What a Ghoul Wants (17 page)

John started to speak, but I cut him off. “Just a sec,” I said, taking a moment to
really get a good long look at my surroundings. I was at the outside wall of the castle,
trapped between a moat and a hard place. “Just my luck,” I grumbled.

I glanced up at the door I’d practically flown out of, and saw that it was still shut
tight. No sign of the Widow could be seen. “At least that’s a good thing.”

“Can I talk now?” John asked.

I sighed wearily. “Yes, John, sorry. Please go ahead.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“I’m on this thin piece of land between the moat and the castle,” I said, fishing
through my messenger bag to pull out my flashlight. Clicking it on, I pointed it to
the bridge just down from me. “There’s an old rickety bridge about fifteen yards away,
but there’s no way I’m crossing that thing in the dark. Who knows if it’s safe or
not?”

“But you have your phone now, right?”

“I do.”

“How’s the battery?” John asked me.

I pushed away from the wall and gimped over to a nearby boulder at the edge of the
moat to sit down before pulling out my cell from my bag. “I’ve still got a full charge.”

“Great. Arthur says he’s got a friend in town who can probably come out tonight and
work on the drawbridge. He’s got his own boat, so he can rescue you too.”

I swiveled on the boulder to point the flashlight out over the moat. The thought of
going across it in a boat gave me the willies. As the beam of the flashlight swung
out over the still waters, I noticed something unnatural floating on the other side
near the bank and my chest tightened.

“Hold on, M. J.,” John was saying. “Arthur is getting the number now.”

“Uh. . . John?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell Arthur to hold off on that number for a minute.”

“Why?”

“Because my first call is going to be to the police. There’s another body floating
in this moat.”

Chapter 7

By the time Inspector Lumley arrived, I was chilled to the bone. He came around in
a small boat being rowed by the same constable who’d jumped in after me nearly twenty-four
hours earlier. Neither of them looked very happy to have been called out here again
in the middle of the night, nor to find me at the scene of another drowning victim.

I’d kept a wary eye on the floating corpse. Oddly, although I’m quite comfortable
communicating with the deceased, dead bodies give me the serious willies. Who the
victim was I couldn’t tell, because the body was bloated and the face was submerged.
But the silver hair on the back of the poor soul’s head sent a tingle of recognition
through me and I seriously hoped I was wrong.

Still, I vowed to hold back any further speculation until the identity was confirmed
by the authorities—assuming I stayed around here long enough to find out, that is.

I tucked the video camera under my sweatshirt when the boat came up to the boulder
I was sitting on. “Miss Holliday,” the inspector said with a nod.

I pointed the beam of my flashlight across the moat. “The body’s right there, Inspector.
I think it’s lodged against those tree roots.”

The inspector half turned and pointed his own flashlight across the water. “Yes,”
he said without further comment on the floater. Turning back to me, he asked, “And
how did you come to be here?”

I pulled the camera back out and held it up for him to see. “I was on a ghost hunt
for our cable show.”

“
Ghost Getters
, is that right?” he asked me. I saw that he’d done his homework. Mostly.

“
Ghoul Getters
,” I corrected, “but you’re close enough.”

“Still,” he said flashing his beam all around the small bit of land I was stuck on.
“How did you get
here
specifically?”

I pointed up to the door ten feet above. “From there.”

The inspector’s eyes bulged. “From
there
?”

“Yes.”

He flashed his beam around again. “But there’s no ladder or rope. However did you
get down?”

“I jumped.”

“You jumped?”

I pulled up the legs of my jeans and shone the flashlight right at the bruises just
forming along my legs. “Yes, Inspector, I jumped. And I promise, it hurt like hell.”

“Why the devil would you jump from such a height only to be stuck here?” he asked
me.

“Because I was running from the Grim Widow.”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but I could’ve sworn the inspector’s complexion paled
a bit. “I see.”

“Inspector,” the constable said nervously. “Can we please help the miss into the boat
and be off? I don’t like being so close to this end of the castle.”

“This end?” the inspector asked. Apparently, he liked to repeat stuff.

“We’re at the south side,” I told him. “The Grim Widow’s territory.”

“Ah,” he replied before standing up carefully and offering me his hand. I moved gingerly
to the top of the boulder and with his help I got in the boat. “You look quite cold,”
he told me.

“I still haven’t warmed up all the way from yesterday.”

He seemed to take that in before telling the constable, “Niles, let’s get Miss Holliday
across the moat and into your car. We’ll turn the heat on for her and wait with the
body for the coroner.”

I smiled gratefully at the inspector. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re most welcome, and while Constable Bancroft rows us to shore, why don’t you
tell me why the drawbridge is up?”

From the way he said that, I had the feeling the drawbridge was never up. “None of
us are sure how that happened,” I told him. “I came home from visiting Heath in the
hospital—”

“That would be Heath Whitefeather? The young man who nearly drowned?”

“Yes. He’s my boyfriend and a fellow member of our crew.”

“How is he?”

“He’s much better, thank you. They just wanted to keep him overnight to make sure
his temperature came all the way back up and that his metabolism was functioning correctly
again.”

“That’s good to hear,” the inspector said. “I’m sorry, I interrupted you: What time
did you arrive back from visiting with Mr. Whitefeather?”

“Close to midnight. When I got to the castle, I discovered that a few other crew members
had gone on a ghost hunt without me and they hadn’t been seen or heard from.”

“They’re missing?”

The inspector was back to repeating again. “Well, at the time I thought they were,
but it turns out they were out on the moors trying to get some footage of the Desperate
Duke and they got locked out of the castle.”

At the mention of the Desperate Duke the inspector’s face turned down in a frown.
“It’d be best for them if they never saw the duke.”

I cocked my head. I was fairly certain I’d had an encounter with Sir Mortimer on the
rocky ground below the door, and he’d done me no harm. The inspector must have noticed
my curious expression because he said, “Legend has it that the duke only appears to
those marked for death. It’s also said that he haunts the area near here and taunts
his wife’s ghost from the shore.”

I suppressed a shudder. I’d witnessed several spooky apparitions that night—not including
the Widow. I wondered if they’d all been the duke. Had he been rowing the boat in
the moat? And was he also the figure making his way along the moors? I felt certain
he’d been the ghost six feet away from me after I’d jumped out of the door, but did
that mean that I was marked for death?

My thoughts spun nervously until the inspector called my attention back with his next
question. “When you returned from your trip to the hospital, was the drawbridge up?”

“No, sir. But about fifteen minutes after I arrived back in the main hall, my best
friend, Gilley—he’s the technical adviser to the show—tried to leave with another
man to go into town and have a drink, and that’s when we all discovered that the drawbridge
had been pulled up and the mechanism that controls it tampered with.”

The inspector’s brow furrowed. “Tampered with how exactly?”

I shrugged. “I’m no mechanic, but the box that houses the switch was broken open and
all the wires were cut. Oh, and all the phones inside the castle are dead too.”

By this time we were at the shore across from the front of the castle, by the road
where it stopped and turned onto the drawbridge—or where it would have turned onto
the drawbridge had it been down. Constable Bancroft eased the wooden boat close to
the short dock that jutted out from the shore and acted like a cradle for the drawbridge.
The inspector stood up slightly and held out his hand so that he could assist me getting
onto the dock. “After you,” he said kindly.

I eyed the water nervously—I couldn’t help it, the memory of swimming after Heath
in those murky depths would probably haunt me the rest of my days—but I forced myself
to reach across the bow to grip the railing. As I was pulling myself up, however,
I saw something long and white glide under the dock.

I gasped and scrambled up, scuttling quickly to the center of the wood planks and
trying to peer through the cracks. “What is it?” the inspector asked.

I shuddered, pointing toward the water. “I saw something.”

Both the inspector and the constable leaned over the side of the boat and looked into
the dark water. “What did you see?” the constable asked me after they’d had a good
long stare.

“I. . . I don’t know.” I barely dared to peek over the side. What I
thought
I’d seen was the ghostly figure of a person swimming under the dock, but that’s not
something I was really willing to confess at that moment. The two men in the boat
were probably nervous enough with all the strange goings-on of late. Still, I felt
it appropriate to caution them. “When you retrieve the body, please be careful, okay?”

The constable eyed me with nervous curiosity, and I could see he didn’t discount my
words. “We’ll take the most care,” he promised. “Now go warm your bones in my motorcar.
The keys are in the ignition.”

I nodded and turned to his vehicle, but couldn’t help looking back when I’d gotten
off the dock and onto dry land again. The inspector was already speaking into his
cell phone to alert the coroner, and his trusty constable had just turned their boat
around and was rowing back toward the south side, when I caught another glimpse of
something thin and white at the stern of the boat. Something that looked eerily like
a bony white hand disappearing below the surface.

I put a hand to my mouth and nearly called out to the two men to stop and come back,
but as I squinted toward the water, I saw nothing but darkness. There was no hint
of anything near the surface.

I watched the men in the boat for a long time, even though I was freezing and the
warm car was only a few feet away. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but even that
did little to settle my nerves.

After five minutes of watching the back of the boat, I turned away with weariness
born of being frightened to the core over and over and moved up to the car.

The constable’s car was unlocked and the keys were in fact left in the ignition. I
turned the engine over and in no time was enjoying the warm air coming through the
vent. I held my hands up to the heat and rubbed them vigorously, but my fingertips
had long since gone numb.

Every once in a while I made sure to look around at the area outside the car. I wasn’t
quite sure how far the Widow could travel. I knew that she haunted the south wing
and the moat, but did that mean she couldn’t come out of the water to the shore?

I reasoned that if she did, I’d throw the car into gear and drive away fast, but as
the minutes wore on and the heat from the car settled around me, I began to grow more
and more sleepy.

My lids felt heavy and my mind was muddled. It grew harder and harder to stay awake,
no matter how many times I tried to shake off the oppressive fatigue.

Finally I gave in. “I’ll just close my eyes for a little while,” I promised myself.

The next thing I knew, Inspector Lumley was knocking on my window. I jumped and flung
my arms up, adding a frightened shriek to boot.

Outside the door he held up both his hands and apologized. “It’s only me, Miss Holliday.
Terribly sorry to give you a fright.”

I used the hand crank to roll down the window. “It’s fine, Inspector. I must have
dozed off there.” I then had the chance to look around and I could see that the sky
in the east was just beginning to soften from the deep hue of night. The clock on
the dashboard read four thirty a.m. I yawned and rubbed my face. It felt like I’d
only just nodded off.

“The mechanic is here working on the drawbridge,” the inspector was telling me.

I blinked a few times and tried to focus on his words.

“He should have it down within the hour. You may stay here if you’d like, or use the
ladder to go up the wall and climb down the other side.”

I clambered out of the car to get a better look and that’s when I saw a long ladder
propped up against the castle wall. I assumed that a twin had been positioned on the
other side.

It was a no-brainer as to which one I’d opt for, even with the added danger of crossing
that moat by boat again. “I’ll take the ladder,” I said to the inspector. I wanted
a real bed and some real sleep so bad I could hardly stand it.

“The ladder’s quite sturdy,” the inspector said as he walked with me toward the boat.

I didn’t much care if it was crazy rickety. I was going to get inside and head straight
to my room and not come out until I’d had some decent sleep. As we walked, I noticed
the coroner’s van again, parked in a similar spot to where it’d been the morning before.
“Did you pull the victim out of the moat?” I asked the inspector.

“Yes,” he said, his mustache turning down. “Nasty sight that.”

“Do you know who it is?” I don’t know why I was so curious, but I was.

“The identification in his pocket indicates his name was André Lefebvre.”

I stopped dead in my tracks even though that was exactly who I’d feared it was when
I’d seen that silver hair. “The fashion designer?”

Inspector Lumley eyed me keenly. “We believe it’s him,” he said. “Did you know him?”

“I didn’t know him personally, but he was a guest here at the castle. He brought a
group of models with him for the shoot, but I was told that he’d gone into town with
them earlier in the evening.”

“Apparently he came back,” said the inspector.

“Is there any sign of his wife?” I asked, remembering the elegant woman seething with
fury when she caught her husband kissing one of the models.

“His wife?”

“I believe she may have been with him,” I said, worried that a similar end had come
to her. The Widow was definitely capable of drowning two people, as Heath and I could
attest to.

The inspector waved to the constable, who was just getting off the boat after having
come back across the water, and the man came right over. “Yes, Inspector?”

“Niles, it seems that Mrs. Lefebvre might be missing. Please see what you can do to
locate her whereabouts immediately.”

“Oh, but I’ve already found her,” the constable said. I held my breath, waiting to
hear that her dead body had also been discovered. “She’s inside the castle, sir. Arthur
let me into Mr. Lefebvre’s room, and we found her there fast asleep, oblivious to
our knocking because of her earplugs and the sleeping pill she took a few hours ago.
Seems she never went out with the others due to a migraine or some such. And she didn’t
even realize her husband had gone missing until we woke her. She’s in a terrible state
at the moment, as you can imagine. As soon as we get the bridge down, she’ll come
out to see about identifying the body.”

“Inspector!” a man called, and we all turned to see a portly-looking man with strikingly
white hair and matching beard waddling over to us.

“Yes, Doctor?” Lumley said when he got close.

The doctor put a hand to his chest, as if he was having trouble catching his wind,
and said, “There’s something I’ve taken note of on the body that I believe you should
be aware of.”