Delilah cast her a baleful sidelong look. A sardonic Angelique was at least better than the one who wanted to wade into the Thames. “Let’s see what we have on this level.”
They aimed their lamps in various directions—east, west, up, down. They soon determined they were in a foyer, in front of a staircase, flanked by what appeared to be two sitting rooms.
Everything was so blurred with dust and laced with cobwebs it was like seeing everything through a haze of laudanum.
The banister and balustrade of the handsome staircase before them seemed to be carved in bulbous shapes and vines, but it was impossible to know quite what those shapes were. Delilah toed the floor to clear some dust; itfeltlike marble.
“Looks just like a townhouse like ours, Lady Derring, don’t it? Only bigger.” Poor Dot sounded infinitely relieved, as if she’d fully anticipated that the studded oak door opened onto the Gates of Hell. And yet she’d followed Delilah through anyway. What had Delilah done to deserve that kind of loyalty?
“I do believe that’s precisely what this is,” Delilah said brightly. “How very interesting. Let’s have a look, shall we?”
She led the way to the right, where they found a modest sitting room. The fireplace was blacked with soot, and its corniced mantel and carved pilasters had been in vogue around the time King George III was still sound of mind; likewise, the balding rug—it was Savonnerie, if she had to guess—the peeling wallpaper, and the two deteriorating settees on spindly legs—Chippendale, or copies. All seemed to be in various shades of red. They’d probably been home to generations of mice. Cobweb bunting swung from the windows and corners.
It was snug—the shuttered windows let in no drafts—and had once been gracious.
Who or what had occupied it? Why was it empty now?
Why on earth hadDerringowned it?
They moved across the foyer and discovered the room opposite was twice the size, dominated by a fine fireplace of the same vintage. It was bald of rug and bare of furniture.
Except for a pianoforte.
“Ohhhh,” Delilah breathed.
She moved toward it slowly, almost on her toes, like a hungry leopard stalking an antelope.
No sarcophagus creaking open had ever sounded quite so eerie as the dusty, closed lid when she lifted it.
Dot muttered something that sounded like a string of prayers.
Delilah touched a dirty key. A G note echoed, like a ghost of long-ago parties.
Behind her, Dot visibly shuddered.
“Do you play?” Delilah asked Angelique, her voice dreamy.
“Yes,” Angelique confirmed. Sounding as mesmerized as Delilah.
And maybe it was weariness, maybe it was the spell cast by the chandelier, maybe it was the sherry, but Delilah could have sworn she couldhearvery faint voices raised in song and laughter, as if from a parade approaching from miles and miles away.
Something stirred in her. She could not have put it into words if asked; it was more a feeling than an actual idea. But the feeling glinted like one of those chandelier crystals. An idea was forming.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said.
The fourth stair creaked, but no one vanished through any of the steps with a scream and cloud of dust. Their lanterns threw giant shadows of the three of them on the wall opposite, which made Delilah feel as though they were going up with reinforcements. Oddly, this made it just a little easier to go down strange hallways when they could light only a few feet ahead at a time.
Which she supposed was rather a metaphor for life.
Some of the fourteen doors on the two floors opened with a twist of the knob; most of the locks, however, needed oiling and required finesse and fussing, except for the one for the largest suite on the first floor, which seemed to have been recently oiled. The rugs and wallpaper in the rooms and halls were shredded ghosts of their original selves. The rooms were empty save for a few toppled pitchers, a washbasin, and several surprisingly decent wardrobes in the larger suites.
Each sealed-up room released a stale gust of air but no other untoward smells or entities. Until the last room, which released something sporting a long, skinny tail and tiny, shiny eyes.
It vanished with such startling speed no one had time to scream, but they all certainly wanted to.
“Well. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Dot announced in a voice that wobbled up and down the scale.
“I’m very proud of you,” said Delilah. Her voice was none too steady.
