Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (Aunt Dimity Mystery) (7 page)

His craggy face was hard, unyielding, his mouth set in an uncompromising line beneath a haughty beak of a nose and a pair of hooded eyes. Here was a man who saw life in black
and white, I thought, who knew for a fact that God was, like himself, a stern Victorian.

“Great-grandfather would have abhorred Captain Manning’s legend,” Nicole was saying. “He had a great admiration for the Scots. That’s why the library faces north.”

“He must be pleased to know that they have their own Parliament,” I commented.

“I’m sure he is.” Nicole led me to the long wall of windows and pointed past the ballustraded terrace to an imposing mound of ivy rising from the neglected garden. “Josiah’s mausoleum faces north as well,” she said. “Although he died in Newcastle, he chose to be buried here. Jared wants to cut back the ivy, but I’d just as soon leave it. It doesn’t seem right to—” She broke off suddenly and turned away, a troubled expression on her face.

“Your great-grandfather’s been gone a long time,” I told her kindly. “You won’t disturb him.”

“That’s what Jared says.” Nicole drew a finger through the dust on a map table. “Would you mind awfully if I volunteered to help you?”

I’d hoped to have the library to myself, but sensed urgency behind the soft-spoken request, as if the young woman dreaded the long day stretching out before her.

“You’re more than welcome,” I said. “I’d enjoy your company.”

“I’ll be back directly, then, to light the fire.” Nicole flicked the dust from her fingertip and took a last look at the mausoleum before leaving the room.

I pushed up my sleeves and got to work.

The library ran straight across the back of the house. It was a high-ceilinged, rectangular room, with the fireplace at
one end, the rolltop desk at the other. Deepset Gothic arches framed the tall windows piercing the long north wall. A fine brass telescope occupied the center bay.

The floor was covered with a dozen Turkish carpets, their colors dulled by a half-century of dust. An assortment of tables, map cases, and reading chairs sat in islands about the room, and an unyielding leather sofa faced a pair of leather wing chairs across the hearth.

I stood for a moment beside the brass telescope, gazing past the ivy-colored mausoleum to the desolate sweep of moorland stretching northward. It seemed odd to me that a man who could have afforded the finest tomb in Newcastle had chosen instead to spend eternity in such chilly isolation. As I reached out to brush a cobweb from the stone sill a gust of wind rattled the window, the ivy fluttered like a thousand beckoning fingers, and I fell back a step, my flesh crawling.

I tried to draw the heavy drapes, but they hung, rotting, on warped poles, so I lit the lamps instead, all the while chiding myself for being such a ninny. I’d get no work done if I kept jumping at shadows.

Josiah’s cold gaze seemed to follow me as I approached the rolltop desk. His expression was so forbidding that I was tempted to turn the portrait to the wall. I doubted that Nicole would have approved, however—she seemed to have a soft spot for the old devil—so I kept my head down, grabbed a notebook and a pen, and dragged the wheeled steps as far away from the portrait as possible.

I started with the topmost shelf in the corner nearest the study doors, selecting books at random and making notes. As
I worked my way along the shelves, I could feel Josiah watching me.

I was halfway through the first section of shelves when the study doors screeched and Nicole came through, carrying a flashlight, a cloth sack filled with rags, and a coal scuttle.

“The Hatches are scandalized,” she announced. “I’m not supposed to do housework.”

“Jared’s orders?” I guessed, from my perch on the library steps.

“He’s terribly old-fashioned,” Nicole admitted, “but that’s why I fell in love with him. He’s not like anyone I’ve ever met, and he knows so much about so many things, not just Victoriana, but life as well…” As she chirruped on about her husband’s manifold charms, she bustled about the room, lighting a fire, handing rags up to me, and winding the silver-and-ebony clock that sat upon the mantelpiece. “Now,” she said, coming to a standstill at the foot of the wheeled steps, “what would you like me to do?”

I put her to work recording titles on the lower shelves and settled back to my private exploration, soothed by the fire’s companionable flicker and the steady ticking of the ebony clock. I was so absorbed in my work that I nearly dropped my pen when Nicole spoke.

“How long have you been married?” she asked, out of the blue.

“Five years,” I replied, gripping the pen firmly. “How about you?”

“Three months.” She made a mark in her notebook before asking, “Do you have children?”

“Two,” I said. “Twin boys.”

“Twins.” Nicole beamed up at me. “How splendid.”

I wondered how long it had been since she’d indulged in a simple round of girltalk. The women in the village weren’t likely to come calling and Mrs. Hatch didn’t seem very chatty. The poor kid was probably starved for female companionship. I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of spying on Nicole, but I didn’t mind lending her a sympathetic ear.

“Are you enjoying married life?” I asked, resting my notebook on my knees.

“It’s wonderful.” She lowered her gaze to her notebook before adding shyly, “Though I somehow expected it to be more…tactile.”

“Tactile?” I repeated, hoping for clarification.

“Yes. Well. You know.” Color suffused Nicole’s face. “Jared says that a relationship should be allowed to ripen before it becomes, um…”

“Oh,” I said, clarification having arrived.
“Tactile.”
I could scarcely conceal my amazement. “You mean, you haven’t…?”

“Not once,” she said softly.

Well, I thought, that would explain the strained look in her eyes.

“I’m sure he’s right,” Nicole added quickly. “It’s important to be friends, to get to know one another properly before allowing intimacy to blossom.”

I dwelt for a moment on my first three, extremely tactile months with Bill before realizing, with a queer twist of dismay, that the face I’d conjured wasn’t Bill’s, but Adam’s.

“It’s unconventional, of course,” Nicole went on, “but Jared’s never claimed to be conventional. Besides, he’s had so much to do, what with furnishing Wyrdhurst and traveling to
Newcastle. He’s not a young man, you know. By the end of the day, he’s exhausted.”

I banished Adam’s image from my mind and focused on the present conversation. “How often does your husband go to Newcastle?”

“Once a month,” she answered. “When he’s gone…” She gazed pensively toward the windows, then came to the foot of the wheeled steps, where she looked up at me with round, solemn eyes. She was about to speak when a nerve-jangling screech intervened.

Mrs. Hatch came through the study doors.

“Lunch,” Nicole said. “And, Mrs. Hatch, would you please ask Hatch to do something about those doors?”

We had an informal meal of soup and sandwiches in the dining room. While we ate, Nicole told me that she was an orphan.

“I was an infant when my parents died and Uncle Dickie became my legal guardian,” she said. “Uncle Dickie’s the only father I’ve ever known. I couldn’t have asked for a better one.”

I attempted to turn the conversation back to where we’d left it in the library, but Nicole no longer wished to discuss what happened when Jared went to Newcastle. I didn’t mind. She was so lonely, so unhappy, and so very young that I knew she’d confide in me sooner or later.

After the meal, she excused herself from library duty, saying she had telephone calls to make. I returned to my perch on the steps and carried on alone.

Two hours later, I was exhausted, filthy, and thoroughly
dispirited. Josiah Byrd’s taste in reading matter had evidently tended toward the theological. The fine morocco bindings, so enticing from a distance, concealed contents that were as dry as dust, and about as valuable. There simply wasn’t much demand for collections of hellfire sermons and outdated Old Testament commentaries. If the rest of the books in the library proved to be as riveting as those shelved on the east wall, it would be a very long week indeed.

I was sitting on the bottom step, bemoaning the flagrant misuse of fine leather, when a gleam of color caught my eye, a sliver of orange beckoning like a rainbow in an arid desert. I got up to investigate.

At the far end of the bottom shelf, next to the rolltop desk, sat a slim clothbound volume that seemed to belong in another library entirely. I pulled it from the shelf and all but ran with it to the nearest lamp, delighted by my find.

“Shuttleworth’s Birds,”
I whispered, caressing the faded cover. The child’s guide to common English birds wasn’t terribly rare or valuable, but it was charming, filled with painstakingly accurate watercolors and lighthearted, whimsical verse. The title page identified it as a first edition, published in 1910, only four years before the author had been killed in the Great War—the Great European War, as Adam had called it.

I spied an inscription on the flyleaf, written in a youthful hand. It was dated October 31, 1910. Halloween, I mused, pleased by the coincidence: All Hallow’s Eve was only six days away.

“To Claire on her twelfth birthday,” I read aloud, “in fond remembrance of sunny mornings on the moors. Edward.”

Lucky Claire and Edward, I thought, gazing out at the
dreary garden. I’d have given a lot for a single sunny morning on the moors, and a friend to share it with.

I looked back at the inscription, wondering why I assumed that Edward was Claire’s friend. He might have been a brother, a cousin, an uncle. Whoever he was, he’d taken pains with the inscription, centering it on the flyleaf, disciplining his sprawling scrawl. It seemed to me that
Claire
had been written with especial care.

Who was she? I wondered, closing the book. Nicole seemed well versed in her family’s history. Would she know about a girl named Claire who’d been born on Halloween?

I started for the study doors, but before I’d taken half a step, a faint creak sent a shiver down my spine. Startled, I spun around, holding Claire’s book before me like a shield, half expecting to do battle with Josiah’s stern-faced ghost.

But there was no spectral figure hovering behind me. The creak had a wholly mundane source: a section of bookcase beside the rolltop desk had swung away from the wall, leaving a dark void in its place.

“A secret door,” I said wryly. “I should have guessed.”

Hidden doors and staircases were as common as fine china in grand houses like Wyrdhurst. Sometimes they were used by servants, sometimes by family members—I’d never run into one yet that was used by a ghost.

How long had it been, I wondered, since the door had last swung open? More interesting: where did it lead?

I gave the theological tomes a jaundiced glance, brushed the cobwebs from my hair, and decided to explore.

T
he door opened on a hollow space cut into the stone wall. The air inside was frigid, the darkness almost palpable. I shivered, wrapped my arms around Claire’s book, and switched on the flashlight Nicole had given me. Its narrow beam revealed a steep flight of stone stairs rising into the gloom.

“Hello?” I called. There was no echo. The thick walls seemed to absorb sound as well as light.

I strained my ears for a reply. When none came, I glanced half-longingly at the fire burning cheerfully at the far end of the room, and started up.

With every step, the air grew colder and the darkness deepened. The bitter chill lanced through my lungs and soon my heart was pounding hard, as if I’d run a mile. The effort made my head swim and I couldn’t focus clearly. The walls seemed to close in on me, and a surge of panic gripped me when the hidden door creaked again, as if pushed by an unseen hand.

Then I heard another sound, a soft, deep-throated chuckle that seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere. Claire’s book slipped from my grasp and the flashlight juddered wildly as the evil, insane laughter filled the air. I turned, arms flailing, terrified, and saw hovering in the darkness, not ten inches from my face, a pair of glowing eyes, bright as young suns, that stared, unblinking, into mine. I cried out, stumbled backward in sheer horror, fell, and remembered nothing more.

“There’s no sign of injury, Mrs. Hollander. She must have fainted. Exhaustion, no doubt. Her hands are like ice.”

“I’ll fetch another blanket.”

“Wait. I think she’s coming round.”

Adam’s face swam slowly into focus, his ebony curls backlit by dancing flames. When I opened my eyes, he murmured, “We really must stop meeting like this.”

I managed a weak smile. “Where…?”

“The sofa in the library,” he said. “I didn’t want to move you further until I was certain you weren’t injured.”

“We found you on the staircase in the wall.” Nicole peered at me over Adam’s shoulder. “The door closed after Mr. Chase brought you out, and we haven’t been able to reopen it. How does it work?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just…opened.”

Nicole eyed the secret door thoughtfully. “I had no idea it was there. I don’t think it’s on the floor plans.” She looked at me. “I didn’t know where you’d gone, but Mr. Chase spotted the book you’d left to hold the door ajar.”