The Medium

Chapter 4, Part 2

I put a hand to my rapidly pounding heart. "You scared me."

"My apologies. If there was another way to come and go without alarming you I'd employ it." He gave me that smile I'd become so used to, the crooked one that made his lips curve in just the right way. It would seem he was no longer upset by what Mrs. Culvert had said.

"Is he here?" George asked, glancing around the room.

"He is," I said.

"Oh. Good." He cleared his throat. "Hello, Beaufort, how are you?"

Jacob sighed and shook his head in disbelief at the polite but inappropriate question. "I see you told him about me. Was that wise?"

"He guessed." To George I said, "He's well thank you, and asks how are you?"

"Very well," George said. "Fit as a fiddle." He pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned at me. He was enjoying this. I suppose he'd never had a conversation with a ghost before. Although to be technically accurate, he wasn't having one now, I was.

"Since he knows about me, I want to ask him something," Jacob said.

"He wants to ask you something," I said to George. "He's standing right beside me."

George's gaze settled on my right.

Jacob, on my left side, sighed again and picked up a book. George's gaze shifted. "Ask him to introduce us to the maid he suspects of stealing the book."

***

The girl, known by her surname of Finch, said she was sixteen but she looked older. Dark circles underscored eyes that drooped at the corners as if they were too tired to open properly. Red blotches on her cheeks and chin marked her otherwise sallow skin and she seemed to have far more teeth than could fit in her small mouth.

"Finch," George said, towering over the girl, "this lady wants to ask you some questions." He spoke to her with his hands clasped behind him and a deeper voice than he used when addressing me. I suppose he was fulfilling his role as master of the house by asserting his authority over her but, like most men, he didn't realize the best way to get answers was with kindness, not by frightening the poor girl.

"My name is Emily Chambers," I said to her. "And you are?"

"Finch," she said, eyes downcast.

George looked at me as if I had a memory like a sieve. Jacob, however, nodded his approval. He at least seemed to know what I was doing.

"Your first name?" I persisted.

"Maree, miss." Her hands, reddened and chapped, twisted and stretched her apron to the point where I thought she might tear it.

"Well then, Maree, Mr. Culvert tells me you started working here only a month ago."

"On the twenty-fifth, miss." Still she did not look at me.

"Ask her if she stole the book," Jacob said.

I refrained from rolling my eyes. Just. "Do you know the book Mr. Culvert claims was stolen from this library, Maree?" I asked instead.

Maree's gaze flicked up to mine then lowered again. "I don't know nothin' 'bout no books, miss. I can't read." Her hands twisted faster and faster and she shifted her weight from foot to foot as if she would bolt at any moment.

"Don't fret, Maree," I said, touching her shoulder. "No one's going to hurt you. You're not in trouble. I believe you."

She looked at me, her eyes not quite trusting. "You do?"