Melody Bittersweet and The Girls' Ghostbusting Agency: A laugh out loud romantic comedy of Love, Life and ... Ghosts? (14 page)

‘I’m not Miss Marple, Isaac. Help a girl out?’

He scans the room. ‘Look around. Check the walls for signs of any disturbance in the brickwork, hidden compartments, loose floorboards.’

‘That’s all very well for you to say.’ The violently patterned rug is huge and has been down for longer than I’ve been alive, lifting it will likely make a dust cloud that could kill me.

He crosses to the chimneybreast. ‘There was always a live fireplace here when my parents had this room. It’s been bricked up. Tap it, you’ll probably be able to tell.’

I follow him across the room and do as I’m told, and believe it or not I can detect the change in sound as I rap my knuckles lightly on the wall.

‘There,’ I whisper, in wide-eyed wonder. ‘You’re right.’

‘Of course I’m right,’ he says. ‘It’s hardly a surprise that these houses were built with fireplaces. We didn’t all have fancy radiators back in those days, you know.’

I feel scolded. ‘I was only saying.’

‘You need to knock a hole through and check inside the fireplace.’

I balk at the idea of damaging the property, and even more so at the thought of ripping that amazing wallpaper.

‘What do you expect me to do, Isaac, put my fist through? I’ll end up in A&E. Besides, why do you think we should check your parents’ room in particular?’

‘I didn’t say in particular, I just said you should check it. You’re going to have to do this in every room, not just this one.’

I huff, and make a mental note to check the internet tonight to see if anyone has written
Basic Sleuthing for Dummies
, because one of those big comforting yellow guides would come in really handy right about now.

‘Right. I’m not going to damage anything in here at this very moment,’ I voice my decision for Isaac’s benefit. ‘Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up through the house.’

He doesn’t look all that impressed. ‘To the cellar, then.’

It’s my turn to be unimpressed. I don’t need a dummies guide to tell me that bad things happen in cellars. We troop downstairs, and I decide that if I’m tackling the cellar, then it’s definitely a case of safety in numbers.

‘Marina? Artie?’ I call as I follow Isaac towards a door underneath the staircase.

‘We’re watching the snooker with Dougie,’ she calls back. ‘Be there in a sec, Bingham’s on for a potential one-four-seven.’

‘I have no clue what that means, but I’m on course to be potentially murdered in the cellar, so get your backsides out here and come down there with me!’ I aim for a jokey tone, but I think it might have come out more shrill/desperate/terrified. It has the desired effect though, because they both dash through and join me by the cellar door.

‘Who’s going to murder you?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ I whisper to Marina. ‘It’s a cellar.’

She looks at the cellar door and then back to me. ‘If Bingham gets a maximum break and I miss it, I’ll murder you myself.’

Artie scratches his head. ‘You die either way in that scenario, Melody.’

‘Thank you, Artie,’ I smile wide. ‘That’s so incredibly comforting.’

Marina turns her head and shouts over her shoulder. ‘Keep an eye on things for me, Dougie!’

I lift my eyebrows at her for shortening his name in such a pally fashion, but she just shrugs and laughs.

‘I can be friends with the ghosts too, you know. Especially young, hot ones.’

Artie rolls his shoulders and steps forward. ‘Let me go first.’

For a moment I think about arguing, but then I change my mind. Artie Elliott is coming out of his shell more every day, and the fact that he’s putting himself forward like this is endearing. Plus, despite the fact that I hang out with the undead, I am actually a bit scared of dark and creepy cellars, so I magnanimously agree and step aside. He turns the paint-encrusted key with some difficulty and twists the handle a few times. With a sharp yank the door swings open.

‘Is there any electricity down there?’ I ask, looking at Isaac, whose expression is enough to tell me the answer is a big fat no.

‘I don’t think the bulb would still work, even if there was,’ Artie muses, pulling his phone out and clicking the torch on. Marina and I do the same and Isaac looks grudgingly impressed.

‘You all carry torches?’

‘They’re mobile phones. They have torches on these days.’

He scowls. ‘Sometimes I’m glad I’m dead. All of this technology is beyond me.’

‘You won’t say that if we find the murder weapon and technology helps clear your name.’

‘I know we’re only getting one side of the conversation so I might be wrong, but you really should try to be a bit more grateful that we’re all putting our lives in danger for you here, Isaac,’ Marina mutters, gripping the bottom of my T-shirt tightly as we follow Artie slowly down the cellar steps, our phones held aloft to light the way. It’s more than gloomy down there, I’m glad of the slim shaft of daylight that picks out the steps.

‘Well, someone certainly liked their wine,’ Marina says as she runs an appreciative hand over the corks of the dusty, dark green bottles laid down on their sides in a rack built into one wall. As you’d expect from a house on the scale of Scarborough House, the cellar is quite large, and from what I can make out, it houses at least a century’s worth of junk.

‘My brother and his cronies, and no doubt his son too.’ Isaac’s sniffy tone tells me that he wasn’t a wine fan or, more likely, he never got the chance to live the high life if he was thrown out of the family in disgrace in his early-twenties. I can’t imagine how life was for him after that; it must have had a pretty catastrophic effect.

‘Did you never see your family at all afterwards?’

‘My mother sent for me shortly before her death.’

‘She did?’ I whisper in the darkness. ‘What did she want?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t come.’

I can’t make Isaac out in the low light and his monotone delivery tells me precisely nothing. I don’t know if he regrets not coming back to hear his mother’s final words, or if he’s still furious and would do the same again if he had to make the choice right now.

I don’t get much time to dwell on it though, because above us the cellar door suddenly slams decisively shut and plunges the place into complete darkness aside from our phones.

‘Oh no!’ I yelp loudly, horrified by the sudden hammer-house-of-horror turn of events. Artie makes a similarly shocked sound, whilst Marina’s choice of words is far more explicit as she grabs hold of the hem of my T-shirt again and winds it around her fist to make sure we are right next to each other.

‘Is this the bit where we all get murdered?’

Her shaky voice only scares me more. Marina does not, repeat
not
, get scared. Neither do I. I see ghosts, remember? I am officially hardcore. Isaac is the only one who seems completely unmoved, most probably because he’s the only one amongst us who isn’t preoccupied by the possibility of imminent death.

‘Let me go and see what the devil’s going on up there,’ he says, agitated, and then he disappears into thin air, dispensing with his usual habit of observing the rules of the living because speed is of the essence.

‘This is the first time I’ve ever wished I was a ghost,’ Marina whispers when I tell them that Isaac has gone upstairs to investigate.

‘You might be in a few minutes,’ I joke, but unsurprisingly she doesn’t laugh. She goes to snip back, but I shush her because I can hear voices.

‘Isaac is arguing with someone . . . Lloyd, I think?’

‘What are they saying?’

‘Shush,’ I flap a hand in the darkness as I strain to hear them.

‘I can hear them too,’ Artie says suddenly, clutching my arm. ‘Oh my God, I can hear the ghosts, Melody!’

Marina lets go of my T-shirt. ‘Sorry, Artie. Unless we’ve both been bashed over the head and died at the same time, there’s living, breathing people up there because I can hear them too.’ She pauses, and for a moment all I can hear is our own laboured breathing. ‘Women, I think?’

We all struggle to hear. She’s right. Behind Isaac and Lloyd’s heated debate there are quieter female voices too. For a moment I fear Gran has turned up to meddle again, but why the hell would she lock me in a cellar? I listen harder, and no, I’m sure it isn’t Gran, or anyone else I know well enough to recognise.

‘I’ll just go up there and hammer on the door.’ Marina stomps towards the steps but I hang onto her arm.

‘Wait, let’s listen. They must know we’re here, which means they probably shut us in deliberately. Babs is hardly inconspicuous, is she? Let me go and see what I can suss out.’

I inch up the steps in an exaggerated way and lay my ear to the door. It doesn’t help me that I can hear Isaac and Lloyd’s raised voices over the top of the hushed female ones. Bloody Isaac! If he’d just pop back this side of the door we could probably get this sorted out a damn sight faster.

‘Why didn’t you stop them, you silly old goat?’ I think that was Isaac.

‘Perhaps because I’ve been dead for over forty years?’

‘Well, you could have tried to frighten them, distracted them, anything but let them lock the door,’ Isaac roars. ‘Admit it. You were perfectly happy to see those children locked down there.’

I bridle a little at the word ‘children’. We’re the best hope he’s got of sorting this out; would it kill him to give us a little more respect? But then I suppose he
was
born in 1887, so maybe I’ll let that one slide.

‘Well, you should have made sure Miss Bittersweet and her cohorts closed the door behind them if they didn’t want people to know where they were,’ Lloyd sulks.

‘I damn well would have if I’d have thought for one moment that someone would come and lock them in. When did they get here?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘Like hell you didn’t.’

‘It’s true actually, Isaac.’

‘Lloyd and Isaac are arguing, and Douglas has just joined them,’ I say for Marina and Artie’s benefit.

‘Lloyd was watching that billiard game on the television with me,’ Douglas says. ‘Someone scored the most possible points from what I can gather. Quite tense, actually.’

I wince, and decide it’s best not to mention to Marina that she’s just missed a maximum break.

‘Well?’ hisses Marina. ‘Who is it?’

I sigh with frustration. ‘I can’t hear them over the argument about whose fault it is that we’re locked in. Oh, hang on . . .’

I step away from the door as Isaac finally materialises through it.

‘You took your time,’ I grumble under my breath. ‘Who’s out there?’

‘Bloody twins, they should be ashamed of themselves.’ He shakes his head in disgust.

‘Isaac, please. I don’t have time to talk about Lloyd and Douglas right now. Who locked us in?’

‘I’m not talking about my brothers,’ he says. ‘Those girls locked you in.’

G
irls
? For a second I’m confused, and then the mists clear. Nikki and Vikki, Leo’s Barbie Twins have locked us in the cellar.

‘Leo’s out there?’ I’m genuinely shocked and more than a little bit hurt. Despite Gran’s stunt with the armour, I thought we had more respect for each other than this.

‘I didn’t see anyone else but those two women. I don’t think their boss is here.’ Isaac frowns.

Marina, on hearing my words, barges up the steps and bangs hard on the door. ‘I’ll kill you for this, Leo Dark. Open this frigging door this minute, and then you better hope you can outrun me!’

‘I’m not sure he’s here, Marina,’ I say quietly. ‘Isaac seems to think it’s just the twins.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ She hammers her fists against the thick old door, furious. ‘I’m seriously losing my temper in here! You two are
so
dead when you open this door.’

To be absolutely honest, I don’t think she’s helping our cause. If I was one of the twins, I wouldn’t let her out for fear of what she’d do.

We freeze, waiting. Deathly silence. We wait some more. Still nothing.

‘Isaac, go and find out what’s happening.’

‘I’m not sure I appreciate being used as a go between,’ he grumbles.

‘Well, I can’t exactly do it myself can I?’ I hiss. ‘Please?’

‘Fine,’ he relents ungraciously. ‘Wait there.’

‘Well, I’m hardly likely to go anywhere else, am I?’

I stand back as he disappears back through the door and let Marina and Artie, who by now have taken a seat on the stairs, know what’s happening.

‘Can you believe those two?’ Marina says, sticking two sticks of fresh gum into her mouth at the same time and chewing aggressively.

‘Honestly? No. I really can’t,’ I say. I find it hard to imagine the twins doing anything without being expressly told to, I’m guilty of assigning them no free will at all. In my head, they’re Leo’s glamorous autobots, sort of similar to how Paris Hilton might have a pair of teacup pigs in her handbag just for show. I have underestimated them at my own peril.

Lloyd strolls through the closed door, looking far too smug for my liking. He’s clearly enjoying this.

‘Is this a bad moment to mention that those two ladies are leaving and they appear to have taken the key with them?’

‘Leaving? They can’t leave us down here!’ I practically shout, and Marina and Artie both jump up at the same time.

‘Get your scrawny arses back here and open this fucking door this instant!’ Marina lets rip, but all we hear is the resounding slam of the front door echoing around the high-ceilinged hall.

‘Oh shit,’ I whisper, clutching my face between my flattened palms. ‘They’ve only actually gone and bloody left us.’

‘I wish I’d brought my lunch box with me,’ Artie says, and we both stare at him, incredulous.

‘Sorry.’ He looks crestfallen. ‘It’s egg sandwiches, my favourite.’

‘I think that’s my cue to leave you all to it.’ Lloyd gives me a superior little smile before he disappears, marking himself out as a member of ‘Team Leo’, or more likely as team Lloyd. He doesn’t seem to really have much in the way of empathy for anyone.

‘Phone reception?’ I say, and we all click our screens to check.

‘Nothing.’ Marina shakes her phone as if it might help.

‘I’ve got one bar,’ Artie says, and then his phone promptly dies. ‘And no battery.’

We all look at my mobile, now officially our last hope. The signal is flickering between no service and one bar when I move my hand around in big circles.

‘Okay. I might be able to make a call,’ I say calmly. ‘But who to?’

‘The police?’ Marina jumps right in.

‘Anyone without sirens?’ I’m really keen not to make a scene that will draw Fletcher Gunn’s attention. I fully expect that he has a hotline from the police station set up to give him the juicy goss on all incoming emergency call-outs, and there’s no juicier bone for that man than a Bittersweet in distress.

‘Well, we can safely cross Leo off the list,’ I say. I have no way to know why his minions were here without him or if he even knew anything about it, but he’s the last person I’m going to call right now.

‘Your mother? Your gran?’

I consider it; my mother and grandmother closing up Blithe Spirits early to come over here and rescue us. This is my first official case for the agency. Am I
really
so inept that I need to call my mum?

‘Any other suggestions?’

Unusually for Douglas, he hurtles into the cellar at a dash straight through the locked door rather than his usual relaxed stroll.

‘You can get out through the coal chute,’ he says quickly. ‘I snuck out of there enough times to know.’

I stare at him, hopeful. ‘The coal chute?’

He nods across the darkness of the cellar. ‘Over there to the left of the chimney breast.’

‘Coal chute over by the chimney,’ I relay to the others, using my phone as a torch again to scan the wall. We all squint as we bump and squeeze our way across the dark, cluttered room.

‘There, look,’ Artie says, pointing up towards the ceiling. ‘Is that it?’

‘It latches from bolts on the inside, I think,’ Isaac says, frowning.

Artie stretches up, but his fingers are a good few inches short.

‘There’s bound to be a step ladder around here,’ Douglas says, surveying the heaped up crates, the tea chests and old suitcases.

‘Step ladders?’ I use short hand to pass the message on, but none of us can see anything resembling steps anywhere.

Artie drags a wooden tea chest across, huffing and puffing as he goes around the other side and shoves it into place beneath the hatch. ‘This is heavier than it looks,’ he puffs, then clambers up on it and reaches for the bolts.

‘Got it,’ he says, quiet and triumphant at finding the hatch, then works the bolts free and shoves both of his hands hard against the closed trap doors. Sunlight floods in, making us all blink furiously, and a second later the tea-chest lid creaks and Artie’s foot goes straight through it.

‘Crap. Artie, are you okay?’ Marina and I leap forward and grab an arm each to steady him, but he just grins, one leg buried up to the knee in the wooden chest.

‘I did it, didn’t I?’ His smile outshines the sunbeams shafting across the cellar.

‘You did,’ I say softly. ‘You’ve earned that egg sandwich, Artie Elliott.’

‘I might even make you a cup of tea without grumbling,’ Marina adds.

I look around the cellar, which isn’t anywhere near so frightening now it’s not pitch black. ‘We’re going to need something more secure to stand on than that chest.’

Artie wriggles his leg free, and as he begins to push the chest out of the way I glance inside it at the exposed contents. Dropping to my knees on the cold flagstone floor, I pick out the pieces of shattered wooden lid and lay them aside.

‘What’s in there?’ Marina says, peering over as I lift out several beautiful encyclopaedias.

‘Books,’ I say, piling them up carefully beside the crate. ‘And these.’ I pick up a stack of smaller books tied together with packing string. The dark blue snakeskin effect cover of the top volume is papery thin leather, with numbers stamped on the front in faded golden swirls. 1908. Diaries. My heart starts to thump as I look at the bundle. Ten years’ worth, probably more. Isaac’s words come back to me about Lloyd. ‘
He was a keen diarist . . .’

* * *

B
ack at the office
, I get straight on the phone to Leo. It comes as little surprise when it goes straight to answer phone. I’m about to leave a furious message when someone taps the door, and Artie opens it to reveal the Barbie Twins standing outside.

Marina’s out of her chair and across the room in a flash, so I click my phone off and make a dash to hold her back. Artie and I link arms with her on either side in the doorway, and I can’t be certain but I think her feet leave the floor for a few seconds and cycle in the air.

‘Ladies,’ I say.

Their eyes flicker nervously from one of us to the other.

‘We’re sorry,’ says the one on the left, wringing her hands.

Marina surges between us with her fists balled and we struggle to keep hold of her.

‘Really, very sorry,’ the other twin says, batting her long, presumably false lashes and sounding anguished. ‘We did a bad thing.’

‘A very, very bad thing,’ twin one adds more gravitas.

‘We could have died down there!’ Marina growls. ‘I could be . . . I don’t know, I could be diabetic and not have had my diabetic thing with me! And Melody’s afraid of the dark! You could have given her an actual heart attack.’

I waver. I’m not entirely sure I appreciate being made to sound such a scaredy cat but I hold my tongue because she plainly isn’t finished yet.

‘And Artie could have . . . fallen down the steps and broken his leg! In fact he very nearly did. Show them, Artie, show them your limp!’

Artie looks conflicted. He clearly wants to back Marina up, but on pulling up his trouser leg it’s obvious that the tiny skin graze is not going to give him much trouble.

‘You two did that. Are you proud of yourselves now?’

The twins shake their heads and look at the floor, and a tear drips from one of their faces onto the cobbles outside the office door.

‘We went back an hour later to let you out again but you’d gone,’ one of them whispers.

‘That’s quite lucky for you, to be honest,’ Artie says, without a hint of malice. ‘Because Marina wanted to wring your turkey necks until your eyes popped out of your heads.’ He glances down at Marina. ‘Did I get that right?’

She nods, breathing in deeply and then blowing out again in slow, measured breaths. I recognise it as a sign that she’s calming herself down so slowly, experimentally, I let go of her arm. After a couple of uneventful seconds, I nod towards Artie to do the same and I’m relieved to see that Marina has cooled her jets enough to not storm forward and hurl herself on the twins. I love her passion, but it’s landed her, and me by association, in more than our fair share of trouble over the years. Let’s just say the local police officers know our names, although less so in more recent times, thankfully. That breathing technique is something she picked up on one of the mandatory anger management classes she attended in lieu of a probation order.

I ask the only question that means anything to me about the whole incident. ‘Did Leo tell you to do this?’

They both look up, stricken.

‘No,’ one of them whispers.

‘Please don’t tell him,’ the other begs, tears leaving crisscross tracks in her immaculate make-up. Her face is so perfectly smooth that she suddenly reminds me of one of my favourite childhood dolls, one that you could put water in the back of and she’d cry real tears. She peed her pants too, but let’s gloss over that part.

‘He’d left his jacket at Scarborough House and asked us to pick it up on our way into work, and when we got there, well . . .’

‘What?’ I say, unmoved by their emotion. ‘You realised we were there and thought it might be fun to trap us in a damp, dark cellar and leave us there to rot?’

They flinch, and I feel horribly like I’m kicking kittens.

‘We thought it might put you off,’ one of them mumbles.

‘We just wanted to help him.’

And then I get it. The twins are fully paid-up Darklings; they saw a chance to do something they thought would aid their hero’s cause and went ever so slightly, temporarily insane. I don’t know whether to be impressed or scared by that kind of fandom.

‘Well, you couldn’t have got it more wrong,’ I say. ‘Because all you’ve done is strengthened our resolve.’

Marina sighs heavily next to me. ‘You’re not going to tell Leo what they did, are you?’

Hope flares in the twin’s eyes as they both stare at me, and I glance down and notice they’re holding hands. For God’s friggin’ sake! Where did he find these child-women?

‘Just go,’ I say, resigned. ‘And don’t ever think about pulling another stunt like that on us again. I’ll tell Leo in a heartbeat if you do, are we clear? No second chances.’

They nod and begin to back away, their stilettos unsteady on the cobbles.

Marina folds her arms across her chest and clears her throat as she stares them down.

‘I think you forgot to say thank you.’

The twins both nod, hurriedly gabbling their thank yous at her over the top of each other.

‘Not to me.’ Marina rolls her eyes and jerks her head in my direction. ‘To Melody.’ She has never sounded more Sicilian.

I smile tightly as they apologise profusely.

‘You did us a bit of a favour, actually,’ Artie says, lifting his hand to wave them off. ‘We found some important things down there, didn’t we? Those—’

Marina and I both lurch forward and slam the door shut at the same time to cut him off mid-flow and prevent him from spilling the news to the twins about the diaries, but not soon enough for me to miss the looks of complete panic that cross the twins faces at the idea that they’ve inadvertently handed us an advantage.

I look at him and grin, and then laughter bubbles up in my chest.

‘Artie Elliott, you are one of the funniest people I’ve ever met,’ I laugh, and as I catch Marina’s eye the tension finally leaves her shoulders and she laughs too. This ghostbusting lark is turning out to be more hair-raising than any of us had anticipated. I don’t know what Nonna Malone’s tea time treat is today, but whatever is I’m having at least four of them.