Are You Haunted (part ten)

Are You Haunted

(part ten)

They had buried their secrets in the mill. Carted away in the aftermath had been nearly all the proofs, and little might be rooted up today, but the house…he believed they still did things there.

Mr. Guy’s friend, who wore the pale suit, the jacket hanging open, the shirt buttons straining, and the hat…was it possible, Rohdl wondered, noticing these things that made the man disagreeable to him, to have a hat fit so badly? Had he stolen it? The friend, meaningly within earshot, had said, “Used to be some kind of scientist. I mean, he’s smart. You have to stay on your toes. You get a smart loony, all that ‘I see ghosts in the house’ could be an act.”

As Rohdl supposed, this ostentation had been an act. They could have said the same things in the car, but he would not have heard. The young woman had called foul on the phantoms that walked. He had heard her say it; Guy, and this arrival who advised him, had hatched a second scheme. Rohdl could not be bothered deceiving people. But how did he know whether he did not sometimes speak his thoughts aloud?

Mr. Guy had brought another vagrant to the house, before Powell Kenzie. That one had not wished to spend the night.

“Mill Road,” Tovey said.

Powell put his hand out the window. He could see the water tower already, and the glazed blocks of the mill’s broken walls.

Tovey pocketed a tobacco pouch, and a little muffled, said, “You’re gonna kill the engine, slowing down like that.”

Remembering Guy’s Ford, Powell figured he’d foreseen the future. If Tovey thought this old Whippet could make it up the drive, he could change places with Powell and goose it along himself. And if Guy was up there waiting for them, Tovey would be robbed of whatever story he’d meant to foist on Powell, when he maneuvered him behind the wheel.

But Powell wanted to trust Isobel. He could at least ask. “Mrs. Drybrook has a couple of people, doesn’t she, working up there?”

“None of those people work for the old lady,” Tovey answered. “Keep going, keep going.”

Powell went slower passing the gate. The fence was down, a post bent near the base, a sheet of chain-link sagging into the weeds. Like an electric plant’s, topped in barbed wire. But a vehicle had barreled off the road; now anyone could climb over. The warning sign, stoved in at the center, and the heavy chain and padlock, meant nothing…

Tovey had said, “none of those people”, so he did not count himself among them. But did he work, do errands maybe, for the old lady?

“Then who do Lloyd Guy and the others get their paychecks from?”

“The trust,” Isobel told him. “But Mrs. Drybrook is a trustee. It was Mrs. Drybrook who hired Guy.”

10

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part eleven)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)