but it wasn’t to be.
As I walked beside Amelia back to the drawing room, I said, “The house is really
quite lovely. Lawrence told me about old Hugo’s diary, filled with rantings
about heretics and such.”
“Yes, it’s in a small room just yon, beneath those rusted old suits of armor
that the maids don’t like to dust. They think the knights are still inside, at
least their bones and their ghosts are, just waiting to pinch them if they’re
not wary. I heard one maid tell another that she wasn’t to get too close to any
of them because one of the knights just might grab her and pull her into the
armor and she would be imprisoned forever.” Amelia laughed then. “This house
sometimes makes me wonder if there aren’t more ghosts than Thomas ever admitted
to before we were married. It’s the feel of it, you see, nothing overt or
blatantly menacing, like sliding chains and creaking floor planks.”
“You asked for a ghost reckoning before you were willing to wed Thomas?”
“Well, you see, my father is a renowned scholar on the delineation of
otherworldly manifestations. He believes that there are probably many spirits
and other spectral phenomena that reside here at Devbridge Manor, although no
one likes to admit to them. He believes that most of them probably date from the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when very violent things happened here, and,
of course, everywhere else as well. He was the one who wanted every ghost
produced and discussed until he was satisfied that none would harm me. Truth be
told, I think my father is more interested in actually bringing to light the
most infamous of the ghosts that is said to reside in the Black Chamber, so he
could lord it over his colleagues.
“Unfortunately, Thomas couldn’t even produce one ghost, and he promised me he
had walked each of the long corridors at least twice at midnight, but none of
them deigned to confront him. As I said, there is simply this feeling here. Soon
perhaps I will ask my father to come and conduct some of his scientific spectral
experiments. Perhaps he will feel something malignant in the Black Chamber. I
never have felt anything in there.”
“I should like to meet your father and observe him,” I said, and then thought I
must be a fool. Who wanted to come face-to-face with an unhappy spirit? Who
wanted a ghost hanging around, clanking chains or moaning up and down the
octaves in one’s ear? What had happened in the Black Chamber?
“Goodness, I never considered ghosts when I agreed to Lawrence’s marriage
proposal.”
I heard Lawrence’s voice as he came out of the dining room and said quickly to
Amelia, “I want to hear more about any resident specters, Amelia. I want to
visit this Black Chamber tomorrow morning.”
I knew, just knew, that my new husband would hear the word ghost out of my mouth
and regard me from that moment on as a complete fool. Better to keep some things
to myself.
“Of course.” She paused, studied her thumbnail for a moment, and added, “There
are other rooms as well that are supposedly visited, but I have never seen or
heard anything, and I confess, I have visited them often. But there are stories,
particularly about one of them. You are wise to keep this between the two of us.
Uncle Lawrence has no patience at all with ghosts.”
What room?
“Amelia, my dear,” Lawrence said, coming into the drawing room. “Andy will be in
The Blue Room. Do you mind seeing her there?”
Amelia stared at him. She was silent as one of those suits of armor with the
knights’ ghosts inside.
I turned and stared at him as well.
Thomas cleared his throat. “The thing is, sir, perhaps you’ve forgotten that The
Blue Room is perhaps better suited to an elderly relative who is rather hard of
hearing and perhaps has dimmed vision?”
“Yes, Uncle,” John said, “a relative with very dulled sensibilities.”
What was going on here? Was this the particular room Amelia had just mentioned?
Chapter Eight
Lawrence laughed. “The lot of you are incredibly gullible. Don’t listen to them,