Magic exists where we cannot see.
It lives in unexplained phenomena, in attraction to strangers, in a pen and crimson inkwell, from a trunk, in a tent, at a fair, in the fog.
I didn't believe in magic.
Before he died, my father taught me the world was solid. Reporting was more like science, anyway. Hard facts. Logical inferences. Of course, I wasn't exactly an award-winning reporter so what did I know about it? But, when Detective Edward Thomas told me he had seen a phantom, something woke up inside of me. I could have tried to dismiss it as a trick of the lamplight, but how else could I explain the body on the cobblestones?
Instead, I simply believed him, and not just because he was arrestingly handsome. I was engaged, after all, to a sensible, though older man--the same man who published my articles, in fact.
No. I believed him because somewhere, deep down, I knew magic was real. What's worse, I knew it was a part of me. The detective's ghost story had just woken me up.
As soon as I accepted this truth, everything changed. My writing career, my family, my domestic prospects, and my freedom.
What woman, pray tell, can fit three men and a writing career in her life and still keep her sanity?
But there I landed.
Byron was my fiancé. He was sensible. He could provide a modest life of means for my sister and me. He could also continue to publish my little articles in his weekly magazine. He adored me.
Edward was my detective, so good and true, straight as an arrow and noble as a knight. He inspired me to be something more. But, I could never live up to such a high standard.
Bram was a mystery. Who could say where his life had taken him before he met me or what adventures he had endured. Everything he did was curious. I was drawn to him in ways I didn't understand.
Could I escape this journey with my engagement intact? Which course would lead me down a road to the woman my father always believed I should be?
My fingers still have that enchanted twitch even as I peck these words out on an old typewriter. Before another episode comes, let me tell you what happened that fateful autumn in Dawnhurst-on-Severn. . .
Excerpt:
“Excuse me,” I
said, after clearing my throat.
“Who’s missing?”
The clerk didn’t look up.
“I beg your
pardon?”
“Missing persons
will file with Ms. Turner down the hall.”
“I’m not here to
report a missing person,” I replied. This was enough to give the clerk at least
a moment’s pause. He glanced his terrier of a face up at me and squinted one
eye in the lamplight.
“Has your
husband beat you?”
“I’m not
married. I’m looking for Sergeant George Cooper.”
“Sarge, you’ve
got a visitor!” he bellowed down the hallway behind him before turning back to
me. “Right down the hallway, Miss. He’ll be happy to have a visitor that isn’t
a felon. I guess, assuming you’re not here to turn yourself in… You aren’t uh,
you know, soliciting wares and suddenly discovered religion if you catch my
meaning?”
This I did not
grace with a verbal response. Instead, I leveled my eyes at him the way I used
to as governess of an impish child, took off my gloves menacingly, and started
down the hall.
“Please have a
seat,” said whom I presumed to be the Ms. Turner the clerk had mentioned. She
wore a tweed skirt and vest, and her hair was done up into what was once a bun.
She too was busy in paperwork, pounding away furiously at a typewriter. I
brushed off a filthy chair and waited. I watched Ms. Turner for some time,
wondering what pathway may have brought her to this desk. She appeared older
than me. It’s difficult to guess the age of women around the middle of their
lives, but the gentle lines around her eyes hinted to me that she was now
closer to forty than thirty. I noticed no wedding ring.
I felt an almost
immediate kinship to Ms. Turner. It wasn’t a large stretch to imagine that I
was looking at myself in ten years, pounding away at a typewriter, perhaps
trying to publish works of my own in my spare time outside of my professional
duties.
I have Byron
now. I had to remind myself about my fiancé so often. How silly. Even when I
was here on his bidding, for his publication no less.
“I wasn’t
drinking on the job, sir!” I heard a man’s raised voice through the sergeant’s
door.
Ms. Turner
slowly looked up at me. “They all say that.”
The door swung
wide open, and I was struck by what I could only assume was the model for a
police force figurine. The man had an acutely trim waistline that stretched up
into a broad chest and shoulders. His hair was combed impeccably, as if each
strand dared not stray from its assigned position. His eyes, alert and lively,
were peculiarly warm for being steely grey. His brow furrowed, and his neatly
trimmed policeman’s mustache curved downward into a disconcerting frown.
He swept through
the office door and stood erect, as though he was at a self-called attention.
Behind him, the large Sergeant George Cooper, a man whom I could only describe
as a younger, meaner looking Father Christmas, filled the doorway.
“I don’t want
outlandish stories, Lieutenant. I want arrests. I want brigands behind bars. I
want young do-it-alls like you to stop trying to turn every little case into
the next apocalypse,” Sergeant Cooper stammered. He was only mostly red in the
face.
The young
lieutenant stood and, though he looked thoroughly unamused, took the tongue
lashing admirably.
“You’ve got a
visitor,” butted in Ms. Turner. Sergeant Cooper looked at me, and his
expression instantly melted into a rehearsed sympathy.
“Ma’am, my
deepest apologies,” he said, putting his hand on his heart. “Do you have a
missing person to report?”
“No,” I
stuttered. “I’m here… do you get a lot of missing persons?”
“Most of the
women we see in here are reporting a missing husband or, regrettably, a missing
child,” he replied.
“I’m sorry to
hear that. But, and, well, I’m not sure how to put this exactly. I’m here from
Langley’s Miscellany, and I—”
Before I could
finish my sentence, the warm expression on Sergeant Cooper’s face melted away.
“You’re a
reporter. Thank you, Miss, but the door’s over there.” He turned and retreated
back into his office. I stuck my foot in the door, which was more painful than
I thought it might be.
“I don’t want to
be a bother. I’m just curious about the latest. I don’t mean to fabricate anything
or inflate your efforts. I just—”
“You just want
to be first to know about the dreadful muck the police force deals with each
day.”
“Well, yes,” I
replied.
“Like I said,
Miss, the door is over there. I have a lot to do.” He put on a pair of spectacles
and sat down at his desk. I felt a burn creep up my cheeks. It was one thing to
be denied, another to be rejected right in front of a woman I had suddenly come
to admire and a deeply handsome police lieutenant. The propriety!
“Please, you
knew my father,” I said. He looked up at me over his spectacles. They were
comically small for his large face. “Gerald Winthrop.”
“Jerry
Winthrop?” the sergeant said with a laugh. “Devils blind me. You were the scrap
of a thing always hiding in the corner, thinking we couldn’t see you.”
I nodded. He
barked out a triumphant laugh.
“Your father was
a hell of a man! Always sticking his nose in places it didn’t belong. Any mate
of his in trouble, he’d be here before a spit trying to talk their way out it.”
He stared into the air as if he could see my father in the office presently.
“How is Jerry doing? I got into more arguments with him. He could take a
yelling and deal it out in turn. If only my lieutenants had half the backbone.
We exchanged words like lads in a fistfight.”
“Well, I hope
you got the last word in then,” I said. His countenance dropped sharply.
“You don’t
mean—how’d it happen?”
“Fever. Or
something like that. I never did get a straight answer from the doctors.” I
hated doctors. A fair majority of them might as well be bunkmates with critics.
“Doctors are
thieves,” the sergeant said.
“I’m very sorry
for your loss, Miss,” said a clear voice behind me. They were the first words
the lieutenant said to me. The purity in his voice took me off guard. After
losing my father, I’d heard “I’m sorry for your loss” time and time again. In
nearly every case, it was mere etiquette, obligation, and passing fancy, as
though someone might check a box of a tidy little list somewhere by saying the
appropriate thing. This man, whom I barely knew, sounded arrestingly sincere.
I turned toward
him, and he bowed slightly. Behind him, Ms. Turner slid into focus with two
very inquisitive eyebrows.
“Yes, well, this
is Lieutenant Edward Thomas. He’s our resident… bleeding heart and imaginist,”
Sergeant Cooper said. Edward extended a hand.
“It’s a pleasure
to make your acquaintance,” I said. His eyes were smothering. I couldn’t seem
to escape them. He had no shyness about looking a stranger squarely in the
face, that’s for certain.
“The pleasure is
mine,” I managed. “Imaginist?” I inquired of the sergeant.
“No doubt in it.
In fact, Lieutenant Thomas may be exactly what you’re looking for,” he said
with a coy smile.
“I’m engaged,” I
spit out.
Sergeant Cooper
erupted into an ungraciously loud belly laugh. I noticed Ms. Turner turn her
face down to suppress a giggle as well. Edward flushed.
“I’m sure you
are. I meant for the stories you’ve been looking for,” Cooper said. I
immediately felt feverish as itchy perspiration appeared on the small of my
back. Luella Winthrop. Gift with words, I have.
“He has a story
for me then?” I muttered, eager to move on.
“Aye. Lieutenant
Thomas here claims to have seen a ghost!”
