What a Ghoul Wants (9 page)

I sat there for a long time, just watching him and letting a few tears fall too.

Sam Whitefeather hovered just behind me the whole time, and I knew that he understood
what had me so undone. I was in love with his grandson and I’d nearly lost him to
that bitch in the moat.

The longer I sat there, the more my emotions turned from fear and worry to anger and
determination. At last I leaned down and kissed Heath’s cheek, then headed out to
get some answers.

Chapter 4

The first place I went looking was at the nurses’ station. I found Heath’s nurse,
identified myself as his emergency contact, and she let me know that they were going
to keep Heath there overnight. “There is the rare chance of an infection to the lungs,”
she explained. “He did take in quite a bit of water, Miss Holliday, and we want to
make sure he doesn’t develop a fever or pneumonia.”

“Please keep him as long as you need to make sure he’s okay,” I told her, taking up
a nearby pen and scrap of paper to jot down my phone number. “That’s my cell number.
Please call me with any new developments, and I’ll be back later to check on Heath.”

I then headed back downstairs and found my own nurse ready with my release papers.
Gopher was watching a soccer match in the waiting room when I tapped him on the shoulder
and motioned that we should go.

We didn’t speak on the way outside and he waved down a taxi for us. For the first
few miles in the back of the cab we ignored each other, but then I finally turned
to him and said, “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we’ll shoot this bust on one condition.”

Gopher raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Which is?”

“If you capture any footage of the poor clerk who drowned, you’ll have to promise
to scrap it.” Gopher opened his mouth to protest, but I held up a finger and added,
“I mean it. We are
not
shooting any footage of the ghost of any recently drowned victim. And I don’t care
if his family won’t see the show or not. We’ve got to have
some
standard of decency!”

Gopher’s eyes dropped to his lap. “M. J.,” he said, “you just don’t understand what
kind of pressure—”

“Oh, I get it,” I interrupted. “Trust me. I know the brass has been all over you about
getting something scary on film, but you have to remember how dangerous this work
is, buddy. We’ve all had our lives on the line a time or two, and this bust doesn’t
look like it’s going to be any different. Which is why I’m putting my foot down. If
you’re going to ask me to risk my ass again, then we need to come to an understanding
about what footage gets passed on to the network.”

Gopher slouched in his seat and stared sullenly out the window. He didn’t talk to
me for several minutes and I had to work very hard to wait him out, but finally he
turned to me and said, “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay what?” I wasn’t trying to be difficult; I just wanted him to understand I wasn’t
going to sacrifice my ethics for ratings. Ever.

He glared at me. “I won’t put anything you don’t agree with on film.”

My brow rose. “Really?”

Gopher rolled his eyes. “Yeah, really. But you guys better help me get something good
to send to the network, M. J., or we can kiss this whole gig good-bye.”

“Trust me,” I assured him, “if I know this hag—which, by now, I kinda think I do—she
won’t be camera shy.”

The taxi stopped in front of the drawbridge and the driver said he didn’t want to
go across it. He was a local and had probably heard the stories of the ghost haunting
the moat. We didn’t argue with him, but I couldn’t suppress a shiver or two about
the thought of crossing on foot.

Gopher paid the cabbie and we got out of the car. He stuck close to me and we walked
in the center of the wooden planks. My eyes darted about as I searched for any sign
of the ghostly hag, but the day was bright and sunny and there was no sign of her
anywhere. Not even my sixth sense picked her up, and I was relieved about that at
least.

Gopher and I entered the large front door and found Arthur Crunn sweeping the main
hall. He was so engaged in his work that he must not have heard us, because he jumped
when I called to him. “Miss Holliday!” he said, setting aside the broom to hurry to
my side. “Are you quite all right?”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “Thank you, Arthur. And how are you?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “As you know, I had a terrible fright this morning,
but the doctor has seen me fit for duty.” The kindly old man then looked past me as
if searching for someone else. “How is Mr. Whitefeather?”

“He’s still in the hospital, but he’s recovering nicely.”

Arthur shook his head from side to side. “I’m so sorry you’ve had such a run of awful
luck on your first night with us. I’ve already spoken to the owner, and she has granted
me permission to take care of any charges to your room for the duration of your stay.”

“Thank you, sir. That’s very nice of you,” I said.

“Least we can do,” he said with a cluck of his tongue.

After I thanked him again, he said, “May I have the kitchen prepare you something
to eat? I expect you’ll want to retire to your room and I can have a tray sent up
straightaway, if you’d like.”

“Oh, no thank you, Arthur. I ate only a little while ago. But, about my room. . .”

“Yes?”

“Is it possible to move to another part of the castle?”

Arthur’s eyes widened. “Your room, ma’am? Was there something wrong with it?”

I didn’t want to blurt out that the hallway outside our door was haunted by a weeping
ghost and something else that seemed even nastier, so I settled for another grudge
I had with it. “Well, it’s just that our room is really a hike from here. Do you have
anything closer to the main hall?”

Arthur scratched his head. “But your room is right up those stairs and to the left,
miss.”

It was my turn to appear confused. “No, Mr. Crunn. Our room is way on the other side
of the castle.”

The hotel manager had the oddest reaction; he actually gasped and moved quickly away
from us to the other side of the clerk station, where he turned the page in the ledger.
“No,” he said. “I assigned you room number two-oh-six, Miss Holliday.”

I shook my head. “Merrick put us in the VIP section, on the other side of the castle,
in room seventeen.”

Crunn’s face paled and I swear, he looked completely taken aback. “That’s impossible.
We have no VIP section.”

I wanted to offer him proof, but I had nothing but my word, so I walked over to the
desk and said, “I promise that’s where he put us, sir. To get there from here, we
had to go up those stairs, down that long hall to the end, through a locked door,
then wind our way through the corridors to room seventeen.”

“You went
through
the locked door?” the old man gasped.

Truthfully I was having a hard time figuring out his reaction, so I just kept to my
story and nodded my head. “Yes. Merrick gave us a key for it. He said it was to keep
out the regular guests so that the VIP guests could enjoy their privacy.”

Arthur’s eyes widened even more. “But, as I said, Miss Holliday, the castle has only
one section for guests, and no one is sent to that side of the castle. . . ever.”

We both stared at each other in confusion for a few seconds when Crunn added, “Why
in heaven’s name would Merrick make up a VIP section and send you to an abandoned
part of the castle that is strictly off-limits?”

I could only shrug. “I have no idea, sir.”

“You say that section is off-limits?” Gopher asked. “Is there something wrong with
that part of the castle?”

“Yes, indeed,” Crunn said. “It’s quite unsafe for guests of this establishment.”

Crunn appeared quite rattled again, and I wondered what the heck was going on. But
then I noticed that Crunn seemed to be holding something else back, and I guessed
what. “Is it unsafe because it’s haunted, Mr. Crunn?”

The elderly gentleman gulped. “Quite.”

“And that’s why the door is locked,” I said.

Crunn nodded. “I can’t imagine what Merrick was thinking putting you up there.”

And then something occurred to me. “Does the hag haunt that section along with the
moat?” I asked.

“The hag?” Crunn repeated. “You saw her?”

I let out a mirthless laugh. “You could say that. She pulled Heath into the water
from that little shortcut you led us through this morning.”

Crunn’s hand flew to his mouth. “She
did
?”

“She nearly drowned both of us,” I told him. “Surely you heard about it from the constable?”

Both Arthur and Gopher shook their heads, and I remembered that I’d had to tell Gopher
the whole story about Heath being dragged into the moat by the hag.

Arthur said, “Miss Holliday, Constable Bancroft was far too cold when he was fished
out of the moat to say much. It was only related to me by Inspector Lumley after he’d
sent his good constable home to warm up that there had been some sort of accident
in the tunnel and Mr. Whitefeather had fallen into the moat and that you had gone
in after him.”

“It was no accident, Mr. Crunn, I can assure you. That tunnel is haunted by the most
beastly hag, and she attacked me, then went after Heath and pulled him into the water
where she then attempted to drown him.”

The old man shuffled over to a cane chair behind the desk and sat down hard. He seemed
terribly undone by what I was telling him, and I worried that he might have another
panic attack. “I had no idea she could do that,” he insisted. “I’ve used that route
for years to get to the lake side of the castle without incident. I promise that’s
the truth, miss, or I never would have led you through.”

I walked around the desk and over to him. “I believe you, Mr. Crunn, but right now
I need to know more about this old hag. Who she is, and why she’s been so active lately.”

“Well, to be quite correct, she’s not a hag, Miss Holliday. The evil spirit you encountered
was the former Lady Mortimer. She ruled Kidwellah from 1552 to 1589, and never a more
vile woman disgraced these halls.”

I wondered suddenly about something the inspector had said to me, about a Lady Catherine,
whose ghost I’d seen weeping outside my door much earlier that morning. “Is Lady Mortimer
connected to Lady Catherine?”

Crunn’s furry brow rose in surprise again. “How did you hear of Lady Catherine?”

“I saw her very early this morning and Inspector Lumley gave a name to the figure.
Her ghost woke me with her weeping, and when I tried to help her, she ran away. That’s
what prompted us to come downstairs looking for some help in the first place. We thought
she was a guest at the castle and had been in some sort of domestic dispute.”

Crunn made a
pffft
sound. “Yes, you could say that Lady Catherine had quite a few domestic disputes
during her married life here at Kidwellah. She ruled here from 1546 to 1550. She was
also Lady Jane Mortimer’s older sister. Lady Catherine was forced to marry Sir John
Mortimer, who quickly grew to despise her. Many speculate that—as John had been marred
by smallpox in his youth and had a rather brutish way about him—Lady Catherine found
him most unappealing as a husband. He beat her quite regularly, and most historians
speculate she died as a result of one such beating.”

I winced. “The poor thing,” I said.

“Indeed,” Crunn agreed. “The Duke of Lennox—Sir Mortimer—and Lady Catherine’s father,
the Duke of Hereford, nearly went to war over it, as Kidwellah had been part of the
Lady Catherine’s dowry, but a resolution was worked out between the two when Sir Mortimer
agreed to pay a sizable fine and consented to marry Catherine’s youngest sister, Lady
Jane, who even as a youth was a terribly unruly creature. Most believe she was quite
mad from the cradle, and her childhood exploits lend credence to the theory that she
was indeed a psychopath.

“She caused so much havoc at her father’s home that the Duke of Hereford was likely
desperate to find someone to take her off his hands, and the murder of her sister
presented him with a golden opportunity. The terms of the restitution agreement between
the two dukes stipulated that if it could be proven that Lady Jane died at the hands
of her husband, Kidwellah and all its holdings would immediately revert back to the
Duke of Hereford and a cause for war would be brought. Sir Mortimer’s family had fallen
on hard times, and by the time he came into dukedom, most of his family’s fortunes
had been squandered. His own forces were pathetically ill equipped to fend off the
Duke of Hereford’s forces. He readily agreed to the restitution.

“So it was that a terrible union was forged. The mad Lady Jane and the bitterly angry
Sir Mortimer. They despised each other from the beginning, and at the wedding Lady
Jane had to be bound and gagged while the priest performed the ceremony. On their
wedding night Lady Jane attempted to stab her husband and things only worsened from
there.

“Sir Mortimer soon resorted to beating her too, but he always stopped short of killing
her. It made no difference; she would recover from her beatings and set out to drive
him mad. She gave away his favorite horse, set his dogs loose on the moors, filled
his bed with snakes and leeches, and attacked him with any object she could get her
hands on. He resorted to locking her away in the south section of this castle, walling
up most of the doors and windows, and leaving her in near total isolation. But that
didn’t seem to stop her. Somehow she managed to find a way out and torture him relentlessly.
Her goal, they say, was to drive Sir Mortimer mad.

“By all accounts she succeeded. The Duke of Lennox went quite insane, insisting his
residence at the south end of the castle was haunted by evil spirits that also inhabited
the moat. During the years he ruled here, some of his closest friends and advisers
were found drowned in the moat. Even his own aunt fell victim.”

“It was Lady Jane, wasn’t it?” I asked. “She drowned them all.”

“Most likely,” Arthur replied. “There are documented accounts of Lady Jane being seen
swimming in the moat on warm summer days, taunting her husband, who would have her
hauled out and sealed up in the south wing again. She was obviously a strong swimmer,
something quite unheard of for a noble in those days.”

“So what happened to him? The duke, I mean. Did she kill her husband too?”

Arthur shrugged. “His fate is unknown. One morning he could not be found anywhere
within the castle or on the surrounding grounds. Some say he was drowned by his wife,
and his body was never recovered. Others say that he finally went mad, wandered out
onto the moors during the wet season, and succumbed to the cold. The moors would have
swallowed his body quite quickly if that were the case. There is even a local legend
that says that the duke’s spirit haunts the moors near the lake. They call him the
Desperate Duke, and it’s said that anyone he appears to will be the next victim of
the Grim Widow.”