Chapter 9
ALEX DIDN’T even have to enter the parlor, similar in size and structure to Mr. Godfrey’s bedroom, to sense there was nothing of interest inside, but she perused it anyway so no one could question her findings later. Two wood chairs with spool-turned legs—one of them broken—a faded red circular sofa, and a small lackluster end table. A plain gray rock fireplace filled the far right corner of the outside walls.
“Why don’t you let me carry Ivy for a while?” Rick said. “I’m sure your arms could use a break.”
Alex petted Ivy’s head. “You’re brave to want to try that again.”
“Nonsense! I’ve faced much more frightening foes than her. Several times, in fact.”
“None with claws.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Very well. But if she scratches you, don’t set her down. I don’t know where that rat poison is.”
“Or the Monk’s Bane.”
Alex quickly scanned the room and handed Ivy to Rick, but the moment she released her, Ivy stiffened her spine and stared at Alex as if she’d betrayed her.
“Be good.” Alex said the words, but rather than believing Ivy would obey her, she watched to see if Ivy would scratch Rick. But she didn’t. In truth, Ivy had never scratched Rick, despite her obvious dislike of him. I wonder why.
Captain Sutter motioned across the hall. “This way to the dining room.”
The dining room consisted of an oblong mahogany table and three mismatched chairs. At least they weren’t broken.
Captain Sutter opened the closed door at the back of the room. “The kitchen.”
Alex touched the top of the table and brushed the powdery dust from her fingertips onto her skirt. She inhaled. The same gingery-sweet scent she’d smelled in Mr. Godfrey’s bedchamber wafted over her.
“Monk’s Bane?” Rick said.
Alex pressed her lips together. She furrowed her brows. It certainly smelled like Monk’s Bane, but she still felt nothing of its life force. Could another substance have replicated it? “Maybe.”
She followed Captain Sutter into the kitchen. A window framed by shelves of dishes filled the wall across from them, and there was another door on the wall at their right, but Alex’s attention latched onto the mounds of dead black ants lying on top of the food-preparation table directly in front of them.
“I’m sorry to offend you, Mrs. Dalton,” Captain Sutter said. “I can assure you nothing of this sort was here when my colleagues and I went through the house.”
“Don’t concern yourself, sir. I’m not offended in the least.” Alex scanned over the piles of ants on the table and down to the floor. Shouldn’t there be ants there too?
“Look here, Alex.” Rick, still holding Ivy against his chest in an embrace that seemed both strong yet gentle, crouched in the corner next to the other door. He motioned at the floor beneath the lowest shelf. “This must be one of those traps Captain Sutter spoke of.”
She peered into the corner beneath the cupboard. A partially-eaten round ball of what appeared to be hardened cornmeal lay a few inches away from the wall, and a dead rat lay a few feet from it. It didn’t stink of death, so the body had likely been there for some time.
She looked up at Captain Sutter. “Do you have gloves with you, sir?”
“Yes.” Captain Sutter pulled a set of slender black gloves from his suit coat pockets, put them on, and lowered onto his hands and knees. After he retrieved the ball, he held it out to Alex and Rick in his cupped hand.
Alex peered at the solid lump. She sniffed. “Cornmeal, to be sure, and some type of hardening agent.”
“I’d bet my hat it also contains arsenic,” Captain Sutter said. “We found, removed, and tested a container of it on the shelf there, along with several dough balls like this one.”
“I expect you’re right. Like this ball, arsenic is odorless and has no preternatural properties.” She turned her attention back to the ants. “This, on the other hand, is quite extraordinary.”
Rick followed her back to the table. “A preternatural substance?”
“I’m not sure yet.” She lowered her face closer to the tabletop. “Every couple of breaths or so, I get a tiny whiff of something. I don’t know what it is, but look here. What could have caused these insects to behave so unnaturally? Hundreds of ants swarmed to this exact spot and died. We can deduce something lured them there, but since I can see no other ants, dead or alive, in this room, I must assume they all went there and died immediately.”
“Unlike that rat over there,” Rick said. “It moved half a dozen feet before it succumbed to its fate.”
“Exactly. Poisons, especially preternatural ones, generally affect all creatures in the same way.”
“So it’s something other than preternatural.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Rick handed Ivy back to Alex, looked under the table, and then knocked on its side. “Perhaps there wasn’t anything on it when the police went through the house because it’s a poison table. No—a cursed one like the treasure my partners are looking for right now. Maybe Mr. Godfrey discovered this table in a basement or an attic and had only recently brought it into this house—only he didn’t know it was cursed. Until he died.”
Alex held back a smile. Rick was brilliant, but sometimes his imagination took over his thoughts. It was often best to go along with him for a time before reeling him back to reality. “Louis didn’t say anything about Jeremiah having brought a new table into the house.”
“We didn’t ask him, either. Think about it, Alex. There is nothing on this table, and yet those ants died on top of it. It has to be the table. It—I know! It housed the soul of an evil demon who finally found a way out.” His eyes widened. “That’s it! This table belonged to the Night Hag.”
Alex stared hard at him so she wouldn’t roll her eyes. “That’s your conclusion? I thought we agreed that a person, not a demon, killed Jeremiah Godfrey and Aunt Pauline.”
“We could have been wrong about that.”
Alex pursed her lips. While she had joined Rick on a few of his treasure-hunting expeditions, she hadn’t gone with him and his partners to South Africa where they’d fought ghosts, discovered Ivy, and retrieved the White Lions of God’s Lost Thunder Drum. Most people considered his adventures as outlandish tales, but when Rick had described them to her, both his voice and his expressions had burned through her with the sound of truth. She’d believed him just as much as he’d believed her about her preternatural sensitivities. Didn’t he then deserve the benefit of a doubt? “We could have,” she agreed.
Captain Sutter lifted his eyebrows. “You two aren’t serious?”
“Can you think of a better explanation?” Rick said.
The captain gaped at him, but said nothing more.
“What’s through that other door?” Alex said.
“The cellar.”
“May we?”
“Certainly.” Captain Sutter took an oil lamp from the shelf next to the cellar door, lit it, and headed down the staircase. At the bottom, he hunched beneath the low ceiling. Rick did too, but Alex, cradling Ivy, stood upright. Ivy’s claws dug through her blouse. Ivy might be feeling better, but she was still afraid of the dark.
Captain Sutter moved to the center of the shadowy, square room. Dust particles floated through the air around the lamp’s flame, spider webs straddled the corners of the room, and dead bug bodies spotted the floor.
Alex sneezed. “I don’t think this place has been used in a while.”
“I believe your right, Mrs. Dalton.”
Rick handed her a clean handkerchief. She pressed it over her mouth and nose. Much better. “Thank you.”
“Have you noticed anything in here?” Rick muttered close to her ear.
“I’m afraid to sniff. If that dust irritates my allergies, I’ll be awake all night.”
“I’ll stay up with you, if you’d like.”
She smiled beneath the handkerchief.
“That’s nice of you, but I’ll manage.” She stepped to the stone wall at her right, removed the handkerchief, and breathed inward. No tingles. “So far the room feels even deader of preternatural plant life than the rest of the house.”
But just as Alex said the word house, Ivy’s fur lit up like a lightning ball.
Alex, raising her eyebrows, scooped Ivy into her hands and lifted her upright. She stared hard into her face. “What causes you to do that?”
“What is it?” Captain Sutter’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. He backed away from Alex and Rick. “Witchcraft!”
“Not in the least,” Alex said. “Ivy is simply a preternatural animal.”
“She has the astonishing ability to glow,” Rick said. “But she doesn’t conjure it. In fact, we haven’t yet figured out why she even does it.”
Ivy squirmed out of Alex’s hands, jumped to the floor, and raced to the back wall. She crouched in front of it with her muscles tensed and her fur, still glowing, standing on end.
“Come back here, Ivy!” Alex said.
A child whimpered behind her.
Alex, Rick, and Captain Sutter whirled to the sound.
“What was that?” Captain Sutter said.
“No. Please!”
The hair on the back of Alex’s neck stood straight up. She scanned the walls, the ceiling, the floor. That was Louis’s voice. Where was it coming from?
“Stop your whining!” a man’s voice said. “You’ll stay down there ’til you’ve learned to obey your master.”
Alex inched closer to the sound. She scanned the wall, the floor, the ceiling, but saw nothing but stone and dirt.
“I’ll obey. I promise! Please don’t shut me up here in the dark!”
Alex’s stomach clenched. Were the voices coming from the walls? It seemed ridiculous, and yet, where else could they be coming from?
Smack!
Scuffing sounds skidded down the stairs. A door slammed. Louis’s wails became soft sobs.
“Dear God in heaven, please don’t let this be real.” Alex prayed the words inside her mind, not as a plea for help but to comfort her heart, because everything inside her knew the sounds were real. Just as real as those she and Rick had heard in her uncle’s office when Ivy had glowed!
Rick grabbed Alex’s arm. “Let’s get out of here!”
Ivy charged up the stairs ahead of them. Alex, Rick, and Captain Sutter raced after her. No one stopped until the four of them stood near the front gate outside the house. Ivy, no longer glowing, jumped into Alex’s arms, and Alex, suddenly overpowered by pent-up emotions, moved into Rick’s open arms. She pressed her head against his chest. Had Mary known a terror similar to what Alex had heard in Louis’s voice before she’d been murdered?
Rick held Alex tighter. She clung to his waist, his strength, his comfort flowing over her like morning sunlight. Several minutes passed. Finally, she pulled herself together, wiped her eyes, and stepped away from him.
The three stared at one another.
“What was that?” Captain Sutter said.
The paleness in both men’s faces and the brightness in their eyes told Alex they, like she, knew exactly what they’d heard.
“Jeremiah Godfrey was a monster,” Rick said at last.
“No wonder Louis prayed the Night Hag would kill him,” Captain Sutter said.
“What?” Alex said.
Captain Sutter frowned. “I’m not surprised he didn’t tell you. He wouldn’t admit it afterward, only said it when my colleagues and I first found Jeremiah’s body. But after what we heard—if anyone had done that to my son, I’d have killed him.”
“No one would blame you,” Rick said.
Alex swallowed. Louis had been the only one in the house when Jeremiah had died—opportunity. The scent of Monk’s Bane in the house along with Jeremiah’s earlier illness indicated poisoning—means. Wanting to escape abuse, praying for Jeremiah’s death—motive. “Except the law,” Alex said. “The law would blame anyone for killing Jeremiah Godfrey, even under those circumstances.”
Both men stared hard at each other and turned to Alex.
“We don’t know anything,” Rick said.
“More importantly, we can’t prove anything,” Captain Sutter said. “The coroner listed Jeremiah Godfrey’s cause of death as unexplained, and as far as I’m concerned, that description still stands.”
Alex faced the road. They had no tangible proof of who’d killed Jeremiah Godfrey, but she knew, and Rick and Captain Sutter knew, that the facts pointed to Louis. Would it be right to force a young boy—a child who’d faced such abuse—to face the penal system for murder?
“I do think we better tell Uncle Henry,” she said.
***