“Yes, Father. There are mysteries to solve, just as Mother said. There is also
the Christmas ball.” She said to Lawrence, “My father is a splendid dancer as
well. Like Thomas, he is so very graceful.”
“I like to dance,” the viscount said. “It passes the time between hauntings.”
Then he pointed. “I am glad I do not have to dance at this moment because there
is something over there, something interesting happened right over there in that
corner. Do you feel it?”
This was said to me. I shook my head and said quickly while I still had his
attention on me, “There are two chambers, however, that we would much appreciate
you investigating for us, my lord.”
He immediately rose, stared around at all of us, and said, “Well? Where are
these rooms? Are we to sit here all day doing nothing at all? But that corner,
it is of interest to me as well. Julia, do write that down in your book to be
investigated later.”
“Yes, my dear Hobson,” said Viscountess Waverleigh.
I didn’t want to go back to the Black Chamber, but I did. John, whom I hadn’t
seen for a day and a half, showed himself when Amelia’s parents had arrived. He
accompanied Amelia and me and his lordship to the west wing. Lawrence excused
himself, saying he himself had no liking for anything not of this world.
As for Thomas, he had just laughed, lightly patted his wife’s cheek, and said, “No
falling asleep in any more rooms, my dear.”
She turned instantly pale, then managed to pull herself together enough to smile
at him.
“Does anyone know what happened in this room?” the viscount asked. “Something
violent?”
“Nothing,” I said. “No one even remembers why it was painted black. Amelia
showed me the room, said one of the best stories was that a former countess had
stabbed a lover, but there is nothing to prove it. It was only I who felt a
malignancy, a dreadful sense that something evil is in there. I don’t believe
anyone else has felt anything out of the ordinary. Just me.”
“Hmmmm, we will see. Sensitive to this sort of thing, are you?”
“Not that I ever knew of.”
I couldn’t bear to go back into that room. Amelia, since it was simply another
room to her, went in first with John, then stepped aside for her father to enter,
which he did very slowly, one short step at a time, sniffing, listening, so
intent, that he nearly fell over a stool near the door.
Then he stopped cold. He stared in the exact corner that had felt so dreadfully
cold to me. Lord Waverleigh, however, wasn’t a coward. He walked right into the
middle of where that dreadful cold had been. I took another step backward, into
the corridor now.
“Can you feel it, sir?” I called to him. “It is just that one spot. It feels
cold, the sort of cold that seeps right into your bones and soul, and there is
menace to it, as if something evil happened right there.”
He said nothing at all. He simply stood there, and closed his eyes. No one said
a word, just watched.
He opened his eyes, nodded to his daughter, and came back out into the corridor.
He took my hands in his. “Listen to me, that is no spirit hanging about in that
room, locked in there by some long-ago violence. I felt everything you felt, and
more. Something violent did happen in that room, but the evil that is in there,
that permeates the very air and space, it is not from the spirit world. It is
from our world; it exists right here, with us now, in this house.” And then
Amelia’s father, closed his eyes and slid down the wall to the corridor floor.
Terrified, I dropped to my knees immediately.
“No, Andy, it’s all right. Father always does this. I believe that what he feels,
what he sees, exhausts him. John, could you carry him to his bedchamber? He will
sleep for an hour or so and then be all right.”
“Just as you slept, Amelia?”
“Yes, just as I slept. I do have my father’s blood, after all. But there is