Fixing to Die

by Miranda James

  An’gel realized her pulse was racing, and she needed to slow down her heartbeat. She moved to the chair and eased herself into it. After a couple of deep breaths, she said, “I’ll tell you in a moment. Let me get ahold of myself.”

  “All right, but you’re worrying me.” Dickce stood by the chair and patted An’gel’s shoulder.

  An’gel smiled at her sister. “Sorry to worry you, but I had a shock right before you knocked on the door.”

  “What happened?” Dickce asked.

  “I put my dress across this chair before I lay down for a nap,” An’gel said. Her pulse quickened again as she recalled the moment of discovery she was about to relate to her sister. “I was looking for my handbag, and that’s when I saw my dress, draped over the suitcase.”

  “Oh dear Lord.” Dickce clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at An’gel in dismay. She stumbled to the bed and sat on the edge, still regarding her sister. “That’s creepy.”

  “It certainly is.” An’gel’s tone was grim. “Someone came into my room while I was asleep and deliberately moved my dress in order to frighten me.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No, I didn’t.” An’gel nearly snapped the words out. “I would have woken up if I’d heard anything. Whoever it was managed to do it without alerting me.”

  Dickce’s gaze swept the room. She got up from the bed and walked back to the door. She swung it back and forth on its hinges. There was no noticeable sound. “That explains part of it. These doors are kept well oiled. Mine doesn’t make a sound either.”

  “Not like the doors upstairs at Riverhill,” An’gel remarked. “We really should oil them, but the only time I think about it is at night when I’m ready to go to bed.” She laughed suddenly. “We’re getting away from the main point. Someone is trying to send a message, obviously, by coming in and moving my dress.”

  “What do you mean, a message?” Dickce went back to the bed and resumed her former perch.

  “The gauntlet has been flung down,” An’gel replied.

  Dickce nodded. “I see what you mean. The person behind all this isn’t worried about you being here.”

  “Exactly.” An’gel’s expression turned fierce. “And exactly the wrong tactic to use on me. It’s really childish, when you think about it.”

  “Yes, and it was definitely a risk,” Dickce said. “Anyone might have come along—besides you and me, that is—and spotted the perpetrator going in or coming out of your room.”

  An’gel nodded. “We’re not going to say a word about this to anyone.”

  “Why not?” Dickce asked.

  “I think it will be interesting to act like nothing happened,” An’gel replied.

  “Do you think someone in the house did it? Or someone who got into the house?”

  “Could be either,” An’gel said. “I don’t think it was a spirit, though. A human being did this.”

  “I agree,” Dickce said. “Though I suppose we can’t rule out a ghost completely.”

  An’gel snorted. “Maybe you can’t, but I’m going to, until we get strong evidence to the contrary.” She pushed up from the chair. “I’m going to see about my hair, then I need to visit the bathroom. Are you ready to go downstairs?”

  “Yes, but what’s the plan?”

  “I want to look over the house,” An’gel said. “It’s been a few years since we last visited, and it won’t hurt to refresh our memories.”

  “Good idea. I’ll meet you downstairs, then, in the hall.” Dickce got up from the bed and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

  An’gel attended to her hair and spent several minutes fussing with it until she was happy with the result. She checked her lipstick and decided it needed to be refreshed. Finally satisfied with her appearance, she started for the door. Her glance fell on her luggage, and she stopped for a moment. She really should unpack, but right now she wanted to explore the house. Unpacking could wait, she decided. She headed for the door. She could deal with wrinkles later. Curiosity over fashion, she thought with a smile and shut the door behind her.

  The upstairs hall was lit only by the afternoon sun that found its way through the half-closed blinds over the west-facing windows near her room. The floor creaked in spots as she walked down the hall toward the stairs. The creaks were not loud enough to be heard in her room, she reckoned, unless she left her door open. She didn’t like her bedroom door open at night, even at home, and she didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave it open here.

  As she neared the head of the stairs, she felt in her pocket for her phone. No luck. It was probably still in her purse. She turned back to retrieve it. She didn’t expect any calls, but she might want to take pictures as they looked through the house.

  She swung her door open into the room and paused. What was that sound? A click perhaps? She swung the door back and forth.

  No repetition of the sound, yet she would have sworn she heard something when she opened her door. Maybe you’re starting to imagine things. This house is getting on your nerves.

  “No, it’s not,” she said aloud to reassure herself. She found her purse and retrieved the cell phone. She checked the battery to be sure she had enough of a charge to last for a couple of hours, and she did.

  She glanced at the bed before she turned back toward the door. She stopped and turned slowly back to the bed. Her mind focused on what she saw; she laid her purse down again and moved closer to the bed.

  Her nightgown—the nightgown she had folded and placed under her pillow—lay unfolded across the foot of the bed.

  CHAPTER 7

  An’gel stared at her nightgown for a moment. She felt strangely calm. The attempts to frighten her were having the opposite effect. The person behind this—she still refused to believe that a supernatural hand had moved her dress and nightgown—had miscalculated. Badly. An’gel wasn’t going to throw her hands up in the air and scream bloody murder. No, An’gel was going to get to the bottom of this and take great satisfaction in telling the miscreant exactly what she thought of his—or her—juvenile behavior.

  She remembered the odd click she had heard just as she opened the bedroom door. The sound hadn’t emanated from the door, she was sure of that. It had come from somewhere inside the bedroom.

  But where?

  She glanced around the room. There was no closet in the room, only the wardrobe and the clothes press for storage of clothing. The room had a large window on each outside wall, one facing west and the other north. One could open the window and step out onto the gallery that ran around three sides of the second floor. Had someone come in through the window from the gallery to move her clothes?

  An’gel checked each window in turn, and both were locked on the inside. The click she had heard wasn’t the sound of a window latch, then. She would have to examine the room further, but now she had better meet Dickce downstairs and look over the first floor of the house. She wanted to question Mary Turner about the possibilities of a hidden passage or secret rooms in the house. She had never heard of the existence of either at Cliffwood, but that didn’t mean the house had none.

  Downstairs she found Dickce looking a bit irritated.

  “What took you so long?” Dickce asked. “I was about to come back up and get you.”

  “I was on my way but realized I hadn’t brought my phone,” An’gel said. “I wanted it in case we needed to take pictures.” She paused to glance around. They appeared to be alone. She stepped close to her sister and lowered her voice. “There was another incident.”

  Dickce’s eyes grew wide. “What happened?”

  An’gel told her about the click she’d heard and the moving of the nightgown.

  “This is getting creepier by the minute,” Dickce said. “Why on earth is someone doing this? Are they trying to drive Mary Turner and Henry Howard out of the house?”<
br />
  “That’s what I’m thinking,” An’gel said. “But I can’t see Mary Turner ever selling this house and leaving her family heritage behind, can you?”

  Dickce shook her head. “No, this house is her legacy from her father, and I don’t believe she would ever willingly leave it.”

  “There may be something else going on that we don’t know about,” An’gel said. “I have the distinct feeling that Mary Turner and Henry Howard haven’t told us the whole story yet.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dickce said. “Why would they invite us here to help figure out what’s going on, though, and not tell us everything?”

  “I don’t know,” An’gel said, “and that worries me. Back to the nightgown incident again for a moment. This time I thought to check the windows because that click I heard could have been the closing of a window.”

  “You mean someone getting into the room from the gallery?” Dickce grimaced. “I certainly don’t like the idea of that.”

  “Both windows were locked. Be sure to check yours next time you’re there,” An’gel said. “While we go through the house, keep an eye out for any kind of spatial oddity.”

  “What kind of spatial oddity?”

  “Think of it like a blueprint,” An’gel replied. “Look for places where there could be a false wall, for example, with a crawl space between rooms. Where the inside of a room doesn’t seem to match with the outside.”

  “I think I see what you mean. You’re looking for a secret passage, aren’t you?” Dickce’s eyes sparkled. “Just like in my favorite Nancy Drew book, The Hidden Staircase. Oh, how I loved that book as a girl.”

  An’gel smiled briefly. “I did, too, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. There could be a secret room or two, small spaces, I’d say.”

  “Maybe there’s a secret tunnel from the house to one of the outbuildings,” Dickce said in what An’gel considered a hopeful tone.

  “Possibly,” An’gel said. “But I’m not planning to go through any secret tunnels, especially one that could be one hundred and fifty years old or more.”

  “Chicken.” Dickce grinned. “But I know what you mean. At our age, the last thing we need to do is go exploring underground passageways.”

  “If there ever was one,” An’gel said. “Let’s start with the front parlor.”

  “Okay.” Dickce followed her sister to the room in question.

  “Have you seen anyone since you’ve been downstairs?” An’gel asked as she opened the parlor door.

  “Not a soul,” Dickce said. “Oh, this is such a lovely room. It reminds me of home.”

  “It should,” An’gel said tartly. “It’s furnished with the same period of furniture, and the carpet is nearly like ours, too.” She regarded the Aubusson with a critical eye. She spotted a few nearly threadbare sections. “This one needs some restoration work, however. Remind me to give Mary Turner the name of the company that did ours.”

  “They might not be able to afford to have it done,” Dickce said. “You need to keep that in mind.”

  “True,” An’gel said. “I’ll have to think of a way to mention it tactfully.”

  “You do that,” Dickce said. “I don’t see any spatial oddities in here, do you?”

  “No, can’t say as I do,” An’gel replied.

  The spacious front parlor at Cliffwood formed a large rectangle. The longest walls were the north and south ones, with the east and west walls perhaps three or four feet shorter. The west and north walls each had two windows that opened onto the porch.

  An’gel thought, This is a room where you could comfortably entertain twenty to thirty people, although you’d have to bring in extra chairs.

  “Weren’t this room and the one next door all one room at some point?” Dickce said. “I seem to recall that there was a large great room where they could hold balls and dancing parties.”

  “Yes, don’t you remember that Mary Turner’s father had that wall put in to divide the rooms? He also had that fireplace installed in the center of the new wall.” An’gel gestured toward the ornately carved oak mantel and the stone hearth.

  “This room and the next are under our bedrooms,” Dickce said. “If there’s a secret room with stairs up to the second floor, perhaps it’s near the fireplace.”

  “Excellent point,” An’gel said. “Let’s have a closer look.”

  They approached the fireplace. An’gel estimated the mantel was about eight feet wide and perhaps seven feet high. She wouldn’t have to stoop much to get inside the fireplace, she reckoned. At the moment, however, she wasn’t about to, because the detritus of a fire covered the bottom.

  “If there’s a secret room here, and the fireplace is connected to it,” An’gel said, “there has to be a mechanism of some kind to open the entrance.”

  “Maybe it’s somewhere in all this carving,” Dickce said. “It’s really elaborate. Trees on the sides, with various creatures hiding in the leaves and branches. And that’s some kind of vine across the front over the fireplace.”

  “Something just occurred to me,” An’gel said, annoyed with herself for not having thought of it sooner. “Remember that Mary Turner’s father had all this work done. Why would he have a secret room with a staircase to the second floor put in? There wouldn’t have been one already here, since it was one large room. Does that seem reasonable?”

  Dickce frowned. “When you put it like that, no, it doesn’t. Should we bother to look any further here?”

  “I’m inclined to think not,” An’gel said. “Marshal Turner Junior was a good man, but not a particularly imaginative one. I simply can’t see him wanting a secret passage.”

  “You’re right,” Dickce said. “I guess we’ll have to look elsewhere in the house, then.” She traced the pattern of the upper part of the tree on the left side of the mantel. She pushed on various carved figures and several leaves but without result. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Before we abandon the fireplace altogether,” An’gel said, “let’s try an experiment.” She headed toward the door, and Dickce followed after a moment.

  “What are we going to do?” Dickce asked.

  “I’m going to stand in the doorway in a position where I can see both sides of the wall. You will walk along the wall out here”—she indicated the hallway—“slowly, until it seems to me that you are even with the dividing wall. I will tell you to stop.”

  “Then you’ll go to the doorway in the next room and look to see if where I’m standing is even with the wall on that side.” Dickce nodded. “Yes, let’s do it. If there seems to be a discrepancy, we can get a tape measure and do it more exactly.”

  An’gel got in place, and Dickce walked at a slow pace down the hallway next to the wall. An’gel watched carefully, and when she thought her sister had reached the point where the dividing wall crossed, she called out, “Stop.”

  Dickce stood in place, and An’gel hurried past her to the doorway of the next room, the library. The door was shut, and An’gel knocked three times. Hearing no sound from within, she opened the door and got in position. She thought Dickce’s position was roughly equivalent to the dividing wall on the library side. She shook her head.

  “No spatial oddity?” Dickce asked.

  “None that I can see,” An’gel replied as she began to move toward her sister. “We ought to move on.”

  A voice from above somewhere startled both An’gel and Dickce.

  “What are you doing?”

  An’gel glanced up to see Primrose Pace peering over the banister rail about halfway down the stairs. “Conducting an experiment,” she said. Should they tell this woman what they were doing? she wondered.

  Mrs. Pace saved her the trouble. “Looking for a secret passage, I’ll bet.” She laughed. “That would sure make things even more interesting, but I think you’ll find that what’s goin
g on in this house has nothing to do with any secret rooms or staircases.”

  “You’re convinced, then,” An’gel said, her tone cool, “that the spirits are the cause?”

  “I am, sure as I’m standing here.” Mrs. Pace laughed again, then started down the stairs. After three steps she paused, and as An’gel watched, the woman’s eyes grew large and her expression turned to one of sheer terror. Her knees gave way, and she sat on the stair tread with a loud thump.

  CHAPTER 8

  For a moment An’gel feared that Mrs. Pace might tumble forward down the stairs, but the woman grabbed one of the spindles of the banister and steadied herself. An’gel followed Dickce up the stairs to proffer assistance.

  They stood side by side on a stair that put them at eye level with the medium. Mrs. Pace’s eyes remained closed, and her skin had an ashy cast to it, but when An’gel started to ask the woman what they could do to help, Mrs. Pace held up a hand to silence her.

  Is this part of an act? An’gel couldn’t be certain. Had the medium really experienced a supernatural episode, or was this a stunt geared to encourage their belief in her abilities? An’gel exchanged a look with her sister, and she could tell Dickce felt some of the same skepticism she did.

  An’gel decided to speak even if the medium wanted her to remain silent awhile longer. “Mrs. Pace, are you all right? Do you need anything? A doctor? Something to drink?”

  The medium’s eyelids fluttered open, and she appeared to be having trouble focusing on An’gel and Dickce. Then her eyes cleared, and a slow smile replaced the dazed expression.

  “That was amazing,” she said. “Did either of you feel it?” She glanced from one sister to the other and back again.

  “Feel what?” Dickce asked.

  “The cold,” Mrs. Pace replied. “It passed right through me, though it did seem to linger a moment. I wasn’t expecting to encounter a spirit so soon.” She shivered suddenly. “The cold of the grave. That’s what it felt like.” She pulled herself upright and looked down upon An’gel and Dickce.