Chapter Seventeen
SEVENTEEN
We don’t get to interview Kate. We speak to her mother, who confirms she recently got a job in the city and moved there, but she’s not sure where the job is located and she’s not sure where she’s living.
I could be horrified by this, but then I remember that after my friends and I moved out of my dorm, my parents texted for my address so they could drop something off.
I’d also held summer jobs during university where my parents would have struggled to remember exactly where I worked.
They were very involved in my life, but by then, I was off and doing my own thing and I wasn’t always the best at updating them on specifics.
At sixteen, a girl from the working classes is considered as independent as I was at twenty.
If anything, Kate’s mother is proud of her, successfully launched from the nest. She gives us what she can so we can track her daughter down.
Otherwise, she’ll let Kate know about Nellie when she comes for dinner on Sunday.
Next we visit Mary’s parents. They’re both at home—they work a small farm. There’s not much they can tell us. Their daughter is dead. She drowned a month ago, and they are still deeply in mourning. She was their only child, two others having not survived infancy.
The police said it was suicide, and Mary’s parents can’t accept that.
I’d like to seize on their disbelief as proof the autopsy was wrong, but there’s a suicide note and missing laudanum.
The police have the note on file, and we take one of Mary’s school notebooks to compare the writing, but her parents say it looked like hers.
Moreover, they found it on her pillow, so it doesn’t seem as if they’re seriously questioning the verdict. They just can’t believe it.
“She was such a happy child,” her mother says. “A simple girl who loved nothing more than helping her old mum or chattering with her friends.”
“Nellie and Kate.”
“Nellie mostly, but yes. She loved her old parents and her old cat and her dear friends. She was always happy, always laughing and singing. How does a girl like that do … do what … what they say she did? I cannot understand it.”
I’d like to say I can’t either. But while I’ve seen many cases of unhappy or bullied or depressed teenagers dying by suicide, I’ve also seen the ones where it really didn’t seem to fit, where it’d been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Something happens, and their still-maturing brains can’t cope.
The ordinary hiccups of life feel so overwhelming when you’re sixteen, emotions running high, and you lack the life experience to deal with them. A romantic disappointment. A friend breakup. A failed exam. Something that seems insurmountable.
We ask about all that. What could have happened in Mary’s life to make her end it?
Nothing. She wasn’t courting. Her friendships were strong.
Schoolwork didn’t concern her. Absolutely nothing had happened.
In fact, she’d been happier than ever, caught up in the excitement of this poem she’d found in their attic.
And then, one night last month, it all ended, and no one understands why.
I’m back at the house. McCreadie needs to speak to Lady Adler and her household.
He offers to take me along, but Isla is home, and I suggest she go with him.
She knows Lady Adler, and she brought Nellie to them.
I’ve already interviewed everyone there, and I’d rather save my chips and cash them in on something else. A very specific something else.
“We need to speak to everyone involved with the séance,” I say.
“The séance where the alleged ghost of Nellie Carmichael requested Duncan,” McCreadie says, “which is particularly concerning now that we have discovered Nellie actually was dead at the time.”
“Yep. I know that poem and Mary’s death seem like they must be connected, but we really need to find out how someone at that séance knew Nellie was dead before her body was found.”
“Well, I suspect Nellie would have known.”
I turn a slow look on McCreadie, certain he’s joking, but he only arches his brows. “Oh, my apologies. Am I not supposed to point out the possibility that it may actually have been her spirit?”
“You believe in ghosts?” I say carefully.
He fixes me with a look. “I never used to, but then I never used to believe in time travel either.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what? You traveled through time, Mallory. More than once. Duncan knows this. And yet here you are, both categorically rejecting any notion of a spirit reaching out to say she has been murdered.” He takes in my expression and pats my arm.
“It is all right. I will try not to hold your outdated beliefs against you.”
I sputter, but he only says, “I am only saying that I am not certain you should focus too hard on that part of the case—the certainty that someone in that room is the killer. You may not believe in ghosts—and I am not saying I do either—but do not let it restrict your investigation.”
I nod reluctantly. “Okay. I don’t think Nellie’s ghost called for Duncan, but I shouldn’t absolutely say that her killer was in that room. It’s just a very strong possibility.”
“I agree. To that end, I will speak to Lady Adler and get the names of everyone who attended, and then we will arrange the interviews. I presume you and Duncan will want to be there?”
“Mmm, maybe just me. I’ll ask Duncan, but he’s really not liking this séance connection.”
McCreadie smiles. “Show him the poem, then. Given the choice between investigating séances and sentimental doggerel, he may very well choose the ghosts.”
Gray chooses neither. Well, no, I haven’t mentioned the séance to him yet. I just tell him about the poem, and he declares it sounds like an excellent lead … and he has an errand to run. Coincidentally, I’m sure.
That leaves me with the poem. I now regret sending Isla off with McCreadie.
I would have liked her literary expertise on this.
I know my Victorian lit—courtesy of my professor father—but poetry really isn’t my thing.
And Dad is much more into the literature that survived.
Dickens and the Bronte sisters may have been considered popular fiction at the time, but this poem is another level of popular.
A lower level, some might say, but Dad always says that what the masses consume tells us more about social history than the classics ever will.
This is the literature of the people. It’s what seized their interest and got nonreaders reading.
With Isla away, I do have another possibility for assistance in the house, and I find her dusting the library.
“Do you know much about poetry?” I ask Jack.
She slowly turns, dustcloth in hand, and eyes me as if I’ve asked whether she knows much about deadly poison.
“Poetry,” I say.
“Yes, I heard that. I’m trying to decide why you’re asking, and I’m really hoping you’re looking for an editor.”
I arch my brows.
“For the odes of passion you are penning to a certain member of this household. Please tell me that’s what you mean.
And the answer is yes. I will certainly help you with them.
You don’t even need to pay me. In fact, I might pay you, particularly if they are true odes of passion. ” She waggles her brows.
“Fine,” I say. “Yes. I thought I was hiding it well, but I am … more enamored of a household member than I let on.”
She grins. “Finally. You admit it. Tell me there are poems.”
“Not yet. I need help writing them.”
“Oh, you have come to the right place. I can help you pen the most passionate odes you have ever read. Ones that will have the recipient running to your bedroom door.”
“I don’t need that,” I say. “The recipient is already at my bedroom door—constantly—and the yowling keeps me up half the night.” I peer at her. “We are talking about Freya, yes?”
She whips her dusting cloth at me.
“Not Freya?” I say. “Damn. Now I’ve admitted I’m actually fond of the blasted cat for nothing.” I wave the paper in my hand. “This is the poem in question. Not written by me, and not about anyone in this household. It’s connected to the case.”
That gets her attention again. She even retrieves the dusting cloth from the floor.
“A poem is connected to your drowning case?” she says. “The one with the séance?”
“It’s about a girl who drowns herself after being spurned by her lover.”
Jack frowns. “Was Nellie spurned?”
“Not as far as we can tell, but she drowned in the same place. As did her friend a month ago. The friend who discovered this poem in her attic and shared it with her schoolmates.”
Jack blinks. Then she grins. “Now that’s a story.” She pauses and makes a face. “And saying that is ghoulish.”
I shrug. “You’re a crime reporter. You’re allowed to be intrigued by bizarre crimes. Just as Duncan is allowed to be intrigued by bizarre deaths. So, are you interested in poetry now?”
She snatches the paper from my hand. Her eyes scan, reading at superspeed. Then she looks at me. “It’s rubbish. The writing, that is.”
“I never claimed it was art for the ages. But it fits a type. Popular and overly sentimental stories and poems. I know a bit about them, but while Isla might claim her reading tastes are very common, they don’t include that.”
Jack lowers herself into a chair. “This wouldn’t interest Mrs. Ballantyne.
But, as you say, it does follow a popular tradition, though one that would now be considered old-fashioned.
The tale of a sweet and innocent girl who is wronged by her lover—‘lover’ in the most innocuous sense.
Sometimes the girl is seduced and ‘ruined’ but that isn’t even hinted at here.
He made her promises and then left her brokenhearted.
She drowns herself in the bog, wearing the gown she’d made for their wedding.
Her father finds her, floating, clutching her bridal posy, and ever after that, people passing that way at night see her still floating there, in her bridal gown. ”