Joan Smith (7 page)

A sudden hush invaded the room. It seemed that even breath was suspended. My heart was throbbing in my throat with excitement. My fingers closed possessively over the locket, holding on to it for dear life. I felt again that all-embracing warmth enfold me. I was afraid to open my fingers, afraid the locket would be gone. I forced myself to loosen my grip. Of course, it was still there. In a trancelike state I fastened the trinket around my neck, lifting my hair first.

A laughing, loving voice spoke inside my head. “Demme, you'll have to do it up yourself Belle. My fingers are too clumsy. Here, I’ll hold your hair out of the way.” Warm fingers brushed the nape of my neck. "There, now you have a piece of me for all eternity, or for as long as we last. You must put one of your own curls in the other side. And I shall have a piece of your mane, too, to carry next my heart.”

The scissors snipped, and a blond curl fell into his waiting palm. As he wound it around his finger, a carved emerald flashed in the sunlight. At the edge of vision, I could see branches of willow drooping above a stream, like the willows at Chêne Bay. It was my phantom lover who spoke.

The next voice was an unwelcome intrusion. "The blond curl is Arabella’s, according to tradition,” Emily said. “I don’t know who the black hair belongs to. Either Vanejul or Throckley, one assumes.”

I pressed the golden charm against my flesh a moment. It fell into the hollow pocket at the base of the throat, as if it had been designed for me. Then I reluctantly unfastened the clasp and looked at it again. Emily said, and did, the most surprising thing.

“Keep it,” she said. “Keep it for now. It might act as a charm to help your writing.” I turned to thank her, with tears in my eyes. “It might have been made for you.” She smiled a wise, arcane smile. “I thought, when I tried to put it on, that Arabella must have had a small neck, like yours.”

I squeezed it tightly in my hand. “I’ll take very good care of it, Emily. Thank you.”

“I know you will, Belle,” she said simply.

We didn’t return to the morning parlor, except to pick up my purse. I left the house at once, half afraid she would change her mind and take the locket back. I drove around the corner and parked in the dappled shade of a tree to examine my treasure. Why had Emily given it to me? Why, for that matter, did I want it so badly? It was pretty, but not outstanding. It had no diamonds, no precious stones, just the intertwined flowers engraved on the front, and the single word on the back.
Toujours.
Always.

A shudder wrenched through me. I had not turned the locket over yet. How did I know it was engraved on the back? It wasn’t! It couldn’t possibly be! But if it was ... then time had been annihilated, and Arabella was here, confiding in me, telling me things without speaking, invading my head with her memories. Her spirit had indeed been set loose, and she had chosen me as her confidante. I was the one who was to tell her story; to free her from those nocturnal wailings in the park. I was to discover and reveal why Vanejul had killed her.

But that
toujours
was only in my mind. I wouldn’t look. I was afraid to. I felt an infinitesimal stirring of the chain in my palm. She was not going to let me act the coward. I slowly turned the heart over and read the single word, done in Gothic script.
Toujours.
That was all it said, but I knew its full meaning as well as I knew my name. It meant “we will be together always. Our love will endure forever.
Toujours.”

The phantom voice said,
“Toujours l’amour.
How hackneyed can one get? I should be ashamed of myself. But then the truth always does sound demmed trite, don’t it?” That ungrammatical “don’t it?” jarred, until I remembered reading it in Byron’s letters, so apparently it was a gentleman’s fad of the era.

For a long time I sat in the car, trying to come to terms with the impossible thing that was happening to me. I was being lured into the beyond, to some limitless other realm never before imagined, into the enchanted boundary where sane reality blossomed into infinite eternity. The past, it seemed, was not irretrievably lost; it was poised just beyond the door of human perception, waiting, tempting, luring the unwary. But why had fate chosen me? It could hardly have chosen a less likely candidate. I was never one for taking big risks. Did I dare to venture toward this strange destiny fate had planned for me?

There was an inscrutable mystery, some unfathomable force beyond limited human comprehension at work here. Frightened as I was, I knew I could not retreat. I would continue into the unknown, with Arabella to guide me, as she had guided me to the bookstore to find Vanejul’s book, and as she had guided me to Emily. With Arabella’s help, I would free Arabella.

She was mine now, my responsibility, my obligation, and my opportunity. When I roused myself from the trancelike state, it was five o’clock. I must have sat there, thinking, for over an hour. I drove to the library and asked the librarian if she had any literature on Vanejul and Arabella Comstock.

She asked for references before issuing me a card. I gave Mollie and Emily, thinking they would not mind. Then she directed me to the proper department. There was no book on Arabella, but I found a large, glossy, illustrated history of the Raventhorpe family. With luck, there might be a picture of Arabella in it. As the library was closing, I had to leave without looking at the pictures.

Chapter Eight

Having accepted my fate, I felt a new calm descend upon me. I did not dash into the cottage and open the book to search for pictures of Arabella and Vanejul. I treated the book as a Christmas gift, to be savored a hundred times in imagination before opening the cover.

I made a sandwich of layers of ham shaved paper-thin, piled on crusty bread, applied a generous dollop of hot mustard. I dined on succulent green grapes from Chile, cheese from Switzerland, supped Darjeeling tea from India in my cottage in the New Forest, marveling that so many corners of the world came together in this simple cottage for this simple meal.

Only when I had removed the dishes and run water over them did I allow myself the luxury of opening the book.
The History of the Raventhorpes
was not only illustrated, it proved to be virtually a picture book, with what Sheridan describes as “a neat rivulet of text meandering through a meadow of margin.”

All my characters were there: dour-faced Sir Giles Throckley with sly eyes, a prosperous belly, and a cravat up to his double chins. His son William, the man for whom Arabella had jilted Vanejul, was not my phantom lover. He was a younger, thinner, and more handsome version of Sir Giles, but with a weak chin and without the sly eyes. It was hard to credit that a sixteen-year-old lass could have fallen in love with him. But then she would have been under Sir Giles’s guardianship, and he would have been at pains to put his son’s interests forward.

I turned the page and gazed at Arabella. The reproduction was an oval shape, perhaps taken from one of those ivory miniatures popular in the days before the invention of the camera. It was small and the artist not a famous one, but he had caught the spirit of a gentle, pretty girl on the verge of womanhood. The blue eyes smiling at me over the centuries held a twinkle of mischief. Her full cheeks tapered to a determined little chin. Her blond hair was drawn back, with wisps of curls escaping to wanton about her cheeks. A white shawl was arranged at her shoulders. She looked about fifteen or sixteen, indicating that the likeness had been taken shortly before her death. She was not wearing the locket.

I sat a moment, communing with Arabella. Something compelled me to pick up the locket. As my fingers closed over it, I felt again that tide of sadness engulf me. Some psychics claim to read the character of the owner by holding one of the person’s objects. If I had some psychic power, I wanted to use it to the full to understand Arabella. I pressed the delicate gold heart closely in my fingers and closed my eyes to concentrate.

The sadness gathered force until it sat like a rock on my chest. It slowly congealed to a burning anger, then gradually ebbed to frustration. I sat on, willing knowledge to come. The frustration increased by slow degrees to a raging fury. I could feel the mood in every atomy of my being, as it swelled insensibly until I felt it consume me.
It is so unfair!
That was the message. She was with me, there in the kitchen, at the deal table, surely trying to tell me something of great moment. Then the feeling dwindled, leaving me drained.

Unable to learn more by intuition, I resorted to mere common sense. What else could she be relaying but her anger at having her life snatched away from her at such a young age? She wanted revenge on Vanejul; she wanted her life back, but that was beyond doing. All I could do was try to learn what had happened, to write it for the world to know her story, and hope that would be enough to let her troubled spirit rest.

A residue of Arabella’s anger was still with me when I turned the page and saw myself gazing at my phantom lover. There he was, the handsome face, the sleek black hair, the darkly sardonic eyes, the full lips, not quite smiling. The name under it was Baron Raventhorpe, the poet Vanejul. It did not come as a surprise. An inkling of the truth had been growing inside me. Oh yes, this was the man who had had his way with a whole countryful of women. His easy charm won them without half trying, as it had no doubt won the innocent young Arabella, and he’d drowned her in the weir when she tried to escape him. This was not a face to take defeat lightly. It was accustomed to having its own way. In spite of her cruel fate, I was glad Arabella had thwarted him.

Mollie thought the ghost visiting the area was a man. If Vanejul was the force that had been called up and come to me in my dream—was it a dream?—I feared I had met more than my match. What chance had I against this demon? As I sat gazing at the book, the page showing his face flipped idly over to the next page, as pages in a tightly bound book will do. I looked at one of those meandering rivulets of print, then focused my gaze to read.

But it is all conjecture. Arabella’s body was never recovered from the lake. Raventhorpe was never seen alive in England again. A local farmer reported having seen Raventhorpe argue with Arabella by the lake and throw her body into the water. The farmer was accidentally shot in the spinney by poachers the next night, shortly after giving his testimony. Some believe Raventhorpe lurked about and shot him to kill the sole witness, not knowing an affidavit had already been signed testifying to what the farmer had seen.

I turned the page back to the illustration, and sat studying the lecherous, cold-blooded murderer, wrapped up in a smiling face and disguised under a load of charm. A clever schemer who had eluded the law during his own lifetime, and historical sleuths for nearly two centuries. I felt beaten before I began. I closed the book and drew a deep sigh. I was mentally preparing an apology to Arabella when it happened.

The book flew off the table of its own volition and slammed onto the floor. There is no other way to describe it. I didn’t accidentally push it. I was sitting perfectly still. There was no draft; the window was closed. No earthquake or tremor moved the floor, causing it to slide. It was hurled with a supernatural force.

I leapt up, emitting a gasp. Glancing at the window, I saw the unmistakable features of Vanejul peering in at me, and my blood turned to wax. On his face was the sardonic smile he wore in the picture. “This is all in your mind,” I said out loud, trying to convince myself. Vanejul’s smile stretched to a grin. He tossed his head back and laughed a soundless, mirthless laugh. Then his image faded like the Cheshire cat.

For a moment, I was incapable of movement. I stood frozen to the spot, peering from book to window, afraid that Vanejul would materialize before me and strangle me, or carry me off to the weir to join Arabella for all eternity in the cold, dark water. My heart banged against my ribs. I was afraid to stay there, and equally afraid to move. I don’t know how long I would have stood there, petrified, if the door knocker had not sounded just then.

My first thought was that he was at the door seeking entrance. But Vanejul was no gentleman. He would have entered if he wished. No, he only planned to terrorize me by leering at windows, to prevent me from learning the truth. The repeated knock had an urgently human sound to it. The door opened, and before I had time to panic, Mollie’s fluting voice called, “Anybody home?” Her footsteps advanced toward the kitchen. “Belle? It’s me. I saw the light and thought you must be—”

Then her frizzed head appeared at the door and I ran to pitch myself into her arms. She comforted me a moment, then stood back. “Now, what is going on here?” she demanded.

“He’s here! Vanejul. You did call his spirit up, Mollie, and he’s come to get me. You’ve got to get rid of him.” The words came tumbling out in a rush.

“So you’ve seen your first ghost,” she said calmly. “Sit down and we’ll have a little chat. Any chance of a cuppa?”

Eventually I settled down enough to get the tea. The cup clattered as I put it on a saucer. The tea fell uncertainly from the spout, splashing into the saucer, but I was glad to have something to do. When we were seated at the table, Mollie said, “It’s nothing to be afraid of, Belle. Ghosts have no physical power. They can only get inside your head and lure you on to do things you don’t want to do.”

“He threw that book right off the table,” I said, pointing to where it still lay on the floor.

"Then he’s using a poltergeist,” she said blandly. “They are a nuisance, but they’re just mischief makers. What’s that pretty little thing?” she asked, taking up Arabella’s locket.

I told her about my visit to Emily, and the trip to the library. I told her about the spirit leading me to the tobacco shop where I had found the book, and everything else that had happened to me. She listened, unfazed, totally accepting.

“He’s afraid that I’m going to write Arabella’s story. He wants to prevent me,” I said.

She sat a moment, puzzling over this. “The world already knows, or believes, the worst of him,” she pointed out.