Clive finished his fourth chicken wing. “The last owner told me he saw the outline of a woman sitting around his seven-year-old son. The boy was inside the ghost and they were playing Xbox together.”
“Xbox?” Jace asked.
“Xbox. She reads over people’s shoulders and when they go too slow, she turns the pages. The eldest son of two owners back said he heard her ride a horse up the stairs, but I think that kid smoked things he shouldn’t.”
“What about ‘her’ tree?” Jace asked.
“That’s from long ago,” Clive continued. “It’s said that she hanged a man there. He betrayed her, so she ordered her men to hang him. Get Mr. Hatch to show you the place where the rope used to be. The rope was kept there until about ten years ago, when the owner before last cut it down.
“There’s another story that she buried her loot under that tree. Mr. Hatch has spent more than one night sleeping under it with a shotgun across his lap. The lads around here are always saying they’re going to chop the tree down and see what’s under it, so Hatch protects the tree.”
“Interesting,” Jace said, looking at his beer, then blurted, “are there any unsolved murders in this village?”
Emma smiled. “I see. You want to write about murder in an English village, don’t you?”
“It’s the only kind of murder mystery that sells.” Jace took a drink of his beer. “Has anyone ever done a study of the population of England versus the number of people supposedly killed in clever ways in remote English villages?”
“Can’t say I’ve heard of it,” George said, smiling. “But if somebody proposed it, I’m sure the government would pay for the study.”
“My opinion,” Emma said quickly, before her husband started on politics, “is that remote English villages are so boring that people think about murder just to liven up the place.” She was looking at her husband pointedly.
“Emma wants George to take her to London for a night out,” Clive explained.
“If he doesn’t, you’ll have a murder to investigate here in Margate.”
“So nothing has happened here other than the ghost and the Xbox?”
“That’s a good book title for you,” George said. “The Ghost and the Xbox.”
Clive was looking at Jace in speculation. “Any particular crime you’re interested in?”
Jace looked away. He’d had too much to drink and there were too many ears listening. He was glad when half a dozen men, off from work, came into the pub. Music was turned on and everyone dispersed.
In the end, Jace stayed at the pub until 2:00 a.m. He laughed and talked with people and did his best to forget what he’d seen in the morning and read in the afternoon. Some man with red hair and freckles drove him home.
4
The next morning Jace decided to spend the day at home. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he’d had two days of falling into bed and that was enough. At breakfast, Mrs. Browne asked after his liver. Jace didn’t reply, but in the next moment, Mrs. Browne was asking him what he’d researched other than the ghost. Jace knew he had to say something or the rumors would create their own explanation.
He looked down at the French toast—à la Jamie Oliver—and acted as though there was something he was trying not to say. She was cleaning the big Belfast sink and waiting.
Jace gave her some time, then said, “Why wasn’t my garden in the local garden show?”
Mrs. Browne immediately launched into a diatribe against her favorite subject: Mr. Hatch. He never entered the village contest because he thought it wouldn’t be fair to the other entrants. After all, he was a professional. Mrs. Browne told Jace what she thought of Mr. Hatch’s gardening skills.
Smiling, feeling as though he’d distracted the watchdogs, Jace went up to his bedroom, where someone had put the box of books the librarian had lent him. Might as well get started on them, he thought.
Last night he’d slept in the big oak bed in the master bedroom, but even asleep it had felt too big and too empty. A door had been cut into the wall so the previous owners could use the room on the west end as a closet, so Jace went to the east into what was becoming his favorite room, where he’d slept the first night. He smiled as soon as he entered it.
One wall contained a beautiful, carved marble fireplace; another wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked over the gardens. The wall before him had a deep bay with enormous windows all around it and a window seat below. The bed was against the fourth wall, as was the door into the bath.
He sat on the window seat and looked out at the parkland, across rolling fields of grass, dotted with…He really must ask Mr. Hatch if those sheep were his or not.
He turned back to the room. There was little furniture, just the bed, or rather a mattress and springs set on a frame, and a single chair by the fireplace. He knew that downstairs he had several huge rooms with sofas in them and if he had any sense he’d go down there with his books, but he wanted to stay in the bedroom. For one thing it was the only room that didn’t feel empty. Even Mrs. Browne’s kitchen, filled to the brim as it was, had a feeling of loneliness in it. But here, in this bedroom…
“Keep on, Montgomery,” Jace said aloud, “and they’ll lock you away.” He told himself that the light in the room was good, there was the window seat, and that was all he needed.
He stretched out on the bed, the box on the floor beside him. The first thing he read was a small blue book published in 1947, about the wicked Barbara Caswell, Lady Grace. Born in 1660 to an impoverished family, she had been a beautiful woman who was bored and restless. When she was eighteen, she’d married the rich man who owned Priory House, and had assumed that her life would be one long round of parties. But her husband hated London, hated all social life. Bored to the point of insanity, the young wife sneaked out of the “chintz room,” up a secret staircase to one of the four tower rooms, donned men’s clothes, then went down the staircase to the ground. She whistled to her favorite horse, then set off to rob people, not for the money, but for the excitement of it.
After a few months of this, Lady Grace met another highwayman, Gentleman Jack, and had an affair with him. For years, they robbed people together. But eventually, the woman’s boredom got the better of her and in her quest for more excitement, she began killing people. She shot a boy she’d seen grow up, and when an old servant found out about her, she poisoned him. When she found Gentleman Jack in bed with another woman, she gave his name to the sheriff. The highwayman was arrested, tried, and hanged. Barbara Caswell’s only worry was that he might expose her when he was on the gallows. But he was true to his name and didn’t give her away.
Two-thirds of the way through the book, Jace could hardly read any more. The story made no sense to him, yet it was supposed to be true. Barbara Caswell had gone out night after night for years. Didn’t anyone notice that she was gone? Wasn’t there even one thing that happened at night that caused people to have to get out of bed so they discovered she was missing?
Reluctantly, he continued reading. After years of murder and betrayal, Mrs. Caswell fell in love with the fiancé of the only person who was suspicious of her, and she reformed. Ah! Jace thought. The power of love. Supposedly, overnight, Barbara Caswell went from being a cold-blooded killer to being content as a housewife—except that she was plotting to poison her husband to get rid of him so she could marry the man she loved.
By the time Jace got to the end of the book, he could hardly keep his eyes open. He knew he was supposed to believe the story was wildly romantic, but he didn’t. When he read that Lady Grace went for one last raid and was shot by the man she loved, he was relieved.
“A well-deserved death,” Jace said, tossing the book back into the box. He wanted to take a nap, but then he remembered Emma Carew and wondered what he was supposed to have read about her.
He picked up a huge paperback, The History of Margate. Since the book weighed several pounds, he didn’t think he’d start from the beginning. He looked in the index, foun
d “Carew,” then turned to the page. There was a photo of Emma, taken about ten years ago, wearing a conservative swimsuit, a crown on her head and a scepter in her hand. “Miss Margate,” it read under the picture. “Voted the prettiest girl in the village.”
Smiling, Jace closed the book and looked at the other items in the box. There were four brochures from when the house was being sold. He glanced through them and saw that not much had changed except for the furniture. One owner had filled the house with chrome and glass and black leather. In the bottom of the box was a booklet about haunted houses in England and Priory House rated a long paragraph. He read how the ghost of Barbara Caswell, the lady highwayman, had often been seen. Among other things, she lit candles in the tower window and rode her horse around the inside of the house.
“But her husband had no idea what was going on,” Jace said as he tossed the booklet into the box.
He leaned back against the pillows on the bed and looked about the room. The ceiling was undecorated, but it was plaster. The walls had old oak paneling halfway up and the floor was oak parquet. “Wonder what the room used to look like?” he whispered just before he fell asleep.
Instantly, he began to dream. He dreamed he was in the bedroom, standing where the bed was, but he could see a narrow bed on the opposite wall. He looked down at his legs and realized his left leg was inside a big wardrobe. Startled, he stepped to the right, out of the cabinet. Curious, he put his hand through the wardrobe, then through a chair beside it. He knew he was dreaming, so he was enjoying the sensation. He walked toward the fireplace, stepping through a big green ottoman, and smiled as he went through an upholstered wing chair.
At the fireplace, Jace tried to pick up ornaments but his hand passed through them. What a wonderful dream, he thought, enjoying the magic sensation of seeing but not being there. And what a marvelous room his mind had created. Victorian wasn’t what he would have thought he would have chosen though. If he’d guessed he would have said he’d choose Priory House when it was a monastery.
This room belonged to a woman, he thought as he kept walking, pausing to run his hands through the pretty bottles on a little dressing table, then looked at the titles of the books jammed into a tall, skinny bookcase. They were mostly children’s books, but there were some nature books as well. “Birds,” he said, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. “She likes birds.” When he heard no sound, he thought, Like a silent movie, this is a silent dream.
He wasn’t up on his history of antiques, but he guessed the room was from about the time of the American Civil War.
When Jace had fully circled the room, he stopped by the wardrobe. To his left, the door into the hall opened. As Jace had thought, the other two doors, the ones into the master bedroom and the bath, weren’t there. Those were later changes.
Even though he knew he was dreaming and knew that what he was seeing wasn’t real, when he heard voices, his heart nearly stopped.
Two women came into the room. One was tall and slim and had her hair pulled back to the nape of her neck. Jace recognized her as the woman who’d blown the spider onto Mrs. Browne. His impulse was to say hello, but he so wanted to see what would happen that he inched his way into the wardrobe, disappearing into the side of it. His view was darker, as though he was wearing sunglasses indoors, but he could see them and wondered if they could see him.
The second woman was shorter and plumper. She had a beautiful face, even if her eyebrows were unplucked, and she wore little makeup. By twenty-first-century standards she was on the heavy side. However, Jace marveled at what she’d done to her body. For all that the top and bottom of her were rather large, her waist was small enough that he could have spanned it with his hands. In a way she looked great, but in another way, he thought that if you cut the straps to her corset, she might expand into a blimp.
He thought the taller woman would probably look great in a bikini.
“Ann, it’s beautiful,” the plump woman said. She was wearing what had to be fifty pounds of green silk and probably a hundred yards of fringe and braid.
The thinner woman, Ann, was holding up a pretty dress of pale yellow silk. It had half the yardage and half the trimming of the other woman’s dress and Jace liked it better.
“Do you think so?” Ann asked. “But do you think Danny will like it when I wear it on our wedding day?”
“I think Danny Longstreet would like it better if it were red-and-black–striped taffeta and had purple fringe along the skirt.”
Ann smiled. “Probably. Mr. Longstreet said that once I’m his daughter I can go to London to shop. Can you imagine, Catherine? London!”
“Something that father of yours would never allow,” Catherine said, then her face brightened. “You will stay with me in London, won’t you? The children are clamoring for the latest chapter in your story.”
“Of course I’ll stay with you, dear Catherine. And I’ll be your alibi for the time you spend with your latest…What is his name?”
“He’s my lover and you very well know his name. Sergei. Oh, Ann, you should see him. Gorgeous doesn’t begin to describe him. And that Russian temper of his!”
“How does your husband like him?”
“I have no idea. Peregrine has an actress for a mistress.”
Ann shook her head. “I thought you loved your husband.”
“I do. Very much. In fact, I think our last child might be his.”
Ann laughed. “You are incorrigible.”
“Me? Here you are marrying a man who is one generation away from being the housekeeper’s son, but I am incorrigible?”
“As you well know, my dear cousin, our family are but three generations out of the factories. It was your face and your waistline that caught you an earl for a husband, not your ancestry.”
“Yes, but now that I’ve caught him, it reflects on you. You could have better than Hugh Longstreet’s son. It’s this old house the man wants and he’s marrying his son to you just to get it. Your father has used you to get what he wants. Are you sure you won’t change your mind about marrying him?”
“Absolutely certain.” Ann put her wedding dress on the ottoman and started toward the wardrobe. “I didn’t show you my going-away outfit. It has a cashmere jacket.”
“I’d love to see it. I—Ann! What’s wrong?”
Ann had opened the door to the wardrobe and there Jace was, standing inside. When he knew she was about to open the door, he’d tried to hide but he couldn’t move back—which would have made him go through the wall—and for some reason his body wouldn’t go sideways to hide behind the other door.
He felt bad about the terrified look on Ann’s face, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Unlike she did in the garden, he couldn’t seem to disappear at will. He smiled at her and even gave a little wave, but that only frightened her more. Her skin was so pale he feared she’d pass out.
Raising her arm, Ann pointed at the wardrobe and Catherine went to it. She saw nothing unusual. She tossed the clothes out and picked up boxes and threw them out.
As Catherine bent down to look inside the deep wardrobe, Jace had the unsettling experience of her head going through his chest. When she tossed out a hatbox, it went through his legs. He couldn’t take his eyes off what Catherine was doing, but after a while he began to see the humor in it all. He looked up at Ann to share it with her, but she was about to fall to the floor in fear.
Jace yelled at Catherine to see to Ann, but his voice made no sound. He pounded on the wardrobe wall, but that made no sound either.
When Ann’s body hit the floor, Catherine looked back. Ann looked at Jace again, her eyes fluttered, then she went limp. The second she lost consciousness, Jace awoke to find himself on the bed.
For several minutes he lay there, blinking up at the ceiling, disoriented, not knowing where he was. Gradually, the barren room came into focus. It was the same room as in his dream, but nothing else was the same. Her—Ann’s—wallpaper above the paneling had been cream with litt
le sprigs of wildflowers tied with blue ribbons. The bed had been mahogany, narrow but tall. The carpet—
Jace ran his hand over his eyes, sat up, and looked at his watch. He’d been asleep only ten minutes.
As he came more fully awake, he began to remember what he’d heard. Names. Danny Longstreet. Ann, Catherine, Peregrine.
He grabbed the thick paperback, The History of Margate, and looked in the index. Hubert and Daniel Longstreet were under the chapter about Priory House.
Hubert “Hugh” Longstreet was the father of Daniel, who had been engaged to Ann Stuart, daughter of the owner of Priory House. But when the marriage didn’t take place, Hugh and his son left Margate and were never heard from again.
“But what about Ann?” Jace asked aloud. “Why didn’t she marry Danny Longstreet?”
As Jace flipped the pages, he thought of all the diseases Victorians had. What awful thing had happened to Ann so she didn’t get to marry Danny Longstreet?
Two pages on, there was an essay written by N. A. Smythe titled “The Tragedy of the Priory House Stuarts.”
Quickly, Jace read the story, then slowed down and read it again. Smythe wrote that Arthur Stuart, beloved son and owner of Priory House, had eschewed the rich young woman he could have married and had, instead, married for love. He married the sweet and lovely daughter of a vicar of a rural parish, and took her back to Priory House. Alas, she and his beloved father died the next year. But Arthur wasn’t left alone as he had his beloved daughter, Ann, to comfort him.
“Beloved,” Jace said. “Everyone is beloved of everyone else.”
In 1877, it was found that the house needed massive repairs, but Arthur Stuart, a renowned scholar, didn’t have the money to pay for them. Hubert Longstreet, a rich American, wanted to buy the house, but he also wanted his son to marry into what he considered the aristocracy, the Stuart family. Although there was no longer any title, it was believed that there had once been a connection to the royal Stuarts, and even a connection to the British throne. Longstreet wanted to elevate his status above his lowly American roots, and Arthur Stuart was desperate to preserve the home of his ancestors.