As the boys came closer to me I stood up. “Are you two in trouble again?” I asked.
They stopped and grinned at me. “We’re not allowed to play, you see,” the older one (Was it Alex?) said. “Because of grandpapa. And it was so boring sitting in the house and reading on a fine day that we begged Mama and she said we could walk around the grounds if Bridget stayed with us, but we weren’t to run.”
“So we weren’t running,” the younger one (Thomas, if I remembered correctly.) joined in. “But we were seeing how fast we could walk.”
“You boys will be the death of me,” the nursemaid said. “You don’t do a thing you’re told. Well, your father is going to hear of this.”
“But we weren’t running, Bridget. It’s not our fault if you only have little legs and we have long ones,” Alex said.
“I don’t believe you’re allowed anywhere near the cliffs,” I reminded them. “You know what your mother feels about that.”
“We thought we’d take a look for ourselves at the place where they found grandpapa’s body.” Thomas said. “We won’t go really near the edge.”
“You’ll go nowhere near it. I’ll walk you back to the house,” I said. “The last thing you want to do right now is give your poor parents more worry. Your mother has lost her father. She’s naturally very upset. You should try to be good boys and comfort her. I expect you miss your grandfather too, don’t you?”
“I suppose so,” Alex said. “We didn’t see him very much and he was rather bossy. We always had to mind our manners with him.”
“He was your grandfather,” I pointed out. “It’s up to you to show respect to his memory.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alex said. Then his face lit up again. “You’ll never believe what we saw last night—we saw a ghost. Mama won’t believe us, but we did.”
Thomas also looked excited. “It was a white lady and she wafted across the lawn and then she vanished.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said, “but I suspect that was me. I ran across to the big house in the middle of the night. My husband was taken ill and I ran across wearing a shawl over my night clothes, so I was your white lady.”
Alex shook his head. “No. This white lady didn’t go anywhere near the front of the house. She ran to the tower at the side where there is no door. We tried to look down by hanging out of our window, but she had just vanished and there was nowhere she could have gone.”
“It was a ghost,” Thomas agreed. “We think we’ve heard ghostly noises before in this place but nobody believes us.”
“You believe us, don’t you?” Alex asked.
“That’s enough nonsense,” their nursemaid said. She took them both by the arm. “Ghosts indeed. Back into the house right now. March. On with you.”
They gave me a regretful look as they were borne away. A white lady who wafted across the lawn and then vanished. I didn’t like to tell them that I was inclined to believe them.
Twenty
I stood looking up at that turret as I made my way back toward the house. It stood solid and windowless at one corner of the castle, its stone sides covered in dense ivy looking incredibly old and foreboding. It was only at the very top, where the turret rose above the level of the battlements that there was a window—in which I had seen a strange child’s face. But the face I had seen had definitely been that of a child, and they were talking about a white lady. Was there more than one ghost that haunted this castle? It didn’t seem possible in a building so new.
I went back to Daniel and persuaded him to try a little broth.
“What news on Hannan’s death?” he asked. “Have I missed anything?”
“We’ve heard nothing more,” I said. “But I’ve had interesting chats with some family members. Mrs. Flannery, Brian’s sister, can’t believe that it would be a family member, but then she mentioned her grandson Sam who had become a Junior Eastman before Brian took him over.”
“And he was the one who supposedly discovered the body when he went out early to go fishing.” Daniel said the words thoughtfully. “I’d be interested to hear the coroner’s report on the time of death. Maybe the body hadn’t lain there since the night before after all.” He tried to sit up. “I wish I’d had a chance to—”
“Lie back. You’re not going anywhere,” I said firmly. “You heard what the doctor said. Absolute rest and quiet because of the possibility of a relapse.”