Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

This morning, thought Kate, watching her help to clear the table, Benny appeared to be listening for something. As she handed cups and cereal bowls to Mrs. Crudge at the sink her head was cocked on one side, like that of a bright bird. Something was going on between those two. Kate had noticed complicitous smiles. Lips tightening with satisfaction, raised eyebrows, whispered conversations that stopped if anyone happened by. They were like two children bursting with a secret.

The telephone rang. Still attached to a toast rack Benny shot across the room and snatched up the receiver. She listened briefly, said something barely audible and hung up. Her face was burning quite red with excitement as she stared at Doris.

Doris’s eyebrows went up so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. She stuck her thumb up in the air and cried, “What’d I tell you?”

Benny gave a choked-up little squeal and ran from the house.

Well, if they think, thought Kate, I’m going to ask what it’s all about they can think again. Even at school she had never wanted to join any of the supposedly secret societies. She picked up her clipboard and pencil and went off to finish listing Aunt Carey’s furniture. An antique dealer from Aylesbury was coming that afternoon to value what she and Mallory wished to sell.

To Kate’s surprise this was nearly everything, for Benny, offered whatever she would like, had chosen a single picture that had always hung over Carey’s bed, a small but beautiful oil painting of a pewter jug holding rich, creamy roses and a tangle of honeysuckle resting on a highly polished table. You could see reflections of the flowers, their outlines wavery and indistinct as if underwater, the colours subdued but still full of life. Benny, stammering out her gratitude, had pressed it to her heart.

Kate had worked her way through the attics, all the bedrooms and the two large rooms on the ground floor. The ones with french windows that opened on to the terrace where she and Mallory had sat drinking Pimm’s and dreaming their dreams and waiting for Dennis to come to dinner. But that was all behind them now, or would be once Benny had given up this mad crusade. Kate wondered how long that would be. She hoped not too long. It was painful to watch Benny, as Kate saw it, deliberately wounding herself afresh every day. Fighting to prove something that had already been disproved beyond any shadow of a doubt.

While Kate had been checking out the furniture, Mallory had been reading the very last book in the very first bag. Kate was trying not to get disheartened about the future – heavens, the company wasn’t even registered yet. But hours of wading through leaden prose, duff syntax and jokes unfunny when they were first cracked over a thousand years ago had left her feeling she never wanted to pick up a book again – hardly an ideal position for someone about to start their own publishing house. Kate was chastened to realise just how much sifting must have been done before her monthly bag of reader’s manuscripts arrived. They didn’t call it the slush pile for nothing.

She found Mallory stretched out on one of the old steamer chairs in the conservatory, seemingly engrossed. For a moment Kate stood quietly, watching him through the glass. Unaware, as relaxed as she had seen him for some little while, Mallory frowned, quickly turned a page and read on. It was a relief to see him really involved in something, if only temporarily. Over the last few days he had sorted through his aunt’s papers, visited the offices of Pippins Direct and met and talked with their workers in the orchard. He had done a fair amount of tidying in the garden and been welcoming and sociable if people called, but Kate knew that all these activities occupied him only tenuously. Always at the back of his mind she sensed a growing anxiety and assumed it was to do with Polly. Where she was, how she was, what she was doing, who she was doing it with. Kate longed to share the anxiety – indeed, had quite a bit of her own after discovering Polly had been in trouble – but her concern was mixed with considerable irritation. After all, their daughter was grown up. She’d probably just gone off somewhere for a break with some friends. Why couldn’t Mallory ever let go?

“Mal,” she moved down the black and white steps, “I was just wondering…”

“Mmm.”

“What you think about—”

“Hang on a sec.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve found something worth reading.”

There was a cry from the kitchen. Then another. Two voices joined in overlapping jubilant conversation. Someone (it sounded like Doris) started to screech with excitement. Kate hurried to see what the matter was.

She discovered Benny sitting at the kitchen table with Doris leaning over her shoulder. They were reading a newspaper. Both became silent as Kate entered, staring at her with expressions she could not quite fathom. Defiance perhaps, on Benny’s part. Doris seemed to be struggling to express nothing at all and succeeded in looking merely constipated.

“What is it, Ben?” asked Kate. “What’s happened?”

“This has happened,” said Doris, leaning over and tapping a black-and-white photograph. “That’s what.”

“Can I have a look?”

Benny hesitated, not passing the newspaper straight across as Kate had expected.

Kate said, “For heaven’s sake,” reached out and took it. She saw the picture of a woman excessively made up with shoulder-length black hair and heavy lidded, dark eyes. She had on a black dress with long sleeves and a lowish scoop neckline. A large jewelled cross rested on the solid shelf of her bosom. Her name was Ava Garret and she could have stepped straight out of a Dracula movie. Kate, immediately inclined to giggle, sobered as she read: “MEDIUM MURDER SENSATION. THE TRUTH FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.” Suddenly uneasy she pushed the Causton Echo back across the table.

“I think you should read it, Mrs. Lawson.” Doris, vindication personified, swelled visibly. “It’s about poor Mr. Brinkley.”

“Dennis?” Reluctantly Kate dragged the Echo back. Read the rest of the article. Folded the paper so the relevant page was on the inside and crammed it into the waste bin. More disturbed than she was prepared to admit she said, “How can people believe such nonsense?”

“Well, I’m very sorry,” said Doris, un-sorrily, “but it’s not nonsense. She described the room that the machines were in, all the details. Everything.”

“So you see, Kate,” said Benny, “the police will have to listen to me now.”

“Benny.” Kate reached out and took Benny’s hand. Little swellings, shiny knobs of incipient arthritis were developing on the knuckles. Kate stroked them gently. How could she make her affection clear without colluding in this extraordinary fantasy? “Can’t you let go of all this?”

“Oh! why won’t you believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” lied Kate, “I’m just afraid you’ll make yourself ill.”

Benny stared stubbornly at the table. Doris turned to deal with the congealing dishes in the sink. Kate went away to gather early windfalls for an apple charlotte. Later on, putting the russet peelings in the bin, she noticed the newspaper had disappeared. And so had Benny.

“That mad woman’s here again,” said Sergeant Troy.

“What mad woman’s that?” asked Barnaby. He never seemed to meet any other sort these days. Recently he had successfully concluded a case featuring a poet who wore only latex, lived on liquorice allsorts and worshipped a horse she believed to be the reincarnation of Radclyffe Hall. And she was the straight man.

“The one who thought her friend was murdered, remember? Those weird machines?”

“I thought we’d sorted that.”