Shades of Midnight Read online

  Eve sighed. She did not want to ask. More than that, she did not want to care. “Did you have supper?”

  There was a short pause before he answered. “No, I don’t believe I did.”

  Eve shook her head. The man needed a keeper! He couldn’t even remember when he’d last eaten. And to think she’d almost volunteered for that position… Lucien Thorpe’s keeper. His wife.

  Perhaps he had done her a favor by leaving her at the altar. Humiliating her in front of her friends and family. Leaving her there for hours to wonder if he was hurt or ill or simply didn’t love her. Letting her sit there until midnight had come and gone, and everyone else had left, and she’d come to the realization—there in the dark—that she wasn’t the kind of woman who would ever be on the receiving end of the powerful kind of love she was prepared to give.

  Lucien’s explanation, delivered three days later, that he’d been on a very interesting case and the day had slipped past without notice, had only strengthened that realization. Men didn’t fall madly in love with women like Eve Abernathy. She was too simple to incite passion, too plain to enflame undying love for life. Men like Lucien expected that women like her would wait forever. Well, she might be simple and plain, but she did have her pride. She would not abide being forgotten.

  If she had been able to think of any other solution to her problem, she never would have contacted Lucien Thorpe.

  As Eve boiled water for tea and viciously sliced ham and bread for a man who couldn’t even remember to eat, Viola screamed and the house shuddered.

  Poor Viola. When Eve compared her own problems to those of the murdered woman, she actually felt grateful for her less than illustrious life. Viola Stamper had married a man who, from all accounts, had loved her madly. And she had loved him, too. To those who looked on, their marriage had been ideal.

  But things are not always what they appear to be. Somewhere along the way Alistair had begun to neglect Viola for his work. He had relegated her to second best, behind his business ventures. Eve knew how that felt. It was painful to be second best. It was excruciating to be forgotten.

  Viola had problems of her own. She had become restless when their three years of marriage did not produce a child. The lonely woman, neglected by her husband and without a child to lavish her attentions upon, had allegedly fallen into an affair with another man.

  Alistair had discovered his wife’s infidelity, and from what Eve had learned—and judging by what she saw and heard every night—it appeared that he had forgiven her. But he hadn’t forgiven, not really. He had only pretended to forgive her foolish mistake.

  On Halloween night, 1855, Alistair Stamper had thoroughly seduced and then coldly murdered his unfaithful wife.

  Eve shuddered. Perhaps she really was better off forever unmarried.

  Chapter 2

  While Eve prepared tea, Lucien unpacked his equipment and set it up, taking extra special care with the newly redesigned Thorpe Specter-o-Meter. When it was working properly, the device was able to measure the amount of ghostly energy in the air, which was indicated by the fluctuation of a red needle. Unfortunately, it didn’t work properly as often as it worked improperly. Still, he had great hopes for the machine. It was a promising work in progress.

  The Thorpe Ectoplasm Harvester was simpler and more likely to function correctly. Unfortunately, one had to be directly upon the spirit for the apparatus to work. He imagined he could carry the harvester upstairs and lay it on the bed where the ghosts frolicked, but that seemed… rude, even where the dead were concerned. He’d try it downstairs, at the point of the murder, first. If that didn’t work, then he would try another, more intrusive method.

  As he carefully assembled the equipment, he listened to the sounds of Eve puttering about in the kitchen. She had forgotten that he had exceptional hearing… or else she didn’t care that he heard her occasionally mutter words like jackass and dimwit and another, more vile word he had not imagined she even knew. Those words were complemented by the random banging of pots and a thwack that sounded suspiciously like a knife hitting soundly against a cutting board.

  He smiled as he adjusted the needle on the specter-o-meter. Eve tried to be a proper lady, but thank God she was not. There was too much fire in her blood for proper. And she had always been able to surprise him, with an intelligent comment or a full-throated laugh. At one time he had been looking forward to a lifetime of surprises, with her as his wife. She wasn’t like other women, not at all. She didn’t waste her time on tedious activities like primping or embroidering or planning unnecessary parties. Intelligence made her eyes sparkle, curiosity made her occasionally brave and often bolder than she should be. Eve Abernathy was a world of surprises, he imagined. He hadn’t known she could be so damned unforgiving.

  He hadn’t intended to leave her waiting at the altar. He’d been summoned to rid a house of its pesky ghost, and from the information he’d been given he had assumed that the job would take no more than a few days. Usually he was in and out of a house in well under a week.

  But the ghost of Winifred Kent had been resistant. More than that, her hands had been incredibly visible, as she knocked up and down the stairs, apparently unable to move elsewhere. Winifred had broken the specter-o-meter he’d been developing at the time, sending the needle right off the scale. She had tried to talk to him, he knew it, but like most ghosts—unlike Viola and Alistair—she had been unable to make a sound. Mrs. Kent had refused to use his own body to speak through; he had sensed her fear at that prospect. So there they were, needing to communicate but unable to do so, Winifred’s hands expressive and insistent, Lucien’s powers failing him in a most unusual way. How many hours had he stood on those stairs, knowing that the words the spirit wanted to say were floating just out of reach? Winifred had, eventually, made her wishes known, and Lucien had led her to the other side, where she could rest in peace.

  He never knew what might be holding a ghost on the wrong side, caught between life and death, unable to move on. Sometimes the reasons were shocking. Sometimes, as with Winifred, the reasons were small. Not at all the sort of thing you might expect. Winifred had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. At first Lucien had, of course, suspected that she had not fallen, but had been pushed. Sometimes a spirit demanded justice, and would not rest until it was delivered.

  But Winifred had not been searching for revenge or justice. In the end it was determined that she had, indeed, fallen. She’d been on her way down the stairs to weed her garden. Winifred had loved her garden. She’d spent hours every day caring for it.

  Once Lucien had discovered that fact, he’d taken a chance and led Winifred down the stairs, into the library, and out the French doors into her beloved garden. They had talked a while—well, he had talked and Winifred had listened—and he’d shown Mrs. Kent how carefully her daughter was now tending the flowers that grew there. The phantom that had been Winifred Kent became still and calm, and then she’d moved on.

  And an hour or so later, Lucien had seen a calendar and remembered Eve and the wedding date that had passed.

  But had she listened to his explanations? No. She’d stood before him still and quiet, downright stony, her spine rigid and her eyes hard as emeralds while he stumbled over his explanation. Stubborn woman.

  By the time Eve returned to the parlor, Lucien had the equipment set up and ready to go. Eve came in carrying a silver tray bearing two cups of steaming tea and a plate piled high with meat and bread. She always tried to feed him too much, for some reason.

  She studied his equipment and sighed in what might be despair. “After Viola and Alistair make their final appearance for the night, you can go to the boarding house and secure a room.”

  “At this hour?” Lucien asked.

  “You can hardly stay here,” Eve said primly. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  Lucien grumbled. Of course she was right. It was different when there was a large group investigating a haunting, as was usually the case. This time th
ere was just the two of them, and for him to remain here with Eve would certainly be considered improper. But he cared little for what was proper, and so did Eve, as he remembered.

  “Where is this boarding house?”

  Eve smiled. “Just a block down from the train station.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a horse I could borrow.”

  “No,” she said calmly. “I always prefer to walk to town. The exercise is good for me, and this time of year the cold air can be invigorating.”

  He had quite a walk ahead of him, and Eve knew it. She also knew that the October air was quickly turning from invigorating to icy. “Fine,” he said as he took the plate containing his late supper, and Eve placed his cup of tea on a nearby table. She took her own teacup and saucer to a table on the opposite side of the room. All night, she had walked away from him.

  Upstairs, the bed Viola and Alistair occupied creaked and scraped across the floor. The voices drifting down were softer than they had been before, but still crystal clear and undeniably amorous. Lucien’s collar became quite tight. Maybe if he continued to talk, the sounds emanating from above stairs would be less distracting.

  “Why me?” he asked as he swallowed a bite of ham and bread. “I’m not the only specialist in this field, you know.”

  Eve huffed. “You were not my first choice.”

  “I thought not.”

  “Hugh Felder is in London, and he won’t be back until well after Halloween. I was afraid to wait that long. The anniversary of the incident might be important.”

  “Hugh is quite good,” Lucien allowed. “I can see why you might try to contact him first.” There was no insult in being chosen after anyone as talented and dedicated as Hugh Felder.

  “You weren’t my second choice, either,” Eve said without emotion. “Unfortunately, Lionel Brandon fell down the stairs at his last job and broke his leg. He’ll be housebound for several more weeks.”

  “Really?” Lucien tried not to smile. He had never liked Lionel. The man grinned entirely too much, and Lucien had found Brandon to be much too friendly with Eve, not long before the aborted wedding. She had brushed the inappropriate behavior off as the young man’s normal gregarious manner. Lucien had not been able to be so cavalier. “Was he pushed by a spirit not yet ready to depart?”

  “Tripped over a board not properly nailed down.”

  So, he had not been her first choice or her second. They worked in a small community. There weren’t that many ghost chasers for her to choose from. Lucien took a long sip of tea, and in the ensuing silence, Viola wailed. “What about O’Hara?” he asked as he set the tea aside, anxious to continue the conversation. Anything to keep his mind off what was going on above his head.

  Eve pursed her lips. Her nose twitched as she said, “O’Hara is a moron.”

  Lucien lifted his eyebrows, confused. He’d always considered O’Hara quite competent, and at one time Eve had thought him brilliant. And now she preferred facing him and their unfortunate history to contacting O’Hara. “A moron?”

  “Yes,” Eve snapped. “That left you.”

  “A last resort.” Lucien stared at Eve for a few uncomfortable minutes. Looking at her had never been a chore, and it wasn’t now. “But O’Hara…”

  “I’d really rather not talk about O’Hara, if you don’t mind.” Eve lifted her chin stubbornly.

  She looked most childlike, most innocent, when she was trying to appear staid and unyielding. That attempt at building a sober facade had always struck him as being like a child playing at being a grown-up. Only in this case, it was a lovely, sweet young woman playing at being as hard and inflexible as any man. Which she was not.

  He brushed off the thought that if Eve were now truly harder and more inflexible than she had once been, it was his doing.

  “I don’t understand,” Lucien said. “O’Hara is young, but he has an apparent natural talent, and he’s always seemed friendly enough…”

  “O’Hara attempted to put his hand up my skirt at the Tristan haunting,” Eve interrupted sharply, losing her patience and her rigid expression. “He got a little bit too friendly for my liking, and I had no desire to invite him to my home. There, are you satisfied?”

  Lucien set his food aside, no longer hungry. “That incompetent, vulgar philanderer,” he said through clenched teeth. “Where is he now, Eve? You seem to know where everyone else is. Where can O’Hara be found? As soon as I get rid of your ghosts, I’m going to…”

  “Stop this,” Eve said softly. “You have no right to become incensed, and no reason to defend me. I can defend myself.”

  “I’m sure you can, but…”

  Her hands balled into small, pale fists. Her green eyes hardened. “Lucien Thorpe, you gave up the right to be proprietary when you left me standing in the church in my best dress, waiting for you in front of everyone I knew and loved.”

  Lucien held up both hands. He had tried to explain once, and Eve had refused to listen. Would she listen now? “I had a visible spiritual body part on my hands… so to speak. I did not forget you, Eve, I simply forgot what day it was.” The manifested hands of an avid gardener were probably not impressive to a woman who presently had two seemingly well-formed ghosts mating in her bed. But at the time, he had been dazzled.

  “Apparently it wasn’t a very important day,” she countered. “At least, not to you.”

  “Eve…”

  She held up a hand. “Can we call an end to this discussion? You’re not here to relive and explain away ancient history. You’re here to get rid of my ghosts. That is all.”

  “Fine,” he said, settling back in his chair. A ghostly laugh drifted down. Something, a headboard perhaps, banged against a wall. He said no more. Torturous as it was, listening to two ghosts make passionate love above their heads was preferable to continuing this conversation.

  *

  Every other night since she’d become aware of the haunting, Eve dreaded the approach of this time. Eleven forty-seven. She hated to hear Viola scream and cry… she hated to hear the woman die at her husband’s hand.

  But tonight she’d be glad to get it over with.

  Tonight the silence that always preceded the end of the evening was heavenly, more so than usual. To be forced to sit here and look at Lucien without visible emotion while amorous antics went on above their heads had been torment. Pure torment.

  A few minutes of perfect and peaceful quiet always came before the final, violent event. In that eerie silence, Eve glanced at the clock, then nodded her head to Lucien as she stood. Together, they stepped into the foyer. He very carefully placed his ectoplasm harvester at the foot of the stairs. The Thorpe Specter-o-Meter was already sitting nearby.

  Right on time, Viola appeared in the hallway on the second floor. She was clearer tonight than she had been last night, and last night she’d been more distinct than she’d been the night before. She was still a pale, white transparent figure, but each night the details became a little clearer. Eve couldn’t help but wonder what Lucien, who always saw and heard more than anyone else, saw when he looked at Viola.

  “Fully formed manifestation,” he muttered, completely in awe as Viola, hair flowing and wrapper dancing around her legs, ran down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs, she stopped, looked into the parlor, and then turned away. The red needle on Lucien’s specter-o-meter jumped and twitched. The spring broke, and with a final twist the needle jumped and fell crookedly and broken to one side. Lucien hardly seemed to notice his equipment’s failure as the vision that was Viola threw her head back, screamed, and crumpled to the floor.

  She didn’t die right away; she never did. A wounded Viola lay there, facedown, and cried. She wailed, as if her heart was as broken as her body. Her wrapper slid down her back, as if someone… her killer… her husband… removed it slowly. When the wrapper passed her waist and revealed her backside, Lucien reached out and covered Eve’s eyes with one large hand.

  She slapped his hand away. “Oh for God�
�s sake,” she whispered. “I’ve seen this before.”

  Viola spoke, but her words were indistinct, as if they traveled over a long distance and could not quite reach the ears of the living. She sounded as if she were pleading; she probably did just that. Pleading with a man who had made love to her and then stabbed her. Begging the man she loved to spare her life. No wonder she haunted this house.

  The woman lay, naked and shimmering, on the floor. Fair hair fell over her face, around her shoulders. Her back, marred by her own blood, rose and fell as she struggled to breathe. She tried to rise but the effort was weak, as if she knew struggling was useless.

  Eve’s heart jumped in her chest as Viola jerked violently, as the apparition was stabbed for the second time. She cried out, and this time the word she cried was distinct enough to send chills dancing down Eve’s spine. Alistair. The woman on the floor crumpled, and the vision that was Viola faded.

  For a long moment, both Eve and Lucien were completely quiet. The violence of the encounter hung in the air. The sadness for a life taken in that way was not dimmed by the passing years. Viola had been young—twenty-four, three years younger than Eve was today—when she’d died. It wasn’t right.

  “How horrible,” Lucien said softly.

  “Yes,” Eve agreed.

  Lucien squatted down and retrieved his ectoplasm harvester. It was full to overflowing. He glanced at the specter-o-meter and cursed beneath his breath. And then he looked up at her. “This happens every night?”

  She nodded. “Just before midnight. At first I couldn’t hear anything, and Viola and Alistair weren’t well formed at all. They were bits of soft light, like the ones we saw at the Warwick haunting.”

  Lucien nodded and looked away, and Eve immediately regretted mentioning the Warwick case. She’d fallen in love with Lucien as they’d investigated that house, and she had believed he’d fallen in love with her. Turns out she’d been nothing more to him than a passing fancy, one easily dismissed.

  Viola and Alistair were gone, and they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow night, about ten-fifteen. They’d be more distinct than ever, come tomorrow. Louder and more vivid as they relived that last night of their lives once again.