Four

The banker cousin must be selling the house furnished, thought Henry, readjusting the pillows against the headboard of Miss Darlington’s four-poster feather bed. This room still had all her furniture, everything but her clothes and most personal belongings. Left behind was a watercolor portrait of her as a young girl—he assumed it was she; same all-seeing level gaze, same privately amused mouth—in what could only be her grandmother’s rose garden. It hung on the wall at the foot of the bed, and he looked at it every time he got stuck for a word on the piece he was trying to write, under his Atticus Bent pseudonym, for Leslie’s Monthly. Since he was almost as tired as he was distracted, he looked at the painting often.

Somewhere off in Paulton, one of the ubiquitous church bells tolled eleven. Henry stubbed out his half-smoked cigar—what good was a cigar without an accompanying shot of booze? None, and since he didn’t drink anymore, he said to hell with it—and reached down to give Astra a good night pat. Everything was in place, all his ghost-detecting equipment, his cameras. He’d taken a few pictures of moonlight on window glass, and they might or might not look like orbs of spirit energy when he developed them, but tomorrow would be soon enough to get some good mists and shadow apparitions. He yawned, stretched, and blew out his reading lamp.

Nice bed. He imagined Miss Darlington in it. Something about her appealed to him in spite of the fact that she seemed to have his number. Or . . . maybe that was what did appeal to him, no in spite of about it. She was nobody’s fool. And in his present circumstances, it was flattering to be seen through.

Also, she had nice ankles. Very small ears. Pretty skin. He fell asleep wondering how long her shiny, dark hair would be if she ever let it down.

 

The music didn’t wake up Astra, the world’s laziest terrier, and it only woke Henry gradually, gently, like a whisper in his ear. Piano music. Light as air, a quick, melodic tune. Gypsy music.

Well, well.

He’d gone to bed in his underwear, not expecting to have to get up, because he never had before, not once in his year-and-a-half-long career as a ghost detective. Where were his trousers? He fumbled with the switch on the wall, click-click, click-click. Nothing. No electricity.

Well, well, well.

“Don’t you hear that?” he complained to Astra, who was finally yawning and stretching, scratching his ear. “You’re not from Calcutta anymore, by the way, you’re from someplace north. You’re from . . . ” Hell if he knew. Have to look it up in a damn atlas.

Luckily there was a nearly full moon; he didn’t bother lighting the oil lamp. He could see fine. He could even check his . . . check his . . .

He stopped dead in front of the mirror over the bureau. His skin prickled with a cold that began in his bones and seeped into his blood—until his brain engaged and he started thinking, not just feeling. Scrawled on the mirror were the words:

Death stifles not the breath of true love

All right, she’d come into the room. How, though? Quietly, very quietly; Astra was a lazy cow, but he wasn’t deaf. Then, too, it was her room, so she’d know how, which floorboards creaked, that sort of thing. Still, it was unnerving to think he and his dog had slept through such an intimate invasion.

He was halfway down the stairs when the music stopped. He sprinted the rest of the way, cursing himself for his slowness. No one in the shadowy foyer. No one in the dark hall. He raced to the music room door, bare feet skidding on the floor, Astra behind him.

Nothing. Unless she was—no, not inside the piano, and he felt like an idiot as soon as he looked. He tried the light switch—still off. Smart ghost; she must’ve done something to the circuit. Could she have gotten out of this room without him seeing her? Or was there a secret panel? Then he really felt like an idiot. “Secret panel”—the very words made him cringe. Of course she could have gotten out, and run down the hall to the kitchen, through the back door, out into the yard. She was probably halfway to Lexington Street by now.

But she wasn’t. She was here. He didn’t intuit it—he heard music again.

This time a violin. Very versatile ghost. More Gypsy music, in a tragic minor key. Henry crept out into the hall, listening, turning his head to discern the direction. “This is supposed to be your job,” he muttered to Astra, who looked nothing but game and interested—not frightened, not threatened. Which was good. Henry had to admit that was reassuring.

He followed the music—“haunting” was really the only word for it—back the way he’d come, to the front of the house. It seemed for a moment, as he stood in the spacious hall, to come from everywhere. Then it stopped.

He thought at first it was his imagination that things were getting brighter, or maybe he thought the moon was coming out from behind a cloud. But no, this light slowly grew stronger from above, from upstairs, it came from . . .

He froze, one foot on the first stair tread. The dancing ghost swayed above him as if in thin air, and the light seemed to shine through her slender body. Certainly it shone through the thin white—alabaster—robe or billowy dress she wore, so that he could see . . . just about everything.

Afterward he would tell himself that that was what kept him motionless for so long, simply the pleasure of beholding a lovely naked lady, dancing. But the more complicated truth was that he could not have moved if he’d wanted to. For the length of time the apparition turned and bent and arched so gracefully, long blond hair rippling to her waist, her arms ethereal, like pale scarves floating in an unseen breeze, he honestly didn’t know if she was real or not.

Only after the unearthly light dimmed and finally disappeared was he able to move. And by then it was too late. He and Astra—whom he’d completely forgotten about; what was his excuse for doing nothing?—rushed up the steps to find the hall . . . empty.

But the portico doors were open.

And there was a scent in the air, a subtle perfume of . . . roses.

He searched every room in the house, including the basement. Also the elevator, although he had no idea what he was looking for there. He didn’t expect to find anything, and he didn’t. Last, he checked his equipment, although he had less than no faith that his thermometers, barometers, wind socks, compasses, and chimes could actually detect anything. If only he’d had some notice, some warning—if only he’d taken a picture of the dancer with one of his cameras. Then he’d know.

Then he’d know? What rubbish. He knew now! Angiolina Darlington had outfoxed him, that was all. He wasn’t used to that. He was the spooker, not the spookee.

In bed, he talked himself back into a state of calm. Look how rational I am, he thought. About to drift off to sleep in a haunted house. If I believed in ghosts, I’d be up all night.

He made the mistake of opening his eyes and letting his drowsy gaze drift to the mirror over the bureau.

The message had changed.

Who loves
Believes the Impossible.

Very literary ghost. Either that or he’d just been visited by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.