Balls clacked together before two of them fell into the pockets of the pool table. Harvey stood beside the pool table, billard pole in hand and one eye focused on the ball.
When Harvey had held out his hand to me, I took it - surprised that I could feel a slight warmth from the specter that stood before me. The two of us shook hands, Harvey looking down at our grasp.
"A good strong handshake," he muttered, "though you're not what I expected."
I looked down at myself, still wearing Mrs. Cesari's borrowed dress, and smiled sheepishly, "I'm not usually dressed like this. I needed to help someone, so I disguised myself as her to lure Jimmy away."
"Smart girl," Harvey chuckled, "Now, before anything else happens, let's get the boy in question somewhere where he can't... disrupt us. I have much to tell you, and only so much time to do so."
It had taken us a bit of time to get Jimmy into his room on the second floor - primarily because Harvey was a spirit and couldn't lift Jimmy as he had wanted to. I had to swing Jimmy's arm around my shoulder and lift his body with my other arm as Harvey helped lead me to where the proprietor's bedroom was. Thankfully, the door was unlocked and we were able to pull Jimmy into the room and place him on the bed.
I winced at the bruise on his forehead, much larger than my own.
"Don't worry, Miss Martin," Harvey had smiled when he noticed my uneasiness, "Jimmy will be fine. That bump at least was a lesson to not mess with someone like you."
"Regardless, I'm nervous about what that other side of Jimmy - Hugo - will do," I looked down at the unconscious man.
"So, it has a name after all," Harvey placed his pipe in his mouth, tapping the base of it in thought, "Makes me wonder how long Rose knew..."
I turned, looking up at Harvey in curiosity, "Dr. Bose seemed to know about it."
Harvey pulled the pipe from his mouth, "Not here, Miss Martin. Let's talk privately in the arcade room. We need to let the boy rest - it's been a few trying days."
I could only agree, following the ghost to the elevator and riding with him down to the ground floor.
I had perched on a bar stool in one corner of the room, watching as Harvey pulled his jacket off of his shoulders and loosened his tie from around his neck before rolling up his sleeves. It was strange to see a spirit that could touch and hold things like a normal human, but still be gone completely from this world.
When I made the comment, Harvey only laughed, "Yes... and dead are supposed to stay dead, isn't that it?"
"I'm not sure what to think anymore," I answered.
Harvey shot another ball into a pocket, "Well, you wouldn't be the first. I know that felt in the same boat around the time Oliver was arrested, " he set the rod down, leaning against the pool table and shaking his head, "I just couldn't believe that a man like him - who had been practicing medicine for twenty plus years, mind you - would do something like rape and attack a child. And if he had in the past, why didn't anyone report in before?"
I scratched at my arm, feeling the case of goose pimples raise on them, "Was... Was this around the time that Dr. Bose killed himself in the basement?"
"Maybe about a week before," Harvey nodded, "You see, what was told to us - Rose and I - was something I could've sworn I heard before. I knew that Jimmy's mind sometimes ran away from him, but I just couldn't believe what was said. There was something off.
"I decided to hunt for clues myself, as Rose wanted to put the whole thing behind us and forget about it. She didn't even want to send Jimmy to therapy - which was a red flag I should have seen later on. I knew that Jimmy had some sort of scrapbook lying around that had newspaper clipping in it. I wasn't entirely sure what was in them, only that Jimmy would take the papers from the main lobby of the hotel if they were more than a week old and cut pieces out of them that he found interesting. And I was interested in what I saw in those newspaper clippings he kept."
"Dr. Bose said something about how Jimmy made up a story based on a newspaper article he read," I answered.
"Yes, but there was more than one story about that sort of thing," Harvey groaned, rubbing his face with his hand, "There were at least a hundred clippings in that scrapbook, and every one of them dealt with abusive teachers or doctors or some other profession. It was frightening and infuriating. I wasn't going to have it, not in the hotel."
Harvey turned away, anger slowly invading the small room as he continued, "I tried to confront Jimmy, but he just laughed. I decided to talk to Rose about it and I also spoke of my own fears. What if Jimmy started accusing the other visitors and guests in the hotel? What would happen to her little egg nest that she was intentionally trying to set up for her son?"
'What would happen?' my mind was whirling.
"I can only imagine..." I answered, "What did Rose - Mrs. Hall - do then?"
"It hurt her, but she agreed that something had to be done," Harvey answered, "Ever since her husband died, Jimmy was all she had left - the only thing she could really cling to. But both of us wanted Jimmy to get better, so we decided to send him away to a special school - a school for boys who needed outside social interaction as well as offered special classes to help make them more aware of themselves."
"Like a finishing school?" I asked.
"Yes, much like one."
"What was your relationship like, with both Rose and Jimmy?" I was interested, "I mean, obviously you cared about Jimmy so much that you had to send him away as a way of helping him and his mum - even if you didn't want to."
"I saw Jimmy as my son, my boy," Harvey answered, picking up the rod and knocking another billiard ball into the pocket, "I raised him from when he was three years old, and taught him everything I knew.
"My part of the family wasn't particularly close with Hugo's side, even though we were cousins. From my understanding, my grandfather had disowned my father and another uncle because of something that happened years ago and never forgave them for it. This, of course, was before I was born."
"Wait, wait," I held up my hands, "Your cousin, Jimmy's father, was named Hugo?"
"Yes," Harvey nodded, "it surprises me that Jimmy's other half is also named Hugo - though I don't know why. Jimmy barely remembers his father, if at all."
"Is that why his comedy character is also named Hugo?" I asked.
"I'm not sure, I wasn't there when Jimmy started his comedy routines. But, if he was anything like his father, I'm sure it was amazing."
"How well did you know Jimmy's father?"
Harvey rolled his head around on his shoulders a few times, thinking, "I may have met him once. However, like I said before, my father and another uncle were cut off from that side of the family. Hugo's parents, on the other hand, were still in good graces with our grandfather - and they wanted to keep it like that.
"My first thought was because of the money. It really wasn't a secret that our grandfather was relatively wealthy, but all of his money went to his eldest son on his passing and no one else received a pound from it."
Harvey shook his hand, "But, I wasn't concerned about the money aspect of things. My own mum raised me, my brother, and my sister on the concept that family was important - and when I received word that Hugo had passed away and left Rose and Jimmy, who was only two at the time, to fend for themselves, I packed up everything and came to Sea View.
"I had known that Hugo had gotten married, but had no idea that he had had a child, a little boy, so I stepped in as a father figure for Jimmy - that's why I call him my son. I raised that little bugger - and that's why I had to make Rose see that there was something not right with Jimmy norhis mind."
"And your relationship with Rose?" I asked.
"It became rocky as the years passed," Harvey admitted, "She was very protective of Jimmy, he was the last thing to remember Hugo by - and it didn't help that he had been abused as a child. I had often wondered if the same person who had abused Jimmy was a nanny or a caretaker and Hugo had found out about it - causing the person to kill Hugo to keep quiet, but had caused Rose to go into hysterics because her husband had died.
"Regardless, her temperament got worse as she got older. She often kept a pack of cigarettes in the main office and a bottle of wine in her room. During those eight years that Jimmy was gone, she had slumped completely into an entirely different person. I began to wonder if she would try and kill me - which was why I kept the cricket bats close to me at night."
"For protection?" my eyebrows raised into my hairline with surprise.
"I didn't know what she was capable of - even when she was drunk. Most of the time, I would have found her slumped at the desk and passed out with an empty bottle and several burnt out cigarettes in the ashtray next to her. Other times, she was wandering around the hotel - disturbing the guests with her drunk cries for Jimmy. Some guests even left in the middle of the night because they couldn't stand to hear a drunk's sobs on their floor - especially if they had children with them."
I shivered at the thought.
I was lucky that my parents never drank - only on special occasions - and had kept it to a minimum. However, when I started in university, drinking students was another matter entirely. I had seen friends and classmates do almost anything when drunk enough - crying, slurring speech about how wonderful everyone was, laughing hysterically until they passed out - but the worst of it was the anger that some people had when drunk. I had heard from my roommate on more than one occasion how one or two students would get thrown out of bars because they had started a fight, causing property damage and injury - one person was even thrown into jail overnight because of their drunken anger.
Harvey must've noticed my unease, coming forward and wrapping his jacket around my bare shoulders.
"There, my dear," he smiled softly, eyes soft, "don't dwell too much on the past. I'm only here to tell you my side of things, not to make you uneasy or cause distress."
"I think the only thing that is distressing me right now is what happened to Mrs. Hall and you," I answered.
"Don't worry about what happened to Rose," Harvey sighed, "She'll come to you when she's ready to talk to you - like all of us."
"I'm also curious about how it was that you approached me," I spoke softly, "I mean - I saw you arguing with Rose in the corridor but after that, you never showed me another image."
Harvey took a seat on the pool table, his hands clasped together and looking at me like my own father would when he was preparing to scold me, "Us spirits will show people like you what we want you to see before making our presence known. I, in particular, know that I appear and am heard by many guests in this place - regardless if they have the gift or not. When you had helped that poor woman to escape, a part of me knew that I shouldn't make things difficult for you, Miss Martin - you've already suffered enough under the current circumstances. I wasn't going to allow myself to be an arse and hide from you - me, Oliver, Amy, and Rose are here to help you. What you do with the information we provide is your choice entirely."
"And the argument was about Jimmy lying and Rose denying it," I started, "You wanted to confirm that Dr. Bose was a good man - even though he was made out to be a criminal?"
"That, and the fact the Rose and mine's relationship was - as I said before - rocky," Harvey confirmed.
"Did it get any better when Jimmy returned?"
"For a time. Jimmy returned to the hotel when he was about nineteen years of age - and his height had increased, only a few inches taller than me. He had good marks in the school and had wanted to return back to his hometown, he wanted to come back and be a part of our lives and prove he had changed.
"I, myself, was incredibly shocked when he came back and seemed to have all of that evil gone completely. I was very proud of him - he worked hard for that right - and Rose was back to normal, for the most part. She had cut off the drinking and her smoking dwindled to the evening hours, only after everyone had gone to bed or were in their rooms was when she had a cigarette or two in her own rooms. And, for the first time, things seemed to be going back to normal."
"But, they didn't stay that way," I commented.
"No, they didn't, " Harvey pressed his hands into the edge of the pool table and lifted himself off, pacing the room back and forth, "and everything went downhill when I told Jimmy that it was time for me to leave. I raised him, did my part as best as I could, and it was time that I left and returned to my own home. I had missed out on my own family gatherings, birthdays, and other special events during my time in Sea View.
"But Jimmy wanted me to stay. I could understand he was concerned of what would happen if I left, but I tried to reason with him - get him to understand that even if I was a distant cousin of his father's, I still had obligations to my own brother's and sister's family that I had neglected. Jimmy begged me to take him with me, but I refused - asking him how his mother would feel and told him what would happen if he left with me. He flew into a rage unlike anything I had seen before - he had broken glassware, wood, anything he could get his hands on. When I tried to restrain him, Jimmy pushed me away - making me practically fly into the medieval weapon display. I was lucky not to have gotten away with a few cuts and a bruise to my back, but I will never forget the crazed look in Jimmy's eyes as he fled down the hallway and locked himself in his room."
"He... he felt like he was losing his father," I said blankly, feeling my throat thicken again, "He had already lost one - one he had never known - and now he was losing a second one, someone he had bonded with over the years."
"Yes... yes he was," Harvey shoved his hands into his pockets, slumping his shoulders, "and Rose wouldn't let me hear the end of it. For a whole week it was nothing but constant bickering and fighting between the two of us - I arguing that I had already neglected my duties as an uncle to my own nieces and nephews, and her arguing that Jimmy was as much as my son as he had been to Hugo - even though he had been dead for so long.
"We came to the agreement that I would remain in the hotel as proprietor for another year - just to make sure that Jimmy was stable enough to do everything on his own. That had been another of Rose's arguments - she may have owned the place, but she knew little about repair work and other obligations and Jimmy was still learning the ropes. When we told Jimmy the new arrangement, he wasn't pleased. It was then that he started setting little traps for me."
"Like the bear trap in the garden?" I asked.
"That was child's play for him back then," Harvey admitted, "his new traps got more elaborate and much bigger. Jimmy's newest traps contained anything that would cause physical harm to someone if they weren't careful - notably the broken heater."
"Jimmy had snuck into a guest's room one day while they were out and had rerouted the wiring to the main lines," Harvey continued, "When they returned and the heater wasn't working, they called me up to have a look at it, " he held out his ghostly hands, scars spread across the skin - still visible even if he was a ghost, "The electric shock had been almost unbearable. I was seeing red - he damaged property, property that was still mine, so I decided to retaliate and damage his."