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“I’m surprised,” I said carefully, “that Professor Hughes went through the trouble of hiring an assistant and a fancy chauffeur service if he was struggling financially.”
The delight in the driver’s eyes was evident. He was giddy with his knowledge.
“Oh, the professor is still wealthy, miss. Aside from family money, the man owns a perfumery. He’s got two factories and greenhouses all across the country.”
He purposefully said no more, waiting for me to ask.
“Then why so little staff?” I obliged, sighing inwardly.
“Well, I reckon it’s because of the ghosts.”
Despite myself, I laughed. The sound was sudden, incredulous, filling the small space uncomfortably. My hope for decent information crumbled. I wasn’t interested in rumors and ghost stories, but the chauffeur boulderedon.
“Not a laughing matter, miss. I imagine there’d be ghosts anywhere someone died so tragically.”
There it was. The information I’d been hoping for.
“Yes, I’d heard Mrs. Hughes had passed away.”
“A sad state of affairs. Had herself a fit. Professor Hughes called in a doctor from town to calm her nerves, you know, medicinally. The professor says she ran out of the house in the middle of the night, screaming, and threw herself into a river.”
The chauffeur was making a riveting story, and my belly curdled.
“How terrible. The poor woman.”
“Oh, I can’t imagine the professor minded much.”
Of everything he’d said so far, this incensed me the most.
“What an awful thing to say!”
“Oh no, miss. It was likely a relief to him. Everyone in town knew Mrs. Hughes was mad as a hatter.”
Mad.
Mad Millie.
Shock punched through my morbid curiosity, and the car interior began to close, the windows growing dark, the ceiling lowering until I was cramped and coiled, the air thick with heat, the stench of exhaust gagging me.
“Miss Foxboro?”
Mr. Dempsey’s concerned call roused me from the oncoming attack, and my vision cleared, though my heart continued to rabbit in my chest. I held my breath against the stench of the imagined fumes, my hand pressed over my nose and mouth. I’d hunched my shoulders forward as though I were in a small space. Hurriedly, I straightened myself.
“That’s enough storytelling for now,” I replied weakly.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, miss.” He sounded sincere. “It’s better you know what you’re going into in case you decide to change your mind. It’s a long way from the estate back to any town.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I don’t take stock in rumors. It’s just car sickness. I didn’t eat breakfast.” I was lying. Nerves had led me to eat a large breakfast, one I was beginning to regret.
“Let me know if I need to stop anytime, miss.”
“Yes, thank you. I will.”
I fell silent, inspecting the passing scenery. We moved out of the town and into a stretch of country, fields wet and dreary on either side of the road. Despite the dappling of the morning sun through the clouds, they remained a bitter picture of stagnant life and didn’t lift my spirits.
I began to ask myself for the thousandth time why I was doing this, leaving my tedious but safe existence as a shadow in a bookshop for what was a decidedly suspicious assignment far from anything and anyone familiar. But I knew why.
A month ago, a round little man sporting the most absurd mustache I had ever seen bustled into Mr. Helm’s shop looking like a kindly walrus. It had started to rain, the dramatic kind of affair that poured as neatly and vigorously as a garden faucet. I’d been on a step stool, covered in dust, arranging a collection of newly rebound anatomy books from the early nineteenth century. No one had entered the door all morning, and I hadn’t expected anyone to come for the rest of the day. People usually didn’t, even when the weather was nice.
