I fetched the lamp from the hall again so that we would have some illumination in the passage. I noted that there was a candle left on one of the steps inside the hidden corridor; apparently whomever made use of it had planned ahead concerning light. I'd actually meant to use that candle, but Shizuru stopped me as I reached for it.
"We should try not to leave traces of our presence if it's not absolutely necessary."
I went along with it, but once the bookcase was closed behind us, the door re-locked, and we were ascending the steps, I stopped to ask about it.
"Shizuru, why are you suddenly concerned about secrecy?"
"Oh?"
"You've gone out of your way to announce to Colonel Warburton, Dr. Brayle, and Mr. Dashiell whom you are and what you're here for. At dinner you took the time and trouble to lay out your lines of reasoning, and various options that you thought were possible.
"I didn't tell them everything."
"You told them more than you usually tell me."
"But Natsuki is so much more fun to play with!" she said, smiling. Before I even had the chance to fume, though, the laughter went out of Shizuru's expression. "In all honesty, Natsuki, I'm acting as I am towards the Warburton family with a purpose. Colonel Warburton appears to be at a tipping point and I do not believe that he can endure a long, drawn-out affair. So, I have set the cat among the pigeons."
"I see it. You barge right in, force them to panic—and end up spitting out feathers."
"As Natsuki says."
"It almost sounds more my style than yours. But what if nothing happens?"
"Then it would be proof that a human agency is responsible, and Colonel Warburton will at least know that he is haunted by the living rather than the dead."
I supposed that I followed that reasoning, too. The shadows of a diseased mind didn't cower in the presence of a consulting detective. Neither, I figured, would a phantom. Only a person would get scared and stop their activities because they feared discovery.
"Look at the floor," Shizuru said. I did, and it was easy to see what she was driving at from our experiences in the late Mrs. Warburton's room. While the passage was generally dusty and ill-kept, even to the point of having cobwebs in the corners a broad trail down the center was swept free of dust, without even any discernible footmarks showing.
"You were right; someone has been using this."
We climbed onward. The steps didn't go all the way up to the second floor but to a kind of mezzanine between the two levels.
"There should be a fork off to our right up ahead—ah, there we are."
"How did you know that? The passage straight on leads towards the Colonel's study, where you already deduced it went, but how did you know about the side passage?"
"From the height of the ceilings in the foyer and the parlor," she explained. "They're much lower than the dining room and library. The ground floor was high enough that this passage could be built between floors, and by knowing which rooms and corridors have ceilings at which heights, I could tell roughly where the passage ran."
I nodded.
"Let's take the side path," she suggested.
The right-hand passage wound on for a short while and ended at a door, not a wall or a trick panel that happened to be obvious on this side, but a plain wooden door. It wasn't even locked.
"Ara, this is excellent!" Shizuru exclaimed as we passed through. "I'd expected that there would be a room near this end of the passage that he'd use for making-up, but this would have served his purpose even better. A secret room!"
It wasn't particularly romantic, as such things went: just a plain, ordinary room, with ordinary walls with slightly overdone carved moldings. There was a writing desk-against the far wall beneath a shuttered window. The shutters were on the inside and could be sealed tightly to prevent the passage of light from within the room. I undid the latch and drew back the shutters, revealing not a typical window but a rose window with ornate stained-glass panes. I recognized it as being above the main door, but from the outside with the shutters closed behind it, it had appeared very different, lacking the lustrous color that shimmered in the light.
"We must be right over the foyer," I said, closing the shutters again.
"I believe so. But look, Natsuki; this is obviously the source of the apparition in the garden."
The other furnishings in the room did, as Shizuru said, settle the matter. On the desk were several items, including a wig-stand with a woman's auburn wig; there was also a cheval-glass and on a coat-rack was carelessly hung a flowing green dress. I remembered the shade of the wig from the portrait I'd noted in the dining room, a brighter red than Gregory Dashiell's hair.
"Catherine Dashiell," I said, recalling the image of the young woman smiling brightly up at her brother, and how his protective gaze on her so differed from he haunted look he now showed in person. "Warburton's sister."
Shizuru nodded.
"The shade of hair goes well with this dress," she remarked, "so I can believe that she might have had a fondness for this color. It's not one of her actual dresses, though."
"Oh?"
"On the one hand, she died over twenty years ago. It's very unlikely that the family would have kept her clothing for that long. In addition, even if Dashiell still did have any of his wife's clothing, if you examine this particular dress's fit, it's clearly a costume piece, meant to be swiftly pulled on over other clothing and then seen only at long distances, under poor light. Given the difference in their features, I doubt even Miss Warburton could successfully make herself up enough like her late aunt to stand close scrutiny."
I pointed to the desk.
"She might try."
Shizuru came over to see what I meant. Next to the wig there appeared to be a kind of make-up kit.
"Natsuki is right in spirit; this is an actor's kit, with greasepaint, spirit gum, and the like. And here is a vial with jasmine perfume."
"So somebody is playing ghost," I said, glancing at myself in the mirror. Eerie shadows lent me a surprisingly haggard appearance, startling me. "They come in here, make themselves up, then slip out into the library, around the corner and out to the garden, where they know that they'll be seen by Colonel Warburton, whose desk is by the window. Then they come back in here, remove their disguise, and rejoin the family in proceeding to respond to the Colonel's alarm. No, wait; how can he or she do that?"
Shizuru lifted the bottle of spirit gum from the make-up kit. It looked about three-fourths empty to me. She frowned thoughtfully; then smiled and replaced the vial.
"Shizuru?"
"Come with me; let us see if we can answer your question."
We left the hidden room essentially as we'd found it and returned to the fork in the passage. Since I now knew where I was, I could notice that one place where the passage turned was likely to avoid the Grange's atrium and main staircase, which stretched through both floors and so left no room for the hidden path. We took the other corridor and followed it most of the way across the house, where it rose another half-level of stairs to an apparently blank wall. Shizuru took the lamp from me and played it over the stonework.
"Ah, here we are!" She pressed her fingers against a slot in the stone at what would be eye level for a man and a small niche opened—a peephole, I realized. "Do you recognize where we are?"
I stood on tiptoe and peeked out.
"It's the corridor just outside the Colonel's study," I realized. "Right where we smelled that perfume."
"How easy, then, to leave its scent here for the Colonel to smell, and to remember."
"But why is that?"
"If the 'ghost' can only be seen at a distance, then there is an emotional distance that is created as well. It exists, but as something observed instead of directly experienced. Leaving a familiar scent, one not associated with anyone who is supposed to be in this house, brings the 'spirit' directly into the Colonel's presence. I doubt that these are the only tricks being played, either."
She closed the peephole.
"This hidden window serves another purpose. The actor can peek out to make sure no one is in the hall before doing this."
She turned another switch and a whole section of the brickwork swung open on what I could now see were cunningly concealed hinges. We went into the hall and shut the door behind us.
"So whomever is playing ghost can either be the first person to respond or straggle in at the end," I said. "But that still doesn't tell us who it is."
Shizuru shook her head.
"Oh, that?"
"Yes, that. Isn't that what you're here to find out?" I couldn't understand her cavalier attitude.
"I've had a firm suspicion of that since dinner, Natsuki."
I felt like an actor in a stage play as I executed a genuine, classic double-take.
"You've had what?"
"It was only a suspicion. Everything that we've uncovered since, though, goes to confirm it rather than the opposite. The evidence, such as it is, was very circumstantial, though. A skillful attorney would scatter my case to the winds, though in truth I do not believe an actual crime has been committed as yet. If I am to accuse a family member, then my case must be airtight, otherwise I am not likely to be believed."
"Then how are you going to get proof?"
"By making that person provide it."
"Just like that."
She gave me her most enigmatic smile.
"I do not believe that it will be particularly difficult." The smile shifted into a slight, thoughtful frown. "Indeed, I suspect that the apparition may well cooperate, if unwittingly."
I recognized that tone. I had accompanied Shizuru on enough of her cases to know that regardless of how I asked, cajoled, or demanded, she wasn't going to tell me any more unless she needed me to do something. It might have been a reluctance to commit herself, or maybe a way of protecting her own ego and reputation for infallibility, or out of consideration for the feelings of the one she'd accuse in case she was wrong, but I doubted it. Those motives might have served for a storybook detective, but for Shizuru Viola the reason was simpler: she enjoyed teasing me. My frustration and exasperation as I tried to follow her reasoning (to her credit, she always played fair in this little game, making sure that I had whatever data she did) seemed to give her endless entertainment.
Fine, I decided. After all, I was only at Warburton Grange at all for her sake, anyway. If it wasn't for Shizuru, I'd have been chasing my own dead, not the Colonel's. So let her have her fun.
I exhaled sharply, putting a little more exasperation into it than I actually felt.
"All right, then; what do we have to do?"
"First, it's time to talk to the Colonel again."
Shizuru walked to the study door and knocked, then when no one answered she knocked again. Once more there was no reply.
"In this case, I believe I shall do as Natsuki would."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Sometimes things are too important for politeness and elegance."
She then did in fact do what I would: she opened the door and walked straight in.
Warburton was seated at his desk; he jerked around in his chair at the sound of our entry.
"You! I told you to get out once already!"
"We do not have time for this, Colonel," Shizuru told him calmly. "I want you to tell me about these apparitions of your sister."
Warburton's eyes bulged; he trembled slightly. I wanted to step in, to add the additional weight of a second voice to the pressure he felt, but I was unsure of where Shizuru was taking things and so kept quiet rather than spoil whatever she was planning.
"What are you talking about? Who said anything about Catherine?"
"The conclusion was an elementary one," Shizuru remained calm in the face of his bluster.
"Don't be absurd," he barked.
"You've scented her perfume on the landing. You have seen her walk in the garden at night. You shot at her, but without effect. You dismissed the female servants in the hope that one of them was whom you saw, but it was to no avail. She keeps returning to you, back again and again, making her presence known in various ways even when she does not show herself. Can you deny it?"
He quailed, then rallied, striking his fist on the desk with enough force to make his whiskey glass rattle.
"It is none of your concern!" he roared. "I told you once to leave me be, and by God, you will! This is still my house, and you are a paid employee, no more!"
"Paid by your daughter, Colonel Warburton, who is terrified on your behalf."
He rose from his seat with a jerky, almost spasmodic movement and took two quick steps across the fantastically-colored Indian rug towards Shizuru. The violence that lingered just under the surface of the Colonel was obvious in every movement he made, and I readied myself to act if necessary. I wasn't going to let him lay a hand on Shizuru, not after she'd come all this way to help him!
"I won't say it again. My affairs are my own. Laurel is a good-hearted young lady, but there are things she can't understand. Forces at work—"
He broke off and glanced back at the window.
"It hasn't appeared yet tonight, has it?" Shizuru asked. Warburton whipped around back towards her, an expression of baffled rage on his face at the way Shizuru refused to obey him. His right hand opened and closed in sharp, almost savage movements as his anger wrestled with the sensibilities of a British officer and gentleman.
"Damn you, you interfering bitch!" he let his fury find an outlet in words instead of actions.
"Does it, then? Every night?"
His hand raised. I took a step forward, and then he let it drop back to his side. It was as if all the energy and vitality had drained out of him in an instant, his shoulders slumping, his head sagging, his entire posture growing slack. All Warburton's vital force seemed to be nothing more than the expression of his strong emotions, and once he had temporarily mastered those emotions he was left as a shadow of himself.
"Not every night," he said in a dull voice. "Only every third or fourth. But...she heralds her coming. The signs...grow closer and closer to this study. Tonight, she will appear again." His voice was thick and slurred, and I realized that he was drunk, not completely cast away, but definitely under the influence.
"At what time?" Shizuru said.
Warburton shuddered.
"When else?" he asked. "The stroke of midnight."
"Of course," Shizuru remarked as if it made complete sense to her. Maybe it did.
"Now, please, can't you just go? I don't know how you've learned so much but...but for everyone's sake, can't you just forget it? Just go, and leave me to my own damnation."
I glanced at Shizuru; she nodded.
"Very well, Colonel," she told him. "We'll leave you for now. I hope, though, to have better news for you later, and perhaps bring some peace to your household."
He looked at her with forlorn eyes, the eyes of a lost soul.
"There can be no peace in a house where the dead refuse to stay in the past."
"No," I agreed, startling Shizuru with my words or the fact I'd spoken up or both, "but it's not the house. We're the ones that the dead lay claim to."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A/N: I don't know if any of you caught the inconsistencies in the description of the ceiling heights in the ground-floor rooms, but if you did, award yourself two gold stars. If you not only noticed it but figured that I had to have a reason for it instead of it just being the Author Not Paying Attention, then you also get a thank-you for your trust!