The Mysterious Mr Wylie: Wonky Inn Book 6 Page 10

  “I can’t wait,” George said and spun on his heel, heading back to his car. Stacey paused, smiling at Silvan, with what looked like open admiration, then she too turned away and slunk back to the Audi.

  Silvan watched her for longer than he should have, so I reached out and tugged at his sleeve.

  “Come on,” I grumbled. “Time’s ticking on.”

  Silvan laughed. “Oh, those green eyes of yours, Alfhild. See how they shine.”

  At midnight, everything was ready.

  We’d magickly sealed The Throne Room, windows and doors, so that if Silvan managed to conjure up the spirit of the departed, they could be held in place without fear of losing them. Silvan had re-chalked the floor with a double circle, and carefully but hurriedly filled the space in between with symbols and marks that obviously meant something to him. He’d arranged the phalange in the centre, surrounded by unlit candles, scattered dirt from one of the flowerbeds in the grounds to symbolise earth, a goblet of water, and incense and feathers to represent air. With all the elemental bases covered, he was ready to make a start at midnight.

  “You know I’ve never done anything like this?” I whispered. The atmosphere in the room had changed, becoming solemn.

  Silvan patted my arm reassuringly. “You won’t have to do anything. Stay calm and quiet and observe. The chances are the spirit won’t even see you. The dialogue will be between me and him.”

  “Alright,” I breathed. Moving to the edge of the room, I sank to the floor and sat cross-legged. I would see everything that would happen while remaining safely out of the way.

  As the distant sound of the inn’s ancient Grandfather clock began to chime downstairs, I observed as Silvan drew himself up very tall, breathing into his diaphragm. His feet were bare, and he had dressed simply in a long black robe. Now he squatted down on his haunches, both hands clenched to his chest. As the chimes of midnight died away, I watched him flick his fingers and shoot fire into the centre of the circle. The candles burst into life.

  Silvan drew his hands together once more as though they contained a small ball.

  “Gentle spirit who passed from one life to the next in this place,” he intoned. “Here am I, Horace Tiberius Silvanus, seeking an audience with you and you alone. Come to me, only if it pleases you, and if it pleases the gods and goddesses whom we both deign to serve.” Silvan parted his hands, widened the circle and stared into the space between them.

  The candles gutted and flickered, casting moving shadows around the walls. A whisper of a breeze brushed against my cheek and the air pressure in the room changed. I sensed we were no longer alone. My eyes skipped along the walls and scrutinized the shadows.

  Silvan widened his hands further and a spark from one of the candles spat into the air, exploding in a golden ribbon of light. The ribbon darted left and right then up and down, an out-of-control electric eel. Moving swiftly, it elongated itself in every direction and grew to encompass a large area in the gap between the wall as though the hand of an invisible man was tying a parcel with the light from a sparkler. Silvan had uncovered a forcefield of some kind. One that had once shielded a body secretly within its confines.

  Silvan held his hands up, flat against the energy field. “Let me talk to you,” he asked again, pushing into the current. I could imagine how that felt—like squeezing against a prickly mattress, soft but not altogether yielding.

  The gold shimmered for a moment, sparkling with vibrant life until a dark thread appeared, growing blacker, deepening as it ran down the front of the forcefield, and widening until it was about six inches wide.

  A candle flickered once more, and a shadow passed beyond the gap. A pale face. Silvan reached forwards, thrust his hand into the area beyond and I gazed in wonder as a pale hand reached to take Silvan’s. Thin fingers—almost transparent—curled around Silvan’s own.

  “Well met,” said Silvan. “But I’m struggling to hear you. Can you—”

  The forcefield in front of Silvan suddenly stuttered. From somewhere deep within came a flash of vibrant red that flooded The Throne Room with a strange light. A second later a fierce wind blew the candles out and we were plunged into darkness. I heard Silvan thrashing around and cursing as the forcefield wavered once, twice, then died away altogether. “Get the lights,” he called, and I quickly pushed myself to standing and swept my hands along the wall till I came to the door and located the light switches.

  With the room bathed in light once more, all evidence of the forcefield had disappeared. Silvan was brushing dirt from his hands.

  “What happened?” I asked. “I thought you’d connected.”

  “I definitely had. That’s quite some forcefield in place there. Powerful, powerful magick. An old magick.” He gazed in wonder at where it had been and reached out as though he could still feel it. “But did you see the rent in the energy?”

  “I did.”

  “It allowed me access, for just a fraction of time.”

  I padded over to Silvan and knelt beside him, holding my hands out and feeling for the faint pulse of energy. “It’s a shame it wasn’t just a little bit longer. We could have found out who he was and how he died.”

  Silvan smiled. “Give me some credit, please.”

  “You know?” I gaped at Silvan in surprise. “But there was hardly any time.”

  “I don’t need much time. His touch was enough.” Silvan stood and offered me his hand. I took it and he pulled me to my feet. His hands were warm, the skin slightly dry. A frisson of energy passed between us, some residue perhaps of the forcefield in the room. “I found out some interesting facts.”

  “Go on.” I removed my hand and the small electric tremor dissipated.

  “You were right in your supposition. This gentleman was called Guillaume Gorde and he was a member of the Cosmic Order of Chronometric Wizards.”

  That much we’d guessed but it was good to hear confirmation.

  “Do you know when he died?” I asked.

  “No. The strength of that forcefield prevented me from finding that out. But the forcefield itself is interesting.”

  “How so?”

  “That tear we saw? That was far more recent than the forcefield itself.”

  “You could tell?”

  “Oh definitely. One was old magick, the other was more recent.”

  “Well how recent? I mean, since the body was discovered? Maybe it was us? Maybe we disturbed something when we found him?”

  Silvan shook his head and stroked his chin. “I might have thought that, but no, for sure the interference was newer than the magick from when Guillaume was interred, but not the last few weeks. Not even the last few years. Maybe a couple of decades old.”

  “Ugh.” I leaned back against the wall and rubbed my eyes. They were gritty from lack of sleep. “What are you saying? Guillaume was interred in the wall cavity quite some time ago—”

  “Over a hundred years ago, I’d say.”

  “And then someone discovered him before us? And managed to get through the forcefield?”

  “That’s pretty much the long and the short of it. They patched up the forcefield so that the body wasn’t discovered by the next witch who stayed in this room. Not a great job but good enough.”

  I looked around the room. What had gone on in here?

  “Why would somebody do that? Why wouldn’t they have told…” I searched through what I knew of my family history. How many years were we talking? Thirty? Forty? “Why wouldn’t they have told my grandparents? Were they covering up a murder?”

  Silvan shook his head. “Well that brings me to the most interesting thing I discovered.”

  I waited expectantly and Silvan smiled devilishly.

  “Guillaume almost certainly wasn’t murdered. He died from natural causes.”

  I rolled over in disbelief when my alarm went off the next morning. Without taking my lavender eye-mask off—a gift from Millicent when I started having trouble sleeping a few months before—I fumbled bl
indly around for my mobile phone on the bedside table.

  “I’ve been asleep for about five minutes,” I grumbled. “No way is it tomorrow yet.”

  “You always did have problems waking up, Alfhild.” The familiar voice of my dearly-departed great-grandmother startled me properly into consciousness. I peeled the eye mask off in a hurry and sat up.

  “Grandmama?”

  “Good morning, my dear.” She hovered at the foot of the bed, one hand above Mr Hoo’s head. He looked mighty pleased with himself for some reason.

  “Where have you been?” I yanked my duvet sideways and thrust my legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ve been trying to track you down.”

  Gwyn shrugged the first part of my question off. “I appreciate that, Alfhild, but I…” She paused, her face crumbling. I had never seen my stern and straight-laced great-grandmother in pain before and it took me by surprise. I reached out to her, wishing, not for the first time that I could touch her and reassure her. The lack of physical sensation was by far the worst thing about my gift to see ghosts.

  “Grandmama?” I cried, and Mr Hoo swivelled his head around to twit-twoo at her.

  Gwyn waved her hands at me and then at him. “I’m fine. It’s fine, my dear. Don’t worry.”

  Clearly it wasn’t.

  “What can I do? How can I help you?” I asked. “Is this about Guillaume?”

  Fat tears ran down my great-grandmother’s face. “You know about him?”

  “I’ve been doing a bit of digging through the records. I looked at the paper records in the attic.” Gwyn nodded. “And Silvan is here. Last night he tried to connect with—” I drew my breath in sharply. “What time is it?” I plucked my phone from the bedside table. Just after six.

  “George!” I shrieked and flew out of the room, running down the corridor in my pyjamas and bare feet, to The Throne Room. I burst in. The candles and debris from the previous evening lay where they had been discarded, but Guillaume’s proximal phalange had disappeared.

  Squeaking with worry I took to my heels again, pounding up the stairs, two flights, to the top floor and the room where Silvan slept.

  Charity was just coming out of her room, freshly showered, ready to get started with the breakfast service. “Everything okay?” she asked, clearly surprised to see me in my pyjamas standing outside Silvan’s room.

  “Yes, yes, fine. I’ll be down in a minute,” I told her.

  “Make sure you get dressed first,” she replied archly and tittered as she made her way downstairs.

  I hammered sharply on Silvan’s door again and when there was still no reply, burst in.

  He lay on his side in his bed, staring at me in evident amusement.

  “Guillaume’s phalange? I can’t find it.”

  “Steady those horses, Alfhild. It’s all been taken care of.”

  “George—”

  “Has been and gone.” I opened my mouth and Silvan added, “With Guillaume’s phalange.”

  “You’ve already been up?” I asked doubtfully. “You were awake?” Silvan was the original night owl. He strived his hardest not to experience much of the morning.

  Silvan yawned. “I made a point of remembering. George isn’t the only man with honour, you know?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh… well… that’s great. Thank you. I was worried about him getting into trouble. He did us a huge favour.”

  “He most certainly did. I must say it was a tad brisk standing on the step waiting for him to turn up. My feet are frozen. Now, if you don’t mind? I intend to catch another few hours of shut-eye.”

  “Of course. Sorry.” I stepped backwards into the corridor.

  “Unless you want to join me?” Silvan lifted the duvet as an invitation.

  “In your dreams,” I growled, and slammed the door on his laughter.

  Later, when decorum had been restored all around, and my guests were comfortable and fed and off doing the things they wanted to be doing, Gwyn joined Silvan and I as we shared a pot of coffee at the kitchen table.

  Monsieur Emietter chopped carrots at a lightening pace, while Florence mixed several cake batters at once, poring over a cookbook she’d found in the attic somewhere with studious concentration.

  “I need to apologise to you, Alfhild,” Gwyn said, surprising me from the get-go. “I couldn’t be entirely honest with you before, but now I see that things have progressed. You ought to hear my side of the story.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” I replied gently. “Do you mind Silvan being here?”

  Gwyn examined the dark wizard next to me and shook her head. “No, I think he’s in as deep as you are.”

  That sounded oddly ominous and not what I expected to hear at all. I suppose I’d assumed that now we knew that Guillaume had died of natural causes, I could be slightly less concerned. That didn’t really explain why he’d been shut up in a cavity in the wall of course, but it was easier to digest.

  “Guillaume was a regular visitor to the inn, right back from when I first married James, your great-grandfather and arrived here in 1919. Occasionally he visited us with his young friend.”

  “William Wylie?” I asked and Gwyn nodded.

  “Yes. William.” She paused and her face clouded with momentary sadness. “From the first moment I met Guillaume I recognised him as an extraordinary wizard. We had a great deal in common. He was much older than I and given that my own father had died when I was a young girl, I think I saw in him the father figure I’d been lacking for so long. I very much looked forward to his visits to the inn.”

  She smiled, casting her mind back through the long years. “I had a vague inkling that Guillaume belonged to some sort of secret order, and I often felt that he went away to do business.”

  “Why did you think that?” Silvan asked.

  Gwyn thought for a moment. “I sensed that he and William had a business relationship of some kind. William deferred to Guillaume in most things, and when they were together at the inn they really were as thick as thieves. When Guillaume came alone, he was more relaxed. We would walk in Speckled Wood, play games on the lawn, play bridge in The Snug. He was excellent company. Full of tall tales and quirky stories.”

  “Did he ever tell you which order he belonged to?” How much had my great-grandmother known about him, I wondered.

  “At the end,” Gwyn replied, her face full of woe.

  “What happened,” I asked softly, gently nudging her to go on.

  “The final time he visited us here he was alone. He was taken ill, suddenly, one evening after supper. James and I helped him to his bedroom to rest. I wanted to get a doctor in, but Guillaume wouldn’t hear of it. He kept saying he’d feel much better after a good night’s sleep. But something told me he wouldn’t. I sat with him, through the night, and his condition deteriorated to the point that it became obvious—even to him—that he was failing.” Gwyn paused and rolled her shoulders back.

  “Then he swore me to secrecy. ‘Alfhild,’ he said, ‘what I’m about to tell you must remain between the two of us’. And he told me about his highly secret order. Eventually he asked that when he passed over to the next world, that I hide him and all his belongings in a secret place. And bind it with the most powerful magick known, so that nobody could find him.”

  I cocked my head, puzzled. “He didn’t want you to reach out to the order? Or to William Wylie?”

  Gwyn looked troubled. “Time was very short, and looking back, I may have become confused. I was young. I was close to panic. I wanted to honour him by following his instructions to the letter.”

  “And you knew the magick?” Silvan asked.

  Gwyn emitted a tight laugh. “By all that’s green, no I did not. But he’d even thought of that.” She mimed holding a stick in two hands. “He carried a staff. He gave it to me and told me I could use it to create a powerful forcefield around him.” She swallowed. “Just before dawn he stopped breathing. I remember standing at the window, watching the sun coming up on a glo
rious day, knowing he wouldn’t see it. It fair broke my heart, I must admit.”

  Gwyn’s voice cracked and she dropped her head to her chin. We gave her a moment to remember the man she had been so fond of.

  “I couldn’t do as he’d requested by myself. I had to enlist James for assistance. We didn’t really discuss it. He knew I wouldn’t have asked him to hide the death unless it had been Guillaume’s will. We decided to temporarily hide Guillaume’s body in the bedroom next door while we had the partition built. We chose carpenters from Honiton, just far enough away that they had no reason to question why we wanted to make the larger bedroom smaller. Then we stowed Guillaume’s body in the corner. I arranged him so that he was sitting upright, with his book in his lap, his hands folded on top of it, because he looked so peaceful that way.”

  I remembered how he’d been found. “And that’s the way he remained until we stumbled across him when we went to add the en suite.” No wonder Gwyn had been so against that idea. “Why was he so adamant that he be kept secret? He must have been missed, mustn’t he?”

  “But that’s the beauty of time travel, isn’t it?” Silvan pointed out. “He’d been going backwards and forwards in time all his adult life. Maybe he counted on the fact that no-one could ever be sure of where he would be and when.”

  I thought about what Silvan was saying and my brain exploded. “Is that the way time travel works?”

  Silvan widened his eyes and shrugged. He had no idea, either. He was winging it.

  Gwyn had fallen silent, I realised. There was something more. Silvan noticed it too, and of course, given that he trod a darker path than I, was quicker to cotton on to it.

  “Except…” he said, drawing the word out as he thought aloud. “Maybe it wasn’t himself he was trying to hide. Maybe he was hiding something he had in his possession.”

  By the way that Gwyn’s eyes glinted I instinctively knew Silvan had hit upon it. “But what could that have been? I mean… there were a few photos and a book… nothing of any real interest.”