Page 49 of Winterset

“Sure,” Grimsley replied easily. “It’s clear as day. It’s the ghosts.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was a long silence as Reed and Anna stared at the gardener.

“Ghosts?” Reed repeated.

“Aye, sir. It’s ghosts right enough.”

Anna cast a glance toward Reed, then said, “Why do you think that?”

“Well, miss, it’s like this,” Grimsley began confidentially, coming a step closer to them. “I been workin’ out here fifty years or so. I spend all me time outdoors, workin’ here, walkin’ places, goin’ to visit me sister what lives in the Fell. And in all that time, I never seen any beast other than a fox or dog or such. But, now, ghosts—ghosts I’ve seen.”

Anna caught the scent of gin coming from the man, now that he was nearer to her, but she asked gamely, “You have? Where?”

“Why, right up there, miss,” Grimsley replied, looking surprised, and gestured toward the house. “I seen ’em at night. Lots of times. It’s the late lord and lady. Not your uncle, miss, but his father and mother, what died right here in the summerhouse.” He gestured off toward the left to where the summerhouse had once stood, Anna presumed.

“Why do you think it is they?” Reed asked.

“Well, they’d be the ones walkin’, now, wouldn’t they?” Grimsley answered unarguably. “Happens, dying sudden like that. ’Orrible death, burnin’. ’Sides, the lights always come along the gallery, you know, where he liked to walk.” Grimsley pointed toward the long row of windows on the right side of the house, where the gallery lay, then lifted his finger higher and over to the left, pointing to a set of four smaller windows, all covered with wrought-iron bars. “And they’re in the master’s old bedroom, too. It’s the old lord walkin’, like he used to late at night. I seen him oftentimes.”

“You saw lights?” Reed pressed, frowning. “When was this?”

“Oh, before you come back, my lord. Not all the time, of course. They don’t always walk. Stopped once you come back. I guess the old lord’s shy, like.”

“And how long has this been going on?” Reed continued.

Grimsley contemplated this question, his head to one side, and finally said, “’Bout a year now. More or less.” He smiled a little apologetically. “I’m not so good with the time anymore, you understand.”

“Yes. Of course. Well, thank you, Grimsley.”

The man nodded, seeming satisfied, and turned, going back to the bush he had been tending and picking up his shears. Reed offered Anna his arm again, and they strolled away.

When they were securely out of earshot of the old caretaker, Anna looked at Reed, saying in a wry voice, “Now ghosts?”

Reed half groaned, half laughed. “That is all I need. As if it isn’t bad enough to have homicidal man-beasts roaming about…”

Anna turned to look back at the house. “Do you think he really has seen lights in there?”

Reed shrugged. “I suppose it is possible. The house has been empty. Someone could have broken in—though the place certainly did not look as if it had been ransacked. And why else would someone break in except to steal things?”

“Well, I understand that ghosts don’t really steal things,” Anna told him, her eyes dancing.

He grinned at her. “Laugh if you like. I have a sister—not Kyria—who came to believe quite seriously in ghosts.”

“Really?” Anna looked at him with interest.

“Yes. I will tell you the story sometime. It’s the sort that sends shivers down your spine.”

“Thank you, I have no need of any more of those,” Anna replied.

“However, I find Grimsley’s story somewhat less reliable than Olivia’s,” Reed went on. “For one thing, when he pointed to the old lord’s bedroom, he was pointing not at the master’s bedroom but at the nursery, I think. Did you see the bars?”

Anna nodded. It was a common practice to bar the windows in nursery rooms so that children could not fall out of the high windows. “Yes, I thought that must be where those windows were.”

“Nor does it seem likely that the old lord—or lord and lady, if you will—should come back to haunt the place a year or two ago, after resting quietly in their graves for the past however-many years.”

“Forty-four or forty-five, I think,” Anna said. “They died a few years after the first Beast killings.”