Trifles and Folly 3, page 3
“The poor woman who works in shipping and receiving broke down sobbing when she handled the box. She was so distraught we had to send her home. No idea why—except the box was in her office all day,” Alistair said. “Everyone who comes in contact with it mentions feeling down or sad, having a sudden change of mood. It’s wreaking havoc with the museum staff.”
Alistair’s gaze slid away, embarrassed. “I have to tell you, I had a terrible time on the way over struggling with an overwhelming sadness that just came on me out of nowhere, for no good reason,” he admitted. “I’m really hoping you can help. We can’t put this on display. We’d have to offer free counseling with every admission ticket.”
Now that Alistair mentioned it, I felt a strong downward tug on my mood, which had been pretty good until he showed up. Teag nodded, letting me know he was feeling it too. I closed my eyes and tried to get a bead on what I was feeling. Sadness. Regret. Those were strong. There was something else…a sense of something hidden, something secret.
“I’m not picking up anything dangerous.” I opened my eyes. “But there are some strong emotions attached. Why don’t you lay out the contents, and I’ll see what I can find out for you.” I gave Alistair an encouraging smile. “Once we know what we’re dealing with, we can figure out better how to neutralize the supernatural heebie-jeebies.”
Teag opened the box and set the items out on the table. The contents were an interesting jumble: An old journal, a stack of yellowed envelopes tied with twine, a man’s ring, and a melted gold coin. There was part of a burned piece of stationary as well.
“What do you know about the previous owner or owners of the pieces?” I asked, still not ready to commit myself by touching anything.
“Not much,” Alistair said with a sigh. “They came from the estate of a Mr. Jacob Whitley, of the New York Whitleys,” he added. If that was supposed to mean something to me, I didn’t get the reference. I raised an eyebrow quizzically, and he continued. “A very prominent and wealthy family around the turn of the last century. Made their money in a line of retail stores.”
“The journal belonged to Marie de Brise Chastain,” he went on. “You recognize those names?”
“The de Brise family and the Chastain family have been Charlestonian movers and shakers since the Huguenot days.”
“The letters are between Rebecca Dumont and Mr. Whitley,” Alistair continued. “Everything dates to around 1920.”
I moved my hand closer to the objects and caught a flash of sorrow, a glimpse of flames, and the shadowy figure of a man. “There’s some kind of tragedy involved,” I said.
Alistair nodded. “Marie Chastain was killed in a fire in 1920. Jacob Whitley, a suitor, escaped with his life but was badly scarred. Rebecca Dumont was a friend of Marie.”
“How did all of these pieces end up in the mountains of New York?” Teag asked.
“I have no idea,” Alistair replied. “We hadn’t started to research the pieces yet. I did put a call in to the Chastain family for information, but no one has called back.”
“All right,” I mustered my courage. “Let’s see what I can find out.”
I sat down at the table and reached for the diary. Later, Teag could read the journal entries, but for now, I wanted to pick up on the resonance of strong emotions left behind. The image of a woman’s face came to mind. Not conventionally pretty, but with regular features.
“It’s not magical,” I said. “Mostly…not quite sad, but wistful? I’m guessing Marie might have had a lot of dreams she didn’t get the chance to fulfill,” I parsed through the images that came to mind. A shadow flickered in my inner sight. Not dangerous, but furtive. A man’s silhouette, there and gone. Odd.
This time, I picked up the letters. The handwriting on the top envelope was faded, in the type of ink that told me it had been written with a fountain pen. The old-style script was a woman’s writing, neat and compact. This time, I got a mental image of two people. One was a petite woman who wore her red hair in a bob. She must have been Rebecca. The other was of a dark-haired man whose face I couldn’t quite make out, whom I guessed was Jacob. Was he the shadow I glimpsed before? I wondered. I picked up a sense of uneasiness, of something being out of place, and a hint of something secretive.
“You haven’t read the letters?”
Alistair shook his head. “We really haven’t had the box long enough to do more than catalog the contents.”
“Interesting,” I said, wondering what the letters and journal would reveal when Teag read them.
The sheet of stationery was partly burned. It looked like someone had snatched it out of the flames. After all this time, it radiated anger and disapproval. “You have pushed my patience to the breaking point,” I read aloud. “There will be consequences.” The man’s handwriting was strong and sweeping. The note was unsigned.
“Any idea who wrote this?” I asked.
Alistair shook his head. “None. Sounds rather ominous, doesn’t it?”
“Did they ever figure out what caused the fire?” Teag questioned. “Was it an accident?”
“From what I could find, it was blamed on a gas leak,” Alistair replied. “Of course, forensics back then weren’t what they are today.”
I knew the coin and the man’s ring would be the worst of the items, which is why I saved them for last. The ring gave me a jolt when I touched it. I sensed Jacob’s energy and Marie’s as well. Was the ring a gift from her? The energy was off, discordant, jumbled. I couldn’t get a clear read on it, but it made me jumpy.
“Had the three of them been in any kind of trouble?” I asked. “It might even have been a scandal rather than something illegal. I think the three of them had a secret, but they aren’t giving it up easily.”
“Nothing comes to mind, other than the fire that claimed Marie’s life,” Alistair said. “I can have a look through the archives when I go back to the museum.”
“I’ll do some digging online,” Teag added, “and Mrs. Morrissey from the Archive might know something too.”
“When we hear back from the Chastain family, I’ll make some discrete inquiries,” Alistair added. Alistair was the soul of discretion, a necessity for fundraising and keeping well-heeled donors happy. History could be messy, and a city like Charleston not only had ghosts in every old house but plenty of skeletons in closets as well.
I steeled myself and picked up the melted gold coin. Suddenly, I was propelled into a vision. I saw the scene through someone else’s eyes. The room was a well-appointed parlor, decorated in the style common at the turn of the nineteenth century. I smelled smoke and felt panic course through me as flames engulfed the heavy draperies that framed the windows.
It was hard to breathe. The fire was spreading fast. Someone screamed. I ran for the door, only to find it blocked by more flames. Marie was trying to knock the burning draperies away from the window with a chair. A couple of the panes in the window were broken. Rebecca ran to the other door. It opened to safety. She beckoned for us to follow her.
Some of the burning draperies had caught the couch on fire, and the horsehair stuffing made thick, black smoke. The carpet was burning too. I could see Marie, but I couldn’t get to her, and then a wall of fire cut us off…
I came back to myself with a gasp. Teag shoved a glass of strong, sweet iced tea into my hand, and I gulped it, trying to recover. I let go of the gold coin, and it gave a metallic ring as it hit the table.
“I saw the fire,” I said. “I was seeing through Jacob’s eyes. The room went up in flames so fast. He couldn’t get to Marie in time.”
Alistair picked up the twisted coin. “It’s a twenty-dollar gold piece,” he remarked. “A Saint Gaudens, named for the engraver who designed it.” He held it up to the light. “Hard to read the date with all the damage, but the gold alone is worth a lot more than twenty dollars in today’s market.” He set it back down. “Pity it’s partly melted. A coin like that goes for a lot of money in good condition, although of course, the gold itself is still valuable in spite of the damage.”
We didn’t deal in a lot of old coins, but I was familiar with the “Saints” as collectors called them. The engraving was a work of art, and the luster of the gold made it amazing to me that people actually spent the coins back in the day. They seemed too beautiful for mere currency. I looked at the twisted gold coin and felt a stab of sadness for the young people whose lives had taken a terrible turn because of that fire.
“What about the ghost?” Alistair asked.
I could sense a presence hovering just beyond my Sight, but unlike some of the revenants I’ve run into, this spirit kept its distance. I couldn’t make out a face, just a faint shadowy form. Mostly, I felt disappointment and longing, as well as deep sorrow.
“You don’t have any idea who gave the box to the Adirondack Museum?” I asked.
Alistair shook his head. “I’ve already asked them for any records they have about the acquisition. But they did a major renovation a while back, and some old records have been misplaced. Or it just might be that the ‘gift’ wasn’t significant enough to do more than log it.” He shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see.”
“I can sense a spirit connected to the items,” I said. “But since all three of the people involved are dead now, it could be any of them. It might be Marie, or it could be either Rebecca or Jacob if they held onto the items all those years. I can’t tell from what I can see of the ghost right now.” I shook my head.
“Will you look into it for me, please?” Alistair asked. “And see if there’s a way to get rid of the ghost so we can store the items without giving everyone a breakdown?”
I chuckled. “I think we can handle that. But first, I’d like to figure out just why this ghost is hanging around—and what secret it’s been keeping all these years.”
“It’s not really a job for the Alliance,” Teag observed after Alistair left. He put the pieces in our store safe. Nothing like a lead box several inches thick to temper supernatural bad mojo. Locked up in there, the package shouldn’t affect our moods the way it had caused mayhem at the museum. I hoped.
“No it isn’t,” I agreed. “I’m not getting the sense that the ghost is any danger, and there doesn’t seem to be a supernatural threat to the rest of the world. But I’m intrigued,” I admitted. “And I think that there’s a story here that hasn’t been told. Maybe if we find out what the secret is, the ghost will go away on its own.”
“Alistair’s already contacted the family,” Teag said. “Let me do some digging into my sources.”
“The Chastain family is still prominent in Charleston, and it’s been around a long time,” I replied.
“Are you going to head over to the Archive?”
I nodded. “Yes. But I’ve got a stop to make on the way. I think this is tailor-made for Charleston’s most famous private detective.”
“Cassidy! So good to see you. Come on in.” Shelley Holmes welcomed me as I arrived at her home at two twenty-one Baker Street, out near the airport. She wore a satin purple bathrobe—more of a long smoking jacket—over what appeared to be loose silk pants and top.
Shelley cleaned away piles of papers and magazines to make room. “Please, have a seat,” she motioned to the couch while she took up the one armchair that wasn’t piled high with odds and ends.
“You said on the phone that you’ve got a case for me. How very exciting. Do tell.”
Shelley Holmes was a prodigy. She studied chemistry and martial arts, became first violin with the Charleston Symphony, and filled her home with an homage of books and collectibles to literatures’ greatest shamuses, private eyes, gumshoes, and detectives.
After she transitioned, Shelly Holmes invited her best friends for dinner to share the news and remained just as focused and indefatigable as ever.
I laid out what we knew about the objects Alistair had brought in, as well as poor doomed Marie Chastain and her friends. Shelley listened intently, puffing on a vape version of a clay pipe.
“What a lovely mystery. I am happy to take the case.”
“How much is your fee?” I couldn’t help glancing around the room. On one wall were framed posters from Sherlock Holmes’s many silver screen and TV incarnations. On another wall, a Weber pistol hung in a shadow box next to a deerstalker cap that had been a movie prop. Several different sets of the collected tales of the “hound of Baker Street” graced the bookshelves along with a pipe stand holding a variety of tobacco pipes and other oddments.
Shelley was eccentric, and here in the South, we value eccentricity. I had never known anyone to so fully take on every attribute of a literary character to become a literal embodiment. Fortunately, a brief stint in rehab years ago got Shelley over her recreational use of cocaine, and she had promised her friends she would make sure that element of authenticity remained in the past.
“Store credit and a list of items I’d like to acquire if they come on the market?” She suggested a dollar amount, and I nodded.
“Sounds fair. What do you make of what I’ve told you?”
Shelley stood and began to pace. Tall and thin with angular features, she looked like a brooding hawk. Her dark hair was cut short in a feminine but practical style to accommodate her mixed martial arts workouts. I had gone to the gym once with her and limped for the next two days, unable to keep up. She made it look easy, just like in school, when she had been smarter than everyone else in the class and knew it. But her closest friends found her endearing in spite of her well-earned pride.
“I’ll want to see the items for myself, of course,” she said, puffing away at her vape pipe. “In case they speak to me, if you know what I mean.”
I did. Shelley has flashes of clairvoyance, glimpses into the future. I wasn’t entirely sure how her gift might help solve a mystery from the past, but I’ve learned never to discount anything when Shelley is on the case.
“Teag and Alistair are going to find out some of the missing pieces,” Shelley said. “The answer is right in front of us, but we can’t see it.” She frowned, deciphering the glimpse of foreknowledge. “You’re in danger,” she turned to meet my gaze.
“Me?” I yelped. “Why on earth would an heiress’s death from nearly a century ago put me in danger?”
Shelley shook her head as if clearing the ethereal fog from her thoughts. “No clue, girlfriend. But I’ve learned to take my psychic glimpses as seriously as I do my powers of deduction. So take the warning at face value.”
Casting off her robe, Shelley put on a pair of shoes and grabbed a jacket from a peg near the door. She settled the jacket over her shoulders without slipping her arms into the sleeves, so it flapped like a cape, her gray eyes alight with the thrill of the chase.
“Come along, Watson!” she shouted. A disgruntled snuffle came from the direction of the kitchen, and then the click of nails on hardwood floors as Watson, Shelley’s sad-eyed bloodhound, roused himself from his comfortable bed. She clipped his leash onto him and headed for the door.
“Let’s go, Cassidy,” she said. “The game’s afoot!”
Every good investigator knows the price for an informant’s help. In this case, it was a large vanilla latte from Honeysuckle Café.
“Cassidy! Shelley! What a wonderful surprise.” Mrs. Benjamin Morrissey, Charleston doyenne and head of the Historical Archive, came out to meet us from her office at the historic home that housed the Archive. “And you’ve brought Watson!” She bent to pat Watson’s head, and Watson gave her a lugubrious look in return.
“Go ahead and take him onto the back porch,” Mrs. Morrissey said. “You can put down a bowl of water for him, and the doors are locked, so no one will bother him.” Shelley took Watson to get settled and returned a moment later.
“And is that a vanilla latte?” Mrs. Morrissey asked, with a smile that told me she knew it was. “So let me guess—you need information?”
We all laughed, and she motioned for us to follow her. We walked through a partially installed exhibit in the house’s large formal foyer, and I heard the sound of workmen upstairs.
“What’s your new exhibit?” I asked. I’ve got to be careful with museums because the kinds of pieces that are important enough to save for historical reasons often have significant emotional resonance—and occasionally, a taint of dark magic. I’d had a couple of run-ins with some bad juju with prior Archive displays, but to my relief, whatever the new installation was going to be wasn’t setting off my magical alarms.
Mrs. Morrissey grinned. “I thought you’d never ask!” she exclaimed. She’s a real Charleston blue-blood, and when her husband passed on, leaving her with a wealth of money and social connections, she stepped into her role with the Archive as if she had been born to it.
“It’s on ‘Great Escapes—Grand Country Manors and Seaside Palaces.’ Nowadays, tourists come for vacation to Charleston. But all throughout our history, Charlestonians went elsewhere to go on holiday. We’ve pulled together a display of photographs, diaries, and items from our collection all about the hunting lodges, beach homes, and get-away residences of some of Charleston’s most famous residents over the years. It’s going to be a fun exhibit!”
Given the enormous wealth of some of the old Charleston families—and some of its more recent celebrity sons and daughters, I didn’t doubt the display would be a big hit with donors and paying guests alike.
“What do you know about Marie de Brise Chastain, Jacob Whitley, and Rebecca Dumont?” Shelley asked, leaning forward and staring intently at Mrs. Morrissey.
Mrs. Morrissey had a mind like a steel trap. She was the Archive’s best “search engine,” and she knew the collection like no one else. “She’s the heiress who died in that fire, back in the Roaring Twenties, isn’t she?” Mrs. Morrissey asked. “Terribly sad situation. Drove her father to suicide, or so they say.”
