Murder by Twilight

by Blythe Baker

  Catherine rolled her eyes, but even that small movement seemed to cost her energy. “Did you write to Mama and Papa before coming?”

  “Actually, I stayed with them for a night.”

  Catherine’s eyes went wide, and for the first time since coming into the room, I caught a glimpse of the same level of alarm that had been in her telegram. The look was gone in an instant, but I’d seen it. She was afraid to know what I’d told them.

  “I told them I wanted to come and visit you and Hazel. Mama wanted me to wait and come with her and Papa later, but I simply explained we needed some time alone as sisters, and they understood.”

  “Papa maybe, but certainly not Mama.” Catherine laughed. “I’m surprised you made it out of the house at all.”

  “Me too,” I admitted.

  I wanted to ask Catherine what she’d been doing lately and how little Hazel was, but based on what I’d seen and heard thus far, my sister hadn’t been doing much beyond sleeping in this room. I was afraid if Catherine had to voice that reality, she would be embarrassed. So, instead of asking her questions, I talked about myself.

  I told Catherine about my time in New York, leaving out the more excitable bits since Nurse Gray was still hovering in the corner, and about the letter I’d received from Sherborne Sharp.

  “Did you write him back?”

  I nodded. “Just before coming here. I’m sure he has gotten it by now.”

  “Did you tell him you loved him, too?” Catherine’s eyes were wide and bright. She looked almost like the sister I’d always known. Almost.

  I furrowed my brow. “Why would I say a silly thing like that? He didn’t tell me he loved me. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “He nearly said it,” she scoffed. “He told you he cares about your safety and misses you when you aren’t around. That is love, dear little sister.”

  “It’s friendship!”

  Again, Catherine rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. “I’ve failed you as an older sister. Really, you should know better than that.”

  She teased me a bit more before I managed to turn the subject back to my time in New York City, which unfortunately included the death of one of Catherine’s old friends.

  “I’m sorry to have told you the information in a telegram, but I didn’t know what else to do,” I said. “I didn’t want you to find out some other way before a letter could arrive.”

  Catherine laid her hand over mine and squeezed. “I’m just glad you told me. And I’m sorry you found her. That must have been horrible.”

  Moisture filled my eyes, and I blinked it away. It had been weeks since the accident, and I hadn’t known the woman as well as Catherine had. Still, the trauma felt fresh in my mind, and I hadn’t realize until that moment how badly I’d needed someone to hold my hand and tell me all would be well.

  “Mrs. Cresswell?”

  We both jumped at Nurse Gray’s voice, having forgotten she was there.

  Somehow, she’d silently stood from her chair and walked towards us without making a sound.

  “Perhaps it is time to rest,” the nurse suggested.

  Catherine’s shoulders fell in disappointment, and I looked from my sister to her nurse and back again, trying to understand their dynamic. I waited for Catherine to say something, to tell her nurse to leave us alone for a few moments. But she didn’t say anything.

  My outspoken sister, who had always let people know exactly what she thought about them regardless of how it would embarrass or shame them, nodded her head in solemn agreement.

  The scene was so absurd I could have laughed.

  “I thought we could go for a walk before the sun sets,” I said suddenly, squeezing Catherine’s fingers before she could pull her hand away. “It is a lovely day.”

  “A bit brisk,” Nurse Gray cut in.

  “Nothing a warm shawl can’t fix.” I smiled at the nurse, and I hoped she could see the malice behind it. Whatever was going on in this house, I had the distinct feeling my sister’s nurse was doing more harm than good.

  At my push back, Catherine seemed to come alive a bit. She sat up straighter and pushed her blankets aside. “Actually, I think a walk would be very good for me. I can’t remember the last time I was outside.”

  “This morning,” Nurse Gray said. “I wheeled you out to the patio.”

  Wheeled?

  Catherine looked at me out of the corner of her eye, and then shook her head as if to dismiss a thought. “I would like to walk. I’m strong enough.”

  I helped my sister shrug into a coat and shoes, and then she promptly stood up, grabbed my arm, and pulled me towards the door. “Come on, Alice. Let’s go.”

  She was so determined, and I enjoyed the look of shock on Nurse Gray’s face so much that I didn’t mention to my sister that she was about to go on a walk through the moors of Yorkshire in her nightgown.

  4

  “We should go back.” Catherine wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her coat closed so only the bottom of her white nightgown hung out of the coat. “I look ridiculous.”

  “No one can see you.” I spun in a circle, gesturing to the empty moors around us. “It’s just the two of us. Besides, it is nice to finally be alone.”

  Catherine sighed and walked ahead of me a bit.

  In the house, she’d seemed weak and pale and ill. She still looked pale, but she no longer looked weak. She looked capable to me. Which begged the question, why was she being put to sleep several times a day?

  “Who is Nurse Gray?” I asked.

  Catherine shrugged and stepped up onto a rock that had broken through the mossy ground, balancing on one foot before stepping back to the damp earth. “She came right after Hazel was born, and she never left.”

  “The delivery didn’t go well?”

  “They told me I lost a lot of blood. That I was lucky to be alive. I don’t remember any of it. I just remember waking up and seeing Nurse Gray.”

  I frowned. “Do you always call her that? What is her full name?”

  “She asks me to call her Nurse Gray. Keeping the separation of personal and professional is very important to her. So, I am Mrs. Cresswell, and she is Nurse Gray.”

  “But she has been here for weeks?” I asked.

  Catherine looked up at the heavy, gray sky, brow wrinkled in thought. “It doesn’t feel like that long, but yes. It has been a few weeks, I think.”

  If Nurse Gray had been there since Hazel was born then Catherine should have known exactly how long the woman had been in the house. What mother didn’t know the age of her own child?

  A mother who had been drugged three times a day and kept unconscious.

  “How is Hazel? Charles said he nearly lost you both during the birth. Is everything all right with her?”

  Catherine nodded. “The cord was around her neck, but as soon as they got it free, Hazel was fine. She is progressing well.”

  Progressing?

  Prior to the birth, Catherine had talked excitedly about being a mother. About what it would be like to hold her child. She wondered whether the child would look more like Charles or herself, whether it would be a boy or a girl. There had been a shine in her voice that was noticeably absent now.

  Her words were cold and factual. Distant.

  The muddy trail from the back of the house broke into three as it neared a crop of trees, and I walked towards the one on the left.

  “Not that way,” Catherine said, grabbing my arm.

  She pointed to a large rock positioned on the far-right trail. It had a wide base and the tip had been sharpened into a point. “Charles put that rock there so I wouldn’t forget which path was safest. He walked all of these trails right after…” Her voice trailed off before she picked up the sentence again. “…and that one has the widest path and avoids the crumbling rock falls.”

  “After what?”

  Catherine raised her brows at me as if she didn’t hear my question, but I knew she had. She was trying to avoid answering it,
and I wanted to know why.

  “Charles walked these trails after what?” I repeated. “What happened, Catherine? Why did you ask me to come here?”

  My sister stared at me, her eyebrows drawn together in concern. Then, she shook her head and turned away, a strand of frizzy blonde hair curling around her cheek.

  She wasn’t herself. Nothing about the woman in front of me seemed familiar anymore. It seemed as though, since the last time I’d seen her, someone had reached inside of her chest and snuffed out the light in her heart. The light that used to annoy me to no end, but that I suddenly wished I could find again.

  “What is happening, Catherine?” I fisted my hands at my side, trying to keep my fingers from trembling. “You’ve asked me to come here and nothing makes sense. Charles was a mess in the car. Your husband talks about you like you’re dying, you barely see your daughter or seem to care that you don’t see her, and an old woman is ordering you around and putting you to sleep. What does any of this mean? Is it because of your hallucinations? Are you mad?”

  Catherine’s head snapped up at that, her blue eyes sparkling with tears. “Do you think I’m mad?”

  “This is all so bizarre, I’m starting to think I’m mad!” My voice echoed off the trees, coming back to me in a faded whisper, and I let out a long breath.

  Suddenly, Catherine was in front of me, her head low. “I asked you here to help me, but now that you’re here, I’m afraid you’ll look at me the way everyone else does. And if that happens, Alice, I’m not sure what I’ll do. You are my last hope.”

  My throat tightened at the desperation in her voice, and I grabbed my sister by the shoulders and pulled her towards me. She sagged against me, limp for a second before she succumbed to the embrace and wrapped her arms around me.

  “I’m here to help, Catherine. Tell me how.”

  Catherine pulled back and nodded. “It started when I was pregnant. I thought it was nerves because of the baby, but the more it happened, the more I couldn’t deny it.”

  “Deny what?” I felt I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear Catherine’s explanation.

  “Ghosts.” She blinked. “I could see ghosts, Alice. Well, I can.”

  Cold air prickled the back of my neck, lifting the hairs there. “Still?”

  Catherine nodded again, her eyes darting from mine to the sky and to the ground. She was nervous.

  “Right now?” I looked back over my shoulder.

  “No,” she said through a small laugh. “Not right now. I wouldn’t be standing here if I saw a ghost right now.”

  “So, that means you’re afraid of them?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Catherine raised her brows, waiting for an answer.

  I would be. The problem was, I’d never believed in ghosts. I enjoyed hearing a ghost story shared in front of a fire, but I’d never seen anything to make me believe spirits wandered the Earth. So, there had to be an explanation for what Catherine had been seeing.

  “What do the ghosts look like?”

  “I can’t always see them. Sometimes there is just a feeling in the air. A chill and a creepy feeling in my stomach.”

  I turned to look at the house through the tree branches. The windows on the side of the house rattled in the wind off the moors. I remembered the gust I’d felt in my room upon arrival. “The house is drafty, Cat. It’s an old place. It could just be—”

  “I know what wind feels like.” Catherine turned away from me and walked to the edge of the path. “And I know you think I’m insane. Everyone does. Even when I nearly died, no one believed me.”

  I snapped my attention back to her. “What do you mean you nearly died? Are you talking about the birth? Do you think a ghost complicated Hazel’s birth, because Catherine, that is madness.”

  “No,” she snapped, spinning back around. Her coat had fallen open, revealing the white cotton of her nightgown, and Catherine looked a bit like a ghost herself. The dying light of the sun cast the grounds in a blue light, and her nightgown seemed to glow. That, paired with the paleness of her skin, made her seem spectral. “Hazel’s birth was complicated for natural reasons, I know that. But during my recovery, I was weak and exhausted, but I was still conscious. I could hear things. I heard Charles weeping next to my bed in worry. I heard him tell Nurse Gray to do all she could to save me. I heard Charles’ sister say it wasn’t safe to allow me around the baby.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean that.”

  Catherine shook her head. “No one trusted me. They didn’t trust me around the baby, and they didn’t trust me when I told them what I saw.”

  “What did you see?” I whispered.

  Catherine looked back at the house, and I realized I could see her window from our position. She had a perfect view of the trails from her room.

  “Flashes of movement in the trees,” she said. “Charles told me they were dreams, but I know what I saw. I saw smoke and hooded figures. They looked up at my window in the night and chanted things to me. When I tried to open my window, they disappeared.”

  Catherine sounded certain. Confident of what she’d seen.

  But it was impossible…wasn’t it?

  I could allow for shadows moving in the trees. That could have been any number of wild animals scouring the moors for their supper. But hooded figures and chants were more difficult to explain away. Those were not a trick of the eye, but a trick of the mind.

  “I saw them again. In person,” Catherine said, moving closer to me. Her eyes locked on mine. “Nurse Gray said what I saw was an effect of the medication, but once I had regained my strength and was going for daily walks, I didn’t need the medication anymore. My mind was clear, and I saw a hooded figure in the flesh.”

  I knew Catherine could see the doubt in my eyes because I could see the hurt in hers. She wanted me to believe her so badly, and I wanted to believe her, too. She was my sister, and I wanted to be on her side, but I also couldn’t indulge these visions until I knew what they were. I couldn’t blindly tell her I believed her when I had no proof to back it up.

  Catherine was standing so close to me I could feel her breath on my face, but I didn’t pull away. Even if I didn’t believe her story, I wanted her to know I wasn’t going to run away. I wouldn’t flee back to London and leave her here with her nurse and her overwhelmed husband. I wouldn’t leave until things were right in Catherine’s world, whatever that meant.

  “Charles thinks I grew weak from my walk and struck my head,” Catherine said, turning her head and lifting her hair to reveal a still-red wound behind her ear. The cut was jagged and fresh, though mostly closed now. “He thinks I fell, landed on a rock, and had a dream. But I know the truth.”

  “What is the truth?”

  “I was attacked,” Catherine whispered. Her blue eyes went glassy with emotion, and she reached out and took my hands. “I felt the blow to my head and saw the flash of the robes. Whatever spirits remain here, they do not want us on this land. They want us to leave. If we don’t, they’ll try again. I know they will.”

  My sister glanced over her shoulder towards the trail that had gone dark as the sun sank below the horizon. I saw a shiver work down her spine, and I reached out to comfort her.

  Immediately, Catherine jerked away from my touch. “I’m not mad, Alice. I know you and Edward always thought I was silly because I liked pretty things and going to parties. None of that makes me simple-minded.”

  “I know that, Catherine. I’ve never thought—”

  She held up a hand to quiet me. “I’ve only ever wanted a peaceful, comfortable life, so I would not make a story like this up. My first thought when it all started was that I was seeing things. But I can’t believe that is true anymore. I’ve seen and experienced too much, and now I know the truth: we have to leave this place, or we’ll all die.”

  I wanted to say too much. I wanted to tell Catherine that I’d always admired her and that neither Edward nor I ever thought she was simple. I wanted to tell her I loved h
er and I was worried for her. I wanted to tell her she should go inside and rest, but I didn’t want to sound like Nurse Gray or Charles.

  More than anything, I wanted to tell Catherine that everything would be fine, but I didn’t know that for sure. Not because I thought she was in danger of being attacked by a spirit, but because if she truly believed that was possible, perhaps her mind had gone.

  The thought wasn’t so preposterous.

  I never would have guessed our brother would be a convicted murderer, yet he’d confessed to the crimes. Compared to that, Catherine losing her sense of reality didn’t seem impossible. In fact, it seemed likely. After everything our family had been through over the years, it made sense that someone would break under the pressure.

  I just thought it would be our mother before it would be Catherine.

  “Mrs. Cresswell?”

  Nurse Gray’s approaching voice brought me a sense of comfort. I needed time to process what Catherine had revealed and decide how to move forward. But when I saw the disappointed look in my sister’s eyes, I felt like a traitor.

  “Over here, Nurse Gray.” Catherine gave me one last look before her shoulders slouched forward.

  Nurse Gray mounted the slight incline to where we stood with ease for someone so advanced in years. She gave her full attention to Catherine, barely noticing me at all. “Dinner is ready, Mrs. Cresswell. Mr. Cresswell had a plate delivered to your room.”

  “Charles?” Betrayal flashed in her eyes.

  Nurse Gray nodded. “He thought you’d be tired from your walk.”

  I wanted to argue, but I’d overstepped enough boundaries in my short time in my sister’s home. Anyway, I was no longer sure the measures Nurse Gray and Charles had taken were unwarranted.

  If Catherine was delusional, she needed more rest.

  “I am tired,” Catherine sighed. “Thank you.”

  She walked up to the house next to Nurse Gray, and I trailed behind them. When we got into the house, Nurse Gray led Catherine upstairs without another word, and I watched them go.