The Ghost Sonata (17 page)

Gilda couldn't remember seeing any “switch,” but she decided not to press Danny further since the process of speaking seemed to irritate him. Besides, she sensed that he and his mother wanted to watch their television show, and she needed to ask a few probing questions while she had a chance.

“Something we can help you with, luv?”

“I just had a question about the house.”

“It's a push button what flushes the toilet,” said Danny.

“It's not a question about the
toilet
,” said Gilda. “I wondered if you've ever noticed anything unusual about this house—any evidence of a haunting?”

“You're asking if we have a ghost?” Mrs. Luard peered at her with slightly unfocused eyes that seemed dilated from medication.

“My friend Wendy and I heard some strange noises, and I actually saw something in my room—something that looked like the ghost of a boy.”

Mrs. Luard looked at her son. “Have you seen any ghost-boys in Wyntle House, Danny?” She seemed amused.

Danny shook his head wryly.

“No ghosts here, luv,” said Mrs. Luard.

“We don't do refunds for hauntings, neither,” Danny added.

“I wasn't going to ask for a refund.”

“You want Danny to go check out your room for you, then? Make sure everything's okay?”

Gilda could tell that the last thing Danny wanted was to leave his television show to trudge up four flights of steps. That was fine with her: the last thing she needed was Danny glumly checking under her bed for ghosts.

“Thanks anyway,” said Gilda. “Hauntings are an area of interest for me, so I thought I'd ask you about it before conducting my own investigation.”

“Hauntings are an area of interest, eh?”

“I'm a psychic investigator.” Gilda usually pursued her work in secret, but every now and then she felt compelled to blurt out the truth about herself—sometimes in blunt reaction to a dismissive remark. It was as if she needed to remind herself that her interests weren't pointless and silly.

Mrs. Luard peered at Gilda with clearer eyes, as if realizing for the first time that Gilda viewed ghosts as an enhancement to her stay at Wyntle House rather than a cause for customer complaint. “Well, there may be a ghost or two in this old house,” she said. “And there are lots of ghosts in Oxford, aren't there, Danny?”

“Sure,” said Danny, reaching for more crisps.

“You've had enough crisps now, Danny,” said Mrs. Luard. “Isn't there a beheaded ghost that kicks his head around the grounds of one of the colleges? St. John's, I think it was.”

“Could be.” Danny crunched his crisps as he spoke, as if making it clear that the topic of ghosts filled him with exquisite boredom. “There's a bunch of headless spirits roaming 'round, I 'spect.”

“And I'm sure you've heard about the ghost of Rosamund the Fair, who haunts Godstow Nunnery,” Mrs. Luard added.

Gilda was intrigued; she hadn't heard of Rosamund the Fair.

“Everybody's heard of her,” said Danny. “And you call yourself a psychic investigator?”

“If you can call yourself a dab hand,” Gilda blurted, “I can call myself a psychic investigator.”

“I never did call myself a dab hand; that's what Mum calls me!”

“Hush, Danny. We have to be polite to our guests.” Mrs. Luard regarded Gilda blearily. “Rosamund was the secret girlfriend of one of them kings of long ago—King Henry the second, I believe. The king kept her locked away in a secret garden, hidden deep in a maze so full of twists and turns, nobody could find her. In fact, in order to find his own way to Rosamund, the king had to tie one end of a very long piece of string to her finger and the other end of the string to a knight who stood outside the maze guarding her.

“Well, as luck would have it, the king's wife found out about Rosamund. She killed the knight, followed the string to Rosamund, and forced her to drink a glass of deadly poison. And ever since, Rosamund haunts the ruins of the nunnery here in Oxford.”

“I thought she haunted the Trout Pub,” said Danny.

“Maybe she haunts both.”

Gilda couldn't help wondering if everyone in Oxford had a ghost story to tell.
Maybe ghosts are so abundant here, you can't help but encounter them
, she thought.

“Well, thanks,” said Gilda. “That was an interesting story.”

“Hope Danny and I didn't scare you, luv.”

“I don't scare that easily,” said Gilda, turning to leave.

“Someone left you a message today,” Danny blurted, delivering this non sequitur with what struck Gilda as a slightly sinister smile.

“Who?”

Danny shrugged. “Odd-looking bloke. A stranger.” He continued watching television without explaining himself further.

“Well—what was the
message
from this mysterious stranger?” Gilda found it difficult to refrain from rushing across the room and giving the chubby boy a good hard shake.

Danny shrugged. “I left it outside your door.”

What ‘odd-looking bloke' could have left her a message? Something about the slight smirk on Danny's face made Gilda feel suspicious.

“Fine,” said Gilda. “I'll go see what it says.”

Propped against the door to Gilda's room was a folded piece of stationery. She opened the tissue-thin paper with a feeling of anticipation.
Maybe it's from Julian
, she thought hopefully.

As she began to read the fountain-pen handwriting, she was stunned. The note was from Professor Sabertash.

21

Professor Sabertash

 

Gilda arrived at Professor Sabertash's rooms in Merton College just as an undergraduate was leaving her tutorial in tears.

“How could anyone be so brutal?” the girl sniffed, digging into a large shoulder bag for a tissue. Smudges of mascara and eyeliner rimmed her red eyes. Her puffy tulip skirt and flat, pointy shoes reminded Gilda of an elf 's costume. “I worked and worked on that essay, and that Sabertash—he wasn't satisfied until every single one of my points was completely and utterly destroyed!”

“That's terrible.” Gilda wasn't sure what to say. She had half a mind to turn and run back down the stairs. If Professor Sabertash routinely drove his college students to tears, how on earth would he receive a fourteen-year-old posing as a serious scholar?

But it was too late to turn back: as the tearful girl fled, Professor Sabertash thrust open the door and beamed at Gilda quizzically through thick, cloudy glasses. “Dame Gilda, I presume?”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Professor Sabertash.” Gilda nervously extended her gloved hand. Tufts of unruly hair sprouted from the professor's nose, ears, and eyebrows. A bit of elastic from his underwear peeked out over his pants and shirt, and a few splotches of mustard from a high table lunch decorated his lapel.

“You'll have to excuse me,” said Professor Sabertash, shaking her hand and squinting into her face. “I'm nearly blind as a mole!”

Gilda couldn't believe her luck. As far as she could tell, Professor Sabertash was too near-sighted to see that she was considerably younger than her letter had implied.

“Please, do come in! I do hope my last tutorial of the day didn't pester you with her tears.”

“In my view, it isn't a proper lesson if someone isn't sobbing.” Gilda did her best to play the role of a self-assured dame of the British Empire as she followed Professor Sabertash into a large, square room complete with a fireplace, several plush couches and armchairs, and a table stocked with china teacups, wineglasses, and bottles of sherry and port. The entire circumference of the room was lined floor-to-ceiling with overstuffed bookshelves.

“I'm opening a bottle of sherry in honor of your visit,” said Professor Sabertash. “I hope you'll join me?” Professor Sabertash held a small wineglass in the air.

“Of course.” Gilda hoped that “sherry” referred to either a very girlish drink with whipped cream or something akin to a Slurpee. “I'll have a tiny umbrella and a cherry in mine,” she added.

Professor Sabertash laughed uproariously as he held a wineglass toward Gilda.

“On second thought, I think I'll pass,” said Gilda. “I like to keep my wits about me when I'm involved in an investigation.”

“As you wish, Dame Gilda.” Professor Sabertash swirled his glass and gestured for Gilda to take a seat in one of the armchairs. “Now before we begin discussing your intriguing findings, I must confess, Dame Gilda, that I am curious. You say you are American, on a visit here to supervise a young concert pianist, yet you speak with a most unusual regional English accent. Furthermore, Queen Elizabeth has made you a dame for your scholarly contributions to the field of paranormal studies, and as we know being granted what is essentially a knighthood is a most rare achievement for an American woman. Indeed, I suspect you have had a most interesting life.”

“I have had an interesting life, indeed,” said Gilda, realizing that impulsively giving herself the title “dame” in her letter to the professor now required an elaborate fabrication if she was to maintain her inflated identity. “My life has been so utterly over whelmed with sordid intrigue and complications, I couldn't begin to explain it all to you, Professor Sabertash.”

“Oh, but that makes me all the more curious, Dame Gilda!” Professor Sabertash raised a finger in the air. “First, I am guessing you were born here in England but are a dual citizen of the U.S. and U.K., no?”

“Yes, that's correct,” Gilda fibbed, thinking it was easier to simply let Professor Sabertash stitch together a plausible life story than to make one up herself.

“And I can hear a hint of the American Midwest in your speech, no?”