Calista, Laura Rahme [best ereader for comics txt] 📗

How long had she stood there, he wondered. Maurice acknowledged her with a nod then stepped downstairs, affecting a casual air. As he returned to the parlour, he was quietly excited about outsmarting the housekeeper. He wondered what he would find in the cellar.

The closet

HER foreign traits, those large melancholic eyes and even the expression on her face – Calista’s portrait haunted Maurice. He could not find rest, let alone sleep.

As he ran his mind through all he had witnessed and learnt, he could not escape the vision of that portrait by the grand staircase. The more Maurice pondered, the more Calista’s eyes returned to haunt him. Black and blue. Yet he knew nothing of the Greek woman who had arrived in England ten years ago prior to her death. Except…

He closed his eyes, recalling Ellen’s testimony. The maid had revealed how in full daylight, she had once seen a hideous face staring at her from Calista’s locked bedroom. Yet when he had entered this very room on Tuesday morning, he had seen nothing out of the ordinary.

Except those stained dresses, thought Maurice. Yes, what about those stained dresses?

As in all households, he assumed the maids soaked clothes in a steaming tub in the washroom near the commons kitchen. For the more delicate clothing, he’d seen Mrs. Cleary bundle up linen and send it off to a laundress in Reading Town.

Why would a woman who lived in such refined surroundings choose to put away numerous stained dresses and leave them to rot in her closet? Maurice’s eyes sprung open.

Because she was hiding the stain. Or perhaps…the origin of the stains. Think, Maurice. This project inside the cellar, whatever its nature, it must have caused those stains. Calista would have climbed upstairs as soon as she emerged from the cellar. If so, perhaps she regularly washed those dresses herself.

Of course, thought Maurice. Calista had been ill, unable to tend to her own laundry for weeks. Then following her death, no one had washed her clothing. The dresses had been left untouched.

There was a secret to Calista Nightingale after all.

It was not yet midnight when Maurice crept out of his room, lamp in hand. The night’s chill clung to his robe as he turned the corridor and followed the stair balustrade to Calista’s bedroom. In his free hand, he clutched at the large eighteenth century key. Trembling slightly, he inserted it.

Taking a deep breath, Maurice turned the key.

He stepped inside.

There was a furtive movement to his left, behind the drapes. He hefted his lantern high towards the window. Nothing moved. In the distance, he heard a crow’s caw. It must have been a bird flapping its wings outside, thought Maurice. At least, there was no spirit staring out the window.

Stepping towards the bed, he was made aware of an unpleasant odour. It was strange. He recalled that the room had been perfumed with jasmine on his first visit. All around him now, were hints of the sea breeze…no, something else. Maurice often walked the long beaches of his native Normandy, and whenever the algae washed up along the shore, a strong salty tang lingered in the air.

That’s what it was. As though death had clothed itself in algae, then reached out from the sea to stain this bedroom, dragging it into the ocean’s depths. At first he could not explain why the scent filled him with such dread, but then, he knew. He had smelt it before. Last night, in my room.

Maurice’s heartbeat quickened. No. He would not succumb to the same hysteria as the Irish housemaids. Ellen was awfully malnourished. It was no wonder she was delirious and prone to follies, no wonder she invented. As for Mrs. Cleary’s visions, he now suspected they resulted from drug taking.

His light caught the coloured pieces glowing on the baroque bedside table. Maurice neared the table and flashed his lamp above it. He’d not seen the shattered porcelain figures the first time. He brought the light to each broken piece and guessed what had been a young shepherdess, then a couple of sheep, and last, a well-dressed gentleman.

Maurice recalled Shannon’s concerns for the Nightingale couple. She had been persuaded that Calista resented her husband at least a year before her death. Had Aaron and Calista fought in this room?

Maurice imagined Aaron in a sudden fury, smashing the porcelain figures. But then Ellen’s voice echoed in his mind. Such a nice man, Aaron was. So kind. The vision vanished.

The floorboards creaked behind him. Maurice turned, flashing his lamp onto the wall opposite the window, searching. Scattered by the lace drapes, the moonlight drew random dancing spots along the flowered wallpaper.

The timber moaned once more and Maurice knew – there was a presence here, right here, in this room. Whatever it was, it had visited him on previous nights and brought with it this smell that so resembled the ocean.

I know it is you, thought Maurice, despite his will to deny superstition. No, he would not drift into madness. He would not say her name.

His eye travelled to the tall closet by the vanity table. If he could seize one of Calista’s dresses, perhaps Madeleine might deduce the origin of the stain?

Maurice flinched. Something was wrong.

He remembered closing both panels during his first visit. There was no doubt that he had shut them for he had been horrified by the stench of the soiled fabric.

Now, as he approached, he could see that one of the doors was ajar. Maurice felt a chill down his spine.

“Calista…” he whispered.

It was foolish to expect her to respond but he believed that by calling out her name, he could show her that he knew who she was. He could acknowledge her presence.

Maurice trembled.

“Calista, is that you?”

Right before his eyes, the