Charity Shop Haunted Mysteries

by Katherine Hayton

  “We’re not going to misuse the information,” the sergeant explained in a slow voice.

  Over the past year, Emily had been on the receiving end of that tone more than she liked to admit. If it got her back up, it certainly wouldn’t endear Margaret to him.

  As if reading her mind, the woman sniffed and folded her arms. “I’m not silly, Sergeant Winchester. I know what’s allowed to be divulged without our patient’s permission and what’s not. Don’t think you can bully me into breaking the law.”

  “But you’ll have to hand it over when I get the warrant tomorrow,” the sergeant mansplained to her while Emily winced. “All you’re doing is postponing the inevitable.”

  “All I’m doing is protecting our resident’s privacy until you fetch the correct paperwork saying I don’t have to.” Margaret had a biro in her hand and now she pointed it directly between the sergeant’s eyes. “Just because it’s expedient for you not to follow protocol, doesn’t mean I have to oblige.”

  Sergeant Winchester held up his hands and back a step away from the counter. “Fine. What are you allowed to tell me about Frederick Wilmott, then?”

  A micro-expression of satisfaction skipped across Margaret’s face, then was gone. In its place was an overdone frown. “Why do you want to know?”

  The sergeant swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He placed his hands flat on the counter and leaned forward. “Because there’s a dead body buried under Stoneybrook’s patio and I’d like to identify the deceased.”

  Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “And you think Fred had something to do with that?” She clicked her tongue. “I doubt it. The man must be in his seventies by now. Hardly strong enough to kill someone, let alone bury them under a load of concrete.”

  “We don’t think he killed anybody.” Winchester shot a confused glance in Emily’s direction.

  She felt a twinge of discomfort as the same emotion bloomed in her mind.

  Now, Margaret faltered. “Then why do you want to know about him?” Her gaze flicked to Emily before returning to the sergeant.

  Winchester’s lips tightened with a grimace of satisfaction. “I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information. Official police business, you know.”

  Emily stepped forward, a terrible thought clouding her mind. “Can you tell us if Frederick Wilmott was a resident here?”

  “What do you mean ‘was?’ As far as I know, he still is.” Margaret shook her head and glanced across the blotter page in front of her. “At least, he was this morning.”

  Sergeant Winchester closed his eyes for a moment, drawing an audible breath in through his nose. “Frederick Wilmott is a current resident of Stoneybrook Acres, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, of course.” Margaret’s frown grew so deep her forehead appeared folded. “He’s suffering from dementia so I’m not sure how much he could answer, but you’re free to question him directly if you want. Room twenty-four.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sergeant Winchester dropped Emily at home without another word spoken between them. Part of her wanted to apologise for the wasted time but another felt aggrieved.

  It wasn’t as though she held herself out to be the world’s leading expert on ghost interpretation. What she knew, she’d passed on. If the dead man wanted to spell words out on a typewriter that only led to further riddles, that was his prerogative.

  If the sergeant had any clues at all, he wouldn’t have jumped on her sole piece of information. There must have been plenty of dud leads he’d proposed during his time on the force—she wouldn’t say sorry just because one of hers led nowhere.

  All the justification left Emily in a fine grump by the time she let herself into the house. Peanut jumped onto her legs the moment she walked through the door, and it took a lot of restraint not to burst into tears.

  “Hey, there. You want to sit on my lap while I watch some mindless telly?”

  From the expression of adoration on Peanut’s face, Emily presumed he did.

  “Thank goodness you’re home,” Cynthia called out as she walked into the lounge.

  Taking a second to remove her heart from her mouth, Emily returned the greeting. The male ghost was also in attendance, sitting right in the place she’d intended to lie down.

  Unwilling to disturb his silent presence, Emily sat on a dining room chair instead. Peanut jumped into her lap and curled up, his purr sending a pleasant reverberation through her legs.

  “The old mime-act and I have been having a marvellous conversation.” Cynthia rolled her eyes. “So far, I’ve told him all about my childhood and the proper maintenance routine for a lady to keep her skin glowing past the age of twenty-five. In return, he’s told me—oh, what was it again?” She placed a forefinger along the side of her cheek, staring up the ceiling, then snapped her fingers. “That’s it. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  Emily leaned to her side and snagged the typewriter. “He spelled out a name earlier using this,” she said, waving a hand over the contraption. “If you’re going to hang out here, perhaps it’s worth another try?”

  “What name?” Cynthia asked, then held a hand over her mouth. “Or don’t you know.”

  “I know. I’m illiterate, not incapable. According to my app, he pointed out the name Frederick Wilmott.” She pulled down the corner of her mouth. “Unfortunately, it turns out that’s not his name.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser. Who was it then?” Cynthia’s eyes grew wide. “Was it his murderer?”

  “Not by the sounds of it. I thought it was him”—Emily jerked her head at the ghost—“until the receptionist at Stoneybrook told me they have a resident called that who’s alive and well. She also said, since he’s past seventy and part of their dementia wing, it’s unlikely he could murder someone and bury their body.”

  “You never know. Just because someone’s old, you shouldn’t write them off completely.” A shadow passed over Cynthia’s features. “I learned that to my detriment.”

  “Not everyone old is a murderer.” Emily stroked Peanut, feeling the gentlest whisper of his presence under her hand—the most solidity the ghost cat could manage.

  “How about it, old chap?” she said, turning to the elderly man. “Do you feel up to spelling out something more? A clue, perhaps?”

  Long minutes passed as the ghost continued to stare straight ahead. Emily was about to suggest she’d head off to bed when he moved. After a shambling walk to the typewriter, he gestured at the keys again.

  “A,” Cynthia called out, finally becoming useful. “S. T. R. I. D.”

  The second time through, Emily clicked her fingers. “Astrid. I used to go to school with a girl named that.”

  “How about a surname, old chum?” Cynthia gave a ghost a friendly elbow in the side. “There’s no use in keeping secrets now. Not when you’re stone-cold dead.”

  But even that cheerful sentiment couldn’t sway him from repeating the same name again. Cynthia pouted and grew bored. “I don’t like your new friend,” she said with a sniff, turning back to Emily. “I think he’s broken. You should send him back and get a replacement.”

  “I should send you back,” Emily said, covering a gigantic yawn with her hand. “You’re meant to be at peace in whatever passes for an afterlife.”

  After that, Cynthia bit her tongue for a while.

  There was a list of things Emily should do, chief amongst them, cleaning up the typewriter for sale. Instead, she sat in the chair, stroking Peanut and letting her mind wander. With all the stress and excitement of the past few days, it was nice to relax and think about nothing.

  Close to sleep, Emily remembered the papers in her purse. With the detente between her and the sergeant on the ride back, she’d forgotten to pass them along.

  “How do you feel about some light reading?” she asked Cynthia. “We might find something useful in here to send our new guest on his way.”

  She spread the printout on the table and let Cynthia peruse them. Emily had l
eft enough room for the typewriter at the side, but still, the woman nudged the man along until he returned to his earlier spot on the sofa.

  “It’s not very enthralling,” Cynthia said after a few minutes of speed-reading. “Frederick Wilmott moved into Stoneybrook Acres four years ago and promptly deteriorated. I’d say the reason was financial stress, these monthly fees are so high, except it looks like he qualified for government assistance.”

  Emily gave a chuckle. “The night staff guy who printed these out said the retirement home was only concerned with whether its residents could afford to pay them each month.”

  “They have gone into a lot of detail on that front,” Cynthia agreed. “Oh, this one’s a bit different. It says he qualifies for a benefit because he used to be a pupil at the Oakhaven School.”

  “Really?” Emily sat up straight, much to Peanut’s displeasure. “That’s the school that ran in the grounds before Stoneybrook reinvented itself as a retirement community.”

  “That grim place was a school?” Cynthia shuddered.

  “Does it say what years?”

  “No. It just mentions the benefit.” She shuffled through the remaining pages. “You could try to find out more on the internet.”

  “I suppose I could.” Emily dragged her laptop out and spoke a variety of voice commands into the search engine. “Here’s something,” she said after twenty minutes of useless results. “I think it’s a school roll.”

  She pressed the command for the computer to begin reading it out, but it got stuck on the description.

  After a frustrated minute, Cynthia sighed and walked over. “Just pull it up on screen and I’ll read it through.”

  Emily opened it up and put the image on full-screen. “Thanks. These archives really need to be updated for use by everybody.”

  Cynthia gave a soft snort. “Yeah. I’m sure they’ll get right on that. Considering they’re only a tiny fraction of a percentage of getting things scanned and uploaded onto the internet, I’m sure voice support is coming any day now.”

  With a shrug of her shoulder, Emily abandoned the conversation. “If you can find Astrid or Frederick on there, it should give us a start.”

  “He’s here,” Cynthia said in surprise. She pointed to a line with the tip of a manicured fingernail. “This is Frederick Wilmott and here’s Astrid Wallheimer.”

  Emily sat up, gazing at the screen as though looking closer would somehow lend the squiggles sense. “What other names are listed?”

  As Cynthia read through the names, Emily gave a start at one. “Gladys. There’s a woman at Stoneybrook Acres with the same name. It’s unusual enough it could be the same person.”

  “Maybe.”

  Cynthia finished off the remaining list, forty-four in total, but no others twigged a response. Emily instructed the computer to search for Gladys Angel. Amongst the images that showed up, she recognised the woman from the home.

  “It’s strange that two pupils ended up back in the same place they’d spent their school years in,” she mused.

  “Not really.” Cynthia moved back to the paperwork on the table, nudging the male ghost aside. “If they’re receiving a benefit devised specifically for ex-students—or inmates—of Oakhaven School, then it stands to reason they’d return there. According to this, it only supports them at the same establishment.”

  “Do you think a local philanthropist made it available?”

  The computer soon assured them money was issued from a trust set up by the ex-headmaster of Oakhaven, Samuel Leuf.

  As Emily’s yawns grew more frequent, she called it a night. “Tomorrow, I’ll visit Stoneybrook to talk to Frederick Wilmott and Gladys Angel. Hopefully, they’ll know something more.”

  “If they’re on the dementia ward, it won’t matter.” Cynthia waved her hand at the male ghost, who swayed to and fro beside the table. “Any information is probably locked up tight, without the capacity to retrieve it.”

  “Well, I’d like to find out either way.”

  As Emily pulled back the covers to get into bed, she found herself facing an audience of three. Peanut, she didn’t mind, and patted the bedspread to encourage him to join her. The other two she wasn’t nearly so comfortable with.

  “Couldn’t you take him to the lounge?” Emily asked. “No offence, old fella but I don’t relish the thought of you staring at me while I’m sleeping.”

  With a grumble, Cynthia tugged the man’s hand until he obediently followed her into the other room.

  Emily lay on her back for a moment before turning out the light, relishing the vibrations as Peanut’s tiny motor purred. Instead of solving a mystery, she just seemed to have opened another can of worms.

  Her stomach tightened at the thought of talking to Gladys and Frederick tomorrow. When she switched off the lamp and closed her eyes, she saw the shuffling motions of the dementia sufferers, so like the infected on The Walking Dead.

  Well, she could put up with it in order to see what information they were holding. The image of Gladys from earlier in the day blinked into her mind—cut it down. Whatever the woman had been peering out at through the window had been overlaid with another image, the past playing out over the present as though they were compatible timelines.

  With a sigh, Emily turned over in bed, adjusting the ghost cat and her pillow. A soft noise caught her attention just as most of her mind tried to pull her into sleep.

  She opened her eyes, expecting to see a curtain swaying in the breeze from the ajar window. The male ghost stared straight at her, his face only inches away.

  Emily huffed out a breath, her chest too tight to scream. The man’s eyes never wavered, staying fixed on her face even though he must come from a generation taught not to stare.

  “Please sit further away if you’re going to stay in here,” Emily said, her voice so weak the order turned into a plea. It was no wonder that the ghost didn’t comply.

  She turned to face the wall, even though her breath bouncing back of its surface made her feel claustrophobic. With the weight of the man’s eyes resting on the back of Emily’s head, even her exhaustion struggled to cart her away to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  The following day was Thursday, so Emily spent the morning at the Pinetar auction house, preparing second-hand goods for sale. The sales room was more crowded than usual, so Emily had to wait for a while for an assistant to write out the labels for her items and tag the entire box.

  Once done, she skipped her lunch in favour of calling in on Crystal and roping her into paying a visit to Stoneybrook Acres. After a poor night’s sleep—with dreams of a monster staring blankly at her—Emily didn’t want to venture into the dementia ward alone.

  She already held some trepidation about the outing. There was no need to cancel it due to her jitters when she could instead call upon a friend to hold her hand.

  They’d just arranged to meet at Crystal’s after Emily finished work for the day when she was booted out of the house by clients turning up early for a reading. After a short chat with Pete, Emily mounted the stairs to the airless attic, wishing it were winter when the room would be snug instead of confining.

  “Back again,” Margaret said a few hours later as Emily approached the front desk. “If you spend any longer here, I’ll have to issue you with a room.”

  “You’re working late,” Emily said, trying not to shudder at the thought. “I hope we didn’t ruin your night too much, yesterday.”

  “Not at all,” the receptionist replied, although the large sigh accompanying the statement told a different story. “Are you here to visit Agnes?”

  Emily was about to say no, then thought twice and nodded. She didn’t want to get into a discussion of who could and couldn’t receive visitors. Although she didn’t know the protocol for the retirement complex, it seemed unlikely Margaret would be thrilled if she asked to see the same man she’d been enquiring about the night before.

  “What a surprise,” Agnes said when they knocked on her
door. “Maude, see who’s come to visit.”

  Maude raised her eyebrows in their direction but didn’t bother to raise her head.

  “I don’t think she’s enjoying it here much,” Agnes whispered. “She used to like to trot around the back yard for most of the day, coming in and out of the house as she fancied. Being trapped in here with me doesn’t suit her at all.”

  “We can take her for a walk,” Emily offered, spotting an opportunity. “It’s no bother, and I’d hate to think of Maude moping when she’s lucky to be here at all.”

  This time, she thought to ask for a leash for the bulldog. With it safely clipped to the collar, Emily, Crystal, and Maude set off into the gardens, giving the holes near the patio a wide berth.

  The worker from a few days before was there. From the long excavation trench leading away from the police tape, Emily surmised he’d finally been allowed to complete his work.

  “Did you get the pipe sorted?” she asked as Maude dragged her toward the man.

  “All done,” he said with a nod, wiping his hands on a rag pulled from his pocket. “I’ve just got to fill all the dirt back in tomorrow, then I never need to visit here again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said, shaking her head. “It’s an awful experience for you, too. I know the residents”—she nodded at the shadow of Agnes, staring out from her window—“will be very glad to have the water back up to full pressure. Apparently, showers have become quite a chore.”

  The man chuckled more than the comment deserved. “Well, they don’t need to worry on that score any longer. Full pressure has been restored.”

  Emily gave a nod and moved on, finding Crystal staring with maudlin fascination at the series of holes. Despite the tape and plastic huts placed over the work, it was still easy to peer through the openings and see exactly what was going on. A PC standing guard near the site gave them both a careful side-eye.

  “Can you imagine living here for years, then finding out there was a graveyard in the back garden nobody knew about?” The medium shook her head, hugging herself despite the warmth of the day.