RESTLESS SPIRITS

by

Flora Kidd

© copyright by Flora Kidd, Jan. 2001
cover art by
ISBN 1-58608-171-3
Rocket ISBN 1-58608-297-3
New Concepts Publishing
4729 Humphreys Rd.
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com

Other books available from NCP by Flora Kidd
Until We Meet Again
To Hell or Melbourne

1

Have you ever felt you are being haunted, that the restless spirit of someone dead and long forgotten is trying to communicate with you from the past?

After the end of my five year affair with Carl Reuter, my erstwhile teacher and lover, I came to work in this old city on the east coast of Canada, three thousand miles away from where I had lived with him. I came to forget.

Since I arrived here, whenever I've walked along the street of red-brick Victorian houses where I live with a distant cousin, Natalie Evans, I've often felt that someone I cannot see has walked behind me, a weird sensation that has sent me hurrying along towards the corner house I share with Natalie.

But it was not until nine months after Carl and I had split that I actually saw the person who had been dogging my footsteps.

On a day in early May, the first warm day of spring, red bricks glowed in the afternoon sunlight and bay windows gleamed with a soft diffused light. The shadows of maple trees stretched, purple black, across the gray pavement and their slender brown branches swayed in the breeze. Delicate buds, pale green and pink, were slowly unfurling.

Then, just behind me, footsteps, not heavy, not male, but made by booted feet and accompanied by a faint rustling noise. A quick glance over my shoulder showed me the sidewalk, dappled with sunlight and shadow, stretching behind me. The only person I could see was a man in the distance, walking slowly, with a slight limp, yet the female footsteps passed me, continuing along the street.

I ran after the sound and lost it. Reaching Natalie’s house, I turned off the sidewalk and went up the three shallow steps. My hand shook a little as I put my key in the lock of the double front door. That would be because I’d been running, I told myself and not because I was badly spooked. I turned and pushed the door open.

At that moment a woman appeared in front of me.

She was wearing a long blue dress. A Paisley shawl, green, red and blue, was draped over her shoulders. Reddish hair was braided into a tight knot below the close fit of the back of her high-brimmed gray bonnet.

"Excuse me," I said. "You're in my way. I'd like to go in the house."

She did not turn to face me. With both hands she lifted her skirt and walked into the house.

For a moment I stood still. I could swear my mouth was hanging open as I stared after her. She faded into the dimness of the hallway.

"Hey, what are you up to? Who are you?" I demanded.

She did not come back to answer my questions so I went after her, stopping short when I saw that the hallway floor was made from wide planks of pine wood. A small carpet, a square of woven wool, indigo blue, crimson, and yellow, lay in the center of the floor. Above my head a brass oil lamp swung from an intricately carved ceiling rose. Before me a staircase curved up to the second floor. Its handrail was a simple beveled piece of smoothed pine supported by slender rods painted white.

I knew then I had entered the wrong house!

Embarrassed by my mistake I turned quickly to leave before someone asked me what I was doing there and almost collided with the woman in the Paisley shawl. She was so close that my arm should have brushed against hers but I had felt nothing.

"I'm sorry. I've made a mistake," I muttered.

The woman said nothing. She didn’t even look at me. She took off her bonnet and shawl. With the bonnet dangling from one hand by its ribbons, she draped the shawl over her arm and floated away from me. I say she floated because her feet did not seem to touch the floor. She went towards the open door of a room on the right of the front door. As if attached to her by some sort of leash, I walked after her, admiring her graceful figure, the thickness of her dark red hair. It was coiled in braids over her ears and wound into a knot at her nape. Ringlets hung over her ears and beside her cheeks.

"Who are you? And whose house is this?" I said, going forward to catch up with her in the open doorway.

My forehead and then my nose hit something hard. My eyes watered. I stepped backwards. There was no doorway leading into a room before me and no woman with reddish hair who was wearing a long a blue dress. I was standing barely centimeters away from the framed print of a painting by the Canadian artist Lawren Harris. Its title was ALGOMA REFLECTIONS and it had been a gift to Natalie from her father when she had bought the house. It hangs on a plain white wall that separates the hallway from the house next door.

The tip of my nose tingled from its contact with the glass in the frame of the print. I was breathing heavily and noisily through my open mouth and my heart was pumping hard. I felt I had been running fast, too fast. I was drained of energy, and I was alone, feeling frustrated because I had not been able to follow the woman in the blue dress.

I looked up. No brass lamp hung from a carved ceiling rose. I looked down. No Turkish rug lay in the middle of a pine wood floor. I was in the hallway of the house I shared with Natalie. The floor was made of shining oak strips. The woven mat she had brought back from Denmark after a visit there was in the middle of the floor. Across the hall, through an open door I could see the Ikea settee and coffee table. Natalie likes contemporary design in everything. She likes white walls, with splashes of vivid color everywhere in oversize cushions and huge prints of exotic places.

"Natalie? You home?" I called, hoping to hear her voice call back, but she did not answer. I wondered if she was working over time at the local oil refinery where managers and staff were filling in for operators who were on strike. I clenched my fist and the sharp edges of my keys made dents in the muscles. My left shoulder ached from the weight of my shoulder bag and the briefcase I was holding. The front door was still open behind me. A truck rattled by. The choking smell of engine exhaust seeped into the hall. I could see sunlight and shadow on red brick, branches swaying in the wind. Everything seemed normal outside.

I closed the front door and went along the passage to the kitchen. The room looked as it always did, white painted cabinets shining, pine table gleaming in the golden glow of late afternoon sunlight that slanted through the panes of the old sash window. In a corner, the refrigerator hummed contentedly. In another corner, the paneled pine door to the basement was slightly open. Thinking Mrs. Cains, who cleans the house for us, had left it open, I closed it.

Now everything looked normal in the kitchen.

So what had happened to me when I opened the front door ? Where had other woman in blue come from and where had she gone?

I dumped my bag and briefcase on the table, threw my keys down, dragged out a chair, slumped on it. Elbows on the table, head between my hands, I tried to make sense of what I believed I had seen.

A woman in a bonnet and shawl had floated into a house I'd never been in and had walked through a door into a room that did not exist..

The long blue dress and high-brimmed bonnet belonged to the nineteenth century, circa 1850s. I knew that because I had studied the history of western dress at Art College and I was presently working as an assistant Art curator in the Provincial Museum, on loan to the History department, helping to set up an exhibit about the history of the city from 1783 onwards. The section I was working on was entitled THE MAKING OF A COLONIAL URBAN COMMUNITY. From the museum's storage area I provided clothes for the models of representing past residents of the city who were shown in the exhibit. I dressed the models in clothes I had found;. long dresses, bonnets, shawls, pantaloons, boots for the women; homespun trousers, jackets, cotton collarless shirts and caps for shipbuilders, tradesmen and lumberjacks; frock coats, waistcoats, cravats and watch chains and top hats for shipping agents, lawyers, bankers and clergymen.

For weeks I’d been a part of the city’s nineteenth century scenario, living with its inhabitants, breathing the same atmosphere they had breathed, joining in their celebrations, suffering their hardships.

Less than an hour ago I had pulled from a hamper of Victorian clothes a long blue dress, its high neckline edged with a frill of white. It had once belonged to a woman who had lived in the city in the middle of the nineteenth century whose descendants had donated some of her clothes to the museum for use in exhibits. The dress was cotton printed with tiny white flowers. I was impressed by its good design and quality. A label on the inside said it had been designed and made by a dressmaker in Liverpool, England. The next day I intended to fit it on a female mannequin, representing the wife of a local timber merchant and shipping agent.

Was that why I had imagined a woman in a long blue dress, Paisley shawl and gray bonnet float into the house before me ? Was I so engrossed in my work that I was bringing it home with me?

Satisfied with my reasoning, feeling more calm, I decided to raid the fridge to see what was there for supper when I heard someone tapping on a door. The door to the basement. Tap, tap, tap. Not knuckles knocking. More like the gentle tap of finger nails.

Tap, tap,tap, followed by a definite scratching noise. Finger nails raking a door panel.. I pushed my chair back. Its legs grated on the tiled floor. I made sure that whoever was on the other side of the basement door would hear me coming.

"Who’s there?" I called and yanked the door open.

Nothing. Only the stairs slanting down into distant dimness.

Then something moved close to me. Something curled against my legs. Hand to mouth to stifle a scream I looked down.

A big Siamese cat, cream, brown and black, smooth-haired, sat at my feet and stared up at me with vivid blue eyes.

"Oh, you..," I gasped and collapsed on the nearest chair.

"Mee-ow," the cat replied loudly and circled my legs once more.

" I guess you got in when Mrs. Cains opened the back door and then she couldn’t find you so she left the basement door open," I reasoned out loud and stood up "Come on. Out you go. This way."

I opened the door to the back porch, unbolted the outer door, hoping it would follow me and go out into the yard.

" Mee-ow, mee-ow," it said, talking back at me as Siamese cats often do It rubbed my legs, looked up at me, mee-owed again then trotted off towards the basement door that was still open.

"No you don’t." I strode across the room, but I was too late. The cat disappeared into the dimness of the basement stairs.

I couldn’t let it stay in the basement. Imagining the sort of mess it might make down there, I knew that Natalie would be furious with me for not making it leave the house so I followed it, clicking on the basement light by the switch at the top of the stairs.

The basement was long and narrow. At some time it had been modernized, its brick walls insulated and covered with knotting pine paneling, its floor covered with vinyl tiles. At the end under the kitchen were two small rooms, one housing the washer and drier. In the other room the oil furnace clanked on just as I descended the stairs. Natalie had arranged the rest of the underground space as a sort of sitting room- study with shelves for books, a desk for her computer, a Television and a hideabed sofa in case we had any overnight guests.

The Siamese came back to me, rubbed against my legs, made several loud mee-ows and to my amazement slid through a wide, dark crack in the wall that separated the room from the basement next door.

The memory of what had happened when I had tried to follow the woman in blue into a room that did not exist in Natalie’s house was still fresh in my mind. I didn’t want to collide with a wall again. so I stretched out an arm and put a hand on the wall, close to the crack. The paneling moved under my fingers. The crack widened. There was a door in the dividing wall. It had been left open by someone and the cat had gone through into the grayness I could see through the opening.

" Puss, puss, puss, " I called. "Hey, come out of there. That’s someone else’s house. I can’t follow you in there. Puss, puss, puss."

The cat ignored my weak attempts to coax it out of the other basement so I tried to push the door back farther. Something was behind it. I pushed harder, determined by now to go into the other basement, find the cat and bring it out of there. The door shuddered and whatever was behind it shifted a little. I pushed again. A scraping sound and the gap widened enough for me to squeeze through into the other dim room.

It had not been finished like Natalie’s basement. The floor was rough earth and the walls were rock. Dusty gray light from windows high up in the rocky walls, showed shapes of furniture; huge Victorian sideboards and wardrobes, cabinets with glass fronts, all jammed together with hardly space for a person to walk between them. Moth-eaten drapes were thrown across enormous chesterfields and armchairs with sagging seats and frayed upholstery, and there were several enormous chests of drawers complete with hinged mirrors. I looked back at the door to see what was behind it….a dining table. On the other side of the door was a tallboy about five feet high with cupboard and several drawers. Piled on top of it were folded packing boxes, the sort used by movers of household goods.

And everywhere there was dust, thick and gray, making me want to sneeze, cold dampness underfoot, cobwebs hanging from a dark, distant ceiling, and the stink of something organic, rotting somewhere in a corner cluttered with old wood.

Mice scampering away across a mahogany sideboard, half shrouded in a calico dust cover, yellow with age. No wonder the cat wanted to be in there.

" Puss, puss, puss, " I called. I was advancing as far as I could without moving anything when I saw the woman in the blue dress again. She was a faint shape floating before me.

"No," I said out loud. "I’m not following you again. My nose still hurts."

She turned and beckoned to me, then floated on to distant corner of the basement.

I followed. I saw her bending over an old silver chest made of wood and bound by strips of iron. I was reaching forward to touch the chest when I heard something creak, high up. Someone in the house walking across the floor above? I looked back at the ironbound chest. The phantom woman had gone.

Another sound like someone trying to pull open a door that was jammed shut by damp. I stood still, waiting, listening. Dust tickled my nose. I sneezed several times, violently and uncontrollably.

At the top of the flight of steps a door opened slowly, hinges creaking. A broad shaft of daylight slanted down..

"Bossy. Are you down there, gone crazy again?"

A male voice. Not a local accent. I could see his shape, dark against the light at the top of the stairway.

He moved. Forward. He was coming down.

Help.

Frantic thoughts raced through my mind. What would I say when he saw me? How would I explain my presence here, standing amongst the dusty decrepit furniture, the boxes and the chests ?

Hide. Quickly. Where?

Behind the tallboy and the piled packing cases.

He swore crisply and briefly when he missed his footing and slid down the rest of the steps. Suppressing a longing to giggle at his foul language and surprise, I ducked behind the tallboy and squatted down in the narrow space between it and the wall. I held my breath and tried not to move in case he heard me. I willed him to go back up the ladder and close the door so I could open the lid of the old silver chest.

Dust was still floating about, getting up my nostrils. To prevent myself from sneezing again I pressed an index finger under my nostrils.

I couldn’t see him and could only hope and pray he had not and would not see me. I thought of him as an enemy, an intruder come between me and my desire to search his basement.

"Bossy? Where are you ? This place is a mess. Not touched for years. The old woman can’t have come down here ever. If she had...."

He didn’t finish that sentence because he blundered into some article of furniture and swore again. I heard a crash and the sound of old wood splintering as he threw something to one side and it landed heavily on another piece of furniture. He was forcing a passage between the packed chairs, tables and chest of drawers and he was coming towards the tallboy.

He was coming towards me!

Something landed on the folded packing cases on top of the tallboy. They formed a sort of roof over the space where I was crouching. I almost yelled out in surprise. Dust showered down. I pressed a finger harder against my nostrils, but could not stop the sneeze this time. It shook my whole body and seemed to me to echo through the basement like a loud blast on a trombone.

The silence after the explosion of sound was tense, nerve-racking. I dared not breathe.

"Bossy."

He spoke softly this time. He was nearby. Too near. Very close to the tallboy.

I tried to imagine what he looked like, recalling the silhouette against the light at the top of the ladder…tall but not gangling, a square, compact figure. Not an old man. Not a youth either. In the middle somewhere, voice mature, used to giving orders. And to swearing.

"So that's where you are. Trespassing again, eh? In our neighbor's basement. I should have locked the door the last time we looked in there."

His voice was not as clear this time. He had moved past the tallboy, towards the open door in the dividing wall. I heard the legs of the table behind the door grating on the stone floor as he pushed it away, the creak of the hinges when he pushed the door wide open. He walked without a sound. I could hear no squeak of rubber soles on vinyl tiles when he went through to the other basement

I breathed again. My knees and calves were aching and beginning to shake. I had to stand up. My back to the wall behind the tallboy and adjacent to the open doorway I slid slowly upright. By leaning to the right I avoided colliding with the overhead cartons.

The squeak of the door being pushed to heralded his return. I drew in my breath, slid down the wall again, squatting, waiting for him to come back.

I would stay where I was, wait for him to walk past again, go up the ladder, close the door at the top.

"Okay. I can take a hint. Stay there if you want. See if I care."

He spoke beside me, startling me. Was he speaking to me? Had he seen me? Or was he still talking to the unseen Bossy? The hinges of the door creaked again. He was closing it.

"I'll leave this open a bit so you can come back if you change your mind," he added.

Go, oh, please, go, I wished silently. I couldn’t stay still and silent much longer.

He was standing there, I was sure, just within the doorway, standing still and listening. Only the tallboy between us. I had a crazy desire to laugh.

Something landed on the cartons above me. They rattled together. Dust rose. I cringed down, pinching my nose between desperate fingers. Something was hissing, a wild feline sound. The cat. had come out of hiding, was leaping about, above me.

"You've been here all the time. I thought so," he scolded the animal. "Been catching mice again, eh ? And rattling things about. Trying to scare me out of this place, I know. Well, I'm not leaving this house yet. Not for a while. It needs to be cleaned out. So you'd better get used to the idea of having me around."

A carton slithered and tilted, came down on the top of my head, pushed by the cat taking off.

"Stop that. Keep your claws to yourself. I'm warning you. More crazy behavior like this and you'll find yourself dead and put out with the garbage. All right. Run away and hide again. Starve to death." The good-humored drawl had gone. He sounded angry.

Cruel, chauvinistic pig, I thought, hating him for his attitude to the cat. I longed to stand up and let him know he could be sued for ill-treating an animal, but I could only stay where I was, aching and cold, willing him to leave.

Minutes passed. I did not hear him move away or go up the ladder, but I heard the door close. I stood up, gulping in breaths of dusty air, and squeezed from behind the tallboy, thankful that he had left the communicating door slightly ajar. I would come back later, in more suitable clothing and with a flashlight. I would come back and search through the massive furniture for whatever it was the woman in blue wanted me to find. Natalie was going away tomorrow evening, flying to Montreal to some conference or other and would not be back until Monday

I would have all weekend to solve the mystery of the woman in blue and the basement of the house next door.

2

I suppose at this point I ought to tell you something about myself. My name is Lisa Dunne. I was born twenty six years ago in a small town in Washington State in the north west coast of U S A. I am an only child. My parents, Julie and Frank Dunne are still alive, but they divorced some years ago when I was twenty years old. Dad now lives in California and is a computer progammer for a well-known international company. Mom, who is a Canadian, lives in Vancouver and is an executive secretary for the C E O of a big pulp and paper company. Recently she was married again, to her boss, Euan Mackie.

I had a happy childhood. Nothing in my upbringing or background was out of the ordinary, at least I didn’t think so. I had suffered no brain damage, no traumatic personal loss through the death of a loved one and no sexual or physical abuse. Nothing had happened to me, as far as I knew, that would lead me to start hallucinating in my late twenties. I had never participated in any drug orgies when a student. I had never abused alcohol.

But I have always possessed a lively imagination.

Had I seen a ghost that afternoon? Or had I merely hallucinated?

I decided the only way I could come to terms with what had happened when I had opened the front door on my return from work earlier in the day, was to write about the experience.

I was sitting at the antique desk in the bay window of the living room scribbling away when Natalie came in. She is about thirty four years of age and is a qualified chemical engineer who works at the local oil refinery. Her appearance is very unusual. From her Lebanese mother she has inherited a dusky complexion and dark brown eyes. From her father she has inherited fair curly hair which she has bleached blonde. The result is eye-catching and I sometimes wonder how many men have been deceived by her curvaceous body, her striking coloring, her throaty voice and wide sparkling smile and have made passes at her only to be repulsed gently, but firmly. She is a product of the age, a career woman who has no interest in marriage or any other close relationship with a man…Or with a woman. She enjoys her freedom to do what she wants and go where she wishes. She always says a husband and children would cramp her life style. And so would a lover.

She was wearing baggy sweat suit pants and a kangaroo jacket. Her hair was darkened by sweat and there was a pink glow in her smooth, olive-hued cheeks.

"What's happened to you?" I teased her. "Where's the neat black suit and white shirt all successful career women are wearing these days?"

"I left them in the office. I've just come from an Aerobics class, " she replied. " Now I feel exhausted. There must be an easier way to lose weight. What did you have for supper?"

"Two chicken drumsticks and a salad."

"Is that all?"

Natalie loves to eat.

"It's enough. If you want to be slim, you should eat less."

"And get anorexia nervosa like you ? Not on your life."

"I don't have anorexia."

"Well, you're too thin. If you don’t eat more than you do you’ll start hallucinating. Being an arty type you must know that’s what some modernists did in the nineteen twenties. They starved themselves and started imagining things that didn’t exist. Then they painted what they thought they had seen."

Her remarks hit a nerve. I looked down at the page before me. I wasn’t painting or drawing what I had seen. I was writing about it. Could Natalie be right ? Was I undernourished and so beginning to see visions?

"I'm not anorexic," I retorted in self-defense, but she left the room. I turned back to my notebook.

My mind was blank. I began to doodle, drawing abstract shapes on the paper. Natalie came back into the room carrying a tray laden with food. She set it down on the long coffee table then went over to the C D player, slid in a disc and punched a button. The sad sound of a flute accompanied by a harp drifted from the speakers cunningly hidden about the room.

She sat down on the chesterfield, curling her legs under her, picked up the bowl of salad from the tray and began to eat with a fork.

"Recognize the sound?" she asked. "Marie and Sandy Williams, the twin sisters who performed at that St. Patrick’s Day party we went to. It's their first C D. Mostly old Celtic tunes. Easy listening. I did introduce you to them, didn't I? I know I thought at the time they might be people you could relate to. You, being like them, an artistic type."

"I remember them," I said without much interest. "How long have you owned this house?"

"I bought it two years ago. Dad said property is the best investment. I used the bonuses the company gave me for being a clever little engineer as down payment for the mortgage. The rent you pay me for your room and use of the facilities helps me pay off the debt."

"Do you know when it was built ?"

"After 1877, I would think. There was a big fire in that year. It nearly destroyed the south end of the city. It's really half a house. You must have noticed how narrow it is, somehow one-sided."

"I guess the other half is next door."

" Right. Number 3O5"

"And that is still vacant?"

"I’m not sure. I saw a guy going in there yesterday evening. I would have said hello to him, welcomed him to the neighborhood sort of thing, but he moved too fast for me. Went in the house and slammed the door shut. I think he guessed I was going to speak to him and made a hasty retreat."

"He could have been a tradesman," I suggested. "Do you know who used to live in there?"

"An old woman. I never met her. She was about ninety or more when she died last summer. She owned the house and lived there alone. Andrea Murphy, the real estate agent, told me the old lady left it to a distant relative in her will and it was taking a while for the lawyers to find him or her." Natalie shrugged her shoulders and stood up. "Like a drink?"

"No thanks."

"Sure? You don’t look too well, a bit pale and peaky."

"I'm okay."

" Not pining for Carl, I hope."

I had been pining a little for what had been, for an illusion I had lost, but the feeling had not been so sharp lately. "No way. Pining for anyone or anything is a complete waste of time," I asserted.

"Good " She stretched her arms and yawned. " I think I'll make myself some decaff: coffee. Sure you don't want anything?"

"Some chocolate milk or hot cocoa?" I asked hopefully, changing my mind.

She nodded and left the room.

I often wished I could be more like her. But I wasn’t. Years ago, when I was nineteen, I had been deluded into thinking I had found the man I could love forever. A teacher of painting at the Art College I had attended, Carl was handsome strong-willed and outspoken. He had been much sought after by his students, both female and male. But I was the one he had chosen to be his lover and house-mate. Defying my parents' advice and protests, while still a student, I had moved in with him, lived with him and loved him, holding nothing back. For six years I believed myself to be happy, and was completely under his domination. When I graduated with a Fine Arts degree in Art History and Conservation he had found me work at a local art gallery so I could stay with him and although I’d thought I was capable of finding a better job, doing the work I liked most in a museum, I stayed because I believed he cared about me. Never once did I suspect that he would break up our relationship so abruptly.

Out of the blue it had come, the shocking, bruising end of the affair.

"I'm going to Europe. Alone. I need to be alone to look around, to think, to re-invent myself," Carl said one morning. "I'm losing it, you must see that Lise There's nothing original coming through. I'm repeating myself, over and over. Living with you is too comfortable, too easy. You're too compliant. I need new challenges. You understand?"

"I understand."

And I had. I’d known how artists need to have change, go to new places, meet new people, refresh their spirits, but it had hurt to realize he blamed me for his lack of inspiration. "How long will you be gone?"

"I don't know. I want freedom, complete freedom. From this city, from the college. From you." He had stared into my eyes, his own wide open, without warmth. It gave me a shock to be stared at by him in that cold way. I'd seem him look at others like that, at critics of his work or at students who sucked up to him, but never at me until that moment. "I want to feel I need not come back, Lise," he had continued. "I don't want to hurt you, but this is the end of the road for me with you. You understand what I'm saying?"

"I've told you, yes. You don't have to keep on saying it. I understand. I've already said I do."

"Then we can still be friends? No hard feelings?"

He had sat beside me, an arm around my waist. He had even kissed my cheek and rubbed his own cheek against my hair.

"No hard feelings. You have to do what you have to do." I had tried to be cool and calm, but my voice had wobbled and tears had sprung into my eyes.

He had been satisfied with my trite answer and had left a week later. I had even seen him off at the airport. He had been in high spirits, promising to send postcards from all the places he visited. He had passed out of my life, leaving me behind, dry-eyed but desolate. So far I had not received one postcard from him.

The gentle and nostalgic Celtic music ended. In the quiet that followed I stopped doodling and began to write. The point of the pencil moved slowly across the page. I felt a chill go down my spine.

What was the matter now? Why wasn't the pencil moving speedily in my usual scrawl? I tried to lift the point from the paper to see if there was something sticking to it, but I could not move my fingers. They were clamped to the pencil and did not obey any message I was sending to them. The pencil point moved on, forming beautiful, slanting copperplate letters, words running into each other, on and on and on, mercilessly until my hand began to ache as if some rheumatic spasm had atrophied the muscles.

The writing stopped. The pencil slid sideways, rolled away. I stared at the page. The short hairs on my nape pricked and I felt again an icy shiver slide down my spine. I read what the pencil had written

"Today I said goodbye to S.J. Now I know how E felt when L eloped, but I cannot laugh about it or pretend I do not care. I cannot even weep. We do not weep in this family even when we are cut to the heart. I did not know I loved him until he was gone from me. I did not mean to love him. I have been taught that it is a sin to love a man who is already married. In my heart I have committed adultery, I have loved a married man even though there was never any physical intimacy between us.

He has gone. I feel desolate. If only I could die."

I stared at the writing before me. Goose pimples crawled over my skin.

Who had taken control of the pencil and written that long screed? I had heard of automatic writing, of the theory some people have that if you sit long enough relaxed with a pen in your hand and sheets and sheets of paper before you, a spirit wishing to make contact with you will take control of the pen and write messages. I was skeptical of the idea. I did not believe in ghosts either.

Until this afternoon.

I read again what had been written.

"I feel desolate. If only I could die."

" Did you die? Is that what you are trying to tell me?" I said softly.

The sound of my own voice startled me. I looked around quickly. Natalie had not come back into the room. I could hear her talking on the phone in the kitchen.

I turned back to the notebook, picked up the pencil, turned to a new page and looked through the window while I waited.... For what? More automatic writing?

"Did you die?" I whispered. "Tell me, please tell me how you died. Was your death self-inflicted? Or did someone murder you? Is that why your spirit won't rest? Why you are contacting me? Do you want me to find out what happened to you?"

The pencil point did not move. I looked through the window. A white mist, like a curtain of thin white cotton, almost blotted out my view of the buildings on the opposite side of the street. I could only guess it had wafted in from the sea, the result of warm sunlight shining all day on the cold current of water that sweeps down the eastern shores of Canada from the Arctic.

While I stared, the mist grew thicker and thicker. It was now like thick gray wool. Light from a gas lamp fizzed in cold air. A two-wheeled buggy drew up at the curb. Its horse stood patiently, head down. I felt someone was standing beside me. I turned, thinking Natalie had come back into the room.

But it was not Natalie in baggy warm-up pants who stood beside me. A tall, slim woman was leaning forward and looking out of the window. She wore a blue dress with a frill of white lace at the high neckline. Her reddish hair hung in ringlets beside her cheeks. She was the woman who had walked into the house before me and who had pointed to the chest in the basement next door.

I could not move, felt frozen to the chair. To my surprise the woman spoke.

"He's here, Mama. Doctor Seth is here to see Grandpa. I'll let him in."

Her voice lilted joyfully. Turning away, she crossed the room in hurrying strides to the open door. It was a different room, furnished with china cabinets and elegant hand-made chairs, plush covered sofas, delicate occasional tables, a fire burning in a wide Adam-style fireplace, Turkish rugs strewn about the floor. The woman disappeared through the doorway into the hall.

I let out my breath slowly. Once again I felt exhausted as if I had been running a race. The room was the same as usual, colorful, casual, contemporary. I looked out of the window. No fog. It was a clear night with a star or two tinkling in the dark sky. Everything was back to normal.

But for how long ?

Natalie came back carrying two steaming mugs. I drank hot chocolate, glad of the warmth sliding down inside me, chasing away the chill I’d been feeling while she talked about the coming long week-end. Would I be all right on my own? I would. I would be busy, I told her, helping put finishing touches to the Museum History exhibit for the opening of the summer season on Sunday afternoon.

We went up to our bedrooms, said goodnight. In my room, I turned over the pages of my sketch pad. I found only the sketches and the doodles. There was no writing, but I could remember vividly what my pencil had written.

I recalled what I knew about ghosts, learned from my Scottish grandmother, Elsie Maxwell. She had once given me a little book of Scottish ghost stories. The underlying theme of all the stories was that only the ghosts of persons who had died violently or without confessing their sins, would haunt the place where they had died.

Had the woman in blue died violently in this house? Had she been murdered and so died unshriven? Or had she committed murder herself and not been able to confess the sin or be brought to justice? Did she appear on the anniversary of her death, perhaps? Was she looking for someone to confide in or confess to so that her spirit could rest at last in peace?

Apparently she had loved a person whose name began with S. She had also mentioned E and N and M. Who were those people? Had they all lived in this house? She could not be the ghost of the old woman who had died last year in the house next door. Her clothing was all wrong for that.

But why was she haunting me and not Natalie, who owned this house? Or was it possible Natalie had been haunted and was refusing to acknowledge the fact and tell me because she regarded anything to do with the supernatural or extra-sensory perception as a lot of balderdash?

I took the problem to bed with me, worrying at it like a cat worries a ball of wool or string until I fell asleep.

3

Knowing I'd slept in and would be late for work, I rushed downstairs next morning, dragging on my jacket. I was heading for the front door, intending to leave the house without breakfast, when Natalie called to me from the living room.

"Lise, come in here. Come and explain this mess," she said. Her voice was sharp, aggressive.

"What mess?" I was grumpy, not feeling in a good humor because I’d overslept.

I stepped into the room, stopping short in surprise when I saw sheets of paper strewn about the floor. The drawer from the wrting table had been pulled out and lay on the floor, upside down as if it had been turned over to empty out its contents.

What contents? The question sprang into my mind. I had never looked in the drawer so had no idea what it had contained.

"Someone must have broken in last night," I said. I looked at my watch and searched my mind for a way to placate Natalie. "Is anything missing? Your C D player? The TV? The video player?" I looked over at the shelves where the electronic devices were stacked side by side. As far as I could tell they were all there. "I’ve heard that’s what thieves have been stealing, lately. Easy to sell for money to buy drugs."

"Nothing has been taken." Natalie was wearing a smart navy blue trouser suit with a white blouse. She stood, hands on her hips, still glowering at me, her attitude hostile.

"Are you sure you didn't do this ? You didn't come down in the night and rummage for something you've mislaid?" she demanded

" No, I did not come down and rummage about looking for something I've mislaid," I retorted. "I took everything I was using last night up to my room. And I certainly wouldn't leave things in a mess like this."

Curious to see what was written on the sheets of paper, I bent down and picked some of them up. It was lined paper, torn from an exercise book. Nothing was written on the sheets I was holding.

"Do these pages belong to you? Did you put them in the drawer?" I asked.

"I don’t know anything about them. To tell the truth I’ve never looked in that drawer since I brought the table up from the basement where I found it"

Natalie, less aggressive now, chewed her lower lip and then shuddered suddenly and pushed her hair back from her face. "I can’t bear to think of a stranger roaming about the house while we slept, touching everything. I just can’t bear the thought of some filthy kids off the street coming in and pawing my stuff. But how would they get in? I lock the front and back doors at night as you know."

"There was a cat in the house yesterday," I said "It scratched at the basement door, but when I tried to put it out through the back door it nipped down the basement stairs, so I followed it. Do you know there’s a door in the wall that divides your basement from next door?"

Looking puzzled, Natalie shook her head from side to side, so I continued. "Well there is, and it’s open. The cat went through into the other basement."

"So what does that prove?" Natalie was sharp again.

"Maybe the guy you saw going into 305 came through it and up the stairs last night…the door in the dividing wall. The door can’t be bolted from this side."

Natalie’s hostility gave way to a sort of panic. "Oh, my God," she groaned. "That’s it. That must be what happened. He could have murdered us in our beds. And now he’s found his way in he’ll come back, swipe everything of value that he can."

"I gotta go, " I muttered. "Call the police. Tell them what you think. See you this evening."

I ran down the step and set off fast along the street. Luckily it was not a great distance from the house to the Museum. Once I had turned the corner into King Street it was down hill all the way to the complex of red brick buildings, restored nineteenth century wareshouses, beside an inlet off the harbor. Sunlight glittered on distant blue water, on sandstone and concrete and glass. Shadows slanted across sidewalks. With the coming of spring weather, everyone was more cheerful. People were moving with more liveliness, actually greeting each other. Even the woman at the reception desk of the museum looked up and smiled as I passed and she usually ignored my existence.

The offices where I hung my jacket and left my purse and briefcase in a locker were deserted. All the people I worked with were in the galleries putting final touches to the exhibits as I would have been if I had not been delayed by Natalie.

Could the man I had heard in the basement of 305 have entered Natalie’s house? During the night I had been disturbed more than once by noises, from the house next door, from the street and even in my room. Once I could have sworn there had been someone in the room, opening drawers, I had switched on the beside light. I had seen no one else in the room, but when I had switched off the light I had heard someone breathing near me.

In bed with me!

Terror was a new experience for me. It was like being hit by a wave of ice- cold water. It had swept through me, shaking every part of my body. In reaction I’d sat up and leapt from the bed in one movement and groped my way instinctively to the light switch by the door, ready to escape from the room, to run to Natalie if I should need help in dealing with whoever occupied the bed.

Pale electric light had shone down on the bed. It had been empty, the sheets creased, the pillows skewed where I had pulled them sideways to support my head. The pink and

green comforter had slid to the floor. My arms hugging my body to stop it from shaking, I had stood bare-legged in the knee length oversize T shirt that I used as nightwear, looking round the room furtively, expecting to see the man I had heard swearing in the basement at 305. There was no one else in the room.

Eventually I had picked up the comforter, wrapped myself in it and had curled up in the small armchair, too scared to get into bed again. .

I suppose I should have told Natalie what had happened in the night, but I hadn’t wanted to upset her more than she had been. Besides she might not have believed me if I had suggested that there might be a poltergeist in the house who was responsible for noisy disturbances and for throwing things about.

The history exhibit was on the first floor of the extension and I went there first to finish dressing the model of a woman. In the shipbuilding section, a nineteenth century parlor had been re-created. I stood amongst the red plush, figured lace and glossy mahogany furniture, looking around at details to see if I had missed fixing anything. There wasn’t much more to do before the opening on Sunday afternoon. From a hamper of clothing I took a dark blue dress and slid it over the head of a naked female mannequin. The dress was made from fine cotton with a design of leaves and flowers embroidered over it in black silk thread. When the buttons of the back opening were fastened I went round to the front of the model. The shoulders of the dress had a sloping curve, giving the wearer a delicate, totally feminine appearance. The sleeves were narrow at the top, widening out to fullness below the elbow. High at the neck, the bodice slanted in to a V shaped waistline and the full skirt was gathered into the V, falling in folds to the hem just above the floor to show the tips of the black shoes painted on the plastic feet of the model.

It was the blue dress worn by the woman who had walked before me into house yesterday afternoon!

I gave the skirt one last pull at the hem to make sure the folds fell evenly, and looked down at the carpet on which I was kneeling. Red, blue, yellow…a Turkish design similar to the red, blue and yellow design of the mat that had lain on a floor of pine boards.

I looked up at the mannequin. The plastic face was pinkish brown with glassy eyes, plain, sad-looking, The wig under a cap of white gauze edged with laces was a dirty gray, not at all like the copper-colored hair of the woman I had tried to follow into a room that did not exist yesterday afternoon. Her hair, the hair of my ghost, had coiled like a living thing about her head, giving off sparks of fiery light in the sunlight.

Different hair but similar dress, designed and made in the eighteen fifties.

"Am I glad to see you," Miss Thomasina Colwell, known affectionately to everyone who worked with her as Tommy, chief curator of the History department, walked into the exhibit half way through the afternoon. "Couldn't find you at eight-thirty this morning. Thought you might be sick."

"I overslept." I adjusted the gauzy cap on the head of the model and studied the insipid unrevealing plastic face. "Who is this supposed to be?" I asked.

Small and thin, with a scholar's stoop and wild frizzy hair that looked like steel wool, Tommy made me feel like a giant as she looked up at me.

"She’s supposed to be James Smith’s wife….his wife." Tommy pointed to the portrait hanging above the black marble mantel over a cast iron fireplace that was on one of the three plasterboard walls of a room. There was no fourth wall so that museum visitors could see the exhibit easily, feel as if they were a part of it.

I went over to take a closer look at the portrait. The upturned points of a starched white collar framed the man's strong, rounded chin. A gold watch chain hung across his dark waistcoat. He was a handsome man, dressed in a well-tailored morning coat. He looked affluent and elegant, but his dark brown eyes seemed to express deep sadness. His hands were broad and muscular, the hands of a practical person, of a man who could work with wood, shape it to his liking with a chisel, plane it, smooth it, bend it. Behind him, a dark painted curtain was looped back from a window. Through the window, painted in the distance, was a half-built wooden ship on the stocks.

" He looks unhappy," I remarked.

Tommy stood beside me and peered up at the portrait through thick lensed glasses. There was an expression of adoration on her thin, pre-maturely wrinkled face.

"And no wonder," she replied. " Tragedy walked through his life. His only daughter died very young. His shipyard burned down in 1855. The ships being built were completely destroyed and he had no insurance. He was an intransigent, dour Irishman who went his own way and wouldn’t listen to advice. All the half models and plans of the ships he had built, including the design of the MARCO POLO, his most famous ship, went up in flames. Broke his spirit. He moved away, up river. Left the yard to his son and never built another ship."

Tommy sniffed as if she were holding back tears, shoved her glasses back up her nose and came back to the present.

"I've had a painting of the MARCO POLO brought out of storage," she added. " It's over there against the wall. I want to hang it in this room. Then I think we'll be through here. You've done a good job, arranging the furniture and the ornaments. Looks really authentic. Like to give me a hand hanging the painting? You're taller than I am. You have a good long reach."

"Meaning I'm a bean pole? Or a lamp post?" I said with a laugh.

"Not at all. You're the height I would like to have been. But both my parents were short, so it was not to be. I was a premature baby, weighed only three pounds. That’s why they called me Thomasina, like the girl in a story who didn’t grow. And now I seem to be getting shorter. Aging, my doctor calls it. I felt like punching him in the nose."

Surprised by this show of belligerence, she was usually mild and sweet-tempered, I picked up the framed painting and held it at arm's length.

It had a background of hazy blue sky, a line of darker blue sea and slap in the middle of the scene, a ship, fully rigged, all sails filled and pulling, yellow where they reflected sunlight. The ship was coming straight towards me, black hull with painted imitation gun ports on a broad band of white, heeling over to the right, the bowpsrit pointing upwards, seeming about to poke through the canvas of the painting, to come bursting through, out of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, to live again and sail the broad oceans. I could hear the wind singing in the sails, the masts creaking, the sea chuckling under the thrust of the bow and swishing along the topsides....

"Today, Lise, if you please. I'd like to wrap this exhibit up this afternoon." Tommy ‘s smoke-husky voice brought me back to the reality of the exhibit. "Hang the painting on that wall, opposite the fireplace. Then we can stand back and see whether the rooms look as if it truly resembles a parlor in a house built in the eighteen forties. I asked Paul to put a couple of hangers on the wall to support it yesterday."

" When was this ship built?" I asked and straightened the painting on the wall.

" It was started in 1851 and finished in April ‘85. James Smith was an established and wealthy shipwright with a yard at Marsh Creek, over on the east side of the city. The ship sailed away to Liverpool, England where it was sold. For a while it transported hundreds of emigrants from the British Isles and Europe to Melbourne, Australia. It never came back to this city, but ended its life not far from here. It was wrecked off the coast of Prince Edward Island. It was back in the timber trade then, but was old and battered and held together by chains." Tommy gazed up at me, her glasses making her look like an owl. "You don’t seem to know much about the history of this city or the Province," she criticized.

"I don’t belong here," I admitted. " But I'd like to know more. I’d like to about the house where I’m staying, right now."

To my disappointment, she didn’t respond to my hint but gave me a narrow assessing sort of glance, as if wondering whether I was a suitable person for her to impart knowledge to.

"The painting of the ship looks good over there," she murmured. "Now Mr. James Smith can look across at it and admire his own design."

"You talk as if he was real and not just a painting on a wall," I said.

"He was real once. They all were. All alive and kicking, like us, and striving to do something productive, to contribute to the human community and leave their marks. And their ghosts still walk the streets of the old city and possibly this building."

I felt an icy tingle go down my spine at the thought of ghosts walking the streets, recalling my recent paranormal experiences.

"Perhaps you can tell me about the people who once owned the house where I’m living," I said. "It was built after the fire of 1877. I guess a lot of property was destroyed in that."

"You're right. Most of the property on the east side of the peninsula was gutted." She peered up at me again. "Why don't we go down to the Atrium and have a doughnut and coffee? We've earned it. And you can tell me where you live."

The Museum extension had been built on two floors of a renovated warehouse and we walked out into a circular space with a few souvenir shops on one side and food outlets on the other. Passages linked the area to a Convention center and escalators gave access to the second floor and also to the underground parking lot. Big glass doors opened on to the Boardwalk, a sort of terrace beside the inlet of the harbor where sailing and fishing boats could find temporary shelter.

We sat on wrought iron chairs set at one of the small round tables that were scattered about the Atrium around a fountain, and drank coffee from paper cups.

After asking my permission, Tommy lit a cigarette. I munched on a honey dip doughnut. I told her about the house I was living in, but I felt I couldn’t confide in her yet about the ghostly disturbances. She blew out a stream of smoke. The thin fingers holding the cigarette were stained with nicotine. She stared past me, across the Atrium, past the fountain out to the glass doors of the entrance from the Boardwalk. I guessed she wasn't looking at anything in particular, but looking inwards, delving into the files of her mind, searching for information.

After a while she came back from wherever she'd been, squashed out her half-smoked cigarette in the aluminum ash tray and said, "It's only half a house?"

"I know. Natalie told me. Do you know why the original house was divided in two?"

"That house, the whole house, used to be the Jackson house. Captain Edwin Jackson built it when he returned from voyaging around the world. Built it on the ruins of his grandfather Maxwell's house, after the fire of 1877. Lived there with his two sons, Caleb and Joshua. Captain Jackson captain willed the house to them when he died. They decided to divide it so that they had a house each. I had that story from Fanny Jackson. She lived in 305, the bigger half. She inherited it from her grandfather Joshua when he died at the age of ninety eight. Caleb didn’t have any sons and his house was sold when he died, aged ninety. Long livers the Jackson men. I went to visit Fanny to get information about Captain Jackson. He knew James Smith and sailed with Captain Forbes on the MARCO POLO 's famous first voyage around the world. But she had nothing. No journals. No diaries. She said there was some old stuff stored in the basement, but she never went down there, something about the stairs being too steep for her. She wouldn't let me go down there either. I was longing to poke and pry. And now she's gone. The last of the Jacksons. Died last summer. Aged ninety seven. Anyone living in it, do you know?"

"No. Natalie says the heir to it hasn’t been located yet. You said the house was built on the ruins of a previous house belonging to Captain Jackson’s grandfather?"

"Yes. He was Elias Maxwell, shipping agent and timber trader. It would be colonial style. Something like the Loyalist house on Union. I always think the city must have been a pretty place, with its shingle and clapboard houses and wooden, colonial churches with their white Wren steeples. Before the Victorians created their soul-destroying industries, filling the place with their pollution." Tommy coughed noisily, picked up her purse and stood up. "I must go and do my shopping. Want me to look through my own files, see what I have about the original houses built along that street? I'm sure I have something on the Maxwell family."

"Would you? Please."

"Nothing I'd like better. Something to do in my spare time. In return, if you find out anything about what is stored in the basement next door let me know, will you? Chat up your new neighbor. He or she might want to get rid of stuff that could be valuable, historically-speaking."

I watched her walk away, drank the rest of my coffee and then went out on to the Boardwalk.

White clouds raced across the blue sky. In the harbor the water was a darker blue, glinting with gold and silver flecks. The squat lighthouse on the end of the wall on the other side of the inlet was stark white and scarlet. Eye catching. Photogenic.

Leaning over the railing, I imagined what the inlet was like in the eighteen fifties, crowded with fishing boats unloading their catch, traders, seamen and housewives, housemaids swarming along the wharfs, bonnets, top hats, woolen tuques, caps. I longed to paint the scene I dreamed up. My artistic muse was slowly but surely coming alive again and all because of the ghost of a woman who wore a Paisley shawl.

I walked away up the main street. The wind seemed to blow me along. I guessed that wind from the harbor had always blown uphill along the canyon formed by buildings.

In the past, they had been not so high, built from wood, steep roofs for the snow to slide off and the roadway had been rough, rutted by cart wheels.

Halfway up the hill, I turned left and went up a steeper slope to the Loyalist house. It was built on exposed rock….white clapboard, some shingles, green shutters, windows on either side of a green front door, with a transom above it. It was a gracious Georgian residence with early nineteenth century influence. A double flight of steps with a white painted railing. A small yard protected by a white picket fence.

That day the house was closed to the public so I studied the front door, trying to see through its thick paneling, imagining what was behind it, recalling the hallway into which I had followed the woman in blue the previous afternoon.

Did this house also have a wide entrance hall with a room on either side, with a staircase sweeping up to an upper floor?

I walked back down the hill, hardly looking where I was going, sometimes walking into people and having to apologize, I was so deep in thought about the house where I lived and the house next door to it.

Yesterday afternoon the woman in the blue dress had led me not into the house where I live but into the basement of the first house built on that particular site; a colonial style house that been burned down.

Had the woman in blue died in the fire? Was that why she haunted the house? And why did she haunt me and not Natalie? Unless Natalie was keeping silent about any apparition she had seen, afraid I might make fun of her… in the same way I had not told her yet what I had seen, for the same reason.

When I reached Natalie's house I crossed to the opposite side of the street and looked back at the solid red brick building that was divided into two houses. Closing my eyes I pictured the white clapboard, green shuttered house Loyalist house and superimposed it on the red brick and bay windows of the two houses across the street. It fitted. It looked right,

But there were no maples casting shadows across the roadway and there was no paving, only a dried rutted mud path. Two women came up on my right, one of them tall as I am, wearing a dark blue dress, the other smaller, dumpy almost, wearing black. Long full skirts, bonnets, shawls. Style of clothing circa mid-1850s.

Arm in arm they crossed the road. I followed them. They would show me the way into their house. There was a solid black not green door with a transom above it, a brass knocker on its center panel. The door opened. The women went in. I hurried to get there before they faded from view.

I ran across the road.

Brakes squealed. A voice shouted. I looked round. A red 4x4 truck had stopped suddenly, its front bumper almost touching me. The man driving leaned out of his window, shouting obscenities at me. On the sidewalk people stopped to stare.

" Sorry," I shouted back and hurried to the sidewalk, embarrassed and yet angry, too, angry because of his rudeness and because he had prevented me from traveling back in time again.

I looked back, made a rude gesture with my hand. As the car drove past me I saw teeth flash in a bearded face as the driver grinned at me.

4

The smell of Italian tomato sauce wafted along the passage from the kitchen into the hallway. Natalie was home and cooking her favorite Spaghetti Bolognese, something she always does when she’s anxious and stressed out, displeased with the world or herself. She would then eat mountains of the food and be restored to her usual, placid state of mind and her weight would go up.

"I saw that," she said, when I entered the kitchen. A striped apron wrapped around her waist, her hair hanging about her face in tangles, she was like a blonde witch, straight out of Shakespeares' play MACBETH, stirring the concoction in the big sauce pot with a wooden spoon.

"Saw what?"

I slumped down on a chair. I was feeling exhausted again after my most recent time-travel experience. Shuttling between this century and the last was proving to be a strain on my heart as well as my mental health. More and more I was beginning to believe I was going crazy, seeing people who did not exist going into a house that had been destroyed long ago.

"You." She raised the wooden spoon in a threatening way, as if she would have liked to spank me with it. "You standing on the other side of the street staring at this house as if you had never seen it before. You dashing in front of a car as if you wanted to put an end to your life. And now look at you. Your face is the color of green cheese and your hands are shaking. What’s with you? What's wrong?"

" I...I guess I've been overdoing it at work," I mumbled, rubbing a hand across my eyes. "There's been a lot to do to get the exhibits ready for the opening on Sunday and I've sort of been living in the past for a couple of weeks. In this town, in the 1850s to be exact. Just now I was trying to imagine the house that was on this site before this one was built. I forgot there were no cars at that time. But it's all done now. The exhibit, I mean. I can take a rest and come back to the present full time. Did you tell the police you thought there was a break-in last night?"

"I did." She stirred the sauce so fast some of it leapt up and over the side of the pot and on to the enamel stove top.

"And?" I prompted.

Still frowning and tight-lipped, she gave me a sidelong glance.

"You're not going to like this," she said slowly. "The constable who came to check out my story suggested it was an inside job. He said someone in the house made the mess."

"What made him think that?"

"There was no sign of any break-in. No windows forced open or broken. No door locks tampered with. Nothing stolen." She gave me another suspicious glance. "Are you sure it wasn't you ?"

"Why me? Why not you?" I was too tired to be angry.

"You sit and write at that antique table a lot. You were sitting at it when I came home yesterday. Maybe you thought you'd left something in the drawer and came down to look for it last night. Walked in your sleep, perhaps." She sent another frowning glance at me.

"Could all be a part of some phobia you’re suffering from."

The chill came again, crawling with tiny, icy feet down my spine. I could easily believe in her suggestion and I wasn’t sure I hadn’t walked in my sleep. I couldn’t be sure of anything that happened when I slept. I had no control over my subconscious mind. The many strange dreams I had experienced in the previous months were evidence of that. I sometimes wondered how a psychiatrist would interpret them.

"I didn't leave anything in the table drawer," I insisted. "And even if I had come down to search for something in it, I wouldn't have pulled the drawer right out, left it on the floor. I would not have tossed sheets of paper about. You should know me by now, Natalie. I'm always tidying up, putting things in their right place. It's you who forgets to put things away. You're the slob around here, not me. But then it's your house and you can do what you like. I'm only the lodger and I have to be more careful or you might ask me to leave."

"I guess you're right there. But if I didn't make the mess and you didn't, who did?"

"I told you this morning. The guy who’s been working next door. He could have come through the door in the dividing wall downstairs, into the basement, come up the stairs into this kitchen and then gone into the living room."

"And left a mess? No. I don't think so. But talking of him, he was driving the truck that almost ran you down. I saw him leave the house. He parks his truck outside 305 at the curb. You must have seen it. A red Ford. Back of it is full of paint cans, bags of cement, boxes of tools."

"He must be a tradesman, then, working in the house. But I haven't noticed the truck before. Did you see and hear how rude he was?"

"I did. You deserved it and you ought to be grateful to him for reacting so fast and braking."

"Grateful? Why should I be grateful to him? He prevented me from...." I broke off. I had been going to say that he had prevented me from following the two women into the colonial-style house that had existed on this site over a hundred years ago

"Prevented you from what?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. If nobody broke in, and you didn't do it, and I didn't do it, I guess we have a poltergeist in the house."

"A poltergeist? " she exclaimed. "Now I know for sure you're going nuts. There are no such things as poltergeists or ghosts or any other forms of restless spirits. I don't go for that paranormal stuff. The dead are dead and don't come back."

Her face glowed pink from the heat and she stirred the sauce furiously again. More sauce slopped over the edge of the pot. Red dribbles slid slowly down the shining stainless steel of the pot and formed congealing blobs on the white enamel top of the stove.

"And I'm not so sure the dead don't come back," I replied. "I'm beginning to think this house is haunted by a woman. She scattered the papers about and she walks in and out of rooms and through solid walls."

"Will you stop that kind of talk?" Natalie yelled. She raised the wooden spoon again to threaten me.

"All right. I knew you wouldn't believe me, but I had to give it a try. I feel much better now for having come out with it," I said.

She looked at me with a pitying expression on her face.

"Perhaps you ought to see someone, a professional who deals in that sort of thing, who knows what causes hallucinations and other abnormal conditions. A psychiatrist who can find out what is the matter with you," she said kindly. "One of the guys at work has been seeing a good shrink. I could get the name from him."

"Don't worry about me. I feel sure this will all stop when I finish working on the exhibit at the museum. As I said, I'm just suffering some stress due to overwork. Did you ask the police to check out the guy next door."

"The constable said he would call on the lawyer who is handling the transfer of property to the new owner and get him to let us know if a tradesman is working in there. He also suggested I put bolts on our side of the door in the basement for safety."

"And are you going to do that?"

"You bet. I’ve already called Fred Carsdale, who did some work for me when I bought the house. I told him I wanted the job done as soon as possible. He might be able to come tomorrow. I said I wouldn’t be here but you would be around. He’ll call before he comes to make sure. You are going to be here, I hope."

"I’ll be here when I’m not shopping or over at the Museum. I’ll go and have a shower. Is there time before supper is ready?"

"Go ahead. I invited Kevin and Chris over for supper and they won't be here until six thirty."

She turned back to stirring her sauce and I went upstairs, thinking about Fred, who was going to come tomorrow, if he could, to board up the door in the basement that gave access to the basement next door.

I hoped he would not come before I had a chance to go into that other basement and search for clues that might help me solve the mystery of the ghost in a blue dress.

That night I fell asleep swiftly as soon, as I had switched off the bedside lamp, dropping down into a deep dark pit where there were no dreams to taunt me and no ghosts to haunt me

I came to the surface of the pit slowly. Daylight slanted into the bedroom through the sash window. The lower part of the window was pushed up and through it came the sound of feet walking, voices calling and wheels rattling.

Yet, I was sure the window had been closed when I had drawn the drapes across it before going to bed.

To my surprise, I was not lying in bed, but was standing beside it, on the side farthest away from the door. The bed was not the one I slept in. It was a fourposter. Drapes of white cotton, embroidered in what is known as Broderie Anglaise, were looped back against the posts. I had a clear view of the quilt, strips of multi-colored cotton sewn together by hand in the Log Cabin design. A woman was lying under the cover, her long, reddish hair spread over the pillows.

On the other side of the bed, in the far corner of the room, a door was pushed open and two women entered. The first woman was tall and full-breasted. Her face was round, her cheeks plump and red as ripe Macintosh apples. She wore a white apron with a bib over her gray dress and a white, frilled cap on her brown hair. She was carrying a big white jug patterned with blue leaves, from which steam was rising. Hot water for washing I guessed, and felt excitement leap through me. I had traveled back in time again and I was about to learn more about the people who had lived in the house that had existed before the great fire.

The woman walked heavily, floorboards creaking under her weight, and approached a dresser near the window. She set down the steaming ewer next to a big bowl, also thick pottery glazed in white and blue.

I recognized the second woman immediately. I had seen her the previous afternoon. Small, straight-backed, neat in black dress and black cap, sharp-featured, intense, not unlike Tommy Colwell to look at, she went up to the bed on the other side from where I was standing and touched the face of the woman lying under the quilt.

"Elizabeth. Time to get up. Today we must pack our traveling trunks and valises. Bessie will help us bring them up from the basement."

The woman on the bed stirred, turned over then sat up, stretching her arms before her. She wore a flannel nightdress buttoned up to her throat and her shining coils of hair hung down over her breast. He face was oval in shape with high cheekbones, full, curving lips and a long straight nose. Her eyes were a vivid blue…not a perfectly beautiful face, but pleasant to look at, good-humored with a hint of steely determination in the set of her up-tilted chin. She would not be easily over-ruled or dominated, I guessed. While being pleasant and often kind to everyone she dealt with, she would always go her own way, control her destiny and I felt an instant empathy with her.

"Yes, Mama," she said. "Good morning, Bessie."

"Good mornin’, Miss. Sure ‘tis a good one so 'tis for the last day of May." The amply-curved Bessie spoke in a lilting Irish brogue.

Bessie and the small woman left the room. Elizabeth flung back the covers and slid out of bed and went over to the washstand.

I looked round the room. It was not at all like the room I slept in. Gone was the tasteful wallpaper of wild flowers traced on a white background. The walls were made from pine planks, golden brown in the morning sunlight. All the furniture was made from pine wood too; two chairs with tall ladderbacks and seats woven from rushes, one against a wall, the other before a sewing table, its yellow wood gleaming with varnish and the washstand, a chest of drawers and a simple wardrobe with a single door. The only color was in the two hand-hooked rugs and the bright patterned cotton strips of the quilt.

Elizabeth, her hair drawn back into its knot, wearing her blue dress with a fresh white collar, was on her way to the door. By the time I had stepped round the bed, she had left the room and was on the landing. I followed her quickly and easily, as if my feet had wings like Mercury the messenger of the Gods in Greek Mythology. When Elizabeth floated down the stairs, I floated after her, one hand resting on the shining wood of the curved banister.

In the hallway, Elizabeth turned right at the bottom of the stairs, into the passageway that led to the kitchen door. Before she reached kitchen, she turned right again, under the stairs and opened a door from which a wooden ladder led downwards. I floated down the ladder after her.

The floor was rough earth. Shadowy spaces stretched on either side of the steps. We were in a basement, dug out of the rock. Daylight filtered through four dusty windows, two at the side of the house and two at the back, where the basement wall showed above ground level. The gray light revealed a work bench strewn with woodworking tools. Planks of wood, discarded packing boxes and old shutters were stacked against a wall, but before I could see more, Elizabeth moved further into the cavernous underground room. She faded into the shadows.

"Wait, wait for me," I called after her and woke up. I was in bed, in the bedroom at Natalie’s house and the gray light of dawn was trickling between the slates of vertical blinds.

I turned over and tried to get back into the dream, wishing I was in the basement of the old colonial house my ghost had lived in. I’d been so close to finding out what she was looking for down there. But though I fell into another deep sleep, I did not dream of the ghost whose name was Elizabeth.

When I woke again, my mind was made up. I was going into the basement next door that morning, before Fred Carsdale arrived to board up the doorway.

5

On Saturday morning Natalie went off to her conference. I was doing a few necessary household chores when Tommy Colwell phoned.

"Have you searched the basement next door yet?" she asked.

"No. I’m a bit hesitant about poking around down there. Someone might hear me and accuse me of trespassing."

"Go at a time when you’re sure there is no one around," she suggested. "Life’s too short for dithering. Lise. We have to go in there and get what we can before the new owner arrives."

"We? You want to come and search with me? I don’t think that’s such a good idea . It’s very dusty. You’d only be coughing all the time." I didn't want to offend her by saying I preferred to search by myself and to keep secret anything I found out about Elizabeth for a while. I had this gut feeling that, like myself, the ghost had been a very private person when she had lived and possibly that was why she had kept a diary or a journal in which she had expressed her personal feelings.

"I guess you’re right. So you will have to search for me, act as a deputy History curator. I suspect any histories or memoirs about the family would be stored away in the drawers of desks. Or in old wooden chests, the sort people used to have for packing their precious valuables like silver and porcelain in. Or even traveling trunks. I would look in those first." Tommy broke off to cough. I waited. At last she croaked, "Will you do what you can, Lise, please? I’m sure there are journals and memoirs hidden away in that basement that I can use for a project I’m involved in."

"I ‘d like to know more about the Jackson family. before the fire of 1877. Have you had time to look through your notes about them?" I was still wary about committing myself to doing what she asked.

"Sure, I’ve had time. The first house on that site was built by Elias Maxwell, a timber trader. He’s buried in the old Loyalist graveyard. I have a few newspaper reports about him, an obituary and report of his funeral and a list of all local businessmen and politicians who attended it. It was a big affair. Held at the original Trinity Church. There are some old pictures of that in the Museum."

She had another coughing bout. I waited again and, when it finished, I spoke quickly before she could get going on another spiel about Elias Maxwell.

"You mentioned a Captain Edwin Jackson yesterday. Was he related to Elias?"

"Grandson. Second son of Martha, Elias's only daughter who married a Captain William Jackson. Edwin was also a Master Mariner and great grandfather of Fanny Jackson."

"Did he have a sister?"

"Let me see." Paper rustled, pages turning over. "I have a family tree here. Copied from one Fanny showed me. Here she is, Edwin’s sister Elizabeth. The youngest of the family of Martha Maxwell and Captain William Jackson of Liverpool. Three sons, Samuel, Edwin and Nathan."

"I've seen her," I said.

"What?"

"I think she’s haunting this house and the one next door. I’ve dreamt about her too." I told her of my recent experiences with the woman in blue. When I'd finished there was dead silence on the other end of the line, no sound of wheezy breathing, no coughing.

"Tommy? You still there?"

"Only just. This is a wonderful bit of news. I’m so glad you’re psychic and can get in touch with spirits from the past."

"You don’t think I’m crazy, then."

"Not at all. What about your friend who owns the house? Has she seen the woman in blue?"

"I don't know. I haven't told her what I've told you. Natalie is...well she's very down to earth, a realist, if you know what I mean. She doesn't believe in supernatural happenings, or E S P, or anything like that."

"And you do?"

"I like to think I have an open mind on most subjects...."

"That's it." She pounced on what I had said and immediately had a bout of coughing. I waited until she could speak again. "You have an open mind. That is why this woman has shown herself to you."

"Explain. If you can. Please. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before and I can’t be sure if I’m hallucinating or not."

"Don’t take LSD or any other illegal substance, do you?"

"No."

"Then I’ll tell you what I believe has happened. You see I believe that the spirits of the dead only appear to people who are at peace with the world."

"And you think I’m like that?" I was surprised.

"You seem to be when you’re working with me. You're quiet, a good listener, can become totally involved in a project that you’re working on. Like yesterday when you said that James Smith looked sad. You show empathy for other people, can feel what they are feeling. You have compassion for other people no matter who they are or what they do or when they were alive. That is why this Elizabeth made herself known to you."

She coughed again and I imagined her sitting at a tale or desk bent over, her thin body heaving as she fought for breath.

"Do you know IN MEMORIAM by Alfred Tennyson, the Victorian poet ?" she croaked when she had stopped coughing.

"No. Should I?"

"God, how ignorant are the young," she groaned. "Don't they teach anything to kids in school these days? Tennyson had something to say about the sort of person the spirits of the dead like to communicate with. He said ghosts only haunt people who have a calm imagination and a clear conscience. That pretty well describes you, I think. But he also noticed ghosts do not haunt people who are skeptical and full of doubt. Understand what I'm getting at?"

"I think so. Because she thinks anything to do with the supernatural or paranormal is garbage, Natalie will never be visited by Elizabeth Jackson."

"Right."

"But why haven't I seen Elizabeth before? I've been in the house nine months."

"I'm not an expert on this sort of thing. But I have read a lot of stories about hauntings and such like. Perhaps Eliza had to get used to you first. Perhaps she had to wait for you to be in the right frame of mind before she could appear to you, until your imagination was calm and fair, as Tennyson says."

I remembered how I had felt on Thursday, as if I had attained peace of mind at last after a struggle to conquer the low self-esteem I had suffered from after Carl had left me.

"And didn’t you say yesterday that someone was in the house next door after it had been empty for some time?" Tommy persisted wheezingly.

"Yes. We think he’s a tradesman working there, cleaning and painting the place before the new owner moves in."

"He could have disturbed the spirit of someone who once lived and died there. Could be Fanny Jackson, you are seeing."

"Wrong period. Clothes like the dress on Mrs. Smith in the exhibit. And you forget. I heard her called Elizabeth in my dream last night. You have no information about her?"

"Only what I’ve told you. But I wouldn't mind betting the information about her is hidden in that basement next door. I warn you, Lise, she’ll keep haunting you until you find it. She wants you to find out what happened to her so we can all know how she died. So off you go and search. And if you find anything, bring it to the opening of the exhibit."

Her voice failed. She was coughing again. I thanked her, said goodbye and put down the receiver.

I was comforted and encouraged. Tommy did not think I was going out of my mind. And I liked her suggestion that the spirits of dead persons only appeared to someone at peace with the world. I would have thought the opposite, that ghosts only showed themselves to persons who were mentally disturbed.

I was even more at peace with the world and with myself and so I no longer felt any anxiety about being haunted by Elizabeth. She could show herself to me whenever she liked and I would search and search the basement next door until I found her diary. But perhaps I ought to ask permission from the owner of the house next door to go into 305’s basement?

No. I could not wait for the new owner to appear. He or she might not be the kind of person who would believe in spirits from the past trying to get in touch with someone living in the present.

But dare I risk going into the basement and being found down there by the man I had heard and seen the previous afternoon? Abrupt, given to swearing, he had sounded as if he had no time for the kinder, gentler things in life.

Perhaps I ought to make sure he was not in the house? Even though it was Saturday, he might be his own master, work for himself at any time of day or night.

It was a perfect day, warm and sunny, perfect for all the people with camps or cottages in the country to be opened up and aired, for boat-launchings and barbecue suppers. I longed to take my sketch pad down to the waterside park by the harbor, to observe people and draw them, but I repressed the urge. I had something more challenging to do.

I went to the bay window in the living room and looked out. A church clock struck twelve noon. If the tradesman was in 305 he might come out now, go home for his lunch. I waited. No one came out of the house and down the steps, but I saw Elizabeth walk between me and the window and look out.

Holding my breath, I watched her turn and walk away across the rugs on the parlor floor to the open door of the room. There she turned back, looked at me and I could swear she beckoned to me again.

I followed her from the room and down the passage to the back of the house. I expected her to lead me into the basement again. Instead, she went through the closed back door, which is opposite the door to the basement and out on to the small wooden deck built out into the narrow back yard.

Natalie had already set out four white plastic chairs and the barbecue on the deck. Elizabeth sat in one of the chairs. I sat on another facing the yard. From where I sat I could see over the low picket fence dividing Natalie's neat and well-tended yard from the overgrown weedy jungle of the yard next door.

Something moved amongst the dead grass and weeds. A cat. The cat. Fully grown, beige and silver, smooth haired, black eared, with a stealthy, stately walk, the beautiful Siamese. I looked to where Elizabeth sat. She wasn’t there.

I called softly, "Bossy. Bossy."

The cat ignored me and continued on its way, stalking though the winter-bleached weeds. A couple of sparrows flew up and away. The cat managed to look offended by their escape from its claws, then lay down and rolled about in the sunlight on a narrow crazy paving path.

"Bossy. Get in here. Now."

It was the male voice I had heard the day before in the basement, autocratic in tone, brooking no disobedience. He should be called Bossy, I thought. Probably had an attitude problem towards any living thing that was smaller and weaker than he was.

He came out of the back door of the other house on to the small deck at the top of some steps. The deck I was on was slightly higher and I could look down on him. Sunlight picked out threads of silver, gold and even blue in his wavy, dark brown hair. I did not have a good view of his face, for his head was tipped forward as he looked down at the cat. All I saw was the outline of a straight nose and the jut of his chin. His shoulders were square under a white shirt and brown leather waistcoat and his hands were hidden in the pockets of his loose-fitting gray pants.

"I said now, Bossy," he said, clearly, loudly. "In. I want you in before I go out."

He was leaving the house. I could have cheered. Waiting and watching had paid off. I stood up quietly and went in the kitchen. Through the window I saw him pick up the cat by the scruff of neck and enter 305. Immediately I rushed through to the living room and stood by the side section of the bay window, hidden by a drape. In a few minutes he came out, closed the front door with a slam, made sure it was properly shut, and walked down the steps to the sidewalk. He turned left, on his way to the main street. I noticed that he limped, dragging his left leg a little. He did not hurry. He could not. I hoped he would not come back until Monday morning.

I found a flashlight and a small wrench in Natalie’s tool box and went down into the basement, switching on the fluorescent lights. The door in the dividing wall looked as if it was jammed shut and I experienced a sinking feeling near the pit of my stomach.

Supposing it was locked from the other side? Could I open it with my wrench? I pushed it hard. It opened and I almost fell into the next door basement. The beam of the flashlight wavered over the gloomy, glowering shapes of furniture. It was not a place I wanted to linger in at twilight or in the dark. My imagination was too lively for that so I had to take this chance of no one being in the house to look while some daylight filtered through the small windows, high up in the rocky walls. Tommy had convinced me that I would be haunted by the ghost of Elizabeth Jackson until I found letters or other records describing how she had died.

Dust, damp and decay. Not a pleasant place to be in. I advanced cautiously, glad that the man who was working in the house had shoved some furniture aside and made a narrow passage between monolithic sideboards and huge chesterfields,

I looked under discarded moth-eaten drapes, tore away rotting dust sheets, found a huge desk, made from oak, with a roll top and deep drawers down either side of the kneehole. Eagerly, I tried to lift the roll top to look in the pigeon holes. It was locked, but the drawers on either side of the kneehole were open and each one was piled high with neatly stacked ledgers. I looked through a couple of them. The flashlight 's beam shone on lists of merchandise, dates, prices, imports and exports, and bundles of lading bills for cargoes, all written by hand in copperplate style. Nothing personal. I pushed the drawers shut, stared at the roll top, and wondered whether I could break into it. I decided not to. He might come down here again looking for the cat, so I would leave everything as I had found it, if I could.

Searching the desk had taken quite a while. I shone the flashlight on my watch. Four- thirty. I had promised to go with Kevin to watch a play-off game of ice hockey between the American League team and one from Portland, Maine. He would call for me about six to go for supper before the game. I hadn’t received a call from Fred Carsdale about boarding up the doorway and couldn’t hear the phone ring down here. The longer I could delay him the better.

The beam from the flashlight was weakening. I would take one last look around the cellar before it went out. I could not see the chest Elizabeth had bent over the previous afternoon. Perhaps I had imagined it. Aiming for the corner farthest away from the communicating door, I shone the flashlight over a beautiful chaise lounge, upholstered in red plush, sadly ravaged by mice and moths, the cloth eaten and torn. There were casters on its short legs of carved mahogany and I was able to push it aside easily. The failing light wavered into the web festooned corner and picked out the glint of something metal. The hasp on a wooden traveling trunk.

Adrenaline rushed through me, overcoming my dislike of going into that creepy, dark corner so far from the way of escape. I pounced on the trunk, hoping it was not locked. Disappointment was a wave of cold following the warm rush of excitement. A padlock of galvanized iron hung from the hasp, large, somehow ponderous. It seemed to say, KEEP OUT.

I thought I heard a swishing sound behind me. I looked round. A vague figure was approaching me; a woman dressed in blue. Elizabeth. She was pointing towards the trunk. "But it's locked, and there’s no way I can break open that padlock. I have nothing to bash it with, " I grumbled aloud.

She did not hear me, of course, but continued to point at the trunk.

"I can't open it," I insisted.

She walked towards the trunk, lifted the lid, and faded from my sight.

I stared at the trunk. The lid was still down. The padlock still hung from the hasp, a square, solid piece of steel. I looked around for something with which to break the padlock. The flashlight revealed nothing as it flickered over old and broken kitchen chairs that had been pushed into this corner. There was no convenient, heavy hammer or a crowbar, yet I could feel Elizabeth’s personality melding with mine, urging me to go towards the trunk and lift the lid.

My light was dimming. I grabbed the frustrating padlock and pulled it. To my surprise it came away from the trunk still attached to the hasp. I guessed the fastening had been torn out of the wood, not by me but by someone else who had found the trunk padlocked, had not possessed a key to open it but had been determined to get inside. And then the broken fastening had been pushed back into place complete with padlock, made to look as if it had not been pulled out.

All I had to do was lift the lid as Elizabeth had done.

Still holding the flashlight in my right hand, I knelt on the floor in front of trunk and used both hands to push the lid up. I held the lid upright with my left hand and shone the light on the underside of the lid. A name had been burned at some time into the wood. Elizabeth Jackson.

I had found it. I had found what she had wanted me to find. I had found her traveling trunk.

In my excitement I dropped the flashlight and it went out. I let go of the lid and it crashed down. Dust flew everywhere. Sneezing and coughing I groped on the floor in darkness, fingers brushing against things on the floor I would rather have not known about, possibly dead mice, balls of fluff, God knew what else.

At last my fingers encountered the rounded shape of the flashlight. Picking it up, I pressed the switch twice, once for off and once for on. Faint light gleamed. I pushed open the lid of the trunk again, let it fall back until it was supported by the wall behind. The frail trickle of yellowish light from my torch flickered over newspaper crinkled and brown at the edges with age, covering whatever was stored in the trunk. I could just make out the date of the paper. March 1920, and then a headline: "Captain Edwin Jackson, well-known in Saint John and Liverpool shipping circles, died yesterday at his home. He is survived by three sons, Jean-Guy Dunne of Melbourne Australia, Caleb and Joshua Jackson of Saint John, a niece Delia Fromsett of Chicago, Illinois, and a nephew, Edwin Beverly, at present living in England.."

The flashlight went out. I shook it and the battery obliged once more. Carefully I lifted the fragile newspaper. There was something soft under it. I leaned closer, peering in the trunk. The smell of mothballs was strong. I could just make out a blue and green feathery pattern against faded black. A shawl. The Paisley shawl I had seen my ghost wearing. I touched it with reverence, lifting it up. Between the shawl and the other clothes, folded neatly and packed in the trunk was a large book, an old-fashioned ledger such as I had seen in the drawers of the roll top desk.

I turned back the cover of the book. There were no lists of goods, no dates, no prices, but pages and pages of some sort of narrative, written in the same beautiful handwriting that had appeared on my sketch pad.

A diary or journal written by Elizabeth at last. The flashlight went out again. At the same time, above me, in the area of the shadowy ceiling, a board creaked. Every nerve tense, I listened, crouched on the floor in the silent, dusty gloom. I guessed the corner of the basement was under the corner of the house where the front door of number 305 was located. The man I had seen in the yard must have come back.

I put my flashlight on the floor, took the ledger book out of the trunk and wrapped it in the shawl with the fragile piece of newspaper. Hugging the valuable artifacts against my chest with one hand, I groped on the floor for the flashlight with the other but could not find it.

"Shit," I whispered and groped again, still on my knees beside the open trunk.

It was then I thought I heard someone laugh, a low chuckle from somewhere in the shadows.

"Who’s there?" My voice quavered a little. If the man who had returned to the house had come down to the basement I had not heard the door at the top of the stairs open. No one answered. Shadows and silence, yet I was sure someone was lurking amongst the dark shapes of furniture.

"Come out. Show yourself," I said bravely.

Nothing happened. Was my imagination playing tricks again? Was I hearing non-existent noises now as well as seeing ghosts?

My skin crept. I had to get out of there. I stood up and I closed the lid of the trunk. I did not wait to push the chaise long back in front of the trunk. I had to leave as fast as I could before whoever was hiding amongst the packing cases and wardrobes pounced on me and grabbed the ledger and shawl.

Light from Natalie's basement shone like a beacon through the opening in the dividing wall. I went towards it sometimes colliding with furniture in my way, bruising my shins and stubbing toes.

At last I was through. I couldn’t close the door tightly, so I left it slightly open and crept up the stairs to the basement door. In a few minutes I was in the kitchen.

It was almost five thirty. I had been in the basement for nearly four hours and I was ravenous. Putting my precious discoveries on the kitchen table, I delved in the fridge, found a package of tortellini and a jar of Italian pasta sauce. After heating both and serving some of the concoction on a plate, I sat down, staring at the ledger, longing to touch it, to open it and devour its contents but forcing myself to wait until I had finished eating and drinking.

My meal finished, I phoned Kevin, canceled our arrangement. I didn’t tell him I had something far more interesting to do than watch an ice-hockey game.

I rinsed my hands under the faucet, dried them and went back to the table.

I was ready to begin. Slowly, reverently I turned the thick board cover of the ledger back. On the first page, there it was, written in black ink which was beginning to fade a little with age. "Elizabeth Jackson, Her journal."

A few spaces down, she had written; " I have been told by Grandpapa that keeping a diary or a journal helps to organize the mind, and he should know because he writes copiously, filling reams and reams of ledgers with his memoirs, but at the moment I cannot think of anything to write about."

Another space of a few ruled lines left empty as if the writer had paused to think I could imagine her staring vaguely ahead and seeing nothing as she twirled her quill pen. Then more writing.

"It is a few moments later. I have asked Mama what should I write about. She says I should start with what happened today. Mr. James Smith's shipbuilding yard caught fire. A new ship building on the stock was destroyed, so were all the half models, including one of the MARCO POLO. Poor Mr. Smith. He had no insurance to cover his loss. The insurance company refused to insure him because they said the steam shed where the timbers are bent had been built too near the stocks. So I say, why didn't he move it so he could be insured? Foolish, foolish man. Mama says he has always been stubborn.

I don't know why I have written all that. A diary is supposed to be about what happens to oneself.

Nothing happens to me. Every day I wake up, get dressed, go and help at the Seaman's hospital. Ride around with Dr. Seth Jones in his buggy, when he visits his patients. I have learned much about diagnosing diseases and medicine from him and have added that to what I have learned from Mama about setting broken bones, dressing wounds etc. I am a good nurse, but I would like to be a doctor. There I have written it down. My dearest wish is to be a doctor like Seth. Perhaps I should not write his name in full. From now I will just use initials. He will be S.

Will my dearest wish ever come true? Will I ever be Doctor Elizabeth Jackson? Women from wealthy families like mine are not supposed to want to do the work men do. It is assumed we do not have the intelligence or the stamina. We are supposed to get married, have babies, manage a household, educate our children, make a comfortable home for a husband to come home to while he does all the interesting work.

Mama has always managed this household, but she has also worked in Granpapa's trading business. I think she knows more about shipping and trading than he does now." I turned over the page. The next entry had been made a few months later and was very brief;

"S left today for Boston. Oh, how I longed to go with him, but Mama needs me here to help nurse Grandpapa, who is confined to bed with the gout. Also Mama says it would have been unseemly for me to go with a married man and his family. Unseemly. Why? I could have helped them settle in their new home, looked after the children. I could have worked at anything just to be near S. And in return he would have helped me find a way to become a doctor of medicine like him.

Now I know how E felt ( for Edwin, my best-loved brother) when L eloped with P D. But unlike E I cannot laugh it off. I am desolate. Empty. If only I could talk to someone about it. I cannot tell Mama. E is on the high seas somewhere. N ( Nathan my youngest brother ) is in Melbourne. S ( Sam my eldest brother, would never understand, would call me mawkish and lacking in true North American grit and determination. And Mary dear, dear Mary Maclean, my closest friend, is far away, nursing poor British soldiers in the Crimea. She is doing something really worthwhile with that great woman Florence, Nightingale, who says a woman should not have to get married if she does not want to. How I wish I was in Scutari hospital too."

I turned the page, anxious to know more. Did Elizabeth go to the Crimea? Or did she escape from the overprotective influence of her mother and grandfather and go to Boston to be with Seth, her guide and mentor?

But there were no more entries until September 1956 when, already on her way from Liverpool to Melbourne, Australia, Elizabeth had begun to write a new day to day account of her experiences on the ship MARCO POLO. Every day for three months she recorded her deepest emotions as she tried to resist falling in love with an ex-cavalry captain on his way to seek gold.

Fascinated I read on and on, well into the small hours of the morning until I had finished the journal. It came to an abrupt end, an unsatisfactory end, as far as I was concerned with the arrival of the ship in Hobson’s Bay.

In frustration, I riffled through the last pages of the ledger. All empty, not even a line written about what happened next. No happy ending of her love affair. No description of her brother Nathan’s wedding.

I had to find out, wouldn’t be able to rest until I did. I would have to go back to 305’s basement no matter what or who was lurking down there waiting to pounce on me and drag me off to another period of time.

6

The speeches from the various city worthies and dignitaries, from the local politicians and from the Director of the Museum were over. The mayor of the city, a blonde woman in a red robe with a gold chain round her neck, cut the ribbon strung in front of the new History exhibit and everyone headed for the wine and cheese and other tidbits laid out on tables in the main entrance.

I found Tommy, her hair bushier than ever, her cardigan suit rumpled, trying to hold her own between two large men. Her glasses flashed a message to me, a desperate message that seem to say; please rescue me. I pushed my way through a crowd to her side. "Excuse me." I smiled up at one of the large personages, recognizing him as the M P. " I hope you won’t mind if I take Miss Colwell, away from you. She’s needed urgently at the exhibit."

They agreed to let Tommy go with me, shaking her hand first and complimenting her yet again on the success of the exhibit.
"What’s wrong? Has someone damaged something?" she asked, looking anxious.

"Nothing is wrong. I thought you needed rescuing from those bores, that’s all. Also I have something important to tell you and I’m sure you’re dying for a fag."

"Oh, I am. I am."

We went into the Atrium and through the exit doors to the Boardwalk. Soon we were leaning against the rail and Tommy was lighting up. Over the rail I looked down at the inlet. The tide was in and clouds in a blue sky were mirrored in the brownish water. On the other side bright red and green buoys, newly painted, and ready to be moored to mark dangerous rocks were piled on the Coast Guard wharf. Above them, to the right, I could see the Coast Guard ship, its white superstructure gleaming in the sunshine. Beyond it the harbor looked like a sheet of beaten gold. On the far western shore red and yellow container cranes resembled exotic primeval birds, their long necks dipped forward as they watched the water for fish.

"Elizabeth Jackson came here often, bought fish here from the schooners." I murmured.

"Sometimes she met Louise LeBlanc here. Elizabeth worked in the warehouses at the shipping agency." I turned, leaned my elbows on the rail and looked up at the restored red brick buildings. "The office and storage rooms of the warehouse were in there, where the Library and the Museum and the antique boutiques and the food outlets are located."

"You’ve seen her ghost again?" Tommy also looked up at the building. " Is she here? Now? "

"She might be, but she hasn’t shown herself. Probably too shy with all these people around," I said with a laugh. "But I’ve found one of her journals."

"Where? Where did you find it?" Tommy was so excited she dropped her cigarette and had to stamp on it.

"Where you told me to look, in an old traveling trunk in the basement of 305. Her initials were on the lid of the trunk. I finished reading it about three o’clock this morning and...."

Tommy wasn’t listening.

"I knew it. I knew it, " she muttered, gazing away to the container cranes. "I knew there would be good stuff hidden away in Fanny Jackson’s house." Her glasses glinted as looked at me. "Where is it now? I hope you’ve got it safe somewhere. Lise, you haven’t put it back in the trunk have you?"

"Not yet. I brought for you to look at. It’s in my locker in the museum."

"Then let’s not waste any more time. Come on, I must see it. I must. This is a wonderful find. Wonderful find. Just what I’ve been looking for. I can hardly wait to tell Gary."

"Who is Gary?" I demanded. She was going at such a speed towards the building I was almost having to run to keep up with her.

"Gary Paton. He’s President of the Project. It’s a voluntary organization we formed a few years ago to raise money to build a replica of the MARCO POLO. I’m conveyer of the history committee. Spend my time ferreting out bits of history about the merchant marine and shipbuilding in this town. Gary and the rest of the committee want me to write a novel about it all. I’ve told him I just don’t have the time or the inclination to write a fiction.."

We strode across the Atrium, dodged through the people still clustered in the reception area of the Museum where Tommy fended off the Museum Director and friends wanting to have a word with her, took the elevator up to the second floor, sidled past the huge skeletons of various kinds of whales and burst into the offices where we both worked and left our coats and bags.

Tommy stood beside me, coughing and almost choking, trying to get her breath back while I unlocked the padlock that secured my locker. The ledger was still wrapped in the Paisley shawl. Tommy touched the colored woven wool with reverence, as if it were a religious relic.

"Beautiful. Beautiful," she wheezed. "Elizabeth’s, of course."

" I guess so. The ghost wears one. Do you think I’m out of my mind talking about a ghost as if she’s real. Alive."

"Not at all. I’ve told you before. She’s the restless spirit of a person who once lived and it’s possible she’s wanting us to know about her history, wants us to know what happened to her. Put the journal down on the table so I can look at it."

"It only tells us about her trip to Liverpool and then on to Australia. It’s really an account of her shipboard romance with an ex-soldier...."

"Don’t tell me. I want to find out for myself." Tommy treated the ledger as she had treated the shawl, with awe and respect, opening the thick cardboard cover carefully, turning pages over gently, leaning close to them to read the elegant script and muttering to herself.

"I’ll have to take it home with me. I can’t possibly read it all here and now," she announced adamantly. "You’ve got to let me take it."

"I was hoping to put it back in the trunk tonight," I said and explained to her about the mess in the living room Natalie had found, and how we suspected someone from next door had come into our house. "Natalie called the police. They said she should board up the door. If that’s done, I won’t be able to get into the basement."

"When will the tradesman board up the door?"

"Probably tomorrow morning."

"Then you have to go down there this evening and bring as much stuff as you can. Written stuff, I mean. More like this. There should be Elias Maxwell’s Memoirs down there. Fanny told me he’d written them with the help of a young Irishman who was a reporter for the Catholic newspaper at that time. She did tell me his name, but I can’t remember it."

"Francis Dunne. He’s mentioned in Elizabeth’s Journal. He married her friend Louise and they all went to Australia on the ship. That’s what this journal is about...."

The door opened and two of the museum staff came in, laughing and chattering. Tommy closed the ledger. I picked up the shawl. We went to my locker, which was still open. I turned to Tommy to take the journal from her. She held it close to her, against her chest and glared up at me.

"I’m taking it home," she muttered. "I have a right to read it as history curator in charge of the Provincial archives. It can’t go back, Lise. Not now. It belongs to the city, to the province."

"But supposing the owner of the house turns up and starts looking for diaries and relics of the Jackson family?"

"Whoever he or she is won’t find this, or anything else you’re going to find tonight Findings are keepings, Lise. So stop worrying about it. By the way I’ve just thought, it’s an odd coincidence your last name being Dunne. Do you know of any Australian connections in your family?"

I didn’t. And I let her take the journal, knowing that I was going to search the basement of 305 that evening for more diaries or journals in the hopes of finding out what had happened to Elizabeth when she arrived in Australia. I wanted to know if she and John Beverly met and if they had married, raised a family.

The red light on the message machine on the counter in the kitchen was winking when I arrived back at Natalie’s. After the reception was over I’d gone with some members of the museum staff for supper at a pub on King Street. Now I was full of hamburger and french fries and beer and suffering from heartburn. Served me right for giving in to temptation.

There were two messages. One from my mother checking that I was still alive and well and hadn’t moved away without telling her since I hadn’t been in touch with her lately. The second was from Fred Carsdale apologizing for not having come to fix the basement door. Would it be okay if he came tomorrow morning, early, say around seven-o-clock before Miss Evans had gone to work? Knowing that Natalie would be back late that night, on the last plane from Montreal and that she would expect the door connecting to the basement next door to be boarded up, I called Fred back and told him it would be all right for him to come in the morning.

I had a few hours to myself before Natalie returned, plenty of time to go down and search for more diaries or letters the old traveling trunk.

Should I, shouldn’t I? Indecision had me in its grip. Did I have the right to go into the neighboring house and search for documents? Not really. I would be trespassing and if I took anything and kept it that would be theft, no matter what Tommy believed about findings being keepings.

I picked up the phone, thinking to delay making a decision by calling my mother. Way out on the west coast her phone rang six times before the message machine kicked in. I clattered the receiver down and felt a cool draft of air waft about my legs. A shiver crawled down my spine. I turned my head slowly, expecting to see Elizabeth’s ghost by the basement door.

The door was slightly ajar and just inside the kitchen the Siamese cat sat, staring at me with wide blue eyes.

"So, Bossy, you’re here again. How did you get in? Who opened the door for you? Did I leave it open ?" I said.

The cat mee-owed once and, in a single leap, landed on my lap, its paws kneading my thighs while it purred loudly and rubbed itself against my chest.

"Pleased to see me? Has he been shouting at you?" I murmured, stroking its head. The cat could not have come up the stairs to the kitchen if the communicating door between the two basements was closed. Here was a good reason for me to back to the basement of 305. I would return Bossy to her home territory and look in the traveling trunk or any other place where I might find letters or diaries to take to Tommy tomorrow. It was my only chance.

Bossy didn’t struggle to get out of my arms as I carried her down the stairs and across to the communicating door. It was wide open, inviting me in to the gloomy cave beyond. I’d found another flashlight before leaving the kitchen and by its yellowish beam I could see my way clear to the far corner of the room, under the front door.

Only the traveling trunk wasn’t there. The whole corner had been cleared and the trademan had been busy plastering the wall.

Still clutching the warm, purring body of the cat, I turned away to see where the trunk had been moved. I saw a woman facing me… a woman I knew well. With a cap of black, shining hair, she was wearing a long summer dress that clung to her tall, too-thin figure…myself, reflected in a brown-spotted, long mirror, framed in mahogany and supported between two carved mahogany posts, a fine Victorian antique worth probably thousands of dollars.

Behind my reflection were the dim, dust-sheeted shapes of furniture looking like so many weird shapes wearing funeral shrouds. The cat stiffened against me, growled softly in its throat. Its claws dug through the stuff of my dress into my skin. The hair lifted on my nape. Something was moving in the mirror, a gray figure coming up behind my reflection.

I was petrified, turned to stone, could only watch this new ghost advance. A man not a woman. A man with dark tousled hair who was wearing a leather waistcoat unbuttonned over a cream colored collarless shirt. The man I had seen in the yard.

I let out a sound halfway between a scream and a groan and dropped the flashlight. Bossy flew out of my arms and landed on a tallboy. Baring her white pointed teeth, she hissed, her back arching, as she glared at something. I knew just how she felt and wished I could express fear and anger in the same way.

Chilled and stiff, I had to force myself to move, to bend down and pick up the flashlight. It was still alight, its beam slanting across the stony floor. Curling my fingers about the black handle I stood up and shone it in the direction of where I thought I had seen the apparition of a man.

Nothing. No person. He had faded away just as Elizabeth’s ghost always faded from view when I approached too close to her.

Feeling vaguely disappointed because he had faded away I shone the flashlight’s beam over furniture again. Something metal, a few yards away, caught the light and winked at me. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the old traveling trunk. The twinkle of light came from it’s hasp.

Happy to see it again, I went over to the trunk, sure that I was going to find something else in it that would tell me what had happened to Elizabeth Jackson after her arrival in Australia. I lifted the broken hasp. The lid swung up and back. The beam of the flashlight revealed a black woolen dress, carefully folded, some white lace collars, yellowing with age, two widows’ caps, delicate things made from black veiling, satin and ribbons. I lifted them carefully and found under them an untidy package of paper tied with ragged blue ribbon. I had no doubt that I had found a bundle of letters and I did not hesitate to take them.

I closed the lid of the trunk and shone the flashlight around the place looking for Bossy. She had disappeared. I called her once, thought I heard footsteps in the house above me and decided it was time I was out of there.

In few minutes I was sitting at the kitchen table in Natalie’s house undoing the knots in the frail blue ribbon that was tied around my new find.

As I had hoped it was a bundle of letters all of them addressed to Elizabeth or Eliza. I was lucky with the first one on top of the pile. It had been written by Julia Jackson, wife of Elizabeth’s brother Edwin, and was dated March 10th 1860 and had been sent from Liverpool to Melbourne, Australia. Julia began by congratulating Elizabeth on her marriage to John Beverly and the birth of their baby boy, christened Edwin, on Christmas Day 1859. It was unclear from the letter whether the birth had taken place before or after they had been married. Julia also mentioned hers and Edwin’s son Caleb, who had been born in Liverpool when she had returned there after she had visited Australia, the Caribbean Islands, the united States and the colony of New Brunswick with Edwin. She ended her letter by wishing Elizabeth a safe voyage from Melbourne to Saint John. Edwin had told her that his mother, Martha Jackson was in poor health and that Elizabeth was returning home to nurse the invalid.

I laid the letter down. It answered the question that the end of Elizabeth’s journal had left hanging. She had met John Beverly again and she had married him. But now other questions popped up to torment me. Their’s had been a real life romance, not a novel that finished with happy ever after. Had it continued after their marriage? Had John accompanied her on her voyage to New Brunswick or had he stayed in Australia? Had she gone back to Australia to be with him again? What had happened to him? I had to know and wondered whether that was why I imagined I had seen his restless spirit in the basement next door.

The answers to my new questions had to be in the pile of letters before me. I picked up the next one, looked at the signature. John Beverly, dated September 1960, the address at the top of the only page a hotel in London England. He had written:

My dearest Elizabeth,

The nights are long and lonely without you beside me, but I have good news. I am booked on the steam packet for Saint John from Liverpool. I’ll go by train to Liverpool tomorrow, visit briefly with Julia and young Caleb (Edwin is away, I’m glad to say). I’ll go aboard the ship on Saturday morning. God willing, I’ll be with you and little Edwin in three weeks time. I’ll save all my news for you until we meet again.

Until we meet again, John."

Had he arrived? What was his news? I started to rummage through the many letters to find out and realized that I would have to sort them into years and then possibly under the names of the various people who had written them to Elizabeth before I could make any sense of them and understand the rest of Elizabeth’s life from what her friends and relatives had written. It was a job that would take me several days, never mind hours.

It was almost ten-thirty. Natalie would return any minute and I was beginning to feel the effects of not having slept much the night before. I gathered up the letters, tied them in a bundle again and went upstairs to my room and put the package in my briefcase. I would take them to the museum in the morning and show them to Tommy, ask her advice on the best way to sort them out.

I was in bed, trying to sleep when Natalie returned. She came into my room for a few minutes. I told her Fred Carslake would arrive before she went to work to discuss the door in the basement and she went off to bed.

Closing my eyes, I settled my head on a pillow and breathed deeply, hoping to relax and to feel sleep sweep slowly through my brain and body. But sleep did not come. Across the room, from the chest of drawers where I had left my briefcase, it seemed to me the bundle of letters pushed and shoved against the soft leather, rocking and rolling in a weird dance as they tried to escape confinement. They would not let me rest.

I sat up in the dark and by the light from the street lamp slanting through the slats of the vertical blind covering the window, I peered in the direction of the briefcase. Nothing moved over there, but I could hear the sound of someone breathing again. The bedroom door was slightly open. Its hinges creaked. I looked towards it, bracing myself to see Elizabeth. She did not appear, yet the floorboards seemed to shake as someone walked across them.

I looked back at the chest of drawers and saw him briefly, the faint light from outside shimmering on his white shirtsleeves.

He was the man I had seen in the basement that evening and he was going to open the briefcase, take the letters.

"Hey, you. What do you think you’re doing?" I yelled.

Flinging back the bedclothes, I bounced out of bed, made towards the chest of drawers and collided with something hard, stubbing my toes, banging my shins. I had walked into the chest and the shock of collision had woken me up from the doze into which I had slipped. There was no one else in the room.

"You okay, Lise?" Natalie pushed open the door. Light from the landing slanted in.

"I’m fine," I tried to sound cheerful. "Just trying to find something in the dark. I should have put a light on."

"You should," she retorted. She came in and switched on the bedside lamp, gave me a quick glance from narrowed eyes. "You weren’t sleep walking again, were you?"

"I don’t think so. I couldn’t get to sleep so thought I would get something to read." I began to unzip my briefcase. "Sorry I disturbed you. See you in the morning."

Natalie took the hint and left. I waited until I heard her bedroom door close before taking the bundle of letters out of the case.

"She wants me to read them. Elizabeth wants me to know what happened to her and John," I muttered to myself as I climbed back into bed.

Once again I was awake long after midnight as I sorted the letters first and then read all of them.

7

"I’ve found out what happened," I announced with triumph to Tommy when she and I met for lunch the next day in the Atrium. "It’s in these letters. Elizabeth married John Beverly and they had a child, a boy. But they didn’t stay in Australia. She came back here to nurse her mother Martha. John came over here later to join her."

Tommy flicked with a forefinger the bundle of letters I had put on the table.

"Good for you. I knew you would find more information if you only had courage enough to go back," she commented. "I read the journal. As you said it does describe Elizabeth’s romance with John Beverly. But I’m surprised he married her. He doesn’t strike me as a man who would be interested in domesticity."

"He loved her," I argued.

"Did he? I suppose he did, in a way. He was a compassionate person who understood her need to break out from her mother’s dominance. But apart from their romance there’s some social history in the journal. Descriptions of manners, morals and clothes and also about the behavior of the ship and the captain of the voyage, James Clarke, which is valuable. Not much about shipping, or trade or politics of the time, though." Tommy touched the letters again." Combined with these letters it’s the basis for a historical romance ending as books in that genre do, with marriage and happy ever after. But what happened to them afterwards? Did they stay together? Or did he leave and go somewhere else?"

"It isn’t clear what happened next from these letters. They are all from her women friends and relatives. There is reference to a loss in her life in a very commiserating letter from Louise Dunne"

"The Acadian who used to live at Paton’s Lodging house? I was most interested in her and her stepfather, Joseph Paton." Tommy’s glasses flashed. "The loss could have been her mother Martha’s death."

"I suppose so, but I have a feeling from the tone of Louise’s letter it might have been John. It was someone Louise had been very fond of and she didn’t mention a name because she wanted to keep her feelings for that person a secret from anyone but Elizabeth."

"That’s all you found?" Tommy was disappointed.

"It’s all I had time to look for yesterday. But there’s been a change of plan about the door. Natalie decided she’d better not have it boarded up until she’s consulted the lawyers who are handling Fanny Jackson’s estate. She thinks closing the door forever should be an agreement between the owners of both houses. Fred Carsdale is only going to fit a lock and some bolts to keep the door closed so that no one can come through from 305 into Natalie’s house."

"Then you’ll still be able to go through and search for Elias Maxwell’s Memoirs and Captain Edwin Jackson’s account of his voyage on the MARCO POLO." Tommy leaned towards me, urgency in her movement. "Those are what I’m most interested in. Anything to do with the ship or the timber trade between Saint John and Liverpool. And while you’re doing that you might find something that will explain what happened to Elizabeth and why she haunts both houses."

The way she insisted that I should go back to the basement again made me uneasy. I felt she was manipulating me for her own ends. Then I thought of my last visit to 305. I was sure someone had been hiding amongst the furniture, watching me, spying on me.

"I don’t feel like going back," I muttered.

"You must, you must. Before the door is boarded up. Before the new owner moves in. Why can’t you go back?"

She was obsessed, I thought. She wanted revenge on Fanny Jackson for preventing her from searching the basement years ago. She was getting her own back on a woman who was dead.

But then Tommy believed the spirits of the dead can come back to haunt you. Maybe she was haunted by Fanny Jackson.

"Yesterday I’m sure someone was in the basement, watching me. I saw someone behind me in a mirror, but when I shone my light on him he wasn’t there," I argued.

"Gave me a scare."

"Another ghost ?" she suggested.

"I think so. And someone came into my room last night looking for those letters."

"Then you’ve definitely got to go and search for more stuff so that these restless spirits find peace." She was vehement. "They won’t rest until their story is out in the open for all of us to know. You’ll be haunted by them all the time you’re living there."

"But there is so much stuff down there, in the drawers of the roll-top desks hundreds of ledgers, bills of lading. And I really don’t like being there. I’m always afraid someone will find out I’ve been taking things and...."

"Go and empty those drawers." Tommy thumped the table with a fist and I felt like a student in school who had dared to refuse an order from a teacher. "We’ve got to get the ledgers and journals and whatever else there is in the way of historical importance. Don’t you see Lise, that will be where all the trading company records are. When can you do it?"

"It depends on when Natalie is out of the house. She’s already suspicious of my behavior, thinks I’m a nut case. And I’m still worried about taking anything. It’s like stealing."

"All right." Her shoulders slumped in disappointment. "I was hoping you would find more about Martha Jackson. You see I’m related to her through my mother’s family. Martha’s mother was a Warren and I’m descended from her sister. That’s why I’m so keen to find records of the trading business. Martha ran it almost single-handedly and successfully for years. A great achievement for a woman at that period of time. But I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. I’ve an invitation for you. Would you be interested in coming to a meeting of the Project Committee? Gary Paton wants to talk with you. He has an idea of how we can use Elizabeth’s journal as a way of promoting the Project’s activities, but we’d have to have your agreement since you found it."

"When is the meeting." Already I was regretting having suspected that Tommy was using me for her own ambitions as a historian and I wanted to make amends.

"Wednesday night. Here in the Museum."

" I’ll be there."

"Good. Then you’d best take the journal the shawl and the letters and lock them up safely somewhere. Probably your locker here is the best bet."

Natalie was already home when I walked into her house. "It’s all fixed. The door. We decided to put bolts on it for now. This side, " she announced. "And the lawyer looking after 305 hopes to receive instructions from the new owner soon about what to do with the property. Fred’s done. See if you think it’s satisfactory. He took the door off, put new hinges on it and re-hung it. Fits much better now."

Fred had done a good job on the door. Not only had he re-hung it, he had also painted it white so that it could hardly be seen in the dividing wall. As I stood staring at the sturdy bolts, three of them, top and bottom and middle, I couldn’t help wondering what Elizabeth would think of it.

Then I wished I hadn’t let my mind wander because she appeared, right in front of the door. She looked older, her hair gray under a widow’s cap, her dress different. In her hands she carried the Paisley shawl, her journal and the bundle of letters I had left in my locker at the Museum. Goose pimples pricked my skin when I saw them. I had hoped that my finding the journal and the letters and taking them to another place would stop her from stop haunting me, but here she was wanting me to follow her again. To find what? More letters? Her grandfather’s memoirs? Her brother’s journal?

"Oh, no," I said, shaking my head. "Not today. I’m too tired."

She faded into the door, became one with it and I left the basement quickly.

I managed to keep all thoughts of Elizabeth out of my mind during the next couple of days. Some paintings belonging to the local Art Society had been brought in for restoration work. They were all by a businessman who had lived in Saint John during the previous century and the Art Society had come to an agreement with the Museum to have them cleaned up and hung in the gallery where New Brunswick artists were exhibited. They needed a lot of restoration because they had been stored away in bad atmospheric conditions at the old museum building. I learned from the research that the artist had been a contributor to some of the British magazines of the period such as the London Illustrated News which had also been preserved in the archives. In one of them I found an account and pictures of the departure of the MARCO POLO from Liverpool on her first voyage to Australia. Tommy was very pleased with my find.

On Wednesday evening I attended the meeting of the MARCO POLO Project committee. It was a friendly occasion. Gary was a history teacher in the local high school and like all the others at the meeting and like Tommy, he was obsessed by the legend of the ship and the idea of creating a replica of it.

But they had to raise money first so would I be interested or capable of writing a novel about the ship using Elizabeth Jackson’s account of her voyage on it from Liverpool to Melbourne in 1856? They had all sorts of suggestions of how it could be done, of how it might become a bestseller romance and earn thousands of dollars… frustrated novelists every one of them, yet not one of them volunteered to write the novel they proposed.

In the end I agreed to try and write a novel, but if I hadn’t come up with something in the next three months while I was still working at the Museum, I would let them know and they could reassess the situation. I knew it would be a lot of work and I would need Tommy to help me with the historical background.

Yet I could not help feeling enthusiastic as I walked back to Natalie’s house along lamp lit streets, hugging Elizabeth’s journal wrapped in her Paisley shawl. Once again, I tried to imagine what that street had looked like in her youth, what her home had looked like so I could set the scene at the opening of a novel, but the images would not come. The street remained solidly in the twentieth century with cars parked against the sidewalk, the shadows of the maples flickering in the wind, and squares of light hanging in the dark bulk of the red-brick houses, now like so many rabbit warrens, their big rooms divided up into single apartments.

As usual there were no squares of light showing in 305, but light streamed out of the bay window and from the transom over the front door of Natalie’s house. I was making for the stairs, intending to take the journal and shawl to my bedroom, when Natalie called to me, her voice singing out lightly, almost laughingly. She sound pleased about something so I went through to the kitchen. Looking rather self-satisfied, her cheeks pinker than usual, she was sitting at the table opposite a dark-haired man. On the counter behind her the cat, Bossy, was sitting patiently, but as soon as the cat saw me she jumped down, meowed a greeting and twined herself around my ankles, curled herself about my legs.

"You see, Bossy has really come to see your friend," the visitor said.

I recognized his voice and went stiff all over. He pushed back his chair, stood up and turned to look at me. He was the person who had fallen down the stairs on my first visit to the basement next door, the guy I had seen in the yard talking to Bossy and had seen later limping along the street.

He was also the man I had seen behind me in the antique mirror and later in my bedroom and he was still wearing the same collarless white shirt and brown leather waistcoat, unbuttoned. My breath caught in my throat and I’m sure I gaped at him. He wasn’t a ghost after all. He wouldn’t be in the kitchen talking to Natalie if he was, because ghosts only appear to people who believe in them. Or so Tommy had told me.

"Lise, this is Jack Beverly," Natalie said, "From next door. 305. Meet my house-mate, Jack, Lise Dunne."

"Hi," I whispered weakly, darting a glance at him. A slight smile curved his lips, creased his cheeks and narrowed his eyes. He did not offer his hand and I didn’t offer mine either.

"Jack for John?" I asked, trying to recover my poise and pretend I hadn’t seen him before.

"You’ve got it. I like Jack better." He had an abrupt way of speaking.

"When did you move in next door?" I asked.

He shrugged, broad shoulders lifting and dropping.

"Last week some time."

His eyes stayed steady on mine. I looked away, down at Bossy, who was still winding herself about my legs. I bent and picked her up, held her close to me, rubbed my cheek against her fur, something to do to avoid Jack Beverly’s clear gray gaze.

"Jack came over to talk about the basement door and also to ask if Bossy was here. She’s been missing all day, he says and when he was in his basement he could hear her crying in our basement."

"I think you should keep Bossy, Lise,." Jack said. "She seems to like you more than she likes me. In fact she’s given me a hell of a time since I moved in. Doesn’t like me being in possession, I guess."

"Isn’t she yours?"

"No. She was in the house already. She might have belonged to Fanny Jackson the previous owner."

"But Miss Jackson died more than a year ago, didn’t she Natalie?"

"That’s right. And we’ve never seen the cat before she started coming into the basement and into our kitchen."

"Looking for food," Jack suggested. "So will you let her stay with you?"

"I’d like to have her." A strange shyness swept over me, most unusual, and I could not look at him. He sounded so down- to-earth and practical and not a bit ghostly. "But I’ll have to call her something else. Why do you call her Bossy?"

"Because she is bossy, and I never could abide female authority." The laughter in his voice took the sexist sting out of his words and surprisingly Natalie laughed too. "So, is it settled? Can she stay here? And then you won’t have to keep returning her to the basement and the door can stay locked and bolted."

That made me look at him. No laughter in his face now. No expression at all that I could read.

"Of course the cat can stay. She can look after the house while we’re both at work." Natalie said

"Then I’ll be off. I’ll go back the way I came."

But before he headed for the porch, he stopped and touched the shawl covering the journal.

"Looks like real Paisley, " he said. "Is it yours?"

My mouth was dry, my heart beat loudly in my ears as I met his hard gray glance, for I knew then that he knew the shawl had come from his basement. He had seen me take it from the old traveling trunk.

"Lise is always bringing things home from the Museum," Natalie explained for me.

"She’s been dressing the models in an exhibition about life in the city during the 19th century. You should call in to see it while you’re here. Ask for Lise at the desk. She’ll show you round. Explain everything."

"Maybe I will. Good night, Lise," he murmured and smiled at me again. It seemed to me he had reached out and touched me, yet he hadn’t moved. Again that unusual shyness swept over me and I looked away.

"Good night." I whispered.

Natalie escorted him to the back porch. I stayed in the kitchen holding Bossy close so that she wouldn’t try to follow him, but the cat seemed quite content to stay in my arms, purring loudly and rubbing her nose against my cheek.

Jack Beverly, the new owner of the house next door, so he said. Or was he another ghost come to haunt me?

What was I going to do now? How was I going to search the roll top desk for the ledgers and memoirs? I would have to tell Tommy I couldn’t look for them tomorrow evening when Natalie was out at her aerobics class, as I had promised.

"What relief to get a neighbor like him, " Natalie announced, coming back from the porch. "A man with some sense. He was telling me it took the lawyers a long time to find him because he was in hospital for a long time. He’s in the army. "

"Which army?" Elizabeth’s John Beverly had been an officer in a British regiment when she first met him.

"The Canadian Army, I guess. Peacekeeping for the U N in Bosnia, probably," Natalie was indifferent.

Next morning at the Museum I told Tommy the new owner had moved into 305.

"He’s the guy I saw in the mirror," I added.

"The ghost of John Beverly, then." She was emphatic.

"But Natalie saw him too. And she doesn’t believe in ghosts."

"Ah, but he might have made an effort to appear to her. He was always what they used to call a ladies man. And since you haven’t found out yet what happened to him he’s turned up to worry you into searching for more family secrets."

"I still think we should ask permission to make another search," I argued.

"Perhaps I ought to consult Jim about it this morning," she said. Jim Appleby was the Director of the Museum. "I’ll ask him to approach the new owner for permission to go in and search. With a bit of luck, we’ll be in the house by the end of the week."

By lunch time the sun was shining brilliantly out of a cloudless sky so after eating a sandwich in the Atrium I wandered outside to the Boardwalk and leaned on the rail, thinking about my new project to write a novel about Elizabeth Jackson. I could imagine she had also come out of the Maxwell and Jackson warehouse and stood by the inlet, looking out at the harbor and I tried to visualize how it had looked in 1855 when Elizabeth and her mother had boarded the packet boat for Liverpool. All sorts of sailing ships would have swung to anchor, their sails furled, their masts swaying as they had waited to be loaded with timber or passengers. Fishing boats, sails billowing, would have leaned into the wind as they left or entered the harbor. Steam tugboats would have sidled up to ships needing a tow, black smoke belching from their funnels. The whole harbor would have been full of activity and not as it was now, empty of shipping traffic.

All sorts of questions bubbled up in my mind and I would have to find the answers. What was it like to travel on a packet ship, driven partly by steam engines, partly by sails?

What was it like to travel on a big ship like the MARCO POLO, with no engine, at the mercy wind and tide? My lack of knowledge was beginning to make me panic. I couldn’t do what the Project Committee asked. I wasn’t an historian. I wasn’t a writer....

"I think it’s time you and I had a little talk."

I jumped at the sound of a male voice speaking close beside me and looked sideways. John or Jack Beverly was leaning on the rail too, looking out at the calm blue water. He was wearing the same white shirt and brown waistcoat he had worn last night. The shirt seemed to be made of linen, had very full sleeves and the long cuffs were hand-stitched. A hand-made shirt in the style worn by men in the 1850s. The sort of shirt Elizabeth had sewn, the sort the male mannequins in the Museum exhibit were dressed in.

"What do you want to talk to me about?" I asked. I looked at the view of blue water and beyond it. On the western shore white and colored houses were strung out on a hillside below the round shape of the Martello tower, built long ago as a look-out and defense against invasion by an enemy

"About you taking property that doesn’t belong to you from a certain traveling trunk in the basement of 305. A Paisley shawl, for an example," he murmured.

"I can explain."

"Go ahead. I’m all ears," he said. "But make it quick. I don’t have much time. Let’s go and sit down outside that restaurant."

I followed him. He was limping, dragging his left leg a little. We sat under a striped umbrella. A waitress came out. I ordered. He didn’t order anything.

"So begin your explanation. I’m sure it’s interesting," he said. His smile was warm, encouraging. My heart did a funny little jump. Take care, something warned me. This man could charm the heart out of any woman and take it with him when he left her.

I told him all about seeing Elizabeth’s ghost and he didn’t laugh. I told him about following Bossy into the basement of 3O5 and how I had heard him come down the stairs and berate the cat. He nodded, a grin curling one corner of his lips.

"I knew you were there…hiding. I heard you sneeze," he said.

"Then why didn’t you speak to me, look behind the tall boy?"

"I wanted to see what you would do if I didn’t. I wanted to see if you would come back. And sure enough, you came and took the Paisley shawl and something else."

"Elizabeth’s journal. I only took them because Elizabeth wanted me to. She showed me where they were and I’ve been told that a ghost will stop haunting if you find what it wants you to find."

"Really?" Now his grin was sardonic. "You have read the journal?"

"Of course."

"And what did you take yesterday?"

"How do you know I took anything?" I challenged him. " I didn’t see you. Or hear you."

"But I was there."

"You must move very quietly."

"As quietly as a ghost." His grin mocked me again.

"I found some letters, all addressed to Elizabeth."

"Going to put them back?"

"If you insist I put them back I suppose I’ll have to. But there’s more down there More journals, letters and ledgers, all belonging to the Maxwell and Jackson Trading company and the Jackson family, and Miss Colwell, the History curator at the Museum says it should all be in the archives of the Museum. She’s been wanting to get at them for years, but Fanny Jackson refused to let her search."

He didn’t seem to be listening and was leaning back in his chair, staring past me at the traffic moving past Market Square and up King Street.

"Do you belong to this town?" he asked.

"No. I’m from the west coast. Vancouver. You’re from England, aren’t you?"

"Born and educated there." He looked at me again. This time his grin was self-mocking. "I grew up good-for-nothing. My father suggested I join the army." He shrugged and stood up. "I have to go, but I’ve a suggestion to make. You can come anytime you like to look for those journals and ledgers you’ve been talking about. See if they’re of any use to you or the Museum."

"This evening?" I was quick to seize the opportunity.

"What time?"

"About six thirty. After supper?"

"I’ll be there when you unbolt the door. But don’t bring Bossy. See you later, Lise." That quick entrancing smile that made me feel as if I was the most important person in his life at that moment and he walked away. I stood up, grabbed my purse, turned to follow him.

"’Scuse me, mz. You haven’t paid."

The waitress was there. She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Are you okay? " she asked.

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing. Nothing," she mumbled.

I paid for my coffee and looked in the direction Jack had gone. He was nowhere in sight so I went back to the Museum.

I found Tommy just before I left work that afternoon and told her that Jack Beverly had given me permission to search for more papers in the basement that evening.

"You’ve seen him again? When?" She frowned at me.

"At lunchtime. On the Boardwalk. I thought he might have come because you or the Director had phoned him."

"I did phone. So did Jim. There’s no phone connected at 305 so we contacted the lawyers handling the transference of Fanny’s property. They said they would contact the owner and let us know the answer as soon as possible."

"Well I’m going to meet him this evening. I’ll bring what I find to you tomorrow."

Tommy frowned even more, pursed her lips.

"You’re sure you’ll be all right, Lise?" she said. "Perhaps I should come and help you."

"He said he didn’t want anyone from the Museum yet. I’ll be okay. And I’ll try and persuade him I need more expert help so you can come the next time."

As soon as I’d finished supper that evening I went down to the basement, making sure Bossy was shut in the kitchen and could not follow me. For some reason my heart was beating faster than usual as I stood on a chair to slide back the top bolt on the communicating door, then stepped down to release the bottom bolt. I felt thrills of anticipation racing through me when the door creaked open, as if I was going to a tryst with a lover. I could have laughed at the feeling if I had not felt it pulsing so strongly along my veins and beating in my brain.

Maybe this was how Elizabeth had felt going to meet him on the ship, in defiance of her mother and brother’s advice, I thought. But then John Beverly, ex-cavalry officer had been the lover of more than one woman. That had been part of his attraction. Possibly all the women he had known had felt like this when going to keep a tryst with him.

I stepped through the open doorway and shone the flashlight over the draped and ghostly furniture, found the roll top desk and slid open one of the drawers.

8

"Why don’t you look in the top of the desk?" Jack’s voice, with that hint of mockery as if he found me amusing, startled me, but also sent warmth flooding through me. I was delighted he was there and had kept his promise to meet me that evening.

I looked round, shining the flashlight into the dusty darkness, but I could not see him. He laughed.

"I’m here, standing behind the desk," he said.

I spun round again to face the desk. The flashlight beam, a bit wobbly because my hand shook with my excitement, glimmered on his white shirt, on his teeth and the whites of his eyes. He leaned his arms on the top of the high desk, smiled more widely and my heart pounded in my ears. If the desk had not been between us I would have flung my arms around him I was so happy to see him. Instead I grumbled, "I wish there was more light in here."

"I like it shadowy and mysterious," he murmured.

"There must be an electrical socket in the ceiling." I shone the flashlight upwards. It showed only the sturdy wooden beams that supported the ground floor of the house above.

"Don’t waste any more time fussing about light. Open the top of the desk," he ordered No warmth or laughter in his voice now. Cool, authoritative, he issued orders and I wondered what rank he held in the army. An officer surely.

"I tried to open it last time I was here," I replied. "It’s locked."

"Try again. I don’t have much longer. I’m expecting a visitor and she might not take kindly to find me dallying with a pretty woman much younger than myself in a dark, shadowy place." He sounded amused again, but I felt as if he had put out a hand an pushed me away. "I’ll sit over there, on that stool and watch you. My leg hurts today. I must have walked too far."

"Perhaps you should have it X-rayed at the regional hospital. The orthopedic department is first class, I’m told."

"It’s past any more treatment they can offer." Again I had the feeling of being pushed away. "Open the top of the desk."

To my surprise, when I grasped the handle at the front of the roll top the whole cover of wooden slats slid up and rolled back. Inside, the flashlight revealed pigeon holes stuffed with papers, a ledger type book and a smaller, thicker book, the pages of paper wrinkled and bulging. I picked up the smaller book, opened it, shone my light on it. The first page was browned at the edges, the words blotchy and blurred, as if they had been wetted with water at some time, but I could make out a name written in bold style.

Edwin Jackson, fourth mate on the sailing ship MARCO POLO. 1852

It was his journal of the ship’s first voyage to Australia.

"Eureka, " I shouted. "I’ve found it."

I looked quickly at the ledger book. I leafed over pages, closely written in neat, yet cramped writing, the memoirs of Elias Maxwell, Elizabeth Jackson’s grandfather.

"This is great. Tommy will be pleased." I swung round to look at Jack. He was leaning against a stool. "You’ll let me take them to her."

"Take what you want, " he said.

"But there’s too much. It will take ages to go through all this stuff in the pigeonholes and in those drawers. I’ll need help. What I’d really like to find now are some letters that might give me some idea of what happened to Elizabeth. Ghosts of people only appear if they have died sudden and violent deaths. And to...." I broke off. I’d been going to say I wanted to know what had happened to her husband, John Beverly, but couldn’t because I felt a strange confusion cloud my mind. For a few moments, I wasn’t sure where I was or who was with me. The past and the present were all mixed up. Was he the ghost of John Beverly, come to direct me to information about Elizabeth and himself? Or was he Jack Beverly, the new owner of Fanny Jackson’s house?

"Why don’t you look in those boxes?" His voice cut through the cloud that hovered around me. I blinked and his face became clear, hard gray eyes staring at me steadily.

"Take them away with you tonight with the ledgers. You can come back some other time with a helper to look through the drawers. I have to go now."

To meet his woman friend, I guessed, feeling more than a little disappointed in my meeting with him. Handsome, charming he might be, but not at all forthcoming, reserved in the extreme, secretive. Yet I had to try to detain him.

"Aren’t you going to help me carry this stuff?" I asked. "The boxes are heavy and awkward to hold with the books and a flashlight as well." I was talking to his back as he moved into the gloom towards the stairs. I followed him. "By the way, I forgot to tell you Tommy contacted the lawyers in charge of Fanny Jackson’s estate. They said they would contact the new owner for permission to let her search the house for artifacts suitable for the archives. Have they been in touch with you yet?"

He did not answer and disappeared into the shadows beyond the beam of the flashlight.

"Hey, wait." I went forward The beam of light showed me the rough stairs, wavered upwards to the closed door at the top. I shone the light around. Only storage boxes stacked on top of each other, drapes, some chairs. "Jack? Where are you?"

My voice was shaky as if I was on the brink of tears…tears of disappointment and rejection because he had gone to meet his woman friend without saying goodnight, because he would rather be with her than with me. He had gone and I was alone, feeling desolate because he was no longer with me.

I feel desolate. Where had I seen that written somewhere recently? In Elizabeth’s journal. How she had felt when the doctor she had loved left her.

"Oh, for God’s sake, Lise," I muttered to myself. "Snap out of it. You’ve got what you came for so get out of here."

I went back to the desk, gathered the shoe boxes under one arm, ledger under the other and picked up the smaller book in my left hand. Flashlight in my right, I closed the roll top of the desk. It slid down with a thud and a click. I tried to open it again. It stayed closed. It was locked again.

Puzzling over Jack’s behavior and the locking of the desk top, I went through to the other basement. I had to put everything down to climb on the chair again to bolt the communicating door at the top. I collected everything up again and went up to the kitchen. Natalie was not home yet, so I went up to my bedroom.

I was soon sitting up in bed, pillows piled behind me, my knees hunched up under the covers, the shoe boxes beside me and a glass of chocolate milk and some shortbread cookies on the bedside table… sustenance to help me through the night as I read through the family letters Fanny Jackson had catalogued with care and thought for future generations to read.

The boxes were labeled. I opened the one containing letters to and from Captain Edwin Jackson, Master Mariner, 1863 to 1877.

On the top of the stacked letters was a separate envelope lying flat. It was addressed to a Colonel Edwin Beverly, at an address in Cheshire, England. Under the name, Fanny had written: "This is for my cousin, Ted. We met in England during World War II when I was an ambulance driver with the Canadian Red Cross."

I opened the letter. It was written on flimsy air mail paper in well-formed letters, easy to read. I read it eagerly while I crunched shortbread and scattered crumbs.

My dear Ted,

Here are the letters I told you about. I have looked through them and think they explain pretty well what happened to John Beverly, your great, great Grandfather and my great, great, great Aunt Elizabeth Jackson. I warn you it is a sad story. I wish you and I could have met more often, but war came between us. Please give my best wishes to your wife Rebecca and also to young Jack. Perhaps one day we shall meet again.

Your ever loving, Fanny.

There was another slip of paper in the envelope with a typed message on it.

Dear Aunt Fanny,

I’m sorry to inform you that my father died this year from complications arising from an operation for cancer of the colon. I would like to visit you in Canada when I come over in August. I’ll bring the letters you sent to Dad, when I see you. I’ll phone you from Ottawa as soon as I arrive.

Best wishes, Jack.

Poor Fanny, I thought. In love with her distant Beverly cousin and unable to do anything about how she felt.

She had thoughtfully stacked the letters in chronological order and the first one I took from the row was written in a vigorous scrawl on stiff paper. The date was December 3 1864.

Dear Edwin ( here Fanny had qualified the addressee as Captain Edwin Jackson, M M.) Elizabeth has asked me to inform you about the tragic death of her husband, John Beverly. You know I expected that he would arrive by way of New York and Boston in the month of October. We had our first snowfall of this year early, in mid November. On November 29 the snow came back. That night John ( he liked to be called Jack) and Elizabeth were preparing to go to bed when they heard the front doorbell ring. Half dressed as he was in shirt sleeves and waistcoat and boots, he went down to see who was at the door. Eliza says she urged him to go because she thought a neighbor needing help or a traveler lost in the snowstorm might be at the door. She followed him downstairs and was behind him when he unlocked and opened the door.

She says she saw snow whirling by, blown by the wind but could not see anything else. John called out to ask who was there.

A figure appeared then, stepping out of the murk, close to the house. Eliza recognized the person. He was wrapped in a cloak, had black hair and his eyes were dark and staring. She cried out, "John take care. It’s Francis Dunne." She had just put her hand on John’s arm to pull him back when she saw the flame and smoke from the mouth of a pistol held by the visitor. John fell backwards against her. She laid him down on the floor and rushed out of the house. Two seamen on their way from the tavern at Reed’s Point saw what had happened. They told Eliza they would run after Francis and alert the police. John died there and then on the floor of the hallway.

The seamen, two policemen and some other townsmen chased the murderer all the way up the hill and along the road to the Reversing Falls gorge. Some of his pursuers overtook him and blocked the way to the new bridge that now spans the Falls. He was trapped between the men in front and the men behind. So he jumped into the river.

The Falls were in full spate. You can imagine what happened to him. His body would be flung about in the foaming water. He would be dashed against the craggy rocks, his clothes, skin and flesh torn to shreds. His body was washed up on the shore of Partridge Island, battered and swollen. He was identified by the sodden letters in his pockets. Eliza has told me why Francis Dunne came after John. He must have been stalking him like a hunter ever since they met in Sandridge, Australia. The man was guilt-ridden and obsessed by the idea that his sweetheart would not have been killed by him if he had not found her alone with John in Dublin all those years ago. It’s an old, sad story of unrequited love and jealousy. Eliza says you know Patrick Dunne and asks you to write to him and tell him of the tragic ending of his brother. Also please break the news as gently as you can of John’s death to Julia.

Eliza is suspiciously calm. She goes about her work at home and at the warehouse as if nothing unusual had happened, but I guess she is inconsolable. Her friendship with John was truly romantic and survived many separations. She told Delia the other day she often felt hers and John’s relationship was too good to last long and always feared someone from his past would turn up and put an end to his life. She also said that she never really knew what John felt about anything. Although he said often enough he loved her and they were physically intimate, he never told her much about himself. It was as if, she says, he wanted no one to know his innermost being. He kept his soul aloof from everyone. I’m not sure I know what she meant. In the short time I knew him I found him good company, lively and astute and always making jokes.

Little Edwin, their son, is growing strong and sturdy, and comes to stay often on the farm with his cousins. He loves to ride the horses. Eliza says she will write to you and Julia when she feels more composed. Mama is no better but no worse. Her spirits go up and down, up and down. Eliza is a saint to stay with her."

I stopped reading because I couldn’t see for the tears that had filled my eyes and were sliding down my cheeks. I mopped them up, folded the letter and put it back in the box. I was just taking out another letter when there was a tap on the door. It was pushed open and Natalie came in, her pale hair spangled with raindrops.

"Are you reading more history again," she scoffed.

"Old letters. I’m glad you looked in. Have you seen Bossy anywhere?"

"Who?"

"The cat. The Siamese, Jack brought the other night."

"Jack?"

"Jack Beverly. The new owner. Next door."

Natalie stared at me much as the waitress had stared when I’d paid for my coffee at the Boardwalk cafe the previous day.

"I wish I knew what you’re talking about, Lise," she said. "You’ve been acting a bit queer for the past two weeks. I reckon your work at the Museum is getting to you. Too much time spent amongst those old historical exhibits, too much living in the past, not enough sleep. I hope you’re not going to be up all night again, looking through that lot." She nodded towards the boxes.

"I’ll tell you all about them when I’ve read them all."

"Okay. See you."

I flicked through the rest of the letters. Most of them were brief, from Elizabeth or Sam to Edwin describing problems with the trading company and I found to my great relief that Fanny Jackson had thoughtfully marked those she thought were important with a red sticker. The first marked in that way was dated 1870, from Elizabeth to Edwin describing Martha’s death and funeral and enclosing obituaries from newspapers remembering her contribution to the development of the city through her work at the trading company business as well as her support of voluntary organizations. There were even reproductions of her portrait, a severe-looking little woman in a black dress and widow’s cap.

The next letter marked with a sticker from Elizabeth to Edwin again referred to the departure of Edwin Beverly, now aged sixteen, for England. He was going to join the regiment his father had served in, the 11th Hussars, and Elizabeth feared for his safety. She hoped her brother and Julia would do their best to keep an eye on the young man, whom she described as having a very lively disposition. I wondered if he had ever returned to New Brunswick. Maybe I would find out when I read through the next box of letters. Then I came to another bulky letter on the stiff paper used by Sam Jackson. Fanny had not only marked it with a sticker but had printed in red ink on the outside: House destroyed by fire. 1877.

I was already feeling exhausted, emotionally drained, I guessed, by the account of John Beverly’s murder. I kept visualizing a door opening, snowflakes whirling by outside, a dark figure looming up and pointing a pistol. I didn’t want to read anything more about destruction and possibly death so I stuffed the letter back in the box, put on the lid and placed the box on the dresser. After a visit to the bathroom, I slid under the bed covers and closed my eyes. Hardly had I done that when I heard crackling noises. Imagination, I jeered at myself, and turned over. The crackling grew louder. My chest felt tight. It was being squeezed by the bedclothes. I couldn’t move. Fighting for breath, I managed to drag the bedclothes down and sat up, my heart pounding, my mouth open, gasping. Red light flickered through the blinds. And the crackling sound was louder than ever… .

The house was on fire.

I leapt from the bed, pulled up the blind, looked out. Above, a full moon sailed the sky. Its light silvered the roofs of the houses opposite. Below, the shadowed street was still. No traffic. No persons walking. No wind wafting the branches of the trees. No sign of fire. I let down the blind, turned just in time to see a faint figure leaving the room. Guess who? Elizabeth of course. I sighed.

"I’m not following you," I said. "I’ve found what I want. Jack helped me to find it." She didn’t look back at me but went out. A stray beam of moonlight trickled through the slats of the blind and rested on the white and yellow shoe box of letters I had been reading.

"Okay," I muttered. "I can take a hint. I’ll read about the fire."

Once more in bed with the lamp slanting light over Sam Jackson’s bold writing, I read:

Dear Edwin,

Two days ago Eliza, who had been staying with us at the farm, insisted on going back to town. She does not seem to be able to stay away from the house on Germain, says she feel close to John there. She’s told Delia she’s sure she’s seen him wandering about, wearing the clothes he was wearing when he was shot. A morbid fancy. We are beginning to fear she is suffering from some sort of dementia brought on by the shock of his murder. She should not be alone so much.

She left on the steamer that goes up and down the river between Fredericton and Saint John. The weather was very hot, hotter than I have ever known it. We spent the mid-day and afternoon hours down by the water or in it. Two days later a messenger brought us news that Saint John had been on fire and that all the original buildings on the peninsula had burned down, including Trinity Church on Germain and the houses close to it. I caught the next steamer and was in the city by late afternoon.

What a mess I found. Nothing left of Grandpa’s house except charred beams and joists and bits of twisted metal. I have enclosed newspaper accounts of what happened. The whole of the area will have to be rebuilt. But to get to the worst news, the reason why I am writing to you is so this letter can go to Liverpool on tomorrow’s mail packet.

We cannot find Elizabeth. She has disappeared completely. Has not been seen by anyone since she left the steamer at Indiatown. I would like you to come, Edwin, as soon as you can. We have to decide what to do about the remains of the property. I keep thinking of Grandpa and his pride in the house he built. All gone now and Elizabeth, too, it seems, although no sign of anything that might be her charred bones has been found amongst the debris. Please come. I need your strength and support."

I was suddenly desperate to find out if the two brothers had ever found their sister. If there was no explanation for her disappearance, I was going to be haunted by her for the rest of my life, I thought in a sort of panic. Or at least all the time I lived in this house. And I didn’t want that. I was tired of being haunted, sick of going back to Victorian times when women wore ugly constraining clothes and were expected to behave decorously, minding their manners all the time. I wanted to be free of Elizabeth and her family, to get on with my life, move into the next century.

To do what? I hadn’t heard from Carl for weeks. No postcard, no Fax, no e-mails, no phone calls. Surely he had finished his studies in Paris and would be coming back to Canada?

Or had he met another woman he preferred to me?

So Elizabeth must have worried about John Beverly. Would she ever see him again? Would he come back to her? He had come to join her here, in the old colonial house but not for long..

I must find out what happened to Elizabeth. I couldn’t sleep until I did and she wouldn’t let me sleep, I was sure.

My fingers snatched letters from the box and tossed them aside until I found a separate bundle, tied together with ribbon and labeled by Fanny: Edwin’s letters to Julia.

The first was marked with a red sticker. This was it, I thought and my hands shook as I unfolded the sheets of paper with the heading Maxwell and Jackson, Shipping agents and timber traders.

Edwin did not waste time

"We have found Elizabeth at last. We were able to clear rubble from the opening to the basement of the house. Imagine how I felt when, after going down the steps, I found her body lying at the foot of them. She was holding a ledger and a small packet of letters in one hand. Her Paisley shawl was still draped about her shoulders. The remains of a cat lay beside her, the Siamese that some trader from the Far East had given her as a gift. John used to call it Bossy because he said it ruled the household.

"The doctors of pathology who examined her say she must have been taking the ledger, which contained her journal of her voyage to Melbourne and the few letters she had received from John Beverly to a safe place in case the house caught fire. In her hurry down the steps she had slipped and fallen to the rough floor of rock and banged the back of her head, losing consciousness. One leg was also broken in the fall so, even if she had regained consciousness, she would not have been able to climb up the stairs. By then smoke from the fire, sweeping down through the opening, would have choked her. The cat must have found her body and stayed with it and died from lack of food and drink, very unusual. I always thought cats were survivors."

I was weeping again. Sadness but also relief. At last I knew what had happened. She would haunt me no more. But what about Bossy? Could I really believe in a ghost of a cat? And then, if Bossy was a ghost, so was the man I had met recently and was in danger of falling in love with. He was the ghost of John Beverly who liked to be called Jack.

I tied up the bundle of letters belonging to Edwin and Julia. The letters in this box were highly personal and did not belong in the Museum archives. They belonged to either the Jackson or the Beverly family descendants. I would take out the newspaper accounts of the fire and Martha Jackson’s funeral, give them to Tommy and return the letters to Jack Beverly tomorrow. It would give me another reason to see him again. If Carl had found another woman to flirt with, I had found another man, I thought, even if he was a ghost.. I was putting the shoe box back on the chest of drawers when an irritating thought crept into my mind. It triggered off a question that I knew would bother me until I found the answer. I took the lid off the shoe box and found Sam Jackson’s letter to Edwin about John Beverly’s death. Yes, there it was. The name Jack. He referred to John Beverly as Jack " because that is what he prefers to be called."

I stuffed the letter back in the box, put the lid on and hurried back to bed. No, I kept saying to the disturbing thought that I had been haunted by two ghosts not one. No, no, no. Lots of people have the name of an ancestor. I don’t want the Jack Beverly I’ve met to be the ghost of Elizabeth’s husband.

And then another name flickered through my mind. Francis Dunne whose brother Patrick had met his wife Louise here in Saint John. They had gone to Australia and Louise had met John Beverly on the way there. I must phone my father and ask him where his ancestors had come from. I’d always assumed they had come from Ireland or from some other part of the British Isles.

Elizabeth had owned a Siamese cat.

Round and round the bits of information circled in my head until at last, mercifully I fell asleep.

All I could think of as I hurried to work next morning, late again and carrying Elias Maxwell’s memoirs and Edwin Jackson’s journal in my briefcase, was the body of Elizabeth in her Paisley shawl lying at the foot of some steps, her Siamese cat lying at her side.

9

Tommy was busy in meetings all day, so I kept the memoirs and journal in my locker and tried to take my mind off the questions that were bothering me by concentrating on the business of cleaning yet another painting.

Lunch time came. I wandered out to the Boardwalk, leaned on the rail. Not such a fine day, lots of clouds, gray and purple rolling across the sky, the water leaping and splashing against the walls of the inlet. Too cool to linger long, yet I lingered, hoping he would come to lean on the rail beside me. I had fallen in love with a the ghost of a complete stranger. Yet he didn’t seem strange to me. I felt I had known him in another life, another place.. He didn’t come. I went back through the glass doors to the Atrium and met Gary Paton coming out of the Museum.

"Been looking for you. Got a minute?" he said.

"Sure."

He brought cardboard cups of coffee from an outlet and we sat at one of the round tables. From his briefcase he hauled out a thick folder of papers and an even thicker book. "These might be of use to you when you get round to writing the novel. Read and inwardly digest. The folder is full of cuttings about the ship and letters I’ve found about her. The book is about the sailing ships of that period and there’s an article about the first voyage of the MARCO POLO to Melbourne and back. I know there were some journals written by passengers on the second voyage that would be useful to read to get an idea of what it was like sailing on one of those Emigrant ships. Copies are in the archives of the Merseyside Maritime Museum in Liverpool. Here’s the address if you want e-mail them or phone them. They might send you printouts if you tell them you’re doing research. Ideally you should visit Liverpool."

"Can’t afford the time or the fare. No vacation. No free time until September when my contract with the Museum ends."

"What then?"

"Look for another job. Go back and sponge on my Mother in Vancouver."

"And finish the novel?"

"I’ve got to start it yet," I said, looking with what must have been an expression of dismay at the amount of material he had offered to me because he laughed.

"I’m in no hurry. Take your time to look through them. But I would like them back. Found any more stuff in the basement of that house?"

I told him what I’d found the night before, leaving out the letters, then asked him if he knew anything about the fire of 1877.

"That was horrendous," he said. "Destroyed some of the best buildings in the original city. All the warehouses here were gutted as well as some residences and churches. It started over in Portland on June 20. A spark fell on some stored hay. The stuff soon flared up. There was a strong wind and everything was dry from the recent hot weather. Flames raged across the harbor to the peninsula and consumed the buildings there. They were all wooden you see. Offices, apartment houses, taverns, ship’s chandlers. Only a few of the stone and brick buildings were left and were restorable It was really a great tragedy, although no one died from the fire. Business and shipping records went up in smoke. But that happened many years after the launching of the MARCO POLO. She didn’t meet her end until several years after the fire. She went aground off Cavendish Beach, Prince Edward Island. In 1883. By then she was old, falling apart and held together by chains. She was a timber drogher again."

"She never returned to Saint John then."

"Cavendish Beach is as near as she got. There are still bits of her under the water there. Divers are always going down to look around. Look, I have to run. Got a class in five minutes. Let me know how you get on, if you have any questions. I’m always willing to talk about the ship."

He walked away and I returned to Museum, lugging the folder and heavy book with me. How on earth was I going to find time to read about the intricacies of shipbuilding and sailing? I was more interested in people and their relationships. Perhaps that’s how I should write the novel. Describe the meetings between people and the consequences of their actions and weave in the history.

Tommy appeared in the conservation and restoration studio just as I was thinking of packing up.

"We have permission to go into the house and look over the contents, take anything suitable for the Museum," she announced, lost her breath and began to cough. I dashed to the sink, fetched her a glass of water. She perched on my stool and sipped.

"You shouldn’t come in here. The turpentine is terrible for anyone who suffers from allergies or respiratory diseases, " I said.

I couldn’t say I was pleased by her news. In fact, I resented it with a fierceness that surprised me. I didn’t want to share the house with anyone else. I didn’t want other people delving into its secrets or meeting its new owner. The feeling of possession--or was it obsession--- swept over me, making me unusually aggressive.

"I met the new owner again last night," I asserted. "He showed me where to find Elias Maxwell’s Memoirs and Captain Edwin Jackson’s account of the launching of the MARCO POLO. They’re in my locker. I‘ve brought them for you. There were two boxes of letters too. I read some of them and I know now what happened to Elizabeth Jackson and to John Beverly. She fell down the cellar steps during the fire of 1877. Broke her leg, banged her head, was suffocated by smoke. Her body was found weeks later by Captain Edwin when the entrance to the cellar steps was discovered under a pile of debris."

"And what happened to him? John Beverly?" Tommy’s magnified eyes zeroed in on my face as if she didn’t want to miss anything I said.

"He was murdered by Francis Dunne."

"Aha. His past caught up on him then. A revenge killing for the death of the woman Frances loved. Another tragedy. A plot suitable for a play or opera." She looked down at the glass in her hand, swung it back and forth, then looked right at me again. "If John Beverly was murdered in that house his spirit is there and he wants you to know it. That’s why he’s been roaming about, haunting you."

No. He isn’t a ghost. He isn’t. He isn’t. I wanted to scream at her, but she was only voicing the doubts about Jack which had been growing in my mind ever since I had read about the murder of John.

"But why me? Why would he haunt me?" I muttered.

"Has it never occurred to you that you might be related to his friend, Louise Dunne, in some roundabout way?" Tommy said slowly. "Haven’t you ever thought of checking out your ancestors? Genealogy is a popular study these days. You can even find your forbears on the Internet, so I’m told."

"I’m going to phone my father later this evening. He lives in California, in Silicone valley. He’s a computer nerd. Creates new systems."

"But you said you’re from Vancouver."

"I am. And Mother lives there. They’re divorced. The age of technology split them apart. Mother can’t bear anything to do with computers."

"Can’t say I blame her. What’s your father’s baptismal name?"

"He’s Guy." I stared at her, my eyes widening.

"And Patrick Dunne’s eldest child, whose natural father was Edwin Jackson, was called Jean-Guy, named by his mother, Louise, formerly LeBlanc, from this province and you are Lise. Short for Louise?" She cocked her head to one side.

"No. Just Lise."

"And Louise Dunne loved to dance and flirt with John Beverly, according to Elizabeth. No wonder they’ve chosen you to be the person who reveals their tragic deaths. But I’m betting that now you know what happened to both of them you’ll never see either of them again."

I was silent. I didn’t want to believe that Jack Beverly was a ghost, a handsome, mischievous, restless spirit who couldn’t resist flirting with a young woman. I wanted him to be a real, live person, flesh and blood, bone and muscle.

"Who gave you permission to search the house?" I asked.

"The lawyers, who are arranging the transference of the property to Fanny’s heir, obtained permission for me from him. He’s been found at last. You know Fanny met her cousin, Ted Beverly, during the war and fell in love with him?" she added, changing the subject. "But her mother interfered, went over to England to stop the marriage."

"Why?"

"She didn’t think Fanny should marry a cousin, she said."

"But they weren’t first cousins."

"That was just her excuse. She didn’t approve of Ted. Thought he was after Fanny’s money. She’d been left a small fortune by her father. Fanny never married. She came back here after the war and lived with her mother until the old woman died."

"And she kept in touch with Ted," I said. "His letters to her are in the other shoe box. I haven’t read them, but I found one from a lawyer saying he had died. That’s when she must have decided to leave the house his son."

"I guess so." Tommy nodded in agreement. "And so got her own back on her mother. Not that there would be much left of that small fortune she inherited from her father. Fanny gave huge donations to various charitable organizations and spent money like it was going out of style. Anyway, I was told we can take anything of historical importance from the house for the Museum as long as we label everything and indicate which family house it came from."

"The letters I found should go to the heir," I said. "They’re very personal. Too personal for the Museum. Do you know if there are any other Jacksons alive, descended from Sam and Edwin?"

"None that we know about. Fanny was the only grandchild of Caleb Jackson. Joshua Jackson had only one daughter. She sold his house and moved south. Sam’s daughter, married an American moved away. His only son joined the group of colonials from the Province who went to fight for the abolition of slavery in the Union Army during the American Civil war and was killed. The farm was sold for development after Sam died. I’ve arranged with Jim to go in on Saturday morning to look for artifacts and papers. It will be our only chance before the antique dealers are let in to price things for an auction. You’ll come?"

"Try and keep me out."

Perhaps Jack will be there. Perhaps I will see him again. Perhaps Tommy is wrong and he isn’t a ghost. Still in the grip of my obsession with John or Jack Beverly, I talked to myself as I walked home. Wind tossed the branches of maples now in full leaf. Their shadows danced on the sidewalk. But I could hear no ghostly footsteps, sensed no unseen presence. No figure of a woman appeared before me as I opened the front door of Natalie’s house. It really did seem as if the haunting was over.

I didn’t ask Natalie again if she had seen Bossy. She would only say I was out of my mind and should see a shrink.

"Tommy and I have permission to go into the house next door and look for stuff for the Museum on Saturday. Like to come with us?" I asked her.

"Morning or afternoon?"

"Morning. About ten."

"I’d like to. By the way there’s a message for you on the machine. From Carl."

Carl. I’d been so obsessed by my ghosts that I’d almost forgotten all about him. They seemed more real to me than he did. I picked up the receiver, pressed the new messages button. His recorded voice sounded near, yet he was still in Paris, he said. He would like me to call him and left a number. Within a few minutes I was talking to him. There was noise behind him, music and voices. A party. We both shouted, so we could hear one another. He wanted me to go over to France. Immediately. Go and live with him again. Take up where we had left off.

"I can’t come just like that, at the drop of a hat," I yelled. "I work for my living and don’t have any vacation time until September when my contract here finishes. And I have some important work to finish."

"More important than I am?"

"At the moment it is."

"You’ve met another guy. One you like better."

"Look, Carl, when you left you said our affair was finished. You didn’t need me any more. At the time that hurt. But I recovered and now I don’t need you any more. If you really want me to live with you again you’ll come here to persuade me. I’m going to stay here until I’ve finished my latest project. I have a lot of research to do."

"Research for what?"

"For a book I’m going to write."

"You, write a book? "

His laughter was scornful and betrayed his low opinion of my intelligence. Then as if he realized he had been offensive, he said more softly, smoozing, in that smoozy way he had, although I’d only just recognized it as smooze.

"Lise, this isn’t like you...."

"It’s like the me I am now." My voice was unrecognizable even to myself. Cold, hard, like a knife it sliced across the sound of his. "The me who has grown up and isn’t so easily deluded by an egotistical bore like you are. You only want me to come and live with you so that you have a live-in slave to wait on you. This is the second half of the twentieth century and women are liberated. Hadn’t you noticed? I’m not coming to live with you in Paris. I have better things to do."

In the room in Paris something disastrous happened. I could hear glass shattering. Carl’s glass?

"Gotta go," he yelled in my ear and crashed his receiver down.

I hung up and stood beside the phone, biting my lip. How unsatisfactory talking on the phone could be. Yet, I’d meant every word I’d said. On hearing his voice it had all come bursting out, what I really thought of him but had been too polite to say to his face, too considerate of his feelings. Had he understood? Or was he so selfish, so absorbed in himself he had no understanding of me or any other person who did not worship the idol he imagined himself to be.

Behind me Natalie cheered. "Good for you. That was great. I bet you feel better now. All that off your chest," she said.

"He took me for granted, " I seethed. "Thought I’d jump at the chance to join him in Paris."

I found my briefcase, took out my address book and searched for my father’s phone number. Would he be at home yet, in his luxurious ranch-style bungalow with its views of a valley where fruit farms flourish?

He answered on the third ring. He was a little out of breath, surprised to hear me.

"Just come out of the pool, sweetie," he said. "How are you?"

"I’m okay. Dad, do you know anything about your ancestors, the Dunnes? For instance, where did your father come from? Was he born in the States?"

"He sure was. Born right here in California."

"And his father?"

"Came here from Australia."

"Which part?"

"Honey, what’s all this about?"

"Just answer my questions, Dad, please, and when we get stuck I’ll tell you what it’s about."

"I think he came from the Melbourne area. In the State of Victoria."

"Do you know of any relatives out there who could tell us more? You know, about how the Dunnes got to Melbourne? What they did there? Were the first ones Irish?"

"Probably. I have a distant cousin still living there. Patrick Dunne. We exchange Christmas cards. But I’m not sure I want to know how our people got to Australia. Our ancestor might have been a convict, sent out on a transport by the British Government of the time. Ugly business that."

"Do you have your cousin Patrick’s phone number? Could you call him and ask him if he had a forebearer, another Patrick, who was a politician in Melbourne round about the late 1850s or early 1860s?"

"I could, but he’ll want to know why I’m suddenly so interested."

"Tell him your daughter is doing some historical research on a Patrick Dunne who lived in New Brunswick, Canada and then in Montreal. He went to Ballarat to dig for gold...."

"Hold on, honey. I’m writing this down and some of these places are strange to me. Is New Brunswick where you live?"

"It is."

"What are you doing there?"

"What does it matter. Just write down what I tell you."

He did as I asked and I made him promise to call me as soon as he had answers to the questions from his cousin.

I longed to go next door, ring the front door bell and for Jack Beverly to answer the ring. I longed to find him living in the house as the new owner with Bossy the cat. I wanted more than anything to prove to Natalie I wasn’t going queer and to Tommy that she was wrong and that Jack wasn’t a ghost.

10

The instinct to go down to the basement and unbolt the door and go through to 305 was strong, over-riding all reasonable thought, and as soon as Natalie left the house that evening to go see a musical at the theater with friends, I rushed down the stairs unbolted the communicating door and stepped into the other basement.

To my surprise electric light shone down from a fitting in the ceiling. Some of the dust covers had been taken off the furniture. The packing cases had been stacked in neat piles. The roll top desk was open and some of the drawers had been pulled open to reveal their contents. A way had been cleared to the stairs. I could see they weren’t in great shape, but they tempted me to go up to the first floor. The door at the top was open. I stepped through into a kitchen.

Evening sunset light streamed through the window. The oak cabinets looked pink. Their brass handles gleamed. A coffee maker burbled on a counter. Beside it a half pint of cream was open. Chocolate cookies spilled out from an open packet.

I felt a chill ripple down my spine. Someone was watching me. I turned slowly and stiffly. A man stood in the doorway to the hallway. Square shoulders, tousled hair, dark brows slanting over narrowed eyes. My heart leapt. Different clothes, blue jeans and a blue shirt, it’s collar open at the neck. Nothing unusual about the clothes. There was no doubt in my mind who he was even though I couldn’t see his features clearly in the fast falling dusk.

I would find out for sure if he was a ghost or not.

I launched myself towards him and flung my arms around him. He was solid muscle and bone. His breath left his lungs in a grunt under the impact of my body.

He was REAL. ALIVE. I could have cheered.

"I’ve missed you," I whispered. " I’ve been miserable because I thought I would never see you again." I burrowed my face in his shoulder and squeezed him hard with my arms.

"Hey. Go easy. What the hell is this all about?" He sounded more amused than angry. I sprang back from him, stared. He stared back, his right eyebrow lifting,

"That was an unexpected pleasure. I’d have hugged you back if I hadn’t been so surprised. How did you get in ?" he said.

"I...I...." I stuttered and stopped. Explanation was beyond me at that point.

"Why don’t you sit down, have some coffee? It should be brewed by now." His voice had lost its curtness. He sounded friendly as he invited me to be sociable. He padded over to the stove. "I guess you’re as surprised as I am," he added. "You expected to find someone else. Someone you’re fond of. Sorry I’m not the guy. I could do with a little affection from an attractive woman. I’m itching for some loving. If you know what I mean."

He looked over his shoulder and cocked that eyebrow at me. There was no mistaking that aquiline profile, that unruly lock of dark hair falling on to his brow.

"You’re very like him." The words burst out of me without thought.

"Like the tradesman who’s been working in the house?" he queried and set a mug of coffee before me.

"No. Like the ghost of John Beverly. Only he prefers to be called Jack."

"How do you know?" he asked and went back to the counter.

I slumped in my chair. I was thoroughly confused and he was so sure of himself.

He brought the milk carton and bowl of sugar to the table and set them down.

" I found some letters in the roll top desk in the basement. Yesterday evening. I...thought John Beverly’s ghost was there and showed me where they were," I muttered and waited for him to laugh at me.

He brought his mug to the table, pulled out a chair, sat down.

"I showed you where they were," he said. "Not John Beverly’s ghost. I’d guessed where Fanny hid and locked up important stuff and I opened the desk yesterday evening. before you came. I have all the keys to all the cupboards, sideboards, cabinets and so on."

I was stunned, could only stare at him, completely speechless for a moment. He drank coffee, put his mug down, leaned back and, hands in his jeans pockets, tipped his chair on to its back legs. His eyes danced with merriment and his lips twitched as if he wanted to grin.

"Are you telling me you’ve been pretending to be your ancestor’s ghost?" I blurted out at last.

"No pretense necessary," he replied, cool as a cucumber. "I appeared and you transformed me into a ghost. I just went along with you."

"Why?"

"Mostly because you intrigued me. I wanted find out what you were after down there. And then I had this strong feeling I’d known you before, in another life."

The icy ripple down my spine again. I knew exactly what he meant. I felt the same about him. He swung his chair straight, picked up his mug, looked at me over the rim.

"Mad at me? For stringing you along?"

"Of course I am. I’m furious. It was a mean trick to play," I retorted. "But the clothes The shirt. The waistcoat. 19th century. Like John Beverly might have worn."

"I found them in one of the old chests. They were his. Fit me perfectly. Guess I inherited more from him than my name. I wanted to tell you yesterday evening, but I was expecting someone from the Museum. A Miss Colwell. She had been in touch with the lawyers and asked for permission to look for useful historical artifacts. She knew my old cousin, Fanny Jackson, who willed the house to me, bless her heart. Fanny had a thing for my Dad, wanted to marry him years ago. I came to see her when he died, brought back some letters she had sent him. She took a fancy to me, persuaded me to stay in Canada. I guess that’s why she left the house and its contents to me." He emptied his coffee mug, fixed me with his clear gray eyes." Miss Colwell told me you’d been seeing ghosts and was quite happy to go along with the hoax. So was Natalie. When I took Bossy over to her she told me you were in a bad way, mentally disturbed, suffered from hallucination, believed poltergeists visited her living room one night." He grinned, without shame. "That was me. After I saw and heard you in this basement I decided to find out where you’d come from so I paid a return visit, went up the stairs to your kitchen. I knew I would get a reaction from you if I made it look as if someone had broken in. So are you going to tell me why visited my basement uninvited."

"I saw a woman enter our house, one day...then Bossy appeared and I followed her.." I was gabbling, not making sense, so I stopped and muttered. "You’re not going to believe this."

"Try me. Only go more slowly. Don’t tell me everything at once. You saw a woman enter where? The house where you live?"

"Right." I drank more coffee, took a deep breath and, aware all the time that he never stopped looking at me, his assessing eyes flicking over my face, my hair, my clothes, I told him everything that had happened until he’d shown me the shoe boxes full of letters in the roll top desk.

"So why have you come up here this evening?" he asked.

"Tommy said I had to face up to the fact that you were a ghost. I didn’t want you to be ghost so I came up to find you and prove her wrong."

"And greeted me as if I was your long-lost lover," he suggested.

"I wanted to feel if you were real. If...if you’d been a ghost you would have faded into thin air."

"If you say so." He laughed, head going back, teeth flashing. "But I’m glad I’m not a ghost and I wish I was your lover.."

"I guessed you’d laugh," I said, pushed back my chair and stood up, anger mixed with disappointment raging through me. He was on his feet in an instant, stood in front of me.

"I knew you wouldn’t believe me," I wailed, all defiance seeping out of me. "Oh, what am I going to do? Natalie is right. I’ve been out of my mind, following a woman about, imagining you were John Beverly’s ghost, talking to myself, dreaming he was in my bedroom...."

"Really? He was...or rather, I was. How interesting," he scoffed.

"But I’m sure I saw Elizabeth’s ghost. She invited me into the basement...."

"I thought Bossy did."

"Stop making fun of me," I yelled and tried to push him out of my way. Instead he put his arms around me, pulled me to him, held me close. I could hear his heart thumping steadily. His hands stroked my back. The feel of them was soothing. I felt comforted and relaxed against him, closed my eyes.

"I’m sorry you feel that I played a trick on you. My intentions were good," he said softly. His bristly chin moved against my temple. The scents of his body tantalized my nose. I realized how long it had been since I’d made love with a man. Nerves which had been dormant all winter woke up, began to uncoil and expand deliciously. I pressed closer to him. His breath came out in a long shaky sigh. The beat of his heart changed, became uneven and when he whispered, his voice shook with passion.

"This is a great pleasure to me," he said. "One I haven’t known for some time and I’m glad you’re not the ghost of that woman I knew long ago. I loved her, but circumstances came between us and we could not consummate our love. She was married to another and I...well, never mind that now. I hope you’re not married and we can make love together. Soon."

If I didn’t break free of his arms I would give into the gentle seduction of his hands moving over me, rousing unsatisfied longings. I wriggled and broke free of his hold. His arms dropped away to his sides, but there was a gleam, almost a blaze, in his eyes that left me in no doubt about how lustful he felt at that moment, a man with overpowering sexual needs that might get beyond his control at any minute.

Completely shaken by my response to his touch, I stepped as far away from him as I could get.

"I’m not making love with a man I’ve only just met," I said. "And right now I’m going back home before Natalie comes in."

"Then you can get the letters you took from the desk yesterday and bring them to me." He was stern now, standing over me, threatening me. Offended by his dictatorial tone, I was about to refuse when he laughed.

"Okay. I get the message, " he said. " PLEASE, Lise, will you fetch the letters and the journal? I would really like to look through them tonight."

He knew only too well how to mollify a woman and get her to do what he wanted. He’d probably had lots of practice, I thought acidly and was immediately deluged by a wave of jealousy for all those women he had known before he had met me. And there must be many was my next thought. He wasn’t a youth. Mid thirties I guessed and nearer forty than thirty.

"Well?" he moved towards me, threatening again.

"I’ll get them. But I think you’re a bit of a bully," I grumbled

"Only when I want something that I believe is mine," he retorted.

He followed me down to the basement. I showed him Elizabeth’s traveling trunk.

"There might be some more letters in it, " I said.

"Go and fetch the others, " he ordered. " I’ll wait here for you and if you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’ll come looking for you. In your bedroom." That predatory gleam was back in his eyes, but so was the laughter in his voice.

I was back in less than fifteen minutes with both shoe boxes and the journal. To my surprise Natalie was with him and they were talking about the communicating door.

"How soon can you get it boarded up?" Jack was saying. "I’d like it done before the house is put up for sale."

"You’re going to sell it?" I exclaimed.

"I need the money. To get married." His glance was bland when he looked at me.

"It can be done tomorrow morning," Natalie said. "First thing. Before the invasion of the folks from the Museum. I’ll go and phone Fred now. Do you want to be here when it’s done? About seven?"

"I’ll be here," he said.

Natalie actually smiled at him and once again I felt that wave of jealousy wash through me. Why? Because she and Jack seemed to be hitting it off?

I pushed the shoe boxes, the journal and the shawl towards him.

"You said you wanted to see these." I was aggressive, wanting all his attention to focus on me. As he took the boxes from me, I said to Natalie,"Better make that call to Fred."

"Oh, sure. See you tomorrow, Jack"

He murmured goodnight and she went off up the stairs. He took the lids off the boxes and examined the contents.

"They’re all there," I said, still aggressive. "I wasn’t going to keep them or give them to the Museum. They are too personal and should belong to a descendant of the family."

"Thank you." He turned to go through the door, changed his mind and came back to me.

"I’m writing a book, too. Non-fiction. Military history about my father’s regiment. I started gathering information about my family when I was convalescing at my sister’s place in England after being blown up...."

"Blown up?"

"Drove over a landmine in Bosnia." He was laconic. "My driver was killed, but they managed to stick me together again. John Beverly was a captain in the same regiment my father was in and his father before him. John was in the Crimea war, but I couldn’t find out what happened to him after the war was over. I’m hoping these letters will help."

"I know they will, and what you really need to read is his wife, Elizabeth’s, journal. That will tell you more. She met him in the hospital at Scutari."

I could hear Natalie thumping about in the kitchen. She called to me from the open doors to the basement.

"When can I see you again?" Jack whispered urgently. "You and I still have a lot to talk about. About the Jacksons and the Beverlys. About you and me."

"Are you really going to be married? " I surprised myself by asking, but it was imperative that I should know.

"I hope so. It’s about time. I just haven’t found the right woman until now."

"I’ll be with the Director of the Museum and Tommy when they visit 305 tomorrow."

"We’ll arrange a meeting then."

He didn’t fade into the shadows. He strode through the door. He had no sign of a limp. No sign of any injury at all, but I guessed there would be scars on his body where they had stitched him together. The desire to see those scars, to kiss them and stroke them, soothe them took me by surprise, shocking me.

I mustn’t think like that about him. I hardly knew him.

I bolted the door and sped upstairs to my bedroom.

11

Natalie was in the kitchen when I eventually got downstairs on Saturday morning. I had slept soundly without dreaming. No restless spirits had disturbed my rest and I felt lively, happy and in need of a good breakfast, the first time I had felt like eating bacon and eggs since I had come to live in Saint John.

"It’s all done," Natalie said. "The door is boarded up. What time are the Museum people supposed to come? They can all come over here for lunch. Jack will come too. I’m glad to see you eating. I guess that means you’ve returned from your time-travel experience or whatever it was. Your paranormal meeting with people who have long been dead. You really had me spooked."

Tommy arrived. I called to Natalie to tell her we were going into 305. She said she would come later and I went with Tommy.

Jack didn’t appear to greet us so we went straight into the parlor. Jim Appleby pulled back the heavy drapes and we all coughed and sneezed at the dust he disturbed. Paul Hendry, in charge of furniture at the Museum, began to remove dust covers from the armchairs. The dust was too much for Tommy.

"Let’s leave them, " she wheezed. "I don’t know anything about old furniture. Show me where those ledgers and business records are."
We went into the kitchen. I opened the door to the basement and felt for the light switch, but couldn’t find one. Enough light from the kitchen slanted down the stairs and there was daylight in the basement coming through the windows, showing the shapes of the furniture.

I started down, warning Tommy to be careful of the broken steps. I was still near the top when I saw the shape of a cat sitting on a step halfway down the flight.

"Bossy," I yelled in delight, pleased to know the cat I had seen had not been a ghost of Elizabeth Jackson’s cat.

I forgot my warning to Tommy, leapt down the next few steps, reached for the cat and stepped into a hole. My ankle twisted and I went tumbling down the stairway, over and over. I landed on my back on the stony floor, banged my head and blacked out for a few moments.

This is what happened to Elizabeth, was my first thought when consciousness returned.

"What happened?" Natalie asked.

She was on her knees beside me. I could see her clearly, blonde curls hanging about her frowning face. There was nothing wrong with the ability of my eyes to focus, just a bump coming up on the hard part of my skull. I wasn’t concussed. I tried to sit up, felt a bit woozy, but that soon passed and I could feel a nasty twisting pain in my ankle.

"I saw Bossy sitting on the stairs and stepped down to pick her up. She must be in the basement somewhere. Hiding," I explained.

"Are you okay, Lise?" Tommy appeared from behind Natalie. Her bush of gray hair seemed bushier and her big lensed glasses made her look like an anxious owl. "I got such a fright when I saw you rolling down the stairs, I shrieked."
Natalie helped me get up. Pain shot through my right ankle as soon as I put my weight on it and I yelped. At that moment I heard a sort of growling meow and felt the familiar furry shape of Bossy slither round my legs. I bent down and the cat leapt up into my arms.

"Oh Bossy. I’m so glad to find you again," I whispered.

"Bloody cat." Jack spoke harshly. I looked round. He was a dark shape against the light slanting in from one of the windows. "You could have broken a leg or broken your neck, " he added coming towards me.

"I was so glad to see her. I thought she was lost." I rubbed a cheek against the cat’s head. Her purring was loud, ecstatic. "I wish you wouldn’t curse her or abuse her. She’s my friend."

"I’m jealous of her, that’s all.. What wouldn’t I give to be stroked and cuddled by you like that," he remarked and I heard Tommy titter. He bent over me. "Come on, let’s get you up the stairs and into the kitchen so we can look at that ankle."

Before I could object, he put an arm around my shoulders, the other under my knees and lifted me. Bossy flew out of my arms landed on a nearby chair and hissed.

"You don’t have to carry me," I complained.

"Shut up and put your arms round my neck and we’ll soon be up those stairs, " he said, ignoring my grumble.

"I’m too heavy, " I argued.

"Light as a feather," he murmured, his lips close to my cheek. "You don’t eat enough."

"I’m always telling her that," Natalie said smugly.

"Starving yourself causes hallucinations, makes you see ghosts. But perhaps you prefer a phantom lover to a flesh and blood guy like me," he whispered and I could only hope the others couldn’t hear what he said.

I gave in, put my arms round his neck and he started up the stairs. Natalie went in front to show him the dangerous hole in the step near the top of the flight.

He dumped me down on a kitchen chair, dragged another over, ordered me to lift my right leg and rest my foot on it so Natalie and he could to examine it. The whole of the instep was bruised and swollen.

"A sprain," they both said.

"What shall we do about it, " asked Tommy. She was all fluttery, not sure how to deal with an injury.

"You don’t have to do anything." Natalie was sharp, impatient with the other woman’s inability to cope in a crisis.

"Why don’t you go back to the basement, Tommy. Jack will go with you and show you where the roll top desk is and the Maxwell and Jackson business records," I suggested.

Tommy was only too ready to avoid the responsibility of helping a colleague who had become suddenly helpless and went willingly with Jack.

"I’d like to get you next door. Then we can give the ankle a hot soak," Natalie said, "Think you could make it by hopping if I support you? We can’t expect Jack to carry you all that way."

I wasn’t going to let Jack carry me in his arms again. While I’d been close to him I’d wanted to melt into him, become a part of his warmth and strength. The feeling had shaken me so much that when he dumped on the kitchen chair I’d almost fallen off it.

"Bossy. Where is she? I d like to take her home. She must be starving," I said.

"Jack will look for the cat. Says he’ll bring her over to you if he finds her. Now stand on your left leg. Don’t let your right foot touch the floor."

With an arm around Natalie, using her as a crutch, I hopped from 305 to her house and collapsed on the sofa in the living room. An hour later I was lying comfortably, legs stretched out, my right foot resting on a cushion, a painkilling pill taken with hot herbal tea, easing the pain and making me sleepy.

I must have dozed off because I dreamt a small engine was throbbing on my chest. Opening my eyes I found Bossy sitting on me, eyes half closed with pleasure as her paws dug into my sweat shirt. Opposite to me, lounging in a chair, was Jack Beverly sat reading a ledger I recognized as Elizabeth’s journal.

"Thanks for finding Bossy and bringing her to me," I murmured..

His eyes flashed blue gray against thick black lashes as he looked up and across at me. "It was not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry," he said, his lips quirking in a grimace. "Look."

He held up his hands. The backs of them were scored with red scratches.

"I apologize on Bossy’s behalf. She doesn’t seem to like men," I said.

He shrugged as if he didn’t care, closed the journal, and leaned back, stretching his legs before him. He stared at me with narrowed eyes. Minutes went by in silence save for Bossy’s noisy purring. I moved, squirming, trying to look away from Jack’s steady gaze. "Stop staring at me," I protested.

"I’m trying to figure out why you’re so familiar. Why I have this queer feeling I’ve known you before." He changed position, sat up leaned his elbows on his knees and went on staring at me. "You have any ideas about that?"

"I thought you were John Beverly’ghost, so perhaps you’re mixing me up with a woman he knew."

"Louise Dunne, " he murmured, still looking at me. "John was in love with her, but she was a devout Catholic and regarded as sacred the vow to be faithful she had made to Patrick and would not go away with John."

"Garbage," I asserted, sitting up straight and wincing when my sprained ankle moved.

"Absolute garbage. He loved Elizabeth, married her."

"Only when he found out she was going to have his child. That’s how she trapped him."

"That’s not so." I was angry now, feeling hot, blind to the laughter gleaming in his eyes and hovering about his lips. "Elizabeth wasn’t like that."

"No? I admit she comes over as prim and proper in her journal, but remember how jealous and possessive she was of him when they were on the ship going out to Australia. Who was she jealous of? Louise Dunne. And where did he visit when he’d had enough of the goldfields at Ballarat? Louise’s lodging house at Sandridge. Louise was in love with him and he responded to her warmth and gaiety, to her loving care."

"That’s not my interpretation of what Elizabeth wrote about Louise," I retorted.

"But you haven’t read these." He held up a packet of letters.

"They were in one of the shoe boxes?"

"No. They were amongst the family papers my grandfather inherited from his father who, I suppose, got them from his father, Elizabeth and John’s son, Edwin, born in Melbourne in 1858, just one month after his parents were married. After the 1877 fire he left Saint John, went to England, joined his father’s old regiment, saved enough money to buy a house not far from the old Beverly estate, something he knew his father had wanted to do. My sister lives there now, runs a riding stable, trains horses for steeplchases." He tossed the package to me. "You might like to read them. It’s because of them that I came back to this house when I learned I’d inherited it. I came to find out what happened to John Beverly and to find out more about Louise Dunne. I’m glad I came and met you. Is it possible you’re a descendant of hers?"

I told him about the inquiries my father was making and soon I was telling him all about myself and why I had taken a job so far away from Vancouver.

"This Carl you talk about. You going to shack up with him again?"

"No way. That’s over. Finished. I can’t believe I was so easily deceived by someone."

"It happens," he said dryly.

"To you too?"

"Years ago. When I was a callow youth." He mocked himself. "So long ago I can’t remember what she looked like. But I’d like to marry this time. Have a family. Would you be interested?"

"What do you mean by ‘this time’? We’ve only just met," I objected.

"But we’ve known each other before. In another life. And there is something going on between us. I’ve felt it. You’ve felt it. Ever since we met. And don’t deny you weren’t all stirred up when I carried you up the basement stairs next door. I could feel you shaking."

"I was afraid you might drop me," I taunted.

"Liar, " he said softly and lunged forward out of the chair on to his knees beside the sofa. "There’s nothing to stop us from satisfying our needs. Neither of us is committed to anyone else," he whispered.

"Oh, yes there is," I countered, shifting away from him as far as I could, which wasn’t far because of the back of the sofa. "I’m not in love with you."

"No? You could have fooled me."

"You’re mistaking sexual attraction for love. Men do that all the time," I argued. His nearness was having it’s usual effect. I was wanting to reach out and touch him, stroke his face, tangle fingers in his hair, feel his hands on me, stroking me ....

I was saved from commitment by the sound of voices in the hall, Natalie accompanied by the group from the Museum.

"Let me know when you come to a decision," he whispered. He stood up and walked away, greeting Tommy as she came into the room to ask how I felt.

I did not see him again that day. Natalie told me he’d gone back to 305 to finish going through drawers and cupboards before any of the furniture was moved out either to the Museum or the auction rooms.

"He said he might call in tomorrow before he goes to the airport," she added. "He’s going to visit friends in Toronto, ex-Canadian Army friends he knew in Bosnia. After that he has to report to his regiment somewhere near Ottawa."

My father phoned later. He had talked to his cousin, Patrick, in Australia and sounded excited by what he had learned.

"That Patrick you talked about was my great, great, great grandfather. And you were right, he was in Saint John for a while and married a French girl from there, Louise LeBlanc."

"And which of their children are we descended from? Their eldest son, Jean-Guy or another?"

"From the second son, Sean. The eldest was lost at sea. Patrick’s going to send copies of all the information he has found about the family directly to you."

We talked a little more before we hung up.

Louise Dunne nee Leblanc, who had lived in this city was my great, great, great grandmother, but I was not descended from her first son. Therefore I was not related to the Jacksons. I wasn’t kin, even distantly, to Jack Beverly because Edwin Jackson his great, great great grandmother’s brother was not my ancestor.

I picked up the package of letters Jack had given me and after limping upstairs, read them in bed. They were letters written in old fashioned French to John Beverly and signed by Louise Dunne. I thanked heaven that I had had to learn French at school and had to use the language occasionally at the Museum, since the Province is bi-lingual and all captions for the exhibits and catalogues had to be printed in both English and French.

I was soon in no doubt that they were love-letters, an outpouring of private feelings felt by Louise for the elusive and secretive John Beverly. Not one of the letters in the package was from him to her.

But he had kept hers, so there must have been something going between them as Jack Beverly had suggested happened between me and him whenever we met.

And now I wanted to tell him I understood why he believed Louise and John had loved each other. I understood why he thought he had known me before and that we had met in another period of time. I would tell him when he called in the next day before he left for the airport..

Natalie left early the next morning to participate in a tournament at the local golf club. With Bossy for my companion I rested my ankle and read through Elizabeth’s journal again. Jack was right. She had been jealous of John’s friendship with Louise.

I was writing, trying to describe an encounter on the ship between the three of them, when the front door bell rang. I hopped eagerly to the door on the crutches Natalie had rented for me.

Tommy was on the step outside and my stirred up emotions fell from high to low. She asked after my ankle and suggested it was a good time to discuss Edwin Jackson’s journal about his relationship with the MARCO POLO. She had brought it for me to read and suggested I should start writing a novel about it before I wrote the other based on Elizabeth’s journal.

"An adventure story. An introduction to the ship, the Jackson family and the places," she said. "Much more suitable. Could be used by schools." .

For most of the afternoon she stayed and we discussed the journals and the novels. I told her about my descent from Louise Dunne.

"It’s not surprising. You have a French look about you. And Louise might have visited Elizabeth in the old Maxwell house." Tommy was off again theorizing about restless spirits, but not once did she explain why she had gone along with Jack’s pretense to be John Beverly’s ghost.

By the time she left so had Jack’s flight to Toronto. He had gone without coming to say goodbye, without coming to ask if I’d made up my mind about his proposal. He’d gone, dropped out of my life as John Beverly had so often dropped out of Elizabeth Jackson’s. My ankle was much better on Monday. Natalie drove me to work and Tommy drove me home at five-o-clock. A removal van was outside 305 and furniture was still being carried out.

"Our stuff has been delivered already to the Museum. This lot must be going to auction rooms, " Tommy said. "The ghosts will have gone, too, now we know all about them."

I spent the next few weeks studying Edwin Jackson’s account of the launching of the MARCO POLO and her first voyage to Australia and making it into a novel with Tommy’s help. The Project committee read the first draft, liked it and found a publisher. A real estate for sale sign went up outside 305 and it was sold.

One day at the end of August I was walking home when I heard footsteps behind me, leather shod shoes or boots, a heavy male tread….John Beverly?

I hunched my shoulders, listening in trepidation for the rustle of a woman’s long petticoats. I didn’t hear it. Elizabeth wasn’t with him and I was relieved that she didn’t appear in front of me when I unlocked the front door of Natalie’s house.

I let the door swing shut behind me, but it didn’t close because it was pushed open. I turned to see who had followed me. Jack stepped into the hall. He was wearing the dark blue uniform of an officer in the Canadian Armed Services with colored medal ribbons above the left breast pocket.

I stared in surprise, feeling delight bubble up inside me. He took off his cap. His gray glance flicked over me.

"You’re still not eating enough," he said.

"What…what are you doing here? " I squeaked.

"The house is sold. I’ve come to pick up the money. And I’ve come to ask you if you’ve made up your mind yet about marrying me."

"I’ve made up my mind," I replied and flung myself forward into his arms.

His breath came out in a laughing grunt as he took the impact and then his lips were warm and sweet against mine.

We had the house to ourselves that evening. Natalie was out of town. But I like to think that the spirit of John Beverly lingered in the shadows and he looked on at our love-making with approval and was able to rest in peace at last.

.