Shawna Delacorte - The Sedgwick Curse

“This telegram arrived for you an hour ago, sir.” Bradley handed it to him, then waited to see if there would be a response he would need to deal with. The tall, dark-haired man of forty-five maintained his normal, stoic manner. He showed no outward reaction to yet another of the moody outbursts Donovan had displayed following the untimely death of his father, Lord James Sedgwick, two months ago.

“Damn! It’s that writer—Taylor MacKenzie. I completely forgot about him. He’s from the United States. He corresponded with my father for about a month. He’s researching some kind of book on British country festivals and is interested in our annual event—how it originally came about, the changes through the years…that kind of thing. Dad told him he could stay here for the two weeks prior to the festival. According to this telegram he flies into London late this afternoon and plans to drive straight away from the airport to the Cotswolds. He should arrive here sometime this evening.”

Donovan’s jaw tightened into a hard line of determination. He didn’t have time for this and he certainly didn’t have the desire to deal with some stranger in the house. “Put him in the second-floor corner room of the old wing. That should give him a feel for the history of the place.” He mumbled under his breath, the words not really meant for Bradley’s ears, “It’ll also keep him out of my hair. I’m in no mood to put up with some nosy writer from the States.”

He glanced out the window toward the family cemetery. The yellow crime-scene tape marked off the area of investigation around the crypt. Several police constables combed the grounds for any clue as to exactly what had happened. A little tremor of apprehension darted through his body. “Not with whatever it is that’s going on out there.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll see that the room is prepared.”

As Bradley turned to leave, Donovan stopped him. “I talked to Alex yesterday. He’ll be here sometime this afternoon. For the past five months Constance has been doing her usual efficient job of organizing this year’s festival, but Alex volunteered to give me a hand with the last-minute details and I’m happy to let him do it.”

Donovan had been pleased when his first cousin, Alexander Sedgwick, had phoned. He and Alex were very close despite the vast differences in their lifestyles and the six-year gap in their ages, Alex’s twenty-seven years compared with Donovan’s thirty-three years. When they were children, Donovan had been annoyed at the way his young cousin would tag along, and it seemed as if Alex and his family were at the manor house every weekend. But as they grew older, the two men had developed a much closer bond.

He looked forward to Alex’s visit and help with the festival if for no other reason than to distance himself from working so closely with Constance. Constance Smythe was a tireless worker, but she always made him uneasy. She was too willing to take on any chore, too quick to volunteer for any committee or project the village was involved with…much too anxious to find excuses to be at the manor house.

THE MOOD WAS RELAXED, a far cry from the stress that had been pushing at Donovan all day. After dinner he and Alex had gone to the snooker room where the two evenly matched players resumed their ongoing personal tournament, a contest that had started almost ten years ago. They played for two hours before Donovan returned his cue stick to the rack. He glanced at his watch. It was only nine o’clock even though it felt much later.

Donovan stifled a yawn. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think I’ll retire for the evening. Apparently that writer fellow isn’t going to arrive tonight.”

Alex returned his cue to the rack, then picked up the bottle of ale from the table and handed it to Donovan. “Here, you still have a swallow left.” A sly grin turned the corners of his mouth. “I hate to see anything go to waste, especially good ale.”

“Thanks.” Donovan finished the last drink, then returned the empty bottle to the table.

Alex’s manner became serious as he stared at Donovan for a moment, then spoke in carefully measured words. “Since you haven’t said anything, I guess I’ll just have to be brash and ask. I saw the local newspaper headlines and the police barricade at the cemetery. What’s going on?”

A quick jab of anger surged through Donovan. The thought of Byron Treadwell and his sensationalist journalism still rankled. “It’s very strange. At midnight last night a loud explosion woke everyone for miles around. When I went to see what happened, I found the door of Great-Grandfather William’s crypt blasted off its hinges, but the sarcophagus inside appeared to be undamaged.” Then a shiver of apprehension revealed his inner fears. “I don’t know how or why it happened. I insisted that Inspector Edgeware take personal charge of the case, but Mike doesn’t know any more about what happened than I do…at least nothing that he’s conveying to me.”

“So that’s why you asked me to stop in the village and pick up your order at the chemist shop. You didn’t want to make an appearance and be inundated with questions.”

“Hopefully the furor over this will die down in a couple of days.” Donovan paused for a moment to collect his thoughts as he stole a quick glance out the window. A jolt of anxiety set his nerves on edge and left his stomach tied in knots. “I’m worried, Alex. I have a terrible premonition that whatever is going on out there is far from over.”

Alex tried to suppress a chuckle without much success. “You’re not talking about that stupid curse thing, are you? How did that go? To rise from the ruins—what is born of the fires of hell cannot die. Some demented old man who was supposed to have mystical powers utters some ambiguous words as Great-Grandfather’s body is being sealed in the crypt and says the curse would come to fruition in one hundred years. I could understand some ignorant and superstitious villagers in the eighteenth century buying into all this curse stuff, but not a mere hundred years ago when all this happened. And now in the twenty-first century everyone is suddenly jumping at every shadow because of some coincidental explosion that probably has some very logical explanation.”

Donovan snapped out his irritation. “That’s not funny, Alex.” He stared out the window into the blackness of the night. Another tremor of apprehension rippled through his body, leaving him very unsettled. “Something extremely bizarre is going on and I don’t have any rational explanation for it.” And that included the blinding headaches that had attacked him several times in the past two months since the death of his father, like steel bands tightening around his head. They left him confused, disoriented and with memory lapses—and frightened about what it meant and what the future held.

The two men talked for a few more minutes, then Alex went to the room he had been occupying on his visits to the estate since he was a little boy. Donovan remained downstairs in the entry hall staring out a window, trying to force his eyes to see whatever it was he sensed lurking in the darkness.

The police had left a light at the site of the crypt explosion. He watched as fingers of fog crept across the ground, edging their way around the tombstones belonging to generations of the Sedgwick family—generations too numerous to count and, according to many, better left forgotten. The ground fog blanketed everything in a damp shroud just as it had that night a century ago. The light electrified the mist with an eerie spectral glow. A shudder swept through Donovan’s body, causing him to hunch his shoulders as if warding off a cold wind.

“Do you require anything else, sir, before I secure the house for the night?” Bradley’s last duty of the day before retiring to his quarters was to see that all the doors and windows were locked and most of the lights turned out.