Five Days of the Ghost by William Bell

Author:William Bell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55455-778-3
Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside
Published: 2015-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

The three of us were lying side by side on the dock. The late-afternoon sun was sinking behind the house and our shore of the lake was shaded and cool. But Chiefs’ Island was still brightly lit and over the calm water I could see the flat rock where we had landed on our trips to the graveyard. There was a light breeze whispering in the weeping willow.

“Well,” Noah was saying, “we made progress at the library.”

“Yeah, after we got that old twig of a librarian to let us into the so-called historical archives we started checking local histories.”

“And they led us to the microfilms of old newspapers.”

“How about skipping all the dramatics and getting to the point,” I said. I guess I sounded mean, cutting into their big moment, but I didn’t really feel like waiting till doomsday.

“Okay, okay,” John said, sounding a little hurt. “Here’s the straight stuff.”

He cleared his throat as he sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees and started in with his Lecturing Voice.

“Our house was built around a century and a half ago by a rich bachelor named Bond who got his money from the lumber and sawmill business, lawyering, and some inheritance.”

“Not what you’d call poor,” Noah added. He had sat up, too. His wet hair was slicked straight back and the two studs and cross in his ear winked in the light.

“No, and from what we could gather, he wasn’t Mister Nice Guy either. He turned up in the newspapers once in a while.”

“Like when he built his house—your house—on the shore of the lake on property he cheated away from an old lady whose financial affairs he was handling.”

“Right,” John said. “Anyway, he was loaded, and he had three servants who lived in the attic. An old manservant named Oliver, a cook named McCullough, and her eighteen-year-old daughter, who did the housecleaning.”

“You forgot the drinking,” Noah said.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Bond was a drinker. Famous for it. A real prize winner. Anyway, he got in trouble for beating up the manservant one time. Broke the poor old guy’s nose. According to the paper, the old guy refused to press charges, plus he kept working for Bond.

“But the juicy gossip was that he got engaged to the young woman. We read the wedding announcement in the paper.”

“Sounds romantic, right?” Noah held up his hand and moved it across in front of his face. Writing on the air with his finger. “Rich snobby lawyer marries servant. Nice headline.”

“Except he didn’t,” John cut in.

“Nope. But he did get her pregnant, from what we can figure. The paper just hinted about that. Anyway, she hanged herself.”

I sat up quickly. “In our house?” Pain shot through my head.

“No, no, her mother and her quit and moved out. She hanged herself in a boardinghouse.”

“The mother left town soon after,” John continued.

I wondered when they were going to get to the point. All that stuff sounded like a soap opera. I mean, it was a terrible tragedy

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