Page 5 of The Prestley Ghost

Charles swallowed hard, in the lamplight.

His brother had evidently been making careful tidy notes, sitting at the table by the window; a stack of records also occupied the table.

John’s handwriting was elegant and clear, perfectly gentlemanly.

Good for record-keeping, for writing, for meticulous research.

Unlike Charles’ own messier hand, too fast and careless.

“Here.” John handed over the list. “These five are all around the right time period for the description, and the right age to be a young man, more or less. Are any of those names right? Not that he couldn’t’ve lied to you.”

Charles read down the list. Josiah Smithfield, having drowned in that twisting frothy river. Ellis Rookwood, from the manor, some sort of hunting accident. William Thatcher, reportedly having murdered his own brother, his brother’s wife, and then himself. He paused to say, “Good Lord.”

“Ah, that one. No one knows where his body’s buried, which would make that tricky.”

“I don’t particularly want to have to deal with that.”

“No, neither do I. None of those?”

“Not those, but—” And then he stopped, because the fourth entry in John’s graceful script contained one Alexander Leonfeld, shot during a duel, a verdict of accidental death having been entered.

Alex. His pretty owl-eyed laughing Alex, somehow—what, fighting a duel, pistols at dawn?

Over what? Charles tried and failed to picture his generous ghost, who’d evidently been kind to ineffectual exorcists and who’d fretted over Charles’s boots and slippery stones, being foolish or careless or stiff enough with honor to demand violent satisfaction.

The information didn’t make sense. It did not fit.

“That one?” John took the list back. “He was an interesting one. Viscount Foxleigh’s only son, though his father had all but disowned him.

It wasn’t technically his duel; it seems as though he was friends with one of the other Rookwood sons, and he was there as a second, only something went wrong. Very wrong.”

“Alex,” Charles said, or thought he did, aloud.

“That particular Rookwood—Oliver—fled to the Continent and never returned.” John looked more closely at him, across the table. “Are you all right?”

“He…didn’t tell me any of that.”

“Ghosts,” John said, meaningfully. “In any case that one’s complicated because I’ve no idea what he would want.

He got a proper burial—here, in the churchyard, which is also interesting; his father wanted no part of it, apparently—and I can see that it would’ve been a shock, as deaths go, but also…

one does know the whole point of a duel. ”

Charles murmured, still thinking, or not thinking, only feeling, “He was there for a friend…as a second…”

“Mm. Perhaps more than a friend.” John put the list down.

“The records aren’t terribly forthcoming, but reading between the lines…

it sounds as if the whole little group of them, that set, were…

well, very much about living a life full of wine, pleasure, and lack of responsibility.

Not exactly libertines—not cruel to others, not that I’ve found—but careless, very young and wealthy and doing precisely what, and who, they wanted.

Often more than one at once, from some of the descriptions of goings-on.

But Oliver apparently wore one of Alexander’s rings, and took it and himself off to Italy, after. ”

Charles found himself staring blankly at the closest ledger. Leather. Plain. Closed. Unreadable. Silent.

John started to speak, hesitated. Charles could feel that gaze, more hazel-grey than his own green, resting upon him.

Of course relations between two men, or two women, were not precisely illegal, not any longer, in this new nineteenth century, not since that certain case brought by a certain duke and his lover; and John knew perfectly well which direction Charles’s interests went.

But that did not mean it was entirely socially acceptable yet, especially if purely for delight and not some sort of carefully negotiated alliance of benefits, like many upper-class marriages.

It would be less usual for a first, or only, son, to be permitted a same-sex marriage, given the need to carry on a family name; and, indeed, in Alex’s time it would not have been legal, not yet.

But they’d worn rings. Alex and Oliver. If they had been so in love—

Charles bit his lip, so hard it hurt. If what? Was he envious? Of a long-gone lover? Of someone Alex had cared for? Ludicrous. Alex was a spirit, and Charles was a medium, and they had exchanged precisely one extended conversation, and that meant nothing, nothing. And Charles had a job to do.

He cleared his throat. “You’re going to tell me the ring would be helpful for a banishment, except it’s somewhere in Italy, probably lost fifty years ago.”

“Well, now I won’t tell you.” John actually touched him this time, hand settling over Charles’s wrist. “Is something wrong? Is this one going to be a problem in some way I don’t know about yet, and would you tell me that?”

“I’d tell you,” Charles said, because it was true, and moved his arm, “if that were the case. I’m fine. It’s fine.”

“You don’t look it.”

“I’m…relieved it’s not the murderer. That’s all.”

“So am I, but this one’s already been both charming and deceptive.”

“He hasn’t hurt anyone…”

“Mischief.” John tapped fingers over Alex’s name. “But he could hurt someone. Without meaning to. A surprise, a shock. Or…he did lie to you.”

“He didn’t lie.”

“He didn’t tell you everything, then. And you asked.

And he must need something; they all do.

” John sighed again, ran a hand through his hair.

“We may want to look into the family. I can write to Eleanor, at the Thaumatological Society in London; she might know. I’d been meaning to do that in any case, since I’ve not answered her last yet… ”

“You should.” Charles did not know what Eleanor Summerton’s name had been before she’d come to London and taken a post as the Director of Antiquities for the Society’s collection of artifacts, and he did not think anyone else knew either, though he had once seen her not-accidentally spill a piping-hot pot of tea upon an obnoxious antiquarian who’d purposely and persistently addressed her with the wrong pronouns.

He did know that she always smiled at John more than she smiled at anyone else, whenever the Haywards visited, and she and John corresponded with impressive speed about questions of historical occultism and classical Roman methods of dealing with poltergeists.

“Invite her to visit, now that we’re settled. ”

John folded the list of names up just to toss it at him. “We’re solving this case first.”

“Then we’re solving your romantic entanglements?”

“We are not involved with my romantic entanglements, and you’re going to write up your notes about today’s reckless and unapproved spiritualist encounter for our records, before you go to bed.”

“Does she like quiet country villages? Or Mrs Davies’ chocolate biscuits? I’m not above bribery on your behalf.”

“And you’re going to bed early, because you tried to do a banishment without preparation and you’re probably going to see your ghost again tomorrow, because you’re an idiot and you promised and he’s already deceived you once.”

“I can offer my older brother as a sacrifice,” Charles said. “Lectures about responsible behavior thrown in for free. Here, do you want a better pen, for that letter? The nib on that one needs mending.” He got up to do that, and also obediently found the current record for notes, for posterity.

The fire crackled, low and cozy. The library held warmth, knowledge, commitment. Himself and John, doing what they did. The family business, as it were. What they knew.

It was a place that could feel like home: a settled house, a comfortable village, a life that did not pull them to spectacle after spectacle, haunting after haunting, in their parents’ quest to find and document the ghostly world. It was a place they could help.

And yet, amid the warmth of tea and the soft leather of the journals and the mending of a pen, it was not right.

It was not perfect. Charles finished with the pen, handed it over.

John took it with thanks, without getting up; and that reminder always lay coiled like a sharp-fanged adder, waiting to bite if Charles even once forgot that so much pain had been his fault.

Pain, and Alex. Who’d died, decades ago, also in pain. Charles did not like thinking that; it made his heart twist in his chest.

He would give Alex peace. He did not know how, yet. But he would figure it out. He would make that, at least, right.

He sighed, and found his own pen, and started a new entry.

* * * *

The morning crackled with ice, as if a frost-fairy had been by to drape tiny diamonds across tree branches and swinging shop signs.

Fairies were not, as far as Charles knew, real; ghosts and residual presences were, however, so he supposed other forms of existence might be possible.

The snow had not come—too soon for that—but the days were drawing shorter, and the nights gathering strength.

He walked with John across the lane to the solid late-medieval bulk of the church, left his brother to do administrative rector’s duties such as collecting charitable donations and meeting with the present Lady Rookwood from the manor house about funds for the orphanage, and went out to the quiet of the gravestones, around the west, in the hushed green grass.

His footsteps left prints, shining, in the frost.

The Rookwoods of course had a family plot, and he wondered whether Alex would have been permitted that; but no, apparently. He moved a row over, near a large drooping tree with swaying branches.