The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James Page B

head in my direction, indicating me to the madman.
    The man whirled. His dark eyes took me in. I realized I had backed up to the window, where I stood, trying not to shake. His entrance had been yet another blow to my nerves. There was spilled tea on the tray.
    The madman seemed to take in all of this in an instant. He reached up and pulled the hat from his head. Despite the gesture of deference, his expression held only a cool contempt, mixed with, I thought, a tinge of anger. “Oh. Hullo,” he said to me.
    I nodded at him.
    Mr. Gellis was still amused. “Miss Piper,” he said, “please meet the man you have been replacing—my assistant, Matthew Ryder.”

    I stared at Mr. Matthew Ryder in shock. I had pictured another eccentric intellectual, like Mr. Gellis—bespectacled, perhaps shy,the type of man who could understand complex recording equipment and quietly organize his employer’s notebooks. I could not reconcile the man before me to that picture.
    Perhaps he wasn’t a madman or a thief, as I had first thought him, but he did not seem to be very far from either. His quick, dark gaze missed nothing, and some dangerous emotion crackled under its surface. He did not stand still. His accent, in his low gravelly voice, held a lower-class twang, bespeaking his origins; and seemingly aware of this, he was brash, rude, and insolent, as if daring Mr. Gellis to take offense. Mr. Gellis, far from rising to the bait, kept an air of amused tolerance. I could tell from the first moment that their strange acquaintance was a long one.
    “What are you doing here?” Mr. Gellis was saying to him now. “You’re interrupting me frightfully. We were just about to begin. You’re supposed to be gone until the end of the week.”
    Mr. Ryder shrugged. “Charlotte had her baby. Everything seemed fine to me. What do I know about it? So I got out. I drove all night to get here. Didn’t want to miss a minute of it. What’s been going on?”
    “I sent Miss Piper in this morning, but have not examined her yet, thanks to you. You should have taken a few days off.”
    “Like fucking hell. You should have told me about this one earlier or I would never have gone. Did it come out?” He turned to me, his black gaze burning. “Did you see it?”
    Something in his foul-mouthed insolence awakened some anger in me. I was tired of being spoken of as if I were an object in the room. I met Mr. Ryder’s gaze with my own. “It saw me,” I said.
    Mr. Gellis’ head jerked up, and Mr. Ryder stepped forward. They were both avid on me now, alive with an obsessive curiosity I had never seen before. I suddenly felt the imbalance, a femalenow outnumbered by two young, strong men in the room, both of them staring at me with fascination. I looked from one to the other.
    “What does that mean?” Mr. Ryder said. “Did you see it or didn’t you?”
    “She—she wanted me to look at her, I think. I couldn’t do it.” I thought of the heels banging on the wall, the gurgling sound, and suddenly I was weak again. I pressed a cold hand to my forehead and sagged against the window. “Mr. Gellis, did you say this girl Maddy hanged herself?”
    “Yes,” said Mr. Gellis.
    That horrible, horrible gurgling sound, as if she was unable to speak. Again I imagined what I would have seen, had I turned around. “Oh God,” I said quietly.
    “Miss Piper.” Mr. Gellis’ voice was quiet, soothing. “You must have a seat. Mr. Ryder has interrupted us, and for that, he apologizes profoundly.” I highly doubted such a thing, but Mr. Gellis went on. “Now—we must have the full account from you, while it is still so fresh in your mind. It’s time to tell us what you saw.”
    “What I saw
isn’t possible
,” I said.
    He still soothed me. “We see ghosts for a living, Miss Piper. I’ve seen dozens. Nothing you can say is strange. Anything is possible—anything at all. Now, please have a seat, and relieve us both of this torturous curiosity.”
    I left the