Midnight in Austenland
Page 40

4. Charlotte announced find to gentlemen and two ladies, none of whom claimed to know of the secret room. And Mary the maid had come out of her room, learning of Charlotte’s find as well. Other servants could have heard of it after that, possibly via Mary. But it’d been very late. Unlikely any servants but those on the second floor would have found out that night, and besides Mary, the others had probably been asleep.
5. Next morning the body was gone.
Wait! A point to add—stick it in as 4.1. Charlotte had heard a thud outside during the night. She visualized the location of Miss Charming’s room, and sure enough, it was below the secret room. The murderer must have returned in the night, thrown the body out the window, rather than drag it down two flights of stairs, and then retrieved it outside and disposed of it somewhere.
Charlotte went to the window. It was wide enough to fit a body through. She didn’t see any telltale shards of ripped clothing or flesh (shudder). If only she had some proof to take to the police. Charlotte hadn’t heard a car or wagon move after the thud. The murderer most likely didn’t have an accomplice. Alone in the middle of the night, he or she must have gone downstairs and out the front door, then carried/dragged the body nearby to some kind of vehicle.
Like Mr. Wattlesbrook’s car.
Charlotte crept back downstairs, a ghost in her white robe haunting the spiral staircase. It felt nice to think of herself as the ghost; it offered a kind of armor to her jumpy fear. Ghosts can’t get re-killed. She tiptoed past the dead eyes of the wall portraits and the shut doors, known to no one but the house itself, her companion in the creeping.
I’m sorry I didn’t like you at first, she thought at the house. And I’m sorry I thought for a minute that you might be an evil monstrosity. Let’s be friends?
Sleepy and alone at dawn, the thought didn’t feel ridiculous.
She opened her door and heard a creak behind her. She whipped around. Nothing.
“Someone there?” she whispered.
Old houses creak, she told herself.
And sometimes, said her Inner Thoughts, people make them creak by sneaking around. Maybe with a knife in hand. Ha ha …
Charlotte ordered her Inner Thoughts to take a hike. She closed her door and wished, not for the first time, that it locked.
Home, over a year before
There were the late nights, the unexpected trips out of state, the irregular laundry patterns. There were the phone calls from unlisted numbers, the caller hanging up if Charlotte answered. There was the odd way James touched her now, or didn’t touch her at all, the curtness in his tone, with no explanation of what she’d done wrong. Things escalated, as they tend to do: a neighbor saying she’d run into James downtown when he was supposed to be in New York on business; a local hotel calling to say James had left behind a phone charger; finding the wrapped lingerie in his closet and assuming he’d forgotten to give it to her on their anniversary—and forgotten her size.
It is much easier to solve someone else’s mystery than to take a step back to survey the one haunting your own home. Charlotte had the gall to be blindsided by James’s confession. Perhaps, Charlotte thought later, she was not so clever. Perhaps she was in the habit of seeing only what she hoped to see.
Austenland, day 11
Everywhere Charlotte looked, she saw signs of murder. The eerie, knowing expressions on the portraits’ faces, the silence in the hallway, the clatter of a plate in the dining room, the emptiness in Mrs. Hatchet’s room.
Charlotte had bathed and dressed after her daybreak snooping and was just about to descend the stairs to breakfast when she heard voices on the landing. She peeked one eye around the corner. Mrs. Hatchet and Miss Gardenside.
“I came to check on you,” said the mother/nurse.
“I’m doing better,” said Miss Gardenside. “A lot better. In fact, I’ve never felt so good.”
“Good. That’s good. You have three more days to go?”
Miss Gardenside nodded.
“Good. That’s good,” Mrs. Hatchet repeated. “So, do you need anything?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m good.”
“Good.”
They both looked out the window.
“You got all dressed up,” Miss Gardenside said, gesturing to Mrs. Hatchet’s navy blue dress. “Are you staying?”
“I just wanted to check on you. But I can stay if you aren’t handling things well on your own.”
“I’m handling things just fine.”
“Well. I will see you next week. Behave yourself.”
“I am,” Miss Gardenside said through clenched teeth.
Mrs. Hatchet nodded and left. Miss Gardenside remained alone on the landing, still staring out the window.
“Riveting,” said a voice beside Charlotte’s ear.
She startled back.
“Eddie. You love to sneak.”
He peeked back at Miss Gardenside, who sighed and then headed downstairs. “I do hope Miss Gardenside was providing better entertainment before I interrupted you, or I might suggest more interesting avenues for spying. Such as through Mr. Mallery’s keyhole. I have not spied that out myself, but perhaps Miss Charming could give you a review. Or Colonel Andrews.”
“Mrs. Hatchet was here,” Charlotte said, ignoring him. She didn’t want to talk about Mr. Mallery with Eddie. “That’s the interesting part. Because she isn’t dead.”
“That is a relief, though I wasted an afternoon drafting a damn fine eulogy. Wait—how did Mrs. Hatchet die again?”
“In the conservatory, by Colonel Mustard, with her own name,” Charlotte said, pretending she was joking too, so that she wouldn’t have to mention dead bodies again. After all, anyone could be the murderer. Even Eddie.
Eddie offered his arm. “No more mystery for you or your womb, sister dear. Breakfast trumps all.”
And for that matter, if the murder was real and not part of Colonel Andrews’s game, then the victim could have been anyone as well. Still, now that Mrs. Hatchet was confirmed alive, Mr. Wattlesbrook’s disappearance the day of Bloody Murder put him at the top of Charlotte’s Probably Dead list.
“What did you gentlemen do with Mr. Wattlesbrook that day he showed up drunk?” Charlotte asked Eddie and Colonel Andrews over breakfast. The others had already dined and departed.
“I was for tossing him out the front door,” Colonel Andrews said. “But driving … a carriage in his condition did seem a mite dangerous. Grey feared for his life.”