Crimson Peak: The Official Movie Novelization (22 page)

Alan tipped his hat but said nothing. The man positively reeked of brandy.

“…of the iceberg,” his fellow passenger continued. “What we see above the surface is estimated to be one-tenth of the mass of the thing. There’s ninety percent more below the water line, stretching out in all directions.”

When the man took a puff on his thick cigar, tears welled in his eyes—from the cold air or the smoke? Or was he maudlin from drink?

“I am sure that we’re sailing too close,” he confided nervously. If we scraped against it, it would gouge a hole in our hull.” Steadying himself on the rail, he looked down at the oily black sea and shuddered. “What a terrible place to die.”

“But surely the captain knows his business,” Alan countered, wishing to calm the poor man.

The man grunted. “I only hope that God does.” He reached inside his fur coat and pulled out a silver flask. Unscrewing the top, he offered it to Alan. “Napoleon brandy,” he said. “The finest.”

“Thank you, sir, but no,” Alan demurred. “This is a unique experience and I do not wish my senses to be dulled.”

“That’s the only way I can endure it.” The man took a swallow and kept the open flask in hand. “Dear Lord, there are more of the bloody things ahead.”

Indeed, an entire family of them, large and small, glittered in the moonlight. Safely guiding the ship through them would be a singular challenge. It was clear from the expression on the gentleman’s face that he was beginning to panic. Alan determined to distract him as best he could.

He extended his hand. “I am Alan McMichael,” he said. “At the risk of sounding patronizing, I’ve crossed before this time of year, and all ended well, sir.”

“I see.” The man managed a weak smile and inclined his head as if acknowledging Alan’s kindness. “I am Reginald Desange.” His expression did not change as he stared at the icebergs.

“Is your final destination Southampton?” Alan inquired, attempting once more to engage him.

“I have business in London,” Desange replied, prying his gaze from the horizon and looking directly at Alan for the first time. “And you?”

“I’m off to Cumberland,” Alan replied, and the man made a face.

“The weather in the north of England is beastly this time of year. Well, actually, it’s beastly any time of year. The proper word is ‘brutal.’”

Alan smiled resignedly. “And yet I must go.”

“May I be so rude as to inquire as to your business there?”

It was a bit forward to ask, but Alan could see that the distraction was helping the man calm down, and truth be told, Alan could do with distracting, too. He permitted himself to think for a moment of Edith and all her lovely books and dreams. “Well, I am Sir Galahad, sworn to rescue a dear lady in distress.” He shrugged, abashed at his attempt at poesy. He was a man of science, not a fanciful writer like Edith.

“In Cumberland?” The man seemed incredulous.

“Yes.”

“You’ll find no castles there. But I believe I read about some Roman ruins. Mining or some such. There is an ancient pit in that region…”

Alan nodded. “As a matter of fact, my destination concerns mining of clay.”

The man raised a brow. “Now I remember. Some wine vessels in the British Museum, quite red, were donated by the family who own a modern-day adjoining mine.” He slid a glance at Alan, who realized he shouldn’t speak further for fear of revealing too much about the identity of the lady in question. He did not want to cause a scandal.

“How interesting,” he said blandly.

The Englishman must have sensed that Alan was done speaking on the subject. He put his flask back in his pocket and lightly tapped the rail with his gloved hand.

“Well, Sir Galahad, I wish you luck on your quest. And I exhort you to dress warmly for your journey to the north.”

“Thank you for the advice,” Alan replied. “I’ll be sure to take it.”

The man cocked his head. “You’re an amenable chap. I say, won’t you join me for a proper drink in the Grand Saloon?”

The night air was bitter, and Alan felt that he had achieved a victory by easing this man’s great anxiety. Though he wasn’t certain that more brandy would serve his new companion well, Alan said, “I’d be honored, Mr. Desange.”

E
DITH WAITED
,
HEART
racing, for Thomas to come to bed and then to fall asleep. Her dog was restless, and kept shifting, unknowingly waking her up a couple of times when she began to drift off. Her stomach was cramping and her headache had gotten worse. Her eyes itched and her mouth was as dry as cotton wool.

Her best guess was that he was in his attic workroom, tinkering with his mining models. It was difficult for her to judge when he might walk into the room, but what of that? She wasn’t a prisoner. She could come and go as she pleased.

So she stole out of bed, picked up the phonograph case and stepped into the hall. Rubbing her arms to ward off the chill, she looked fearfully up and down the long, elaborate hallway with its mullioned arches. Light from the moon tinted the air a dreary blue. Moths that perched on the walls turned out to be shadows in the wallpaper. She could almost see human faces, even letters forming words that she couldn’t quite make out.

Was that the elevator? She had better get to work or she would miss her chance. Gingerly, she crept to the linen closet and faced the closed door for a good minute before she gathered the courage to open it. The box of wax cylinders was still inside. She accepted now the possibility that she had experienced supernatural guidance in finding them. To what end, she was not yet clear. She had also come to believe that neither Thomas nor Lucille could see these ghosts or phantoms or whatever they were. They had no idea that they were there.

Unless Lucille is a better actress than I give her credit for. She certainly can’t hide the fact that she sees me as an interloper.

She grabbed the cylinders and tiptoed down into the kitchen. With each noise, each shift and creak of the house, her sore stomach spasmed. There could be something in the room with her. It could be standing behind her, or crouching under the table.

By the moonlight, she arranged the cylinders for playing on the phonograph, and examined her clutch of envelopes from the trunk with their faded lettering:

Pamela Upton, London, 1887. Margaret McDermott, Edinburgh, 1893. Enola Sciotti, Milan, 1896.

Her memory cast back to her father’s first fateful meeting with Thomas. Carter Cushing had stared straight at him and said, “You have already tried—and failed—to raise capital in London, Edinburgh, Milan…”

Her throat tightened and she almost faltered, but she put down the needle on the cylinder and listened:

“
I cannot take it anymore.
” The speaker was a woman with an Italian accent.
“I’m a prisoner. If I could leave him, I would. If I could stop loving him. He’ll be the end of me. Hush, hush now…”

And then, as the scratchy recording ended, the cooing and wailing of a baby. She blinked, stunned.

I have seen no baby here. Those things in the attic… I assumed they were Thomas and Lucille’s. But did another child live here?
She looked back at the date.
It would be four years old now.

She thought of the red rubber ball. It could have belonged to a child, not a dog. That would make more sense, since the Sharpes had not owned a dog.

That day in the tub when she and the dog had played fetch, and the ball had rolled back on its own… and she had heard something in her bedroom…
Could it have been a little child?

Perhaps there was something wrong with it. With
him.
Maybe the speaker was his mother, and the child was so sick or malformed that his mother had stayed by his side rather than leave him. Maybe she had died and left him on his own here, and Lucille had concealed that fact from Thomas.

Or maybe Thomas knows. What if all those automata he has made are for that child, and not Lucille when she was a little girl?

Shakily, Edith pulled the cylinder off the spindle and put on another. Then the next, and then a third. And when she was done…

No.

…everything in her heart and soul stopped working for at least a full minute. She simply could not believe what she had heard. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was that she couldn’t.

Once upon a time…

It was like a wicked fairy tale. Like Bluebeard, with his haunted castle and the one room his new wife was forbidden to enter.

The room with the forbidden key. Thomas had told her never to enter the clay pit.

Enola Sciotti’s trunk was in that pit.

Once upon a time:

There lived three young women. One was named Pamela, one was Margaret, and one was Enola. They did not know each other. Each of them had fallen in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe and left everything to move to Allerdale Hall to be his wife.

Like me
, Edith thought.

And each had been so happy at first, so loved. Then they had gotten sick. They had grown steadily weaker, unable to leave Allerdale Hall. They had suffered terribly. Wept. Cursed Thomas’s name. Tried to warn others with these recordings… or at least leave a mark upon the world:
I was here. I was murdered
.

Oh, God
, Edith thought. She began shaking from head to toe. Her heart thudded thickly; her head pounded. A sensation like sharp pins moving through her veins traveled throughout her body. Icy fear and the deepest dread she had ever known clasped her in invisible arms and drew her inside that dark, evil room she was not meant to enter. This couldn’t be right. This could not possibly be the secret of Allerdale Hall those red-boned wraiths wanted her to see.

It could not be, because it was too horrible.

Not Thomas.

Quaking, she shuffled through the stacks of photos she had found in the envelopes and matched them to the voices on the cylinders. All featured Thomas and one of a trio of women, proudly smiling.

Pamela Upton, from 1887, was thin, and seated in a wheelchair with a cup of tea on the arm. Edith jerked as she studied the conveyance. Was it the one she had seen in the attic nursery?

Margaret McDermott’s photo was dated 1893. She was a little older than Pamela, and older than Thomas, who stood beside her. Margaret was already graying, but what one might call “handsome,” in a straw hat. She was holding a cup of tea.

Wait
, Edith thought. She went back to the picture of Pamela Upton. She was also drinking tea. Were the cups the same?

They were.

And it was the same cup Lucille had used to make tea for her.

Her throat constricted so tightly she couldn’t swallow. She teetered on the brink of bursting into screams; through sheer force of will, she sat in the chair and saw her sister-in-law in this very kitchen putting on the kettle. Saw the tea leaves steaming in the pot. Saw the cup on a tray brought up for her.

All on that very day, that first day, when Thomas had told her about firethorn berries. And urged her to drink her tea. And had stayed away from her, claiming to respect her mourning, when in reality he had not wanted to make love to a dead woman.

No, I have to be wrong. I’m tired and scared.

“They put poison in the tea,” she whispered very distinctly, forcing herself to face it, believe it. In
her
tea. Her stomach clenched hard and she tasted the bitterness in the back of her mouth and the odor of it singed her nose as she absorbed the shrinking horror of it; she had been murdered. She couldn’t even count the many cups she had consumed since arriving at Allerdale Hall. She recalled with crushing clarity how, when she had made sandwiches and tea for Thomas, he had asked her which tin of leaves she had used—the blue or the red? She remembered his guarded expression, which had obviously masked real fear at the prospect of drinking only one cup. Had he ever poured her a cup himself? Had she drunk down her death deliberately prepared by him?

She forced herself to move to the next picture. By the date she knew that this was Enola Sciotti. Also with tea… and by her side sat the cute little dog that now belonged to her, Edith.

Edith remembered what Lucille had said just after she had come in from the post office:
What is that thing doing here?
They had pretended not to recognize it. But they had thought it was dead. That all evidence of the Italian woman… the Italian
wife
… had been erased.

He had released it onto the moors, anticipating that nature would run its course. He hadn’t cared a jot that it might starve, or fall into a ravine, or drown in an icy stream. That sweet little pup had come to her emaciated and half-frozen.
And Thomas had let it happen.

More frantic, she made herself look at the next picture:

Enola.

Holding a newborn baby.

It had to be the baby in her recording, the one Enola had soothed as it cried. But surely there was no four-year-old hidden away in this enormous mansion?

There are parts of the house that are unsafe.
So Lucille had claimed. Unsafe for whom?