Are You Haunted (part twenty-six)

Are You Haunted

(part twenty-six)

He was in the middle this time, a paper bag in one hand, his other on an ice chest, steadying it over his knees and Isobel’s.

“You go out the back, and take your things.”

Mrs. Lessing, loud at him, when Summers and Connolly stood to go. Isobel had tapped Powell’s arm. “Let’s see what she means. Oh!”

The kitchen door was blocked by a musty army cot, a pile of shirts, two suits on polished wood hangers. Dead Davis Drybrook’s. The paper bag was stuffed with drawers and undershirts.

But clean, fine, charitable. Nicer than any things Powell had owned. He wondered why she’d kept them, moved them from the other house…

Felt a recoil from anyone’s unending grief.

But, because they were good. They had some value. Mrs. Drybrook with her life’s losses wanted to decide for herself; she didn’t want Dennis Tovey to occupy his father’s suits…

No, she didn’t want him to sell them.

Summers, swinging the chest packed with leftovers, ambled late after Powell, and Isobel followed carrying a box of dishes. They found Tovey fixed in the driver’s seat.

And while Powell stood behind the car puzzling over the wedging in, Mrs. Lessing added a radio. “This is broken. But maybe it still works.”

Tovey braked ahead of the barn, crashed into reverse and plowed through the grass, braked hard again. Out fast then, not a word to Isobel, eyes on his polished shoes as they watched him pick his way up the path.

“But the place is empty. I mean, they didn’t leave anything…”

Nice. He would offend going further. In his private mind, though, Powell believed Tovey wanted to take something from the Drybrook house.

“What were they talking about,” Isobel said, “Summers and Connolly?”

“I thought…well… Mr. Rohdl is missing. Mr. Connolly was worried he might have drowned in the river. Summers said he wouldn’t be…”

He trailed off. Her face told him he hadn’t understood her.

“Did you hear Connolly say they’ve laid their plans? That’s the government he’s talking about, ‘giving clearance’. That’s to say there are no more war secrets, it can all be buried. Powell, you need to know who Davis Drybrook was.”

26

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part twenty-seven)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)