Midnight in Austenland (Austenland 2)

Duh, people are killed at noon just as often as midnight, her Inner Thoughts replied.

Not helpful, Charlotte thought forcefully.

Well past midnight and between bouts of unconsciousness, Charlotte began to wonder if the house itself was the real assassin. It groused and soughed as if it had a voice and something to say. Perhaps someone had crossed the house, and it had seized the threat in its gullet and consumed it entirely. Charlotte had discovered the victim’s body mid-digestion, finding only a hand, and by morning the house had absorbed the rest.

“Nice house,” she said, patting the wall. “Good house. Charlotte is friend.”

It couldn’t hurt.

As soon as paleness filtered the black of the sky, Charlotte slipped on a robe, creaked her door open, and tiptoed to the second-floor secret room. She didn’t really believe that the house had killed someone and swallowed the body. Not now that it was morning, anyway.

Charlotte lifted the lid of the black Chinese vase again, just because it seemed like something that should hold a clue. But it was still empty. In the unfinished light of dawn, the stack of broken chairs did resemble a dragon, but that wasn’t particularly helpful. Even in her sleepy half-madness, Char

lotte didn’t believe in dragons.

Charlotte sat on an abandoned settee, slumping in the absence of a corset. A body had lain right over there on the couch. She couldn’t talk herself out of it anymore. No way had she mistaken a glove for a fleshy dead hand.

To keep calm, she tried to reason it out logically.

1. Murderer approached victim. Lured up to this room? With intent to kill? Not likely. Must have been an unplanned crime or else a stupid criminal. The top floor of an occupied house was not an ideal location for a murder.

2. Victim killed in secret room, and body abandoned on sofa. Until more convenient time? Murderer lay velvet coverlet partially over the body. Possible sign of regret? Also a disregard for the value of a velvet coverlet.

3. Charlotte found body in room. The hand was cold, but she didn’t remember any stench, so most likely the body was fresh. (Ugh, what a horrible adjective to apply to a body, as if it were meat, which, she supposed, it kind of was.) Killed recently? Same week? Same day?

4. Charlotte announced find to gentlemen and two ladies, none of whom claimed to know of the secret room. And Mary the maid had come out of her room, learning of Charlotte’s find as well. Other servants could have heard of it after that, possibly via Mary. But it’d been very late. Unlikely any servants but those on the second floor would have found out that night, and besides Mary, the others had probably been asleep.

5. Next morning the body was gone.

Wait! A point to add—stick it in as 4.1. Charlotte had heard a thud outside during the night. She visualized the location of Miss Charming’s room, and sure enough, it was below the secret room. The murderer must have returned in the night, thrown the body out the window, rather than drag it down two flights of stairs, and then retrieved it outside and disposed of it somewhere.

Charlotte went to the window. It was wide enough to fit a body through. She didn’t see any telltale shards of ripped clothing or flesh (shudder). If only she had some proof to take to the police. Charlotte hadn’t heard a car or wagon move after the thud. The murderer most likely didn’t have an accomplice. Alone in the middle of the night, he or she must have gone downstairs and out the front door, then carried/dragged the body nearby to some kind of vehicle.

Like Mr. Wattlesbrook’s car.

Charlotte crept back downstairs, a ghost in her white robe haunting the spiral staircase. It felt nice to think of herself as the ghost; it offered a kind of armor to her jumpy fear. Ghosts can’t get re-killed. She tiptoed past the dead eyes of the wall portraits and the shut doors, known to no one but the house itself, her companion in the creeping.

I’m sorry I didn’t like you at first, she thought at the house. And I’m sorry I thought for a minute that you might be an evil monstrosity. Let’s be friends?

Sleepy and alone at dawn, the thought didn’t feel ridiculous.

She opened her door and heard a creak behind her. She whipped around. Nothing.

“Someone there?” she whispered.

Old houses creak, she told herself.

And sometimes, said her Inner Thoughts, people make them creak by sneaking around. Maybe with a knife in hand. Ha ha …

Charlotte ordered her Inner Thoughts to take a hike. She closed her door and wished, not for the first time, that it locked.

Home, over a year before

There were the late nights, the unexpected trips out of state, the irregular laundry patterns. There were the phone calls from unlisted numbers, the caller hanging up if Charlotte answered. There was the odd way James touched her now, or didn’t touch her at all, the curtness in his tone, with no explanation of what she’d done wrong. Things escalated, as they tend to do: a neighbor saying she’d run into James downtown when he was supposed to be in New York on business; a local hotel calling to say James had left behind a phone charger; finding the wrapped lingerie in his closet and assuming he’d forgotten to give it to her on their anniversary—and forgotten her size.

It is much easier to solve someone else’s mystery than to take a step back to survey the one haunting your own home. Charlotte had the gall to be blindsided by James’s confession. Perhaps, Charlotte thought later, she was not so clever. Perhaps she was in the habit of seeing only what she hoped to see.

Austenland, day 11