The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall (Sherbrooke Brides 11.50)

Pip was right. No matter what time of the day or night he wrote the last line, he toasted himself with champagne. “We can’t wake up Haddock—”

Pip pulled his thumb out of his mouth. “Mr. Haddock says he has to sleep eight hours to grow his hair.”

Since Haddock was blessed with more hair than he deserved, Grayson couldn’t argue with the eight hours a night. “Maybe Mrs. Elvan left a bottle of champagne in the icebox. I told her about my champagne tradition, and she knew I was getting close to the end of the book. Let’s go to the kitchen and see.”

Grayson carried the candle branch in one hand, Pip pressed against his shoulder with the other. The house groaned with its night sounds as he walked along the wide corridor, boards creaking beneath his booted feet, and the air hung quiet as a crypt, musty, choking—but wait, he heard something. Something close, too close, maybe in the wall, a muffled moan, not a human moan, no—

Grayson shook his head at himself. His mind always went to the macabre, to the potentially terrifying. Hmmm, Thomas was carrying the small son—or daughter—of the house to safety, not knowing what lay waiting ahead, but the sounds he’d heard were deep in the wall, or perhaps behind the wall, trying to punch through—

Belhaven House kitchen sported a brand-new icebox, an experimental invention by Mr. Hubalto Custer of York, who’d asked Grayson to give it a try, which he’d agreed to even though Mrs. Elvin believed the monstrosity to be the work of Satan. Imagine, a box with a huge block of ice in it that melted all over everything and dripped on the floor and made a body slip and slide—no Christian would be responsible for that.

He unlatched the wooden box door and raised the candle. The once-big block of ice was melting, true, but it was a slow drip, most of it caught in a pan set in the bottom. And because Mr. Custer had stuffed sawdust in the inside doors, the interior remained cold. Mrs. Elvan hadn’t complained about that. It was an amazing invention. Yet another remarkable invention by a man named Fox-Talbot was photography, not a painting or drawing, it was a recording of what you actually saw. One of Grayson’s good friends, Murdoch Tynes, said it was time someone finally developed a cure for baldness. And train cars were becoming more widespread, and, of course, his icebox. Grayson leaned in and saw the two lower shelves of the icebox held three covered dishes and a single bottle of Legrandier’s finest champagne. The bottle was cold to the touch. Should he give Pip a sip? He could see Lorelei smiling, and so he did, a very small sip after they toasted his completion of The Evil Within.

He heard a noise, not a house sound, something else entirely, and it wasn’t from his imagination. “Pip,” he whispered against his son’s ear. “Don’t say a word. I’m putting you down. Don’t move.”

The sound came again, a scraping sound. Someone was trying to open the locked door at the back of the kitchen.

Grayson lightly squeezed his son’s arm, said again, “Don’t move.”

Grayson left the candle on a tabletop and carried the champagne bottle by its neck toward the back door.

CHAPTER THREE

Grayson silently unfastened the lock, turned the knob, and jerked the door open. A boy no more than ten tumbled in headfirst, squealing as he hit the floor. He rolled onto his back and stared up at Grayson. “Lawks, don’t ye kill me, yer lordship! I only be ‘ere because me mistress be in a revoltin’ way.”

Grayson set the champagne bottle on the floor and came down beside the boy. “Are you hurt?”

“Me buttocks took a fair knock.”

“Knocks are good for buttocks, especially young boys’ buttocks. Any place else on your person that took a knock?”

There was thought about this, then a shaggy head shake.

Grayson took in his small intruder. He was as skinny as a walking stick, with dark-red hair curling all over his head atop a pale face with a small scattering of freckles. Grayson looked directly into very nearly Sherbrooke blue eyes. He saw no pain. “Who are you?”

“Barnaby, yer lordship.”

Pip crowded in behind his father. “It’s late, Barnaby, you should be at home in bed.”

“See ‘ere now, nipper, so should ye. I’m an old man compared to ye. Besides, I’m on a mission, I am, to ‘elp me mistress.”

“And your mistress would be?”

“P.C., yer lordship.”

Grayson cudgeled his brain for a neighbor with the initials P.C. but couldn’t come up with a single name. “What does P.C. stand for, Barnaby? And I’m not a lordship.”

“I can’t tell ye, ah—yer grace, she’d pull my innards out through my nose. But P.C. said she really needed ye, had me repeat yer name three times so’s I wouldn’t forgets, and I ‘eard her say, ‘I really need Thomas Straithmore or next time it will come and everything will fall off the earth into the abyss.’ Aye, that’s exactly what she said. I don’t know what this abyss is, but I figure it’s gots to be really bad. She said to tell ye she needed ye to come right away so she can tell ye what happened and ye can fix things like ye always do, Mr. Straithmore, yer grace.”

“I’m not a grace either, Barnaby. If I hadn’t been in the kitchen, what would you have done if you’d managed to break the door open? Searched out my bedchamber and tapped me on the shoulder?”

“I ‘ad to light me candle first, yer chancellorship—I ain’t no idjut.” Barnaby pulled a stub of a candle from his jacket pocket, a nicely made jacket, Grayson saw. “I needs me a Lucifer. I sees a box of ‘em over there on the counter.”

“Then you would have found the stairs and climbed up and begun your search for me?”

Pip leaned close. “I know where Papa’s room is, Barnaby. I could take you to him so he could be a hero for P.C. Papa’s not a chancel-ship. I never heard of that sort of boat.”

“Yer a smart nipper, ain’t ye?” Barnaby gave Pip an approving look, then sat up, wrapped his arms around his bent knees, and looked up at Grayson. “But yer right ‘ere, so I don’t gots to do no lookin’ around for ye. Will ye come wit’ me now, yer worship?”