Are You Haunted (part twenty-five)

Are You Haunted

(part twenty-five)

Mrs. Lessing sat on a piano bench. The piano was there, too, in a dark spot by the window drapes. Powell felt a look askance tighten his neck, but held to the study of his dinner roll, his hand sopping gravy. Manners let you do that, didn’t they?

The bench was lower than Mrs. Drybrook’s chair. Mrs. Lessing tucked an arm under her charge’s, steering the wrist; together they labored at this semblance of Mrs. Drybrook feeding herself.

She caught him watching. “You better get yourself some of that cake.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lessing.”

“Good grub, ma’am,” Summers said, putting down his fork. “Mr. Kenzie, bring that cake to the table.”

Powell came from the sideboard conscious of his ragged nails, the precious weight of the cut-glass stand. Of Isobel stacking aside Mr. Connolly and Summers’s empty plates.

“Ma’am?” Connolly raised eyebrows.

“Hand across the plates, will you, Powell? Turn yourself, please. Those small ones.”

He found a cake knife, showed intelligence and brought this also, saw Connolly redden as Isobel took on the cutting and serving, pretending to suppose she’d been asked to.

“Mrs. Lessing, you make a cinnamon crumble. My mother would make hers with a little almond paste and nutmeg.”

Mrs. Lessing frowned at Summers.

Summers took up with Connolly. “There’s a difference between vagrancy and sleeping outdoors. Mr. Rohdl has some money of his own, even a place to live. He just tends to gravitate to the mill. If Guy picks him up again, he’ll say what he does every time, that he’s happy to go home. Happy to go right back.”

“But you don’t think the symptoms, if that’s the right word, have gotten worse? He must hear talk if he gets around the town, at all. Mr. Guy may have said it to him, even, that…”

Connolly finished lower, “That it’s all soon to go.”

“It’s the river you’re thinking of. I don’t believe Mr. Rodhl has those feelings. ”

“No, I’d prefer him alive, not to make further mysteries. More to the point… Mrs. Tovey, I’ll have another bite of cake, thank you, ma’am.”

More coffee, too, and Dennis rose to pour it.

“More to the point, the mill site is viable for new industry. It needs a layer of fill and packing in. Concreting over. In a year or two, we’ll be given clearance to develop.”

“Mr. Rohdl won’t be there in a year or two,” Summers said.

Tovey spun them onto Mill Road, goosing the engine far more than Powell had dared. “You own the place now, Kenzie? That why Connolly had you signing papers?”

“It’s my business asking.”

As resident caretaker, he could report Tovey. To Lloyd Guy. “I could help you, if I knew what to do.”

25

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part twenty-six)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)