Girl of Shadows (35 page)

And Sarah grinned back, treating him to one of her wide and rarely seen Sarah specials.

Sarah carried the tureen of roasted and boiled vegetables through to the dining room, set it on the table and removed the lid.

‘Don’t bother serving, dear,’ Ruthie Cole said. ‘We can all help ourselves, can’t we? No need to stand on ceremony.’

She was as short and as round as her husband, with a matching twinkle in her eye, and as they were the senior couple at tonight’s supper party Sarah had seated them one at each end of the table. Harrie and Friday sat along one side, while she and Jared were opposite. Esther’s precious cutlery hadn’t been polished since she’d run off so Harrie had given it a bit of a clean that afternoon, and in the lamplight it gleamed softly, arrayed around the table like a muted silver necklace.

‘I’ll carve, shall I?’ Bernard offered.

‘Allow me,’ Jared said.

He stood quickly, grabbed the carving knife and, with notable skill and speed, shaved off slice after slice of moist, pink-grey beef; such speed in fact that droplets of fat flew out and spattered his trousers.

‘Oh dear,’ Ruthie said. ‘White kerseymere. That’ll stain.’

‘It won’t. Sarah works absolute wonders in the laundry,’ Jared insisted ingratiatingly.

‘Good for you, Sarah!’ Friday said.

Sarah made a rude gesture behind Jared’s back. The supper party had been her idea, a carefully orchestrated occasion at
which Bernard was primed to reminisce about Esther’s ‘haunting’ in an effort to make Jared feel as uneasy as possible. She’d gone to see Bernard the day before yesterday and informed him of what she’d discovered via Leo, then explained what she intended to do about it. He’d been truly scandalised and aggrieved on Adam’s behalf, then amused, though quite disappointed, to realise that Esther’s haunting had been manufactured. He’d believed it had been genuine, and had thoroughly enjoyed it, which inspired Sarah to hope she might get away with it a second time. Ruthie Cole had also been recruited, and both had agreed to do anything they could to help Sarah clear Adam’s name, and put the boot into Jared if at all possible.

Unable to relinquish her role as a housemaid even for an evening, and disregarding Ruthie’s suggestion that they all help themselves, Harrie forked slices of meat onto the plates and served the vegetables. Jared poured the wine and raised a toast.

‘To health, happiness and good fortune,’ he said brightly.

‘Except for Adam’s,’ Sarah said. ‘He won’t be getting anything of the sort locked up in some shithole in Port Macquarie.’ She jumped slightly as Friday tapped her ankle under the table, and scowled.

But Friday was right — she needed to keep her mouth shut. It was so hard, though. What she yearned to do so badly it made her physically shake was beat the living daylights out of Gellar — smash her fists into his face and drive her boots into his belly and groin until he screamed for mercy, and then keep going until he never made another noise again, just as they’d done to Gabriel Keegan — but if this were to work, if they hoped to manipulate him in the manner in which she planned, she
had
to control her feelings. She couldn’t even let on she was aware of his business rackets. She did have a perfectly valid excuse to feel some antipathy towards him, however, and behave accordingly — his lewd gropings would have offended most women, and surely even a man as arrogant and coarse as he was must know that.

Bernard said, ‘Perhaps a minute’s silence in recognition of absent friends?’

‘Indeed.’ Jared immediately lowered his glass and his head, gazing at his plate, face grave.

You lying, turncoat bastard, Sarah thought.

Friday signalled the minute’s passing by tucking into her supper. Speaking with her mouth full, she said, ‘I know we’re here to talk about how to get Adam out of gaol, but are we really going to be able to do that?’ She wiped a dribble of gravy off her chin with the back of her hand. ‘I mean, we all know he was set up, but we couldn’t find anything to prove that before he went to trial. How are we going to do it now?’

‘We can’t. It’s too late,’ Sarah said hopelessly. But she didn’t mean it. All this had been carefully rehearsed the day before while Jared had been out.

‘What about his colleagues, other people in the jewellery business?’ Harrie suggested. ‘They might have heard something.’

Bernard said, ‘What do you think, Jared? You must be at your wits’ end wondering how to help.’

Ploughing through his supper, Jared choked and coughed.

‘Bean go down the wrong way?’ Sarah asked.

Red-faced, Jared nodded, reached for his wine and took a hearty gulp. ‘I do beg your pardon. Yes, I’ve been thinking long and hard racking my brains about what to do.’

‘Why don’t
you
talk to Adam’s friends and colleagues?’ Bernard said, knowing Jared was aware that would be a waste of time. ‘The girls here wouldn’t know where to start and, well, they’re not really in a position to make those sorts of enquiries, are they?’

‘Why don’t
you
talk to them?’ Jared replied. ‘You’re in the trade.’

‘Yes, I could, of course. But first I think I’ll pay a visit to Arthur Hocking. Adam’s solicitor? I know the man. Decent sort. And that barrister fellow, what was his name?’

‘Evans. Augustus Evans,’ Jared said.

‘Yes, that’s him.’ Bernard poured more gravy onto his meat. ‘Well, that’s a start, at least. It’s probably all we can do for now. Have you heard from him yet, Sarah?’

‘No, nothing.’ Sarah’s voice was as flat as the Yorkshire puddings she’d made to accompany the beef.

‘It’s a dreadful business,’ Ruthie Cole remarked. ‘Such a lovely boy, Adam. To think of him all alone in a filthy cell hundreds of miles up the coast.’

Sarah regarded her at the end of the table. In her lace house cap and with her round face and rosy cheeks, bright, teary eyes, and her grey/brown hair she looked like a little upset squirrel. And she knew Ruthie wasn’t acting: she really was very upset about Adam.

‘I don’t think he will be alone, dear,’ Bernard said. ‘He’ll be in a barracks, probably.’

‘Still,’ Ruthie said, ‘it’s a bad business.’ She cleared her throat nervously. ‘And Bernard tells me on top of everything else your ghost is back!’

Sarah nodded. ‘It does seem so.’ From the corner of her eye she noted Jared staring at her intently.

Bernard dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. ‘But why, I wonder? Last time you thought it might have been trying to stop Esther from mistreating you. What could have brought it back this time?’

Sarah gazed deliberately at Jared. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘Not “it”.
Her
,’ Harrie corrected. ‘Her name is Rachel. And you’re very distressed, Sarah. Perhaps she’s come to give you support. She’s like that.’

Oh no, Sarah thought, her heart missing a beat. Keep to the script, Harrie!

Bernard explained to Jared, ‘I was here for a few weeks during the last manifestation, looking after the business while Adam was away, and I can assure you it was
not
a pleasant experience, what with the noises and the smells and the
very
strange activity. Extremely disturbing! Poor Esther was beside herself.’

‘We had a ghost once,’ Ruthie said. ‘Did Bernard tell you, Sarah?’

‘The little girl in the cesspit?’

‘Yes, Pansy. Very sweet, but so sad.’

‘Rachel wasn’t sweet, was she?’ Friday said, topping up her glass again with claret.

‘She was so!’ Harrie protested. ‘She was a darling.’

Friday laughed. ‘
Sometimes
she was a darling. Bloody good with the broads, too. You should have seen her play, Bernard. But sometimes she was the most bad-tempered little thing ever.’ She sighed and was quiet for a second. ‘I’d give my left arm, even with my new tattoo, to have her back, though. Anyway, I didn’t mean when she was alive. I meant the last time we saw her, in this house.’

‘You saw her as well? The ghost?’ Jared asked, startled.

One of the wall lamps flickered and went out. Looking alarmed, he half rose from his chair, then sat down again when no one else appeared bothered.

Sarah thought: sod, too early. She’d made sure the oil in the lamp was low, but had hoped it might have lasted a little longer.

‘Only once or twice,’ Friday said, ‘And she wasn’t being very darling then, I can assure you. Sarah and Harrie saw her more than I did. They both have the sight, especially Harrie.’

‘Can you … sense when there’s a presence here?’ Jared asked Harrie.

‘Oh yes. So can Sarah.’

Jared shifted his gaze to Sarah, a vein in his neck visibly pulsing.

She waited a moment or two to heighten the tension, then said, ‘What do you think, Harrie? Is she here now? Can you feel anything? I can.’

Harrie laid her knife and fork neatly across her plate, clasped her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. Everyone forgot supper. Nothing happened for the longest time, though almost no one at the table was expecting that anything actually would. A late cicada
buzzed shrilly from some unseen hiding place, and in the tree outside a pair of night birds bickered.

Another lamp flickered to a mere pinpoint of light.

The door from the back porch into the dining room creaked open, bringing with it a sulphurous whiff of cesspit from the yard.

Bugger, Sarah thought, and got up and closed it. By the time she’d returned to her chair, Harrie had opened her eyes again.

She smiled delightedly. ‘Yes, she’s here.’

Jared’s gaze darted wildly around the room, his eyes huge.

Harrie was looking at a point halfway up the wall behind Bernard, but of course there was nothing there to see. God she’s good at this, Sarah thought.

Harrie appeared to listen for a moment, then she said conversationally, ‘We’re talking about what to do about Adam, to get him out of gaol.’ She cocked her head to one side, said, ‘Well, ask her yourself,’ and glanced across the table at Sarah.

Sarah panicked — they hadn’t practised this bit! She pretended to listen, then ad-libbed, ‘I do, Rachel. I miss him horribly.’ She shot a pleading look back at Harrie. ‘I can’t see her any more. Is she still there?’

Ruthie suddenly shivered at the other end of the table, and pulled her shawl more tightly across her shoulders.

Harrie shook her head. ‘No. She’s gone now.’

‘Out of —’ Jared’s voice came out as a high-pitched squeak. He cleared his throat noisily and tried again. ‘Out of the house?’

‘Oh no,’ Harrie said cheerfully, and pointed to the closed door behind Ruthie. ‘She went out there, into the hallway.’

That
wasn’t in the script, either. Disconcerted, Sarah caught Friday’s eye.

Harrie gave a little start, turned to Friday and said rather testily, ‘What?’ Then, ‘Oh! And she said she’s really,
really
angry.’

‘But what’s she angry
about
? That’s what
I
want to know,’ Friday boomed with theatrical inflection worthy of Drury Lane’s Theatre Royal.

‘She said she will not have Sarah treated badly,’ Harrie replied.

‘Oh dear,’ Bernard said. ‘It does rather sound like a repeat of last time, doesn’t it? But Sarah, you’re not being mistreated, are you?’

‘Not at all,’ Sarah said woodenly. ‘I really don’t understand why she’s here again.’

Beside her she felt Jared go very, very still.

So he’d received the message, but would he heed it? And even if he did, keeping his dirty hands to himself was not going to be enough, for she’d decided she would not stop persecuting him until he’d confessed to framing Adam.

Jared came down to breakfast the following morning looking as though he’d spent a week on the jar. Puffy mauve bags marred the skin beneath his bleary eyes, his skin was pasty white and his hands shook badly as he poured himself a cup of tea. He looked like Sarah felt.

‘Eggs do you?’ she asked.

‘Thank you.’

Though she knew very well he hadn’t, she asked, ‘Did you sleep well?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Upset guts?’

‘Nightmares. I hope.’

‘Really?’ Sarah plopped two fried eggs onto his plate and a couple of rounds of black pudding, then served herself.

Jared poked his knife into his egg yolk and watched as it oozed out onto the plate. ‘After what transpired at the supper table last night I had a couple of fingers of brandy to settle my nerves and managed to get to sleep, but then had the most hideous dreams. I dreamt I heard rapping and knocking noises half the night, and that my bed chamber was filled with a horrible, other-worldly light. It went on and on, the noises and the lights, until an hour or so before dawn.’

Sarah knew exactly what time the noises had stopped, because she’d been up in the attic making them, and crawling around with a lamp covered with a glass mantle coloured a sickly greenish-yellow, shining it through the holes she’d drilled the other day.

‘I don’t think you were dreaming,’ she said. ‘I heard all that, too.’

Jared appeared dismayed. ‘And a scratching at my window, just prior to sunrise. My
upper
-storey window.’

Sarah wondered what that had been; certainly not her doing. A possum? There were dozens in the town’s trees and they often scampered across rooftops on noisy little feet. But it gave her an idea. ‘Harrie believes Rachel sometimes appears as a bat. Perhaps it was her, trying to get in.’

Jared blanched.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, delighted with his reaction, ‘I thought you said you’d had experience with this sort of thing? Didn’t you say you once owned a house that was haunted?’

‘We did, yes. In England. That was nothing like this, however. I never actually saw that ghost.’ He shuddered. ‘I couldn’t abide actually
seeing
one.’

‘Who’s we?’

The barest flicker of discomfort crossed his pale face. ‘My wife and I.’

Sarah might have guessed he was married. She decided to rub it in. ‘I didn’t realise you’re a widower.’

‘I’m not.’ He went back to his eggs. ‘My wife remains in England.’

It was time to test his mettle. And his intentions. ‘Well, it could very well get worse here. It was pretty grim last time. If you don’t like it you could always go back to your own lodgings.’