Phantoms Can Be Murder: Charlie Parker Mystery #13 (8 page)

“This is a good one,” she said,
handing me the large hardcover volume. “It covers Bury’s history in detail—more
than you might want for a light evening read. But somewhere back here . . .”
She flipped pages. “There is a chapter about the haunted sites. And further on
is a chapter about several heinous crimes, way back in time.”

Just what I needed for relaxing
bedtime entertainment. I curled into a corner of the sofa with the book across
my lap. At some point I became vaguely aware that she’d cleared away the empty
cups, said good night and climbed the stairs.

The old house had its own set of
noises and I soon switched out the lamp and went upstairs myself, taking the
big book along to read in bed. It turned out that there were so many tales of
murder, mayhem and ghostly visits that I kept turning pages avidly, completely
losing track of time. When the clock downstairs chimed two o’clock I realized
that I would never memorize all the names and really didn’t need to. All I was
accomplishing was to fill my head with gruesome details. I rolled over and let
the book lie on the comforter beside me after I switched out my light.

Chapter
9

My late hours spent in the book
of hauntings caused me to sleep until nearly ten in the morning and I found
that Louisa had left for work much earlier. A note on the kitchen table invited
me to help myself to whatever breakfast I wanted and suggested that we might
want to try The Fox Inn for dinner. “Save some room—it’s fabulous!” she’d
noted. She’d also sketched me a little map to show where to find the museum and
the newspaper office.

And so it was that I found myself
in the other-world atmosphere of a newspaper archive that went back a hundred
and fifty years. Luckily, I didn’t have to go back quite that far to locate a
couple of stories about the Trahorn Building. Background on the more
sensational piece informed me that it was built in 1793 in the days of the
cattle market. A photo showed it as it looked in the 1800s, with two shops
side-by-side—butcher shop on the left, double doors to the slaughter house on
the right. A second photo of the location was taken in 1946 with a report of
the murder of a homeless man.

By that time the two halves of
the building had become individual retail shops, one selling bicycles and the
other non-specific one was called Watson and Sons. I puzzled over the photos,
trying to place them in modern context. The stone façade above the second floor
was the same in 1946 as now, although now it was painted white. Wood trim had
been added alongside the display windows, each half done in a different style
and color, which explained why I hadn’t realized the two shops were actually
part of the same structure.

The former bicycle shop was now
home to The Knit and Purl. I would have to go back and take a look to see what
Watson and Sons had become. Obviously, my powers of observation could stand a
little fine tuning.

An elderly man shuffled into the
room where the office clerk had parked me with the index to articles.

“One day we shall get all this
transferred to microfiche,” he said, stepping around me to reach for a file
box. “Got the modern bits catalogued already, but it’s those historic
archives—huge job.”

“Am I in your way?” I shifted my
chair in hopes that he wasn’t about to drop the heavy carton on my head.

“Oh, no. You’re fine. I see
you’ve got some pieces on the death of that poor man in the cycle shop. That
was a tragedy. Poor chap was sleeping in the doorway, freezing cold night it
was. Someone nicked his wallet but had to bash him in the head to do it.
Couldn’t be content just to take the cash. And him a war veteran and all.”

I’d already scanned the article,
which didn’t mention the weather or the fact that the man was a veteran. “You
remember the incident personally, don’t you?”

“Aye, Miss. I’ve covered the news
in this town going on seventy years now.”

“Can you tell me something? Have
there been stories of, say, ghosts or apparitions in the Trahorn Building?”

He set down the carton he’d been
holding and bit at his lower lip as he gave the question some consideration.
Finally he shook his head.

“No. Not in that one. Now the
Cupola House—that one’s got a hundred stories. People still claiming to see
things there. But the two are a few blocks apart. Why d’you ask?”

I told him that my aunt was a
friend of the current tenants, Dolly and Archie Jones. I didn’t go into details
about Dolly’s claims. Talking rumor with a newsman didn’t seem like a great
idea.

“Archie Jones? He and the wife
are living there now? Well, I’ll be. Remember one time I covered a ribbon
cutting at the sugar mill—this would be maybe ten years ago. Jones was a
manager then. Braggart sort of fellow, tall, sort of stiff in the spine,
insisted on taking me all round, wanted me to do a big spread on the success of
his department. Course we didn’t have the space for that. He was none too
pleased with me, but I couldn’t give in to the man. Hard news trumps a business
story. They were lucky to rate a photo and a caption.”

I thought of Archie as I’d seen
him, somewhat stooped in posture, quiet. A shadow of what this man was
describing.

“I could locate the piece for you
if you’d like,” he said.

“Oh, no, don’t go to the trouble.
I was just interested in the supernatural history, if there was one.”

He picked up the box he’d
originally come for. “All right then. All I know’s what I’ve told you, but you
might try the museum. Talk to Gertrude Hutchins. Tell her Billy Williams sent
you.”

And so I did. Mrs. Hutchins was
no spring chicken herself, but she was probably a good twenty years younger
than Billy. Her eyebrows wrinkled when I told her he’d sent me.

“Surprised he’d want my opinion,”
she said as she led me into a display room. “We’ve not shared the same view on
anything in thirty years.”

Maybe as a newsman he was giving
me the chance to get both sides of the story? I simply shrugged and followed
her.

“I’m specifically wondering
whether there is a history of hauntings or supernatural activity in the Trahorn
Building,” I said.

Gertrude paused in the center of
the room, her gaze darting among the many enlarged photographs on the walls.
Her eyes squinted nearly shut and then she turned to her right and headed
purposefully into a second room.

“It was in the cattle market
section of town way back,” she said, pointing to a poster-sized blowup of the
same photo I’d seen in the newspaper. “Always something strange in that place.”

The descriptive placard under the
photo merely said: Trahorn Building, constructed 1793. The Watson Brothers
Butcher Shoppe occupied the building until the 1850s.

The grainy photo had to have been
taken near the end of that particular occupancy.

“Sightings of ghostly shapes and
horrid noises during the night is what caused the Watsons to close up shop and
leave town,” my guide was saying.

The spirits of all those
butchered cows? “Really? Mr. Williams said there’d never been anything
supernatural about the building.”

She gave me a pointed stare,
reinforcing the comment she’d made about the two of them disagreeing on nearly
everything.

“My own great-grandmother was a
Watson. These stories have been in my family for generations. My father
wouldn’t even enter the bicycle shop that moved there in later years. Claimed
he’d never trust the work performed under those conditions. In fact, a man on
our lane bought a bicycle there and the thing came apart the first day he
brought it home. Broke his leg.” She ended with a curt nod, daring me to make
any statement to the contrary.

I stared again at the photo, as
if some faint ghostly image might appear to me. But nothing did.

“Anyhow, take your time and look
around,” she said. “I’d best get back to my desk.”

I made the circuit of the two
rooms. One display covered the two most notorious grisly murders of the
county’s history, including a human skull that purported to be that of a serial
killer executed in 1860. After awhile I noticed that the names of the sites
were starting to feel familiar to me, but I still hadn’t found much that could
specifically tie in with Dolly Jones’s current problem.

I decided to grab another of
those Cornish pasties for an early lunch, this time the chicken and mushroom
one Louisa had told me about. I carried it to the Abbey Gardens once again and
let the ambiance of flowering beds and birdsong relax me. Before I lost track
of all the new information I’d studied this morning, though, I decided to pay
another visit to Dolly’s shop and report the small scraps of information I’d
gained.

Archie looked up from the sales
counter when I walked in. At my inquiry he said Dolly was upstairs asleep.

“Poor dear, she hardly slept a
wink last night,” he said.

I heard footsteps from the stock
room and Gabrielle emerged, her face slightly flushed, two knitted throws
bundled in her arms.

“Brought these from the cellar,”
she said to Archie. “Shall I arrange them for display?”

He looked like he would have
turned to Dolly for an opinion but since she wasn’t there he just nodded.

“Well, tell her I stopped by,” I
said. I shouldn’t wake her for the minuscule amount of information I’d learned.

“It was another of those ghostly
things,” he said. “The reason she had no sleep.”

I’d turned toward the door but I
stepped back to the counter. “When did that happen?”

“About midnight. She said she
heard a noise down here in the shop. Myself, I slept through that part of it.
Woke when she came clattering up the stairs, all shaken up.”

“What happened?”

“
Claims
she saw a person
here in the shop. When she shouted out, he just vanished. Whoof! Right into
thin air.”

“You don’t believe her?”

“Well, it’s just, you know. I
never heard or saw a thing. After she come running into the apartment, shoutin’
and all, I came down here to check it out. Didn’t see a bloody thing.”

I glanced around the small shop
space.

“Door was locked tight. Only
thing out of place was this bin.” He indicated a plastic trash receptacle
beside the counter. “And Dolly herself admitted she’d bumped into that and
knocked it over.”

“What do you think she saw?”

He shrugged. “Might be anything.
Lights from the street lamps, shadows from the trees.”

I turned. “Gabrielle, do you have
any ideas what she might have seen?”

The young woman merely shook her
head and went back to draping the afghans over a display rack.

“Any rate, Dolly didn’t get
another wink all night so she asked if I’d take the shop for the morning.
She’ll be waking any time now. I can check, see if she wants to come down.”

I started to tell him not to
bother her, but he’d left the room. Besides, it might be good for me to get
Dolly’s version of events while it was still fresh in her mind. I watched
Gabrielle fiddle with the yarns in their racks, seemingly making busy work. She
avoided eye contact. In a couple of minutes I heard voices from the back room.

“Charlie? Come on upstairs,”
Dolly called.

Archie stepped back into the
store. “She just got up. In her robe, but she wants to see you.”

I closed their apartment door
behind me, following small sounds to where I found Dolly in the kitchen,
pouring herself a cup of coffee. She held the pot out but I declined.

“Archie said you had a real scare
last night,” I said.

Something
had shaken the
woman. Her face was pale and dark circles ringed her eyes. Tangles knotted her
normally precise pageboy and the robe hung lopsidedly with the fabric belt
undone. Her hands were trembling so badly that she set her mug down.

“It was so real. Then it was
completely gone.” She sank into a chair at the kitchen table and raked her
hands through her hair. “Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.” Her voice broke
when she admitted that last part.

I took the other chair. “Start at
the beginning and tell me all of it. Exactly what you saw and heard.”

She reached for the mug and took
two long sips. “Arch and I were sound asleep. Not a thing out of the ordinary
that evening. We’d watched a television program then went to bed.” Another sip.
“I woke to a noise. Very distinct. A thump downstairs. After a few seconds, a
second thump. I pictured someone down there messing with the stock again so I
grabbed up my robe and rushed to the stairs.”

Her hand started to shake again.
She set her mug down and took a deep breath, staring at a place in the middle of
the table.

“I reached that spot where a
person comes out of the stock room, just behind the sales counter. Looked
toward the front of the shop. A man stood there, clear as day. I shouted ‘Hey!’
wanting to scare him away from my yarns.”

She looked up and locked eye
contact with me. “He let out a long moan, then it was as if he turned to smoke.
A dark wisp, gone.”

I have to admit that a chill
passed through me at the intensity in her eyes.

“When you saw him clearly,” I
asked, “what did he look like? How tall? What was he wearing?”

She closed her eyes for a second,
remembering. “It was dark. His silhouette was framed against the light outside
the windows, though. He stood a bit shorter than me, but not much. He wasn’t a
young lad. It was a grown man. His clothing seemed old fashioned somehow. A
cap, and a coat that went almost to his knees.”

“How long did you see him like
that? Minutes? Seconds?”

“A few seconds at most. The
moment I shouted out at him was when he disappeared.” She clasped her hands
together, as if they would hold each other still. “The thing that frustrates me
most is that Arch doesn’t believe me. I
know
what I saw.”

I had no idea what to make of the
information. Her description didn’t exactly match anything I’d read or heard
about other ghosts around town. It certainly wasn’t the Brown Monk or the Grey
Lady. I reached out and patted her hand.

“I’d best get dressed and see to
the shop,” she said. She stood up and carried her mug to the sink.

I told her I would talk to her
later. The few scraps of local lore I’d discovered this morning didn’t exactly
shed any light on this new event.

Down in the shop, Gabrielle
handed Archie a heavy carton and he began heading toward the stock room with
it. I raised my eyebrows and he paused.

“My opinion?” he whispered. “We
watched an old movie last night, black and white, with lots of foggy Victorian
scenes. I think she had a dream about it and then walked in her sleep.”

He kept moving toward the stock
room and I said a quick goodbye, then left.

Maybe Archie was right. My own
inclination, had I been in the situation, would have been to believe I’d been
dreaming but Dolly was obviously convinced that this had really happened.
Suddenly, I didn’t know what to think.