The Ghost of Winn Peterson

23. Winn

I squinted down at my pages. There was a small note beside a very poor sketch of the abbey I'd invented. Investigation, it read, a bit more rigidly than the rest of the words. Was I injecting my own goals into this infant of a story? I laughed aloud, but the laugh grew cold. That very well could have been it. There was nothing ordinary about Evie's forced hand or the doctor's bizarre presence in her life. From what little I had been able to read of the letters discovered in my attic, Evie had not been the first woman ensnared by the doctor, which was enough of a reason for me to come to the conclusion that I needed to unveil the truth. If I let any of this go unnoticed beyond the cursed halls of this miserable house, then would Evie perish, only to be replaced by another woman of unfortunate circumstances? 

Leaping to my feet and ignoring the wave of dizziness I felt, I dove onto my bed and scrambled for the pillows. Evie had previously hidden the letters in my room, owing largely to the lack of privacy she would endure while under the stricter vision of the doctor, and was I ever grateful for that now! Pulling the pretty ribbon that held the crinkled pages together, I threw it to the bed and combed through the pages until I found the one sentence Evie had previously read aloud. 

"Know that without you, I am as miserable as were we together."

The words sounded so grim when read aloud, and also strange. Who wrote in such a confusing way? I looked for a date, but there was no such thing written. If not the date, I wanted desperately to understand why these had been in my house, and hidden away in the abandoned and filthy rooms of the upper rooms. It could hardly be coincidence, that my home and the doctor's would be so strangely linked. If the crumbling hall my father had purchased was the previous location of finding a wife for this Igor Radcliffe, why had he not come straight to me upon seeing my arrival? 

I recalled then a crucial piece of Evie's story, the night she detailed her initial meeting with the doctor. He'd been out of town, administering care to someone of a most peculiarly named church. I closed my eyes and chastised myself for not having remembered the name of it, before I further laughed at my own stupidity - I had written it in here, had I not! St. Peter's Church of Winterborne Came. Usually, an unforgettable name, but I hope to be forgiven for forgetting in light of my current circumstances. Evie had taken a full day to travel there upon the word of the local healer of Dorset, and I could only offer a quick prayer to my fortune at having been situated in my seaside home while the doctor was away! 

Taking the letters to the window (I was out of candles as of three or so days ago, and loathed the idea of asking for more from anyone), I nudged the curtain aside and squinted through the paltry light of the hidden sun. All of them were addressed to the doctor, but I noticed a strange detail; not one of these letters was actually written to him. Indeed, the more I sifted through what really felt like confessions, the more I became convinced that whoever had penned them wished merely for a safe means of expressing dissatisfaction with their husband. As to the point of being just as miserable either way, I discovered in my continued reading that the mysterious author was growing steadily sicker with an illness they blamed on the doctor, a suspicion that worried me greatly. Would Evie or myself be subjected to an even steeper decline in health than either of us had experienced? 

I won't waste the ink on writing out what all these letters said, but I will note that the author claims they could hear strange noises in the house, and only upon their remarking of this to the doctor were they removed and placed so unceremoniously in the crumbling abode that would late become mine. 

Needing some space from the tragedy I feared would befall my friend and I, I placed the letters on the desk and paced back and forth. Surely, the realisation of noises could not have been all that was required to quit his wife from the house! Knowledge was always in short supply when people of power needed it to be so, and to have it any other way was dangerous. Was that not why I was taken along with Evie? A noise could be explained by anything at all, but strange noises? Given the nature of this house and the owner, I shuddered to think on what manner of mess the author could have borne witness to. 

Unbarring my door, I made to step into the hall, but found myself face-to-face with an unfamiliar face instead. Already made to be on edge from the disturbing news I'd read of, the sight of an astonishingly pale face at my door forced a most awkward reaction from myself, as I screamed and leapt back behind my door. When there was no ghastly scream or pounding on my door, I opened it slowly and peered around the corner, hoping that there was nothing terribly interested in eating me waiting in the hall. To my great relief and even greater confusion, the pale face had remained, albeit with a look of confusion for themselves. Blond hair, combed neatly over the pleasant face of a man appearing around Atticus' age, rested above a set of very wide grey eyes. 

"Goodness," he said with a relieved smile, holding a white-gloved hand to his chest, "you gave me such a fright! Are you quite alright?" I blinked at him. Surely, he couldn't be serious?

"I haven't any idea who you are!" Retreating a little farther behind the door, I regarded this stranger with a near-scowl. How little did I need such a shock as this, and at no worse time than that moment. Realising that my reaction wasn't so dramatic now, the stranger gasped and bowed hastily. 

"Apologies, my lady!" When he stood, his cheeks were flushed, and he gave me a nervous grin. "I was on my way past your lovely home, you see, and I inquired at the door if I might admire its halls from the inside." 

"Alright then," I relented, "but who let you in?" 

The man stammered and faltered. "He did not give me his name, but he had a pick between his teeth, if that helps?" I felt my relief wage a furious battle with my annoyance. Of course, Atticus would have let a stranger in, and without alerting me at all! It seemed most likely that he existed solely to cause chaos and disruption in one's sense of peace, and I resolved to snatch that stupid pick from his teeth the next time I saw him. 

This gentleman, however, had done nothing wrong. While not very customary in America, or at last, not where I'd lived, I understood the practise of taking these bizarre tours of homes you admired, or knew of a respectable person having resided in. Whoever this man was, he appeared simple and clean enough to have desired nothing beyond gazing on something new. Realising I was the only one with whom he could have taken the tour with (I strongly doubted any of the staff would find the time to do so, and Evie had locked herself in her rooms since our argument), I sighed, pulled my dress up an inch off the floor, and curtsied. 

"Welcome to the House of Radcliffe," I said, grateful for being creative on occasion, as I had no idea what the actual name of the residence was. "I am as much a guest here as yourself, but allow me to share the splendours of the macabre interests of Dr. Radcliffe!" 

I shall wait a while to describe my tour of the house, but for now, I must rest and bother the cook for a cup of tea. 

Wearily, Winn