Mistletoe Mysteries Page 3

  She hung up on the general and was still standing there with her arms dangling limp when Brooks came back. Opening the door took all the nerve she had.

  “Sorry I took longer than I meant to,” he apologized. “Ms. Carboy was just coming in and waylaid me on the steps.”

  Sarah came alive again. “What was she wearing?”

  “Eh? Oh. Black boots and gloves, brown coat, and a brown fur hat.” Brooks was a birdwatcher, he noticed details. He wouldn’t be wrong.

  “I have to call the general again,” she said. “This will mess up your sherry hour.”

  “Why? Sarah, what’s happened? You’re white as a sheet.”

  “Just a minute, Brooks. General Purslane, are those secret service men still with you? Wonderful! Have them come immediately to the Kelling house on Tulip Street and pick up a woman named—what’s her first name, Brooks?”

  “Virginia.”

  “Naturally, what else? Virginia Carboy. Tall, thin, long-faced, about forty-five. She’s the one who put the negatives in the tea cozy, attached the note, and delivered the bomb. Now, please. She may try to bolt once she realizes she hasn’t set this house afire.”

  Sarah reconfirmed the address, broke the connection, and dialed again. Charles answered, fortunately.

  “Charles, this is Sarah. Don’t so much as lift an eyebrow, but you and Mariposa make absolutely sure Ms. Carboy doesn’t get out of the house. Somebody’s on the way to pick her up, she has to be there when they arrive. Knock her out and tie her up if you have to, but do it quietly.”

  Evidently violence had not been necessary. Watching out the front window while Brooks reset the glass in the door, Sarah had seen the secret service men rush to the house, seen Charles let them in with precisely the right blend of unruffled dignity and patriotic cooperation. She’d seen Ms. Carboy being led from the house in handcuffs and stowed safely away in the unmarked vehicle that had managed during its brief stay to fill the lower half of Tulip Street with a Yuletide medley of honking horns and drivers’ curses.

  “I can’t imagine it was Cousin Mabel’s photograph that turned Ms. Carboy into a homicidal maniac,” said Sarah. “It must have been Mr. Ronely who broke in and took the blue tea cozy, don’t you think? Ms. Carboy wouldn’t have had time to commit a robbery, then rush back for an incendiary bomb, even if she’d had one kicking around her bedroom where Mariposa would be apt as not to set it off when she cleaned.”

  “I quite agree,” said Brooks. “They wouldn’t have had time to liase, as General Purslane would no doubt describe the action. Anyway, the reason for that elaborate rigmarole with the tea cozy has to have been that they couldn’t afford to be seen together. Otherwise, she could simply have walked up and handed him the negatives.”

  “So the bomb was a preplanned attempt to kill me,” said Sarah. “Because Ronely, or whatever his real name happens to be, got the wrong tea cozy the first time around, I suppose. He may have thought I knew what he was up to and tricked him on purpose. Or else he was simply afraid I’d be able to identify him as the man who mugged me in front of the Ritz. Somehow or other he must have got word to Ms. Carboy that she was to deliver the fire bomb instead of just shooting or stabbing me because they didn’t want it known I’d been deliberately murdered. If the arson squad had managed to detect signs of the bomb afterward, I suppose a story would have been gently leaked to the effect that Sarah Kelling Bittersohn was a known terrorist. Ugh!”

  “Here,” said Brooks, “you’d better have a nip of your own brandy. I don’t know but what I might have one myself. What do you say we light the gas log?”

  “You do it,” Sarah replied. “I lit the last fire, I and the pigeon. It burned to death, poor thing.”

  “Better the pigeon.”

  That was a major concession from Brooks, who was normally on the side of his feathered friends. “Sit down and warm yourself, Sarah. I’d better start fixing that broken window.”

  While Sarah was finishing her brandy and Brooks was puttying the window, Charles snatched a moment from his service in the library to telephone that Ms. Carboy had been only too willing to rat on Mr. Ronely as soon as she realized the jig was up. Even now the secret service men must be closing in on him at a secluded rendezvous where he was trying to peddle Cousin Mabel and the alligator to a clandestine representative of an unfriendly foreign power. And Mrs. Brooks desired to ascertain whether Mr. Brooks would be back in time for dinner.

  Brooks said Theonia had better not count on him because he still had Mrs. Sarah’s curtain rods to hang. He then went on with his carpentry while Sarah roused herself from the gas log and began wrapping presents including Mother Bittersohn’s tea cozy, which she now felt safe enough to take out of the freezer. Not to rock the boat, she used plain white paper and noncontroversial blue ribbon.

  Max came home exhausted from tracking down clues and battling the storm, sorely in need of wifely consolation. She got him a drink and settled him down by the fireside with her and Brooks to discuss the case he’d been working on, which was a particularly intriguing one with many ramifications of interest to the analytic mind. Then Max got a telephone call that made him realize he’d inadvertently set up Sarah’s uncle, of whom for some reason she was fond, to be the killer’s next victim. Thereupon, all three of them charged off into the blizzard to ward off yet another disaster.

  By the time they’d rescued the uncle, got the murderer safely jugged, and floundered their way back to Tulip Street, none of the three wanted to do anything except crawl into bed and stay there. Sarah had all but forgotten her own adventure until Max, warming his cold nose against the back of her neck, asked sleepily, “How did the shopping go?”

  “All right,” she replied. “I bought your mother a tea cozy.”

  “That’s nice,” he said, and fell asleep.

  After a moment’s reflection, Sarah did the same.

  PETER LOVESEY

  THE HAUNTED CRESCENT

  Few mystery writers feel more comfortable and secure in the past than Peter Lovesey. This often charming, always fascinating British author thoroughly enjoys researching and creating the sense of an earlier time … not always the same time, for his stories have spanned many decades. Peter lives near Bath and often walks past the Royal Crescent, entertaining himself by imagining things that might have gone on and perhaps might still be going on there.

  A ghost was seen last Christmas in a certain house in the Royal Crescent. Believe me, this is true. I speak from personal experience, as a resident of the City of Bath and something of an authority on psychic phenomena. I readily admit that ninety-nine percent of so-called hauntings turn out to have been hallucinations of one sort or another, but this is the exception, a genuine haunted house. Out of consideration for the present owners (who for obvious reasons wish to preserve their privacy), I shall not disclose the exact address, but if you doubt me, read what happened to me on Christmas Eve, 1988.

  The couple who own the house had gone to Norfolk for the festive season, leaving on the Friday, December twenty-third. Good planning. The ghost was reputed to walk on Christmas Eve. Knowing of my interest, they had generously placed their house at my disposal. I am an ex-policeman, by the way, and it takes a lot to frighten me.

  For those who like a ghost story with all the trimmings—deep snow and howling winds outside—I am sorry. I must disappoint you. Christmas, 1988, was not a white one in Bath. It was unseasonably warm. There wasn’t even any fog. All I can offer in the way of atmospheric effects are a full moon that night and an owl that hooted periodically in the trees at the far side of the sloping lawn that fronts the Crescent. It has to be admitted that this was not a spooky-looking barn owl, but a tawny owl, which on this night was making more of a high-pitched “kee-wik” call than a hoot, quite cheery, in fact. Do not despair, however. The things that happened in the house that night more than compensated for the absence of werewolves and banshees outside.

  It is vital to the story that you are sufficiently informed
about the building in which the events occurred. Whether you realize it or not, you have probably seen the Royal Crescent, if not as a resident, or a tourist, then in one of the numerous films in which it has appeared as a backdrop to the action. It is in a quiet location northwest of the city and comprises thirty houses in a semielliptical terrace completed in 1774 to the specification of John Wood the Younger. It stands comparison with any domestic building in Europe. I defy anyone not to respond to its uncomplicated grandeur, the majestic panorama of 114 Ionic columns topped by a portico and balustrade; and the roadway at the front where Jane Austen and Charles Dickens trod the cobbles. But you want me to come to the ghost.

  My first intimation of something unaccountable came at about twenty past eleven that Christmas Eve. I was in the drawing room on the first floor. I had stationed myself there a couple of hours before. The door was ajar and the house was in darkness. No, that isn’t quite accurate. I should have said simply that none of the lights were switched on; actually the moonlight gave a certain amount of illumination, silver-blue rectangles projected across the carpet and over the base of the Christmas tree, producing an effect infinitely prettier than fairy lights. The furniture was easily visible, too, armchairs, table, and grand piano. One’s eyes adjust. It didn’t strike me as eerie to be alone in that unlit house. Anyone knows that a spirit of the departed is unlikely to manifest itself in electric light.

  No house is totally silent, certainly no centrally heated house. The sounds produced by expanding floorboards in so-called haunted houses up and down the land must have fooled ghost-hunters by the hundred. In this case as a precaution against a sudden freeze, the owners had left the system switched on. It was timed to turn off at eleven, so the knocks and creaks I was hearing now ought to have been the last of the night.

  As events turned out, it wasn’t a sound that alerted me first. It was a sudden draft against my face and a flutter of white across the room. I tensed. The house had gone silent. I crossed the room to investigate.

  The disturbance had been caused by a Christmas card falling off the mantelpiece into the grate. Nothing more alarming than that. Cards are always falling down. That’s why some people prefer to suspend them on strings. I stooped, picked up the card, and replaced it, smiling at my overactive imagination.

  Yet I had definitely noticed a draft. The house was supposed to be free of drafts. All the doors and windows were closed and meticulously sealed against the elements. Strange. I listened, holding my breath. The drawing room where I was standing was well placed for picking up any unexplained sound in the house. It was at the center of the building. Below me were the ground floor and the cellar, above me the second floor and the attic.

  Hearing nothing, I decided to venture out to the landing and listen there. I was mystified, yet unwilling at this stage to countenance a supernatural explanation. I was inclined to wonder whether the cut-off of the central heating had resulted in some trick of convection that gave the impression or the reality of a disturbance in the air. The falling card was not significant in itself. The draft required an explanation. My state of mind, you see, was calm and analytical.

  Ten or fifteen seconds passed. I leaned over the banisters and looked down the stairwell to make sure that the front door was firmly shut, and so it proved to be. Then I heard a rustle from the room where I had been. I knew what it was—the card falling into the grate again—for another distinct movement of air had stirred the curtain on the landing window, causing a shift in the moonlight across the stairs. I was in no doubt anymore that this was worth investigating. My only uncertainty was whether to start with the floors above me, or below.

  I chose the latter, reasoning that if, as I suspected, someone had opened a window, it was likely to be at the ground or basement levels. My assumption was wrong. I shall not draw out the suspense. I merely wish to record that I checked the cellar, kitchen, scullery, dining room, and study and found every window and external door secure and bolted from inside. No one could have entered after me.

  So I began to work my way upstairs again, methodically visiting each room. And on the staircase to the second floor, I heard a sigh.

  Occasionally in Victorian novels a character would “heave” a sigh. Somehow the phrase had always irritated me. In real life I never heard a sigh so weighty that it seemed to involve muscular effort—until this moment. This was a sound hauled up from the depths of somebody’s inner being, or so I deduced. Whether it really originated with somebody or some thing was open to speculation.

  The sound had definitely come from above me. Unable by now to suppress my excitement, I moved up to the second-floor landing, where I found three doors, all closed. I moved from one to the other, opening them rapidly and glancing briefly inside. Two bedrooms and a bathroom. I hesitated. A bathroom. Had the “sigh,” I wondered, been caused by some aberration of the plumbing? Air locks are endemic in the complicated systems installed in these old Georgian buildings. The houses were not built with valves and cisterns. The efficiency of the pipework depended on the variable skill of generations of plumbers.

  The sound must have been caused by trapped air.

  Rationality reasserted itself. I would finish my inspection and prove to my total satisfaction that what I had heard was neither human nor spectral in origin. I closed the bathroom door behind me and crossed the landing to the last flight of stairs, more narrow than those I had used so far. In times past they had been the means of access to the servants’ quarters in the attic. I glanced up at the white-painted door at the head of these stairs and observed that it was slightly ajar.

  My foot was on the first stair and my hand on the rail when I stiffened. That door moved.

  It was being drawn inward. The movement was slow and deliberate. As the gap increased, a faint glow of moonlight was cast from the interior onto the paneling to my right. I stared up and watched the figure of a woman appear in the doorway.

  She was in a white gown or robe that reached to her feet. Her hair hung loose to the level of her chest—fine, gently shifting hair so pale in color that it appeared to merge with the dress. Her skin, too, appeared bloodless. The eyes were flint black, however. They widened as they took me in. Her right hand crept to her throat and I heard her give a gasp.

  The sensations I experienced in that moment of confrontation are difficult to convey. I was convinced that nothing of flesh and blood had entered that house in the hours I had been there. All the entrances were bolted—I had checked. I could not account for the phenomenon, or whatever it was, that had manifested itself, yet I refused to be convinced. I was unwilling to accept what my eyes were seeing and my rational faculties could not explain. She could not be a ghost.

  I said, “Who are you?”

  The figure swayed back as if startled. For a moment I thought she was going to close the attic door, but she remained staring at me, her hand still pressed to her throat. It was the face and form of a young woman, not more than twenty.

  I asked, “Can you speak?”

  She appeared to nod.

  I said, “What are you doing here?”

  She caught her breath. In a strange, half-whispered utterance she said, as if echoing my words, “Who are you?”

  I took a step upward toward her. It evidently frightened her, for she backed away and became almost invisible in the shadowy interior of the attic room. I tried to dredge up some reassuring words. “It’s all right. Believe me, it’s all right.”

  Then I twitched in surprise. Downstairs, the doorbell chimed. After eleven on Christmas Eve!

  I said, “What on earth …?”

  The woman in white whimpered something I couldn’t hear.

  I tried to make light of it. “Santa, I expect.”

  She didn’t react.

  The bell rang a second time.

  “He ought to be using the chimney,” I said. I had already decided to ignore the visitor, whoever it was. One unexpected caller was all I could cope with.

  The young woman spoke
up, and the words sprang clearly from her. “For God’s sake, send him away!”

  “You know who it is?”

  “Please! I beg you.”

  “If you know who it is,” I said reasonably, “wouldn’t you like to answer it?”

  “I can’t.”

  The chimes rang out again.

  I said, “Is it someone you know?”

  “Please. Tell him to go away. If you answer the door he’ll go away.”

  I was letting myself be persuaded. I needed her cooperation. I wanted to know about her. “All right,” I relented. “But will you be here when I come back?”

  “I won’t leave.”

  Instinctively I trusted her. I turned and descended the two flights of stairs to the hall. The bell rang again. Even though the house was in darkness, the caller had no intention of giving up.

  I drew back the bolts, opened the front door a fraction, and looked out. A man was on the doorstep, leaning on the iron railing. A young man in a leather jacket glittering with studs and chains. His head was shaven. He, at any rate, looked like flesh and blood. He said, “What kept you?”

  I said, “What do you want?”

  He glared. “For crying out loud—who the hell are you?” His eyes slid sideways, checking the number on the wall.

  I said with frigid courtesy, “I think you must have made a mistake.”

  “No,” he said. “This is the house all right. What’s your game, mate? What are you doing here with the lights off?”

  I told him that I was an observer of psychic phenomena.

  “Come again?”

  “Ghosts,” I said. “This house has the reputation of being haunted. The owners have kindly allowed me to keep watch tonight.”

  “Oh, yes?” he said with heavy skepticism. “Spooks, is it? I’ll have a gander at them meself.” With that, he gave the door a shove. There was no security chain and I was unable to resist the pressure. He stepped across the threshold. “Ghost-buster, are you, mate? You wouldn’t, by any chance, be lifting the family silver at the same time? Anyone else in here?”