“It’s no use, Artie.” Her voice sounded thin and far away through the thick wooden door. “I know what you want, but it isn’t possible. Halcyone and I must stay here for whatever time we have left. That’s what Ogden wishes.”
“Liana, at least open the door so we can discuss it.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. We can’t leave. Not now, not ever.”
It was all I could do not to punch the smooth, solid surface between us.
“That’s cra— What are you talking about, Liana?” I called. “What do you mean?”
“Can’t you feel it?” Her voice changed into a kind of wail, as though she was crouched down like an animal on the other side of the door. “He’s here. He’s back. Ogden’s spirit has returned to Green Lanterns. Ogden has come home.”
Chapter Four
I can’t deny that Liana’s stubborn refusal to leave Green Lanterns was aggravating.
And alarming.
I didn’t give up, though. I figured it would just take a little time—and a lot more pressure.
But that night, the second night in my boyhood home, my certainty received a good, hard, swift kick.
I went to bed early, not so much tired—though I was certainly short on sleep—as emotionally worn out. For a time, I stared up at the shadowy ceiling beams, thinking about Aunt H., Liana, Ogden, Tarrant, Greg, even Cassidy the head gardener. Plenty to think about and too soon to draw any conclusions—about anything but Greg, and really, I hadn’t had much choice there.
It seemed like I’d hardly shut my eyes when a violent thump brought me upright into a sitting position. My eyes strained the darkness. I could just make out the pale, rectangular glimmer of the door.
Had I dreamed it?
I held my breath, listening, held it so long, I thought my lungs would burst. The thump was not repeated. Slowly exhaling, I reached for the bedside lamp but stopped, hand frozen in midair at a new sound.
Footsteps.
Footsteps, deliberate, distinct, passing my room.
“What the fuck,” I muttered and jumped out of bed, heading for the door.
The sound was already receding as I grabbed the knob and yanked open the door.
The hallway was dark, almost pitch-black. I stared in the direction of Aunt H.’s rooms, but nothing stirred in the gloom. I glanced back toward Liana’s room, but again couldn’t make out anything. No band of light shone from under either door. However, as I gazed past Liana’s door, I saw…something. An indistinct shape. No. A glow slowly moving away from me down the corridor toward the staircase. I tried to make sense of that fuzzy light. Was the form male or female?
Was it even a form?
“Stop!” I commanded.
The glow did not stop. Did not even waver. It continued slowly, steadily, moving toward the staircase.
“Hold it right there!”
Hold That Ghost.
The phosphorescence dimmed, faded to a diffused grayness, vanished.
I ran after it. When I reached the landing, I could see the light had already descended halfway down the staircase. I heard the creak of steps. Heard something else too. The very soft rustle of cloth. Clothes.
Or maybe a winding sheet?
Okay, there was a creepy thought. Where the hell had that come from?
On the wall opposite the top stair, I felt around, fumbling for the light switch, but couldn’t find it.
“Goddamn it.” I couldn’t waste time. I started down the stairs, blindly feeling for the bannister, using it as my guide.
The “ghost” continued unhurriedly on its way.
As it reached the foot of the stairs, the fuzzy light turned left, and with a floating bounce crossed the hall, paused before the drawing-room doors, wavered for a moment, then went through.
Wait. What had I just seen?
I froze on the stairs, trying to remember if I’d heard the turn of a knob, the whisper of a door hinge.
I had heard nothing.
Silence thrummed in my ears.
Was that because I was too far away to hear, or because there had been nothing to hear?
I wasn’t sure.
Which is to say, I was pretty sure I had been too far away to hear. But I wasn’t positive.
My heart beat in a funny, jerky rhythm as I stumbled down the last few steps and, guided by the opaque patch of fanlight above the outer door, groped my way across the parquet floor. I collided with a long table, nearly upsetting a vase of pale flowers…hearing the slosh of water, the chattering of glass on wood…before I found the handles of the drawing-room doors.
I threw the doors wide and went into the drawing room. This time I found the wall switch.
The light from the chandelier dazzled my eyes. I blinked as the mysterious white-sheeted inhabitants—chairs and cabinets—seemed to stare my way in affronted silence. Heart thumping, I scanned the room, half expecting one of those misshapen shrouds to come to life and jump at me—half expecting to see my glowing quarry standing in one of the corners.
Nothing moved.
Then I heard something.
A sliver of sound, like a click.
I spun around.
Nothing.
I listened tensely. The click repeated itself. The sound seemed to come from beyond the drawing room. I strode to the door on the far side of the room, flung it open.
Squares of moonlight shone through the Palladian windows of the music room, spotlighting a baby grand piano, a large standing harp, a painted fire screen, and several deep-cushioned sofas and chairs.
The room was empty. I could see that at a glance. What caused the hair on the back of my neck to rise was the whiff of tobacco smoke that reached my nostrils. Fresh tobacco smoke. The distinct incense-like aroma of Balkan Sobranie pipe tobacco. Ogden’s brand.
Ghosts did not smoke pipes. That was a certainty.
But I had not imagined I was chasing a ghost.
The idea that a human agency was going to these lengths to fake Ogden’s ghost wandering the halls of Green Lanterns was not all that much more reassuring. In fact, it kind of scared the hell out of me.
There was one more room on this side of the house—Ogden’s study.
But when I pushed open the door and switched on the light, I found that room also empty. I gazed at the impersonal mahogany desk, the leather chairs, the floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with gilt-bound classics and the colorful dust-jacketed copies of Ogden’s own published authors.
I took a couple of sniffs. The scent of Balkan Sobranie was unmistakable.
I went to the bookshelves and ran my finger along the edge, streaking the thick dust. There was no hidden door behind these shelves. No convenient secret passage. No handy-dandy hidey-hole. No one could have disappeared from this room. In fact, it didn’t look like anyone had been in here at all since Ogden’s death.
For a couple of seconds I stood motionless, considering the last few minutes. Did Tarrant smoke a pipe? I didn’t recall. If so, he could very well have inherited Ogden’s unused pipe tobacco. Even if it were Tarrant I’d been trailing—and that seemed unlikely—where had he disappeared to?
But if I hadn’t been following Tarrant holding a flashlight…who had I been following? What had I been following?
I had not been dreaming. That I was sure of.
No, it had to be Tarrant up to something for reasons unknown. In the morning I would question him. And he’d better have a damned good explanation for these…shenanigans.
I turned off the light, and the sudden change threw the long French windows into relief, gauze-covered oblongs of grayish light. Framed in one of those pale oblongs was the silhouette of a man. A man with a large, misshapen head.
I sucked in a sharp breath.
Hold the hell on. Not a misshapen head. For God’s sake. I was getting to be as bad as Aunt Halcyone and Liana. The man’s hands were framing his face as he tried to peer inside.
Not that that was a lot better, and I’m embarrassed to say, I was pa
ralyzed for a couple of vital moments as I tried to process what I was seeing. This couldn’t be the figure I’d been pursuing, because that made no sense. Why would it—he—run outside to look inside when it had already been inside? So who was this, and what was he doing lurking outside the window of Ogden’s study?
The dark shadow vanished.
Stop.
Not vanished. Withdrew.
I stumbled forward, parted the draperies, stared out.
I saw nothing but a strip of moonlit, cobbled terrace, and the silver-edged blackness beyond.
What the hell? Who the hell? Who had that been? A bum, a vagrant, a thief? Oh, hey. How about the new head gardener?
Was that—he—the same figure I’d nearly broken my neck pursuing through the dark?
I glanced down, only then noticing that the French doors were locked, the heavy brass bolt drawn across the slide.
No one had exited the house from here.
I strode down the length of the room, double-checking, but all the windows were locked. Locked from the inside.
Chapter Five
When I got back to my room, my aunt was waiting, sitting tense on the edge of the bed, her colorless face muffled in the collar of a beige velvet robe. “Well?” Her voice was uncharacteristically sharp. “You heard it too, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you—did you see anything?”
“Maybe.”
Aunt H.’s eyes widened.
“I’ve got a theory about who our ‘ghost’ is,” I said, sitting down beside her.
Her lips parted. “Who?” she asked faintly.
“I’m not one-hundred percent sure, but what do you know about the new gardener?”
“Cassidy?”
I nodded.
“But… Why?”
I shook my head. “What’s his story?”
“Well… He doesn’t really have one. His references were excellent.” She added slowly, “As was his timing.”
“Did you actually check his references?”
She bit her lip. “Honestly, no. We needed someone desperately, and he seemed pleasant and intelligent. And he does have references, after all.”
I said grimly, “We hope.”
“I can’t imagine Cassidy playing such silly pranks.”
Silly pranks? No. Cassidy didn’t strike me as a guy who went in for pranks. But whoever was creeping around this house was probably not doing it for laughs. Maybe Cassidy was point man for a gang of burglars and casing the place?
Or maybe not. That would be a pretty inefficient casing process. Nor did it quite line up with Aunt H.’s account of nightly pacing up and down the halls.
Okay, I wasn’t convinced the ghost was Cassidy, but the idea of Tarrant skulking in the hallways with a flashlight in the middle of the night seemed even more unlikely, given how spry that mysterious glowing figure had turned out to be.
On the other hand, Tarrant was the one person who maybe had a legit reason for wandering around in the middle of the night. Maybe he’d heard a shutter banging? Or a raccoon frolicking in the attic? And Tarrant might ignore my call to stop just out of general cussedness.
Tarrant or Cassidy. Those were our two choices. Because what other rational explanation could there be?
Or was I being sexist? What if Betty was our ghost? Nah. That felt like a stretch. Her fear that morning had struck me as genuine. No way was Betty wandering around the house at night, candelabra in hand à la Mrs. Danvers.
So, who was left? Liana?
Hm.
Liana was certainly behaving oddly these days.
What if Liana was creeping around the place in an effort to keep Aunt H. in line by bolstering this fiction of Ogden returning from the grave?
I opened my mouth, but Aunt H. was watching me with a mix of anxiety and hope that stopped the words in my throat. Really, the last thing I should do was share my suspicions of the other members of this household. Aunt H. needed comfort, reassurance. She did not need to hear my theories about sinister servants, potential prowlers—ghostly or otherwise—let alone deranged in-laws.
“First thing tomorrow I want to have a look at Cassidy’s references,” I said.
“All right, dear,” she said doubtfully. “Process of elimination, I suppose.”
“Exactly, Watson. We have to start somewhere. We might as well begin with the newest member of Green Lanterns.”
She smiled faintly, nodded, but was clearly unconvinced by my fake cheerfulness.
“Meanwhile, we both need sleep.” I rose. “Can I see you to your door, madam?”
She managed another of those shaky smiles and stood, smoothing down the folds of her robe. “Yes, you may, kind sir.”
I saw Aunt Halcyone back to her room, made sure she locked her door behind her, and then returned to my own chambers, where I spent what remained of the night wondering how the hell someone had managed to get out through Ogden’s study while leaving the door locked from the inside.
I was up at first light. The house was still quiet and cool when I arrived downstairs. I hadn’t expected to find anyone up and moving around yet, but when I went into the kitchen, the radio was blasting and Tarrant was pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“A Russian Bay girl has earned over five thousand dollars selling lemonade this summer,” announced the newscaster at KWTF.
“Morning, Tarrant,” I said with determined cordiality. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the radio.
He responded, “Ulyanna is still in her bed.” There was a note of accusation in his tone.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is she ill?”
“Her blood pressure, it is always acting up.” He divulged the information with a sort of grudging satisfaction. “She is not so young either. None of us are young here.” Cup in hand, he moved from the stove to the pantry. When he came out of the pantry, he was holding a small white bag. He carried his coffee cup and the bag over to the table and sat down.
The announcer on the radio blabbed cheerfully on, like a host trying to cover an awkward moment between guests at a party. “Fourteen-year-old Naomi Warfield says she is donating the entire amount to Rational Christians United!”
“Does she take some kind of medication?” I found a mug in the cupboard and helped myself to coffee. “Does she need a doctor?”
“No.” Tarrant reached in the paper sack and extracted a crusty, sugared ring of a doughnut. “She has got her pills. For all this good that they are doing her.”
I leaned against the counter, observing Tarrant, and took a swallow of coffee. I almost spit it out again. It was lukewarm and bitter. At a guess, yesterday’s coffee reheated. I set the mug on the counter beside me.
“Tarrant, do you smoke a pipe?”
His gaze grew suspicious. “What is it you are asking?”
“Just that. Are you a pipe smoker?”
“Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Why is it you wish to know this?”
“I smelled pipe tobacco last night, that’s all.”
I thought his confusion seemed genuine. He continued to watch me with suspicion.
I tried to think of a tactful way to phrase my questions. I couldn’t come up with anything, so I settled on the direct approach. “Did you happen to be upstairs last night for any reason? Like maybe checking a loose shutter or something?”
Tarrant heard me out, then gave a weird laugh. “Now it is you who are hearing ghost.”
“No. Whatever that was, it was no ghost.” Maybe an argument for ghostly manifestation could be made for the scent of pipe tobacco, but the boards on the staircase had squeaked beneath someone’s weight. I had heard the rustle of clothing. Those were indicators that the nocturnal wanderer had been corporeal. Not that I had really doubted it.
Not for more than a couple of crazy seconds when the figure had seemed to float through the drawing-room doors.
His brows rose in not so polite disbelief. “You are so sure?”
“Yes, I am so sure.�
��
Tarrant broke off a wedge of doughnut, dipped it into his coffee, and held it over his cup. “Maybe it is better for all if you leave.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He shrugged his bony shoulders, popped the bit of soggy doughnut into his mouth.
I felt an unfamiliar rush of temper. “Whether I stay or go is my own affair, Tarrant. I don’t recall asking for your opinion. If you can shed some insight on whoever was moving around the house last night, I’ll be glad to hear it. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise you wish me to be shutting up?” He glared at me with open hostility.
Pretty much. Yep. I managed not to say that, though. “Otherwise,” I said in what I hoped was a cold and quelling tone, “I wish you to behave in a polite and professional manner, which is what my aunt pays you for.”
Far from being quelled, he rose, knocking against the table and upsetting his coffee cup. “Yes, it is your aunt who pays me. Mrs. Bancroft, she is my employer. Not you. You have no right to come here and be ordering us around. Do this, Tarrant! I say do that, Tarrant! Who are you to come back here and play great lord?”
I’m pretty sure the word that best described me was gaped. I gaped at him.
“The great… What the hell’s gotten into you?”
Tarrant gave another of those weird, unnerving laughs. “You do not like to hear truth, do you, Mr. Artemus? Always you are spoiled and pampered boy having your way. Until Mr. Hyde comes. Then it is all so different. Then you do not like it. Then you run away. Now you are thinking you can come back and have everything as it was, have your way again—”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Mr. Hyde, he will not have it!”
“You’re about to talk yourself out of a job, Tarrant.” I’m not sure how I managed to say it so calmly because my heart was hammering in my chest and the muscles in my neck and jaw clamped so tight, I felt like a marionette trying to chop the words out.
He shut up but continued to blaze silent rage in my direction.
“I don’t understand your attitude at all. Whatever has happened to change you, you can’t blame on me. I haven’t said more than ten words to you since I got back. I sure as hell haven’t been ordering you around.”
Seance on a Summer's Night Page 5