Emily's Ghost (43 page)

"Hey, hey, he's come and
gone before. Wait and see, Emily," Lee said, cradling her in his
arms. "Wait and see."

Eventually they let her
go. After a little kicking and screaming Emily was turned over to
Lee's care with the proviso that she call an ambulance immediately
if she ran into a severe headache or loss of motor function in the
next twenty-four hours. In exchange she agreed to let Lee drive her
home and have one of his staff members hand-deliver her Toyota the
next day.

"You drive a hard bargain,
Senator," she said, handing over the keys to her car. The funny
thing was she meant it.

They left the hospital at
midnight and drove through rain-slicked streets littered with
downed tree limbs. The thunderstorm had been extraordinarily
violent, with sixty-mile winds and a ferocious display of
lightning; Emily hadn't been aware of any of it. She wasn't very
clear on what she'd experienced in the tower, and after a
halfhearted attempt to explain it, she gave it up and closed her
eyes. She needed desperately to sleep.

The next thing she knew,
Lee was shaking her gently awake. "We're home," he murmured in a
low voice.

She sat up and rubbed her
eyes drowsily. "Lee, the media are going to have a field day over
tonight. What will you do?"

His arm was on the seat
behind her; he looked calm, almost cavalier, considering his career
was officially in a shambles. "I dunno. Punt, I guess."

She laughed sadly and
shook her head, wincing from even that small effort. "Boy. You must
curse the day you took me to that séance."

"Nope. I still bless the
day I found you."

She thought he was being
ironic, but in the darkened car there was no way to be sure. It was
impossible to tell him how grateful she was that he tracked her
down to the tower. She sighed and said, "I have to admit, Maria
gives new meaning to the concept of ancestor worship. She could
have killed me, Lee," she added. "You saved my life."

"Yeah, but did you notice?
I had to take a number to do it," he said with an ironic smile.
"You had a hell of a guardian angel in there."

"So to speak," she said
with a bleak smile. "What's going to happen to Maria?"

"I expect they'll keep her
for observation. The husband's been contacted; apparently there's a
history of schizophrenia in her family."

Lee began to get out of
the car, but she didn't want him to see her to her door; she wasn't
sure why.

"Get some sleep," he said,
brushing her lips gently with his. "I'll call you
tomorrow."

Once Emily had cleaned
herself up and got into her pajamas, sleep became just another
enemy to have to fight. She popped the soggy 1863 diary into an
oven set on low and began monitoring it carefully while she made a
pot of double-strength tea. Then, while the diary was drying and
the tea was brewing, she turned her computer on. The screen, pale
and blank and endlessly patient, stared back at her.

Somehow this wasn't the
way it was supposed to be. She'd always assumed that when the time
came, Fergus would be looking over her shoulder and she'd be having
a beer and he'd be putting in his two cents' worth. But he wasn't
over her shoulder; after tonight he might not be anywhere. It was a
dismal thought. How could she write the story without
him?

And if he
was
around, but just not
showing himself? Then she didn't want to write the damn story
anyway, because once the story was published he'd leave her
forever, and that was an even worse thought.

"My God, Fergus," she
cried, tipping her chair back on its hind legs. "I'm paralyzed.
What if I have writer's block? Wouldn't
that
be a kick in the
pants?"

She laughed softly to
herself, glancing at the sofa, half expecting to see Fergus appear
there, and at the television, half expecting it to turn on by
itself. She got up and poured herself a cup of tea and went over
and opened a window and felt cool, clean air wash over her aching
burns. She went back to her computer. And looked at the sofa and
then at the television. It had begun to sink in. Her time with
Fergus was over.

There was nothing left now
but to free him once and for all. Blinking back tears, washing down
the lump in her throat with hot Darjeeling, Emily began to type out
her best guess about who murdered Hessiah Talbot.

Newarth, Massachusetts, is
a town that time would like to forget. We can't let that happen. We
can't, because a hundred years ago its citizens played fast and
loose with an innocent man's life. It's time to set the record
straight.

Emily Bowditch had given
Fergus O'Malley her word; now she was putting it down in writing.
The words, once begun, came in a rush; before long she had the
broad strokes of the trial and the hanging laid out. Unaware that
it was now the middle of the night, she began to stitch together
the few facts she had into a patchwork quilt of Hessiah Talbot's
life.

Just before dawn Emily was
ready to lay down what she knew, and what she'd deduced, about the
night of Hessiah's murder:

When Hessiah Talbot
arrived home after the Silver and Gold Ball, she was in high
spirits. The handsome and dashing lieutenant had danced nearly
every dance with her, and together they'd sent the rest of the
company into fits of gossip. The younger women were jealous, but
the older men were relieved: Their daughters were safe, at least
for the night, from Lieutenant Dale Culver's charms.

The crystal necklace that
Hessiah wore to the ball was a gaudy, impossible trinket, just the
thing a flashy military man might pick up in a bazaar on his
travels overseas. Even after she had changed out of her ball gown
into her dressing gown, Hessiah kept on wearing the necklace. It
was so like Dale Culver, who after all was so unlike the rest of
the stuffy, boring men in Newarth.

Men like Thomas Dayton,
her cousin. Hessiah found Tom as dull as toast. For as long as she
could remember, Tom Dayton had been part of the scenery -- solid
and efficient, like the gateposts in front of the manor. She
wondered again why Henry Abbott was pressing her to reconsider her
rejection of Tom's proposal.

Granted, Henry Abbott, an
old friend of her father's, had always taken a special interest in
her welfare. But she couldn't understand why he'd push her into a
marriage that had nothing to recommend it but money. Money wasn't
everything to her. The mayor, who'd been a charmer in his own day,
ought to have known that. Besides, Hessiah had all the money she
needed; her brother Stewart gave it to her.

No, Hessiah much preferred
someone who could make her laugh, and Lieutenant Culver was very
good at that. They'd laughed together over the fuss poor Cousin Tom
made when she turned him down. And they'd laughed over the temper
tantrum Henry Abbott threw when he learned that she'd turned aside
a stodgy provider for a penniless charmer. It
was
funny, as far as Hessiah was
concerned. Besides, who said the mayor could run her
life?

That was her brother's
job. And Stewart did it well. All her life.

Emily stopped and went
over to the oven where she slipped a hot mitt over her hand and
took out the diary. Two hundred degrees seemed about right; the
pages were drying out slowly, from the outside in. She was able to
catch a dry edge and peel each page carefully back, but it hardly
mattered. The ink had run in random squiggles all over the place.
The secrets of 1863 were as safe now as the secrets of
1867.

Fire and water. It seemed
almost mystical, yet Emily believed more than ever that there was
nothing mystical about the diaries. They'd been written by a woman
who had been horribly unlucky in love -- as a wife, a mother, and a
lover. Celeste de la Croix had married a man who was cold and
driven, then had a baby by another who was hot-blooded and driven.
Two of her children were murdered.

And the third got away
with the crimes.

All her life Stewart had
been obsessive about Hessiah. In his aloof and cynical way he doted
on his sister. He wanted her for himself, this charming, saucy
moppet wrapped in ruffles and with ice in her veins. Unquestionably
they were kindred spirits, very much like their father. The
difference was that John Talbot's obsession, the textile mill, was
socially acceptable, whereas a brother who wanted nothing more than
to keep his sister in his thrall -- that presented a series of
problems.

The first of them was
James Talbot. Alone among the children, James must have been much
like his mother Celeste. With his gentle, sweet face and big brown
eyes, James was the sensitive one. To him his baby sister was a
fragile, adorable creature. He liked to do things for her, like
bringing cool drinks to her in the summer. Every time he did such a
thing he ran a risk. One summer day not too far into his life, his
luck ran out. It was nothing at all for six-year-old Stewart to
shove him down the well.

If his parents suspected
anything -- and Celeste undoubtedly did, because the matter was
kept out of the local newspaper -- they kept it to themselves.
Stewart was left to kill again another day. When he twisted the
neck of Hessiah's kitten, which she had offered -- not even in
affection -- to a member of the staff, Stewart never thought twice
about it. The kitten was just another obstacle, with neither less
nor more significance than his brother James.

There were other
obstacles, of course. The only daughter of the richest man in town
was bound to be harassed with proposals of marriage. Stewart was
surprisingly successful in fending them off, convincing Hessiah to
turn away suitors, encouraging her in her many pointless
infatuations. (He also bribed her shamelessly to stay at home.
There was enough money to keep her amused, although after John
Talbot's death it began to slip away at an alarming
rate.)

But Lieutenant Dale Culver
was another matter. To Stewart, of course, he was just another
pretty face. All things considered, Stewart preferred military men
to court his sister; they tended to move on before things could get
too serious. But this time something went awry. Maybe it was
because Hessiah was aware that her debutante years were behind her.
(Certainly Henry Abbott didn't mind reminding her; no doubt there
were whispers behind her back as well.)

Or maybe it was because
Hessiah Talbot had fallen in love for the first time in her empty,
frivolous life. Probably the handsome lieutenant never looked back
once he'd left Newarth the morning after the ball. But Hessiah took
him for the real thing. That's why she wore his bauble to the
Silver and Gold Ball; that's why she kept on wearing the necklace
after she had tossed her expensive gown aside for the night. Her
maid might have noticed the new sparkle in her mistress, but her
maid had been dismissed the day before, the latest in a long line
of servants who'd come and gone through Hessiah's dressing room.
There were no witnesses to the argument that ended Hessiah Talbot's
life.

Emily shook herself free
of her self-induced trance. She was aware of a crick in her neck
and of increasing pain from the burns. Her head ached from a
dizzying lack of sleep, but she wanted desperately to finish the
story. Then, in the morning, she could rush it to Phil, who
fortunately was suffering from a summertime shortage of
copy.

So she took two aspirin
and did a few stretches and made another pot of tea. Somehow the
sleeve of her pajama hooked on the spout of the ceramic pot,
pulling it off the Formica counter. It fell to the floor with a
crash, breaking into a dozen pieces. The teapot had been a pretty
thing, bright yellow, with cobalt flowers in an oriental design.
Emily stared at the fragments -- and broke into uncontrollable
sobs.

For the next ten minutes
she cried, not for the broken teapot but for the night of fear and
agony she'd just lived through. And afterward, when she felt
calmer, she sat down at her computer to finish the
story.

At first it wasn't even an
argument. Her brother dropped by her bedroom, as he always did
after Hessiah returned from an evening out. Stewart had been at the
ball only briefly, but he'd seen enough. "What a little idiot you
are, darling," he'd told her with a charming smile. At any other
time, over any other man, Hessiah would have laughed and traded
insults with her brother. But tonight she was still walking on
clouds, and Stewart's cynical affection was unacceptable. Her
retort was angry, cruel, and defiant.

But Stewart decided that
he'd had enough of his increasingly hard-to-manage sister. She was
costing him far too much: in money, in devotion, in heartbreak.
When he pulled the heavy chain sharply around her neck, it wasn't
even in anger. He had simply had enough. His one emotional
indulgence was to take the hated trinket from her neck and hide it
away in the house. After that he continued on his way to a card
game with the rascally set he sometimes visited. And after that,
Fergus O'Malley came creeping into the house, bent on
thievery.

But nothing
else.

It was done. Whether she
was right or wrong was for other powers to decide. All that
remained for Emily was to print the story out and see that it was
published. With a pounding head and a heavy heart she dragged
herself off to bed and didn't awake until the doorbell sounded off
like a fire alarm in the morning. She tripped and staggered to the
buzzer and a minute later opened the door to a young and earnest
aide of Senator Alden's.