The Ghosts of Tullybrae House (4 page)

Lamb opened the door to Lady Rotherham, who stood on the stoop outside with a file folder full of papers clasped to her chest.

“Hello Lamb,” she greeted affectionately, stepping through to the entryway. She allowed the old butler to take her shawl and wide-brim floppy hat, then ran her fingers through her chin-length hair, which was dyed a rich shade of red.

“And you must be Emmeline.” The lady swept towards her in a larger-than-life manner. Grasping her firmly by the shoulders, she air-kissed Emmie’s cheeks.

Before Emmie could get out a hello, Lady Rotherham was off, striding down the hall towards the library. “Do be a dear, Lamb, and make us a spot of tea.” Her cultured English accent held only a hint of Scots.

Emmie raised her eyebrows to Lamb, then trotted after the trim, small figure of Lady Rotherham. Reaching the library, she closed the door, and joined the lady who had seated herself on the settee that Emmie had just vacated.

“Oh, shoo, Clunie,” the lady chided, scooting the cat off the seat.

Emmie took the spoon back armchair opposite, and folded her hands expectantly in her lap.

“Well, my dear, I’m happy to have you here.”

“I’m happy to be here. Thank you, your ladyship, for the opportunity.” Feeling a need to make the first overture, she added, “May I ask: Why do you ring the doorbell to your own home?”

The lady laughed, tossing her small head back. “I like you already.” She looked around the library, thinking. “Well, I suppose it’s habit. It’s something Daddy insisted on as soon as Anne-Marie and I got married and moved away. We no longer lived here, you see—if one does not live here, one must ring the doorbell to be let in.”

“Maybe he wanted to give you the guest treatment,” Emmie said charitably.

“Hardly. Putting us in our place, more like. Not that I resent the old darling for it. In the end, the house became mine.”

Sighing elegantly, Lady Rotherham placed the file folder in her hands onto the rosewood end table at her right. She tisked, tracing a centuries-old scar in the surface. “Everything’s an antique, here. This table, for instance. A Victorian reproduction; Louis the Fifteenth; Ormolu mounted.”

“You’re a bit of a historian yourself, I see.”

“I Googled it,” Lady Rotherham deadpanned. “Apparently, there’s another one at La Maison Mont Du Lac. It’s a vineyard outside of Bordeaux, in a town called Pauillac.”

“How… prestigious.” It was all Emmie could think to say. But it seemed to please her new employer.

They were briefly interrupted when Lamb brought in a silver tea service with china cups and saucers.

“How you manage to make tea so quickly, I’ll never know, Lamb.” Lady Rotherham waited for him to place the tray on the low table between them.

Emmie, too, wondered about that. He must have had everything ready in anticipation of her arrival.

“Oh, and Mrs. Lamb’s shortbread cookies. These are legendary around here.” The lady poured herself a cup of tea and helped herself to a buttery white biscuit.

“Your ladyship,” he said, then left the library quietly.

Before she poured her own tea, Emmie sneaked a peak at the bottom of the cup. The mark read “Fine Bone China; Crown Staffordshire; Est. 1801; England.” Lady Rotherham noticed, and winked.

“You’re not on duty just now,” she jested, then took a sip of her tea. “So. Emmeline. How are you liking Tullybrae?”

“It’s just Emmie,” she corrected politely. “Tullybrae is beautiful. Exactly as you described it.”

“You haven’t decided to turn tail and run then, after seeing how much work is ahead of you?”

Emmie smiled knowingly. “It’s not like you didn’t warn me your ladyship.”

“Camille.” Lady Rotherham’s face grew serious. “All kidding aside, I would like to be frank about why I hired you. You know you’re not being paid a salary appropriate to your title.”

Emmie had known. She nodded.

“The fact is, my dear, that I simply cannot afford to hire an experienced curator for the amount of work that needs to be done. No one would take the post if I tried.” She gestured grandly to the air as if all of the potential candidates for curator were hovering in the background.

“I know.” Emmie put her tea cup down; she winced when the delicate china clicked against the equally delicate saucer. “Professor McCall went over all this with me. I know what I’m getting into. It is a lot of work, and the pay is not comparable to what I would expect if I were to be offered the curator position at, say, the Museo Del Prado. But then again I would never be
offered
the curator position at the Museo Del Prado or anywhere like it.” She knew she was being handed an opportunity to gain experience, and she appreciated it for what it was.

Lady Rotherham beamed. “Oh, good. I was worried old Boomer hadn’t given you much to go on.”

Emmie stared. “Who?”

“Oh, Boomer is Ethan McCall’s nickname from way back at UCL. He spoke so highly of you when he put your name forward for the position. He thought it was right up your alley.”

“Boomer.” Emmie snickered. “Professor McCall is always so serious, I can’t imagine him as a ‘Boomer’.”

“Yes, well, he can be a bit stuffy when he’s working, can’t he? But put a scotch in his hand and he can let loose with the best of them.” Leaning forward, she lowered her voice. “When you see him next, you will have to ask him about how he got that name. I won’t tell you, but it involves a sheep, purple dye, and a value pack of glow-in-the-dark condoms.”

Emmie choked on her tea.

“Right then,” Lady Rotherham continued, “as far as the work goes, I’m sure you don’t need me to go into detail with that. But I will say that I do want everything catalogued.
Everything
, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem. Do you have any idea where you might start?”

“Um—” Emmie eased her teacup back onto the saucer with exaggerated delicacy. “I think it will be to take valuable antiques like these out of rotation for everyday use.”

“These aren’t the most valuable ones we have, dear. For Lamb, these
are
the everyday alternatives. Now, I believe Boomer mentioned, I’m thinking of turning Tullybrae into a museum now that Daddy’s gone. Maybe a hotel, too. I haven’t decided yet.”

“He did mention.”

“Oliver—that’s Lord Rotherham—wants me to sell it. But I just can’t bring myself to do it, not even to the National Trust. It was my childhood home, you see. My younger sister and I spent our youth here.”

“I understand. It’s hard to let go when you love something so much.”

Lady Rotherham smiled sadly. “That’s why Lamb is still here, you know. I love him too much to let him go. Oliver tried to get him to retire, but he wouldn’t hear of it. And I didn’t have the heart to support Oliver—which, believe me, I heard about once we were home.” She took another bite of her biscuit. “I do worry about him having a fall when he’s here alone. You wouldn’t mind terribly keeping an eye on him, would you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. Well then, perhaps I should tell you what you can expect these next few months.” The lady flipped open the top cover of her file folder. Within were what looked like contracts, which she fanned out for closer inspection. “I’ve been a very busy woman, contacting the networks.”

“The networks?” Emmie leaned in to take a look.

“Yes. I heard back from two. Stannisfield Films is picking us up for an episode of Digging Scotland with Dr. Iain Northcott—and you’d best be prepared for that one; they want to start digging by the end of the week so they don’t get snowed out.”

“Digging?”

“Didn’t Boomer tell you? There’s a legend of a burial on the property—a grave, murder victim from God knows when. The team came out a few weeks ago and did a scan with ground penetrating radar. They found a disturbance out in the east field that might corroborate a burial, so they’re coming to film an episode. I’ve already had my interview with Iain.” She primped her unnaturally red hair.

“So they’ll be filming here?” Emmie felt a little faint. Professor McCall hadn’t mentioned anything about filming.

“Yes, but it shouldn’t affect you at all. They won’t need you for the camera. The most you’ll have to do is help Lamb see them off each night, and make sure they’re not damaging the property at all. You probably won’t have anything to worry about there, though. They are archaeologists, after all.”

Emmie nodded vaguely. “And the second network?”

“Yes,” Lady Rotherham nodded. “Well… you see… how to say this? Perhaps I should be totally honest. Tullybrae is haunted.” When Emmie’s eyebrows shot up, Lady Rotherham explained. “It’s nothing to worry about. They’re nice ghosts. I grew up with them, and they’ve never done anything to me. One is the sixth Countess of Cranbury, who died in sixteen ninety-one. She won’t bother you much. The most you’ll catch is a glimpse of her, or perhaps a whiff of her perfume. Rose—you’ll smell it. And the second, we think, is the ghost of a little girl named Clara. She’s the only child’s death we have registered at Tullybrae. In seventeen eighty-three. Tuberculosis. She’s not harmful, but she likes to play. You may hear giggling, or things might fall off shelves. That kind of thing.”

Emmie recalled the strange giggling she’d dreamed of last night, and shivered.

“I hope I haven’t frightened you,” Lady Rotherham put in.

She met the lady’s concerned gaze, and tried so smile. “No, not frightened, exactly. I can’t say I was expecting that, but I’m sure it will be fine. As long as nothing jumps out at me.”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. Anyway, BBC Two is coming out for an episode of Haunted Britain. That’s happening mid-September. You won’t need to be on camera for that, either, but they will be staying overnight at the house to shoot.”

Emmie breathed, absorbing the news she’d just been blindsided with. “I think I can handle that.”

“I’m sure you can,” Lady Rotherham agreed airily. “For now, I just need you to work on the items in the house. You’re free to come and go as you please. I’m not a stickler for in-office hours… or in-house hours, in this case. As long as you’re making progress, that’s all I care about.”

“Understood.”

Lady Rotherham gave Emmie an appraising look. “I have a feeling we’re going to get along famously.”

She hoped the lady was right. Because after everything she’d just been told, Emmiewas wondering if she might be in over her head
.

THE FIRST WEEK
on the job was slow-going. Emmie began her first real day of work with enthusiasm. Perhaps also a touch of idealism. She was a soldier of history. Her mission: To return to the present those lives which had been lost to the past. She would be the voice that spoke for those who could no longer speak.

Lamb must have anticipated her eagerness. When she came downstairs that morning, he had a full Scottish breakfast waiting for her. She ploughed through it, enjoying—truly
enjoying
, imagine!—the haggis and blood pudding, and washed the lot down with three cups of coffee. When she got up to help with the washing up, he wouldn’t hear of it.

“You go on. You’ve a long day of… whatever it is you do, ahead of you.”

“Lamb, you’re a doll.” She gave him a one-armed, sideways squeeze. He hadn’t been expecting the familiar gesture. Sputtering, he patted her hand awkwardly.

“Yes, well… you go on then.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, Emmie barrelled into her career as an official curator.

By noon, she was ready to give up.

When she’d thought about how she would start the night before, she had decided the sitting room would be a good place to ease herself into the job. Old Cranberry (or so she’d taken to calling the curmudgeony earl in her head) had used this room until his death. It was one of the few rooms at Tullybrae which hadn’t fallen prey to consolidation and storage; the general cramming of too many items into too-small spaces.

At her side were her four favourite items, highly specialized equipment for historical cataloguing: a yellow notepad, an easy-glide ballpoint pen, a digital camera, and a box of pre-threaded manila tags. Cataloguing was one thing she knew how to do inside and out, since it was what she did most often under the tutelage of Professor McCall. Each item would need to be meticulously described, with as many distinctive marks and identifiers as she could locate. The item’s condition would also be recorded. It would then be photographed from multiple angles, assigned a number for future identification, and tagged.

But even the study quickly proved to be an overwhelming room. Everything,
everything
, was antique. The furnishings, the paintings, the rugs, the window treatments. Even the wallpaper. And although the room had the outward appearance of livability, there were mounds upon mounds of items stacked haphazardly within the hutch, the credenza, under the window seating, and inside a large ornamental chest in the far corner.

By lunchtime, Emmie hadn’t evaluated even half the room, much less catalogue her finds and determine their historical significance and value.

At twelve-thirty, Lamb brought a tray into the sitting room. Hearing his short-stepped gait, Emmie looked up from where she sat, cross-legged, on the floor in front of the credenza. Arranged neatly on the tray, which the butler clutched with a death grip, was a watercress sandwich, four homemade shortbread cookies, a Granny Smith apple cut into slices, cubes of sharp cheddar cheese, and a tall, frosty glass of milk.

“Lamb, you sweet man. I said I usually skip lunch. You didn’t need to do this.”

Lamb bent, his knees creaking, and handed her the tray when she rose to meet him half-way. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you going from dawn to dusk without eating. I hope I haven’t included anything you don’t like.”

“I’m grateful, thank you. It all looks delicious. I love watercress.”

“Do you? ’Tis an old-fashioned taste, I think. No’ what the young people like to eat nowadays.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed by my line of work, old-fashioned is kinda my thing.”

Lamb let out a huff that was almost a chuckle. “Fair enough.”

That first day tired her more than she thought it would. Emmie was asleep less than a minute after her head touched the pillow. If the strange giggling and the tugging at the covers happened again, she was too far gone to notice. Every night thereafter she slept soundly as well. Whatever had disrupted her that first night must have been an anomaly. A product of her over-active imagination, stimulated by the atmosphere of the house.

Or so she tried to convince herself. But her historian’s imagination, its fascination with the past, wouldn’t be subdued for long. No sooner would she chastise herself than her mind would drift back to the idea that there were beings in the house whom she couldn’t see. There were times, too, when she was alone that a spider web sensation would tickle along her spine. And though she knew she was being a little absurd, Emmie would find herself slowing down around corners, steeling herself against the possibility of coming face to face with a lurking spectre.

Nothing like that happened.

She asked Lamb about the ghosts one night at dinner. He wasn’t much help.

“Old houses like this have had many lives come and go through its doors,” he evaded. “It would no’ be a far stretch to imagine that they’ve all left their mark on the place in one way or another.”

“True enough. That’s why I do what I do, I suppose.” She forked a green bean and crunched it thoughtfully.

It was hardly the answer she’d been looking for, and he knew it. Emmie stared at Lamb. There was something he wasn’t saying. He studied his plate like he would be tested on its contents, and chose his next pan-fried mushroom with deliberate care. She let the matter drop.

That night, before she crawled under the covers, she stood in front of the dresser, kissed her forefinger, and planted it on the glass over her mother’s photo.

“Ghosts, Mom,” she whispered to the smiling face. “I’m not sure if I’m frightened or not. You’ll protect me, right?”

The face smiled back at her. That silent smile, frozen in time, meant different things at different times to Emmie. This time, she took it for reassurance.

As she became accustomed to life at Tullybrae, Emmie found that she was able to put the thoughts of spirits out of her mind most of the time. Her work kept her busy, and she enjoyed slipping into the routine of research.

There were three stages to the process of cataloguing. Once she’d written down as much as she could about an object by sight, and had taken photos, she then retreated to her laptop to see if she could identify her finds through reputable websites. Those items to which she could not assign a manufacturer and year, she tagged with the frustratingly simple, moniker
TU
: Temporarily Unidentified. Originally, Professor McCall had instructed her to use just a “U,” but Emmie was never comfortable with the permanence it conveyed. Thus, she began adding the “T” early on in her career.

For these “TU” items, she could forward what details she had to the university archives at Edinburgh or Cambridge, which would do a trace on them—for a fee. But as yet, she had not taken this step. Emmie had not discussed it with Lady Rotherham. She had no doubt the lady would approve. But, as Lady Rotherham openly admitted, it was her husband who would be paying the fee, and he might not consider a positive identification worth the cost.

So, Emmie’s “TU” pile grew.

Mid-week found her moving from the sitting room to the library. By then, her days had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Mornings she would spend doing the grunt work of cataloguing, and afternoons she would spend researching. For this part of the job, she’d set up an office of sorts in a room which had once been the nursery.

Emmie liked this room the best. Being at the east corner of the house, its hexagonal shape was a result of the manor’s turreted architecture. High, bright windows which faced both east and west flooded the room with light through most of the day. The children’s items had been moved out and stored in the attic over a quarter of a century ago, Lamb informed her when she asked. In their place, the late earl’s personal documents and records had been moved in. Brown, crumbling banker’s boxes were stacked willy-nilly around the room. Some were so old that they threatened to collapse, which would send almost fifty years’ worth of yellowing paper spilling out onto the threadbare carpet.

It was a simple matter to restack the boxes against a wall, only an hour’s heavy lifting. Emmie wasn’t too pleased that it had to be a window wall, but the walls on the inside of the house were unsuitable. One had a small, old-fashioned radiator which, like the one in her room, was still operational in the winter months. Beside that was the wall with the door, and the wall beside that was the fireplace wall.

By the time the weekend limped in, she was satisfied with the amount of work she’d accomplished, and was looking forward to a break.

Saturday morning dawned dim and foggy, but her mood was light enough to drive away the shadows.

“You look like you have some plans for the day,” Lamb noted at the breakfast table.

Emmie nodded as she dunked a narrow strip of toast—a “soldier”—into her soft-boiled egg. “I’m thinking of driving into Aviemore today to do some errands. This is really good, by the way.”

“Nothing I can help with?”

“Just dry-cleaning and some groceries. Nothing I can’t take care of, myself. And I have a few things I want to pick up that I’ve run out of. Why—you wanna come?”

“Nay, you’re all right,” he answered. “But thank you all the same.”

“Do you need anything while I’m out?”

He thought for a moment. “Well, as long as you’re asking, I wouldn’t mind a nice bottle of red wine. His lordship has a fine reserve in the cellar, but I don’t feel right about taking from him.”

“Oh, come on, Lamb. He’s dead. He can’t complain. Live a little.”

His eyes crinkled in what was almost a grin. “Old habits die hard. Anyway, will you be out all day, do you reckon?”

She mopped up the last of her egg yolk with her remaining soldier and bit into it. “I should be back mid- to late-afternoon. I was thinking of finding a pub somewhere for lunch.”

“Ah. Well, then you’ll want the Aviemore Arms. On the High Street, just past Craig Na Gower Avenue. They do a nice steak and ale pie, they do. That is, if you like steak and ale pie. You might not, but I do.”

“I love steak and ale pie. I’ll check it out.”

After clearing away the dishes, Emmie dashed out to her Panda. Soon, she was on the road, driving through thick, Highland mist, her headlights and her eyes peeled for stray sheep. She made it to Aviemore in a little over half an hour.

By mid-morning, the sky had cleared up, and the sun came out. It shimmered through the moist air, bestowing the quaint tourist town with an invigorating, dew-kissed feel. The Highland air was so fresh and so fragrant that Emmie found herself inhaling deeply every time she stepped out of a shop.

The locals were friendly, and customer-service was clearly a top priority. Each shop owner invited her in like she was an old friend. They spent time with her, explaining their products, and letting her try, feel, taste and smell them. At one store, a stout, middle-aged lady in a tartan vest took the time to explain to her all the different clan plaids that were represented on pure wool scarves, which were prominently displayed near the front window.

“This one here is Urquhart,” she said, pulling one out and showing it to her with soft, short-fingered hands. “My clan.”

“Matches your vest.”

The woman beamed. “Aye, it does. And see here?” She fingered a small, gold pin anchored to the lapel. “Speak weil, mean weil, doe weil. The Urquhart motto.”

Emmie’s eyes travelled up the built-in cubbyholes with all the scarves stacked neatly by clan. “What about MacCombish? Is there a tartan for that name?”

“MacCombish, MacCombish.” The lady tapped her chin with her pinkie finger, then scurried to the counter at the back of her store on fat, little legs. From beneath the cash register, she pulled a well-thumbed paperback book.

“MacCombish,” she repeated to herself as she leafed through the pages. “Ah, here it is. Well, see now, MacCombish was under the protection of Clan Stuart. The Bonnie Prince himself. So they would have worn his colours.”

The lady laid the open book on the counter, and pointed to the entry. Emmie leaned over, craning her neck slightly to read the blurb beneath the name.

“And here’s the Stuart colours,” the woman continued, flipping to a well-used page. In a full-page, glossy image was a replica of the red and black of Clan Stuart. “Is your name MacCombish, lass?”

Emmie hesitated, drawing a finger over the colourful plaid photo. “Yes… well, no, actually. It’s Tunstall. But it was MacCombish once.”