Emily's Ghost (16 page)

"Good morning," Emily
called out pleasantly. "Can you tell me where I'll find the
librarian?"

The woman raised herself
slowly, one knee at a time, and smiled through a wince of arthritic
pain. "That'd be me, dear," she answered, brushing her hands clear
of soil. She reached into the pocket of her denim apron and pulled
out a rag to finish the cleanup.

She was short and very
stout. The flesh hung heavy and loose on her liver-spotted arms,
and her legs sagged into a bow shape under her weight. Her grey
hair had probably started the day tied back in a bun, but it wasn't
there now. "How can I help you?" she asked pleasantly.

"You manage all of this by
yourself?" Emily remarked, impressed. "The library and the
grounds?"

"'Tisn't much to manage,
dear," the old woman said as she pulled her apron over her head and
dropped it on a hook inside the door. "Everything in here was
published before the war -- that'd be the Great War, dear -- and
I'm sorry to say there isn't much demand for any of it. A few years
ago I began whiling away the hours outside. It started with a
little weeding and now I've turned into a maniac. I'm Mrs. Gibbs,"
she added.

Emily introduced herself
and said, "It's all perfectly lovely. But ... Newarth has no books
printed after 1914?"

The librarian smiled.
"Sure we do; they're in the Newarth
Public
Library. You're not from
around here, I suppose."

Emily shook her head,
feeling stupid. It hadn't occurred to her to scan past "Newarth
Library" in the white pages of the phone book.

"This library was built by
John Talbot. He was the owner of the biggest mill in town, and a
philanthropist of course -- they all were, back then. Very
concerned with the welfare of their towns. Still, things would be
less confusing if he'd named this the Talbot Library. Anyway, the
endowment dried to a trickle, the acquisitions stopped, and now we
get by on a wing and a prayer ...."

Emily wasn't hearing her
any longer. The certainty that she'd been feeling all morning
rushed in to overwhelm her. If there was a mill owner named John
Talbot, then he had a daughter named Hessiah Talbot. Who was
murdered.

"So," the librarian was
saying, "let me give you directions to the Newarth Public Library
--"

"No, no, I've come to the
right place, I really have," Emily answered feverishly. "Do you
have copies of the
Newarth Sentinel
in your archives?"

"Oh, dear me, yes; almost
every issue from l868 to 1914."

"On
microfiche?"

The librarian laughed out
loud; the old gentleman awoke from his doze, harrumphed, and
snapped his morning paper back into position.

"My dear, we have the
crumbling originals. You'll have to help me get them out; the
bindings are very heavy. Microfiche?" She laughed again.

Emily spent the next two
hours in the large, dry cellar of the Newarth Library, pouring over
yellowed and brittle newsprint. She'd gone directly to the first
issue to be printed after the day of the murder on August 12, 1887
and confirmed what she already knew: that she was not insane. There
it all was, in old-fashioned black and white.
Shocking Murder of Textile Heiress. Robbery the
Motive.

Ah,
well
, she thought with a jittery
sigh.
At least I've saved myself the cost
of a shrink.

She read through the next
few issues. Every detail was there, just as Fergus O'Malley had
described it: the frenzied hunt, door to door, for the murderer;
the discovery of a silver spoon emblazoned with a "T" near the
front door of O'Malley's flat; his sensational arrest and parade
past jeering, rock-throwing citizens. After that, the trial itself
-- swift and, by all accounts, impartial. Soon after came the
sentencing, and finally, the hanging.

The hanging. It came like
a blow to the stomach, knocking away the fascination she'd been
feeling and leaving her dizzy with nausea. She was thrown back
bodily into her nightmare as she read the account: "The murderer,
bound and blindfolded, lashed out with his legs twice, and then he
was still. Justice has been done, and a terrorized town will sleep
more safely tonight."

She stopped reading for a
little while, then brought herself under control and forced herself
to continue, taking constant notes.

At the bottom of page four
she found a postscript to the hanging: an eleven-year old crippled
boy had tried to attack the hangman and was bound over to a home
for wayward youth just outside of Newarth. The boy refused to give
his name to the authorities, and no one had come forward to
identify him.

"Ah, Fergus," Emily
murmured, overcome with sadness. "Your little brother really did
love you."

She closed her eyes,
reflecting on it all. Then it occurred to her that Fergus had never
said a thing about his brother being crippled; she'd only dreamed
it.

So how did she know? Had
Fergus somehow been able to penetrate her nightmare? Was she
remembering Fergus's past because it was really her own past?
Was
she
Fergus?
Reincarnated?
Oh, God
, she thought wearily. Could it possibly get any worse? She
folded her arms across the pile of
Sentinels
and buried her head
there.

After a while she sighed
and lifted her head--and there he was, with his arms folded against
his chest, leaning on a file cabinet marked "Retired - A to H".
Same clothes, same arrogance, same glint in his eye.

She felt a kind of
triumphant shock at the apparition. "Fergus! What are you doing
here?"

"Reliving old times," he
said dryly.

He looked as incredibly
real as ever. But her latest speculations had left her muddled;
what if he
was
a
kind of alter ego, a throwback to an earlier life of hers? "You
shouldn't be here," she said, stalling for time. "You said you'd
let me do the research on my own."

"And so I planned. But
there seems to be a limit to how far apart we can be." He pointed
to the crystal that hung around her neck and added, "About the time
ye hit the shopping district, I found myself being yanked out of
yer place. Which is just as well. You'll be needing me
help."

In a barely controlled
voice she said, "Are you telling me we cannot get farther than
forty-five miles apart without your popping up?"

He shrugged. "It
appears."

"I will not be joined at
the hip to you, Fergus!" she cried, exploding with frustration.
"You can't be here, dammit! Someone is bound to find
out!"

"Keep up the shoutin' and
someone will."

Right on cue the librarian
called down, "Is everything all right down there?"

"Ahh ... yes, m'am," Emily
called back. "I was just reading aloud."

She heard the librarian
murmur to someone, "What a strange young thing she is," and then
walk away from the stairwell. Emily lowered her voice to a hiss.
"Where have you been, anyway?"

"Watchin' ye make a bloody
fool of yerself--when I wasn't watchin' your picture
box."

"
What?
You were in my condo the whole
time?"

"Not the
whole
time. The folks
below you was havin' a shindig and I slipped in to see what the
noise was about. They are fond of their drink, them university
types. And the language. Migod."

"What did you see,
Fergus?"

"Not much," he answered
with a shrug. "A lot of back-slappin' and belchin'. One of 'em
juggled three beer bottles. Then two young ladies --"

"Not down there, you
jerk
! In my apartment!"

"Oh. There." He blushed a
deep, deep red. "Nothing."

Emily was absolutely
scandalized. "You saw us
together,
" she whispered,
devastated. "I can't believe this." A vivid mental picture
presented itself of Lee Alden and her, locked in passion. She
looked away, then shook her head. Tears stung her eyes. "Have you
no sense of shame?"

"Have
I
no sense of shame? I like that!"
Fergus answered, turning indignant. "Do ye have any idea what yer
behavior seems like to a man like me? In my day a woman -- even the
poorest woman -- would never live alone, much less invite a man in
alone, much less throw herself at 'im the way ye did. Not unless
she was the worst kind of tramp."

"But this
isn't
your day, is it?"
she said, seething. "Men don't fool around with the town tramp and
then propose to virgins any more. There are no virgins any more
--"

"The devil there
aren't!"

"Believe it, Fergus. The
double standard has gone the way of the buggy whip. Society permits
men and women to come together as equals --"

"But what do they come
together
for
, if
not to marry?"

She blinked. "Well -- for
pleasure."

"But that's what tramps
are for!"

"I told you, Fergus, there
are no tramps any more. Well, that's not exactly true. I suppose
there are, but -- oh, skip it. The point is, what the
hell
were you doing
spying on me?"

"What did ye expect?" he
asked with dignity. "I'm a male."

"You see?" she asked,
throwing her hands up in the air. "That's my point about you. A
female -- ghost or alive -- would never spy. She would have allowed
us our ... moment of privacy."

"I thought ye said men and
women were equal. Ye talk as if the female is the superior sex
today."

"Not at all," Emily
replied cooly. "I would expect a modern male to behave in exactly
the same way." But a little voice inside her said,
Uh-huh. Name one.

"I see," said Fergus.
"Well, then, accept me apology. I'll try to behave in the manner of
a modern male. It's the least I can do."

He watched her curiously.
"Will ye be marryin' the man, then?"

"Of course not!" she
snapped. "He's a United States Senator."

Fergus nodded sagely. "I
understand. Above your station."

"No, that's not it," she
said irritably. "We don't marry according to station any more.
Anyone can marry anyone."

"Ah. He doesn't love you,
then."

"I didn't say that! I ...
have no way of knowing," she added in an overly casual
voice.

"Sometimes men don't say,"
he agreed in a helpful way. "But ye told him ye loved
him
, of
course."

"I don't have the faintest
idea whether I love him!"

"Ye didn't do it for
money, surely?" Fergus asked, shocked.

"Of course
not!"

"Then--"

"That doesn't mean I'm a
tramp!" she shouted, slamming her hand on the table. "This is
different! These are the nineties!"

"If ye say so," he said,
rubbing the back of his neck. "No doubt it'll come clearer to
me."

Suddenly his head jerked
up in the direction of the stairs. He began to more or less
vaporize in front of her. ln a panic she hissed, "Wait -- don't
disappear!" then turned in time to beam reassuringly at the
approaching librarian.

"I heard a crash," the old
woman said, looking around.

"That was me, stomping a
bug," Emily improvised. "The shouting was me, too," she added.
"Spiders terrify me."

"They oughtn't to," the
librarian said crisply. "They're
quite
helpful in the garden. Have
you found what you need?"

"Oh, yes. Actually, I'm
doing a kind of historical piece on the murder of Hessiah Talbot.
It's covered in great detail by the
Sentinel
."

"You're interested in the
Hessiah Talbot murder! How wonderful!" the librarian cried,
clapping her hands together. Instantly she thawed and became
friendly again. "Then you know that the publisher of the
Sentinel
was a good
friend of John Talbot, which is one reason for the thorough
coverage."

Mrs. Gibbs lowered her
battered weight into a chair opposite Emily at the long oak table
and settled in for a chat. "It was an absolutely shocking event at
the time. And of immense historical importance to the
area.

The Talbots had been the
dominant force in Newarth for four generations," Mrs. Gibbs
continued. "But after Hessiah Talbot was murdered, her family sold
the mill and moved to California, setting the mill in motion on a
downhill course. Talbot manor was allowed to fall into near-ruin as
well, part of the curse that fell on Newarth and is with us
still."

"Not a curse, surely,"
Emily couldn't help arguing. "Just simple economics. Historical
trends were already threatening the success of smaller textile
mills. Concentration of labor, foreign competition--"