Secret Reflection (7 page)

While a little overbearing, she’d found Richard to be personable and gallant, and couldn’t for the life of her begin to fathom why the ghost would be so disapproving. Perhaps it was merely to create an illusion of distance between Richard and this whole farce?

‘I have learned to have some affection for your Tom and Nancy. However, that is by the by,’ he continued. Lowering his gaze, he whispered, ‘I humbly seek your help in freeing me from this prison.’ He opened out his palms in entreaty and for a long minute, Kelly almost believed him, so genuine was the little-boy-lost expression he wore.

The sound of her mobile phone’s insistent trill broke the spell she had fallen under. She stepped back, her hand rising to her throat as if fending off a threat. Even as she made the gesture, she felt an overwhelming desire to laugh. Hysterically.

Instead, she backed up another pace and again narrowed her eyes.

‘I’m not sure how many people have been conned by this grand performance … but I won’t be one of them.’

She picked up her now silent phone and glanced at the display: a text message from Nancy saying that she and Tom would be delayed in the village. It might be a new (took out the ‘utechnology, but she’d found it very helpful in her line of work.

After closing the message she looked up at the mirror to find her visitor watching her with a fascinated expression. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me you don’t know what this is, either.’ She waved the small handset before him.

‘Indeed, I have seen your friends using those on many occasions, although I have only seen them speak into the device.’ He straightened up and looked down his nose as if proud that he could answer her.

Kelly didn’t let herself respond – for an instant she almost forgot that the image she saw wasn’t real. Instead, she scanned her contacts and found Graham Zatz’s number then composed her own text message, hoping that the phone company hadn’t lied when they said she could message across the Atlantic.

When done, she popped her phone back into her pocket and gathered her jacket from the back of the chair.

‘Are you leaving?’ the apparition asked.

‘I was planning to spend some time researching surveillance equipment. I’d suggest you come along, but I can see how impossible that would be,’ she said once she’d donned her jacket and picked up her attaché case. ‘While this has been very amusing … I would prefer that this little charade ends right here.’

Gripping the gilt doorknob she looked meaningfully at the man in the mirror. ‘Don’t be here when I get back.’ The door squeaked as she thrust it wide, blocking him from her sight.

‘Wait!’ John’s voice wrapped about her like a whip.

She stopped. The logical part of her brain wailed as she allowed the door to swing back. His eyes captured hers in a vice-like grip that defied her to turn away.

‘What if I can prove I am who I say I am?’

She tried not to smirk at the absurdity of such a statement. ‘I don’t think that is possible.’

‘I heard Tom say something about you being an investigator – if that is indeed the case, then investigate me. I could tell you all I know and you could look up the histories in the church records.’

Kelly rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘Anybody can do that … besides, all that would accomplish is to tell me that you have done the research to play your role.’

‘But I know things that are not in the records. And my cousin’s journal … Edward Ditchley … it would tell things that nobody but I could possibly know.’

She sighed. ‘And where would this journal be?’

John hesitated, glancing away as if staring out the window into an unknown horizon. ‘That is the great dilemma – I do not know. It is the very thing that has been plaguing me all
these years past. I am certain the answer to my incarceration lies within those pages. Indeed, I know it is, because my cousin wrote everything down – it was almost a sickness in him.’ His eyes darted back to hers, burning with both fire and challenge. ‘Please, could you not look for the journal?’

A vibrating silence filled the space between Kelly and the mirror – between Kelly and the apparition that had undoubtedly been very well rehearsed to play his role. Not once had he dropped the act, either by mistaken word or false movement. Yet she knew that the journal, like the man in the mirror, was surely just a device to make her fall more deeply into the trap.

And there was one gaping hole in his argument.

‘If you have been in this house all these years, why don’t you know where it is? Surely, being a wraith, you can go through every room. If what you said is true, you’d certainly have had enough time to search the place a thousand times.’

‘Alas, the method of my incarceration allows me little movement and as the years pass, even less so. You see, I am trapped within the mirrors—’

‘Well, from what I’ve seen there are plenty of those,’ she scoffed, her fingers tightening on the doorknob as she again prepared to leave.

‘Ah, but I cannot enter all the mirrors – only those that were present at the time I became imprisoned. Each time a new generation takes up residence, they move, sell or sometimes break one.

‘In the beginning, I could move easily from room to room and know all the doings, but now only five of the original mirrors remain. This one, the mirror in the formal dining room, the one on the landing above the main stairs, one in storage in the pantry and my mother’s ivory hand mirror are all that allow me to see.’ His voice dropped to a plaintive whisper. ‘One day, if I cannot find a way out, all the mirrors shall be gone and I will be blinded – forever lost between the real world and the next.’

Against her will she became so enthralled by the quiet desperation in his voice that her fingers slid from the gold knob and she stepped toward him, a tiny thrill racing through her abdomen.

‘Even if you do not believe me – could you not allow a little time to search?’

He held himself completely still as if his whole world hinged upon how she would react. And yet, his eyes conveyed a silent dignity, which reassured her that whatever her answer was, he would accept his fate with grace. It was almost too difficult to meet his gaze.

Against her better judgement the word ‘Yes’ tumbled almost inaudibly from her lips.

In an instant his blue eyes caught fire and a buoyancy seemed to lift his shoulders till he stood tall and regal before her. His chest appeared to widen and his jaw took on a strength that made him resemble some of the more magnificent portraits that paraded down the staircase outside her room.

‘I do not know how, or even if I can ever repay your kindness, Madam, but as God is my witness, I shall find a way.’

Kelly raised her arms as if she were fending off an unexpected blow. ‘Hang on! – I said I’d look. That’s all. I didn’t say I believed you. Like I said to Tom and Nancy last night, the purpose of my investigation will be to disprove your existence and I haven’t changed my mind about that.’

She turned away and wondered whether she was finally having the nervous breakdown her lawyer, Kyra Goldstern, had warned of as they exited the courthouse almost a month ago. To even contemplate helping an apparition in a mirror – worse! – to allow the slight possibility that he was genuine, was quite insane and she knew it.

But.

But something deep within compelled her to
know
.

It had always been like that. For as long as she could remember she’d driven her family crazy with her persistent questions. And she was never satisfied with evasions. She needed to know exactly why things happened … why people behaved as they did. Later her obsession included the desire to understand what motivated people in power, or world events – whether momentous or insignificant.

That desperate need to
know
had been the impetus for her taking up journalism. That, and the profound disgust that so many people seemed to want to cheat each other, hurt each other. It had made her almost manic in her desire to find the truth. That same desire drove her to discover Frank’s infidelity.

And now, more than ever, she needed to find the truth.

‘So,’ she said as she again moved to the door, ‘be prepared. I will uncover this little hoax and I promise you, I’m not easily fooled. If Tom or Nancy come looking for me, tell them I’ve gone to London to find a surveillance expert.’

‘I cannot,’ John said.

‘Why not?’

‘They cannot see me – only you can.’

Convenient
. ‘And why is that?’

‘I do not know, precisely. Indeed, I have found through the years, that I can only be seen for a short span of time every twenty or so years, and only by the person who sleeps in my bed.’

She darted a glance at the four-poster –
his bed?
She slept in his bed? That notion was especially disturbing. But she still didn’t see the significance.

‘Again, I ask, why is that?’

He shrugged. ‘I know not the method or rules of the sorcery that put me here – only the actual ritual, which I witnessed as I was incarcerated. The rest I have learned over time.’

‘All right,’ she crossed her arms and lifted her chin, ‘explain what you do know.’
This should be interesting
, she murmured under her breath.

He raised a brow. ‘Indeed it is.’

A slow moment ticked past as Kelly tried to measure his face, to know whether he could be believed. Everything inside her screamed that she was a fool to even listen to his stories, that she was setting herself up for disappointment if not to be tricked.

And yet something vulnerable hid in his dark eyes … something needy that made her body clench with want.

She shook her head, astonished at her own wayward feelings. She couldn’t afford to buy into it. She needed his answers to catch him out –
and that was all!

Leaning against the bedpost, she looked him in the eye with same intensity she would have used with a media magnate or suspected underworld mobster. ‘Okay, I’m listening.’

As he returned her stare, she made a mental note that he didn’t seem to be taken aback by her assertive attitude, which, she suspected, would never have happened in his own time – if indeed, his 1800s origin proved genuine. Instead, he favoured her with a wry half-smile that suddenly altered his countenance in ways that promised mischief.
Strike one
, she mused.

‘It appears that every twenty years I have eighteen days to seek my redemption. As I have already told you, I was set into this place at midnight on October 21, 1861. My father became Earl upon the death of my grandfather, on May twelve of that year, which, in turn, conferred the title of Lord Stanthorpe upon me, since I am the eldest son.’

‘Whoa! If the title goes from eldest son to eldest son, how can you be Lord Stanthorpe when Ditchley is the inherited surname? Didn’t you say your name was Tarrant?’

‘Please, Madam, allow me to finish my tale.’

‘By all means,’ she replied skeptically and stepped back to sit on the edge of the high bed.

‘Thank you,’ he muttered before he started to pace the width of the mirror. ‘After inheriting, I invited my childhood friend, Elizabeth, to come and lend a hand with refurbishment as I was planning to marry in December—’

‘So you and Elizabeth were engaged,’ Kelly interrupted.

‘Heavens no,’ John stopped pacing and slanted her a look. ‘Elizabeth was my cousin,
Edward Ditchley’s
wife – yes, Edward Ditchley was my cousin, younger by a year– and heir, since my sire had no other legitimate offspring and Edward was my only other living relation, with the exception of my parents, of course.

‘Elizabeth, Edward and I grew up together.

‘Edward was off taking delivery of a shipment of goods from India and Elizabeth had been staying with my mother at our townhouse in London. Elizabeth joined me here to see to the house. It hadn’t been lived in for some length of time and was in need of much repair and a woman’s touch.’

‘So, your childhood friend arrived to help you redecorate. Then what? – how did you wind up stuck there?’ she asked lightly as if she truly believed what he’d told her so far.

John pinned her with a sharp glare. ‘Madam, you display little patience. Are all women from your country so rude as to preempt a man’s words at every turn?’

Kelly began to laugh – he played the role well. Majestic in his indignance, he stood ramrod straight with arms crossed. She made a secret note to herself to check out local actors then inwardly altered that to London and other major cities instead. Although she
didn’t know Richard well, she suspected that if he had contacts in the theatre, they’d most likely hail from London. And if Tom and Nancy were party to this charade, they would be certain to find an actor who was not only professional, but also not easily identified by the nearby residents, otherwise the whole scam would be uncovered with ease.

‘You find my question amusing, Madam?’

‘Will you stop calling me that!’ she broke in. ‘Where I come from a madam is a brothel owner … as I am sure you already know.’

‘Indeed. An interesting thought,’ he murmured as his eyes raked her up and down, almost mockingly. ‘How then, should I address you? Mrs … ?’ one black brow quirked.

‘Not Mrs. I’m not that either, at least not any more. Just call me Kelly.’

‘It is not customary for a gentleman to address a lady by her given name unless she is well known to him.’

She giggled.

‘First you find my questions amusing, and now you make jest of my polite manners. Mada— Kelly, you would wound a gentleman deeply.’

She came to stand before him. ‘What
amuses
me is that you can keep in character for so long without slipping up.’

His brow creased. ‘I assure you, Kelly, the floor where I exist is not in the least slippery.’

Again she laughed. ‘Okay, if you want to keep pretending, fine by me. Tell me what happened after Elizabeth fixed up the house.’

He glanced down and away, almost like a child avoiding an admission of guilt. His whole body seemed to shrink in on itself and suddenly that air of vulnerability returned.

She took a hesitant step toward the mirror. He looked up and when his eyes met hers, they swam with moisture. ‘I killed her.’