Friday: Ireland
FRIDAY DAWNED WET AND GRAY, WORDS THAT COULD ALSO BE USED to describe Jane’s mood. As she lay on her side in bed and looked at the rain spattering against the windows, she couldn’t help but wish that she were back home in Brakeston, a town she’d chosen because it reminded her of the peaceful life she’d enjoyed in Chawton. People there don’t go flying off towers for no reason, she thought darkly.
Lucy’s suggestion that perhaps Charlotte (she could think her name as long as she didn’t speak it) might be responsible for Ryan McGuinness’s death had unnerved her a bit. If true, it meant that Charlotte had more in mind than just simple revenge. Trying to kill me is one thing, Jane thought. Killing other people to make me look guilty is going too far, even for a Brontë.
Beside her Walter grunted softly, turned on his side, and put his arm around her. Holding her close, he kissed her neck gently and immediately started snoring. He always snored when he’d had too much to drink, and as they had lingered at the pub until well after two in morning, Jane didn’t expect him to be fully functioning until after lunch.
She would have been content to stay in bed all day and not have to face those she knew still suspected her of committing foul play, but they were due on the bus shortly after eight o’clock and it was already seven. Gently freeing herself from Walter’s arm, she slipped out of bed and went into the bathroom to shower. She knew Walter would need all of fifteen minutes to get himself ready, so she let him remain asleep.
The hot water went out only five minutes into her shower, before Jane had even begun to rinse the shampoo from her hair. She damned the inn’s ancient plumbing, as well as everyone who had risen before her and therefore probably had much more pleasant bathing experiences. She finished under a cold trickle and got out feeling less awake and more peevish than she had before getting in. After towel-drying her hair, she went into the bedroom to wake Walter up and found him already dressed.
“Good morning,” he said brightly.
“You’re awfully cheerful for someone who nearly drowned himself in whiskey last night,” she said as she got dressed.
“I’m operating under the principle that if I act happy, I’ll be happy. The truth is, my head feels as if an army of woodpeckers has taken up residence in it. What time are we leaving?”
Jane glanced at the clock. “Half an hour. Why don’t you go get some breakfast and I’ll pack up the bags?”
Walter groaned. “I don’t even want to think about food.”
“Have some porridge,” said Jane. “It will do your stomach good.”
Walter sighed. “All right,” he said. “But don’t you want anything?”
She shook her head. “Save me a scone,” she said. “And not one of those nasty ones with fruit in it.”
Walter left. A minute or two later there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Jane called out.
She was surprised when Miriam entered. Miriam set Lilith on the bed, where the dog immediately curled up and went to sleep.
“We need to talk,” Miriam said. “Did you throw that man off the tower?”
“I did not,” said Jane. “Did you have someone do it in order to frame me?”
Miriam snorted. “Why should I hire someone to do anything?” she said. “If I wanted to do you in, I would just stake you myself.”
“In your dreams,” said Jane, shutting the suitcase she’d been packing.
“Then if you didn’t do it and I didn’t do it, who did?” Miriam asked.
“Lucy thinks maybe it was Our Gloomy Friend,” Jane told her. “Who the hell is that?” said Miriam.
Jane found a piece of paper and wrote down Charlotte’s name. She handed it to Miriam.
“Charlotte Bron—”
“Shh!” Jane hissed. “We don’t say her name. Why do you think I wrote it down?”
Miriam crumpled up the paper and tossed it on the floor. “Not this nonsense again,” she said.
Although Miriam had almost been killed by Charlotte during Jane’s last encounter with her nemesis, she refused to believe that Charlotte was who Jane said she was. Jane had given up on trying to convince her—and had of course never revealed her own true identity to Miriam.
“Regardless of who you think she is or is not, Our Gloomy Friend is a very real danger,” Jane said.
Miriam sighed. “All vampires are a danger and need to be destroyed,” she said. “This one is no worse than the rest. I can handle her.”
“Yes, you did so well against her last time,” Jane remarked. Before Miriam could start an argument the door opened and Walter came in. He was carrying a cup of coffee on top of which was balanced a scone. When he saw his mother he said, “My two favorite people in one place.”
“I was just leaving,” said Miriam, picking up Lilith. “I have to finish packing.”
“Well then, I guess we’ll see you on the bus,” Walter said, setting the coffee on the dresser and handing Jane the scone.
When his mother was gone Walter asked, “What was that about?”
Jane sat down in the room’s one armchair and took a bite of the scone. “Nothing,” she said. “She just wanted to borrow some hand cream. This weather is hard on old skin.”
Walter chuckled. “I’m glad to see the two of you are getting along better,” he said, more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone.
Jane finished the scone and drank the coffee while Walter gathered up the last of their things. Then they went downstairs and out to the waiting bus. Lucy and Ben were already there, and Jane and Walter took the seats beside theirs. The other members of the group were scattered throughout the bus. No one was particularly talkative, which only added to the gloomy mood of the morning.
When the last person—Orsino, looking very much like a grumpy bear who had been awakened a month too early from hibernation—was on the bus, they left. This time there was no briefing from either Chumsley or Enid. Only when the bus passed a sign reading CLONAKILTY did Jane remember where they were headed.
Chumsley stood up. “Clonakilty is not our final destination,” he said. “We’ll be visiting a house a bit beyond the town limits. However, you might be interested to know that in 1999 Clonakilty won the Tidy Towns competition for the neatest town in all of Ireland.”
Jane, looking out the window at the rows of gaily painted houses, said, “It really is very clean.”
“Like Disneyland,” Ben said.
Thus awed by the cleanliness of Clonakilty, they passed out of it and into the countryside. A quarter of an hour later they turned onto a narrow lane, and five minutes after that they passed through a stand of trees and exited the other side to find themselves looking at a manor house.
“Ah,” said Brodie in a booming voice. “Gloxhall House. I recognize it from my textbook back at Dalhousie.”
“Brodie is exactly right,” Chumsley announced. “We are indeed at Gloxhall House. While it’s now generally overlooked in favor of more showy homes, Gloxhall is one of Ireland’s hidden gems. It is important not least of all because it was designed and built by Fiona Byrne, one of the few female architects of her time. Not that anyone knew she was female,” he added. “Fiona disguised herself as a man and attended school under the name Kevin McCready. It wasn’t until her death at age eighty-six that her true identity was discovered.”
“Just another tragic example of the way in which women are overlooked in the profession,” Enid said.
“I’m sorry, dear. Did you say something?” Chumsley asked, grinning broadly. “Another interesting fact about Fiona,” he continued, “is that she is widely believed to have been a witch. Among her possessions was found a diary in which she recounted numerous encounters with demonic beings in the house.”
“More nonsense perpetrated by misogynists!” said Enid.
“In particular, she is believed to have had as her familiar a creature called a red cap,” Chumsley said as Enid fumed. “Red caps are notoriously bloodthirsty sprites who get their name from knocking their victims on the head with rocks and then dyeing their caps in the blood. Fiona’s red cap was called Squish. Very appropriate that, what with the rock dropping and all.”
“Enough of this twaddle,” Enid said, standing up and opening the bus door. “Everybody into the house.”
They all exited, with Chumsley bringing up the rear. As Enid marched briskly up the path to the house, Chumsley sauntered along next to Jane and Walter.
“Is it true about the red cap?” Jane asked. “Meaning, is it true Fiona wrote about him in her diary?”
“Yes,” said Chumsley. “Of course, it’s all the ramblings of a madwoman, but she wrote it.”
“How very interesting,” Jane said. “I should like to have known her, I think.”
“Pity she died in 1888, then,” said Chumsley.
“That is a pity,” Jane agreed. I could have easily come to know her, she added to herself. She tried to remember where she’d been in 1888. Oh, yes, she thought. Moscow. The circus. Well, that had been an adventure worth having, and you couldn’t do everything.
The inside of Gloxhall House was indeed impressive, all marble floors and grand staircases and pictures of horses in gilt frames. The group wandered through its three grand living rooms, thirteen bedrooms, and two libraries marveling at the woodwork and ceiling construction, the joinery and ingenious layout. Mostly the tour was narrated by Chumsley, although Enid added the occasional caustic comment here and there regarding Fiona Byrne’s oppression at the hands of men.
At one point, while touring the west wing of the house, Jane felt the need to visit the toilet and excused herself for a moment. Certain she had seen a bathroom down a particular hallway, she went down it again. Only now it seemed unfamiliar to her, and when she turned the knob on the room she believed would be the one she sought, she was surprised to find instead a bedroom she had not yet visited.
She stepped inside and without knowing why shut the door behind her. The bedroom was not particularly large, and the furniture in it was plain but well constructed. A four-poster bed took up most of the room, curtains of dark red silk hanging from the tester. A washstand with a pitcher and bowl stood to one side of a small dresser over which was set an oval-shaped mirror. On the wall closest to the door there hung a painting. It was to this that Jane gravitated.
The painting was perhaps two feet wide and half again as tall. Done in oils, it depicted a woman with red hair wearing a white dress in the artistic style. She was standing in a garden of roses, in front of a stone wall. On the wall stood a small man, perhaps a foot high, wearing a pointed red cap. The woman had her right hand on his shoulder, and he looked out at the viewer with an expression of unconcealed malice.
“You would be Squish, I imagine,” Jane said.
“I would,” said a voice with a heavy Scottish accent. “An joost how did ye find this room?”
Jane started, then looked toward the bed. Seated on the edge was the little man from the painting. “You’re much uglier in person,” she said.
“Thank ye,” said Squish. “Now answer ma question afore I bash ye on the head with a rock.”
“My name is Jane Fairfax,” she said. “I am a vampire.”
A grin appeared on Squish’s face. “A fellow bloodbeast,” he said happily.
“I wouldn’t call myself that. But I suppose you could.”
“Ya drink it. I dye ma cap in it. The person ends up dead one way or t’other,” said Squish.
“I don’t kill them,” Jane protested. “I just drink from them a little.”
Squish spat on the floor. “What good are ya then?” he asked.
Jane pointed at the painting. “I take it that’s Fiona,” she said.
Squish nodded.
“Then the stories are true,” said Jane. “About her being a witch.”
Squish snorted. “She weren’t nae witch,” he said. “Joost had second sight is all. Could see those of us from the other side, so to speak.”
He jumped down from the bed and walked over to where Jane stood. His pointed hat reached just above her knee. It was very red, and Jane wondered how recently it had been dyed. Squish looked up at the painting and sighed deeply. “I dae miss her,” he said. Then he turned his gaze to Jane. “I still da nae know what you’re doin’ here, though.”
“I was looking for the bathroom. I came in here by mistake.”
“No one comes in here by mistake. There’s a spell on this room. Only ones who find it are ones what get stuck in the enchantment, and them’s the ones whose heads I stave in.”
“Well, I certainly hope that won’t be the case,” said Jane. “But honestly, I don’t know why I’m here.”
Squish stared at her for a long time. “Said yer a vampire, did ya?”
She nodded.
“Nae a very good one, I don’t think.”
“Why do you say that?” Jane asked, wounded.
“The other ones that come through here, they knew just what they wanted.”
“Other ones,” said Jane. “What other ones?”
“The three,” said Squish. “Can nae recall their names. Very tiresome, they were.”
“Tedious,” Jane said.
“Whit?” asked Squish.
“They were tedious. The Tedious Three. At least, I’m guessing they were. Were they looking for Crispin’s Needle?”
The red cap brightened. “That was it!” he said. “Mibbie yer lookin’ for the same thing?”
“Actually, I am,” said Jane. “Did you give it to them?”
Squish shook his head. “Could nae give them what I do nae have,” he replied. “Naw idea what they were talkin’ aboot. Care to fill me in?”
Jane explained what the Needle did, or was supposed to do. When she was done Squish nodded. “Now I see,” he said. “Fiona, she knew a lot of strange folk. Vampires, some of ’em. Probably these three thought one of them may have given it to her or told her where ’twas.”
“But she never mentioned it to you?” Jane asked.
“Nae that I can recall,” said Squish. “And I ken recall a lot.”
Jane sighed. “Well then, I guess there’s nothing you can do for me either.”
“Who said I was goin’ to do anything for ye? Yer lucky I did nae bash yer head with a rock. I think that’s doin’ enough.”
“Yes, you would,” said Jane irritably. “But it seems to me that if there’s a spell on this room and only people who have second sight can find it, there should be some reason. Do you see what I mean?”
Squish rubbed his chin. “Ye may have a point. Almost makes me feel bad for bashin’ in the heads of so many what come here.”
“You didn’t bash the heads of the Tedious Three, did you?” Jane asked.
“That I did nae,” said Squish. He reached in his pocket. “Nicked this from one of them, though,” he said, pulling out a gold key about four inches long.
“What’s it for?” she asked.
“I’ve nae idea,” said Squish. “I joost like stealin’ things. Think it might be important?”
“I don’t know,” Jane said. “It looks like an ordinary old-fashioned door key. It could be to anything really.”
“Then ye might as well have it,” he said, holding it out to Jane.
“What will I do with it?”
“How am I supposed to know that? Yer the one goin’ on aboot there bein’ some reason ye came here, and I’ve got nothin’ to give ye save this key or a rock to yer head, so choose which it’ll be.”
“I choose the key,” Jane said, taking it from him and slipping it into her pocket.
“I thought ye might,” said the red cap, sounding disappointed.
Jane turned and put her hand on the doorknob. Then she looked at Squish, who was once again sitting on the bed, staring at the painting of Fiona.
“Thank you,” she said.
Squish looked at her and frowned. “Be gone with ye,” he said. “I’ve no time for foolishness.” He hesitated. “But mibbie if that key turns out to be somethin’, ye kin come back and tell me aboot it. If ye can find yer way, that is, and not get lost in a toilet.”
Jane smiled, but just a little. “I’ll do my best,” she said, and opened the door.