The Ghost and Miss Demure (11 page)

“Rain?” Karo echoed. Or was it a sign from heaven? A divine, wagging finger sent to chastise one of his stupider creatures before she screwed up her life again. What would it take to convince her that she should be cautious about bosses, no matter what they offered—getting hit by lightning?

Actually, getting hit by lightning wasn’t enough. She’d done that already and was still thinking of trusting Tristam.

GHOST,
n.
The outward and visible sign of an
inward fear.

—Ambrose Bierce from
The Devil’s Dictionary

“Fish,” Karo said, setting down her coffee cup. Tristam had the knack for brewing perfect java: the coffee was vehement but not impolite. She needed it after her night spent tossing and turning and a morning up in the elm. The top tree branches were the only place she was able to get reception for her cell phone, and she’d figured that, after the hurricane, she really needed to reassure her parents that she was alive and well. During the call her mother had enthused about the cookbook idea, but her father was clearly still worried—he’d talked her through how to change the oil in her car.

“I’m sorry. Did you say
fish
?” Tristam looked up from his PDA, which he was never without and which he’d been buried in throughout their toast and coffee. There had been no B and E waiting for her this morning. Though Tristam was nominally in charge of producing such, it being his only culinary skill, she forgave him because of the coffee.

“Yes. Are there any in the stream out back?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. Why do you ask?”

“Fishing!”

“You sound euphoric. Do you enjoy fishing?” He appeared surprised. She had to wonder sometimes what went on in the murky depths of his brain when he was communing with his PDA.

“Tristam, come up for air! I’m talking about tourists. I’m talking about money. We could sell day-use tickets. You know how fanatical fishermen are. They’ll stand around for days and in any sort of weather if there’s even the hope of a catch.”

Her employer stabbed several times at the PDA with the plastic stylus. It was a sure sign that she had gained his attention. They had already discussed hosting mystery nights, a croquette tournament between the local seniors and a group from the college, musical events and candlelight ghost tours like they had in Jamestown. The last had made Karo uneasy, especially considering her introductory experience in the Vellacourt mansion, but she had to agree that they would draw people.

“Find out if there are any trout or bass,” she instructed. “They’re better than catfish. And if not, can we stock the stream?”

“Right ho,” Tristam replied.

“And while you’re still with me, have you found out about health permits yet? And have we selected a publisher and format? I’m dying to start the cookbook.”

A pained look marred his face. “I haven’t been standing about twiddling my thumbs and stammering dirty limericks to the 900 operator,” he replied, with a hint of indignation. “Whilst you have been mucking about with the bric-a-brac, I
have been consulting the powers that be. Barratry, you know. Permits are imminent.”

“Sorry. I guess I was getting enthusiastic again,” she apologized. “I’ve been going through the china. It’s absolutely outrageous. Limoges. And there’s enough to seat thirty. And there’s Haviland for twenty. We just
have
to offer dinners here. And it would be a crime not to use pictures of the stuff in the cookbook. It’s too photogenic for words.”

“You sound like you’re having multiple orgasms. I’ve warned you about that enthusiasm…” The tone was stern, but there was a pronounced twinkle in his twenty-four carat eyes. It had been there ever since Dr. Monroe’s forty-eight hours had passed and she’d had no relapse. “You’ll get your cookbook—at least five hundred of them, since that is the minimum that the press will run—but there’s to be no tearing off on cheerful, sentimental jags about ghastly china. The budget won’t run to color snaps. And, no, you may not adopt the appalling glassware. It stays at Belle Ange. So drink your coffee and let me be. You know that I can’t tolerate keenness before nine o’clock.”

“It’s almost ten. And, fishing could bring in a lot of money. Like the restaurant and cookbook.”

“Well, thinking of money is fine. I encourage it. Keep your eye on the bottom line, though, and see that you don’t start acting like a Victorian female—mooning enviously over someone else’s silver.”

He was being deliberately offensive, she realized. It was a compliment, since he had, as per her instructions, given up flirting with her and
moved on to more guylike insults. He was trying to be buddies. Tristam’s concept of the role was a little odd, but she played along.

“I
am
a female,” she said, obligingly rising to the bait in the interest of preserving good working relations. She had to give him something to pick at once in awhile or he would get cranky. “What of it?”

“All the more reason to be more cautious.
Limo-ges!
” he mimicked, rolling his eyes. “Now, when can I burn those twice-damned antlers?”

“Well…”

“What?” He groaned and put down the PDA. “What now? Are they rare Tibetan antlers? Gifts from King Charles to his subjects in the New World? Artifacts from the lost continent of Atlantis? Speak up. I can brick up and push on, but put me out of my misery at once.”

“Don’t be silly.” But she couldn’t stop her smile. “I just had an idea.”

“An idea? Oh, well, in
that
case.”

“Have you ever heard of the Winchester Mystery House?”

“Of course I have heard of the Winchester Mystery House. It is the Holy Grail of tourist restorations, and Sarah Winchester is our guild’s patron saint.”

“Oh.” Karo never could tell when he was kidding. “Er, then you’re familiar with the concept of occult appeal. It can be done tastefully.”

“My dear, haunted houses are very popu lar in Europe. You cannot be a first-class castle without at least one ghost in residence.” When she sniffed
at his tone, he laughed. “Go on. Occult appeal, you said?”

“Well, I was thinking again about those Capuchin monks in Italy and their ghastly skeletons with their various parts stacked like cord wood. They’re awfully popu lar.”

“Yes, yes.”

“What if we took all the antlers and used them to line that back hall? That boring one on the second floor that’s reasonably wide. We could even wire them overhead like a tunnel or a hedge row. Then…Um, this isn’t strictly honest,” she warned.

“I’ve never let that stop me from considering a good promotional wheeze,” he assured her. “We’re all going to have to lie our heads off anyway. Have no fear. Speak on.”

“Okay. Then we just mention how the family always collected them and used them to build fortifications.” She took a deep breath for courage, still unaccustomed to taking flights of fancy while on the job. Until now, she had never considered perpetrating a fraud on anyone other than her parents and that had been about going to a slumber party.

“Go on,” Tristam encouraged. “Don’t lose your daring now. What might they have been fortifying against?”

“Against the swamp devil,” she said in a rush. “And if we could just tie that in to the cookbook…”

“My dear, in another century they’d have burned you for a witch. What swamp devil? Is there one in residence that they have failed to inform me of?”

No, but a demon perhaps
. She was thinking again of her first night here, and the vision she’d seen, though there had been no recurrence. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, feeling mildly ashamed of her suggested chicanery. “It just seemed like a neat solution. And there are so many antlers! We’ll be having bonfires ’til New Year’s. Besides, there almost always is a swamp devil in these parts.”

“It is a neat solution. And there are a great many antlers,” he agreed. “It might even be true about the swamp devil. Old Vellacourt’s actually been on my mind all morning. Remember Valperga?”

Karo shuddered and said, “She of the many bad paintings who didn’t read Newton?” Her words were flip, a defense with the commonplace against that which challenged reason—or at the very least challenged her comfort. Valperga’s paintings had been almost as bad as Karo’s arrival at Belle Ange and her brush with what felt like the paranormal. This sudden semibelief in otherworldly things was a newly discovered and unwanted character flaw. Karo had never been tainted with such fears before Belle Ange, and she didn’t like it.

“Yes. I’ve been reading up in various library journals before sending them to Clarice. It seems that Valperga is the one responsible for all that ghastly paraphernalia in the entry hall—the thumbscrews and such. Old Vellacourt never used them in his torture chamber. His kink was purely sexual in nature. Hers…? Something else.”

“Really? I’m relieved to hear it—about Vella-court.” And Karo was. Another thought occurred:
“That’s odd. She lived in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, right? Most of the witch hysteria was over by then. Where did this mania come from? Those sorts of ghastly things wouldn’t have been hanging about in the parlor where company could see them. In fact, unless she had them made, I don’t know where she would have made such purchases.”

“Too right,” Tristam said. “But you misunderstand. She wasn’t after witches. She started collecting antlers on the advice of our defrocked priest, who by then was in his dotage and none too sane. She…she hoped that it would scare dear old granddad back into the grave.” Tristam paused, and Karo couldn’t help her eyes from going wide. “The antlers were part of her mystical cure: powdered bone to feed the spirit or something. Every generation since has added to the collection. It’s a…shall we say ‘talisman against ill-fortune’? It sounds so much better than ‘a homegrown voodoo gris-gris to keep grandpa away.’ ”

“You’re joshin’!”

“If by
joshin’
you mean
joking
, then never a bit. It’s all written down. They’d send servants—well, in the beginning it was slaves—out to comb the woods after the seasonal molt—”

“I was referring to the part about the ghost. She meant her grandpa was a ghost, right? Not a zombie or a vampire? Though, any of those options is equally crazy, I suppose.” Karo felt compelled to say this, though it wasn’t true. She didn’t believe in zombies and vampires.

But, did she believe in ghosts? She didn’t want
to. It was one thing to accept the hypothetical idea of the existence of ghosts and another to stay in a place where people had actually seen them. Or to believe that she had seen one herself.

“Ah! Well, she truly believed that Vellacourt had become a specter of the night and that he walked these unhallowed halls. If she hadn’t retained a staunch Calvinist’s horror of the Church of Rome, I’m afraid old granddad would have been sent off to spiritual oblivion with the old exorcism rites. Good thing, too, that Father Basco was defrocked, or we wouldn’t have a ghost left to our names.”

He said this all blithely. Clearly he was untroubled by the notion of paranormal activity in the house. Did that mean he was a non believer, or that he expected such uncanny happenings? Or was she just crazy?

“Why did she think that her grandfather was a ghost?” Karo asked, feeling truly nauseated for the first time since the afternoon of her arrival. This wasn’t a topic she entirely wanted to discuss. Wasn’t there a belief that using a ghost’s name could conjure it?

She mopped at her brow. The room was suddenly rather warm, and Karo had the oddest impression they were being listened to with great interest, though the only other living thing near them was the cat. Karo wiggled her fingers at ’Stein, but since they were empty of food and permanently begrimed an unattractive shade of gray, the beast just sneered, contempt radiating from his every hair.

“Because he spent his days on earth having carnal
relations with the devil’s handmaiden, our very own Eustacie La Belle,” Tristam was saying. “That, and a large collection of things on the third floor going bump in the night. These kept the lady—if that’s the word for her—from any sleep of the righteous. She also had
dreams
. Naughty dreams which she blamed on her grandpa.”

“Oh.” Karo understood that. She’d had a couple of naughty dreams here about Tristam, dreams she would never have had anywhere else. In them, she’d stared. She’d coveted. She even had these thoughts during waking sometimes—even though she’d been sincere in her vow to never get romantically involved with her boss again.

Of course, Tristam wasn’t her grandfather. That would be icky.

“Um, are we talking generic naughty, or incestuous naughty?” Collecting gossip and snooping, both socially indefensible habits to Karo’s mind, could be cheerfully sanctioned when one was a historian. Or a detective. She sort of fancied herself both.

“Generic naughty, with Eustacie and Hugh in the leading roles. But modern psychiatry had not yet freed women from guilt about their libidos, and such visions were bad enough for Valperga,” Tristam explained reasonably.

“Right. In the garret? She thought he was still cavorting up there, partying instead of going to hell liked damned spirits should. But…wouldn’t that actually involve two ghosts?” Her voice sounded convincingly light, but the very idea was raising gooseflesh on her arms.

“Just so. And that’s not the best of it. She claims
to have even gone so far as to purchase a copy of

The Witch’s Hammer.”

“The
Malleus Maleficarum
?”

“Yes, The Hammer of Witches, as it is also called—in the hopes of ridding Belle Ange of the vile, lecherous spirits. Unfortunately, though thorough in describing the many efficacious treatments of suspected witches, this very expensive book didn’t tell her anything about lascivious ghosts or methods of ridding oneself thereof. If only she’d had the internet.”

“Tristam!” Karo was horrified. It was irrational, but she lowered her voice against the listening walls. “If that book’s here we have to find it. A copy of the
Malleus Maleficarum
would be worth a fortune!” But that wasn’t the only reason why it had to be found.

“I’m aware. That’s why I would like you to help me in the library today. It is our new priority. We’ll turn the room upside down if we must, but I want that book. I can’t imagine how I’ve overlooked it.”

“It’s a priority,” Karo agreed. “That book should be in a museum.” Or, rather, in a vault—deep underground and far, far away from anyone who might want to use it. Karo didn’t believe in burning books, but in this case she might make an exception. In her morbid youth she had done a fair amount of research on the witch trials, which had led her to witch hunts in Europe. Some estimates were that nearly nine million people had been put to death by the Spanish Inquisition and other religious nut jobs. Almost eight million of them had been women, most of them elderly women with property and no heirs to defend
them. The whole subject was sickening. She wanted to believe that humans had evolved beyond that sort of cruelty and nonsense, but she didn’t think it had happened yet.