CHAPTER 8.
The following week, Colonel Havelock took ill, coming down with a dreadful cold that confined him to his bed. Though I caught it as well, I was relieved. It meant summoning the surgeon. For an elderly man, an ordinary cold could prove fatal. Of course, Mr. Anson blamed me.
“Didn’t you bundle him up?” he demanded when the surgeon took the colonel’s temperature. “You know that window is drafty!”
“He was wrapped tighter than a mummy,” I sniffled in my defense. “And he wasn’t anywhere near the window.”
“Did you take him outside?”
“No.”
“Then how—”
The surgeon held up the thermometer. “This is most… peculiar,” he said, shaking it out. “I cannot get an accurate reading.” He scolded the colonel as if he were a naughty child. “Did you take this out when my back was turned?” Colonel Havelock shook his head, too congested to offer much but a disgruntled oath. “Well, maybe there is something… amiss.” He stuck it back in and made certain the colonel could not remove it. After a few minutes, he removed it and accused us of trickery.
Mr. Anson yanked him into the hallway. “What’s the meaning of his, Bellamy? Is he feverish or not?”
“He is.”
The surgeon was a former naval officer who despised his job and only put up with Colonel Havelock because the Navy drummed him out on his ear. Mr. Anson said he could no longer sustain a private practice. “Too many complaints,” he whispered to me shortly after the man’s arrival.
“What sort of… complaints?”
“The costly kind.”
“Then what is he doing here?” I whispered back, watching with envy as Colonel Havelock treated Dr. Bellamy as if he were his own son. “Should he be tending to our employer?”
“You’re resentful,” Mr. Anson observed coolly. “But I wouldn’t be too put out. Dr. Bellamy hides mints in his pockets. He does that with all his patients.”
“Should I do that?”
“I doubt it would help. If the colonel has decided to dislike you, there is nothing you can do to rectify the matter.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “He’s not fond of you, either,” I pointed out.
Mr. Anson blessed me with one of his annoyed looks, a common occurrence with Colonel Havelock’s servants, and one that reflected the fractured state of Briarwood Hall.
Dr. Bellamy held out the thermometer. “This is brand new!” he cried. “And it refused to read his temperature!”
“What was his temperature?” I had the temerity to ask. Both men refused to acknowledge my inquiry, and I added another reason why I should leave Briarwood. I stood with my hands behind my back as they parried back and forth, each accusing the other of some grave offense relating to the colonel’s poor health. “Was it high or low?”
“Neither!” they shot back, making me wince.
Thinking it was best to let them fight it out, I wandered past the gallery and towards the back staircase leading up to the attic. I don’t know why I was drawn to it. There was a siren call that beckoned to me at night. More than once I had awakened, longing to see what was up there.
Though I was forbidden to do so.
Mr. Anson, on my first day, had coldly informed me I was to avoid the attic. “There is nothing up there that concerns you,” he said when I asked him if there was someone up there. “The attic hasn’t been opened in years.”
“But I felt someone watching me when I arrived.”
“It was your imagination, Miss Gibson. Nothing more.”
Had I an overactive imagination?
Anne Gibson was not given to fits of hysterics or flights of fancy. I was a natural skeptic. I didn’t even believe in ghosts! But, as time wore on, I began to feel as if I were being watched. That day in the hall when something shoved me proved Briarwood Hall held more than dusty relics of the Regency era.
They held something more frightening than a spiteful old man who mumbled nonsense to himself.
Yes, Colonel Havelock spoke to himself when I wasn’t there. I thought nothing of it at first. He was old and often had trouble recognizing people and objects. Once, when I brought him his tray, I heard him pleading with someone to leave him alone. Now, one might say he was reading a book or acting out a scene in a play. We’ve all done it. But this was something that sent chills through me. I’ll always remember because of what he said.
“Why do you torment me?” he cried, his voice fraught with pain. “Haven’t I done what you asked? I sent them away!”
I pressed my ear to the door and was startled to hear a hushed whisper in reply.
“Why do you say that? It’s not fair!” he railed. “It’s not fair to keep me here!”
The whisper grew louder still, but was unintelligible.
“It wasn’t my fault! I refuse to take blame!”
“… shame!” The whispery voice accused.
“NO!” Colonel Havelock shouted, loud enough for anyone in the house to hear. “I’m not sorry for what happened! Do you hear? I’m not!”
The next words chilled me to the bone.
“… kill.”
“I didn’t! You can’t blame me! It was an accident!”
“… pay.”
“I won’t!” Colonel Havelock was saying, slurring his words. I knew I had to get in there. He was working himself into a frenzy, shouting and throwing things. I set the tray down and tried to turn the knob.
The door was locked.
Impossible, since I had the key. I felt for it in my pocket and hurried to insert it into the lock. The lock would not disengage. “Colonel Havelock?” I shouted, pounding on the door. “Can you hear me?”
“Go away!”
“I’ve brought your lunch. Would you please unlock the door?”
“I don’t want any!”
No matter how hard I tried, I could not open that door. I ran downstairs for the skeleton key. Mr. Anson refused to have another made and kept it in a biscuit tin on the top shelf of the pantry. I had to pull out a ladder to reach it. With key in hand, I raced back to Colonel Havelock. “Colonel…?”
He had stopped talking.
I think the eerie silence was far more unsettling than anything the colonel might have said or done. I let myself in and found the room in shambles. Papers were strewn all about. They were on the floor, on the bed, and piled around Colonel Havelock’s feet. “Sir…?” I breathed, taking a hesitant step. “Are you… well?”
“What does it look like?” he growled, batting a shredded piece of paper away. His eyes narrowed. “How did you get in?”
I held up the key. “What on earth happened? Did a hurricane hit?” I tucked the key into my pocket and fetched a broom and waste bin. I spent a better part of an hour cleaning up torn bits of paper. I wanted to ask him how he managed to tear all that paper. But I kept my mouth shut. He was eccentric, nothing more.
That’s all there was to it.
After cleaning his room and fetching him a fresh pair of slippers, I brought him his tray. I had prepared jam sandwiches and tea. “Will that be all for you, Colonel?” I said, shaking out his napkin. In many ways, he reminded me of Eileen. Though she was not prone to fits of irrational anger or in need of a bedpan. “Sir?”
I turned to pick up the waste bin and his eyes grew round. My arm suddenly felt as if it were held in a vise. Pain radiating through my arm, the colonel yanked me close and hissed in my ear. “Did you see her?”
“Wh-who?”
“Her!” he wheezed, impaling my sleeve with his fingernails. “Tell me I am not the only one who sees!”
“Please, Colonel!” I pleaded, wincing with the pain. “My arm!”
He glanced down in confusion and let me go. I rolled up my sleeve to find five red welts. But Colonel Havelock didn’t notice. He was too busy picking at his sandwich. I watched him peel the crust from the bread, then separate the slices as if to inspect their jam filling. “I don’t like this kind of jam,” he pouted, tossing the slices onto the tray. “I don’t think I like jam anymore.”
“It’s what you… requested,” I replied faintly, staring in disbelief as he smeared jam all over his face. He licked his fingers. “Perhaps you would like another kind.” I fought the urge to flee the room when he bit into a slice, chewed slowly, then spat it out into his hand. He held it out to me.
“I used to give her presents,” he sighed, dropping the masticated ball of bread on the floor. “She liked flowers. Red ones.”
“That’s… nice.” He had spread the jam on his white linen shirt and was now rubbing into his scalp. “Sir, please. Let me get you a damp cloth.”
The colonel’s eyes widened innocently. “You remind me of her. Both of you with those doe eyes. Oh, I could sit and watch her eyes all day.” He leaned forward as if to confide a secret. “I used to, you know.”
“What, sir?”
He held another ball of bread, patting it as if it were a pet. “I used to watch her. She never knew it, of course. She was married to my brother.”
“Brother?” I repeated stupidly. “I didn’t know you had a brother, sir.”
“Oh, yes.” He nodded, his eyes filling with tears. “But he died.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“So was I.”
“How did he die, Colonel? Was it sudden?”
Colonel Havelock looked at me then, his once vivid eyes faded and rimmed with fleshy folds of skin. “Sudden? Of course it was sudden.”
I began picking up soggy balls of sticky bread. “Was it a long illness?”
“Illness?” he repeated, as if the word amused him. “Heavens no!” He giggled like a little boy. “He was never ill a day in his life!”
I glanced up to see a smirk lifting the corner of his wizened lips. “Forgive me, Colonel. It is none of my business.”
“Oh, that’s all right. It couldn’t be helped. She was my present. It was my birthday when he brought her home. Everyone knows that.”
I had no idea what he was blathering on about. I just wanted to clean his mess and soak in a hot bath. “I’m sorry, Colonel. Perhaps the jam sandwich was not to your liking.”
“Jam? I hate jam.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
Though I cleaned what I could, the carpet would have to be scrubbed and the colonel would have to have a sponge bath. “I’ll get the towels, Colonel. Will you let me shave you today?”
“Shave? What’s this about shaving? I’m trying to tell you about the day my brother died!”
“Oh.” I frowned slightly. “Should I be privy to this?”
“I want to tell!” the colonel cried. “I’ve got so many stories and no one to listen. Don’t you want to hear about the day Michael died?”
Gulping, I nodded. “Then will you let me bathe you?”
The colonel gave me one of his sly looks. “Perhaps. Now, about the day Michael died…”
I sat, half listening to a story that made no sense and wishing Mr. Anson hadn’t seen fit to run off on the pretext of obtaining the colonel’s favorite brandy. I may be young and naïve, but a man heading into the village wearing a brand-new suit did not intend to socialize with the local shopkeeper.
To my horror, I felt myself nodding off and shook myself awake. The colonel was waxing poetic about his older brother Michael and some incident in which the colonel had to run for help. “Was he wounded?” I inquired, just for the sake of being polite.
“He shouldn’t have been standing there,” the colonel went on, ignoring my startled expression when he described the wound Michael had received when they got into an argument. “It was his fault,” he insisted. “No one blamed me.”
“Who shot him?” I gasped, not comprehending what he was saying. “Was he—”
The colonel smiled.
“I shot him,” he confided with a boyish gleam in his eyes. “I had to. He came at me. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him get the last word. He never would have let me forget it.”
Not wishing to hear anymore, I threw everything on the tray and prepared to leave. Before I turned, the colonel giggled again. “Promise you won’t tell.” He held out his hand. “Pinky swear!”
Not realizing what I had just been privy to, I went along with it. “Pinky swear,” I said, relieved he hadn’t seen fit to rip my arm off. “Now, will you let me wash you?”
“Oh, yes. I suppose I should. Jam is awfully sticky.”
“Very good, Colonel. I won’t be but a moment.”
As I made my way through the house, I tried to forget the ramblings of an old man tormented by the past. There were no such things as ghosts. And it was he who had torn the paper. Everything had an explanation.
Reason and facts were my motto.
Unfortunately for me, the lines between truth and myth were about to merge and destroy what I had always known as cold, hard reality.
