Fixing To Die

“The word comes from German, doesn’t it?” An’gel said. “It translates roughly as rumbling spirit or noisy spirit, I believe.”

Mrs. Pace nodded approvingly. “Yes, Miss Ducote, that’s correct. The spirit or spirits here aren’t noisy. They move things around, but they don’t hurl things or behave maliciously.”

“That’s certainly a relief to me,” Dickce said. “The last thing I want is a noisy spirit throwing things at me.”

“I don’t want to mislead you,” Mrs. Pace said. “The behavior could escalate. That happens sometimes, so you have to be prepared in case it does.”

“What is your plan to deal with any spirits you find here at Cliffwood?” An’gel asked.

“Oh, there are definitely spirits here,” Mrs. Pace said. “The first step is to let them get used to my presence, you see. Only then will I be able to establish trust with them. Then I will show them the way on to the next plane of existence, and they can leave this world behind forever.”

The woman certainly sounded plausible, An’gel thought. Most of what Mrs. Pace had said jibed with what An’gel herself had read over the years, both in nonfiction and in fiction. There were common threads to it all, and Mrs. Pace obviously knew that.

An’gel wanted to ask the woman what she charged for her services, but since she wouldn’t be paying the bill, it wasn’t really any of her business. She hoped that Mary Turner and Henry Howard would be able to afford it, because she doubted that Mrs. Pace worked cheap.

Of course, if she and Dickce, with Benjy’s help, were able to expose the truth without the aid of Mrs. Pace, the woman would go away empty-handed. An’gel wasn’t going to underestimate her. She figured Mrs. Pace was shrewd enough to realize that An’gel and Dickce weren’t necessarily her allies in this situation. What Mrs. Pace had shared with them so far was nothing really concrete, at least in terms of Cliffwood’s so-called ghosts. It was the standard line for these situations. An’gel intended to keep an eye on Mrs. Pace, and no doubt Mrs. Pace intended to do the same with her.

Now An’gel wished the woman would leave so she could share her latest interesting bit of news with Dickce and Benjy. She wanted their take on what she had observed.

Perhaps sensing that her presence was no longer desired, Mrs. Pace rose from the sofa. “I have enjoyed chatting with you, but it’s time I resumed my attempts to converse with the spirits here. I am going into the library. Perhaps the spirit who turns the pages in the dictionary will be there and willing to talk to me.” She moved in a stately fashion from the room. A few moments later An’gel heard a door close, and she thought Mrs. Pace had shut herself up in the library.

“Thank goodness,” An’gel said. “I’ve been about to burst to tell you what I saw and heard upstairs right before I came back down. I want to know if you agree with my interpretation of it.”

“Go ahead, then,” Dickce said when An’gel failed to continue straightaway. “I’m dying to hear about it.”

An’gel glanced toward the hall. Perhaps she should go close the door in case anyone happened by. The house was quiet around them. She heard no sounds of activity from anywhere else, and she decided the door could stay open.

She did lean forward in her chair, however, and lower her voice while she related the story to her sister and Benjy. She stumbled a bit over the vulgar word Wilbanks had used but thought that she had managed to convey it well enough without actually repeating it. When she’d finished, she sat back and waited for their reactions.

Benjy appeared briefly shocked, perhaps more by An’gel’s euphemism than by the act itself, she thought. Dickce didn’t appear to be fazed by any of it. She chuckled when An’gel finished.

“That does add some spice to the mix,” she said.

“I’ll say.” Benjy nodded.

“I can’t tell Mary Turner,” An’gel said. “Unless it turns out to have a bearing on the situation here.”

“No, you can’t, not yet,” Dickce replied. “Right now, I have to say, Nathan Gamble is my chief suspect in all this. If the contents of that room are the object of these shenanigans, I figure he’s trying to spook Mary Turner so badly that she’ll agree to let him have everything, will or no will.”

“I would say the same,” An’gel said. “I’m glad to know we’re working on the same assumption here. So far I haven’t been able to come up with any other reason for all this.”

“What if it really turns out to be a ghost, and not some person pretending to be one?” Benjy asked. “What then?”

“Despite what has happened since we’ve been here,” An’gel said after a moment’s thought, “I don’t think I really believe that a ghost is responsible. I don’t have any explanation yet how my dress and my nightgown were moved around in my room. I also don’t have any explanation for what I saw on the staircase this morning. But until I’m convinced there’s absolutely no other explanation possible, I don’t believe the answer is a spirit.”