Pieces of Hate (A Wendover House Mystery Book 4) (11 page)

And I really didn’t want to. I told myself I was afraid of spiders.
Which was silly.
There hadn’t been any live spiders in the
wall for centuries. What I was really afraid of was touching what might be one
of the cursed coins.

“Fine,” I said, getting to my feet. My legs and shoes were covered in bits
of broken plaster. “Salad tongs will work.”

Down to the kitchen we went, Barney and I. Kelvin
wasn’t
interested in a snack, but Barney is always hopeful. I gave him a cookie from
the old crock and then fished through my drawers until I had the salad tongs.

It wasn’t easy since the hole was too small for my head and I had to
work by feel, but eventually I managed to pinch the rogue object in the pincers
and pulled up the thing I least wanted to see—another golden piece of hate.
This one rather dusty.

It wasn’t all that remarkable, but still quite apt, that there should
be a blaze of light followed almost immediately by the crack of thunder.

“Enough with the drama,” I muttered, feeling both annoyed and also a
little fearful at the omen. The necklace and coin I returned to the torn
leather bag which was badly desiccated but which managed to hide both items
from my sight. I left them on the floor and we all left the room, closing the
door behind us though the temptation was to hurl them over the cliff and into
the sea.

I lectured myself as I went downstairs to make some tea and to check
that the doors truly were locked. Ben would bring the box back tomorrow; I
would pack up everything and give it back to the sea in one neat package. Friday
was the full moon, if that really mattered, and then life would go back to
normal and we would all be fine.

I refused to entertain any other ideas.

I only just
recognyzed
the
Calmare
, she was
bloated with tessellations, barnacle strewn and festooned
wyth
seawrack
, her
sayls
slimed
and tattered to the extent of being useless unless
drivyn
by the
devyl’s
wynd
. I
wished that I could lay blame for the
vysion
on
inebriety but had tasted no
wyne
that
nyght
. I knew it was the damned
coyns
that called it forth from the deep. They recalled their fell purpose and wished
to be reunited so they might fulfill their maker’s evil intentions.

—from the unbound journal of
Halfbeard

Feeling caught in the morass of island weirdness and tired of waiting
for Ben to arrive, I decided to drop Jack an email and just casually mention
the box washing up on the beach.

I should have known that Jack would immediately assume the worst and
demand details of the box, the storm, and what I thought it meant.

Jack, at various times, had thought of us as having a past but also a
someday-to-be-again romantic alliance. This was nice, but at present we have a
long-distance friendship with some vague assumptions of obligation. How much
explanation was he owed?

With Kelvin on the desk advising me, I was deciding just what to tell Jack
about the box when there
came
a knock at the door.

It was rather early for Ben to have returned from the mainland, but I
jumped up quickly to answer the summons. However, it wasn’t my fellow scribbler
on the
doorstep,
it was Harris Ladd, looking serious.
Of course, he always looks serious. It is his natural expression, even if he
had attempted to dress down by wearing the gray wool cardigan he sometimes dons
when away from the office.

“May I come in?” he asked tentatively when I stood there gaping
instead of offering tea and shelter.

“Of course.
Sorry, I was
expecting Ben. He is bringing the box back today. I wanted it back before the
full moon.”

“That’s good,” Harris said gravely, stepping over the threshold and
hanging his hat on the coatrack. He didn’t greet either dog or cat. Harris
isn’t a dog person and Kelvin makes him nervous. I think he believes that
Kelvin was my great-grandfather’s familiar. And he could be right. “Have you
thought about how to….”

“Give it back? Not really, but I think it may actually work this time.
I, ah, found something in Nicholas Wendover’s bedroom.
Part
of the treasure that was missing.”

“Really?”
Harris began to look animated.

“Yes, you can look if you want. I just wouldn’t touch anything. It
feels….”

“Contaminated?” He grimaced.

“Yes. That’s exactly what it feels like.” I brushed at my skirt,
almost certain I could feel something slimy on my hands, though I had never
actually touched any of the cursed coins. “Look, I had to knock a hole in the
wall to get it out. We’ll need to have someone in to repair it. Sorry.”

Harris didn’t sigh but I knew he wanted to. Any damage to Wendover
House might as well be damage to him.

“I suppose retrieving the dread object was more important than the
plaster,” Harris said bravely. He really talks like that.

“I think so.” We started up the stairs. “Not that I’m not happy to see
you, but why have you come?”

“Well, it’s not truly important. Just some
gawmy
gossip, but Bryson and I discussed it and I thought I had best tell you that
we’ve had a death in the islands and there is bound to be some talk since the
deceased has family.”

“Someone besides Mrs. Tudor died?”

“Yes, a mainlander. He did not heed the weather bulletin and went out
last night. There was an accident and he drowned. He came for the celebration.”

I stopped outside the bedroom door, feeling a little ill. I hadn’t
thought about the tourists who would be here for the Founders Day Pageant.

“And?”
This news by itself was not enough to
bring Harris to the island.

“And the night before, whilst inebriated, he claimed to have seen a
ship—a fire ship.
Which in some cultures betokens that there
is a treasure hidden nearby.
”

“It also betokens death in every damned case I’ve ever heard of. It’s
like a nautical banshee.”

“Yes. But he was drunk and overcome by the idea of treasure, and chose
to chase the ship as one would a rainbow.…”

“And the storm killed him for it.”

Harris hesitated. He prefers to be precise and he feared it wasn’t
actually the storm that had killed the man. I’ll grant the distinction of being
killed by a storm and what was hiding in it, but not in matters of public
relations.

Some people are indefatigable in their efforts to do stupid things for
money. My surge of anger was partly about feeling some sense of responsibility
because it seemed that this curse was caused by a family member. But it was
also plain old anger that this stupid, greedy stranger could cause more
problems for us.

Some of the mainland coastal towns are within the outskirts of the
bane’s influence. The people are grateful that their fishing remains good while
other regions are in trouble. Mostly they don’t ask questions about what
happens in the islands because the story of the Wendover bane is still vaguely remembered
in fishing families. But those further inland do not benefit directly from the
islands’ good fortune and they do ask questions which sometimes find their way
into the press whose denizens are always hungry for sensational stories. There
is a saying in the news business: if it bleeds, it leads.

“It wouldn’t matter so much, if Mrs. Tudor had not had her vision of a
pirate vessel as well. People have long memories and aren’t always careful
about where they reminisce about past visitations,” he finally said. “There’s been
some talk among the visitors.”

“Harris, I don’t know what to say, except that I hope everyone is
paying attention to the weather bulletins from Bryson and staying off the water
at night. I’m doing what I can to fix this, but I keep getting sandbagged with
problems outside of my skill set. A little warning would be nice.”

“Keeping people off the water at night shouldn’t be a problem,” Harris
said, ignoring my implied criticism. “It never was a problem here in the
islands. Those on the mainland … they have mostly forgotten to have fear.”

I nodded, letting the matter go, and opened the door to Nicholas’s
sleeping chamber. We stepped into the bedroom. Harris winced when he saw the
wall and the dried wood lathes and plaster on the floor, but his attention went
at once to the glove on the rug near the window. In the sunlight it looked a
bit like a shriveled hand.

“Use the tongs if you want to see the coin that’s inside.” I didn’t
offer to fish it out. “The damned coins are associated with something called
monkey leprosy.”

Harris actually shuddered.

“That’s alright. I feel no need to see the damned things. Your
great-grandfather described them well enough.”

“You knew about them then?”

“Not that they were specifically cursed, he may not have known that, but
that there were two gold coins in the chest, yes.”

Not for the first time I felt like shaking Harris for withholding
information from me.
Again.
He would let me do it too.
Because I was the last Wendover.
This kept me from
giving in to the impulse. That and the fact that I knew he acted out of what he
thought was kindness and the danger of overwhelming me with peculiar and
sometimes even bad news.

“There are three gold coins now.
And the necklace.
The jewelry may not have anything to do with the problem, but Nicholas thought
it might, so I’m sending it back, just in case. I don’t want anyone else
dying.”
Especially me.

And I was beginning to wonder if this was a possibility. Ghosts in
literature and legend are usually unaware of the people who witness their
movements. The white ladies and black monks make their eternal rounds at their
appointed places at the predetermined hours, unaffected by human presence. But
I know from personal experience that ghosts can be completely aware of the
corporeal world and can seek to influence it.

I was beginning to think that whatever was out there was aware of me.
At least was aware that I was a Wendover, and as the family’s last
representative, it wanted something only I could give it.

Harris stared at me for a moment, probably wondering how Nicholas had
contacted me with news from beyond the grave, and then his consternation broke.
His smile was relieved.

“You found his log? Where was it? I should very much like to read it.”

“No log, just some notes.
But there is enough there
to give me the general outline of the situation.”

When Harris made no move toward the yellowed glove, I gestured that we
should leave. Just seeing the thing made me nervous and, though it was
completely unreasonable, I didn’t even want to breathe the air of the room so
long as the coin was in it.

“Did you know that Nicholas killed the crew of the ship he stole the
treasure from?” I asked Harris. “They were sick with something he called monkey
leprosy and he sewed them up—living and dead—into a sail and threw them
overboard.”

Harris looked distressed and also revolted. He doesn’t like staring such
brutal unpleasantness in the eye.

“I know every family has black sheep, but this guy was a real winner,”
I said. “I kind of hope the ghosts, or monsters, or whatever this thing is got
him in the end.”

“It was said that either he died by accident, or that he killed
himself.” Harris got out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “He did not die
peacefully in his bed.”

“So, chalk one up for the other team. Or maybe three, if they scared
Mrs. Tudor to death and lured the drunken treasure hunter out to sea.”

Harris hesitated.

“What?”

“There were probably more deaths through the years. It is said that
deaths come in threes whenever the box appears and it seems to have come every
decade or so.
At least during Kelvin’s life.”

That was a lot of deaths.
Thirty every century.
Somehow, this had to end. Hopefully returning this last coin would do the
trick.

“Ben doesn’t know that part of the story,” I said. “I’d prefer to keep
it that way.”

“I agree. There is no way that the family could be held legally liable
but the whole thing would attract the sensational press if he were to mention
it in one of his books.”

Leave it to Harris to worry about that aspect of things ahead of
anything else.

“I know,” I said soothingly. “That’s why I wouldn’t let Ben’s museum
friend call in specialists to examine the box and the coins. The matter must be
contained.”

We reached the foot of the stairs. Since Harris didn’t put his hat
back on immediately I suggested he stay for lunch. I didn’t have much I could
prepare on short notice, but he liked baked beans on toast and that I could
manage.