Midnight in Austenland (10 page)

The rain had stopped, but the night was wet and cloudy, with no moonlight to glint on the puddles and shaking leaves. She stared, trying to determine the source of the noise. It hadn't been a sharp sound, like a falling roof tile. It hadn't been flat, like a slamming door. It was a thud, like something heavy but not breakable dropping onto the front walk below. But she couldn't make out anything in the dark and gave up, returning restlessly to Miss Charming's bed.

Around five in the morning, gray light replaced black, and Charlotte found she could keep her eyes shut and sleep.

I didn't know I was so scared of the dark, she thought as she began to drift. I didn't know I still believed in monsters.

Home, ten months before

Charlotte sat on a love
seat in her family room, the mail strewn around her, and stared at the wedding announcement. James's mistress-soon-to-be-wife was named Justice. The glazed ivory card stock and cursive raised lettering slapped so much dignity on the name that it seemed to mock it.

Emotional responses aside, let's be careful not to vilify Justice. Just because she had a prolonged sexual affair with another woman's husband doesn't mean she was rotten to the core. Here's a woman who donated all her discarded clothing to the Salvation Army—why, she even boxed up her old, stained Tupperware and empty egg cartons in case schoolchildren wanted them for crafts projects. She knit scarves. She drove slowly through duck crossings. She observed Yom Kippur even though she wasn't technically Jewish.

As a general rule, Charlotte loved her fellow human being. So in a gesture of acceptance, Charlotte pinned the announcement to the corkboard. Then Charlotte pinned a flyer from a yoga studio over it. Thank goodness she was still numb.

Justice …

Austenland, day 6

If there had been a body, then whose was it?

Charlotte sat at her vanity as Mary did her hair. Mary's movements were skittery, and yet her eyes were always wide open, looking around. Little happened that she would miss.

“Will all the guests be at breakfast today?”

“I believe so, ma'am.” Mary had a high voice. It scraped the ceiling.

“And what of the staff …”

“Ma'am?” Her expression was smooth, but her voice remained suspiciously squeaky.

“It just seems like someone is missing. For some reason. Did anyone … leave the manor recently?” Or get offed and stuffed in a disappearing room?

“Not that I know of, ma'am.”

Mary caught Charlotte watching her in the mirror and looked away.

Dressed and fitted up, Charlotte started to head down the stairs for breakfast in the dining room. But then, looking back to make sure no one observed her, she hurried to the spiral stairs instead.

Truth is rarely more horrible than imagination, she told herself.

Then she started imagining scenarios where the truth really was more horrible. That's a thought cycle that never ends well.

The second-floor corridor seemed narrower in the daylight. It was the darkness itself that had made the corridor seem cavernous, filled with frights from her own overactive brain.

Pipe down, brain, Charlotte commanded. I blame mystery novels for your bad manners.

As she left the safety of the stairs, goose bumps prickled her arms. She took silent, careful steps down the hall, passing the table with the empty vase. The entrance to the room would be between the table and the next bedroom. The wainscoting created panels about the height of a door. She pushed against a panel, then the next, the next—

“Skulking back to the scene of the crime?”

Charlotte spun around. Eddie was coming up the stairs. Even his slight, surprised-looking smile brought out those dimples. He had such a harmless face.

“Eddie,” she breathed. “Don't do that.”

“You look positively criminal, Charlotte. Are you sneaking sweets? Have you drawn on the walls or perhaps spilled your juice on the carpet?”

Charlotte let her shoulders relax. “If I did, would I get a spanking?”

Eddie raised a single eyebrow.

“Whoa!” said Charlotte, feeling a blush come on. “That's not what I meant. I was trying to keep with your naughty-child theme, not add another kind of naughty something or other. Sorry, brother of mine.”

She giggled, then covered her mouth, not sure if she should appear more penitent.

Eddie narrowed his eyes. “What are you up to?”

She glanced up the hallway. The far window seemed to sink back even farther, the light barely shuffling down the hall.

“Come with me. I'd rather not do this alone.”

He approached slowly, his feet reluctant. “I don't know if I should encourage this fancy of yours.”

“It's already encouraged. It's beyond encouraged. Just help me resolve it, if you would be so kind.”

She continued pushing on the wall as she went, feeling for give. “It can't have been a normal door. There must be a disguised door here somewhere.”

“A
secret
door? Charlotte—”

“I know you all thought I was crazy, and I was ready to believe you. But by daylight, I don't feel crazy. There's got to be—aha! Here, push,” she said, taking his hands and placing them on one wall panel.

“See how it feels kind of … loose? A little bit?”

She stood with her back against the wall and slid along it, as she had been doing the night before, feeling for a lever or switch. He laughed.

“I wanted you here so you could
help
.”

“Actually, I believe you wanted me to protect you from the Pembrook Phantom.”

“Maybe.” She tried to sound cheeky, but truthfully she really didn't appreciate him throwing around words like “phantom” while she was in a dim corridor looking for a secret passageway. Her goose bumps were getting goose bumps.

Then she felt it—a kind of knob, hidden in the wainscot. She flicked it with her finger. The wall at her back swung in.

She almost fell back again, but Eddie grabbed her arm and pulled her upright. His wide eyes took in the room behind her.

“See? See? I'm not completely crazy.”

“Not completely,” he whispered and went in, his hands together as if he were entering a holy sanctum, or perhaps Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Charlotte followed. The door shut behind them, making them both jump.

“It does that,” said Charlotte. “But I don't like it that it does that. In fact, I wish that it wouldn't do that. I really wish that it—” She shut herself up because she realized she was rambling, and she realized she was rambling because the secret room did in fact exist. Which also meant …

Charlotte met eyes with the sofa. That is, if the sofa had eyes, she would have met eyes with it. As it was, she just had the creepy sensation that it
knew
she was looking at it. Which of course it didn't. It was just a sofa, after all. A sofa that seemed to have eyes, and if it did have eyes, it would be glaring—kind of smugly. A smug kind of glare.

She was still rambling, even in her thoughts.

Shut up, Charlotte, she told herself.

She pointed at the sofa. “It was there.”

Eddie didn't speak. Perhaps if he had, he would have rambled too. Instead, he approached the sofa cautiously (almost as if the sofa had eyes and Eddie didn't like the way it was smugly glaring) and lifted the velvet coverlet.

Nobody. No body at all. Not even a severed hand.

Charlotte's relief was chased from her chest by an aggressive stampede of disappointment and confusion.

“But … there was … I swear …”

Eddie looked around. “I don't know that we should be here. This is a bit of an underbelly, isn't it? Like seeing backstage.”

“But it's real, Eddie. Everyone thought I was crazy, but the room is
real
.”

He nodded, eyeing the wobbly stacks of chairs and old sofas with ripped covers. He knelt at a box and pulled out a fencing foil with stubbed tip.

“Ooh,” he said.

Charlotte examined the velvet coverlet and what wasn't underneath it. She shut her eyes and saw again the hand, lit up silver by the well-timed lightning. It had been real, just like the room. Right? There was nothing on the sofa now but the coverlet, and its fringe could hardly imitate five fingers and a palm.

“I'm sure I saw … I touched it.” Her stomach squelched. “Oops. Excuse me.”

Eddie put back the foil. “Come along, Charlotte darling, I will escort you to breakfast. Breakfast should always come before sleuthing.” He went to the door … or what was an outline of a door. There was no knob.

“How exactly do we extract ourselves from the belly of the beast?”

“I'm not sure.” She studied the wall. “It was dark. And I think I was, well, flailing around.”

The wainscot was carved. She pressed it until she found a rounded bit that gave way under her hand, and the door swung in.

“Look out—that is alarming each time,” said Eddie.

The door clicked shut behind them. They'd just taken a step toward the stairs when a non-secret door opened and Mary peered out. She saw them, and her face turned very red.

“Hello, Mary,” said Charlotte.

“I'm … I'm in my room,” she said and shut herself back in.

“She's perpetually jumpy,” Charlotte whispered.

“Let us keep the secret room a secret, shall we, Charlotte?” said Eddie, taking her arm and walking to the stairs. “Mrs. Wattlesbrook does not like guests to see anything dusty or untidy.”

“But … we should call the police. The secret room is real! So that must mean the body was real too.”

He took her hand and looked at her with concern.

He has brown eyes, she thought. So does my real brother. But Eddie's have more honey in them.

“Are you certain, Charlotte? Are you absolutely certain you encountered a murdered human being last night?”

Yes! She was! They'd been playing Bloody Murder in a dark and creepy old house and she'd fallen into a secret room and naturally there'd been a dead body. Well, she'd only seen the hand. Now that she thought about it, the hand had felt odd. Not that she'd ever encountered a real corpse before, but did they all feel so … so rubbery? It had seemed to be attached to something, and she'd assumed it had been a body, and again had assumed that the deceased person had been murdered and hidden away. Wow, she
had
assumed quite a bit. But if it hadn't been real, then why was it gone? Why would someone put a prop corpse on a couch in a secret room and then move it between midnight and morning?

“I … think so.”

“Mrs. Wattlesbrook is sensitive. If you call the police, and they come search the house and find nothing, well, it will be disruptive and very hard on her. I just want you to be certain.”

“I'll think about it,” she said. “Maybe I should just talk to her first.”

He nodded and, seeing she intended to go about her business immediately, went to the dining room alone.

Charlotte found Mrs. Wattlesbrook working at a desk in the morning room.

“Mrs. Wattlesbrook, do you have a moment?” she asked.

The woman gestured to a seat and put on a patient face. An impatient sort of patient face, like an impatient face dressing up as a patient one for Halloween. Charlotte decided to speak quickly.

“Last night while we were … um, playing … Bloody Murder …” Charlotte almost whispered the last two words. For some reason, they filled her with shame. “Well, I was alone and I stumbled into a room without a real door on the second floor, and I just wanted to make sure you were aware of its existence.”

“Of course I am aware. This house has been a part of my husband's family for generations. The Wattlesbrooks have always been eccentric. Some ancestor probably had the room's door disguised as a good joke. I use it for storage.” She sniffed. “I assure you that the rest of the house is kept properly and am sorry you were exposed to our less-than-regal side.”

“No, it's fine, really. I mean, I'm not a stickler for well-ordered drawers.” She tried to smile companionably, but the woman didn't return it. “Oh, I meant ‘drawers' as in the things you open, not, like, underwear, because clean and tidy underwear is a passion of mine!” Really, Charlotte? she thought. Is it really? Is that a statement you want defining you? Charlotte cleared her throat and looked down, begging herself to shut up. This ghost-hand business really had her flustered. “Have you been there recently?”

“Not in a month at least, I should think. Why?”

“It's just, when Mr. Grey and I went in this morning—”

“You should not be alone with any gentleman in a closed room.”

“But he's my brother.”

Mrs. Wattlesbrook sniffed. “Quite.”

“So … so when we were there, I realized that something wasn't there anymore.” What could she say? I wonder, Mrs. Wattlesbrook, if you find yourself missing a corpse this morning? Do you perhaps know if someone was recently murdered and stashed in your storage room? Perhaps you could count heads and take pulses amongst your staff and see if anyone happens to be dead?

She met Mrs. Wattlesbrook's eyes and said boldly, “I can't be sure, but I might have seen a dead body in there last night.”

Mrs. Wattlesbrook's look turned white hot. Charlotte cringed. Then, even worse, Mrs. Wattlesbrook tried to smile through her rage. It was like watching an alligator make a kissy face.

“I let Colonel Andrews indulge in his games because my guests seem to find them amusing,” she said slowly. “But let me be frank: I prefer not to take part.”

No concern over the implication of a murder in her house? The woman was often severe, but this morning she seemed beyond. As Beckett would say, Who peed in her Cheerios?

“Mrs. Wattlesbrook, are you all right?”

Mrs. Wattlesbrook's forehead creased, but she looked back at her papers. “Quite so.” She began to write.

Charlotte felt invisible. She whispered something that might have been “thank you” or “I'll just go now,” or possibly “Moses supposes his toeses are roses.” She curtsied as she left, though no one saw.

The gentlemen and ladies were in the dining room, chatting over breakfast. Mr. Mallery watched her enter, his expression unreadable. Charlotte smiled and hurried to the sideboard, looking for something without grease. Her stomach couldn't take it today.

“You gave us all a fright last night, Mrs. Cordial,” said Colonel Andrews. “With your dead body and screams fit to wake it. I say, you put a twist on old Bloody Murder. Well done.”