Alexander
The moment he stepped onto the grounds of Lowood, Alexander Blackwood was surrounded by ghosts.
Twenty-seven of them, in fact. An unusually high number.
Now, Alexander was no stranger to ghosts. Ghosts were his job. (His main job, that is. The job that paid the bills. His side job—well, more about that later.) But he wasn’t here for ghosts. He was here for a girl, the one he thought could be a seer. But instead he ended up with twenty-seven ghosts, twenty-six of whom were young girls, and one of whom wanted his murder solved.
“Are you listening?” asked the ghost. “I’ve been murdered.”
Alexander made a note in his notebook: Twenty-seven ghosts. One claims he’s been murdered.
The girls were all different ages, with different color hair and skin and eyes, and different—uh—names, too, presumably (although Alexander didn’t bother to make formal introductions), but the one thing they all had in common was the sad expressions that spoke of short, difficult lives without affection.
Well, that and the fact that they were all dead.
“Mr. Brocklehurst killed me,” said a transparent girl wearing a dress of colorless burlap. Her lips were tinged blue, as though she’d been very cold when she’d died. “He locked me in a closet for five hours. By the time anyone came to find me, I was dead.”
Alexander’s eyebrows rose.
“You needed to think about what you’d done,” said the ghost of Mr. Brocklehurst.
“He killed me, too,” claimed another girl. This one had red welts all over her arms and neck, with angry slashes across her skin like she’d tried to scratch the welts right off. “I’m allergic to burlap.”
(Hey, reader, it’s us again. We did some digging, and it seems as though burlap wasn’t produced until 1855. At least, that’s the popular theory. We did a little more digging and it turns out that Brocklehurst actually invented burlap just to make his students miserable, but it wasn’t widely known about until much later. Now you know.)
Alexander looked at the ghost of Mr. Brocklehurst, who just shrugged.
“Itching is good for the soul,” he said. “It inspires prayer.”
As Alexander walked up the stairs to the crumbling school building, the ghosts continued offering grievances against the late Mr. Brocklehurst, who countered every accusation with an excuse of some sort.
The door squeaked open before Alexander could knock, and another girl squinted out at him. This one was alive, we should mention.
She raised a pair of thick spectacles on a wand. “You must be from the Society! I recognized you by your mask. Everyone says people from the Society wear masks so the ghosts can’t discern what they look like. Is that true?”
“My name is Alexander Blackwood. I’m here to speak with one of your teachers.”
“Are you here about the murder?” she asked tightly.
“I could tell you about the murder,” said the ghost of Mr. Brocklehurst. “I was there, after all.”
“I’m here to speak with one of your teachers,” Alexander said again.
“Which teacher?”
Well. That one was harder. He hadn’t caught the teacher’s name. “I’d like to see all the teachers.” He was fairly certain he’d recognize the girl from the pub if he saw her again, although if he’d been asked to describe her, he wasn’t sure about her hair or eye color. She was small in stature, he recalled. And her coat had been gray.
“Shouldn’t there be another agent with you?” the girl asked, and peered around him as though someone might be hiding in the tall weeds that lined the walkway. “I’ve heard that you work in pairs.”
“I don’t need an assistant today.” He cringed at the thought of last night. Who tried to tackle a ghost? They’d almost failed the assignment because of that dunce.
“Interesting.” The girl traded her spectacles for a notebook and began scribbling into it.
“That’s Charlotte,” supplied Mr. Brocklehurst. “And if I weren’t dead, I’d—”
“Stop,” Alexander interrupted. He didn’t want to hear what kind of punishment would be dealt to the girl. In fact, he was rather coming to understand why someone might have wanted to murder Mr. Brocklehurst.
The girl looked up from her notebook. “Excuse me?”
“Stop delaying, I mean.” Alexander pointedly looked around her, peering into the foyer. “I’m on a schedule. Miss . . . ?” He had learned that her name was Charlotte, but of course it would be improper to address a young woman by her first name.
“Sorry.” She stowed her notebook and pencil and stepped aside so he could enter. “I’m a writer, you see. Charlotte Brontë, at your service.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Brontë.” Alexander went inside, the ghosts of dead students trailing behind him. “What do you write about?”
“Everything,” Miss Brontë said. “But murder, lately.”
“A popular subject.” He looked at her more closely; murder (and the avenging of) was one of the topics he was most interested in, himself. “Have you been writing about this murder in particular?”
Her face went blank and her voice flat. “I suppose you could say that.”
“And what have you concluded?”
“That it’s generally agreed upon that we’re better off now that Mr. Brocklehurst is gone, so who cares who did it?”
“I’m standing right here!” cried Mr. Brocklehurst.
“Whoever killed him did us a great service,” Miss Brontë went on, not hearing the ghost, of course.
“I see. So you won’t tell me who you think did it?”
She shook her head.
He found that commendable, in a way, but solving the murder made an excellent excuse to gather the teachers together. He didn’t want anyone to get ideas about him coming to see a young lady he’d met at the pub.
“Very well. I’ll solve your murder.”
“It’s not my murder,” Miss Brontë insisted. “It’s our murder, in that it benefits us all.”
“Then will you please allow me to see the teachers?”
“Of course I want the murder solved!” Miss Brontë collected herself. “I mean, please follow me.”
“Miss Brontë thinks Miss Eyre poisoned me. I read her notebook over her shoulder.” Brocklehurst sighed. “They’re friends. Makes sense, if you ask me. They’re both ungrateful little liars.”
“You believe Miss Eyre did it, don’t you?” Alexander asked. To confirm the ghost’s claims, and definitely not because he enjoyed shocking people.
Miss Brontë’s face turned white. “Of course I don’t. Why would I think that?”
Alexander took out his own notebook. Student suspects “Miss Eyre” may have poisoned Brocklehurst, he wrote. And then, to Miss Brontë, he said, “All right, please gather all the teachers together.”
Miss Brontë lifted her chin. “I’d rather not do anything until I know whether you’re going to arrest my friend.”
Alexander frowned.
“You don’t scare me.”
Alexander kept frowning.
“Not even with that mask.”
More frowning.
“Fine. But remember, she’s my friend, and even if she did kill him, she helped the school. You have no idea how bad things were. It was self-defense.”
“I know about the burlap.”
“Daisy was allergic to burlap!” Miss Brontë pulled out her notebook and scribbled what looked like He knows about the burlap. “All right, go ahead and solve the murder, but don’t arrest anyone I like.”
He tried not to smile. “I make no promises, Miss Brontë.”
Several minutes later, Alexander found himself in the center of the parlor, with teachers and students (both living and dead) all standing in a circle like an audience. It was quite crowded, and everyone seemed to be talking at once, going back and forth about the murder, the improved situation since, and the latest theories about who’d done it.
And . . . there was an even more uncomfortable topic spreading from the back of the room. More uncomfortable than murder. More uncomfortable than the murderer likely being in the room with them. And that was—
“A boy,” one of the girls said, and she didn’t exactly say it quietly enough to avoid Alexander’s notice. “A boy here.”
“I’ve never seen a boy so tall.” That was another girl in the back. “With hair so black.”
“You’ve never seen a boy, so you don’t know if this one is tall or not.”
“He looks like someone straight out of a story.”
“Do you think he’s come to marry one of us?”
“He’s probably here to marry a teacher.”
“Miss Scatcherd? Or Miss Smith?”
“No, probably Miss Temple. She’s so pretty. Imagine what beautiful babies they’d have.”
Alexander felt his face going red under his mask, and it wasn’t long before the living half of the girls were finger-combing their hair and pinching one another’s cheeks. Some of the dead girls started, too.
Quickly, he found the line of teachers near the door. One was definitely a Miss Scatcherd, if the sour expression on her face was any indication. The second was a tall, lovely woman, possibly Miss Temple. The third might have been a Miss Smith. And the fourth was the girl from the pub.
Their eyes met, and the young lady blushed and looked away.
“You,” he said, approaching her. “What’s your name?”
Her mouth moved, and some sort of sound came out, but it was too soft to hear under the students bouncing where they stood.
“Oh my gosh!” one of the girls whisper-screamed. “He’s here to marry Miss Eyre!”
Miss Eyre. The same girl Miss Brontë thought killed Mr. Brocklehurst.
Alexander sighed, but at least he’d found her. “Miss Eyre,” he said, “may I speak with you privately?”
Miss Eyre didn’t say a word, but when he went out of the room, she followed after a bit of prodding from Miss Temple.
Just before he closed the door, Miss Brontë caught his eye. Do not arrest her! she mouthed.
“Miss Eyre,” he said once the door was closed and they had the hallway to themselves. “I’ve come to speak to you.”
“To me, sir? Everyone says you’re here to solve the murder.”
“Not originally,” he said. “I came here to see you.”
“Why me? I didn’t do anything.”
Well, she might have murdered Mr. Brocklehurst, but that was beside the point.
“Of course you did nothing wrong,” he said quickly. “I’m with the Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits. You may have heard of us.”
Miss Eyre said nothing.
“Well, I assume you’ve heard of us. Is that why you came to the pub last night? Because you learned we would be coming?”
Miss Eyre said nothing.
Alexander cleared his throat. “I know you were able to see the ghost. That would make you what we call a seer.”
Miss Eyre . . . still said nothing.
He tried a new tactic. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of what you can do. It’s actually a rare and valuable gift. It makes you unique. Special.”
Her brow rumpled, but still she said nothing.
“At the Society we are in great need of such talented individuals. Normally we don’t employ women, of course, but in this case I think an exception could be made.”
Nothing.
“I’m trying to offer you a job,” he said. “At the Society.”
Her eyes widened slightly. That was obviously not what she’d been expecting.
“What do you think, Miss Eyre?” he prompted.
“I think . . .” She frowned.
Of course she must be overwhelmed, to have such a sudden, wonderful turn of her fortunes.
“I think I must decline. I’m going to be a governess,” she said.
Alexander’s mouth dropped open. “A governess! Why?”
“It’s my life’s dream. I’ve always wanted to be one. I think children are adorable.”
“But . . .” He was completely flummoxed. “What are your qualifications for being a governess?” Because she clearly had the single most important qualification to be a Society agent: she could see ghosts.
“My qualifications?” Miss Eyre shook her head. “Why, I was meant to be a governess.” She rattled off a list of things she could do: something about Latin verbs and pianoforte and high marks in classic literature.
He frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to be a governess,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
Alexander scowled. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to join the Society? If you’ll just come with me to London, I can show you—”
“I’m going to be a governess!” Miss Eyre pressed her hands to her mouth. “Excuse me. Can we get on with the murder investigation?” She turned on her heel and opened the door to the parlor.
Several girls jumped back (Miss Brontë included) and scattered to the other side of the room, as though they definitely hadn’t been trying to listen at the door. Fortunately for Alexander, he hadn’t been speaking about the whole seer and job thing with much volume. By now, the students had probably decided on names for the children they imagined he and Jane Eyre would create.
Awkward.
Confused over the less-than-favorable response to his job proposal, Alexander turned to leave.
“Wait,” called one of the girls. “Did you solve the murder?”
Alexander glanced from Miss Eyre to Brocklehurst to the door and back to Miss Eyre. “Should I?”
“Yes,” several girls cried.
“No!” said Miss Brontë.
The latter was outvoted. Alexander strode into the center of the room. His eyes landed on Miss Temple. “Please tell me what you know about the poisoning.” Now that the seer had turned him down, he wanted to get back to his inn.
Miss Scatcherd prodded Miss Temple. “Go on. He wants to talk to you.”
A couple of the students in the back whispered that he’d left Miss Eyre for Miss Temple, and what a scandal it was. “This is like a real live romance novel,” one girl said. “I can’t stand the tension. Who will he choose?”
Alexander couldn’t wait until his life revolved around ghosts again. “Miss Temple,” he said gently, “if you’d tell me about the day Mr. Brocklehurst expired, I’d be so grateful.”
“He’d be sooo grateful,” sighed one of the girls.
Miss Temple was trembling as she stepped forward. “Well, Mr. Brocklehurst came for one of his monthly inspections—”
“Pardon me,” Alexander said. “We can skip that part. I know enough about the school under Mr. Brocklehurst’s care.”
Miss Brontë was standing near Miss Temple, and the student leaned forward just enough to mutter under her breath, “He knows about the burlap.”
“Ah. Very well.” Miss Temple clasped her hands together. “Mr. Brocklehurst had demanded tea and cookies, so the girls and I made them while he napped in front of the fire. After he awakened, I served the refreshments. A short time later, he expired, though I didn’t realize it at first. I thought he’d just gone back to sleep.”
“Very interesting,” said Alexander. He turned to Miss Scatcherd. “Please bring me the teacup.”
Miss Scatcherd pressed her lips together and frowned, then turned toward a girl nearby. “Anne, fetch the teacup.”
“Which teacup?” asked the girl.
“The one Mr. Brocklehurst drank from!” Miss Scatcherd huffed. “Of course.”
“All the teacups are the same.” Anne pressed both fists against her mouth.
Alexander hated when his clients were difficult and he had to embarrass them, but he needed that teacup. “Miss Scatcherd. The teacup. Now.”
Her face reddened, and after a tense moment with everyone staring at her, she turned and vanished down a hall.
“Why do you want the teacup?” Brocklehurst asked.
Alexander ignored him. Instead, he looked at Miss Eyre. She was so obviously a seer. And, quite strangely, she was surrounded by adoring ghosts. One of the dead girls whispered that she liked Miss Eyre’s hair, and another inquired about her skincare regimen.
How could she not want to work for the Society?
“Look,” whispered one of the living girls. “He’s pining.”
“I really hope it works out for them,” said another girl.
Abruptly, Miss Eyre excused herself and headed toward the door, slipping through the crowd of people (avoiding stepping inside any of the ghosts, too, he noticed).
Miss Brontë caught Miss Eyre’s arm. “Are you all right?” asked the former.
Miss Eyre shook her head. “I don’t feel well.”
Just as Miss Eyre left the room, Miss Scatcherd returned with a cart full of teacups.
“Perhaps you misunderstood my request?” Alexander said. “I only needed the one.”
Miss Scatcherd rolled her rattling cart through the crowd and parked it against a wall. There had to be at least thirty teacups. They were chipped and worn, with the paint rubbed off most of the ceramic. “Yes, well.” The teacher came to stand by Alexander, but landed partly in Mr. Brocklehurst.
Brocklehurst shuddered and jumped away, and all throughout the room, girls gasped and rubbed their arms, as though chilled.
“The cup was washed and put away with the rest.” Miss Scatcherd shook her head. “I didn’t realize you were going to ask about our teacups. How am I supposed to know which one was the one?”
“The teacup held poison and you just put it away?”
“We washed it.” Miss Scatcherd shrugged.
“Very well.” Alexander approached the cart of teacups and glared, like glaring may reveal which teacup potentially held poison.
“I’d have served his tea in the one with the fewest chips,” offered Miss Temple.
That did narrow it down some. Alexander picked out the five cups with the fewest number of chips and showed them to Brocklehurst. “Do any of these look familiar?”
“They all look the same!” The spirit of Mr. Brocklehurst slammed a fist on the cart, making several cups jump. One crashed to the floor. The girls yelped.
This was bad. Alexander had to get the spirit under control before anything worse happened. The living couldn’t usually tell what the dead were doing—not unless they were like him—but when spirits became emotionally charged, the boundaries of what was possible shifted.
“Why do you care so much about which cup it was?” asked a dead student.
“Because.” Alexander seized one of the potentially poison-bearing cups and tapped Brocklehurst on the forehead with it.
The ceramic went right through.
Everyone was staring. The living were clearly questioning their faith in his ability to deal with ghosts. The ghosts of students past just frowned and muttered that it was rude to put things through ghosts. And Mr. Brocklehurst himself just seemed confused.
“Don’t do that again.”
Alexander did it again, this time with a different cup. Again, though, it had no effect.
“If you would all be so kind as to leave the room,” Alexander said to the living students and the teachers. Clearly, this was going to get ugly.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” said one of the students.
“No one does,” replied Miss Temple, nudging the student toward the door. “But I think we should leave.”
“Why are you hitting me with cups?” Brocklehurst’s face and neck turned red, in spite of the fact that he was dead and didn’t have blood anymore. “I demand that you stop!”
Alexander did it again with a third cup.
Nothing.
Maybe it wasn’t a cup, then. But he’d been so certain. Of course it had to be a cup, didn’t it? What if it had been the cookies? He’d have no clear talisman. It could be a spatula, a mixing bowl, or even the oven.
As Alexander reached for a fourth cup, Brocklehurst lashed out and struck a painting off the wall.
At once, screams filled the parlor. The ghosts stayed in place, but the living moved toward the exit at top speed.
Brocklehurst, for his part, threw more things onto the floor: cups, pens, books.
Alexander had to act quickly. Brandishing the fourth cup, he pursued the angry ghost.
“Stop hitting my head with cups!” screamed Brocklehurst.
“Not until I know which cup it was!” Alexander tried again, and this time the ceramic thudded firmly against the ghost’s forehead.
Immediately the ghost of Mr. Brocklehurst was sucked into the teacup. The ceramic trembled in Alexander’s gloved hands, like the ghost was struggling to escape.
“Please work,” Alexander whispered. And then there was a flash of light and the shuddering stopped. He’d trapped Mr. Brocklehurst.
Carefully, he wrapped the teacup in a scrap of burlap. Handling these talismans was a delicate business, and why he always wore gloves: touching a talisman could lead to possession by the ghost trapped within. Society agents always wore gloves, to be safe.
“Are you going to make any arrests?” Miss Brontë asked, returning to the now-empty parlor.
Alexander shrugged. “My job isn’t actually to solve murders. I capture ghosts. Though sometimes that involves solving murders. I just didn’t need to this time.”
Miss Brontë pressed her lips together. “Mr. Blackwood, are you going to relocate the other ghosts in Lowood? I imagine there are a lot after all these years.” There was a look in her eye. A sadness, as though she’d lost people she cared about.
Alexander shook his head. “I can relocate any the school finds troublesome, but to relocate them all would take a lot of time and it’s not strictly necessary, unless the spirits begin causing problems.”
The girl’s shoulders relaxed. “No, no. I mean, unless they want to go with you. But perhaps they’re happy here. Even though they’re dead.”
“Perhaps.” Alexander’s encounters with ghosts were rarely happy ones. People never called him because of friendly ghosts.
“Well, good day to you.” Miss Brontë pulled out her notebook and wandered away, busy with whatever story she was telling now.
Alexander just hoped it wasn’t a romance.
Back at the inn, Alexander pulled out a pen and slip of paper to send a note to the Duke of Wellington.
Sir, I’ve encountered a seer. Her name is Jane Eyre. Unfortunately, she has declined my initial offer to join the Society. I will endeavor to persuade her. —A. Black
When the ink was dry, he sealed the paper closed with a drop of wax and secured the note to a pigeon’s ankle. Soon, the bird was off to London and the Society headquarters.
Alexander had dedicated his life to the RWS Society at the tender age of four, when three important things had happened: (1) His father was killed. (2) He gained the ability to see ghosts. (3) The Duke of Wellington took him in and began training him to become the best agent the Society had ever seen.
This was where the side business came in. Yes, Alexander was the star agent of the Society, and usually that was good enough for him, but his father hadn’t just been killed.
He’d been murdered.
This meant that Alexander’s side business was actually the revenge business, though to be completely honest he had just the one customer: himself.
For fourteen years, he’d been working toward avenging his father’s murder, but he didn’t have much to go on at the moment, only the fuzzy memories of a frightened young boy. Which made revenge quite difficult. So he poured himself into his day job at the Society, tracking down troublesome ghosts, reading newspapers in search of new recruits, and generally trying to keep the struggling Society on its feet.
Reading a newspaper was how he’d found his apprentice, who’d been the perfect age to join the Society, and at the perfect place in his life. He’d had no other attachments that might prevent him from doing his job. (Sometimes people did.) And he’d had the gift. (Not everyone got it, even under all the right circumstances.) Over the years, Alexander had offered jobs to several people, and most were happy to join. But ever since the king cut funding, recruitment had been far more difficult.
Just as night fell, and Alexander finished writing up a formal report to go along with the teacup and Brocklehurst incident, a pigeon arrived with a note from Wellington. (Yes, this does sound like a remarkably fast reply for the day, and it was. But Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, possessed the fastest racer pigeons in all of England. One could even say that they were almost supernaturally fast.)
Alexander snapped the wax seal and unfolded the note.
I trust you. —A. Well
For the next several minutes, Alexander thought back to his approach to the job offer. Everything had been hectic. She’d been flustered, he thought. Perhaps an impromptu relocation hadn’t been the best time or place for such a proposal (no matter that he’d gone there with that intention in the first place).
Very well, then. He’d go back and he’d try again, and this time he would get it right.