She put her hands to her shoulders, holding herself, and she closed her eyes.
“What was he wearing?”
The blue eyes opened. She took another breath. “A long white gown. A sort of nightgown.”
“He was tall? Short?”
“Tall,” she said. “Not so tall as you, but tall. And his head was bent over to the side. Tilted. Twisted.” She shivered again. “It was horrid. It made him seem demonic.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He said-” She caught herself. She shook her head. “No. He said nothing.”
For the first time I got the feeling she was lying. She had imagined the ghost, maybe. But if she had, she had also imagined him saying something. “Did he do anything?” I asked her.
Once again she shook her head. Once again I thought she was lying. “No,” she said. “But he was there!”
“Gentlemen,” said a female voice. I turned. It was Mrs. Corneille in a belted red silk robe. Her heavy black hair was still sleek, still perfectly groomed.
“I suggest,” said Mrs. Corneille in that dark furry voice, “that you all return to bed and permit me to care for Miss Turner.”
“For some reason, Vanessa,” said Sir David, “I have a difficult time imagining you as Florence Nightingale.” I thought I could hear irritation in his voice, running through it like a tight thin wire.
“For some reason, David,” she said, “I have a difficult time imagining you as Dr. Livingstone. Miss Turner? Would you like to come with me? I should imagine that you’d rather not attempt to sleep just yet. And, if you feel you need it, I’ve some brandy, as well.” She smiled sweetly at Sir David. He smiled blandly back. To Miss Turner she said, “And there’s another room in my suite. You’re quite welcome to it.”
Miss Turner glanced toward the open door of her room, looked around at the rest of us, finally turned back to Mrs. Corneille. She raised her head. “Thank you. Yes. It’s very kind of you. I would like a brandy. But I must fetch my robe.”
Mrs. Corneille said, “I’ll be happy to fetch it for-”
“No, no,” said Miss Turner. “Thank you.” She dropped her arms to her sides, turned, and walked into the door that led to her room. She kept her head held high, as proud as an Egyptian queen. And Egyptian queens almost never wore pink flannel nightgowns.
Mrs. Allardyce said in a stage whisper, “You really shouldn’t encourage her.”
Mrs. Corneille smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure you’re right, of course. But what harm can it do if she gets away for a bit? No doubt she could do with a few moments to pull herself together. She seems basically a sound young woman.”
Mrs. Allardyce frowned. She was dubious but she would go along. Maybe because Mrs. Corneille was being sensible, but more likely because Mrs. Corneille somehow outranked her. “Very well,” she said. “But I’m not entirely sure that I approve of brandy at this hour.”
Mrs. Corneille smiled again. She was better at that than I would have been, if I’d been the one smiling at Mrs. Allardyce. “You needn’t worry,” she said. “Only a thimbleful.”
Sir David started to say something to Mrs. Corneille but just then Miss Turner returned to the room. She was wearing her glasses now and she was buttoning up the front of a shapeless gray bathrobe. None of Miss Turner’s clothes lived up to her blue eyes. Not many clothes could.
“Come along, then,” said Mrs. Corneille. She took Miss Turner’s left arm and patted it. She turned to the rest of us. “Pleasant dreams.”
Miss Turner glanced at all of us again but she said nothing.
They walked off. They made an interesting pair-Mrs. Corneille sleek and glossy in her red silk, Miss Turner taller and stiffer and almost drab now in her gray wool. You wouldn’t think it was possible for someone to look drab and proud at the same time, but Miss Turner somehow managed to pull it off.
Without looking back, the two of them walked out the door into the hallway.
I said to Mrs. Allardyce, “What was it, exactly, that woke you up?”
She blinked. She was surprised, I think, by my asking. “Why, that awful screaming, of course. The silly girl gave me a horrible start. I thought my poor heart would stop.” She put her hand on her heavy chest. Probably she had a heart and probably it was in there somewhere.
“Miss Turner screamed twice,” I said. “Which scream woke you up?”
“The first one. It would’ve awakened the dead. ”
“When you heard the scream, what did you do?”
“I sat up and I switched on the electric light.” She frowned. “Why on earth do you ask?”
“An excellent question,” said Sir David. “What are you playing at, Beaumont? Amateur sleuth?” He was annoyed at Miss Turner, I think, for calling him a fool. And probably at Mrs. Corneille, for plucking Miss Turner away. He was taking his annoyance out on me, probably because I was a witness, and a male. I could live with that for a while, if I had to.
“Mr. Houdini will want to know,” I said. “This is the kind of thing he came here to investigate.” It sounded reasonable to me, but it seemed to bother Sir David.
I looked at Mrs. Allardyce. “You turned on the light as soon as you heard the scream?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, the-the poor girl screamed again, a dreadful scream, absolutely pitiful. ” She was on her best behavior now. She was assisting the Great Houdini with his research. “I had no idea what to think. But I got out of bed and I put on my robe-I was concerned about Jane, you see, and I thought I should go and have a peek at her. And then she came running through the door. She was completely hysterical.”
“You didn’t see anybody else coming from her room.”
“No, of course not. Only Jane. There was never anybody else in her room. Jane’s a charming person, good- hearted, but clever, of course, and terribly imaginative. It’s all those books she reads. And last night, you see, Lord Purleigh told us all some truly horrifying stories about the ghost who’s supposed to haunt this part of the manor. An ancestor of his, the third Earl, Lord Reginald Fitzwilliam. Far be it from me to criticize, Robert’s a dear sweet man, but really, he ought to have known better-anyone can see that Jane’s an excitable person. What must’ve happened is that after hearing all that, Jane dreamed she saw Lord Reginald, and then, of course, because she was sleeping in a strange bed, she was disorientated. And so she thought the dream was real, you see.”
I nodded. “You heard two screams,” I said.
“Yes, didn’t I just say so?”
“Uh-huh. You mind if I take a look in Miss Turner’s room?”
If she’d had eyebrows, she would’ve raised them. Instead she raised the ridge of her forehead. “Is that absolutely necessary, do you think?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got to make sure everything’s okay. Mr. Houdini will ask about it.”
She frowned. “Well, if you think…”
“Thanks.” I walked through the doorway.
It was the same set-up as the Great Man’s room-first a bathroom and a toilet and then the sleeping area. There was no one in it, anywhere. The bed was a tangled mess and one of the pillows was on the floor, near the door. There was no one under the bed and nothing in the wardrobe except Miss Turner’s clothing and the clean smell of talcum powder. The floor was wooden and the walls were made of stone. The window was too narrow to let anyone in or out.
Sir David had followed me in. Like mine, his hands were in the pockets of his dressing gown. Maybe he was hiding a pair of hand-cuffs of his own. His smile had gone from bland to ironic. He said, “Searching for clues, are we?”
I glanced once more around the room. “Right,” I said.
“Aren’t we going to produce our magnifying lens?”
I looked at him. “You think it was a really small ghost?”
His smile became bland again. “As an American,” he said, “you probably wouldn’t know this. But a gentleman never enters a lady’s room without her permission.”
I nodded. “Then I guess we’d both better leave.” He stood in my way, so I walked around him and back out
