Withering Heights by Dorothy Cannell Page B

tripped over something left on the stairs. But the next morning she acted really nervous and said he’d woken from a bad dream and had been imagining things. I heard her talking to Betty, and it was clear she wasn’t herself.”
    “A sprained ankle’s no fun,” I pointed out.
    “I know that. And Mrs. Cake hates having to sit in her chair with her foot up, unable to do more than shell peas and watch Betty let the saucepans boil over. But I’m telling you, there was more to it.”
    “What do you think happened?” I asked.
    “I think someone was moving around that night up in the part of the west wing where the indoor servants slept in the days when there were lots of them. Now there’s just Mrs. Cake, in the room closest to the stairs leading down to the kitchen.” Ariel adjusted her specs. Only the wind and rain attempted to interrupt her. “I think it was a real live person up there, the one who wants us out of Withering . . . Cragstone. Betty thinks it was Mr. Gallagher’s ghost and Mrs. Cake was afraid to say so in case it made her sound loopy, but the next morning decided it might make more of an uproar if it was thought there had been an intruder.”
    “If it were a ghost,” said Mrs. Malloy, “I know just the person to—”
    Unwilling to let her get started on Madam LaGrange, I cut her off. “Let’s get back to what else has you worried, Ariel, beyond the incidents that you admit can be explained away.”
    The expression on the girl’s face was hard to read. “The thing is, most of them have happened to Betty, who’s far from my favorite person and likes to draw attention to herself. But she doesn’t have enough imagination—seeing as she never reads anything beyond fashion magazines that don’t do her any good—to make things up on a grand scale. She’s a really boring person. I don’t think Dad minds a bit that she moved into a bedroom of her own because of his horrible snoring. At least it stopped some of her nagging. I don’t see how he could ever have been in love with her after being married to my mother. Grandma Hopkins said she was an angel that God wanted back in heaven. Honestly, I wish Dad and Betty would be sensible and get a divorce. But of course he’d never consider it because he’s such a strict Catholic. He wouldn’t even go for an annulment. He told me once when he heard of a couple from church getting one that such loopholes should be reserved for marriages that haven’t been consummated. And horrible as it is to think about, he
has
had sex with Betty. He admitted it when he was giving me the Talk.” Her voice capitalized it. “They’ve done it more than once, too, not just to get it over with.” She shuddered. “Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve all this grief. Perhaps I was a murderer, or something equally wicked, in a past life.”
    “Interesting you should bring that up—” began Mrs. Malloy.
    Again I hurried to prevent the interjection of Madam La-Grange. “Ariel, what frightening things have happened to Betty?”
    “She went into the study one morning—she always goes inthere first thing to have her coffee—and found a funeral wreath, a horrible moldy one that looked as if it were weeks old, hanging on the nail that used to hold Mr. Gallagher’s portrait. And another time she discovered three dead ravens on her bedroom windowsill.” Ariel paused, to good effect. “As I just said, she has her own bedroom, so Dad can’t say whether this next thing is true or not, but last week she was woken in the middle of the night—or so she says—by a mournful disembodied voice calling her name. When she asked what it wanted, it said, “Help me, Betty, get me out of this dark place!” And then the shadow of a man with a lion’s-head walking stick appeared on the wall at the foot of the bed. Mr. Gallagher has . . . had . . . a lion’s-head walking stick.”
    Clearly thrilled to the core, Mrs. Malloy was rendered speechless, leaving me to ask