“A SÉANCE! HOW PERFECTLY ENTERTAINING! Why, they are all the rage. Just last month Lady Furbisher hosted a spiritualist at one of her notorious dinner parties—or do I mean legendary? I always get those two mixed up. In any case, it was a sensation! Everyone’s fortune was told in secret. They say one of Lady Furbisher’s daughters fainted when she heard what the fortune-teller had to say. Hmm, I think I like this one.” Lady Constance tipped her head from one side to the other in front of her dressing-room mirror, the better to admire the elaborate chapeau that she had just placed upon her upswept curls. It was pale green silk, with an arrangement of peacock feathers extending upward from the brim. “But green is such a sickly shade. It makes my eyes look the color of seawater. Never mind, it is awful! Hand me another, please, Margaret.”
“Aren’t you afraid of ghosts, my lady?” Patient as ever, Margaret stood with an armload of hats for her mistress to try on and find fault with, one after another after another. “I surely am. I don’t much like being around a dead animal, never mind a dead person. Just thinking about it makes my skin feel creepy-crawly all over.”
“Creepy-crawly—wherever do you learn these expressions, Margaret? At least dead animals stay where you put them. They don’t go skittering around beneath your chair and frightening you half to death!” Lady Constance peered into the mirror. “This one casts strange shadows across my nose. Most unattractive. Next, please.”
“The butlers searched all over the house, ma’am. They swore they didn’t see any mice.”
“Just because one does not see something, that does not mean it isn’t there,” the lady replied, in an accidental moment of insight. “Why, for all we know there are unseen ghosts hovering about us in this very room, eavesdropping on every word we say. Halloo, ghosties! Look, Margaret, I think I see one waving back at us, there, in the mirror!”
This remark made Margaret squeak in terror. Lady Constance laughed at the poor girl’s fright, which was really not a very nice thing to do. “Silly Margaret, I am only teasing you. Would you like to be mesmerized? I would! They say that once the mesmerist has you in a trance, you can be made to do anything, and you don’t remember a scrap about it afterward. It sounds like wonderful fun. Look, there in the mirror! Another ghost! Boo! Oh, how ridiculous you sound when you shriek!” It went on that way for some time, with Lady Constance trying on one outlandish hat after another and making poor Margaret scream by pretending to see ghosts. Finally, Mrs. Clarke put an end to it by taking over the hat-holding duty herself and sending Margaret down to the kitchen to recover.
Clearly, Lady Constance was in high spirits. That the possible marriage of the Widow Ashton and Admiral Faucet had provided an excuse to shop for new outfits was one reason for her merry mood. The other was her belief (which was really more of a wish) that, once remarried, her mother-in-law would take a long honeymoon and then set up her household somewhere far away with her new husband. “After all, Admiral Faucet is a fearless explorer of Parts Unknown,” Lady Constance gaily confided to Mrs. Clarke, after poor Margaret had been sent away. “They might decide to live anywhere. The North Pole, for instance; explorers seem drawn to it for some reason. Or even Canada.”
“I hope they don’t move that far away, my lady,” said Mrs. Clarke. “It’s a great comfort to have family close by, and Lord Ashton has hardly seen his mother for many years as it is.”
Lady Constance was done with the hats and had now moved on to gloves, which she tugged on and off in rapid succession. “Let us be frank, Mrs. Clarke. The woman makes Fredrick anxious. Personally I find her conversation unwholesome. All those horrible tales of death and tar pits! It is enough to curl anyone’s hair, even in dry weather. Why some people persist in talking about unpleasant topics I shall never know. Thank goodness Fredrick is not like that. He hardly says a word, and when he does I rarely understand what he means. But at least he does not bore me into a stupor with talk of strange moonsicknesses and ‘nothing left but his precious hat.’” She lowered her voice to the sort of loud, gossipy whisper that fairly begs to be overheard. “I know the Widow Ashton is Fredrick’s mother, but truthfully, I am not sure what the admiral sees in her. Except her fortune, of course! Ha ha!”
But this was no joke, as Penelope well knew: It was the Widow Ashton’s fortune that the admiral craved. The widow apologized to the admiral for the delay, but her position was clear: She would neither accept nor decline his offer of marriage until after the séance. “It will be better for both of us if I can entertain your proposal knowing that I have Edward’s blessing,” she explained. “For a half-hearted marriage is no marriage at all. Surely you agree, Fawsy dear?”
According to Mrs. Clarke, who reported on the whole situation to Penelope, the admiral grumbled and said, “I’ll wait if I must, but time is money, dear. I need to have more ostriches shipped from Africa as soon as possible, before the bad weather sets in. Wouldn’t want our future champions to be shipwrecked on some unmapped island somewhere and get eaten by cannibals!”
Of course, if the residents of this hypothetical island ate ostriches, they would not, strictly speaking, be cannibals (unless they themselves were ostriches, that is). But Penelope was too distracted by her own concerns to point this out to Mrs. Clarke. The fleet-footed housekeeper had made the previous day’s post with time to spare, but still, it would take a day for Penelope’s letter to get to London, and a day for Simon’s reply to come back, assuming he answered her at once. Had she been foolish to promise something to the widow that she could not yet guarantee would happen? Perhaps, but she had faith in Simon. At the very least, her suggestion that Madame Ionesco conduct a séance to speak to the spirit of Edward Ashton had bought Bertha and the Incorrigible children some time.
As for Lord Fredrick, who had miraculously recovered from his brief spell of barking and scratching (which happened to coincide exactly with the full moon)—well, it all seemed a bit too much for him to take in, according to Mrs. Clarke. “Mother getting married? Some quack fortune-teller raising the dead, in my own home? Not sure how I feel about any of it, frankly. If anyone is looking for me, I’ll be at my club.”
SIMON’S REPLY CAME IN THE evening post on the second day. “Will do,” it read in his own dear, sweet, familiar cursive, with its poetic loops and flourishes. “Expect us on the morning train. Don’t trouble yourself to meet us; sounds like your hands are full enough with plot twists already. We’ll hire a carriage at the station. Yours, SHD.”
Penelope was giddy with gratitude. That night, after the children were tucked in and she was near bedtime herself, she could not concentrate on her own book, but instead found herself conjuring up an assortment of flattering definitions for the acronym SHD, which, of course, stood for Simon Harley-Dickinson, “but in Simon’s case might just as easily mean Steadfast, Humane, and Dependable,” she thought. “Or Sensible, High-minded, and Decent. Or Stalwart, Handsome, and Deserving.” She felt a twinge of embarrassment about the “handsome,” but she had run out of H’s and, frankly, she did find Simon pleasing to look at. “It must be the neoclassical symmetry of his eyebrows,” she murmured, and pretended to sketch those very eyebrows in the margin of her book with a fingertip. “They are perfectly arranged, see: One over each eye—and, oh my!—he will be here, at Ashton Place, tomorrow!”
She placed the book on her bedside table. It was the cannibal adventure she had found in Lord Fredrick’s library. Despite her vow to avoid this disturbing tale before bedtime, she had been unable to resist taking a peek. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), she found the text difficult to understand, as it was all handwritten in blotchy ink that looked as if it had weathered many a storm at sea. Not only that, but the whole gruesome tale was set in rhyming verse of a most eccentric nature. Penelope enjoyed poetry as a rule, but this volume was too peculiar to easily make sense of. If she were not already in her nightgown and under the covers, she would have gladly traded it in for lighter fare, such as All the Pretty Ponies, in which Edith-Anne decides to get a second pony to keep Rainbow company (but who could have known that Rainbow would be so jealous?), or even the plodding and preachy Rainbow Goes to Work, in which Rainbow spends an unhappy summer as a pony for hire, while Edith-Anne is sent off to stay with her sick aunt in Norfolk.
“But who can concentrate on books at a time like this?” the perplexed young governess thought, which just goes to show what an unusual state of mind she was in. “Simon will be here tomorrow morning—and he says ‘Expect us,’ which must mean he has persuaded Madame Ionesco to come as well. I shall have to intercept them before they arrive at the house, so I can fill them in on the details of our scheme…but however shall I manage it?”
With that, she put her book down and blew out the bedside candle. She was tired, to be sure, but there was still a great deal of plotting and planning to do regarding this séance, and scant time in which to do it. She even had a fleeting worry about what she ought to wear for Simon’s arrival.
“Unimportant,” she thought, yawning. “Immaterial. Doesn’t matter. Perhaps my brown worsted…”
“WHEN IN DOUBT, SLEEP ON it.” So said Agatha Swanburne, according to a great many hand-stitched pillows at Penelope’s alma mater. As usual, the wise lady was correct. Within minutes of waking, the tangle of problems that had flummoxed Penelope so thoroughly the previous evening had somehow sorted themselves into neat skeins of wool, as it were.
Armed with a clear head, fresh purpose, and a quick but nourishing breakfast, Penelope flew out of the house an hour past dawn, found Old Timothy polishing the doors of the brougham, and asked the enigmatic coachman if he could take her halfway to the train station and then wait on the road so she might flag down a carriage. To his credit, he did not ask any questions but simply nodded and put a horse in harness.
Penelope sat in the backseat and chewed her lip the whole way. It was not only that she half wished she had chosen the navy-blue dress rather than the brown, although that did cross her mind. It was because her plan about the séance, which had seemed so simple and foolproof when she first thought of it, now appeared to have more holes in it than a mole-infested garden. “Truly,” she thought, “it is not easy to make plans that involve the supernatural, for who can predict the behavior of the dearly departed?”
The very thought made her shiver, for as much as Penelope liked to think of herself as scientifically minded, with finely honed powers of deduction and a sensible Swanburne-trained head on her shoulders, in fact she was just as superstitious as the next person. This should come as no surprise, for in Miss Lumley’s day, séances, Ouija boards, hypnotic healings, and the like were very much in fashion. In fact, they were nearly as popular as ferns (and ferns were wildly popular in Miss Lumley’s day, and may well be ripe for a comeback, as they are both attractive and easy to grow). It was only now, on her way to explain her plan to the soothsayer herself, that Penelope began to consider just what kind of haunted bucket of worms she might be opening up by proposing that Madame Ionesco attempt to communicate with the dead.
“Penny for your thoughts, miss?”
There, he had said it again. Just hearing the word “penny” made her think of Miss Mortimer, who no doubt would be full of excellent and pithy advice right now. With no reason to lie, she answered, “I am thinking about the séance that the Widow Ashton plans to have.”
“A dangerous business, that. Some holes are better left undug. Unless you already know what’s buried, a’ course.”
Something about his remark made Penelope sit up straight. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, some presents are better left unopened. Unless you already know what’s in ’em, a’ course.”
Penelope felt certain he was trying to make a point, and one that might prove useful to her, but what was it? “I am sorry, Timothy, but I still cannot quite understand what you mean. Perhaps if you say it slowly?”
The old coachman grunted in annoyance and spoke at a snail’s pace. “What I mean is, some questions are best left unasked. Unless you already know the answer—”
“A’ course!” Penelope exclaimed, for the answer she was seeking had just come to her. “And eureka,” she added, but softly, for now she had that much more to think about.
They rode in silence for the better part of an hour, until Timothy brought the brougham to a stop just before the crest of a hill, near the forest’s edge. From there they would see any oncoming travelers long before they could be seen themselves. Soon the rhythmic thud of hoofbeats on earth alerted them that another carriage approached.
“That’s them, I’ll wager,” said Old Timothy, peering into the distance. “I recognize the coach; that driver often takes fares from the station.” With a few clucks and some skillful handling of the reins, he urged the horse to pull their carriage sideways, blocking the way.
With a fluttering heart, Penelope climbed out and stood in the middle of the road, waving her arms. The oncoming carriage came closer and closer still. Finally it stopped, and the driver began to scold.
“Have you lost your mind, miss? This is a carriage road; it’s no place to be doing your morning calisthenics. Move along, now.”
“Simon!” she called, jumping up and down, for she was sure she had spotted him inside.
“Simon says, jumping jacks, I don’t care what you call it! Now step aside and let me pass.”
“What’s the hurry, driver?” The door of the carriage swung open, and Simon leaped out; a moment later he stood before Penelope, grinning. “Miss Lumley—I mean, Penelope—what a perfect treat it is to see you! Feels like a long time, and no time at all, if you follow my meaning.”
“Hello!” she cried, and then said it again, since she was so very glad to see him. “Hello!” The two of them stood staring and beaming at each other. Awkwardly, Penelope held out a hand. Simon shook it vigorously.
Penelope looked around. “And…where is Madame?”
He jerked his head toward the carriage he had just left. “Sound asleep in the cab. Dreaming of other dimensions, I bet. Pardon me for asking, but what are you doing out here on the road?”
She took a step closer and spoke quietly, so that the carriage driver would not hear. “Mr. Harley-Dickinson—I mean, Simon—upon reflection I realized it would be best for me to intercept you before you reached Ashton Place, so that you and I might speak in private about the reasons for my summons. I have my own carriage and driver here.”
“The plot is afoot, eh?” Simon scratched his chin. “We could switch carriages altogether, but I hate to wake Madame. She was muttering the most interesting things in her sleep. I was hoping for a clue about the Great What’s to Come, or a forecast for tomorrow’s weather, at least.”
“Your driver can take Madame Ionesco. She is expected at the house and will be warmly welcomed. You can ride back with me.” She lowered her voice even more. “It may be better if we speak out of Madame’s hearing as well.”
He arched one of those perfectly formed eyebrows. “Right-o, then. I’ll get my bag. Didn’t bring much, but I wouldn’t want to be without a pen and paper at a time like this. Inspiring things are bound to happen.”
It took but a moment for Simon to remove his traveling satchel from one carriage and move it into the other. The coach carrying Madame was dispatched to Ashton Place. After giving the other driver a generous head start, Timothy muttered something about taking the long way back to the house so they might better enjoy the scenery. Then he chuckled and clucked the horse to a lazy walk.
Now that Simon was finally here (and sitting next to her, in the backseat, rather close!), Penelope could scarcely decide what to say first, and the whole story tumbled out in a mad rush. She explained about the Widow Ashton’s arrival with Admiral Faucet, and quickly sketched her adventure with the children in the forest, in pursuit of Bertha.
“But now the admiral plans to make Bertha into a champion ostrich racer, and then, when her racing days are through, turn her into…” She searched for a kind way to say it, but the best word she could come up with was “Victuals. With onion sauce.”
“Onion sauce!” exclaimed Simon. “What a way to go. Poor old bird.”
“Not only that. He wants the children to be part of his exhibition as well, the ‘Bloodthirsty Wolf Children of Ashton Place,’ or some such nonsense. But without the Widow Ashton’s money, he can do none of what he plans. He has proposed marriage to her in the most flowery terms, but I am sure he is only after her fortune. The widow is unsure about marrying him but seems inclined to do so anyway—unless she knows for a fact that her dear dead husband, Edward Ashton, would not approve. Therefore…” She paused for breath, for she had been talking nonstop. “I have persuaded her that we must have a séance.”
Simon stroked his chin in that thoughtful way of his. “A séance? Ah-ha! So Madame Ionesco has been summoned to deliver the message from dead Edward, from Beyond the Veil! Dead Edward says no, the wedding is off, and the admiral can go look for another rich widow to fleece. Brilliant scheme, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I do not mind,” she said, rather formally, but inside she was very pleased.
“One potential glitch, as far as I can see: What if dead Edward says yes?”
“I have thought of that as well,” Penelope replied, for this is precisely what had made her say “Eureka!” earlier. “First—and I mean no disrespect to her soothsaying abilities—but I feel it is far from certain that Madame Ionesco will truly be able to summon the shade of Edward Ashton. Do you agree?”
Simon glanced around, as if making sure no ghostly eavesdroppers could hear them. “I remain agnostic on that point. If anyone can, Madame Ionesco can, that much I will say. But that doesn’t mean anyone can, does it?”
Penelope nodded. “The fortune-teller may have a true gift, but the situation is unpredictable, and we must plan for various outcomes. As Agatha Swanburne once said, ‘Trust whom you like, but rely on yourself.’ Therefore I propose that someone with a keen sense of the theatrical, a talent for mimicry and improvising dialogue—a playwright, perhaps?—be engaged as an understudy to the ghost, as it were.”
Simon’s face lit up. “Aha! So if the shade of Edward Ashton fails to appear on command, or does appear but provides an answer other than the one we require, this playwright you mention could take over the role, so to speak.”
“Precisely.” Penelope was so excited that she wanted to jump up and down and clap her hands, but of course this was impossible while sitting in the backseat of a carriage. Instead she smiled and said, “Simon, your gleam of genius is undimmed. Will you do it?”
“Will I? Just try to stop me! They say that Shakespeare himself played the role of Hamlet’s father’s ghost! I’ll be walking in the footsteps of giants, and once again, Miss Lumley—Penelope—the adventure is all thanks to you. Before we met, my life was dull and boring! Tedious and uninteresting! But no more.”
The carriage stopped.
“Is it the wheel?” Simon asked, ready to leap out. “I must confess, I have a knack for fixing a broken spoke. Shall I take a look?”
“The wheels are fine. Just giving the horse a breather.” Which was an odd thing for Old Timothy to say, frankly, since the horse had been walking at a leisurely pace the whole time. The coachman stared straight ahead, but his words were directed at Penelope. “The young gentleman won’t be staying at the house, I take it?”
Old Timothy’s face was as blank as a mask. Penelope began to say something to the enigmatic coachman but stopped as the good sense of his remark sank in. She turned to Simon. “Timothy is correct. You must forgive my lack of hospitality, Simon. But given the secret role you will be called upon to play at the séance, I think it is best that you remain unseen for now. If no one knows you are here, you cannot fall under suspicion.”
“There’s a kind of logic in that,” he agreed. “Although I hope we’re not just sticking our heads in the sand about it all. Say, do you think we ought to tell Madame Ionesco about this understudy business? It’s not so easy to pull the wool over the eyes of a prognosticator, after all.”
Penelope frowned, for this indeed was the last and deepest mole hole in her scheme, and the one in which she feared they were most likely to step and twist an ankle, so to speak. “I would not want to insult her, of course. But if she knew what we intend, she might object to conducting the séance to begin with….”
With a soft “hey-yah” from Old Timothy, the carriage resumed its slow progress. By the time they reached the edge of the parkland that surrounded the house, Simon and Penelope had reluctantly decided that it would be best not to tell Madame about their plan to have Simon step into the role, should the ghost of Edward Ashton fail to appear. Whether this would prove to be the right decision or not remained to be seen. But Bertha’s life was at “steak” (if you will forgive the pun), and the children’s safety and future hung in the balance as well. Much as they regretted the dishonesty, they felt they had no choice.
Without being told, Timothy turned the carriage down a side road that led to some humble farmhouses nearby. Arrangements were quickly made for Simon to stay with Jasper’s family, whom Penelope recalled could use the extra help because of the new baby. The family was delighted by the visit and gladly accepted Simon as a local lad recommended by that clever young governess at Ashton Place who had worked such miracles with Lord Ashton’s wild wolf children. Simon also proved to have a knack for calming a squalling infant, so he was quickly put to work. In the hubbub, Simon and Penelope had no real chance to say good-bye, but she whispered a promise to send a message later on, with details about when and where the séance would take place, as soon as it had been arranged.
Timothy drove the carriage back up to the main road and then proceeded to Ashton Place, where he discreetly stopped a short way behind the barn, out of view of the main house. As Penelope climbed out, she shyly mentioned that she hoped there would be no need for Old Timothy to mention their early-morning excursion to anyone.
He snorted in disdain and looked at her with his changeable, cockeyed stare. “A true coachman never says where he’s been, miss. Or tells where he’s going.”
“I am glad to hear it—”
“A coachman who repeats what he overhears in the backseat of a carriage wouldn’t keep a job for very long, make no mistake.”
“I appreciate your discretion—”
“And I’ve been a coachman for a very long time. Since before you were born, and for some years before that, too. What I hear, I don’t hear, if you know what I mean.”
“Thank you,” she said simply, for she had no wish to provoke him further. He undid the harness and led the horse away to the stables, clucking and talking softly the whole way, with promises of a good rubdown with a towel and a currycomb, followed by a breakfast of oats after the beast was cool enough to eat.
Watching him left Penelope with two very different ideas to ponder as she walked up the drive back to the house. The first was how nice it was to see someone treating a horse with such care and respect. Naturally, it made her think of Edith-Anne Pevington and Rainbow, but to try to draw any further comparison between the grouchy, bow-legged old coachman and the fictional rosy-cheeked heroine would be absurd. “Dr. Westminster had a similarly nice way with animals,” she said to herself. “Perhaps that is what I am reminded of now.”
Her second thought was how odd and thoroughly unexpected it was that, of all the people she had met since coming to live at Ashton Place, it was Old Timothy whom she had come to rely upon the most. Whether that, too, would prove a mistake also remained to be seen. But there was no more time to puzzle over it, for she had already missed breakfast with the children, and although she had left detailed instructions for them about how they were to begin their morning lessons without her, even from where she stood, she could spot Beowulf leaning perilously close to the nursery window.
“Cuckoo!” he yelled excitedly as he saw her approach. He pointed at a nearby tree limb. “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!”
“Careful, Beowulf!” she called up to the window. She broke into a run. “Careful! I am on my way!”