Return to main “Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor” page
The Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor by P Griffin & DeviXF
The Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor
by P R Griffin & Devi XF
The Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor, a Gothic Entertainment in Three Volumes, available from all reputable booksellers and lending libraries. (By the Author of Enigmatic Fortune; The Cipher Gentleman, or the Veiled Life; Firmament, or Below and Behind; etc.)
Preface to the Bound Edition
The response to the serial version of The Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor having been of gratifying generosity, the publishers have been so good as to issue the story again in hard covers, suitable for the use of circulating libraries. I have taken the opportunity thus provided to undertake certain revisions to the chapters comprising the first number of the serial, and wish here to explain my reasons for these revisions, and express my appreciation for the personage, without whom, the work would never have been properly launched.
Due to the vicissitudes of publishing in this hectic modern age, it is essential for announced works to appear in a timely manner, and no disaster in an author’s life can alleviate this requirement, for it is the law of the marketplace — that is to say, the law that makes that of the jungle seem judicious and forgiving. The ink upon the contract obliging me to produce the monthly numbers of Mulder Manor was scarecly blotted, when I was overcome by an event which, though not unexpected, affected me in a way I scarcely anticipated, having been through the same blessed occurance eleven times previously, without suffering more than a day’s suspension of my normal habits. However, my confinement was much more difficult than usual, and my subsequent illness became the occasion of a veritable reunion, as all of the female members of my family descended upon my abode in order to take care of me and the new little blessing who came wailing into this welcoming world. All well and good, and little Jane Elizabeth Mary Catherine Katherine Ann has had no lack of godmothers, but the sad fact is that with all their worthy, sturdy, housewifely virtues, for which I am eternally grateful, not one of my immediate family knows one end of a pen from another. I was in a fever of delirium, continually demanding pen and paper, insisting that the number must be put together in time for the publisher, yet producing nothing legible when allowed to write.
Like a knight in full sail, my cousin (who requests that she be referred to only as “Devi” in these pages, for after all she has her reputation as a lady to consider) arrived from Lower Chutney and at once saw the solution to the difficulty. Since I was incapable of composition, and had made no notes of any description (for I find it slows the flow of inspiration considerably, to be continually puzzling over what I wrote on a previous occasion), she read the completed first chapter and immediately launched into a second, third, fourth, etc. During my lucid moments, these were read off to me, and I feebly dictated my own words, weaving my originally conceived plot in with hers as best we both could manage. It was under these conditions that the first number was composed and sent to the printer, and it was thus that my reputation in the literary world was saved, for had that number not been punctual, I would have been hard-pressed to obtain another contract.
When I was fully recovered, “Devi” modestly withdrew once more to Lower Chutney and took no further part in the production of the story you hold within your hands. On re-perusing the manuscript, I find that flaws inevitably crept into the tale during its strenuous birth. That I have chosen to alter these earlier chapters, primarily by breaking them at different points in the story, so as to make them of more uniform length and emphasize certain features which I believe should have been better stressed, is no reflection on my estimiable cousin’s skills. She performed heroically under difficult conditions. Without her, there would have been no Woof-on-the-Tweed and no sloop Maria, nor any Lady Beatrice Eton-Hogg. Her contributions earned the hearty approval of the original, serial audience, who earnestly pray that she will return and offer them the entire work of her own hands, so that they can see what she can do when the bird of her muse is set free to soar upon its own wings, instead of supporting the limping pinions of another.
I trust that in meddling further with the story, I have not inadvertently spoiled it, and that this revised offering will prove acceptable to the public, pleasing whom is indeed the only desire and intention of
The Author
Upper Chutney, 18—
The Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor
CH. 1: IN WHICH WE ARE INTRODUCED TO MISS DANA SCULLY, FRIENDLESS ORPHAN; ARE SUBJECTED TO AN INTERMINABLE FLASHBACK, AND SEE HER JOURNEY TO HER NEW PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT INEXPLICABLY INTERRUPTED BY A LARGE, GLOWING DISK
It was a dark and stormy night; much too dark, inside the coach (of which she was the sole passenger) for Dana to read the improving book which she carried for her edification and amusement during the tedious hours of the journey. She was, in any case, too distracted by apprehension to be properly diverted by perusal of Mr. Darwin’s controversial theories. Though her position was too desperate, and the remuneration offered her too generous, for her to have declined the post for which she was now bound, she could not but muse uneasily upon the puzzling features of the letter which had summoned her. From whom had Mr. Mulder obtained the glowing recommendation of her accomplishments in embroidery, miniature painting, and forensic pathology, to which he referred? Certainly not from her previous employer, who was still wroth as a result of her thrusting his grown son into the fishpond — despite the fact that she had at once extricated him from that predicament; and, indeed, it was the young man’s own cephalopodian tendencies which had suggested the fishpond to Dana as the proper habitation of his person. And why was Mr. Mulder so reticent, both about his household, and about the precise nature of her duties as companion to his wife? Something was amiss…
CH. 2, IN WHICH MR. FOX MULDER RESOLVES TO HIDE HIS ASTONISHMENT AT MISS SCULLY’S APPEARANCE, SENSING THAT SOME SECRET HAND IS AT WORK IN HIS AFFAIRS
The fury of the tempest had abated somewhat, without relieving the agony in Fox’s breast. That light which he had seen beaming forth over the fields beyond the elder trees had been no lightning! He fought his way through the gale-driven rain, and his heart faltered as a small, dark figure arose from the new-harvested stubble. A female figure, certainly, but was it — could it be —? “Samantha?” he called, choking upon the name and a mouthful of rain.
The shadow turned its head, spraying water from the brim of it’s bonnet, as he skidded to a stop and staggered against it. Though scarcely as high as his shoulder, and but new-risen itself, the apparition raised its hands to steady him, and an unfamiliar dulcet voice emanated from the darkness below the bonnet. “Pray be careful, sir! Are you in distress? May I assist you?”
His heart plunged, for the certainty that this was not, in fact, Samantha seemed conveyed to him instantly by contact between his sleeve and her gloves. “Not at all,” he said, gathering his scattered composure as best he could, given the necessity of shouting against the storm. “But I could ask the same of you! Pray come up to the house, ma’am! This is no fit night to be out!” He offered her his arm, but could not refrain from one final glance about the field. Lightning flickered about the edges of the sky, but no grand illuminations tempted him on further wild goose chases.
Progress to the manor was assisted by the sail-like effect of the storm upon the lady’s skirt, which threatened to lift her off the ground like a kite. With no appearance of discomfiture, she clung to his arm as to an anchor, laughing merrily when he had to run to keep up with her. To his astonishment, Fox found himself laughing as well, and he thrust her quickly through the side door, lest the wind put out the single, flickering lamp he had left burning upon the console. “There! Now we are safe!” He declared, shaking the wet from his coat. “May I ask what the deuce you were doing wandering in my fields like a gypsy in this weather?” Even storm-ridden as she was, he could tell this was no gypsy. He had seldom seen a woman more respectably dressed, though her boots were sensible rather than stylish, and her bonnet was three years out of date.
“I fear I know no better than yourself, sir,” she said. “The best conclusion I can draw is, that my coach was struck by lightning, and I must have wandered in a state of confusion since. Would you be so good as to set me upon my way again?” The dim light fell upon her face, and from beneath the shabby bonnet flared the most remarkable pair of eyes that had ever graced him with a glance. He felt a warm thrill through his whole being, and his ears rang so he scarcely heard her state: “I seek an estate called Mulder Manor…”
CH. 3, IN WHICH MULDER MANOR RECEIVES VISITORS, AND MISS SCULLY RECEIVES INTIMATIONS THAT HER EMPLOYMENT WILL BE OF A MORE CONGENIAL NATURE THAN SHE EVER DARED HOPE
The night was still dark and stormy, yet was now accompanied by the clattering of a coach and four upon the cobblestoned courtyard below the window of the sitting room, where Dana and Mr. Mulder sat in front of the small coal fire, embroidering and reading, respectively.
Dana glanced at Mr. Mulder, noting his noble brow, his dark eyes, skin pale in the warm light of the fire. His figure was trim, his let well-cast, and his clothing of the most severe cut. Mr. Colton, the man servant, entered the room noiselessly, two men behind him, dressed in shining wet oilcloth, hats obscuring their faces.
“Sir, Messrs. Skinner and Krycek.”
Dana had a bad feeling, one that was not limited to the fact that she had stabbed herself in the finger with her needle. After blotting her finger, Dana gathered her embroidery and made ready to place it in the bag at her feet, when Mr. Mulder imperiously held up one slim-fingered hand. She tilted her head in acknowledgment of his command, and sat, hands clasped in front of her. Mr. Mulder stood gracefully, stalking over to the low table that held a variety of sprits.
One of the gentlemen, upon removing his hat, revealing a nearly hairless head, remarked loudly upon the miserable weather outside. The other gentleman went to the fire, staring most impudently at Dana, who, had she not been so gifted and talented a young woman, would have looked away in shame, for his glance held a naked desire the likes she had only read about in the most impudent of books.
“Sir, if you please!” Mr. Mulder gave a sharp look in the young gentleman’s direction.
“Mr. Mulder, we come to you in time of great desperation. Beatrice, Lady Eton-Hogg, a mere child of eight, has been abducted from her one not four days past!” cried the gentleman with little hair. “Sir, I implore you to look into this matter. We,” and here he motioned towards the scowling figure at the fire, “have heard of your exploits concerning the conduit at Woof-on-the-Tweed, and decided to come here to beg your assistance!”
Dana could not help but notice the whitening of Mr. Mulder’s cheeks and the tightening of his lips. The poor man, to have such a reputation! He turned away for a brief moment, looking at the glass he held in his hands. A visibly bitter emotion coursed though him, and Dana could barely restrain herself from offering her own assistance, but as she thought this, the most severe bright light swept the room, and she knew no more…
CH. 4, IN WHICH DANA INVADES THE BASEMENT SANCTUM IN WHICH HER NEW EMPLOYER PERFORMS EXPERIMENTS OF AN INTERESTING AND PECULIAR SORT, AND ACCOMPANIES HIM ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY
Dana opened her eyes slowly, noting the dreary light coming in through the drawn drapery, and wondering from what dream she awakened from, for she was lying across Mr. Mulder’s lap. He appeared to be asleep, so she gently drew herself off of the sofa, realizing immediately that she had not memory of falling asleep, and certainly not on her employer’s lap! Her dove gray dress was still perfectly starched, the corset digging into her ribs with intensity. The gentlemen who had arrived the previous evening were gone.
The clock on the mantle slowly rung the time — but surely it could not be eleven o’clock? Dana hastily consulted her pocket watch, becoming confused, for it read five o’clock. Holding the watch to her ear, she heard it not ticking. Relieved, she wound it to the proper time. Leaving Mr. Mulder on the sofa, she returned to her own room to wash and write in her journal.
For his part, Mr. Mulder, as soon as he understood that his lovely young companion had left, rose from the sofa with a sigh. He had suspected as much. The arrival of Skinner and Krycek certainly heralded a new case which he could study, and perhaps, publish in the Woof-on-the-Tweed College Journal of Philosophy. But first, he would ask Miss Scully what exactly her watch face had read. His own was off by seven hours. Dana slipped out of her corset with a sigh; why women had to wear such constricting clothing was a mystery, but her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock on the door.
“Miss Scully, may I ask you a question, if I may disturb you?”
Dana lipped on her dressing gown and dusty-blue shawl, with the black rose pattern and proceeded to open the door, where Mr. Mulder stood, looking less like a grown gentleman and more of a little boy who was lost in a crowd.
“Mr. Mulder?”
Mr. Mulder found himself drowning the small woman before him, strong and sturdy and unafraid. “May I look at your pocket watch?”
“I’m afraid I’ve already rewound it, sir, but it was off by some hours anyway.”
Mr. Mulder nodded slowly and turned away to go to his own room in the west wing, but he turned to face Dana gain. “I need to see some books at the college today, would you care to join me, Miss Scully?”
Dana did not hesitate. “Sir, I would be most inclined.”
CH. 5, IN WHICH DANA ENTERS WOOF-ON-THE-TWEED ACADEMIC SOCIETY AND ENCOUNTERS EVIDENCE OF HER EMPLOYER’S ECCENTRICITY, IN THE REACTIONS OF THOSE THEY ENCOUNTER
Wan light filtered in through the coach window, the countryside lying drearily outside. Rain threatened. Dana stared out the window, most aware of Mr. Mulder’s steady gaze upon her face, but refusing to allow it to bother her.
“Miss Scully, do you recall anything odd happening last evening?” Mr. Mulder asked softly.
Dana glanced at him quickly before returning to the grey countryside, houses now appearing with some regularity. An image of the sofa appeared in her mind. “Sir?”
Mr. Mulder leaned forward and peered out the window. “What is it that you see out there?”
“I see a quiet land preparing itself for winter.” Mr. Mulder decided to try again. “Miss Scully…I know that you have only begun your year’s employment with me, but I would ask that whatever you witness, whatever you should overhear, should remain between the two of us. My work is… unusual, and I may require your assistance at times.”
Her curiosity aroused, Dana looked directly at him. His eyes were dark in the dim light of the coach.
“I am a seeker of the truth, Miss Scully—” The coach suddenly hit a series of ruts, throwing Dana and Mr. Mulder closer. She removed her hand from his knee, blushing somewhat. Dana rapidly recovered and sat back in her seat, gloved hands clasped in front of her. “Sir, I will endeavour to give what aid I can.”
He smiled ever so slightly. “Thank you, Miss Scully. Ah, we have arrived —”
Dana looked out the window once again, noticing a large town in the near distance.
Mr. Mulder brought out of his jacket pocket a small notebook and lead, handing it to Dana. “If you would take notes?”
“Of course, sir…”
CH. 6, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY ASSISTS HER EMPLOYER TO MAKE A COMMOTION, ALL AGAINST HER WILL, IN THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE.
Dana looked through a few moldy books in the pale light of the tall window, disgusted at their condition. To think that books would be in such condition spoke poorly of the librarian, indeed of the college at large. She set them on the shelf again, wandering into the next stack, which was appropriately enough, filled with dusty tomes concerning Health, Physicks, Childhood Maladies, Humours, Female Gyneacology, and Hysteria. She decided to forego looking at them, and stepped to the balustrade, leaning over the metal railing to see where Mr. Mulder was. Locating him at the far end of the main hall, she quickly went to the top of the stairs, ignoring the venomous looks directed her way from several young gentlemen in black college robes.
Mr. Mulder did not mark her appearance with any specific movement, but Dana felt that he had somehow noticed her presence, and drew out the notebook he had given her earlier from her pocket. She waited quietly.
“Mr. Mulder!” An imperious voice rang out, echoing through h the floor. “Females are not allowed on the premises!”
Dana felt her heart sink. It would certainly not be the first time she had been escorted off college property, and probably would not be the last.
Mr. Mulder looked up, eyes glinting. “Mr. Blevins. I hope you don’t think I’m intruding upon the studies of your young gentlemen by bringing Miss Scully here.”
Mr. Blevins, a rotund little man with a disagreeable expression upon his face, stared at Dana, taking in the hair that was brilliant even in the dim light of the library, the delicate figure in gray, the white gloves, and then at Mr. Mulder, as if he could not believe what was before him. “Sir, my young gentlemen need to keep their utmost attention upon their education. Distractions such as …females… have no place in institutions of higher learning!”
“Mr. Blevins, Miss Scully is here at my request. She is my aid, and thus may come and study as she pleases.”
Mr. Blevins grew dangerously red in the face. “Mr. Mulder, sir, you do understand that females do not have the capacity for things beyond the mundane. The philosophical is beyond their fragile mentality.”
Dana could not contain herself. She leaned forward and fixed eyes of cobalt upon the little man. “Sir, if females, as you so quaintly name us, wold be allowed to utilize such grand institutions on a regular basis, perhaps we would not be such distractions at all, nor would our minds be so fragile! We are not beasts, sir, that graze upon the pasture with no will, but rather creature of thought and sensitivity! Give us but a chance, sir, before judgement…”
CH. 7, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY MAKES TWO ACQUAINTANCES SHE WOULD SOONER HAVE DONE WITHOUT, AND LEARNS SOMETHING OF THE INVESTIGATIVE METHODS USED BY HER EMPLOYER, WITHOUT ENTIRELY APPROVING OF THEM
Scarcely had the porter’s gate clanged shut behind them, than Miss Scully’s apologies for the awkward situation she had inadvertently created were forestalled by the appearance of a lady, in the height of fashion, who descended upon them with a genteel cry of recognition. “Great heavens! Can it be? Fox! I had no idea you were in town!” She turned to her companion, a small and toadlike man who, Dana thought, she had perhaps seen before. “Don’t you think it is too naughty of him, to call upon his stuffy university before presenting himself to me?”
Miss Scully elevated her eyebrows, and turned to see how her employer reacted to being addressed in such familiar terms. Though a cheek as sallow as his could scarcely blush, he did appear distinctly uncomfortable. “Of course, I – I intended to call upon you later in the day, when I would have a reasonable chance of finding you at home” he said. His eyes evaded Dana’s as he made the necessary introductions. “May I present my assistant, Miss Dana Scully? Miss Scully, this is my — my fiancée, Miss Phoebe Greene; and her cousin, Mr. Frohike.”
“Your assistant, eh, Mulder?” said Mr. Frohike. “Well, you certainly know how to pick them!”
Dana ignored the offensiveness of his tone, the hard and calculating glance which Miss Greene turned upon her , the guilty agitation of Mr. Mulder’s manner, and even the inward sensation of falling from a great height which inexplicably beset her. Bolstered by the manners which had been so relentlessly drilled into her at St. Martin the Warrior’s Home for the Ancestrally Challenged, she extended her hand and murmured, in the most rigidly polite tones at her command: “How do you do, Miss Greene? I am exceedingly pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Miss Greene scarcely touched Dana’s hand, not quite grimacing as she noted the dusty white glove that had just transferred a small notebook into a gray skirt pocket. “Fox, I’ll see you tomorrow for tea.”
Mr. Frohike grinned and nodded at Dana, winking at her most inappropriately before taking Miss Greene by the elbow and turning up the street.
Mr. Mulder did not speak, but hesitated slightly before slowly walking in the opposite direction. His composure had obviously been shaken by the encounter with his…finacée, and Dana was unsure what to say, if she should say anything at all…
CH.8, IN WHICH DANA AND MR. FOX ENCOUNTER A PECULIAR CREATURE, AND DISPUTE EACH OTHER’S DEDUCTIONS ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE MANOR.
After taking their leave of Lady Beatrice’s father and new stepmother, Mr. Mulder led the way to a peculiar shop in a back street, where they placed an order for half a ton of sunflower seeds and a patent lantern. It was on their departure from this shop, which lay in an out-of-the-way part of Woof-on-the-Tweed, that Dana began to feel a peculiar sensation, as of pressure in the small of the back; yet she knew her stays were not excessively tight. When she glanced around she saw nothing unusual — indeed, she saw practically nothing at all. The gloomy autumn afternoon was made gloomier by the rise of fog from the nearby river, and the near-desertion of the streets. She thought she saw a movement in an alley as they passed — a dog, no doubt. She concentrated on Mr. Mulder’s conversation, or rather his vocal musings, on the problem before them.
“If only there were a witness!”
“What of the nurserymaid?” inquired Dana. “We have not spoken to her.”
Mr. Mulder made an impatient gesture. “She was sound asleep, and saw nothing. The constabulary have already questioned her, prior to his lordship’s giving her the sack for carelessness.”
Dana was about to remark upon the usefulness of stern men like Mr. Skinner interrogating frightened Irish nurserymaids, scarcely more than children themselves, when the astonishing shape surged out of the shadows behind the dustbins and hurled itself toward them as a rugby player hurls himself into the scrum. Her cry of warning served only to cause Mr. Mulder to step between herself and the assailant, an unsatisfactory event, for it began to grapple him with a savagery that bid fair to overcome such science as he possessed. Dana hurled herself into the fray, obtaining a purchase upon what might be considered a neck, though it oozed and shifted disturbingly within her grasp. With an intense, if fleeting, grateful memory of Sister Mary Ignatius and her morning exercise program, Dana jerked backward, bringing the — thing’s — head? — to the proper height for a solid blow from the blackjack she had managed to snatch from her reticule. Instead of the sharp crack of wood against skull, there was a nauseous plop! Something gave repellantly under the force of her blow. As Mr. Mulder scrambled out of it’s oozy grip and turned to grapple it about the throat, it moaned, twitched, and lost all consistency.
“Oh, fiddle,” said Dana. “I believe I exerted too much force. Are you injured, Mr. Mulder?”
“Only my dignity,” said Mr. Mulder, kneeling to examine the remains. “It is certainly dead. Most efficient of you, Miss Scully!”
“Efficient is as efficient does,” said Dana, determined not to take his compliments personally any longer. “If the thing is dead, and decomposes thus rapidly, I am not certain how we are to learn what it was — the more so, since we have nothing whatever to collect samples of it in.”
Dana stepped back hastily, nearly bumping into her employer as she avoided the putrefying mass of goo that began running down the cobblestones street. The mass bubbled and hissed, and soon no more evidence of it was in existence, save for Dana and Mr. Mulder’s memories.
Mr. Mulder crouched down, poking at the cobblestones with his penknife. “Look closely, Miss Scully. The cobblestones are pitted as if by some voracious acid. I wish I had gathered samples the last time I saw this.”
“Sir? Do you mean to say this has happened before?” Dana was horrified.
Mr. Mulder rose smoothly and tucked his penknife back into his vest pocket. “There have been several cases in Aberystwyth, Glasgow, Cardiff, and I have even heard of four cases in the Orient, one in Ceylon, two in Persia, and the last in the penal colony of New South Wales.”
“But, sir, surely you are not suggesting that those occurrences have anything to do with what has just happened here?!”
Mr. Mulder clasped his hands behind his back and slowly strode up the street, listening to the quiet swish of his companion’s skirts as she caught up to him. “I have no physical proof as yet, Miss Scully, but I have made inquiries, and expect that proof to arrive on the sloop Maria in some weeks.”
Dana pursed her lips.
Mr. Mulder glanced at her. “I hope, Miss Scully, that you will be able to provide some service in this regard.”
“Of course, sir…”
CHAP. 9 IN WHICH MISS SCULLY MAKES A NEW ACQUAINTANCE, LOSES HER TEMPER, AND GOSSIPS WITH THE SERVANTS IN A GOOD CAUSE, LEARNING FRAGMENTS OF A TRAGIC STORY
Dana stepped from the coach, disregarding the hand Mr. Mulder offered. She had collected herself from the day’s earlier surprises, and was now ready to sup and sleep. She followed Mr. Mulder into the Manor and headed towards the sitting room, slippered feet making little noise on the parquet floor. Colton was just setting down a tray filled with tea, bread, and red currant jam. He sniffed as Dana passed him.
Dana poured tea into rose-patterned china, waiting for Mr. Mulder’s nod before pouring herself a cup as well. She sat on the sofa, warming herself before the fire, ruminating on the day’s events, watching Mr. Mulder take his chair from the corner of her eye. Mr. Mulder certainly was an interesting man. She wondered where his fortune had come from.
“Fox.” The voice was dry and unknown, and although Dana was startled, she made no move, save for staring into the darkest corner of the room, where a figure was slowly rising. Mr. Mulder stiffened and got to his feet. “Sir. Miss Scully, may I introduce you to my father, Mr. William Mulder.”
The newcomer spared no glance for Miss Scully. “What’s this I hear about you?” he demanded of his son. “Can’t I leave you alone for a fortnight? Thank G** I left your mother on the continent! You’ll be the death of her yet! Do you know what they call you at the Club behind my back? Do you?”
It was like watching a tree engulfed by an avalanche. Mr. Mulder the elder’s words lost all meaning as he continued speaking and his son continued silent, only bending lower and lower under the weight of the words laid upon him. Samantha — your mother — irresponsible chasing after shadows — your disreputable friends — Miss Greene’s expectations — Miss Scully did not understand a tenth of what was said, but she could not sit and watch Mr. — Mr. Fox (as she must learn to think of him, for there could not be two Mr. Mulders in one house) Mr. Fox crumble before this onslaught and be transformed into a guilty schoolboy before her eyes. Seizing on the only portion of the discourse in which she could claim a legitimate interest, she rose and inserted her own voice between one breath and the next. “Am I to understand, then, sir, that no one has hired me?”
To her unbounded relief, the voice stopped. She met him eye-to-eye, though she had to raise her chin defiantly to do so. “Who the d**** is this?” he snapped, jerking his gaze back to his son’s face; but not before Dana had seen straight through the eyes and into the man in back of them — a small man, and scared. Scared to death. She would not let him return to his victim!
“I am the Miss Dana Scully to whom you wrote, engaging me to act as companion to your wife,” she said, stepping between them,“but as you say she has remained on the Continent, I am at a loss as to what you intended my duties to be.”
Dana felt Mr. Fox rise behind her, evidently prepared to face for her what he would not face for himself. “Miss Scully has been assisting me, Pater,” he said, “while we awaited your return.”
Mr. Mulder turned purple. “But I never wrote to anyone!”
“Did you not, sir?” Dana opened her reticule, and took out the letter, glad she had not yet had liesure to file it. Mr. Mulder accepted the page ungraciously and scanned it.
“I — I remember now,” he said, hoarsely, his mien a peculiar shade which was neither mauve nor fuchsia, but rather a curious commingling of the two. “You had — you had better stay.”
“As my assistant?” inquired Mr. Fox.
Mr. Mulder shook his head, as if to throw off the persistent buzzing of flies. “Yes — yes — I suppose — Excuse me. I — am not well. The journey —” He departed abruptly, walking with the steady insensibility of the somnambulist.
Dana and Mr. Fox regarded each other across the gap left by his absence. “He likes you,” said Mr. Fox, erecting that barrier of levity which Dana suspected covered real sorrow as a lid would cover a well, the roots of which extended into the deepest regions of the earth. “I fear your tea has grown cold.” He rang for Colton, opening the thin red-bound book he had obtained at the library that afternoon.
So. She was not to learn from his lips what any of this was about. Far be it from her to pry into her employer’s personal affairs — but if he thought his reticence would suffice to keep her long in ignorance, he little knew the resources available to an intelligent and resourceful woman in a houseful of servants…
CH. 10, IN WHICH THE HOURS PRIOR TO GOING IN TO WOOF-ON-THE-TWEED ARE BEGUILED BY HEALTHY OUTDOOR EXERCISE
Dana, as usual, was up betimes. Rather than disturb the servants, she slipped down the back stairs, determined to brew up her morning cup herself. Her purpose was forestalled, however, on encountering Mr. Fox in the hall where they had first introduced themselves, on that stormy night so lately passed as the world measures time, so immeasurably distant on the clock of experience. He was dressed as for a morning tramp, yet he clutched the book which he had obtained from the library, and she fancied that his pale, melancholy face brightened perceptibly at sight of her. “Miss Scully! You are an early riser!”
“As are you, I see,” she said. “Is it your custom to walk out every morning with a book? I think it is scarcely light enough to repay the endeavour.”
“No, no, I slept badly, and have something to investigate.” He held out the book, open at a remarkably detailed map, showing individual fields, hedgerows, and buildings, and marked with odd sigils, of what appeared to Dana to be a runic character, though her knowledge of such things was sketchy at best. “This field is not but five miles from here, near the Old Farm. It is one of what the countryfolk call it the Fairy’s Fields, where every summer mysterious signs appear among the corn, created by the careful bending of the stalks. There are several such in the neighborhood — the one where you found yourself the other night, for example — but, by an interesting coincidence, it was from this particular field that Lady Beatrice disappeared, nearly a week ago now. I fear the trail will be cold, but there are some hints in this book which I wish to pursue.”
“No doubt that is the correct proceeding,” said Dana, supressing a twinge of disappointment that she was not to be a part of the expedition. “Have you a breakfast with you? And where are your specimen bottles? You would not wish to be caught out as we were in the street yesterday.”
“Assuredly, you are in the right, as to the specimen bottles,” conceded Mr. Fox. “But I have no fancy for breakfast.”
“You will, after a tramp of five miles!” Dana assured him. “If you will gather the bottles and any other equipment you may have neglected, I will put together a bundle of food for you.”
Mr. Fox opened his mouth as if to protest, but suddenly laughed instead. “Very well! And, Miss Scully —”
“Yes, sir?”
“Be so good as to put in as much breakfast as you shall require, as well…”
CH. 11, IN WHICH FOX TAKES TEA AT MISS PHOEBE GREENE’S WHILE MISS SCULLY PURSUES HER OWN LINE OF INVESTIGATION.
Phoebe was in one of her charming moods, and in recognition of the long betrothal the only chaperone was little Miss Evelyn Greene — a sly boots, but absorbed in devouring teacakes and Blackwood’s magazine. Under the warmth of his finacée’s regard — so often withheld — Fox found himself relaxing and expanding, relating to her the course of his investigations into Lady Beatrice’s vanishment. She listened with a rapt countenance as he expatiated upon his theory of the relationship between local fairy lore, the sigils in the corn, and the most recent theories of scientists concerning the evolution of humanity and the habitation of the celestial bodies.
“So these events may be due to other intelligences, perhaps evolved separately from humankind, or generated upon the moon and planets? You amaze me! And yet it is a compelling argument.”
Memory spoke in Fox’s ear, in husky, restrained tones identical to those in which Miss Scully had responded to this theory that very morning: “Sir, I have never before seen so large an edifice of speculation erected upon so flimsy a foundation of evidence.” Thus checked, he demurred: “It has its merits as a working hypothesis, but as Miss Scully spent the morning pointing out to me, it suffers from many blemishes and lacunae which cannot be wished away.”
Phoebe laughed her tinkling laugh, and the follicles on the back of Fox’s neck erected themselves in alarm. “How bold and unwomanly of her,” she remarked, her fine lavender silks rustling as she poured more tea. “I suppose she is so accustomed to thinking of herself as a predestinate old maid, that she has not troubled to cultivate the proper demeanour. Yet I think if she played her cards right, she could land my cousin Frohike.”
“Frohike?” Fox felt as if he had walked into a wall, and suddenly recalled many nuances of the previous day’s encounter which his agitation at the time had prevented his noticing. “She can do better than him!”
“With that dumpy little figure, those irregular features, and — my dear! That red hair?”
“Your hair is —”
“Auburn, darling. She’s obviously Irish, poor thing. Thank goodness she has no brogue! But, still, no family, no prospects — my cousin would be a godsend to her!” SShe leaned back with the smile Fox dreaded more than he did her stormiest frowns. “I am determined to do your little assistant a good turn, and play matchmaker. A seance would be just the thing — a dark room, holding hands — only an idiot would fail to improve such an opportunity! Though — ” her laugh made the gooseflesh rise upon his arms, and drew Evelyn’s cold attention from her reading — “I almost quail from my purpose, at the thought of how ugly their children will be! But perhaps she will produce only sons…”
CH. 12, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY PRODUCES THE RESULTS OF HER CONVERSE WITH THE NURSERY MAID, SHE AND MR. FOX INVESTIGATE A DESERTED FARMHOUSE BY NIGHT, AND MISS SCULLY ENTERS A ROOM FRACTIONALLY TOO LATE TO SEE THE GOOD STUFF
The lamplighter had made his rounds, though it was not yet six of the clock. Dana hurried, but Mr. Fox was already at the meeting place, sunk into a brown study, from which he emerged suddenly when she vaulted over the wheel to sit beside him on the gig’s box. “We must go to the Old Farm at once!” she declared.
Mr. Fox’s countenance altered, from that of one who contemplated the sorrows of the world, to that of one contemplating a newly-opened chocolate box. “Yes’m,” he said, touching the curl of his forehead and clucking to the horses in the broadest country manner. “Tha willna find un verra comfoartable, missus, but ah’ll takee ee there.”
Dana forbore to notice this comment on her pre-emptory manner, judging correctly that it would only encourage him. “It will be a great deal more uncomfortable for the Lady Beatrice, by this time,” she said, drawing her shawl close about her as they trotted down the high street. “We’ll be lucky if she hasn’t caught her death.”
“Why should she be at the Old Farm?” inquired Mr. Fox.
“Because that was where her mother laid violent hands upon herself three years ago.”
“How the blazes did you hear about that?” Mr. Fox seemed genuinely appalled. “It was hushed up most thoroughly.”
“Families with servants can never hush up anything thoroughly,” said Dana. “You should gossip more. And I’ll thank you to be a more frank with me in the future! It is disgraceful that I had to seek out information of which you were already aware!”
“Yes’m! But who told you? And how does it relate to your belief that we will find Lady Beatrice where they found her mother three years ago?”
“Katie Scarlett, the dismissed nursery maid, told me all about it,” said Dana, “including the fact that, ever since her father’s re-marriage, Lady Beatrice has insisted that her mother is still alive, and would come fetch her so they could live in the country. The Old Farm is the only country spot associated with her mother.”
“But Lady Beatrice was only five years old at the time, and has been carefully sheltered since. She can know nothing of the Old Farm’s importance in her history.”
Dana expressed her opinion of this statement by closing her lips tight and forcefully expelling her most recent inhalation through her sinuses. “She was young; she was not blind, deaf, or insensible! Children notice, and they remember!”
This proved to be an unfortunate remark, for Mr. Fox returned to his brown study as they rolled quickly down the country lane to the deserted farmstead…
CH. 13, IN WHICH LADY BEATRICE ETON-HOGG IS RETURNED TO THE BOSOM OF HER FAMILY, AND MISS SCULLY AND MR. FOX RETURN HOME VERY LATE INDEED.
The light vanished even as Dana achieved the doorway, but sufficient irradiation emanated from her lantern to show her Mr. Fox kneeling by a straw pallet, and a little girl, attired in white, sitting upon it and rubbing her eyes. She blinked at Mr. Fox and said, disapprovingly: “It isn’t proper for gentlemen to invade a lady’s bedroom.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Dana, gently, wrapping her shawl around the girl — whose hands and face were already quite warm, though a rime of frost dusted the surface of the pallet. “However, you are not in your bedroom, and we have come to return you to it.”
“Who was that lady who was here just now?” asked Mr. Fox.
“My mother,” said Lady Beatrice, reclining confidingly upon Dana’s breast. “She said a lady would come to take me home, so I could make my stepmother’s life miserable.”
“If you do so, you will assuredly make yourself miserable as well,” said Dana, casting a stern gaze upon Mr. Fox. “You have been dreaming, and I am surprised at this gentleman’s encouraging you in your fancies.”
“I saw a lady, as plainly as I see you,” said Mr. Fox, shining the lantern over the surface of the floor, “but since I saw her only from behind, I could not identify her with any certainty. Look here, Miss Scully! Our footprints are the only ones in this thick dust.”
“Then clearly the lady you saw was but an illusion of the darkness,” said Miss Scully, stoutly, “just as the light I saw was a freak reflection from my own lantern.”
“Look again,” said Mr. Fox, directing her attention to all corners of the room. His footmarks and hers were clearly discernible; but of the passage of the child’s bare feet (warm, as Miss Scully gathered her up into her arms, and tucked the toes away inside the shawl) there was no sign…
CH. 14, IN WHICH THE NORTHEAST TOWER IS MYSTERIOUSLY ILLUMINATED FROM WITHIN, AND DANA AT LAST LEARNS IN FULL THE PITEOUS TALE OF THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MISS SAMANTHA MULDER
Without a word, Mr. Fox whipped up the horses, and Dana was forced to cling to the seat in order to maintain her place. The light shining forth from the tower — the same one which all the servants said must never be entered — was unlike any she had ever seen, discounting the peculiar brilliancy which had accompanied the lightning strike upon the coach. It shone white, rather than the cosy yellow of lamplight or ominous red of flame. That it held some dreadful meaning for Mr. Fox, she could not doubt,for not only did he drive with the recklessness of a maniac, but he hurled himself out of the gig before it ceased to roll, and burst through the door of the manor without even calling for a groom.
Though in haste to follow — for whatever that light portended, it would surely not be well for him to confront it alone — Dana could hardly leave the horses in the cold to founder, so she quickly drove them into the coach-house, calling out to Danny as she did so. The faithful coachman emerged, blinking, from his room. “What the —?”
“Something is amiss in the tower,” she explained, leaping out of the gig. “Mr. Fox is —”
He made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go, go! I know what he is!”
Hiking up her skirts like a schoolgirl, Dana raced through the tangle of dark hallways to the forbidden stairwell. All was dark there, and silent, save for a muffled sound like sobs. On attaining the topmost room, she paused in the doorway to let her eyes adjust. There was no light but that of the frosty moon, streaming through the barred, unshuttered windows. The room was a nursery, littered with the play of children twenty years grown — a discarded doll, a rocking horse, a toy theater. It smelled, not of clean, good children, but of dust and despair. Mr. Fox crouched above an arrangement of toy soldiers, sobbing as no boy of twelve years would ever dare to sob…
CH. 15, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY SETTLES INTO A ROUTINE AT MULDER MANOR, THE SLOOP MARIA IS OVERDUE AT THE DOCK, AND A NUMBER OF CASES WITH NO IMMEDIATE BEARING ARE TANTALIZING REFERRED TO, PRIOR TO GETTING THE PLOT BACK ON TRACK WITH AN EXPECTED INVITATION.
The failure to resolve all the mysteries surrounding little Lady Beatrice Eton-Hogg’s disappearance, and the immediately subsequent failure to find anything amiss in the playroom, plunged Mr. Fox into a melancholy from which no device of Dana’s could lure him. However, at the expiration of two days, during which he lurked morosely in his basement sanctum, the case of the Ralston-on-Purina Puma was called to his attention. Immediately, he and Dana were plunged into a whirlwind of activity, investigating in quick succession the St. Mary Mead Devil (which Dana insisted till her dying day was a large owl), the Wessex Vampire, and the Abdominal Snowman, in the search for which Sir Thomas Slick so tragically lost his life.
As per Mr. Fox’s request, Dana confided the details of these cases only to her private diary;’ but her weekly letters to Sister Mary Ignatius did not lack interest. The twin mysteries: Why women must wear such constricting garments, and What precisely precipitated her hiring? She regarded as peculiarly her own. Nor was she reticent as to the character and habits of her fellow inmates at Mulder Manor.
Mr. Mulder the elder was visible only at meal times, and even then he subsisted as much on tobacco and spirits as on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. In his absence, Dana commiserated his obvious wretchedness, but in his presence, this compassion gave way to irritation and even wrath, for he overlooked no opportunity to humiliate and reproach his son. On being reminded of her existence, however, Mr. Mulder inevitably faltered, quailed, and retreated. Dana was at a loss to understand how she struck such terror into his narrow heart; but she never hesitated to be useful to Mr. Fox by any means that lay within her power. Mr. Fox himself was a most congenial employer, never reminding her of her dependent position, and treating her in all respects as a comrade rather than as a woman. Dana acknowledged to herself that, in the first instance, she had indulged a certain inappropriate interest in him; but that was all behind her now, as she reflected two or three times each day. Miss Greene struck her as perhaps a shade haughty to be matched with Mr. Fox’s easy equability, and he always seemed to her to be more subdued than elated by his visits to her, but the matter was certainly of no interest to her. None whatever.
It was a snowy day, and Dana was indulging in some finicky needlework for the sake of the prospective offspring of a fellow St. Martin’s alumna, while Mr. Fox read aloud from an interesting and improbable account of the Voudonistas of Haiti, when Colton brought in the invitations to Miss Greene’s seance…
CH 16, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY CALLS ON MISS GREENE FOR THE FIRST TIME, IS BEWILDERED BY A STARTLING RESEMBLANCE IN A STRANGER TO SOMEONE FROM HER PAST, AND CANNOT AVOID GOING IN TO DINNER ON MR. FROHIKE’S ARM.
Miss Greene’s home in town might have been specially designed for the intimidation of friendless orphans, being a marvel of grace, taste, and expenditure inside and out. Dana’s spirits did not quail, however, and she followed Mr. Fox like a shadow into the well-appointed foyer. Hearing a small sound as they passed below the grand staircase, she looked up and started in surprise; pausing in her progress to gaze in amazement at the child looking down at her through the balustrades. “Evie?” The calm, bovine face gazed down at her in turn, and the voice replied, in well-remembered accents: “My name is Evelyn Greene. Who are you?”
But — it was fifteen years since Evie, her age-mate, had been removed from St. Martin’s under such mysterious and disturbing circumstances; and this child was no more than eight. “I beg your pardon,” she said. “I am Miss Dana Scully, Mr. Fox’s assistant. You — looked familiar to me.”
“I’m Miss Greene’s sister,” said Miss Evelyn, “and I don’t know anybody of your station in life.”
Before Dana could respond to this complacent rudeness — which also was so familiar! — Mr. Frohike appeared at her elbow, beaming all over his toad face, and took her arm. “Now, don’t hang back here being shy, Miss Scully! There won’t really be any Society here today. Cousin Phoebe seldom invites me, if there will be! It’s only a couple of the old boys from the university, and Cousin Phoebe, and that medium woman, Mme. Melissa. A thoroughly scientific evening.”
Dana allowed herself to be drawn into the parlor, reflecting with some satisfaction that at least she looked her worst. Having been apprised of Miss Greene’s no-doubt-well-meaning condescension in attempting to arrange a match between herself and Mr. Frohike, she had taken great pleasure in hiding away the necklace that formed her only ornament, and digging out from the bottom of her trunk the grayest of her gray dresses, which she trusted fervently would make her look like a cow…
CH. 17, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY’S NATURAL TENDENCIES ASSERT THEMSELVES DESPITE HER BEST EFFORTS, WITH UNFORTUNATE RESULTS.
Dana remained silent during the long ordeal of dinner, repeatedly resisting the temptation to communicate with Mr. Fox by some subtle facial motion to which all but he should, ideally, be oblivious. During the dessert, Mr. Byers settled into an exposition of his favorite topic: that life, art, politics, economics, and the cricket circuit were dominated by various secret masters, alternately competing and conspiring to arrange the world as best suited themselves. Dana quietly ate her tourte de pommes frites a la glace as he held forth upon the dastardly machinations of the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Sufi Masters, and the trade unions, and had consumed all but the crust when he mentioned the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
All unbidden, there rushed into her memory the many happy midnight hours she had spent in the basement morgue of the Mt. Zion Teaching Hospital and Daycare Facility, under the genial tuition of Sister Mary Ignatius’s friend, Dr. Fleischmann. Unable to take her as a regular student, he had been glad to have her assistance after all the regular students had gone home, and had frequently complimented the tidiness of her incisions, the detail of her anatomical drawings, and the strength of the hemstitch with which she had closed the corpses.
Dana unaware of any intent to speak, until she opened her mouth in the midst of a sentence concerning the iniquities of the Jewish banks. “I am astonished, Mr. Byers,” she heard herself say, “that you should be taken in by so obvious a fraud! Even had the protocols not been thoroughly exploded almost as soon as they appeared, the absurdity of the notion of a cabal of elderly Hebrews, plotting to manipulated the markets and control the gentile population, when they cannot so much as choose their own dwellings and occupations, or protect themselves from the torches, ropes, and pitchforks of their neighbors, should be evident to anyone with the merest moiety of common sense.”
She stopped, breathless, amid a ringing silence. Mr. Fox looked happier than he had all evening. Miss Greene glanced from his face to Dana’s with a look of purest venom. Mme. Melissa was suddenly overcome with a fit of coughing, which necessitated pressing her napkin to her lips, but which could not cover the sparkle in her eyes. Mr. Langly and Mr. Byers stared at her as if she had dropped from the moon.
Mr. Frohike was the first to speak, and his tone and expression made Dana’s heart sink as far down her anatomy as the constriction of her stays permitted. “Ha! Didn’t I tell you?” He glanced from Mr. Langly to Mr. Byers, with the air of a sportsman whose longest shot has come in. Dana perceived with dismay that, not only had she called attention to herself and attracted the resentment of Miss Greene, but she had made Mr. Frohike her slave for life…
CH. 18, IN WHICH THE SEANCE ROOM IS PREPARED, MR. FOX AND MISS GREENE HAVE A CONVERSATION, AND MISS SCULLY NOTICES THAT MME. MELISSA IS WEARING A FAMILIAR LOOKING ITEM, BUT SAYS NOTHING
As they made their way down to the second parlour, Fox said softly to Phoebe: “Don’t do it to her.”
“Do what to whom?” Phoebe’s voice was light as air, her glance as hard as frost-kissed steel.
“Whatever it may be that you plan to do,” said Fox firmly, “to Miss Scully.”
“Really, Fox! What an astonishing thing to say! I have no intention of doing anything’ to your little assistant!”
Perhaps she truly didn’t. Perhaps he was imagining it. The habitual excuses began their tired chorus in his head. But he had seen Phoebe’s dark glance fall on Miss Scully when she so deftly fileted Mr. Byers’ argument at dinner, and he had seen too many social disasters follow hard upon the heels of such glances. Any humiliation Miss Scully suffered would be upon his head. He should not have looked at her — should not have shown her any sign of approval — should not have brought her to this cursed house at all! “Be sure that you do not,” he said, coldly. “I have placed my heart in your care, and you are perfectly entitled to trample upon it as much as you wish, but Miss Scully has done nothing to merit inclusion in your little games. She has been a capable assistant to me, having already saved my life three times, and I would be hard put to replace her, should you drive her to seek other employment.”
Phoebe’s lip quivered, her eyes blinked rapidly, and her breath caught. “I’m sure I don’t know what I have done to deserve being spoken to in such a fashion! You needn’t go to such lengths to wound me, Fox, when your lightest word could kill me.”
Fox found that this performance — so successful, so often, on past occasions when he had tried to hold her to account for some injury to his much-scarred heart— on this occasion made no impression whatever. This woman wouldn’t cry if I threw ammonia into her eyes, he reflected…
CH. 19, IN WHICH COMMUNICATIONS ARE RECEIVED FROM NUMEROUS GRANDMOTHERS, GRANDFATHERS, RED INDIANS, ATLANTEANS, AND A MARTIAN NAMED (IF MISS SCULLY’S NOTES ARE TO BE ACCEPTED AS ACCURATE) WINDSOCK.
Dana examined the seance table, which was sturdy and, she noted with satisfaction, not too perfectly suited to the production of fraudulent raps. Miss Greene fussed about the room, placing people. “Here is your chair, Mme. Melissa. Fox — Mr. Mulder—” she blushed at the slip — “and Mr. Byers have the most experience in these matters, so they will sit on either side of you.”
“I am primarily a voice medium, and frequently produce no physical manifestations at all,” said Mme. Melissa. “I trust your guests will not be disappointed by the tameness of the proceedings.”
“Nonsense!” Miss Greene assured her. “Since your spirit guide’s wonderful performance of Lead, Kindly Light’ upon the tambourine at Mrs. Tillman’s house last month, I have been convinced that your skills are just the thing for our purposes.”
By chance catching Mr. Fox’s eye at that moment, Dana failed to resist the temptation to mouth the word “Tambourine?” and elevate an eyebrow. Though his mouth quirked at the corners, his returned glances admonished her to behave herself. And indeed, since this seance had been gotten up chiefly for her benefit, it would have been ill-mannered in her to be too critical of the entertainment provided.
This exchange took less time than it did for Miss Greene to complete her seating arrangements. “I will sit next to Mr. Mulder, Mr. Langly next to Mr. Byers, and Cousin Frohike, you and Miss Scully will neatly bridge the gap in the circle.” Dana glanced at Mr. Fox in the same instant that he glanced at her. His frown was gone almost before she saw it, and his voice was that of one making a well-considered suggestion. “I think Miss Scully had better take notes of the proceedings,” he said.
“Oh, but Fox —!” protested Miss Greene, as Mr. Frohike’s face fell, and Dana quietly brought out her notebook.
“After all,” Mr. Fox appealed directly to Mme. Melissa, “accurate notes are essential in checking the information received from the spirits.”
“And I have heard that the presence of a skeptic in the circle can be disastrous,” said Miss Scully, seeking out a corner, well-removed from Mr. Frohike’s seat, from which she could keep an eye on the entire company, and adjusting the lamp. “I would be mortified if my involuntary uncooperation jeopardized the success of the experiment. Will the light inconvenience you, if I sit here, ma’am?”
“Not at all,” said the medium, taking the seat Mr. Fox held for her, and glancing around the room as if weighing everyone in it. “It seems to me to be the best possible place for you…”
CH 20, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY RECEIVES A SHOCK, AND THE AUTHOR APOLOGIZES FOR SUCCUMBING TO THE TEMPTATION TO BE DRAMATIC.
“Fox!”
The voice rang unexpectedly in Dana’s ears, though she had anticipated it from the beginning. Mr. Fox stiffened in his chair, but did not otherwise respond, and the little-girl voice rang out again: “Fox! Where are you! Why don’t you come for me? Fox!”
Miss Greene put her up to this, thought Dana, her hand shaking with rage so that she could barely record the words. I’ll scratch her eyes out! Surely he didn’t believe in it — but it was affecting him, all the same. His face was strained and set. Beside him, Mme. Melissa’s countenance was pale against the darkness, her eyelashes trembling on her cheeks, her back hair coming down as the plaintive voice emerged again from her lips: “Fox—”
She stopped.
She shuddered.
Her eyes opened wide.
Sister Mary Ignatius’s eyes, in Sister Mary Ignatius’s face. “Dana?” she thundered. “What do you want with her? Look here — get out —” Sister — the medium — the being in the chair rose, dragging Mr. Fox and Mr. Byers with her; and Dana herself was on her feet, she scarcely knew how. “Oh, would you —?” roared the familiar accents, breaking off as Mme. Melissa screamed, and convulsed, sending the room into convulsions with her.
Dana snatched up the lamp and darted through the confusion, pushing Mr. Byers aside and kneeling beside the medium as she twisted, panting, on the floor. Dana spared a brief glance for Mr. Fox, who understood her mute appeal at once. “Stand back, fellows! Come out of here. Let the women take care of her.” He herded Messrs. Byers, Langly, and Frohike out, as Mme. Melissa’s twitching subsided and Dana, noting a bluish tinge in her face, loosened her stays…
CH. 21, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY DISCOVERS THAT SHE IS NOT ALONE, AND MR. FOX RECEIVES A MYSTERIOUS COMMUNICATION WHICH GIVES HIM LEGITIMATE REASON FOR EMBARKING UPON A JOURNEY WHICH HE INTENDED TO MAKE IN ANY CASE.
Dana was bracing herself to ask the last, most difficult question when a soft knock came upon the door. “Miss Scully? May I be of any assistance?”
“Come in, sir,” called Dana. “I believe she wishes to speak with you.” She turned a serious mien to the medium.
Mme. Melissa, pale but composed, erected herself upon the divan as he entered and enquired as to her health. “Save for a pounding headache, I am entirely recovered,” she said. “So dramatic an effect has never transpired in my sittings before, and I trust never shall again, as I found it most uncomfortable.” She hesitated. “Miss Scully has indicated that I may be entirely forthright with you.”
The glance Mr. Fox exchanged with Dana was so swift she was scarcely aware of it herself. “Nothing you say will leave this room. But may I ease the communication? Your performance tonight was — excuse me — not entirely authentic, was it?”
Mme. Melissa had the grace to blush. “I have my mother to look after. When I was an amateur, honesty was easy, but — ever since my father was lost at sea, and his pension inexplicably denied by the government — consistency is a desirable quality. And the dead are a predictable lot. It only requires a minimum of knowledge of your sitters, readily available from the spiritualistic support networks, to produce an unspectacular but satisfactory sitting even in the dampening presence of such forces as Miss Scully’s skepticism, your own entrapping questions, and Mr. Byers’s moist palms. But I swear to you, sir —” Mme. Melissa looked him in the eyes — “I would never have been so cruel as to invent a communication from your sister! My own little sister vanished when she was two years old. I know how dreadful is uncertainty, and how much more dreadful a false hope! What my final communication meant, I know not, but I did not fabricate it!”
“Not purposely,” said Dana, gently. “But — at the last, I was seeing impossible visions, myself. Might you not have unwittingly fabricated the communication, under the stress of an oncoming epileptic fit?”
“I have never before suffered an epileptic fit,” said Melissa. “Why should I have one now?” Mr. Fox was grave, but to Dana’s surprise passed on to the inquiry which she herself had dreaded to make. “And what about your communication to Miss Scully?”
“To Miss Scully?”
“I have not discussed that with her yet, sir,” said Dana hastily. “And indeed, I am not sure there is any utility in doing so. Events took hold, and my notes are incomplete.”
“The circumstances were striking enough that notes are superfluous,” said Mr. Fox, and proceeded to repeat the words of the terminal message, as Mme. Melissa listened with growing horror.
“Dana was my sister’s name,” she whispered. “I have tried many times to find her through the spirits and never succeeded. But what has this to do with Miss Scully?”
“And that necklace you wear,” continued Mr. Fox, as Dana’s heart beat thickly in her breast. “Where did it come from?”
“This?” Bewildered, Mme. Melissa touched the gold cross with the crystal in the middle which adorned her neck. “My father brought it back from one of his voyages, along with similar ones for Mamma and Dana — but what has it to do with anything?”
Mr. Fox looked at Dana, who without a word drew out her own, similar necklace from its hiding place behind the high-necked frock which she had donned in order to discourage Mr. Frohike…
CH. 22, IN WHICH MR. FOX’S EMOTIONS ARE NOT SO MUCH MIXED AS PUREED, MISS EVELYN REFUSES TO GO TO BED, HASTY PREPARATIONS ARE MADE FOR AN URGENT JOURNEY, AND MR. KRYCEK INSERTS HIMSELF WHERE HE IS NOT WANTED.
“Fox? To whom were you speaking?”
Fox was distracted only momentarily, but that was time enough for the mysterious gentleman to disappear into the whirling snow. He stepped inside quickly, closing the door. The foyer was ice cold, the little wreaths of snow let in during the brief conversation unmelting upon the parquet floor. “Phoebe,” he said, “I trust we have almost come to the end of the disruptions to your household. I depart for Lymon Regis in the morning.”
“Lymon! No one goes there in the winter!”
“Someone has committed — or perhaps is still committing — a series of murders with highly unusual characteristics,” replied Mr. Fox. “The sooner I arrive, the more assistance I can render to the authorities. Since Mme. Melissa is manifestly unwell, and her mother resides in Lymon, she will accompany us, and your house will be your own once more.”
“Us?” The hall was cold; Phoebe’s voice, colder. “Your Miss Scully goes as well?”
“Of course.” He tried to sound careless; tried to move past her, but she blocked his way, and suddenly was no longer cold.
“Fox,” she said, “is this what our married life will be like? Sudden summonses in snowstorms, convulsing mediums in the second parlor?”
“I’m afraid that is the nature of the work I do,” he said, holding himself so still it seemed to him his autonomic functions had slowed to a halt. She stood close and warm, in a cloud of “La Vie Dansant” perfume. (Miss Scully, he recalled irrelevantly, always smelled of Pear’s soap.) “Phoebe, I’ll quite understand if you —”
“June,” she said softly. “That is the proper season for weddings, is it not?” She kissed him.
Six months ago, these same words and actions would have rendered Fox deliriously happy — or, at any rate, delirious. Now he found himself standing outside himself, listening to conflicting voices in his head. You cad, said the old familiar one; “she loves you dearly, and you impute base motives to her every action.*
A newer, fresher voice asked querulously: June? Why after five years of delays and excuses is she suddenly setting the date for June? Your father will be pleased, but should you be? He retreated from her embrace, formulating his response from the necessities of his situation, rather than from desire. “June will be satisfactory,” he heard himself say, “if that is truly your wish. My father will be delighted to have things settled at last.”
“Excuse me.” Miss Scully’s voice drifted down upon them like feathers from a punctured pillow. Fox started guiltily (though why should he feel guilty? Old habit?) and looked up to see her standing on the landing, holding Phoebe’s sister by the hand. How long had they been there? Why did he care? She addressed Phoebe rather than himself, her voice cool and husky and even. “I found Miss Evelyn wandering about upstairs. She refuses to let me put her to bed, and I have been unable to locate a nursemaid…”
CH. 23, IN WHICH DANA AND MR. FOX IMPROVE THEIR ACQUAINTANCE WITH MELISSA STARBUCK AND ANOTHER, LESS WELCOME, PERSON, IN THE COURSE OF A THREE-DAY TRIP BY COACH IN FOUL WEATHER.
The trip to Lymon Regis would have been more pleasant, had Mr. Krycek not invited himself along. He was much more courteous, on this occasion, than on his first meeting with Dana, but his presence necessarily inhibited the conversation which she and Melissa were so eager to hold. Neither could quite believe the evidence of the necklaces; that Dana Scully of St. Martin the Warrior’s Home for the Ancestrally Challenged might in reality be Dana Starbuck, daughter of a naval captain and a former Cornish beauty out of one of the county’s oldest and least prosperous families, now forced to let her house to strangers in the summer. Dana apparently boasted two brothers, as well, one in the navy and the other in the merchant marine. By an astonishing coincidence, (Dana, perhaps ungratefully, felt that she would go into palpitations if she encountered one more astonishing coincidence this week), the brother in the merchant marine was currently overdue in port along with his ship, the sloop Maria; the very same which Mr. Fox daily expected to produce the proof of one of his less orthodox theories. All these things, and the years which had passed without knowledge of each other, as well as Dana’s determination to retain the name of Scully whatever the outcome of investigation into her background, would have formed a delightful fund of conversation, had they been accompanied only by Mr. Fox. He and Melissa were soon quite easy with each other, having many interests in common; but Mr. Krycek was another matter. Sleek and smooth, he represented vague officialdom, and neither Dana nor Mr. Fox could pry from him information as to precisely who had told him when and where to meet Mr. Fox’s private coach.
However, he could scarcely be turned out, and he did indeed have a wealth of information as to the murders that they would be investigating. Dana found this information fascinating, but rather thought that Melissa would have preferred topics of more general interest than removed organs, ritual arrangements, and inaccessible locations for corpses…
CH. 24, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY MEETS HER MOTHER, OR POSSIBLY DOES NOT, AND THE UGLY SECRETS OF LYMON REGIS BEGIN TO BE UNCOVERED DESPITE EVERYTHING MR. KRYCEK CAN DO TO ASSIST.
The Starbuck house looked like a society widow, pale and refined and withdrawn. The seaport air smelled homey to Dana, but the street itself could not have been more unlike dear old grimy, dismal Kidneypool. Thank heaven the sleet had ceased! “I will prepare my — our — mother,” said Melissa, as Mr. Fox handed her out of the coach. “Wait here, dear — I won’t be a minute.” She kissed Dana on the cheek and hurried inside. Dana stood on he pavement, inhaling deep breaths in an attempt to still her agitation.
Mr. Fox smiled reassuringly down at her. “Nervous?”
“Terrified,” admitted Dana.
“Hold still. You have a smudge.” He removed his silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and, placing his hand beneath her chin in order to hold her face steady, rubbed at her cheek. “She’ll adore you,” he said, lowly and lightly. “It’s not as if you had any faults.”
Dana endeavoured to smile at his nonsense, and failed. “What if — what if I don’t like her?”
“Why should you not? She’s your mother.”
“She may be,” said Dana, facing the worst squarely, dismayed at how large it loomed. “But — oh, sir, what if she isn’t? What if it’s all a cruel delusion?”
“Then you will still be Miss Scully, able to stare delusion out of countenance and make it yield to the truth, no matter how obscure.”
“Mulder! Are you going to stand there forever?” Mr. Krycek leaned out of the window of the coach.
“Patience,” said Mr. Fox, releasing Dana’s face and replacing his handkerchief in his pocket. “I can’t leave a lady standing unattended in the street…”
CH. 25, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY HAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO INDULGE AN OLD HOBBY, TO MR. KRYCEK’S DISAPPROBATION AND THE GAINING OF MUCH INTERESTING INFORMATION
“You will all think me a monster,” said Mr. Fox, “but I absolutely must have your opinion of a corpse tonight, Miss Scully. It is to be buried in the morning, and there are some features that I am convinced are significant, but which I have not the expertise to interpret.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mulder,” said Mr. Krycek. “The coroner is perfectly satisfied, and you can’t snatch the young lady out of the bosom of her long lost family to go traipsing through the sleet to view such shocking sights in the middle of the night.”
“Nonsense,” said Dana, heartily wishing Mr. Krycek at Jericho, and glancing apprehensively at Mrs. Starbuck — her mother, rather. How strange, to have a mother, and not know how she would regard one’s plain duty! “If I can be of any assistance in apprehending the monster responsible for these outrages, then clearly I must, sleet or no sleet. And I own that I am exceedingly curious, for you may recall I had many questions which your material did not address, and a sight of the victim would readily answer many of them.”
“Well, I will have no part of it,” declared Mr. Krycek. “It is most irregular, and I warn you, Mulder, it will all come to nothing, for they will never let you bring her into the morgue. Much better you should stay and be comfortable.”
“Isn’t the cook’s brother-in-law an attendant at the morgue, Mama?” Melissa asked.
“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Starbuck. “It is not three days since I went down to brew up a cup — you must not fancy that we are formal here, Mr. Krycek —” She spared the young man one of her warm and gentle smiles —“and found him dropped by, complaining mightily of the coroner’s general foolishness. I cannot say I relish the prospect, but I’m sure the means exist to gain you admittance, if that is really your duty, my dear.”
Dana felt herself grow quite warm with pride. Mr. Krycek looked nonplused, but Mr. Fox appeared perfectly satisfied. “If you could arrange it, that would be most kind of you, ma’am,” he said, privately reflecting that, no matter how many proofs might be lacking from a legal point of view, there could no longer be any doubt in his own mind as to this excellent woman’s kinship with his redoubtable Miss Scully…
CH. 26, IN WHICH DANA MAKES THE BETTER ACQUAINTANCE OF HER FAMILY, AND VICE VERSA; AND SHE AND MR. FOX ESCAPE MR. KRYCEK TO PURSUE SOME FRUITFUL, YET PROFOUNDLY DISTURBING, AVENUES OF INQUIRY AMONG THE PROMINENT FAMILIES OF LYMON REGIS.
From the breakfast room, Mrs. Starbuck could see Mr. Fox descending the stairs from the first floor he had so casually rented for so much more than its worth. He wore abstraction about him like a cloak; but, due to the disordered state of his hair and cravat, he looked more like a schoolboy contemplating the fine points of a cricket match, than like a man in pursuit of a ruthless murderer — or, murderers, if Mrs. Starbuck interpreted the conversation of the night before correctly. “He’s quite a sweet young man,” she said to her elder daughter, “if a tad eccentric, and that wouldn’t show, if he didn’t insist on valeting himself.”
“I fear it would, Mamma,” said Melissa. “His reputation in Woof-on-the-Tweed is formidable and ridiculous at once. He left his man behind largely due to the press of time, but — oh, now, watch this!”
Mr. Mulder had almost reached the foot of the stairs when Dana appeared on the landing, descending from the second floor, where she couched among the family. Mrs. Starbuck could not repress a smile at sight of her, skimming down the stairs in her unrelenting dove gray. A bewildering miracle — her Dana — in the flesh, upon the stairs, arresting Mr. Mulder with a word. He turned obediently and she stood three steps above him, so that she could look down on him as she deftly smoothed the hair and straightened the cravat, with an air of ease that made her mother’s heart quite warm. She turned, opening her lips, but Melissa forestalled her: “Hush! Don’t even think it! He’s engaged — to a perfectly poisonous woman.”
Dana, satisfied that her employer was presentable, took his arm to go in to breakfast. “Let his finacée once see that,” said Mrs. Starbuck.
“She has,” said Melissa. “Watch — they’re disputing a theory involving corpses and weapons. I can tell by the tilt of her head and the stubborn cast of her chin. That one will never marry. She’d rather tear a man’s pet theory to shreds than hear him make love to her.”
Mrs. Starbuck expelled air through her sinuses (in, had she but known it, precisely the same manner Dana did when her employer was more than usually outrageous in his hypothesizing); and greeted the pair warmly on their entrance. Dana came round the table, shyly, to kiss her. “Mr. Krycek,” said Mr. Mulder, with evident satisfaction, as he unfolded his napkin, “is indisposed, and I doubt will be down before noon.”
“This hasn’t anything to do with the nightcap you offered him, has it?” inquired Dana.
“I certainly hope it does,” said Mr. Mulder, stirring his tea. “That mess I mixed him would have put me down for the count for a week, had I been fool enough to drink any, and if he’s got a stronger head than I, I don’t know how to escape him. His determination to interview absolutely everyone who cannot possibly know anything about these murders has become dashed inconvenient…”
CH. 27, IN WHICH THE AUTHOR INDULGES HERSELF WITH A MONUMENTAL SENTENCE, THE PLAN DANA WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN DEVISING IS IMPLEMENTED IN HER ABSENCE, AND CIRCUMSTANCES ARISE WHICH THREATEN TO THROW THE ENTIRE OPERATION INTO JEOPARDY.
Though Dana had herself dissuaded Mr. Fox from attempting to force her presence on Mr. Krycek and the regular constabulary, and though the business to be conducted at Mrs. Starbuck’s solicitor’s was of great moment, she could not but regret her absence from the action that afternoon, for she was not convinced that their efforts had uncovered every prominent citizen who had indulged in unsavory bargains with supposed infernal forces; and though she dismissed Mr. Fox’s fears that the rituals might not have been entirely vain, and though she had herself checked and double-checked the plan of arrest, she could not but recall Mr. Fox’s recklessness in the apprehension of the “Wessex Vampire,” and how narrowly her best efforts had prevented disaster. She would not be easy till she had her employer safely under her eye again. Nor could she deny that it was disagreeable, having worked so hard in putting together the chain of evidence demonstrating so unlikely a proposition as the propensity of a town’s entire ruling elite for horrid midnight rituals, not to be in at (so to speak) the kill.
Though Dana did her best to keep in spirits, the walk home from the solicitor’s was not a comfortable one. She had a sensation of pressure in the small of her back; and since each previous occasion of such a sensation had been sequelled by an attack upon her own or her companion’s person, it would have been odd had she not begun to scrutinize the people they passed in the street. The rainy day discouraged foot traffic, and she soon isolated their pursuer, a nondescript fellow, not overtly threatening. She kept him in sight till they reached the safety of the Starbuck home, at which time she hurried at once to the window, ascertaining that he still lurked upon the pavement opposite.
“Why, Dana, what’s the matter?” inquired Mrs. Starbuck.
“That man across the street has followed us,” replied Dana, stepping back. “No, no, don’t part the curtains!”
“But — why should he do so extraordinary a thing?”
A dozen possibilities flitted through Dana’s mind, but she restricted herself to the least sinister. “Very likely, casing the joint,” she responded lightly. “Melissa, may I borrow your old bonnet?” She divested herself of her own, and changed her cape for the shabbiest shawl available.
“Certainly,” said Melissa; “but whatever for?”
“It wouldn’t do to follow him looking as I did when he followed me,” said Dana, extracting from her reticule those items which she saw the most possibility of requiring — her blackjack, the pistol with which Mr. Fox had provided her in Ralston-on-Purina (ready loaded), notebook, pencil, and two handkerchiefs. Aware that Mrs. Starbuck was staring at her with an expression that struggled mightily not be to mortal terror, she kissed her. “Don’t worry, Mamma,” she said, not realizing that this was the first time she had ever used the word as a mode of address, “I shall be quite all right. Admit no one till I return — except Mr. Fox, of course! But I daresay I shall precede him…”
CH. 28, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY IS UNACCOUNTABLY DELAYED, TO THE GREAT ANXIETY OF HER EMPLOYER AND RELATIONS, AND MRS. STARBUCK MAKES USE OF HER EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE LOCAL SCENE.
Fox, in a rare taking, bounded up the steps to the Starbuck home, too disturbed to wonder when the lady of the house herself opened the door before he had even knocked upon it. “It’s all to do over,” he growled. “She’s coming along next time, with no arguments, and so I told them! Not that I know how she could have improved matters, but she always does, and this would have been no exception. Where is she? We’ll never unsnarl this tangle without her.”
“She went out,” said Mrs. Starbuck, sensibly realizing that the pronoun”she” could in the circumstances have only one possible antecedent, “an hour since.” Her voice alerted him to her agitation, and a stab of apprehension pierced him like a mounting-pin piercing a moth. “She said someone had followed us, and she left to follow him, saying she would be back before you returned, but —”
Suddenly, Fox knew why the sole captive they had taken had been so mightily amused. “Good G**,” he breathed.
“I shouldn’t have let her go,” quavered Mrs. Starbuck.
“You couldn’t have kept her. You might as well try to control the sea,” Fox assured her, around the terror rising within him. Panic would not assist Miss Scully. If she had not already assisted herself, the situation must be dire indeed, and called for immediate, well-informed action. “You’ve lived here many years, ma’am. If you were going to perform a virgin sacrifice, where would you go..?”
CH. 29, IN WHICH THE GREATEST SCANDAL IN LYMON REGIS HISTORY ROCKS THAT QUIET COMMUNITY, AND MR. KRYCEK HURRIES BACK TO DELIVER TO MR. SKINNER A REPORT MORE REMARKABLE FOR ITS SELF-AGGRANDIZING THAN FOR ITS VERACIOUS ATTRIBUTES.
The figure upon the makeshift altar was indeed Miss Scully. Fox and Mrs. Starbuck flung themselves upon her at the same moment, though a number of cultists were still being apprehended. She had evidently not come quietly. Her cold, pale skin was much bruised, her hair disheveled. “She must be alive, she must be,” sobbed Mrs. Starbuck, groping for a pulse as Fox huddled her into his topcoat. The small boy buried inside even the most respectable of men noted, in surprise: So that’s what ladies look like beneath their attire, but Fox, being a gentleman, ignored it. “She’s only asleep,” he said, recognizing the sticky-sweet smell as her head rested on his shoulder. “They have administered laudanum, no doubt the only efficacious method of subduing her.” Oblivious to the pandemonium raging about them, they bore their precious burden away from the basement of Mrs. Padduck’s Select Academy for Young Gentlewomen, which Mrs. Starbuck had so perspicaciously concluded would provide the most convenient location in Lymon Regis in which to conduct an impromptu human sacrifice…
CH. 30, IN WHICH THE AUTHOR AGAIN ABANDONS ALL ATTEMPT TO BE AMUSING, PREFERRING THE SATISFACTION OF WRINGING THE AUDIENCE’S COLLECTIVE HEART, WHILE MISS SCULLY RECOVERS SATISFACTORILY, AND LYMON REGIS SOCIETY ADJUSTS TO THE LOSS OF ITS MOST PROMINENT MEMBERS AT THE HEIGHT OF THE SEASON
Unable to sleep, Fox made his way upstairs to Miss Scully’s room. Her mother, not surprisingly, had fallen asleep in the chair; the fire had burned low, and the lamp smoked in the chill air. Fox covered Mrs. Starbuck up with a blanket from the box at the bed foot, and turned down the lamp. It seemed to him vaguely monstrous that Miss Scully, who had brought light and warmth and reason into his wintry life, should lie enshrouded in cold darkness. He knelt at the hearth to build the fire up, until the flickering red light fell across her face. He rocked back on his heels and watched her, smiling to recall the account the arrested cultist had given of her capture. They had selected her as victim, for the express purpose of striking back at him at little risk to themselves, not realizing that they had chosen far the more dangerous of the pair. Had the little pistol he’d given her not misfired — but it had.
Next time, she would select her own pistol!
It warmed him to know that there would be a next time, that he had not ultimately failed her — as, it seemed he had failed every other woman in his life. Samantha (Crime) and Phoebe (Punishment) and his poor frail mother, to whom, by the worlds’ standards, he owed everything — every thought of them was pain and despair, while Miss Scully, to whom by the world’s standards he owed only a salary — who disputed unceasingly with him and yet backed him against all comers, who would neither accept his protection nor refuse his challenges —
He never completed this complicated thought, for just as he began to lose himself in the tangled web of reverie, a large coal dropped in the hearth, and she started awake, all at once, reaching out with a cry: “Mr Fox! Where are you? Are you all right?”
“Sh, sh, sh,” he said, gently pressing her back upon the pillow. “I was never in any danger. You’re the one who’s been force-fed laudanum and beaten half to death. Lie still.”
She did lie still, with a murmur of relief, and quickly resumed her normal mien; but for one brilliant instant he had seen her face bare, unmasked by sleep or her habitual decorum; and what he had seen would haunt and sustain him through many dark hours to come…
CH. 31, IN WHICH OMINOUS EVENTS LOOM UPON THE HORIZON, AND MISS SCULLY IS BRUTALLY FORCED TO SELECT A NEW COLOR FOR HER WARDROBE
Though Miss Scully was sorely tempted to plead indisposition in order to evade callers, it would have been the basest cowardice to shirk the duty of being introduced to her mother’s friends and acquaintances, who in the wake of the arrests suddenly numbered among the town’s most prominent. She found it vexatious to be treated as a heroine, when she knew herself to be merely a juggins who had permitted herself to fall into an ambush. She refrained from expressing this opinion, however, after Mr. Fox’s remarks at breakfast her first morning down. “Miss Scully is mortified,” he explained solemnly,“that of the eight ruffians who beset her, she inflicted serious damage upon only six.”
Mr. Fox was in one of his cheerful moods, rising at six for a brisk constitutional, eliciting mediumistic secrets from Melissa, borrowing romances, police gazettes, and treatises on rare poisons from the circulating library, escorting all three ladies on outings, and generally showing no anxiety to return to his home in time for Christmas. The climax was his purchase of tickets to the Christmas Eve ball at the Lymon Regis assembly rooms, the greatest event of the season, all private parties having been abruptly canceled.
“It is a kind thought, sir,” said Dana, refraining from taking the pasteboard rectangle proffered to her; “but I must inform you, that I have never danced anything but Roger de Coverley.”
“Not dance!” cried Melissa. Mr. Fox waved the difficulty aside, and opened the piano. “You’ll notice, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Starbuck, “that your younger daughter did not aver that she could not dance, merely that she never had. I’ll warrant that, if you’ll favor us with the music, she’ll soon waltz as well as she tracks pumas.” He bowed deeply before Dana’s chair. “May I have the honor, miss?”
Dana cast her eyes at the ceiling, but Melissa urged her, and she could scarcely be ill-natured. Waltzing was certainly a frivolous pastime, but she soon found, as Mr. Fox steered her ably round the room, that it was not unpleasant; only pleasantly uncomfortable — his arm about her waist, hers about his neck, their feet darting mutually in and out, her head tilted back and his bent down, clinging together as their own centrifugal force tried to force them apart. “I will soon have a crick in my neck, if I can find no partner nearer my height,” she declared.
“You’ll soon get used to it,” Melissa assured her. “But I don’t know what we’re to do about your gown. The seamstresses are always over booked this time of year.”
“Oh, that’s a small matter of a few yards of silk and a simple pattern. I’m a quick needle when I must be. There was a lovely pigeon-colored silk —”
“No grays!” chorused Melissa, her mother, and Mr. Fox, with one voice…
CH. 32, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY SEES OLD FRIENDS AGAIN, UNDER INAUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES, AND ALL PLANS FOR FRIVOLITY ARE SPEEDILY DISMISSED IN THE FACE OF SOME ASTONISHING ACCUSATIONS.
Dana kept awaiting some sign of distress, but Mr. Fox seemed happier the more packages she and Melissa burdened him with, and by the time they turned their feet homeward he was nearly invisible behind parcels — Dana’s new pistol, a sweet little Walker Colt designed for Indian fighting in the wilds of Texas; chocolates for Mamma; the latest medical journals; and several yards of wine-colored velvet, destined against Dana’s better judgement to become a ballgown. “The more I think of the Christmas ball, the less convinced I am that the scheme is well-advised,” she said, as they approached her mother’s house. “You will be unable to escort us to it, sir, and return to Mulder Manor in time for the holiday.”
“My father has not celebrated Christmas in twenty years,” said Mr. Fox.
Dana felt as if she were about to kick a puppy, but duty is duty. “And Miss Greene? Has she no plans that would be upset by your absence?”
Mr. Fox, to her relief, looked no more distressed than he might be on biting into a lemon. “You underestimate her, I assure you,” he said. “I am by no means so essential to her happiness as all that. I sent her a note by Mr. Krycek, and I’m sure she has already arranged her plans accordingly.”
“Heavens,” said Melissa, pointing to a hired chaise waiting at Mrs. Starbuck’s door. “Someone is calling. How odd, at this hour. I wonder if one of the boys may have returned at last! But — either one would have sent the chaise on.”
The party mounted the steps, looking up at the window to the front parlor. Through the gauze curtains, Dana glimpsed a familiar black and white figure, in a familiar stance. “Sister Mary Ignatius!” she cried, in delight, and at once proceeded to abandon decorum and run into the house, leaving her sister and employer to follow as they might.
The first form she saw, on entering the parlor, was not the nun’s, but one almost as welcome. “Jack!” she cried, taking his hands. His craggy face did not return her greeting smile, but then, it never had been a good face for smiling. “Or should I call you Detective Willis now?” she asked, to tease him. “Sister wrote to me that you have risen in the world.” Her glance fell on the black armband on his black coat, the black crepe around the hat upon the table, her mother’s grave face. “Jack? Who is it? Who’s died? Sister Mary Invicta, at last?”
Jack shook his head slowly, like a pendulum, as Melissa and Mr. Fox entered. “No,” he said, in his gravelly voice. “She’s still beating off death with her stick and declaring Our Lady promised her a full century.”
“Ellen?” The thought of the baby clothes, neglected this fortnight, brought this stab of fear to her heart, and in the moment of speaking she was certain of its truth. “I told her not to have another child yet — I told her —”
“Not Ellen, either,” said Jack. “Dana. You’d best sit down.”
“Fiddle, Jack! Don’t torment me!” She dropped his hand and looked around the room. “Sister will tell me. Where did she go?” The nun was no longer at the window.
“Dana. Sit down.” He moved as if to force her into a chair, but she sidestepped him and Mr. Fox moved up behind her. “The lady asked you a question,” he said coldly. “Do you intend to favor her with a reply?”
Jack spared him a contemptuously casual glance, then bent his burning eyes on Dana’s face. She met his gaze full on, braced for the blow, but not fearing it. “Dana,” he said, almost gently, for Jack. “Sister’s dead.”
“Which Sister?” demanded Dana. Where had she gone?
“The Sister. Sister Mary Ignatius.”
She felt Mr. Fox move to support her on one side, her sister on the other, heard a ringing in her ears, but she remained erect, watching his lips form words that had no meaning at all in her mind: “And I have come to ask you what you know about it…”
CH. 33, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY, UNCHARACTERISTICALLY PERTURBED,MUST INFORM HER EMPLOYER OF CERTAIN EXPERIENCES WHICH HE IS CERTAIN TO MISINTERPRET; AND SETS OUT FOR KIDNEYPOOL ACCOMPANIED BY TWO GENTLEMEN, EACH OF WHOM WILL SPEAK TO HER, BUT NOT TO THE OTHER
Dana let the sobs out as she stuffed her bag with necessities in the room that would always be hers now. For the first time in her life she could not think; could only act, and listen to the strange huge sounds jerking themselves out of her body. An approaching footfall made her whirl round, clamping her lips shut and swallowing the sob in her throat as if it had been a lump of gristle discovered in her meat during a formal dinner. “Don’t try to stop me!” she snapped, at whoever was beyond the blur of tears.
“I won’t,” Mr. Fox assured her, entering the room. “I’ve ordered the horses put to and sent your Mr. Willis’s chaise on its way. We’ll make better time in my coach.”
“You don’t have to come,” she said, blinking him into focus.
“Yes, I do.”
She couldn’t bear to look at him, so she turned her back, groping for her handkerchief. He walked into her purview again, and gave her his. When she had composed herself, he gestured toward the chair. She sat down without quite knowing why, and he sat opposite her, his eyes focused on her face. “I know how hard this is for you, Miss Scully.”
Did he? Did he? Did anyone, even Jack?
“But I need you to tell me — for her sake — what exactly did you see in the window this afternoon? And at the end of the seance last week..?”
CH. 34, IN WHICH THE JOURNEY TO KIDNEYPOOL IS MARRED BY DISPUTES, BUT ENLIVENED BY MISS SCULLY’S RECOVERY OF HERSELF; SHE INTRODUCES HER EMPLOYER AMONG OLD FAMILIAR SCENES AND FACES, AND IS PRESENTED AT LENGTH IN THE OFFICE OF A DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR.
“The question is,” said Willis, “who would kill Sister?”
“No, Jack,” said Miss Scully, her eyes snapping like chestnuts on a fire. “The question is, who could kill her?”
“Dana,” Willis sounded pained. “She was a nun.”
Fox considered the feasibility of tossing him out of the coach for insolence, and dismissed the idea. Miss Scully, who seemed to afford this scowling lout some of the privileges of a brother (only those of a brother, assuredly!), would undoubtedly have insisted upon retrieving him. His assistant was in fine form, having recovered her composure after the paroxysm of grief that had followed Willis’s crude breaking of the news; and she swept his statement aside with the contempt it merited. “She was the most infrangible nun in the country,” she said. “Don’t you remember the burglars? The man who accosted her in the park? The man who assaulted Father Mulcahey? The man who was beating his wife? The —”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Jack, “but the killer took her by surprise.”
“Sister was not the woman to sit tamely writing letters in her nightgown while a stranger or an enemy walked coolly up and stuck a darning needle into her neck!”
By G—, she’s magnificent! thought Fox, with purely professional fervor, as she focused the blaze of her attention upon Willis, leaning forward as if to thrust the truth into his hands. “It was someone she trusted,” she continued mercilessly. “Someone she wasn’t surprised to see entering her chamber in the middle of the night. One of us, Jack!”
“Us?”
“Her children. The orphans. Us…!”
CH. 35, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY AND MR. FOX SET AN ALTERNATE VIEW OF THE MURDER BEFORE THE AUTHORITIES, CONDUCT SOME HIGHLY INTERESTING INVESTIGATIONS IN THE ENVIRONS OF ST. MARTIN’S, CONSULT WITH DR. FLEISCHMANN, AND GENERALLY ANNOY THE ESTABLISHED CONSTABULARY FORCES
Detective-Inspector McGrath was not unduly impressed by Mr. Fox’s credentials, nor by Dana’s alibi. “Your presence at the seance among so many respectable witnesses at the precise moment of the Sister’s death certainly clears you of applying the actual needle to the actual vein,” he said, “but the fact that she had said she was going up to respond to your most recent letter, and that no such letter, nor any trace of the regular correspondence which everyone indicates you carried on with her, has yet been found, creates a strong presumption that the murder is in some way connected to you.” He turned a bleak eye on Jack, who stood by as impassively as a graven image. “It shows little regard for procedure on Detective Willis’s part, to have informed you so well of so much.”
Dana might have been lured into some unconsidered response, which she would have had subsequent occasion to regret, but Mr. Fox forestalled her. “The removal of the letters is indeed most suggestive,” he said smoothly, “as indeed is their existence. The correspondence was founded on Miss Scully’s devotion to and confidence in the woman who raised her, of which Detective Willis was fully aware at first hand. Perhaps you were not aware that Miss Scully has been my assistant in investigating some cases of an unusual nature, the details of which might be of interest to ill-disposed persons, and which she might be supposed to have confided to her friend? Or that similar deaths to these have been noted in several areas, with domestic livestock as the primary victims? My own tenants have lost several cattle in this way.”
“Sister Mary Ignatius was a formidable woman, but I would scarcely call her a cow,” said McGrath.
“And have you yet investigated the similarities of this death to others, not entirely unconnected to St. Martin’s, which occurred fifteen years ago?” inquired Dana, having taken the opportunity to recover her composure.
Jack started visibly. “Bless my soul! I had forgotten those rumors.”
“They weren’t rumors, Jack,” said Dana. “Not in the girls’ ward!”
“But — Evie’s in Broadmoor!”
“Are you sure of that?” asked Mr. Fox. “No, none of us are — yet. I dispatched a message to Broadmoor as soon as Miss Scully informed me of her suspicions, and asked that the reply be sent to the Kidneypool Constabulary with all speed. Till that arrives, we must prepare for the possibility that an extremely dangerous lunatic is abroad…”
CH 36, IN WHICH FOX AND MR. WILLIS INTERRUPT WHAT BIDS FAIR TO BE A SERIOUS DISAGREEMENT, IN ORDER TO BE DECOYED INTO AN ALLEY AND BESET BY DISAGREEABLE CREATURES WHOSE NATURE WILL BE MORE (BUT STILL NOT VERY) FULLY REVEALED IN THE SUBSEQUENT CHAPTER.
Fox mis-liked leaving Miss Scully alone in the midst of nuns and orphans, but he could not contrive any persuasion that could make her old home seem dangerous to her. As he took his leave and departed with Willis into the sleeting night, he could still feel the gaze of over a dozen eyes following him, and wondered what the nuns were saying in regard to him. Each individual Sister — Mary Impassionata, Mary Invicta, Mary Innocencia, Mary Immaculata, Mary Incunabula, Mary Interregna, Mary Immememorata, Mary Immensita, Mary Immortalita, Mary Inevitabila, Mary Inundatia, Mary Impervia, and Mary Innumerabla — had personally scrutinized him for signs that he was not a proper associate for “our Dana.” The impulse was comprehensible, even laudable; but it was very wearing upon its subject.
Willis led the way down the street toward the establishment of a Mrs. Howard Johnson — declasse surroundings, whose sole advantage was their proximity to St. Martin’s, which made Fox glad that he had no servant along save Danny the coachman. “She won’t allow it, you know,” said Willis, in lugubrious tones which were more annoying than any amount of truculence.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Fox coldly. “Your statement lacked antecedents, and I fail to understand its import.”
“Dana won’t accept protection if she recognizes it when offered,” clarified Willis. “You’d better leave that to me. I know all the dodges for getting round her.”
Though Fox had indeed been reflecting on the perils that might face his employee, this declaration vexed him exceedingly. “Miss Scully has frequently demonstrated that she is capable of dealing with threats,” he said. “I would think it a great impertinence to attempt to get round her,’ as you say.”
“That’s the ticket,” said Willis. “You keep up that line with her, and you can’t go wrong. She’s game as they come, you have to give her that; and I own I don’t mind calling on her to back me if it looks like a fight. Why, the local toughs still talk about the time she put that boy that followed her into the hospital. Took his shiv away from him, slit him across the face when he insisted on coming after it, then took him over to Mt. Zion and gave him ten stitches and a lecture while Dr. Fleischmann held him down. It scares me to death, when I think of the chances that little bit of a thing takes — but it doesn’t do to let her know that. You let me do the talking, and we can tuck her safely away in the hospital doing something useful tomorrow.”
Fox nearly choked, attempting to formulate a response to this that would adequately express his feelings without distressing Miss Scully by creating a permanent rift with this “friend,” who clearly was not deserving of her confidence. As they reached the corner, and the small child with the large broom who waited there began to clear a path for them through the slush and filth, he said, in his austerest tones: “It has been my experience — Good G**! Evelyn?”
The exclamation fell from his lips involuntarily, as the light of the street lamp fell across the child’s face, and he paused in the act of handing her half a crown. At the same moment Willis croaked, unbelievingly: “Evie? It can’t be —” and reached to seize her; but she leaped away with the fleetness of a startled rat, and raced into the sleeting darkness of a nearby alley…
CH. 37, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY HAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO PRACTICE HER MARKSMANSHIP, AND THE NUNS AND ORPHANS RALLY IN SPIRITED DEFENSE OF THEIR HOME.
The ruckus in Orphan Alley would have roused Dana even had she been sleeping, which she was far too agitated to do. Rising and throwing up the sash, she recognized two out of the many sounds rising from the darkness — Mr. Fox’s voice, and Jack’s, each swearing in united consternation. The light from her lamp shone palely upon a scene of pandemonium rivaling anything that might have graced an illustrated edition of The Inferno. Her employer and her old friend were drowning in a sea of small beings — children? Dwarfs? Monkeys? — which they tried vainly to beat off with their walking sticks. The assailants were none of them taller than a child of eight years, but they were so numerous as to pack the alley from wall to wall, and their shrill, chattering voices rose through the sleet like the chatter of a plague of locusts devouring Egypt, Pharaoh and all.
Dana snatched up her reticule, extracted her new Walker Colt, which she had herself loaded before embarking from Lymon Regis, spun the cylinder, cocked it, and took the best aim she could through the window. She took a grave risk of hitting one of the two men, but it could not be helped. Aiming well to the left of the sounds of their choking voices, she fired into the moving shadows.
The result surpassed her best expectations. One of the creatures exploded in a burst of flame, igniting its neighbors and illuminating the alley with sufficient clarity that Dana could with confidence take aim and fire at a shadowy being who was in the process of beating Mr. Fox upon the head, from the vantage of his shoulders…
CH 38., IN WHICH MR. FOX, RELUCTANTLY, DEPARTS POSTHASTE FOR WOOF-ON-THE-TWEED, TO INVESTIGATE THE VIPER IN THE BOSOM OF HIS finacée’S FAMILY, LEAVING MISS SCULLY AND MR. WILLIS TO INVESTIGATE THE KIDNEYPOOL AFFAIR, WHICH PROCEEDING IS INTERRUPTED BY THE UNTIMELY ARRIVAL OF MR. FROHIKE, BEARING DISTURBING NEWS
The first thing Fox was aware of was that someone was pouring brandy down his throat; the second, that his head hurt abominably; the third, that he was gently pillowed on a soft surface that smelled pleasantly familiar. Opening his eyes, he realized that Miss Scully was the source of the brandy, and that the pillow was in actuality her lap, whereupon he decided that attempting to rise would be most unwise. His brain seemed slightly addled, and he was unable to put together any questions, but, resting his eyes on Miss Scully’s face, he relied upon her to divine what he needed to know, and she did not disappoint him.
“There you are at last,” she said, setting aside the brandy and stroking his hair back with a touch almost too gentle to feel. “Hold quite still, as I believe from the dilation of your pupils that you have suffered concussion. Jack is rather battered, as well, but you have both come through valiantly.”
“Yes, thanks to you!” Fox became aware that Willis was also in the vicinity, submitting to having a plaster applied to his face by Sister Mary Impassionata. They were in the Sisters’ lounge, where surely no masculine presence had ever intruded before, Fox realized, as Willis’s gravelly voice continued. “I never saw anything like your shooting, Dana. Six for six, in that visibility — spooked them properly!”
“Nonsense. At most I softened them up for the assault by the Sisters and the big children,” said Miss Scully. “And our best efforts did not avail to prevent their carrying off their wounded. I fear, Mr. Fox, that once again we are left with no hard evidence!”
Mr. Fox licked his lips and spoke carefully. “If they did no permanent damage to us, the primary goal is achieved. Eyewitness evidence is still worth something,” he said. “They were a mixed bunch — difficult to see in the light —”
“But I saw well enough to see one thing, and that thing impossible,” said Willis. “You won’t believe this, Dana — G** knows I barely believe it myself — but at least a dozen of the little monsters was the living image of Evie.”
She lowered her gaze to look a question at Fox. “Even after what you told me about Evelyn,” he said, “I could scarcely credit it, but — I’ve known the child since she was in long dresses, and I’d swear to as many as twenty versions of Evelyn assembled in that alley, including an infant, engaged in biting my ankle furiously.”
Miss Scully frowned. “Sir, I fear we must assume that all is not well in the Greene household…”
CH. 39, IN WHICH DANA RECEIVES ATTENTIONS, AND DR. FLEISCHMANN’S STARTLING SUGGESTION ABOUT THE NATURE OF THE DEBRIS FROM THE ALLEY IS NOT ACTED UPON BY THE POLICE, WHO PRODUCE THEIR OWN THEORY
“What that little toad said — it’s not true, is it?” demanded Jack as Dana washed her hands at the morgue sink.
“Why shouldn’t it be?” inquired Dana, surprised at his vehemence. “Mr. Frohike would scarcely lie about so serious a matter as his cousin’s disappearance.” She dried her hands, and turned down her cuffs. “Even without the peculiar question of Evelyn’s origins, it’s not a matter to take lightly.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Jack. “Didn’t you hear him, when Fleischmann wouldn’t let him interrupt your examination of the samples, declaring that you and he were virtually engaged, and no one had the right to keep him from you?”
Dana clicked her tongue. “Dr. Fleischmann and I have tried seven ways from Sunday to identify the substance recovered from the alley, and are as ignorant as when we started; a little girl who may not be who or what she seems is missing; Mr. Fox is riding off into unknown dangers; the slums of Kidneypool teem with dangerous lunatics in the guise of small children; and poor Sister died of a needle in her neck! How can you possibly concern yourself with such trifles as Mr. Frohike’s delusion?”
“So it is a delusion? You have formed no attachment for him?”
Dana slipped off the pinafore with which she had protected her frock and tossed it into the laundry bin. “No, I have not, and it will someday be my unhappy duty to convince him of that fact. Miss Greene has been — with the best intentions in the world, I assume — stuffing his head with nonsense. Please be polite to him, Jack. For reasons unclear to me, Mr. Fox values his friendship, and I see no reason not to disillusion him as gently as possible.”
Jack’s face, which had softened at her “please,” hardened again at the mention of Mr. Fox’s name. “Very well, I won’t punch his head for him, however well he deserves it,” he said, “but if that’s a sample of the sort of folk this Mulder person introduces you among, I must say I don’t like it above half.”
“Yes, they are so much less genteel than the pickpockets and sharpers you meet on your daily rounds,” laughed Dana, trying to exit past him; but he blocked her way. “Jack, please. Though we have been friends a long time, nonetheless this matter is no concern of yours.”
“It could be,” he said.
“You don’t intend to revive that subject, surely?” asked Dana. Wounding Jack was like drawing a knife across her own flesh, but it never occurred to her that she had an alternative. “We went through all this four years ago, and I have work to do.”
“Work!” He cried, seizing her hands. “There’s plenty of work for you, good honest work that doesn’t involve poking around in dead people and chasing ghosts across the countryside!” He pressed her hands between his own, proceeding in a voice that quite bewildered her, for she had not heard such intensity from him before, save when he discussed the finer points of apprehending street toughs. “There’s a house I’ve been looking at — room for a dozen children, if you liked —”
Dana extricated her hands. “But I do not like. I fully intend to die a spinster.”
He seized her hands again. “Only consider it!”
“There is nothing to consider,” said Dana. “You will oblige me by never recurring to this subject, and by letting me pass.” She twisted her hands in his grasp so that she had command of the grip, and added: “I daresay I can still take you two falls out of three, but pray don’t make me prove it. Even Mr. Frohike never drove me to such lengths as that..!”
CH. 40, IN WHICH DANA ANSWERS A SUMMONS IN THE NIGHT, AND CAUSES GRAVE CONCERN TO HER FRIENDS; WHILE MR. FOX IS MORE CONFUSED THAN ENLIGHTENED BY THE EVIDENCE LEFT BEHIND BY MISS EVELYN, AND DETERMINES THAT A SWIFT RETURN TO KIDNEYPOOL IS HIS MOST PROFITABLE, AS WELL AS HIS MOST PLEASANT, RECOURSE.
Dana wished that Mr. Fox had returned before the police effected their resolve to arrest the young maidservant, Evangeline, for the murder of Sister Mary Ignatius. Though the case against her seemed, superficially, to be sound enough, and Jack was positively cock-a-hoop over the development, too many questions still went a-begging for Dana to feel quite comfortable in her mind. If Mr. Fox were here, he could have bullied Detective-Inspector McGrath into allowing them to talk to the girl, and they could even now be discussing the information thus derived over a nice hot cup of tea. Not for the first time, she fretted over the unreasonableness of men in general, and men in uniforms in particular, in preventing her from performing a duty for which she knew herself to be peculiarly well-suited.
All around her, the familiar sounds of the orphanage settling in for the night had faded away, but Dana was broad awake and restless. Where was Mr. Fox right now, facing what dangers, without her to look out for him? Tramping the moors waiting to be assaulted by hoards of devil-children; freezing his spirit in Miss Greene’s first parlor? She was busily making herself miserable with the mental image of his comforting a distraught, but impeccably dressed, Miss Greene on the commodious sofa that dominated that room, when a timid knock upon her door returned her to her surroundings. Thankful that she had not progressed further in her dishabille than donning her slippers, she called: “Who is it?”
“Only Duane Barry, miss.”
Goodness! What was the poor boy doing up so late? Dana opened the door and attempted to mask her instinctive concern with a kind smile. “Is something the matter, Duane?”
“Something’s always the matter with Duane,” the afflicted man said plaintively. “That’s why they keep him here, to fetch the coal and run the errands.”
“And you do both most ably,” Dana assured him, “but shouldn’t you be abed?”
“You were always good to me,” he answered, “but poor Duane has to show you something.”
“I’ll see it better in the morning,” said Dana, feeling a familiar pressure in the small of her back.
He shook his head. “No, no. Got to see it tonight. It’s to do with Sister dying. I’ll be in fearful trouble if you don’t come tonight.”
Dana reviewed her options as she carried her candle into the hall after him. Jack in his own bed, three houses away, and none too pleased with her. The nuns exhausted and asleep. Mr. Frohike — no, not Mr. Frohike! What, after all, was there to fear? She had known poor Duane all her life, and had dealt out more than one bloody nose among those who would torment him. Yet the pressure in the small of her back continued to trouble her, as she followed him through the darkened hallways, to the rear stairs. “Where are we going?” she inquired.
“The roof, Miss.”
“What’s on the roof that has to do with Sister dying?”
“You’ll see.” He led her up one flight of stairs and then another, to the little attic where he slept; and paused with his hand upon the door leading out onto the leads. He peered at her over the candle, his face frightened in the flickering light. “You used to bring me gingerbread,” he said. “I remember that. But that gingerbread’s all ate up, now, and it won’t help poor Duane Barry none where they’d take him. You won’t be angry at poor Duane Barry, now, will you, miss? You know he’d never have done it, except he was scared.”
“Of course I won’t be angry,” Dana assured him. “Only tell me, what have you done? Who scared you?”
In answer, the door to the roof blew open, and her candle extinguished in the cold wind; but no darkness ensued…
CH. 41, IN WHICH MR. FOX TAKES THE NEWS BADLY, AND UNDERTAKES A DESPERATE AND APPARENTLY ILLOGICAL SEARCH
“Lost her?” cried Fox, valiantly restraining the impulse to fling himself upon Willis and choke him. “How the devil could you lose her?”
“I didn’t! I saw her safe to the door of St. Martin’s and left her merry as a grig in a house full of orphans and nuns!” retorted Willis. To his credit, he looked as devastated as Fox felt: two days’ accumulation of beard on his chin, his uniform a disgrace to the service, eyes burning huge in his cadaverous face. “All seemed safe enough. We had Sister’s confessed killer in quod —”
“Where she promptly drowned herself in her bowl of bread and milk,” snarled Fox, “unable to give us a word more of information! How could you accept that confession on the merits of the case? What about the children in the alley? They could be hiding anywhere — we don’t even know what they are — my future sister-in-law appears to have run off to join the little horrors, and now Miss Scully — Miss Scully —” Miss Scully had liked this ugly incompetent, Fox reminded himself, achieving sufficient control to assault the wall of the police station with his fist, rather than Willis’s nose.
“Da-Miss Scully’s disappearance had nothing to do with Sister’s death,” asserted Willis. Fox did not fail to notice his hesitation, and wonder with a flash of unseemly glee what circumstance had destroyed his first-name status with the lady. Except for that one stumble, Willis spoke as firmly as if, by making a strong enough assertion, he could render the nonsense he uttered true. “Duane Barry’s story, stripped of his mad fancies, is plain enough. Voices told him to lure her to the roof so they could take her away. When the voices failed to abduct her, no doubt he supplied their want by — by — throwing her—”
“Oh, yes, and she obliged by hopping onto the rail of the catwalk!” Fox hit the wall again, as the only adequate expression of his opinion of this reconstruction of events. “I can see her doing it, can’t you? Or perhaps you think she conveniently fainted, like a damsel in a novel?”
Willis had the grace to look embarrassed. “I grant you, if anyone had asked me if Duane could have overcome her, I’d have laughed in his face, but the facts —
“Oh, the facts!” Fox rounded on him. “The fact is, if anything had precipitated her from the roof of St. Martin’s, she’d have landed in the alley, and would not now be missing!”
“Well, it’s no good yelling at me!” Willis shouted. “She’s gone, and I haven’t slept and I haven’t eaten and I haven’t left a soul in the city unquestioned, and she’s nowhere to be found!”
“Then you have not looked in the right place,” said Fox, regaining some control. “Where’s Frohike?”
“I had to stick him in jug,” said Willis, wearily.
“I beg your pardon? On what charge?”
“Disturbing the peace and interfering with a police investigation,” sighed Willis. “He was making an infernal nuisance of himself.”
Fox, having known Frohike many years, could imagine this well enough. “Who must I see to get him out?” he asked. “I need his aid in searching the rooftops…”
CH. 42, IN WHICH MR. FOX’S SEARCH BEARS UNEXPECTED AND NOT WHOLLY DESIRABLE FRUIT, HIS INTERVIEW WITH DUANE BARRY GOES PARTICULARLY BADLY, AND THE YULE CELEBRATIONS OF THE ST. MARTIN’S HOME FOR THE ANCESTRALLY CHALLENGED ARE CONSIDERABLY LESS FESTIVE THAN USUAL
He found it with the last glimmer of light — Miss Scully’s necklace. At first he thought his eyes deceived him, but there it was, its gold and crystal glittering in the lurid light that shown through the rising sea fog. Fox laid his full length along the steeple of St. Mary ad Infinitum’s Second Church of the Illuminati, and grasped the cross at the top to pull himself up.
The necklace was draped over the bar of the cross, and his attempt to retrieve it nearly sent it — and himself — hurtling into the abyssal streets below. Clasping it desperately, he eased himself down until he stood solidly on the leads of the roof again. Frohike was examining the gutters on the north end of the nave; futilely, Fox now suspected, but he did not call out. He held the necklace to his breast and turned his eyes to the indifferent cross, to the sullen sky, to the vast emptiness that had swallowed Miss Scully. Below him spread the dark and huddled buildings of Kidneypool, bustling indifferently about the business of preparing for Yule. Four days till Christmas, and the rebirth of the world, of all pointless events! To the west, the sea heaved and sighed like a disturbed bosom.
Nowhere! Fox thought bitterly. I cannot follow her into the heavens, and if she is not on the earth — It would have been an easy matter to step off the roof; but the necklace was warm and firm as a promise in his hand.
She would come back.
She must come back…
CH. 43, IN WHICH A LONG-AWAITED ARRIVAL IS FINALLY ACCOMPLISHED, WITH UNANTICIPATED RESULTS; MR. FOX ENCOUNTERS A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER FOR THE SECOND TIME; AND DR. FLEISCHMANN IS PRESENTED WITH THE STRANGEST CASE OF HIS MEDICAL CAREER
At dawn on Christmas day, the sloop Maria sailed smoothly into Kidneypool harbor and glided to a stop. The man standing above the dock watched her for some time, as her sails flapped in the cold wind and the gulls mewed plaintively above her. Thick frost rimed her rails and spars, and the peaceful slap of water against the pier was punctuated by the “thunk” of her sides striking at random against the dock. When at last the harbor master emerged, rubbing his eyes, from his hut and ran toward the unnaturally silent and still bulk of the ship, the watching man turned, and headed purposefully into town.
The harbor master’s hails, unanswered as they were, did not take long to draw a crowd of those wharf-dwellers for whom even Christmas is merely one more day. Soon the silence of the ship swelled greater and greater by contrast with the muttering noise upon the land. No one fancied boarding her, but board her someone must, and clearly it was the harbor master’s duty. He conscripted two of the handiest sea dogs he knew to accompany him, but they lagged behind, and his were the first feet to echo on the frosty planks.
All sails were set, all hatches snug. No one could have asked for a tidier or a better-ordered ship. The last date on the log in the pilot house was November 21, and the position was a mere sixty miles from Kidneypool. By tacit agreement, the three men stayed together as they searched. The food in the galley was as fresh as shipboard food ever is and neatly stowed, but the galley stove stood cold and full of ash. The captain’s cabin was neat as a pin, all instruments in their places. The cargo hold was empty as a drum — “That’ll worry the investors!” growled one of the sea dogs. “Men they can replace, but a cargo lost is a cargo lost!”
“Maybe we’ll find someone in the crew’s quarters,” said the harbor master, without hope.
Crew quarters were silent and cold as the rest of the ship; but not quite as empty. Rows of bunks lined the walls, neat and empty every one; except that at the furthest end from the door a still figure lay, corpse-quiet, in a lower bunk. The harbor master shone his lantern beam upon it, and started in surprise where he had been braced for terror. “By Jove, that’s no sailor!”
“We should be so lucky,” grinned one salt.
“Aye, she’s homely enough,” said the second. “I never could take to red-heads myself. But that’d matter less a couple months out!”
“Hush your yap,” said the harbor master, kneeling and lifting the hand folded on the dove-gray breast to test the pulse. “She’s alive — barely. She needs a doctor, not a beau, so run fetch one. I’ll sit with her.” He sat down upon a footlocker blazoned with the name: “C. Starbuck,” and settled himself to wait, staring at the luminous face of the little woman on the bunk, wondering if he wanted to know what strange story she could tell; and also why she was fully dressed except for her slippers…
CH. 44, IN WHICH THE FATE OF THE SLOOP MARIA‘S CREW IS MADE NO CLEARER, BUT THE CASE OF SISTER MARY IGNATIUS IS HASTILY WRAPPED UP BY THE POLICE, AND MISS SCULLY IMPROVES THE OCCASION OF HER CONVALESCENCE WITH THE PRODUCTION OF A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THE ADMIRALTY.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” admitted Dr. Fleischmann, elbowing Frohike out of the way for the seventh time. “She hasn’t been drugged, she hasn’t been injured, her pulse and respiration are untroubled, if faint, and yet nothing I do rouses her.”
“Holy men in Oriental lands are able to place themselves in suspended animation by means of mental discipline,” suggested Frohike. “Perhaps this is something of that kind.”
“Perhaps,” said Dr. Fleischmann, “but if you can imagine Miss Scully undertaking such an experiment, it’s more than I can do.”
“You’re right,” said Willis, glaring at Frohike. Frohike, accustomed to being glared at, disregarded him. “She never entered this state voluntarily. Perhaps some mesmeric influence was used.”
“That is somewhat more likely, if one assumes mesmerism has any utility upon a subject who is strong-willed and unsuggestible, which I personally find a doubtful assumption. It also advances us not a whit, since a mesmeric trance must be broken by some pre-determined signal, and without that signal we are helpless to wake her.”
“So what do we do? Stand here and watch her starve to death?” demanded Willis.
Fox had been standing quietly all this time beside the head of the hospital cot where Miss Scully lay, as straight and still as she had been carried from the Maria. She scarcely looked like herself, her lineaments all as still and cold and pale as if sculpted of snow, the winter-faded freckles upon her nose like a sprinkle of dried blood. As white as snow, as red as blood — “Good G**,” breathed Fox. “You don’t suppose —?”
“I don’t suppose anything,” said Dr. Fleischmann, “and if you lot don’t produce a sensible suggestion in short order, I’ll have you all expelled.”
“There was a case in the Hartz Mountains some years ago,” said Fox, feeling the delicate curve of her throat. “Highly unusual, and the circumstances were — ah! Do you feel something lodged here?”
Frohike and Willis leaned forward as Dr. Fleischmann palpated the hollow of her throat. “Ye-es,” he said. “Yet it seems not to impede her breathing. You say this has happened before?”
“An obscure case, but an interesting one,” said Fox. “If I am right, we must extract this object at once.”
“But — if you are right — what is it?” demanded Dr. Fleischmann.
“A portion of apple,” said Fox, “of a most unusual sort…”
CH. 45, IN WHICH MR. FOX AND DANA RETURN BY SLOW, CIRCUITOUS WAYS TO WOOF-ON-THE-TWEED, AND ARE GREETED BY AN UNEXPECTED DEGREE OF NORMALITY
Altogether, Dana felt that they were departing from Kidneypool under a cloud. The only memory she retained of her mysterious abduction was a peculiarly vivid dream, in which Mr. Fox figured as a scarecrow, Mr. Frohike as a lion, and Jack as a man fashioned of tin. Though she secretly treasured one particular image from this fancy — that of Miss Greene melting away into a heap of sodden finery — she could not feel that it shed any light upon events.
The arrests and subsequent sudden deaths of Evangeline and Duane Barry did not seem to her to be in any way a satisfactory conclusion to the mysteries, but McGrath intimated dire consequences to anyone who pursued the numerous unanswered questions in her own and Sister’s cases. The nuns seemed glad to have the matter over, however, and she and Mr. Fox had done all they could, from this vantage and at this season, in the matter of the missing crew and cargo of the sloop Maria.
Despite all this, Mr. Fox was in elevated spirits as they prepared to board the coach for the long trek — first, back to Lymon Regis, to deliver her unknown brother’s effects into her mother’s hands; thence, to Woof-on-the-Tweed, and Mulder Manor. “I would not have anticipated that you should be so cheerful,” Dana remarked to him, as they waited in the shelter of St. Martin’s doorway for Danny to bring the coach round. “We have accomplished so little; the Eves are still at large; and out of all your anticipated evidence from the Maria, we retain only a small and anomalous apple.”
“Yes, it’s a shame,” he responded airily. “But — that apple didn’t kill you, when it easily might have. You turned up whole and sound. Is it too much to hope that your brother and the rest of the crew will do the same? And after all, Miss Scully —” his eyes sparkled, green as the sea, as he looked down at her, “isn’t the world a beautiful place to be in, when all’s said and done?”
Sleet fell from a low gray sky upon the narrow gray streets of Kidneypool, cold damp crept around her toes, and a passing hackney coach splashed mud upon the skirt of her traveling cloak. Mr. Fox’s hair fell across his high forehead, above his sea-green eyes, and she found unexpectedly that her heart bobbled in her bosom like a balloon. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I quite see what you mean…”
CH. 46, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY IS INTRODUCED TO HER EMPLOYER’S FUTURE FATHER-IN-LAW, AND THE SEARCH FOR MISS EVELYN PROVES WOEFULLY INADEQUATE
That their arrival at Mulder Manor was not anticipated was clear; no lantern illumined the porte-cochere, and the doors were already made fast for the night. Rather than disturb the butler with knocking, Mr. Fox extracted the key to his private laboratory, accessible through an obscure door in the west wing. Weary and cold, he and Dana groped their way through the accumulated paraphernalia of their investigative life, which he disarranged as fast as she could organize it, and emerged into the hallway outside the billiard room. Here, to their surprise, a light shone under the door. “My father is still pacing the room and smoking, no doubt,” said Mr. Fox.
“Should you not inform him of our return?” inquired Dana, more finely tuned than before her recent acquisition of a family to the lack of warmth in this sad household.
“You are right, as usual,” said Mr. Fox, “but pray, do not accompany me. Miss Evelyn’s disappearance has left him — testy.”
“I have no fancy for groping my way up the back stairs alone in the dark,” said Dana, who likewise had no intention of permitting him to face his father without the shield inexplicably afforded by her presence. “While you converse with him, I will obtain a candle from the press by the cue rack.”
Mr. Fox acquiesced with a shrug, and opened the billiard room door. Miss Scully, looking past him, was surprised at the sight of a frozen tableau within — Mr. Mulder and another man, both shrouded in wreaths of smoke, heads together earnestly above a tray of spirits, mouths open as if in dispute. Their postures bore every evidence of their having been interrupted in mid-argument. Twin pairs of cold, hard eyes turned toward the door, and Miss Scully thought, with a shiver: I have seen that second man — somewhere — and he bodes no good —
“Excuse me, Father,” said Mr. Fox. “And good evening, Mr. Greene. I had no idea you had returned from the Continent, though I knew Phoebe had sent for you…”
CH. 47, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY RECEIVES AN INVITATION AND UNDERGOES AN ORDEAL, WHICH MR. FOX SHARES WITH HER IN SPIRIT
Though for a time it seemed that a coolness between the betrothed pair might result from Mr. Fox’s failure to locate Miss Evelyn, Miss Greene was soon confiding to callers that she felt the mysterious losses of their respective sisters formed a peculiarly strong bond between herself and her fiancé. This was universally regarded as a touching sentiment, and her friends were soon urging Miss Greene to trust in Providence, and not to let the — surely temporary! — vanishment of her sister interfere with the conduct of her duties to Society. Miss Greene let herself be persuaded, and the dinner, dancing, and illuminations originally scheduled for Boxing Day were re-scheduled for the ultimate week in February. Learning from some source that the date set for the ball coincided with that of Miss Scully’s birthday, she graciously invited her fiancé’s employee to attend.
On the whole, Dana would have preferred to spend that evening arranging her notes on the investigations completed in January (notably the complex case of the capering coffins and that of the mad gasser of Besseldorf Place; but not neglecting such brief affairs as that of the supposed Loch Mess monster) and organizing the extended ongoing correspondence re the cargo and crew of the Maria. However, a refusal would surely be misinterpreted by Society, as indicating some animus against her employer’s future bride; and after all, the worst that could happen would be that Mr. Frohike would refuse to allow her to be a wallflower. Melissa and Mrs. Starbuck had kindly worked up her wine-colored velvet during her stay in Kidneypool, so she could not claim deficiency of wardrobe as an excuse.
When Dana removed the gown from her bandbox, indeed, she was dismayed to find that her mother and sister had taken certain liberties with the pattern she had selected. On trying it on, however, the fit was so perfect that she could not bear to alter it — and, after all, it would be mere vanity to suppose that anyone (always excepting Mr. Frohike, to whom she was resigned) would care to look at her, with the flower of Woof-on-the-Tweed on parade in all their expensive finery. Surely not even Miss Greene would lower herself to notice the neckline of one so humble as herself…
CH. 48, IN WHICH MR. SKINNER SUPPLIES THE EXCUSE FOR MISS SCULLY’S ESCAPE FROM MISS GREENE’S PARTY, AND SHE VENTURES OUT INTO FILTHY WEATHER, PLACING HER NEW GOWN IN SERIOUS JEOPARDY
“Ah, Miss Scully! You seem to have made quite the hit,” said Miss Greene, as they waited for the gentlemen to return with ices. “I see your dance card is entirely full.”
“Yes, ma’am. I believe Mr. Frohike has asked his friends to look after me,” replied Dana.
“You are too modest,” said Miss Greene, her eyebrows contracting as she examined the card, with evident interest. “Mr. Krycek is no very particular friend of Cousin Frohike; nor do I believe that he and Mr. Pendrell are at all acquainted. I trust Mr. Byers and Mr. Langly did not bore you too much?”
“On the contrary, they were most amusing,” answered Dana, “though I fear I have annoyed Mr. Byers by differing with him rather strongly on the subject of Freemasonry.”
Miss Greene fanned her diamonds and her decolletage with her ostrich feather fan, and lowered her voice confidentially. “That reminds me, my dear,” she said, “I trust you won’t mind if I drop a little hint in your ear?” Dana braced herself as Miss Greene continued, from the shelter of the fan, without awaiting permission. “It really does not do to be so froward and disagreeable with the gentlemen. They are ever so much more easily led, if they think you in proper feminine awe of them. I grant you seem to have Cousin Frohike on a chain, but I assure you, he could still be lost through the fear of your tongue. And — please do not take this the wrong way, my dear —” she lowered her voice yet further — “Fox was saying only the other day that — oh, dear, here they come back! Later!” She closed her fan with a snap, and smiled benignly upon the returning figures of Mr. Fox and Mr. Frohike…
CH. 49, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY AND MR. FROHIKE ENCOUNTER A MYSTERIOUS GENTLEMEN AND RECEIVE DIRE INTELLIGENCE, WHICH LEADS TO THE RUIN OF MISS SCULLY’S NEW GOWN; AND STRANGE EVENTS GO FORWARD AT THE PARTY IN HER ABSENCE
Dana successfully repressed the amusement which Mr. Frohike’s assurances, that she could rely upon him if any unpleasantness should arise, roused in her bosom. The neighborhood to which Mr. Skinner’s information led her certainly was not a proper one for a lady to walk abroad in, but it was nowhere near so dark, lonely, nor dangerous as many of the streets amongst which she had grown up; and she was certain that Mr. Frohike had no experience of such localities whatever. However, Mr. Fox had been quite right to insist on her need for an escort, as annoyance was less likely to arise for two people than for one. She reflected that, much as she would have preferred her employer’s company, it truly had been too much to ask that Miss Greene release him from his social obligations to accompany her; and at least her mind was at ease as to his well-being. She held her lantern aloft to read the corner post, and interrupted Mr. Frohike’s monolog. “Pandora Court,” she read out. “The address should be the third house on the left.”
“What, that dreadful teetering box?” squeaked Mr. Frohike. “I cannot permit you to enter such a pile! Even if it is not a den of thieves, it is likely to collapse about your ears.”
“Your objection is duly noted, but since you have not the authority to permit or forbid any action of mine, and since the alternative to my entering is to send you in whilst I stand alone in the street, you must forgive me if I enter, despite that,” said Dana, opening her reticule. “Have you ever used a blackjack?” With difficulty, she retained her composure as his eyes widened in dismay. “Never mind. It is not difficult, and in all likelihood the only necessity will be that you hold it with some authority.” She wrapped his hand about the grip, satisfied herself that he held it securely, and checked her pistol. All was in readiness, and she proceeded to mount the steps of the third house on the left. Behind the dancing curtain of snow, it reared dark and silent, leaning slightly to one side as if weary of standing about in the cold. When Mr. Frohike gallantly attempted to precede her, she unceremoniously prevented him, and tried the door, which opened easily.
“Good evening,” said an unfamiliar voice. “I fear you are too late.”
“Too late for what?” demanded Dana, shining her lantern upon the middle-aged gentleman in the hallway, and casually pointing the Walker’s polished barrel in his direction.
“To see what had been here to be seen,” said the mysterious gentleman. “And, alas, too late to prevent the disruption of Miss Greene’s ball, which should be going forward even as we speak…”
CH. 50, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY LEADS A FRUITLESS SEARCH, AND IS FORCED TO TAKE MEASURES, AS PER THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE MYSTERIOUS GENTLEMAN, WHICH LEAD HER TO A CUPBOARD SHE WOULD MUCH RATHER HAVE LEFT UNOPENED
Dana did not pause even to cast off her cloak or to wipe her feet, but hastened at once to the ballroom, where a scene of grave disorder met her eyes. Locating Mr. Skinner amid the fainting women and quarreling men, she approached him and seized his arm. “Sir, what has happened? Where is he?”
“No one knows!” replied Mr. Skinner tersely, sensibly divining that the pronoun “he” could have only one antecedent. “He was dancing with Miss Greene when we all heard a loud report, such that the building shook. No one has seen Mulder since, and Miss Greene is in strong hysterics.” He directed her towards an alcove, where Mr. Krycek strove vainly to soothe his hostess and administer sal volatile.
Wondering fleetingly what had become of Miss Greene’s father — surely a more seemly person to be tending her at such a time — Dana hurled herself upon that lady’s weeping, shrieking form and slapped her, twice, so hard that the color rose lividly in her chalky face. Miss Greene fell abruptly silent. “Miss Scully! How dare you?” demanded Mr. Krycek, moving to interfere; but Mr. Pendrell drew him aside with a sharp word of reproof.
Dana took Miss Greene by the shoulders and met her eye-to-eye. “What happened?” she demanded.
“I — I scarcely know,” said Miss Greene, pressing her palms to her cheeks. “We were dancing — near the French doors — he thought that one had come unfastened and would let in a draft, but as we steered in that direction —” she swallowed. “As G** is my witness, I know no more than you do what has become of him! I was blinded by a brilliant flash, deafened as by thunder, loosened my grip upon him — and he was gone entirely!”
“Which French door?” demanded Dana, as Mr. Frohike at last caught up to her, panting…
CH. 51, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY PERPETRATES TWO FELONIES, LOSES HER EMPLOYMENT, PURSUES AN UNLIKELY ALLY, AND DISCOVERS THAT SHE HAS NOT LOST HER GIRLHOOD KNACK FOR ROPE-CLIMBING
Suspended in the liquid of the vial was the object that gave luminescence to the whole; a tiny, perfectly-formed human figure, like a nude girl, half concealed within a huddle of gossamer wings. Dana paused with her hand upon the cold glass as her brain struggled to reject what she saw before her, and could not. She lifted the vial, wrapped it in her handkerchief, placed it inside her reticule, and retreated from the cabinet, carefully locking it behind her with the key which the mysterious gentleman had provided. Samantha’s room was silent, dark, and musty. She locked it’s door in turn, and groped her way down the tower stairs.
Midway, she detected the familiar reek of Mr. Mulder’s cigar, and paused. “Trust no one,” the mysterious man had said. Certainly she had no cause to trust Mr. Mulder! Yet — if he cared nothing for his son, did he likewise care nothing for his property, which in his son’s absence would one day be inherited by a distant cousin? More importantly, was any line of retreat or means of evasion open to her? Boldly, she abandoned all attempt at stealth, and marched downstairs to the waiting glow of his cigar end.
“Good evening, Miss Scully,” said the cold, dry voice. “What are you doing?”
“Attempting to save your son’s life, sir,” said Dana.
“If you have such laudable aims, why skulk about candleless in the middle of the night?”
“So that you may claim that you knew nothing of it; that I robbed you and acted entirely on my own,” replied Miss Scully evenly. “There is no necessity for you ever to have left the billiard room.”
The cold, frightened eyes fell before her gaze. “You reckless, impertinent little chit,” he said. “You have the effrontery to despise me, don’t you? But if you knew the nature of the game you’re playing — understood the terrible powers you walk so lightly among —”
“I trust I would still strive my best to do right,” interrupted Dana. “Pray, sir, help me, or hinder me, or step aside, but do not stand there prosing drearily while Heaven only knows what fate befalls your son!”
Mr. Mulder exhaled a lungful of smoke, and stepped aside. As she passed him, with a bow, and walked away down the passage, he called after her: “Robbery is clear grounds for dismissal, Miss Scully. You are no longer employed at Mulder Manor…”
CH. 52, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY IS REFUSED ASSISTANCE FROM ONE QUARTER, ONLY TO GAIN IT UNEXPECTEDLY FROM ANOTHER; AND COMPLETES THE NIGHT’S TALLY OF FELONIES BY BREAKING INTO THE VAULT OF ST. KEVIN’S CATHEDRAL
Miss Greene stared at Dana as if at a madwoman. “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said frostily, gathering her dressing gown more closely about her, “and I fail to comprehend how anything could justify your entering my bed chamber in so unorthodox a manner.”
“I am talking about ransoming your fiance,” explained Dana, advancing from the window, “and orthodox manners have all failed us. Mr. Fox has been missing for three days now, and the only clue as to his whereabouts lies in the fantastic and inexplicable instructions which I have received. Two women are to bear — the ransom — to the appointed place, in direst secrecy. I am acquainted with few women in this area, and of those, only you and I have sufficient interest in Mr. Fox’s well-being to take the risk. Pray dress yourself and come along, before the worst befalls him.”
“That will not happen,” whispered Miss Greene. “I am assured that it will not.”
“Assured? By whom?”
Miss Greene bit her lip. “If you do not vacate my room, I shall scream!”
“If we do not ransom Mr. Fox, he will die, said Dana. “And if he dies, you do not get his money, you do not get his manor, and you do not get the pleasure of lacerating his feelings for the remainder of his life.” Ignoring Miss Greene’s gasp of indignation, she pressed ruthlessly on. “Nor, having squandered five years of your youth in leading him on, are you likely to find a suitable replacement before being left on the shelf as an old maid.”
“How dare you address me in that manner?”
“How dare you sit there and do nothing?”
“You do not understand the case, or you would not speak so to me! Fox is in no danger — I — I have reason to be sure that he is not — it would be folly to accompany you — and if you think I will not at once inform my father of your mad conduct —” Dana, who had not thought for a moment that Miss Greene would be silent if she refused her aid, did not await the termination of this speech before extracting the ether from her reticule, and applying it expertly…
CH. 53, IN WHICH MR. FOX IS RESCUED AGAINST HIS WILL, AND HE AND DANA QUARREL VIOLENTLY ALL THE WAY HOME
Dana and the fortuitously arrived Melissa descended the stairs into the crypt, Melissa with the vial a little in advance, Dana with the pistol alert to the slightest movement in the surrounding shadows. The sole light came from the pathetic, object hovering within the vial, but that glimmer seemed to burn brighter the longer Melissa clasped it, until when they achieved the foot of the stairs, it cast a living glow upon the caskets, upon the hooded form who awaited them, and upon a bound and huddled figure in evening dress. “Mr. Fox?” called Dana.
He jerked his head upright, and her heart bounded with relief when she saw that he was unharmed. “Miss Scully? You should not have — oh, my G**!” His eyes widened as he perceived the vial.
“Be silent!” The unknown and rasping voice seemed to echo from all corners of the crypt, though it must certainly have emanated from the grim figure who now shook Mr. Fox by the hair. “Give me the vial!”
“No!” cried Mr. Fox. “It could be the key to understanding everything!”
Dana trained the gun upon the dark figure’s breast. “Release him, and the vial is yours.”
“Give me the vial, and he is yours.”
“Take it to Langly and Byers,” said Mr. Fox. “Miss Scully, that is an order!”
“I am no longer in your employ, sir, and will use my own judgement.” With a main effort of will, Dana did not look at him. “Release him at once. You needn’t fear my cheating you.”
“Dana,” breathed Melissa, her eyes on the glowing container in her hand, “it’s moving.”
“I fear very little,” boomed the hooded figure.
“The more fool you,” rasped a new voice, above and behind Dana upon the stairs.
“Mr. Greene?” croaked Mr. Fox. “What are you doing here?”
“Protecting the family interests.” The warm stink of tobacco advanced into the cold stone smell of the crypt, easing past Dana’s skirts as if she were of no significance. Mr. Greene’s weapon looked much older and better used than Dana’s Colt, and was of singularly large caliber; but it was pointed as yet at the ceiling. “Give me the vial,” he said to Melissa.
“Give him the vial, and this man dies,” said the hooded figure, placing a pearl-handled razor at Mr. Fox’s throat. Melissa looked at Dana. Within the bottle, the tiny figure twitched and fluttered horribly. Dana jerked her chin. Melissa, pulling the stopper, cast the shimmering bone of contention into the air…
CH. 54, IN WHICH MR. FOX WAKENS TO A NIGHTMARE, AN UNEXPECTED PERSON ARRIVES FROM THE CONTINENT, MULDER MANOR ABRUPTLY CHANGES HANDS, AND MISS SCULLY RETAINS HER EMPLOYMENT
Fox’s head, which seemed drained of memory, ached as if it had been crushed in a vice, pounded flat with a hammer, and subsequently crushed in the vice once more, but this did not prevent Colton from forcing him to dress. “The house is full of well-wishers, sir,” the manservant informed him. “The least you can do is to appear presentable. Your father most particularly wishes to see you in the billiard room.”
“Well, I most particularly do not wish to see him,” groaned Fox, submitting to the shirt chosen for him. “Still, duty is duty and all that, I suppose. Never mind my cravat — step down the hall, and ask Miss Scully to bring along one of those capital head-clearers of hers. I need to see her before anyone else, in any event.” A bitter, cold draught taken from Miss Scully’s hands, and a little quiet explication of recent events in her husky, restrained voice would, he felt, brace him sufficiently to face whatever unpleasantness the old man cared to thrust upon him. Vaguely, he wondered where all the well-wishers had come from — how had news of his return from Limbo spread?
“I fear that will not be possible,” began Colton, as the door to the chamber flew open, and Miss Starbuck burst in, in a high state of agitation.
“Aren’t you up and about yet?” she demanded. “You must speak to him, before the coach comes round!”
“And a bright good morning to you, as well,” said Fox, holding his head securely upon his shoulders with his two hands. “I thought that was you in my hallucination last night. A peculiarly vivid one, under the influence of which I think I may have said something or other regrettable, but —”
“Never mind that now!” cried Miss Starbuck. “Dana is packing, and Danny is putting the horses to!”
“Packing?” Fox repeated, dully. “Where are we going? Colton, why didn’t you mention this? Am I packed?”
“No, sir,” said Colton, eyeing Miss Starbuck with disapproval. “You are not going anywhere. Miss Scully has been dismissed without a character, and your father has most graciously provided the coach to convey her and her sister home.”
Well before the termination of this horrifying speech, Fox was precipitating himself down the stairs and hastening to greet his father in the billiard room. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” he roared, bursting through the door. “You can’t dismiss her at all, much less without a character!”
“I can and I have,” said his father, from behind a thicker veil of smoke than usual. Despite the early hour, Mr. Greene and Mr. Krycek were both present. A warning bell rang in the back of Fox’s brain, but did not distract him from the matter at hand…
CH. 55, IN WHICH MR. GREENE ASSUMES COMMAND, MRS. MULDER SETS UP HOUSEKEEPING, AND MISS SCULLY’S BEST EFFORTS AVAIL HER LITTLE
“Samantha?” Mrs. Mulder stepped back from the chamber door, the light in her face fading. “No,” she said. “No, of course not. Excuse me, Miss —?”
“This is my sister Dana, ma’am,” said Melissa gently, assisting the older woman to reseat herself, but not taking her eyes from Dana’s face. Pale as new linen, and trembling, she reminded Melissa of someone, as she pulled the door to behind her, occluding her eyes simultaneously as she leaned against the knob. Pappa used to look so, when the world turned unreasonably against him, necessitating the repression of a towering, sea-captain-sized rage. “What is happening ?” Melissa asked. “Mr. Mulder -”
Dana knelt before Mrs. Mulder’s chair, taking both the papery hands between her own. “Ma’am,” she said. “This will be a great shock to you. I regret to tell you that your husband is dead.”
Something sparked behind the vague, unfocused eyes. “And Fox?” Mrs. Mulder said. “They called Fox away from me, when I had scarcely seen him.”
Dana took a deep breath, and Melissa knew she was treading very near the heart of rage. “He became — distraught, and the doctor prescribed a sedative. He is confined him to his room.”
“Then I must go there,” said Mrs. Mulder.
Dana gently, but firmly, prevented her rising. “You will not be admitted.”
“Not admitted? It’s my house!”
“The doctor declares that no one may see him save his manservant and the doctor himself,” said Dana. “Mr. Greene has asked a groom to see to it that these orders are obeyed.”
“Mr. Greene?” repeated Melissa. “What rights has he in the case?”
“None at all,” whispered Mrs. Mulder, sinking weakly back into the chair. “But we can’t dispute him — can we?”
“Not at this time,” said Dana grimly.
“Why ever not?” demanded Melissa. “What aren’t you telling us? I can’t credit it, that you permitted them drug Mr. Fox and shut him up in his room!”
“Mr. Fox will come to no permanent harm,” Dana said, evenly. “Much as I dislike to leave him in that predicament, I am persuaded that we have nothing immediate to fear for him. But someone has murdered Mr. Mulder, and I do not know why, and I do not know who, and without that information we must move very discreetly indeed, for a mistake may prove fatal to someone before the day is out.”
“Murdered?” repeated Melissa blankly. For a moment she felt as weak and powerless as Mrs. Mulder looked. How could her clairvoyance summon her across so many miles to her sister’s distress, and not show her a murder occurring in the same house as herself?
“Yes, murdered,” repeated Dana. “There is no doubt on that score. But as to who murdered him — I am sure only of you, Mrs. Mulder, Mr. Fox, and myself.”
“You needn’t be so sure of me!” spat Mrs. Mulder. “If I knew who did this deed, I’d shake his hand!”
Melissa gasped in horror, for the words and expression carried conviction, but Dana merely leveled her gaze on Mrs. Mulder’s face and said, with that dreadful calm that was the very echo of Pappa’s: “You were with Mr. Fox in the porte cochere when the deed went forward, ma’am. You are not under suspicion…”
CH. 56, IN WHICH MR. FOX MULDER ASSUMES CONTROL OF HIS PROPERTY, EXPLORING MANY DARK AND DISUSED NOOKS, AND NUMEROUS CLUES ARE PURSUED ALL OVER THE LANDSCAPE
The room was dark, cold, and close; at first, Dana could make out no details. “Go away, Colton,” moaned an amorphous mass on what was probably an ottoman.
“Colton has gone,” said Dana, righting the occasional table which lay overturned in her path, and placing the tray upon it. “He resigned when you hurled the andirons at him.”
The shape raised its head, and became Mr. Fox, blinking, disheveled, and still in the near-dressed state in which he had confronted his father immediately prior to recent distressing events. “Miss Scully,” he said, in tones suddenly clear and firm. “Thank G**! When you didn’t come, I feared — never mind.”
Dana picked her way through the room’s contents, most of which lay scattered randomly upon the Aubusson carpet, to the windows, where she proceeded to draw back the drapes and lower the upper panes to admit the cold, fresh breath of early March. “Forgive my intrusion upon your solitude,” she said, “but despite the opinions of the doctor, I cannot think the state beneficial to you.”
She heard him sit up. “How long have I been in here? What has happened? When is — when is the inquest?”
“Yesterday.” Dana moved from the windows to the dark, cold hearth. “The coroner returned a verdict of death by misadventure, in order to reduce the scandal to be expected from a verdict of suicide. Mr. Krycek and Mr. Greene were the primary witnesses.” She heard the crack of a bitten sunflower seed as she swept the ash from the grate.
“And where were you?”
Dana spoke as neutrally as she could. “The coroner — and Mr. Greene — were so concerned that my female sensibilities not be subject to the strain of speaking publicly on the topic of billiard cues in relation to corpses, that five tall men were deputed to prevent my entering the chamber where the inquest was held.”
“And Skinner permitted this?”
“Mr. Skinner explicitly told me that the matter was beyond his purview.” Dana began to lay a new fire.
Mr. Fox made an indignant sound. “Miss Scully, what the deuce are you doing? Come tell me all about everything! Why have you been so long in coming to me?”
“Mr Greene has only today permitted your mother to evict him from the house,” Dana explained, rising and turning to face him. He thrust the pile of antimacassars which had buried him to the floor, but she seated herself upon a low hassock nearby rather than in the space thus cleared. “I endeavored to restrict the amount of sedative administered to you, sir, but the servants walk in terror of your future father-in-law, and your mother —” Dana hesitated.
“You needn’t spare me on that head,” said Mr. Fox ruefully. “I hope she has not been overmuch trouble to you?”
“Melissa has been looking after her. She wishes to see you.” Dana observed him closely, clasping her hands in her lap. He looked tired, wan, and weak, but ate his seeds and water with visibly increasing appetite, and his eyes were clear. “Sir, I know this time is difficult for you, but matters are very grave. Your father’s death —”
“Was neither suicide nor misadventure,” he interrupted. “I had reached that conclusion even while my mind was clouded. Do not let concern for my sensibilities deter you from pursuing the matter! If — a certain person — is willing to do so hideous a deed, it must be for a large reason. And until we know that reason, we do not know who may be next.”
“I believe, sir, that you are safe so long as you remain engaged to Miss Greene,” said Dana, speaking with admirable clearness around the constriction in her throat. “But your mother is another matter.”
“As are you,” he said gravely, laying his hand on hers so briefly she scarcely felt it, till afterward…
CH. 57, IN WHICH ALL APPEARS TO RETURN TO NORMAL, UNTIL MYSTERIOUS SIGILS REAPPEAR IN THE NEW-SPROUTED CROPS, AND MISS SCULLY INVESTIGATES
Mrs. Mulder, under Melissa’s watchful eye, seemed to bloom and flourish with the spring, spending a portion of each day in healthful exercise in the garden, and another portion in embroidering pillowslips, tablecloths, and other household linen with the Mulder family motto: “Trust No One.” Mr. Fox (who submitted to being Mr. Mulder in public, but insisted upon the old form of address between themselves) now had the business of the estate to transact as well as his pursuit of truth; yet he and Dana successfully concluded a number of important investigations, most notably of the Old Bedfoot Apparition, the Jersey Angel, and the appalling affair of the Seven Gables, the only good result of which was that Mrs. Mulder gained a lapdog, whose dreadful history, however, she never learned. Yet the brighter grew the hedgerows with blossoms, the louder the birdsong, the greener the fields, the more complete Miss Greene’s preparations for the wedding, the deeper grew Mr. Fox’s melancholy, and the less Dana could relieve him with common sense.
For no matter how they delved into the late William Mulder’s papers, they could uncover no clue to the central mysteries that assailed them, and twice the light shone from Samantha’s room, with no tangible result. So great did Mr. Fox’s despair grow, that on one occasion he went so far as to make an unconsidered remark, as to what irrecoverable possession he would trade for the clue that would lead to the heart of the matter, and it took all their combined wits to evade the consequences. Nor was the library tolerable for sitting in for a fortnight after, due to the ineradicable odor of brimstone…
CH. 58, IN WHICH THE AUTHOR RUTHLESSLY, GLEEFULLY, AND SADISTICALLY PLAYS UPON THE SENSIBILITIES OF HER GENTLE READERS, AND MR. FROHIKE LAYS HIS HEART AT MISS SCULLY’S FEET
Dana strove valiantly against the force which spiraled round her, but the young shoots of wheat to which she clung broke off in her hands. Some small effect was achieved by striving with all her limbs in a swimming motion, but she was already sunk past her knees in the earth when Mr. Fox seized her firmly, first by the hands, and then round the waist. Dana similarly clasped him round his neck, and together they strove against the monstrous vortex, seemingly determined to drag Dana into the bowels of the earth.
Straining every nerve in combination, the pair drew her slowly, slowly out her predicament. At last her feet popped free, the suddenness of the release precipitating Mr. Fox onto his back, and Dana, still clasped and clasping, necessarily fell atop him. At some point in the process — at once the most confused, and the most vivid, moment of her life to date, so that she could never subsequently describe nor forget it — their mouths became as fast-clasped as their arms, so that it was some moments before Dana, gasping for breath, attempted to extract herself from this undignified position. Rather than loosening his grasp, however, Mr. Fox only tightened it, as if afraid the vortex would return, this time through the air, and snatch her from him. “Dana,” he said, as if her name were an orange, and he were sucking all the sweetness in the world from it.
Summoning a strength she had not known she possessed, Dana extricated herself from his arms, and knelt beside him on the crushed and broken wheat. “Thank you, sir,” she said, unsteadily. “Without your prompt assistance, I shudder to think what my fate would have been.”
She felt as if she had stabbed him, and the distress of his countenance as he sat up was almost more than she could bear. “Dana, who can you speak so coldly? After what just happened —”
“Nothing has happened, sir,” she said, restraining his frantic hands between her firm ones, and meeting his eyes with her own, “except that you have saved my life, a service I value greatly.” She quieted his protest with a pressure of her fingers, and a look. “If anything else had happened,” she said, suddenly incapable of any speech above a whisper, “I would have to go away.”
She saw the moment at which he remembered Miss Greene’s existence, as one might see the moment at which a cloud obscures the moon; saw him swallow all the words in his throat; felt him kiss her fingers with his eyes.
“You are right, as usual, Miss Scully,” he said. “But pray remember, that there is no more particular merit in my saving your life, than there would be in my saving my own…”
CH. 59, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY GENTLY RETURNS MR. FROHIKE’S HEART TO HIM, AND, IN THE COURSE OF RECRUITING HER COMPOSURE BY PERAMBULATING THE GROUNDS OF MULDER MANOR, ENCOUNTERS AN INTERESTING JUVENILE
Dana had thought herself well-braced to receive Mr. Frohike’s proposals, but in the wake of the occurrences of the afternoon, in the context of the soft May Eve, in the setting of the fragrant bower to which she had retreated even from her sister’s company in order to safely suffocate the sudden blossoming of feelings which she had taken such care to suppress, it took all the fortitude she could muster not to scream and break his neck. “Oh, get up off your knees, for mercy’s sake,” she snapped, before summoning her prepared speech from the recesses of memory. “Excuse me, I mean — Sir, conscious as I am of the honor of your regard —”
“Don’t talk stuff,” interrupted Mr. Frohike, “and let me finish. I’m perfectly aware that I disgust you. I own a mirror, you know.”
This last remark was made with such appealing frankness that Dana did not know whether to laugh or weep, as she forcibly stood him on his feet. “You do not disgust me, sir.”
“Oh, I know it’s Mulder you want,” continued Mr. Frohike, with great aplomb. “Everyone knows it. You two must think the world is blind! Phoebe’s been having a bully time, hitting poor Mulder on that sore spot and watching him squirm. She’s quite looking forward to being able to do that for the rest of his life. And I suppose she needs something to look forward to, at that. She never wanted him for himself, you know, but for some reason Uncle Greene is determined to have the Manor in the family, and Cousin Phoebe’s an obedient daughter, whatever else she is. But she needn’t have everything her own way, if you and Mulder will but accept my plan.”
“I fear I don’t follow you.”
“Of course you don’t, for I haven’t explained it yet. First, you and I marry — that’ll convince Phoebe she’s queen of the world. Then, Mulder and I go partners in this truth-seeking business. I do know some few things along those lines, though I can’t shoot straight or cut up dead bodies. You retain your position as Mulder’s assistant in fact, though we might need to shuffle the names, and it will be quite proper for us all to travel together, and take large suites, and who’s ever to know if I take the little room and you two take the big one?”
Dana stared, her breath quite taken away; for if this suggestion was the most improper she had ever received, it was surely also the most generous. “I fail to see what benefit you derive from this outrageous scheme,” she said, when she recovered her power of speech.
“Oh, I’m counting on your sense of fair play,” said Mr. Frohike, earnestly. “After all, we’ll have to be in town sometimes, and Mulder will have to do his duty by Phoebe, at least till the Manor has an heir; and we can keep the room as dark as you like. I won’t ask what you’re thinking! But you may take your time coming to that point.”
Dana, with the distinct impression that she wandered loose in a nightmare, inhaled deeply and worded her reply with care. “I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot accept your proposal, because it would be wrong to do so.”
“Right, wrong, what’s the odds?” exclaimed Mr. Frohike. “We’d all benefit, and no one would be hurt — except, if we’re very lucky, Cousin Phoebe…”
CH. 60, IN WHICH A LONG-ANTICIPATED REUNION PROVES AS DISTRESSING AS IT IS JOYFUL, MUCH IS MADE CLEAR, MUCH MORE RENDERED EVEN MORE OBSCURE, AND MR. FOX AND MISS STARBUCK GRIMLY PREPARE FOR THE WORST
“Mamma! Pappa! Fox!”
At the sound of the voice, Fox leaped to his feet, every hair erect, and he cried: “Samantha?” at the very moment that he realized, with strange composure, that the strain of his impossible situation had at last broken him, and he was now quite mad. But Frohike turned toward the sound and the open window, as well. “What the devil?” he ejaculated. “It can’t be your sister, Mulder. That’s a little girl’s voice.”
But Mulder was already through the French doors, running across the twilit lawn to meet the small figure, with its dark braids and pale nightgown, running barefoot through the buttercups. “Samantha?” he called.
“Pappa!” she shrilled, hurling herself upon him; but scarcely had she clasped his neck and looked him in the face than she drew away. “You’re not Pappa! Who are you?”
“I’m Fox, Sam.” Kneeling at her level, face to face, he explored her countenance for signs of recognition. “Don’t you know me?”
“Oh!” Her confusion cleared. “That’s what she meant! When she said I had been gone too long and you had changed, I didn’t think of your being grown up!”
In the midst of his joy and wonder, Fox felt an ominous thrill, and he cast his glance beyond his sister (his own sister, the same in every line and feature) to the empty lawn beyond, to the stand of elder where he had lately seen Miss Scully walking. “Who told you that?”
“The red-haired lady,” said Samantha, as a door slammed up at the manor. “She was nice, and told me to hurry home.”
“Samantha?” cried their mother’s voice, as she hurried across the lawn.
“The red-haired lady,” repeated Fox, his heart quaking with fear in his bosom. “Where is she? She should have escorted you home.”
“She couldn’t,” said Samantha. “She had to take my place…”
CH. 61, IN WHICH MISS STARBUCK BRINGS HER EXPERTISE TO BEAR, THE MYSTERIOUS GENTLEMAN IS PERSUADED TO EXPLAIN HIS POSITION, AND MR. FOX PREPARES TO AFFECT AN ENTRANCE
“It would be better to leave things as they stand,” said the mysterious gentleman, not emerging from the shadow of the elder trees.
“Better for whom?” demanded Fox.
“Everyone,” declared the man. “By placing an innocent, ignorant, and unwilling child at the junction of Faery and Middle-Earth, the Queen gave herself free rein. Miss Scully, an alert and well-informed volunteer, places certain restrictions on the inhabitants of Faery, merely by her presence.”
“Dana is not so well-informed as that,” protested Miss Starbuck. “She doesn’t even believe in fairies, despite having seen one, and there is a great deal of their natural history and habits of which she has no inkling.”
The mysterious gentleman looked askance. “You should not have brought this woman,” he said, addressing Fox with some asperity. “She has no business here.”
“This is the third time her sister has disappeared,” said Fox. “I think she has business enough. Also, she is knowledgeable in the relevant areas. It was she who reminded me to place bread and salt in my pockets; and she has emphasized the urgency of finding Miss Scully while it is still May Eve and the barriers between the worlds are thin. If you do not intend to assist us, pray refrain from hindering us.” He stepped forward.
The mysterious gentleman gave ground, but did not move aside. “You do not know what you are doing,” he said. “Miss Scully is an essential part of the overall plan.”
“What plan?” demanded Fox, his patience exhausted. “What do you know of this outrageous situation? Why are you always on hand, immediately prior to one or the other of us vanishing?”
Miss Starbuck gasped. “Sir! Don’t you see? Look at his aura — look how he falls back at your approach — he’s a fay himself!…”
CH. 62, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY MEETS AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE, HEARS MUCH THAT SHE DOES NOT BELIEVE, EXERCISES HER AUTHORITY AS GATEKEEPER IN A WAY ILL-CALCULATED TO PLEASE HER NEW EMPLOYER, AND ENCOUNTERS FAMILIAR FACES IN UNEXPECTED CONTEXTS
The moment she saw the troll, Dana realized of whom Mr. Frohike had reminded her at their first meeting. The creature who approached in the bright twilight beneath the blossoming, fruit-laden tree was even more diminutive than her erstwhile suitor, being no more than two and a half feet in height; but the facial resemblance was striking. More than that, the sight awoke a sleeping memory as easily as daylight awakens a sleeping child. “It was you!” she exclaimed, involuntarily. “You lured me out of Mamma’s garden, bore me through the air, and left me in the streets of Kidneypool for Sister to find!”
“Yes, that was me,” said the troll. “Not one of my prouder moments, but one has a duty to king and country. And you would not be who you are if I hadn’t, so I believe you have cause to be grateful.”
“That’s as may be,” said Dana. “Is it too much to hope for an explanation? It seems —” she glanced around the quiescent landscape, in which all the colors were subtly wrong beneath the green-tinged, sunless sky — “that we have ample time.”
“No time, and all time,” agreed the troll, sitting nigh her and plucking from a low-hanging branch a fruit that resembled a golden apple more than it resembled anything else. “Pray take some refreshment to sustain yourself. It is a long tale.”
“Thank you, no,” said Dana, mindful of her mythology, and the fate of those who partake of nourishment in the subterranean realms. “I dined but recently.”
The troll tossed the fruit into her lap. It’s fragrance rose enticingly to her nostrils. “You may well want something before I’m done,” he said. “And you must maintain your strength for the task you have assumed. It would be an ill thing if you were to fail, for the king selected you himself.”
“And who selected the little girl who preceded me?” Dana enquired.
“The queen,” said the troll. “Her Majesty has till your advent been free to conduct a great deal of mischief. If you remember always that you are of the king’s party, for order and reason, you will do well. Your first duty —”
“Hush!” Dana raised her hand. “Someone calls me.”
“I don’t hear anything,” said the troll. “Pray have a bite of fruit.”
Dana rose, letting the fruit tumble into the grass, where it bounced. The voice was faint, but near, and distinct, as if a gnat with Mr. Fox’s voice hovered in the air three feet away, at the spot whence she had entered, and called for her…
CH. 63, IN WHICH MISS SCULLY’S RESIGNATION IS REFUSED, AND MR. FOX’S ACUMEN IS TESTED TO THE UTMOST
The child Evelyn simpered from the Faery Queen’s knee, and the grown echo of her face smiled slyly above that. How many copies of that face ran free in the world above? Dana wondered. Would it not be a sacrifice worth making, to spend eternity in the dull glow of Faery, in order to keep Sister’s murderers within bounds?
“Well, well,” said the Queen, “is the bargain repented so soon? After all these years, I would have expected you to want to spend a little time with your dear sister!”
“She does very well with my mother,” said Mr. Fox. “Business comes before pleasure. My assistant gave me no notice of resignation, and I strongly desire to recall her.”
“I have no objection,” said the Queen. “It was my husband who wished to engage her. What have you done with him, by the by?”
“Miss Starbuck is entertaining him,” said Mr. Fox. “I am content to deal directly with you.”
“Very well,” said the queen. “Only return the little girl, or a suitable replacement, to me, and I’ll gladly let you have this — creature — of my husband’s in return.”
Mr. Fox flushed, and Dana felt it high time she entered this discussion. “I regret the informality of the termination of my employment, sir, but I took this position of my own free will, specifically to free that unfortunate child.”
“The old lady would do nicely, instead of the girl,” piped up Miss Evelyn.
“A capital suggestion,” smiled the Queen. “Mrs. Mulder is half dotty in any event, and we would provide well for her here. I daresay she would not enjoy life under the regime of the future Mrs. Mulder half so much.”
“I consent to no exchange,” said Dana firmly. Noting a mulish look about Mr. Fox’s mouth, she added: “This is by no means an onerous duty for me, I assure you. I will be in a position to do some good in the world, if only by keeping — certain persons — out of it.”
“What you fail to grasp,” said Mr. Fox, “not having all the facts, is that if no mortal holds the gateway, no gateway will exist, and that surely is the greatest good we can either of us do! When will you learn to stop disputing with me?”
“When will you learn to listen to me?” enquired Dana. “I have told you, I have already attempted to return through the gateway, and I cannot. An exchange is necessary.”
“Not if I bear you through the gateway myself,” said Mr. Fox. “I satisfy all the requirements of the one who can free you, and I will not leave without making the attempt.”
“What requirements?” asked Dana.
“Yes, you may free her,” smiled the Queen “if you can first know her, and hold her!”
Dana felt herself precipitately whirled from Mr. Fox’s side. When her head cleared, she stood in an aquamarine-tinted field, which seemed to have grown a sudden crop of Danas. As she turned her head, a hundred duplicates turned theirs as well, and Evelyn, the Queen, and the troll seemed to find this highly diverting…
CH 65, IN WHICH ALL ARE UNITED IN A SCENE OF GREAT REJOICING, SAMANTHA TELLS THE FULL HISTORY OF HER SOJOURN IN FAERY, AND MR. MULDER CONVEYS MISS SCULLY INTO TOWN, THERE TO PURSUE HER RESEARCHES WHILE HE UNDERTAKES A DELICATE TETE-A-TETE WITH HIS INTENDED
Dizzy from the rapid series of alterations her form had undergone, Dana staggered against Mr. Fox, without disrupting their mutual grip. Her teeth chattered with cold, but at least the shape she wore was her own again. The empty twilit realm of Faery was filling rapidly with floods of recalled Queen-duplicates, trolls, goblins, shapeshifters, and other, more peculiar, entities. It crossed Dana’s mind that, if she and Mr. Fox were prevented from retreating before the gateway closed, they could be trapped here forever — but would the gateway close, if they were prevented from exiting through it? The natural laws of this place were far too confusing. She concentrated on clearing a path through the crowd by ruthlessly kicking aside various versions of Evie, and clinging tightly to Mr. Fox, who was similarly engaged.
Abruptly, they emerged into warm open air, under a deep velvet sky spangled with sequins of stars. Elder trees whispered in the breeze, and the homely odor of the stables wafted welcomingly about them. “Dana!” cried Melissa, rushing to assist them, as they collapsed upon the flattened circle in the grass.
“I am quite all right,” Dana assured her, turning her attention to her employer, who despite the onset of safety had not relaxed his grasp upon her waist. “And you, Mr. Fox? I fear my temporary incarnation as a burning coal must inevitably have injured you.”
“I believe I am slightly singed, but your immediate subsequent incarnation as a block of ice relieved the effects, and I am sure whatever ministration you choose to apply when we return to the Manor will efficaciously alleviate all damage,” said Mr. Fox, looking beyond Melissa to the shadowy form beneath the elders. “Your Majesty, surely you should retire at once? It is my understanding that the gate to your kingdom closes even now.”
“I am just going,” said the mysterious gentleman, emerging from the night and regarding the trio quizzically. “How odd, that having taken so many precautions against my wife and her minions, ultimately I as well as she was defeated by my own tools! But I am curious — I know that my wife’s simulacra are exceedingly good. How did you chance to select the correct Miss Scully?”
“Elementary,” said Mr. Fox. “And no chance entered into it! Not one of the false women smelled of the correct variety of soap…”
CH. 65, IN WHICH THE WISHES OF EVERY READER’S HEART ARE GRATIFIED, BUT THE WRITER, BEING A VICTORIAN, REFUSES TO CLOSE THE BOOK BEFORE TYING UP EVERY LOOSE END AND DISPOSING OF THE FUTURE ESTATE OF EVERY PIDDLING LITTLE CHARACTER, WHICH WILL TAKE ANOTHER FULL CHAPTER AT LEAST
No cure for anxiety is sovereign save work, as Dana well knew; and once she had the proper resources arrayed around her at the library table, and began to assemble the clues which made sense of her experience, she found herself less inclined to torment herself with vain rehearsals of the scene now going forward between her employer and his fiancée. Indeed, she was so absorbed in constructing a diagram of her life in relation to the history of Mulder Manor and the intrigues of the fairies, that it was a full fifteen seconds after the tumultuation began that she realized she was hearing Mr. Fox’s voice and running footsteps, approaching precipitately through the disapproving hush of the library. Though unable to distinguish his words, Miss Scully discerned that something had affected his spirits agreeably, for there was a tone which might best be described as a “whoop,” and when she turned she perceived that Mr. Fox was leaping up the central stairwell, three steps at a time.
Blevins, scowling like a thundercloud, approached the head of the stairs, evidently intending to reprimand him; but Mr. Fox seized him in a glad embrace and pounded him on the back. “She jilted me!” he cried. “Where is — hurrah!” Espying Miss Scully, he released the astonished Blevins, and hurled himself across the room, skidding to a stop, on his knees, at her feet. “She’s jilted me!” he announced again, his countenance suffused with joy. “She says the manner of my father’s death, my mother’s condition, and my own acceptance of an eight-years child as my twenty-years-missing sister demonstrate the existence of a strain of insanity in the Mulder family, with which she does not wish her children to be tainted! Is it not marvelous?”
“You are indeed to be congratulated,” said Dana, as felicity blossomed like a daffodil in her bosom. “Have a chair, sir.”
Mr. Fox laughed and seized her hands. “You don’t expect me to propose sitting down! Miss Scully — let’s see, I had a speech prepared — Conscious as I am of being wholly unworthy of your regard and esteem, I nevertheless have dared to hope that you were not wholly indifferent to me, and I swear by — by — oh, by anything you like — to strive every day to be good enough for you. Please, will you marry me? Pretty please, with a cherry on top?”
“Of course I will,” said Dana, “for I never considered you unworthy in the slightest. Quite the contrary! But pray get up and behave yourself, or Mr. Blevins will expel us before I am able to demonstrate this pretty little theory for you.”
Nothing, however, could have been further from Mr. Blevins’ thoughts, for in striving to keep all immodest emotions from her voice and gesture, Dana had unwittingly forced all her heart into her eyes, and the head librarian — like most of the nearby students who witnessed the exchange — was momentarily dazzled, bewildered, and desperately unhappy, that no woman had ever bent upon him a gaze such as Miss Scully now bent upon Mr. Mulder…
THE LOST CHAPTER, WHICH WAS FOUND IN A SECRET DRAWER FORTY YEARS SUBSEQUENT TO THE AUTHOR’S DEATH, AND WHICH WAS NEVER SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION, FOR FEAR OF INFLICTING APOPLEXY UPON THE PUBLISHER AND DISGRACE UPON HER OWN GOOD NAME.
Dana sat in her corset cover before the dressing table, humming a tune of Mozart’s as she withdrew pin after pin from her hair and permitted it to tumble, in full sunset glory, round her shoulders. As she reached for her brush, the sparkle of gold upon the third finger of her left hand attracted her notice. With an irrepressible laugh, she raised it to her lips, and kissed the little fetter that would bind her forever where she wished to be. On lifting her head again, she saw behind her, in the mirror, the man she would never again address as “sir,” standing in the doorway with an expression more dazed than any which strange phenomena had ever stamped upon his features. Meeting the reflection of his eyes, she smiled brightly and said: “Good evening, Mr. Scully-Mulder!”
He returned her smile and advanced, to touch her hair gingerly with her open palm. “Good evening, Mrs. Scully-Mulder.”
A twinge of unease marred her perfect happiness. “What is wrong, darling?”
“Wrong?” He bent his eyes to her hair in some confusion, stroking the bright tresses back from her face. “I have everything my heart desires. What could be wrong on our wedding night?”
Dana turned to him gravely. “That is indeed what I desire to know.” She fixed her eyes on his, and laid her hand along his cheek. He smiled ruefully, took her hand between his palms, and kissed it.
“I am perhaps a trifle nervous,” he conceded. “Dana— you know what happens on wedding nights, do you not?”
“Certainly. I look forward to it.”
“You do? I had understood that ladies did not enjoy — that sort of thing.”
“Possibly society ladies wedding for money or duty do not. I am not one of them, I assure you!”
“But — is it not a little — wicked?”
“Nothing married people choose to do together can be wicked, else there is no point to marriage. Who has put these notions into your head, dear?”
He shrugged. “I’ve — picked them up. In all candour, I know nothing of the matter. I have no idea how to proceed.” Sparing sufficient attention for the shade of her father-in-law to cast a curse in his direction for neglecting this important portion of his heir’s education, Dana stood, feeling the throb of his heart as she pressed against him. “I am sure you do. When you think about me, what do you wish to do?”
In answer, he placed his arms about her waist, drew her in even closer, and kissed her. When their lips released, both breathed unevenly, and she discerned evidence that portions of his person, at least, were not so ignorant as all that. “And next?” she whispered.
“This is the point at which I jump up, pace the room, and go down to the laboratory to work on some absorbing problem.”
Dana found his hand, and placed it on the fastening of her corset cover. “I don’t know of any problem more absorbing than this one…”
CH. 66, IN WHICH THE FUTURE HISTORY OF THE SCULLY-MULDERS IS SETTLED WITH A TIDINESS AND HARMONY FOREIGN TO REAL LIFE, AND PRECLUSIVE OF ALL SEQUELAE
In all literary endeavours, there is a point past which the author must decline to go. To say that the future lives of the inhabitants of Mulder Manor were blissfully devoid of interest would be to commit an untruth, but marital unity is not so absorbing a study as romantic division, and one must stop somewhere. Suffice it to say that the closing of the gates of Faery and the termination of the plan to get an heir of supernatural antecedents into Mulder Manor through the medium of the fay-blooded Greene family did not end the occurrence of strange and inexplicable phenomena in Britain, and the Scully-Mulders had ample occupation in the education of Samantha, the normal operation of the estate, the production of a fair brood of children (Mary Ignatia, Melissa, Margaret, and the twins, Otter and Badger), and the pursuit of such mysterious affairs as that at Styles, the exploration of the House on the Borderlands, the peculiar death of a certain Mr. Crookes, etc.
The lonely Manor soon became a center of activity, for the Maria’s crew, though they were all dispersed to their families within a week of their mysterious re-appearance at the bottom of the garden, were prone to drop by between voyages, bearing gifts and strange tales, and Dana’s continuing interest in dress reform, the plight of friendless orphans, and forensic science made the estate the location of many lively assemblies. It was at a dress-reform gathering that Mr. Frohike met the young lady who would at last conquer his passion for his friend’s wife; Melissa Starbuck married Mr. Pendrell out of the front parlor; and Mr. Skinner’s long and ultimately successful courtship of Margaret Starbuck began in the same bower where Dana had fended off Mr. Frohike’s advances.
As for Miss Greene, she became Mrs. Krycek, and ruled Woof-on-the-Tweed society serenely for three months; at which point the arrest of her husband for the murder of William Mulder, and of her father for treason, greatly complicated her heretofore simple existence…
Good night, Gentle Readers. It’s been real!
(The Light in the Tower at Mulder Manor is a parody by Peni R. Griffin and one other person. Text is copyrighted 1996 and is the sole property of Peni Griffin and Devi XF, but may be distributed freely so long as their names remain intact. Character names and situations are freely and shamelessly borrowed, twisted, and amended from the X-Files and other miscellaneous works of fiction, for parodic purposes only. No profit is anticipated and no harm intended in using these names. They are only used because not using them spoils the whole joke. Thank you for not prosecuting.)
EX-LIBRIS: X-LIBRIS IN WHICH THE ARCHIVIST FAILS TO REACH THE LITERARY HEIGHTS OF THE ABOVE WORK.
The distinguished publishing house of X-Libris, having reprinted this Hardcover Edition, have liquefied it again for downloading from x-libris.xf-redux.com.
With the gentle cadence of my words, I weave a tale of homage and transformation, enveloping this declaration in the ethereal mist of the moors. Be it known that what lies herein is a derivative work, an offspring conceived through the interplay of inspiration and creative endeavor.
It is perhaps an X-File as to the manner in which the authors of this story happened upon characters created by Chris Carter well before his existence, and thus, this work is not related to Ten-Thirteen or The Fox Network.
Though I aspire to abide by the principles of legality and fairness, I beseech your comprehension that interpretations may vary, and the line between homage and infringement can oftentimes appear veiled in a nebulous haze. Not a farthing is ever to be exchanged for these works, as they are purely infused with a love that transcends that once shared by Catherine and Heathcliff upon those dark and misty moors. (To be fair, Heathcliff was a bit of a dick).
In other words, characters, stories and art remain the property of their talented creators and no infringement is intended. Portions of this disclaimer were written by ChatGPT, but not much because it’s not human and had no opinion as to whether Heathcliff was a dick. Any copyright concerns can be addressed to [email protected].
