Chapter 26

In Which Aunt Kitty Braves a Nighttime Haunting, and I Encounter a Ghastly Ghost

Late that night Aunt Kitty sneaked into Mr. Drysdale’s bedroom while he slept. She didn’t carry a serving tray of tea and cakes or any such refreshment. She carried a vial of blood.

Blood obtained, I observed to her repeatedly, through illicit means. Had I known when I taught her the finer points of gunmanship that she would use it to deliberately slay an innocent chipmunk, I never would have shown her how to pull the trigger. She said it was all in the name of stopping Evil in its tracks. But now and again, I had my doubts about Mr. Pinkerton’s detectives and the lengths they were willing to go to in order to catch a criminal.

What if Mr. Drysdale were as innocent as that chipmunk? How could Aunt Kitty justify her antics?

But like any good detective, she could be very sly when she wanted something. So she tried to convince me the chipmunk was rabid.

“I’m once again to the garden tonight,” she panted, upon returning to our room, the vial of chipmunk blood half as full as when she’d left. “Detective Webster said I need to be ready for another nighttime ramble. This time, Penelope, I expect you to stay put upstairs and observe from the safety of this room.”

When midnight chimed on the grandfather clock, just as the night before, our sleepwalker soon emerged from his room, padded down the long hallway, and again slipped into the back garden.

Aunt Kitty slipped right along behind him.

And just as the night before, I was not about to be left behind.

I did not want to miss a moment of this escapade, so I pressed in close to my aunt as we crept along the path beside the shrubbery. But perhaps I was a bit too eager, as I bumped into her more than a few times. “I appreciate that you are no squeamish child. But if you do not give me a bit more space to breathe, I will have you go sit among the rhododendrons.”

I let out a long sigh and shoved my hands into the pockets of my robe. But I kept close pace with her every step, eagerly watching for our sleepwalker.

“Aunt,” I choked, barely able to get the words out of my mouth. “Look at Mr. Drysdale there! His nightshirt is bloody!”

“Of course it is! It’s chipmunk blood, and I put it there myself. We are trying to scare a confession out of the man. Now hush!” And she told me to wait where I stood, which I was not about to do. I stayed by her side like a burr in a horse’s hoof.

Aunt Kitty, and me right along with her, tiptoed out to the center of the wide yard and began pouring drops of the chipmunk blood along the path Mr. Drysdale had taken from the house. Then we slipped back among the shrubbery once again.

He was just ahead of us, walking down toward the gently bubbling stream. I felt around in the leaves above us until I found the snapped magnolia branch. I knew we were at the same spot we’d come to the night before.

Mr. Drysdale paced back and forth like a nervous dog guarding her pups. Then suddenly he waded into the water a few feet and began feeling around along the sandy banks. Something about his pacing and his preoccupied manner reminded me of Mrs. Maroney at her cellar door, guarding where she’d hidden her loot. And that’s when I realized we must be near Mr. Drysdale’s stolen money.

I tapped Aunt Kitty’s shoulder and whispered this into her ear. I could practically see the big pirate X that marked the spot—his ill-gotten treasure lay buried right where his dreams were leading him.

The cold water must have revived his senses, because all at once Mr. Drysdale seemed to come awake with a start. Aunt Kitty and I dove behind another rhododendron bush and observed as he stumbled back onto the shore. He wore a befuddled expression and sputtered at his bloodied nightshirt.

Suddenly a twig snapped not five steps away from him. And I realized not only were there three of us in the yard now, but a fourth figure had emerged beside an ancient tree and was gazing back at us. And when it stepped into the clearing, I saw blood spilling down its head and onto its shoulders, the very picture I’d imagined over and over in my mind of the poor, murdered bank teller.

I tugged on Aunt Kitty’s arm to alert her. But she’d spied the ghost as well and was pressing her finger to her lips to keep me quiet. Because Mr. Drysdale had seen it, too.

“No,” came Mr. Drysdale’s anguished denials. “No, it cannot be you!”

And then he took off running through the bushes across the yard, his wet nightshirt flapping in the light of the crescent moon. From behind us came more snapping of twigs. Aunt Kitty and I spun to face the latest danger, though I wasn’t sure about the wisdom of turning our backs on the ghost.

“Good work, Mrs. Warne,” came a man’s voice, thick with a Scottish lilt. Immediately I knew it was Mr. Pinkerton. “This place reminds me of the moors—it’s full of banshees!”

Then Mr. Pinkerton stepped over and shook hands with the ghostly figure, offering hearty congratulations. “Very convincing, Mr. Green,” he said in a hushed voice. “You look remarkably like the dead bank teller himself, I believe. Mr. Bangs would be impressed to see your handiwork.”

“And Nell, you’re quite brave, too—for a ghoul,” came Detective Webster’s jolly, joking whisper on the other side of me. He gave my ribs a playful jab with his elbow. “Drysdale doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance with you around.”

The bloody specter greeted them all—first Mr. Pinkerton, Detective Webster, and finally Aunt Kitty—then he stepped over toward me with a friendly nod of his gory head.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Warne,” he said, tipping his bloodstained cap as if we were at a Sunday picnic. Dropping his voice to a whisper, he added, “You’re mighty tough. Most folks would be letting loose like a screech owl to see me in my costume. I’m real impressed, I am.”

I shook his hand and tried to ignore the red goop that was smeared in his hair and down the back of his head. We stepped over toward the banks of the stream as we chatted, almost like he was a regular chum and not some phantom from the underworld.

“Are you another detective?” I asked, trying to make friendly conversation. “Or are you just a sort of”—and here I paused, searching for what to call him—“demon for hire?”

Mr. Green grinned and let out a cheerful snort, which seemed at odds with his gruesome appearance. He said he was just helping Mr. Pinkerton out tonight, but he was leaving on the morning train for New Orleans.

“I’m taking a job in a fancy hotel there called the Saint Charles,” he said. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but most days I’m a cook.”

I remembered the plates of warm Macaroni with Fromage from the hotel with Aunt Kitty, and I could feel my mouth start to water.

“That’s where we should dig,” Aunt Kitty announced, ever mindful of the case at hand. “We believe Mr. Drysdale’s dreams were leading him to his hidden treasure. I’ll bet it is buried right there, where Penelope is standing.”

And after nearly an hour or so of digging, performed alternately by Detective Webster and Mr. Green, the five of us heard a sudden scraping. Mr. Green’s shovel had struck a trunk. After a bit more digging, he and Detective Webster hoisted the discovery out of the pit.

It was a small rectangular box with a sturdy lock in front. But a few well-placed jabs from the shovel got past that, and Mr. Pinkerton lifted the lid.

“Good gravy,” I whispered.

“You can say that again, Nell,” gasped Mr. Green.

“She’s Penelope,” corrected Aunt Kitty. “We’re still undercover.”

“Looks as if it’s all here,” judged Mr. Pinkerton, taking a quick inventory of the paper and coins. “The murderer didn’t have the courage to spend it.”

As we returned the dug-up riverbank to its former condition, tamping down the muddy area where the treasure had lain, Mr. Pinkerton and my aunt pondered the next step.

“We have evidence now,” I said, joining them. “But what about an eyewitness?”

“I’m afraid the only witness to this murder was the bank teller himself—now deceased,” Aunt Kitty replied.

“Then what do we need to solve the case?” I asked, worried that Mr. Drysdale might still slip away, only to hammer again.

“What we need, Nell—er, Penelope—is a confession,” Mr. Pinkerton declared, running a hand through his wild brown beard. “I believe one final push from our ghost will scare it out of him.”

The ghostly, ghastly Mr. Green nodded politely at Mr. Pinkerton but reminded him that he would be on tomorrow’s eight-o’clock train bound for New Orleans. He wouldn’t be around to do another nighttime haunting.

“Of course, that’s where our substitute comes in,” Mr. Pinkerton said, tugging some more on that overgrown beard of his. “And it looks as if we have one of comparable height to Mr. Green.”

Suddenly I noticed that Mr. Pinkerton was staring at the top of my head. Detective Webster was, too, along with Aunt Kitty, though she had that tight, pickled-onion face again. I slapped my hands up there in case a bat was flitting around my hair, and I bumped my elbow into Mr. Green’s ear beside me. We turned to face each other, and I noticed we were just about nose to nose.

“Oh, you cannot be serious, Mr. P—” began Aunt Kitty in protest.

“Mr. Pinkerton,” interrupted Detective Webster with a wide grin, “I think she’s perfect for the job.”

“She’s just a girl,” my aunt sputtered. “You said so yourself on the train!”

“Just a girl?” retorted Detective Webster, the smile never leaving his face. “There’s no such thing as just a girl, is there, Mrs. Warne? There’s Nell, and Nell Warne can do great things!”

Mr. Pinkerton waved at the two of them to hush, and then he fixed his fierce eyes on me. “That’s what makes her perfect for the job, Mrs. Warne. The girl has a certain theatricality about her that I find remarkable.

“So what do you say, lass?” he whispered in that lolling way of his. “Are you up for it?”

I shot a look at Aunt Kitty, who was gazing skyward for some sort of divine counsel. Detective Webster stood beside her, appearing every bit the devilish imp. Then I peeked beside me at Mr. Green’s ghoulish costume as the hammered bank teller—at the bloody gunk that streamed from his head and over his shoulders, and at the gory, red-stained jacket. He was a repulsive mess, a true fiend if ever there was one. He was, in a word, disgusting.

And he was also the key to cracking this case.

“Mr. Pinkerton,” I said, “it would be an honor.”