Chapter Text
“This way, miss,” the confident female voice with a prominent accent distracted Victoria from her thoughts.
Frau Lehzen, as the housekeeper of the estate had introduced herself when she picked her up at Hatfield Station, was the embodiment of German reserve and pedantry. Victoria knew at once that she was the all-seeing eye of this house — nothing would go unnoticed by this woman.
Standing in front of the impressive front door of the old mansion that was decorated with a Christmas wreath, the young woman asked herself if she was ready for what she was supposed to do. The answer was affirmative: yes, yes, she was, it was colossal luck, her winning lottery ticket!
Nervous, Victoria clutched the handle of the small carpetbag so tightly as though she feared it might fly away with all her modest possessions. She had to spend a few days in the company of the Ashers, who were the new owners of Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, successfully complete the job, and forget about poverty and odd side jobs for the next few months.
The war was long over — the year 1929 was just around the corner. And yet, although night Zeppelin raids were a thing of the past now, life was hardly happy and serene. The global economic depression, as the papers called it, was evident in every little thing. Prices skyrocketed, and strikes were a common occurrence. Victoria had a rough time after her grandmother had passed away and left her all alone. Many people lost their jobs, including office girls, and Victoria had been doorstepping the few still open offices since autumn, with no luck.
She swallowed hard and took a determined step across the threshold. If she only knew how high the passions running behind that door were!
“How did it even occur to you to invite this questionable character here, Charles?!” Amalia Asher exclaimed indignantly. “Don’t you care about my wellbeing at all?”
“You will see, darling, this is going to do us all a lot of good. We need to solve the problem that gives you these morning migraines, as soon as possible.”
“But what, what can this girl do? A shaman dance or a séance of exorcism? God Almighty, what have I done to deserve this?! Couldn’t we purchase a quiet respectable mansion in London?!” the new lady of the house lamented, wringing her hands.
“No, no exorcism! I bet none of your titled friends can boast of owning such luxury: an old English estate with a history complete with its own ghost! By the way, the latter cost me a small fortune, and I have no intention of getting rid of it.”
Mrs. Asher jerked her shoulders nervously.
“Thank you, I have had more than a fair share of this so-called luxury. Susan found two gray hairs on my head yesterday!” she glowered at him and both turned without finishing this overwrought exchange because a thin pale girl of no more than eighteen, judging by the look of her, entered the drawing room.
“Miss Victoria Coin,” the butler announced primly.
“Oh, finally! We have been waiting for you!” Charles Asher exclaimed enthusiastically and offered their guest an armchair upholstered with cream-colored silk fabric. He and his wife sat down across her, looking over the girl’s worn but neat plaid dress adorned with a plain white collar and her slender fingers clasped around a square parcel.
“How was your journey, Miss Coin?” Charles dragged on his cigar.
“It was nice, thank you, sir, very kind of you to send a car for me,” the guest answered demurely.
“Don’t mention it. But pray tell me, what is it you have there?” he stared at the object in Victoria’s hands again, puffing out a ring of smoke.
“This is a special board for séances,” Victoria explained simply as though it was the most common thing in the world.
“How incredible! And you use it to contact ghosts, don’t you?” Asher scoffed.
“Ghosts can be very… unforthcoming, but I do manage to get them to talk,” she forced a smile, trying to sound casual.
“Ah yes! I get it, it’s a sort of a telegraph for ghosts!” Asher laughed loudly at his own clumsy joke.
“What is the exact nature of your problem, Mr. Asher?” the girl said straightforwardly. “I thought you had something more serious to discuss.”
“Ah. Of course. Time is money as they say. You are not without business acumen, young lady!”
He paused, collecting his thoughts.
“You see, I acquired Brocket Hall a short while ago, and it was quite a steal. At first, I was surprised to find a clause in the agreement saying that the house is sold with a real ghost. You can imagine my reaction! But then I was told that ghosts in old mansions were a rare treasure, so I bought into these fairy tales and shelled out a few thousand dollars extra. However, instead of a regular, humble, harmless spirit that would just appear in the windows and blow out the candles from time to time, I got a real scourge of God! There is sighing and morning in the halls, portraits fall from the walls in the middle of dinner parties, and brandy disappears from my study once I have uncorked the bottle! Not to mention the irreparably ruined, bent golf clubs! And that ugly bloodstain on the carpet that keeps coming back no matter what powder the housekeeper uses to clean it.”
“Erm, sorry to interrupt you, what bloodstain?”
“You forgot to mention, Charles, that our dear ghost, according to the rumor, was a notorious murderer and libertine while he was alive. Christ! Had I known this before, I would have never set foot in this cursed place!” Mrs. Asher joined in, unable to stay quiet any longer.
“Hold your fire, honey, I am a businessman and I only accept constructive solutions. We will make our ghost behave as befits a decent spirit. To get rid of something so exotic would be unforgiveable folly, wastefulness at the very least.”
“What have you come up with now?!” Mrs. Asher asked worriedly.
“It’s so brilliantly simple! I am going to make a deal with our ghost! And Miss medium here will be our middleman!” Asher said triumphantly. This was how he usually announced the upcoming purchase of yet another new company.
“A deal with a ghost?! It’s impossible, sir! The ghost world is too delicate, it isn’t easy to talk to them, let alone make arrangements with them!” Victoria exclaimed in bewilderment, meeting the glare of a person whose decisions were not to be questioned.
“But that’s really your problem, isn’t it, Miss Coin?” he said. “You will have to explain to the ghost that it has to respect its owners and ask it what it would take for it to behave, and I will propose my own terms. Easy as pie. Trust me, Charles Asher knows how to do business!”
“Well, I suppose I could try. I hope the ghost will be amenable,” Victoria said quietly, realizing that any argument she could offer would be useless.
“Very good, so we have understood each other! Frau Lehzen will take you to your room now. We should try to have a séance tonight. What do you think?”
“Certainly, Mr. Asher. Séance it is,” Victoria answered without thinking.
***
Strangled sobs echoed in the quiet of the library. Here she could finally let the tears flow. She had tried in vain for an hour to summon the malevolent ghost — the Ashers must have thought she was such a useless idiot! Why couldn’t she just pretend, like many pseudo mediums did? Just roll your eyes, imitate a trance and babble some nonsense!
She had always been special, for as long as she could remember. Too pensive, too quiet at times, but capable of standing up for herself in the moment of real danger better than any street urchin. Sometimes, tending to her bruises and grazes after another skirmish at school, wiping bitter tears from her face, her grandmother would say that she had to keep her gift a secret and try to act as everyone else. But Victoria couldn’t help drawing in the margins of all her notebooks and textbooks, filling them with sketches of odd, frightening apparitions. They were uninvited guests that stormed into her head, making her talk to them.
She occasionally managed to chase them away but, more often than not, she had to put up with another brazen ghost who wanted a Mary to stop seeing an Alfred or tried to urge living relations not to fight over the inheritance. It complicated the life of the frail little girl who wasn’t used to disguising her thoughts, to lying and pretending. When asked if she was talking to herself, she always answered, in a straightforward businesslike manner and without hesitation, that she was talking to a lady or a gentleman whom no one else could see. No wonder that her schoolmates thought she was crazy, and she was often ambushed by a gang of them teasing and insulting her on her way back home from school. Soon Victoria had to learn how to fight. At that she exceled, so they left her alone. She became so adept at playing a studious pupil in the last two school years that people stopped giving her dirty looks, although she never made friends or even good acquaintances among the living.
However, it was her gift of communicating with the afterworld that helped her make ends meet. There was no lack of those wishing to participate in a real séance, but not everyone could afford paying for it. Often she settled for payment in groceries or just simple gratitude from an inconsolable widow longing to hear from her beloved late husband, so the Ashers’ invitation was truly a blessing.
And tomorrow she would be thrown out into the street without a penny in her pocket! Victoria thanked heaven that it hadn’t happened in the dead of night. Her hosts patiently accepted her promise to summon the ghost on the following evening.
She might have more luck if she saw the portrait of the former owner of Brocket Hall. But after Mrs. Asher had fainted a couple of times seeing a portrait wink at her, all paintings were banished to the basement.
“There are no ghosts here, just wild draughts!” Victoria cried out desperately.
The lamp on the table beside her armchair suddenly flickered and went out. The soft light of the full moon from the window was flowing into the library. Victoria sat up, straining her ears.
“Unfortunately, ma’am, you are mistaken…” said a quiet deep voice very close to her.
Victoria glanced at the window, at the ghostlike moon glade running across the floor, and suddenly saw the figure of a tall middle-aged man sitting on the window sill in a long shapeless garment that resembled the ancient Greek toga. His face in the dim moonlight resembled that of a marble statue chiseled by a skillful master: high cheekbones, classical straight nose, beautifully shaped lips and eyes overflowing with extraordinary sadness.
“So you are the Ghost?” she asked.
“If it pleases you to call me so, ma’am. And if I may… I did not wish to cause your tears.”
“It pleases me that you have come to talk to me. See, I am not crying anymore. Please tell me how I may address you.”
“Oh, I must apologize, I seem to have forgotten my manners over the half a century that has flown by since the last time I had a need for them. William Lamb, the second Viscount Melbourne, at your service, ma’am.”
“Victoria Coin, medium,” she introduced herself.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Victoria. The name suits you… The resemblance is truly striking…” he said, so quietly that Victoria did not make out the last sentence.
“The pleasure is all mine, Sir Melbourne.”
“To tell you the truth, I thought you were pulling the wool over these people’s eyes when I saw the spectacle you put on in the drawing room.”
“It wasn’t a spectacle, it was a séance. Spirits are usually quite willing to communicate with the world of the living through the Ouija board.”
“This Ouija of yours must be either a consummate idiot or a charlatan. You obviously can hear me without any boards.”
“I can see you just as well.”
The ghost’s face turned even paler. Muttering apologies, he vanished into the moonlight.
“Your lordship! Sir Melbourne!” she called, wondering what she had done to drive away her ghostly companion.
“I apologize, I was not prepared for this,” said his voice from nowhere.
“You don’t want me to see you? I don’t mind, but could we continue our conversation?”
“I have no objection to that, ma’am.”
“May I ask you something then?”
“I am all ears.”
“I was told yesterday that there is an indelible bloodstain on the carpet in the drawing room…”
“And you want to ask me if it has been there since the day I killed my wife whom I had kept locked in her bedroom for years, don’t you?” the ghost deadpanned.
Victoria felt her blood turn to ice.
“No, sir, I mean, yes, I do… It would help me understand why you haunt this house, why you cannot find peace.”
“Well, if you do, I can tell you, Victoria, that this is utter nonsense! I might not have been a perfect husband, but Caro did not die by my hand and the bars on the windows in the bedroom were there solely for her safety. Unfortunately, she was mad.”
“So the stain--”
“Is just red ink. You have no idea how much of a challenge it has become to find red ink. For a long time, the horrible legend has been frightening away buyers well enough but this trick does not work on that scoundrel Asher for some reason.”
“But why did you nail the antlers to the wall above Asher’s portrait?”
“I couldn’t resist the temptation. I heard him once very eloquently expatiate on my scandalous reputation in the company of friends, and he had caught his own wife in the arms of a hot-blooded driver a couple of months before that.”
Victoria suppressed a chuckle.
“So that’s why Frau Lehzen goes to town herself and drives her mistress around! But still, sir, why don’t you try and make peace with the owners of Brocket Hall?”
She had barely finished saying that when she felt the air in the room get cold. Her words had clearly put the ghost in a foul mood.
“Owners!” he cried angrily. “My family has owned this place for centuries, and these vulgar nouveau riches have no right to call themselves its owners!”
Victoria thought that she had made an unforgivable mistake by enraging the ghost. She now could see why the séance had failed. But it was too late, and the quick-tempered ghost didn’t say another word. A gloomy heavy silence settled in the library.
***
Victoria returned to her bedroom, berating herself for the indiscretion. How could she forget that ghosts, even the most civil and gallant of them, could be very sensitive! Would the ghost of Brocket Hall ever want to talk to her again?
However, when she finally surrendered to fatigue and pulled the covers off the bed, she was surprised to see a few large ripe apples on the pillow. A fire was crackling cozily in the fireplace, where some thoughtful hand had put a few logs, and a delicate scent of flowers in the air reminded her of something painfully familiar and completely obscure at the same time. That night, for the first time in years, the Ashers and their servants didn’t jump at the noise of dishes shattering in the kitchen and loud sighs echoing through the rooms, and Frau Lehzen didn’t have to resort to nerve pills.