“I’ve heard that before,” Allan told her. “One of the maids who resigned said much the same thing.”
In fact, all the servants who had not been arrested as accomplices to the marquess and Farnham had either resigned or requested to be transferred elsewhere. The house was standing empty, with a pair of night watchmen patrolling the grounds at night, and a squad of maids from an agency coming in every second day to dust and sweep.
And even then, several of them had refused to return after their first day of work, and one had walked out the door five minutes after walking in. Furthermore, they had hired a second night watchman because no one would stay even in the grounds at night if he was on his own.
“That was our last room,” Mel told Allan. “Unless you want to do the kitchen?”
“Let’s leave,” said Allan. “We shall see whether that makes a difference to the maids. And us, for that matter, since we must be back here tomorrow to take the architect and the master builder on a tour to discuss what we want to have done.”
The master builder only made it as far as the second floor before he told Allan he would not be taking the commission. “Some buildings just feel wrong, Lord Kemble. And I’ve learned over the years that working on them isn’t worth it. Accidents happen. And fights, and other disturbances. People even lose their lives. This is that kind of building, and the worst of its sort I’ve ever seen.”
The architect lasted the full tour, but he was clearly uncomfortable even before the builder’s defection—pale and sweating, starting at the least sound, constantly looking over his shoulder. In the end, he, too, expressed his dislike of the building, though he prefaced his remarks with, “I know it is irrational, but…”
Before they even reached the tower, which they intended to reopen as overflow accommodation for the main house, he claimed another meeting. “I shall begin making concept drawings, Lord and Lady Kemble. I shall be in touch when they are ready. And you have told me enough about the tower for me to include a few ideas.” His eyes darting from shadow to shadow, he hurried out of the building.
When the agency contacted them the following morning to say that the maid-team had threatened to quit if they were sent back to Teign Tower, Allan had had enough.
“We need to see the bishop again,” he told Mel. “And if that doesn’t work, the building will have to come down. If we can find someone willing to demolish it.”
Hearing what had happened, the bishop reluctantly agreed to perform what he called “an exorcism and blessing. A deliverance, if you will.” He and several priests whom he trusted would prepare, he said. It would require several days, and he had other engagements in the meantime. The date was set for the second Saturday in February.
“All those who are going to be present must also prepare with prayer and fasting,” he warned. “We shall start in the main room of the house, and move through room by room.”
He described the process in detail, his initial skepticism no longer in evidence. Mel wondered if he doubted her and Allan rather than the existence of inimical powers. That theory made sense, since—as a bishop—he presumably had a firm faith in spiritual beings beyond human imagining.
“I am relieved,” she told Allan. “He is taking this seriously. It gives me hope that he knows what he is doing.”
“I know what you mean,” Allan agreed. “And yes, I have come round to your way of thinking, Mel. Something is wrong with the house beyond my own feelings about it. Something I can’t explain. Best to leave it to the professionals.” He twistedhis mouth in a grimace. “I am not looking forward to telling my brothers. They’ll be as skeptical as I was, and not as polite about it.”
In the end, the brothers and their wives supported the exorcism. Baldwin was the one most inclined to scoff, but Clara told a couple of stories from her village about a house that was thought to be haunted, and Baldwin never liked disagreeing with his wife. Frank was wholeheartedly in favor, pointing out that the place had been oppressive all their lives and if what the bishop tried didn’t work, they had lost nothing.
Even practical Thomasina thought it was a good idea.
So, on the second Saturday in February, those chosen to represent the rest of the family gathered in the drawing room at Teign Tower, all except for Allan and Mel, who waited by the door for the bishop and his assistants.
After a round of introductions in the drawing room, the bishop suggested that they begin immediately. “It is a big house,” he said, “and I must repeat the exorcism in every room and closet.”
He led them through the Lord’s Prayer and the prayer of general confession, and then pronounced an absolution. After a Gospel reading came several prayers asking God to cleanse the house and deliver it from “all evil spirits; all vain imaginations, projections and phantasms; and all deceits of the evil one.”
Then he sprinkled every corner of the room with water he’d brought with him, and pronounced a blessing on the room and all those within it. It might have been her imagination, but to Mel, the room felt better. Lighter, somehow, both in the sense of weight and of brightness. Though neither of those words were right, precisely. The sensation had nothing to do with normal senses.
“That’s one,” the bishop said. “Lord Kemble, let us proceed to the next room.”
He and his assistants were very thorough. No room was missed, not the smallest attic bedroom, not the linen closet or the butler’s pantry. In every room the bishop repeated the prayers of deliverance, the sprinkling of water—even into cupboards—and the blessing.
Since the house had grown over time, it was a bewildering maze, with corridors that apparently led nowhere or looped back on themselves, steps between levels, and another entire network of corridors to convey servants invisibly from one part of the house to another.
After an hour, they had visited fifteen rooms, blessing them and the corridors between them. They had almost completed the grandest floor of the house—the one designed for entertaining important guests and holding large gatherings.
On other floors, the rooms would be smaller and more numerous.
“How many rooms does the house have?” Mel whispered to Allan.
He shook his head. “I have never managed to count. Somewhere close to one hundred, I think.”
“We are going to need to provide refreshments,” Mel decided. One hundred rooms at this pace would take all day. And yet, already the rooms they had been in felt better.
Perhaps, as Baldwin insisted, it was her imagination. Still, it was worth continuing, whether the bishop was succeeding in driving malign influences out of the house, or whether she and Allan—and the other members of the family—were simply being deluded into imagining both the bad feelings and their expulsion.
