Chapter 8
THE GODFREY’S white timber home on the edge of town looked just like the saltbox structured dollhouse Alex and Fay had shared. It even had a steep-pitched roof that ran from the top of the two-story front section and down over the single-story back portion. There were two differences, though: a white picket fence surrounded a yard of long brown grass, and tan curtains covered every window. Had someone closed them after Jeremiah had died? Or had Jeremiah kept them like that? Maybe because he’d been gone so much of the time?
“If you’d please follow me,” Captain Sutter, Uncle Henry’s policeman friend, had hair as thin and white as Uncle Henry’s, and the narrowness of his physique was also similar, but the pinkness of his cheeks on either side of his long white mustache was such a healthy contrast to her uncle’s almost-gray countenance that she had to blink five times to stop tears from clouding her eyes.
“Mrs. Dalton?” Captain Sutter adjusted the black belt around the middle of his dark blue, button up uniform jacket.
“Oh—I’m sorry. Yes.” She shifted Ivy between her arms and straightened the sleeves of her white Georgiana blouse before stepping through the gate Captain Sutter held open for her.
“Are you all right?” Rick, behind her, dabbed his white handkerchief to the sweat on his forehead.
“Let’s just finish this.”
Rick inhaled sharply, but ignoring him, Alex strode quickly over the grass growing through the cracks in the stone path to the front door. She stepped over the threshold into the narrow entry hall lit only by the sunlight shining through the open doorway and involuntarily shivered.
“You can’t possibly be cold?” Rick unbuttoned the coat of his matching suit. “I don’t remember July mornings here ever being this hot.”
She touched her blue touring hat, making sure it still lay securely on her head, and crossed her arms tighter around Ivy. Why’d Rick choose that suit today? It was a bit darker blue than her twill bustle skirt, but everyone—Edna, Uncle Henry’s other servants, even Captain Sutter—had given them appraising glances indicating they’d thought they’d coordinated their clothing. On purpose. “I don’t know why I shivered. It’s probably nothing.”
“I doubt that.”
Alex’s scowl wavered. After all she and Rick had been through and all she’d said to him, he still trusted her shivers? Not even the other members of the Preternatural Science Society had accepted her sensitivities until she’d found a preternatural žaltys snake slithering around a dentium thorn bush near Venturer Pond, but Rick had believed her the moment she’d spoken of them.
Captain Sutter motioned past the hall’s Currier and Ives wallpaper toward the parlor on their right. Someone had torn out —uncaringly?—a six inch rectangle of the paper between a large pale green leaf and a faded yellow flower, exposing the rough plaster beneath it.
“Where would you like to begin?” Captain Sutter said.
Ivy jabbed her claws through Alex’s blouse.
“Ouch! What’s that about, kitty?” Alex pulled her cat away from her shoulder.
“Maybe she needs a break from that position,” Rick said. “Let me carry her.” But when he reached for Ivy, Ivy hissed at him and clung sharper.
Rick yanked back his hand. “Maybe we should have left her at the manor.”
“And let her out of my sight? Not until I’m certain she’s well, and I figure out what causes her—” to glow.
Captain Sutter quirked an eyebrow.
“—to behave as she does.”
Rick’s eyes glinted, but he didn’t smile.
Alex drew back her shoulders. “I think it would be best if we inspected Mr. Godfrey’s bedroom first, Captain. Our most logical first step is to learn all we can about the scene of the crime.” Besides, she and Rick had just come from Aunt Pauline’s room and would more likely notice similarities between them. If they did, indeed, exist.
“Of course. Your uncle would have suggested the same thing had he been here.” Captain Sutter opened the flaking white-painted door at the end of the hall and stepped inside a narrow, enclosed stairway. The steps led like a tunnel to the top floor.
Rick touched Alex’s elbow. “Is that the reason you kept Mary’s clothes?” His whisper sounded more like a sigh of realization than a question. Had he really not understood why she’d gathered everything that had been with Mary when the sheriff had found her body?
“Of course.”
Rick swallowed. “I thought you kept them to—” He shook his head.
“To what?”
“Never mind.”
She didn’t ask him about it again, but the sudden tightness in his lips and the pallor of his skin hinted at what he wouldn’t say. He either believed she hadn’t been able to part with what remained of their daughter, which was true, or he’d thought she’d saved them as a reminder meant to punish him. Yet, if he thought her capable of such cruelty, why would he still want to be with her?
Because he loves you.
She shoved that thought away, faced fully away from Rick, and stepped up the creaky wooden stairs to the second floor.
On the landing, a small table covered with a dusty white tablecloth stood against the wall directly in front of them. Splinters flaked from its legs as if someone had chipped at it with a small knife, as did the frame of the open, empty wardrobe next to it. Two doors took up most of the other two walls.
Captain Sutter smoothed his mustache and opened the door at their left. “Mr. Godfrey’s room is here. We’ve taken the bedding to the station for further scrutiny, but everything else is as it was when we found his body.”
Alex curled her toes. If only she could have examined the scene before the police had touched, destroyed, or otherwise altered the evidence. Captain Sutter had graciously supplied her with a list of what the police had found, but experience had taught her their clue-gathering techniques often overlooked critical points.
Rick caught her eye. “Too bad Alex wasn’t here then. She’d have likely doubled your list.”
Captain Sutter frowned. “I assure you, my men are among the best detectives in the state.”
Alex glanced between them, but when her gaze locked on Rick’s, inexplicable heat rose to her cheeks. That intense look again. My knees will not buckle! “We have more to worry about than who is capable of what, and I, for one, would like to get on with the investigation.”
Captain Sutter gave her a hard smile. “This way, if you please.”
Mr. Godfrey’s spacious square bedchamber had a slanted A-frame wall at the back end, a black walnut floor, and stained pale yellow wallpaper. But the furniture—the feather bed, the storage chest, the wide bureau of drawers, and the spindle-backed rocking chair—were badly neglected or damaged just as the rest of the house she’d so far seen. Even the plain tan curtains hanging in front of the room’s three windows were torn and frayed. Did men really care so little about what they saw around them every day once the women in their lives were gone?
She glanced at Rick. He still stood in the doorway, watching her with those stormy sea-hazel eyes that made her fingers ache and her mouth water as if she’d just eaten a newly-picked golden apple, and she quickly turned away from him. She swallowed. That assumption—what she’d just wondered about men—was wrong. The men she knew on a personal basis did care—or at least notice.
Alex stepped into the room and took a deep breath. “Nothing so far.”
Captain Sutter lifted a gray eyebrow over his even grayer eyes. “Are you looking for something in particular?”
Rick strolled toward the bed, and Alex set Ivy on the floor. The cat stayed close to her feet. “I won’t know what I’m looking for until I sense it.” She again scanned the room, but the only thing similar to Aunt Pauline’s bedchamber was the rocking chair. If the Night Hag had indeed killed Mr. Godfrey, wouldn’t the chair be closer to the bed as it was in Aunt Pauline’s room rather than by the bureau? Local lore indicated that those who’d survived a Night Hag attac
k had first seen the demon sitting in a rocking chair close to the bed. But then, perhaps the demon, if she truly existed, brought her own ghostly rocking chair with her? “Has any of the furniture been moved?”
Captain Sutter pressed his lips into a tight line. “Everything here is as it was when we arrived.”
“Oh, yes. You said that.” Alex moved closer to the bed and sniffed. A hint of spice trickled at the edge of the air. Ginger or—? “Did anyone find dishes or a container of any sort in this room, Captain?”
“I don’t believe so.”
Rick sidled closer to her. “What is it?” he said softly.
Alex stared in front of her, pretending she didn’t notice the feel of his arm pressed against hers, and sniffed again. “What about a wine glass?”
“No glass,” Captain Sutter said. “However, we did find wine spilled on Mr. Godfrey’s nightshirt—along with what he’d swallowed at dinner.”
“Uncle Henry’s notes said Jeremiah hadn’t felt well.”
“That is correct.”
Rick stepped away from Alex and crossed to the back wall. He pushed aside the curtain. Hazy light flashed over his hair the way it had the first day she’d seen him standing in the Watson’s front doorway, all strong and handsome and cheery-eyed, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Why did good memories so often prompt heartache?
“This window doesn’t look like it’s been cleaned in ages,” Rick said. “The sill’s covered with spider webs. I expect Mr. Godfrey and the boy lived alone?”
“They did, Mr. Dalton.”
Alex paced from the bed to the bureau. On the way, something tickled at the edge of her breath. She tapped her forefinger against her lips, quickly running the sparse facts through her mind. Sickness, wine, his cry of, perhaps, pain? “Is it certain Mr. Godfrey wasn’t poisoned?”
Captain Sutter’s stare narrowed so tightly she couldn’t tell if it was with admiration or surprise. “We did take that possibility into consideration, Mrs. Dalton, but the only poison we found was arsenic in rattraps in the kitchen and cellar. The medical examiner also found no poison in Mr. Godfrey’s body.”
“No poison he knew about, you mean.”
“He’s quite thorough.”
Rick, his chest moving in and out with his slow, deep, still-fit breaths, stepped between Alex and Captain Sutter. “I’m sure the examiner was thorough, as far as the modern sciences are concerned, but Mrs. Dalton is quite well versed in, shall we say, unconventional substances.”
Captain Sutter’s stance relaxed, but his expression remained taut. Why hadn’t Uncle Henry ever told her his policeman friend was a skeptic?
“Your interest in the preternatural,” he said.
Alex turned away from him and stared, unseeing at the window. It’s not just an interest. It’s who I am. “There’s a scent in this room that reminds me of Monk’s Bane. It’s a highly toxic flower found only in mountainous meadows.”
“It kills some and heals others, I suspect. Many so-called preternatural products proclaim similar hype.”
Alex licked her lips and faced him again. “It is not hype, Captain. It’s science. And Monk’s Bane only kills.”
“Nevertheless, if it is a real substance, I’m sure our examiner would have found it.”
A real substance? It was a good thing Alex hadn’t brought Alistair with her. She had a good mind to set him on top of the captain’s head just to see if he’d recognize Alistair was real.
“I do not wish to offend you,” Captain Sutter continued. “Your uncle has always spoken highly of your deductive skills, and I have always trusted his judgment. But I have also seen and arrested enough preternatural snake oil salesmen to know their claims are rarely true. And when I say rarely, I am being generous.”
Alex opened her mouth. How dare he be so—so rudely narrow-minded? But before she could confront him about his prejudice, Rick took hold of her elbow.
“Shall we move on?” His voice whispered through her like a warm pulsing shiver, and she scowled. I don’t want to feel comfort now!
Captain Sutter stared between the two of them. “Yes, of course. This way.” He led them from Mr. Godfrey’s room and to Louis’s bedroom across the hall. On the way, Rick removed his suit coat and draped it over his arm. The twill fabric bumped the back of Alex’s hand. Sturdy but soft. And comfort again. Had his ability expanded to his clothing? She hurried through the doorway ahead of him.
Louis’s bedroom contained even fewer furnishings than Mr. Godfrey’s did and was in need of much greater repair. The blankets heaped at the foot of the small trundle bed were torn in several places, and the wardrobe had more nicks and scrapes than any finish work she’d ever seen. A large wooden crate sat against the wall beneath the window, and a pencil lay beside it on the floor. His writing desk?
Rick stepped next to her again. The floor creaked beneath his weight. “Notice anything?”
“The scent’s not in here, but—” She walked to the window and pulled back the tan curtain. While there weren’t any spider webs on these ledges, a single dead plant draped over the edge of a cracked brown flowerpot.
“Monk’s Bane?” Rick said.
“Monk’s Bane has purple flowers.” She leaned over the wilted orange flower and took a deep breath. Nothing stirred or tingled within her. It was possible that might be because the plant had lost its life force, but more likely, it was—“A simple geranium.”
She looked over her shoulder at Captain Sutter. She expected to see an emotionless stare, but instead he looked down at his boots. Ivy had planted herself on top of them.
“Come here, kitty,” Alex said.
Ivy slowly stood, as if she were the only being in the world with anywhere to go, and walked to Alex. Alex crouched down to her, and Ivy leapt into her arms.
“You don’t think it’s the Night Hag, do you?” Rick said.
Alex hugged her cat. “I never did, but now I’m even more of that opinion. Let’s move on.”
“What makes you say so?” Rick whispered.
Captain Sutter nodded, straightened his uniform jacket, and headed for the door. His footsteps clomped smartly across the wood floor.
“Because of the Monk’s Bane?” Rick added.
“Somewhat, but really, Rick. Demons? It sounds like a fabricated ghost story.”
“You’re forgetting I’ve seen ghosts. Fought them too.” Rick motioned for her to leave with him out of the room.
Alex pursed her lips. That’s right. She had forgotten. “Very well, I’ll concede on your say-so there are disembodied spirits in this world. But I still don’t believe they can kill. You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“I was the last time I checked.” He caught hold of her hand, stopping her at the top of the staircase. Warmth, strength, skin. “Do you agree?”
She lowered her gaze from his and removed her hand before the foolish thing sweated even more. “Be serious, Rick.”
“I am serious.” His breath touched her forehead.
“Mr. and Mrs. Dalton?” Captain Sutter called from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes,” Rick said. “Coming.” He stared at Alex. “Shall we?”
She cleared her throat and started down the stairs. “However, while we’ve both seen things we can’t fully explain, I have never seen abilities with the power to act for themselves. Have you?”
He trailed close behind her. “No.”
“It follows, then, that abilities, powers, energies—whatever you want to call them—are controlled by a physical entity, and since ghosts don’t have physical bodies, one couldn’t have killed Mr. Godfrey. The murderer has to be a person.”
“Disembodied spirits aren’t abilities, Alex. Nor, I suspect, are demons. And they do have the power to act for themselves. I’ve fought a few ghosts over the years. But I will agree with you on this point. While many people have dealt with ghosts, I have never heard of a ghost that had killed a human being. Only stopped them. Or perhaps lead them to dest
roy themselves.”
“Neither Mr. Godfrey nor my aunt destroyed themselves.”
Rick exhaled. “Poison, then.”
“That’s my strongest theory.”
“So we’re looking for a plant with a purple flower.”
“Yes. Or anything that smells odd but not unpleasant.”
***