wisty was lost to us forever, and Thomas was dead. The sins he committed were due to his illness. Otherwise he never would have harmed his son.”
“Exactly what was his illness?”
“All I know for certain is that he was in a hospital in Italy. He had a breakdown, probably what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder, and while he was hospitalized, he received a medical discharge from the army. For some reason, Wisty was not notified, but that may have been his wish. He was sent back to Canada on a supply ship and was supposed to enter the Christie Street Veterans’ Hospital in Toronto for further treatment. Instead, he just walked away and came home. I don’t know what the army was told about his absence, but since he had technically been discharged, I don’t think they pursued it. Maybe Patrick reported to them that Thomas was recovering at home.”
I felt I had to tell her what I knew.
“Wisty killed Thomas.” I related Wisty’s remarks about hanging. “I think she killed him to save him from prosecution and execution. Then she went into that catatonic state because she couldn’t stand thinking about what she had been forced to do. And because of what happened to Tommy.”
Aunt Clem was silent for a moment. She seemed to be turning ideas over in her mind, taking the facts and our surmises, and arriving at the most logical solution. I wasn’t ready to share my conversation with Leander about the plans and progression of Thomas’s and Wisty’s souls, so I kept silent too.
She gave a nod. “You may be right, Lyris. Wisty was a woman of her time. She was completely under Thomas’ control in every way and she would have believed it was her duty to save him from further torment. Even though he had murdered her baby, and she was putting her own soul in jeopardy by killing him.”
“She and Patrick were having an affair.”
Aunt Clem looked surprised, but didn’t ask how I knew. I would share with her my experience on the widow’s walk eventually. Right now I wanted the facts without too many side trips.
“Thomas was a physically abusive husband,” she said. “When he went away to war, she didn’t mean to fall in love with Patrick. But Patrick was so completely different from Thomas, gentle and loving. It just happened. It happened quite a lot during the war.”
So many untold stories, so soon to be forgotten.
Depressed, I got up without a word and went home.
With a sturdy Georgian chair securely tucked under the doorknob of my bedroom door, I felt…insecure.
I was sure Conklin wouldn’t have said anything if I decided to sleep in the employees’ wing again, especially if I limped a little and looked pathetic—not much of a stretch by Monday bedtime. But I knew I had to face my fears sooner or later, and I was tired of feeling like a wussy. It was time to take charge again.
I was pinned like a rat in a trap. I had the chair under the knob, three fans blowing the hot air around the room with no improvement, and the company of Rasputin and Jacqueline to keep the bogeyman away. Before letting them stay with me, I made it clear that they better not need a bathroom break during the night, or I would be forced to open the window and drop them out. No way was I venturing into the hallway that night, not until Scott Fournier was apprehended.
Marc had phoned after dinner to say he had stationed an officer at the front entrance and another in the field near the wooden gate. We both knew this would not stop Scott from getting into the grounds if he wanted to. In point of fact, Marc avoided mentioning Scott by name, referring to the intruder, but I knew he meant Scott. And if Scott rapped on the door at the end of the employees’ wing, I wasn’t sure Caroline would be strong enough to resist him.
All in all, I was pretty jumpy by the time I barricaded myself inside my bedroom. I played with the Internet for a while, searching for psychic and spirit guide, but all I came up with were websites devoted to the occult that promised to tell me about my past lives or offered to give me a reading over the phone. I shut the computer off and climbed into bed.
I thought about trying to contact Leander, just for somebody to talk to. Up to now, he had called on me without an invitation, and I wondered if I could get in touch with him somehow by just mentally requesting his presence. But the last time we talked, I had the feeling I wasn’t quite up to snuff in Leander’s eyes and I was not in the mood to hear any more of that.
Even if all my senses weren’t on red alert, my bedmates made it impossible to sleep. Jacqueline walked around on the bed, and Rasputin made a loud droning noise that in no way resembled purring. I got out of bed again and sat on the window seat with Amelia for a few minutes, peering into the trees and shadowy gardens. Not even a breath of a breeze moved the leaves or plants in the gardens below.
I went back to bed for the umpteenth time, and despite all the noise and twitching going on around me, managed to fall asleep.
CHAPTER 30
Staccato bursts of thunder jerked me back from the black hole of dreamless sleep. Flashes of light penetrated my closed eyelids, and at some level of my exhausted brain, I knew the lengthy drought had ended. The rain was pouring from the clouds to beat against the windows and fall onto the thirsty earth.
Then another sound overwhelmed the thunder. I sat straight up, wide awake, my heart pounding. A high-pitched shriek pierced through the thunderclaps. In seconds I was tugging at the chair under the doorknob.
When the second scream was still at its zenith, I threw the door wide and looked into the hallway. The next scream was almost overpowered by loud shouting and banging, as if furnitur
e were being knocked over.
In the three or four seconds it had taken me to wake up, jump out of bed, open the door and call myself an idiot for not having my cell phone, I had somehow come to a decision. I had to go downstairs no matter what.
I raced down the hall, turning left toward the staircase. Simultaneously I heard a sound of pounding feet behind me and the air was forced out of my chest as something substantial tackled me from behind.
A pair of strong, hard arms encircled me. A hand covered my mouth and I was powerless to breathe or to move. I was dead. I knew it. I had been foolhardy once too often.
“Shhhh, Lyris. It’s okay, it’s me.”
“Marc?”
I sagged in his arms. With his hand over my mouth and nose, I wasn’t able to breathe.
When Marc took his hand away, I leaned against the wall and willed the dizziness to pass. “Marc, what are you doing here?”
“I’ll explain later. Stay here.”
He spoke into his shoulder radio as he started down the hall. I was close behind, but not close enough to hear what he said. I caught up to him as we neared the bottom of the stairs. For the rest of my life, I will wonder if things would have turned out differently had I listened to Marc and stayed upstairs.
The noise level increased. There were still shrieks and shouts and banging. Marc flattened himself against the wall of the great hall just outside the drawing room.
He looked at me in annoyance and whispered, “Go back upstairs and wait. I’ve called for backup.”
Without waiting to see if I obeyed, he moved his head enough to look into the drawing room. By then, I was on the other side of the doorway doing the same thing.
At night, one or two low-wattage lamps were left burning in the drawing room, just enough to eliminate total darkness. I couldn’t distinguish one piece of furniture from another or how many people were in the room. Marc moved swiftly inside, and I was close enough behind to hear the creak of his leather holster. I remembered the light switch was beside the doorway and flipped it up. Immediately all the lamps in the room glowed. Or, almost all.
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