Page 24 of The Forgotten Boy

2018

Only when the sun had risen in a watery blue sky did Juliet open her bedroom door, an event that required moving a desk, a chair, and the suitcase that she had shoved in front of it.

She didn’t know why she thought any of that would stop a ghost.

Maybe he was a polite ghost, though, because the rest of the night had passed without any incident except those imagined in Juliet’s head. She’d never been so aware of the sounds an empty house could make. And ten thousand square feet of house only amplified the sounds, and the fear.

She’d very nearly broken down and called Noah Bennett. Which might be considered progress, considering she hadn’t thought about calling a man other than Duncan in ten years. But she’d had enough self-preservation not to call a good-looking man in the middle of the night and say, “Sorry to wake you, but I saw a ghost in the corridor. Or possibly I’m hallucinating my own dead son.”

When in a state of rattled exhaustion, start with food and coffee. Juliet gratefully toasted some of Rachel’s homemade bread. And after three cups of coffee, her head had cleared enough to make a to-do list:

1. Pull myself together before Noah arrives.

2. Ask him about noises in the furnace and water pipes.

3. Get him to tell me about the Havencross ghost.

4. Find my makeup.

5. Destroy this list so as not to humiliate myself.

Starting from the bottom up, within thirty minutes Juliet had changed into a pair of velvet leggings and an oversized cashmere sweater, had brushed her hair, and had applied concealer, mascara, and lipstick. It was the longest she’d looked at herself in the mirror in months, and she was glad to note that the pregnancy weight, compounded by depression eating, had begun to drop off. Her olive-toned skin no longer looked sallow, and her dark hair had something of the same sheen to it that she’d seen in the photos of a young Clarissa Somersby.

Once ready, she set up in the cavernous Victorian kitchen with the scrapbook of Thomas Somersby’s disappearance and her notebook—it was either pretend to do research or sit on the front steps like a teenage girl waiting for her first date.

The thing about being a historian was that even pretending to research could easily turn into the real thing. It only took one tidbit to catch the imagination—usually buried in a mass of details. Gradually Juliet compiled a timeline.

Sir Wilfred Somersby had passed Christmas and New Year’s at Havencross with his second wife, Sylvia, their two daughters and baby son (ages four, three, and one), and the children of his first wife, thirteen-year-old Clarissa and nine-year-old Thomas. Also present for the holidays were two of his sisters with their husbands and children. A grand total of six adults and sixteen children.

It seemed their planned departure had been hastened by an oncoming blizzard and the threat of the bridge being flooded over. Reading between the lines of the local news stories, Juliet got a strong impression of an unruly scene: the North’s early sunset mixed with heavy clouds and rapidly increasing snowfall, almost four dozen people (counting the servants), horses being harnessed to carriages, children being loaded separately from parents, too many people shouting too many orders with too little organization …

Only when the last of the carriages arrived at a Newcastle inn was it discovered that Thomas had been left behind. As at least five servants had remained at Havencross, so it was assumed the boy would be petted and spoiled. How he would enjoy being the only child there until the weather cleared.

It was three days before anyone realized that Thomas was not at Havencross. Or at least, not in the house. Searches were set up, and every foot of ground for five miles around was scoured. The only thing they found was a single shoe, on the banks of the high-rushing river.

By keeping a severe focus on her note-taking, Juliet avoided losing herself in the pathos of the lost boy. This was research, she reminded herself. And if she intended to write about the influenza epidemic at the boys’ school, she’d have to get used to reading about suffering children.

An editorial published three weeks after the search had been suspended offered the intriguing tidbit Juliet had been hoping for.

Odd happenings are not new to Havencross. The estate passed rapidly through various families from the days of the first Elizabeth until the end of the eighteenth century when it lay empty for decades. All properties of great age accumulate ghosts—at Havencross, it is said to be the spirit of a young boy. Supposedly he haunts both the house and the grounds, though he is reported to be of a mild nature.

Juliet was scribbling down notes rapidly, already wondering how she could weave this into her research, when she heard footsteps followed immediately by Noah Bennett’s voice.

“Are you home?” he asked rhetorically, since he already stood in the kitchen doorway. “I used the knocker on the front door but figured you’d never hear it if you weren’t nearby. But then you didn’t seem to hear me knocking on the scullery door either.”

She stood up too quickly, nearly knocking over her chair. “Sorry! I get this way when I’m reading. Or researching. You could set off fireworks behind me and I’d never notice, so my husband always said. Ex-husband.”

Shit. So much for doing her makeup and impressing Noah—he’d been here twenty seconds and she’d already babbled about her failed marriage. She wouldn’t be surprised if he walked straight back out the way he’d come.

But he just said, “Enviable trait. I have to wear noise-­cancelling headphones if I want to concentrate for more than fifteen minutes at a time. More research about the school?”

“Not directly. I was reading the news clippings about Thomas Somersby’s disappearance in 1907. Most of them refer to the ghost boy of Havencross, the one your great-aunt says might date back to the Wars of the Roses, but one of the reporters also talked about tunnels constructed by the original medieval priory. They were supposedly used as hideouts or escape routes during the Scottish wars, and I’d like to look into that. Secret tunnels could easily provide answers to some supposed hauntings.”

“Absolutely. And secret passageways. Havencross supposedly has some of those.”

Juliet felt a chill at the base of her neck. She was already living entirely alone in a house with more rooms than she’d bothered to count and at least three staircases—did there really have to be hidden passages for her to worry about?

Not that ghosts need hidden passages, she reminded herself.

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