Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2012 19:12:52 +0200
From: Amy Redek <adultreading@gmail.com>
Subject: Ghost. Chapter Seven.

    This story is for persons of eighteen years or over.  All comments,
good or bad, are welcome and all will be answered.

			       Chapter Seven

   This letter made a staggering impact on the family when it was produced
that night at the dinner table by Sophie.

   `Odds bodkins!' Thomas exclaimed. `This would definitely have killed
father if he'd seen this. So Richard was my grandfather and not Edward,' he
mused. `Percy!' This was what Percival was called by the older members of
the family, but was Mr Percival to the younger ones. `Send one of the
servants down to the chapel please, and have them bring up the family
Bible.' To this request, Percy left the table briefly to instruct someone
to collect it, telling them exactly where it was to be found and quickly
returned to the table in time to hear his wife Anne make the suggestion
that was it possible that the ghost could be that of Richard, me.

   Going round the table, this seemed to be the most popular assumption and
it also gave rise to further speculation amongst them and further
questions.

   `Well he's definitely not buried in the family vault,' Percy
asserted. `Every one there is accounted for according to the family tree in
the Bible.' Our family Bible had all the family members names, date of
birth and death going back to when Stapleton Hall was first built. There
was only one past family person not interred in the vault and that was of
Captain Adam Stapleton who died whilst at sea, the younger brother of the
first Earl. He was buried somewhere in the Caribbean Seas after dying of
wounds sustained in fighting off pirates.

   Hugo refrained from speaking out, but noted down any relevant comments a
family member made and also wrote down his thoughts whilst the debate
ranged across the table. I gave him a pat on the back when I looked over
his shoulder at the notes and suppositions he was beginning to formulate,
for he was heading in the right direction. He couldn't feel my hand or
presence, but it just made me feel better that at least someone there was
using their brain.

   When the children were told the next morning of the finding of the
letter, they were all for having a ghost hunt to try and find my body
which, to tell you the truth, excited me. But that began to pall when I
found that they were looking in the wrong places and I raved and cursed
with every stupid option that was brought forth as I paced up and down
behind them, trying to get into their minds and direct them. But they were
all getting older and less susceptible to my being able to get into their
bodies and minds hence my cursing and ever increasing frustration.

   Hugo, to my pleasure, didn't stop in his pursuit to get to the bottom of
this mystery of my disappearance, and spoke to the elder members of the
family to have them relate their experiences, not only of those that had
seen me, but of other things. Such as the actions and behaviour of past
relations that seemed peculiar to them on reflection. There were only Emily
and Joan who were alive now that could have any insight to how Edward had
appeared or reacted as it were at the time. Hugo had them both together in
a small lounge off the main hall as he asked them to describe their
brother's actions and behaviour at the time that Richard had supposedly
left to rejoin his regiment.

   Emily did most of the talking with Joan nodding her head in agreement at
all she told Hugo. They did seem to be of one accord in with what Emily was
telling him.

   `He would be in his place at the head of table,' she reminisced to Hugo
when being questioned. `He would be eating or drinking and then suddenly
stop doing either or talking and stare off into space and go quite white. I
didn't think much of it at the time and it's strange that I should remember
that. There was one time when he slammed his glass down onto the table,
breaking the glass as he stood up and shouted. Enough! Enough! Leave me
alone, and then he staggered away from the table and I never saw him for
three days after that.'

   `Do you think he saw Richard that caused him to act as he did?' Hugo
asked.

   `On reflection, the answer is probably yes with what we know now,' Emily
replied. `I remember the last night and it was almost the same. He drank
quite a lot at the table and then went white and stormed out of the hall
and the next thing we knew was that he was dead. He fell off the
battlements. What he was doing up there, I never found out.' Hugo noted all
this down and it was young Richard that went and pointed out the direction
for Hugo to go.

   `Mr Hugo,' he said one morning in the library classroom. `I've seen
Richard's ghost and so have quite a few others, but it's always been
upstairs in the bedrooms or the upper hallways. Do you think this could
mean anything?'

   `By God's breath, I think you've hit upon it Richard,' he exclaimed
recalling all the known sightings but had not made the connection. Lessons
were aborted which pleased the other children as Hugo began to review his
notes again. After half an hour he beamed at Richard and said to them all
that the most sightings had taken place in the very bedroom he was at
present using.

   I clapped my hands at them finally arriving at the right place and I
kept up with them as they all went up to his room to watch them start to
inspect the bedroom in the most minute detail.

   They all began to start tapping on the wall panels and Hope was
admonished for tapping those by the window as being the most stupid place
to look for a secret passage. It took them half an hour to find the right
panel that had a different sound and was most likely the place to
concentrate on. Ten minutes later, I couldn't quite see which child found
the switch that made that section of panel open, but there were gasps as it
slowly opened.

   Everybody seemed to shrink back from that opening panel as if they
expected my body to come hurtling out at them from the darkness behind it.

   `That's just where he disappeared,' Hugo said with bated breath as it
swung fully open. He then turned to his bedside and struck some tinder to
light his candle. With it burning properly, held it up and went and looked
through into the gloom and could see a staircase that led downwards. This
he was telling the children behind him as he described the walls and steps.

   `Don't go down,' cried Joan, covering her eyes with her hands.

   `I must,' said Hugo stepping through the gap and began to go down the
steps. Richard, bless him, followed, not wanting to miss out on whatever
may be found down there. It was a great disappointment to them when they
reached the bottom to find a catch which opened a panel to let them out
down by the kitchen door. Not waiting to find the way in from down there,
Hugo drew the panel to close it and with Richard, returned back up the
narrow steps to the bedroom, much to the relief of the others still waiting
expectantly for their safe return.

   `So we found a secret passage or staircase from a bedroom to the ground
floor,' he said to the others when they were back in the classroom. `But it
hasn't taken us any further in our search,' he said somewhat dispiritedly
and the news was taken the same way by the family when he related the
afternoon's events during dinner.

   `Do you think that that was the room he was murdered in?' asked Anne.

   `I shouldn't think so,' Thomas replied. `That isn't the best of rooms,
sorry Hugo, but it wouldn't be where Lady Caroline would have slept. Her
room would have probably be the room that Sophie now uses. Close to the
staircase and far more sumptuous. It's probably where Edward had taken
Richard after he had killed him. That's why he's been seen there the
most. He was taken through that panel and down the stairs and probably
buried somewhere out in the gardens.'

   By all the Gods in the heavens, I raged at them though they couldn't
hear me, when they all seemed to agree on this hypothesis of my final
destination. Such was my anger and ire at this false premise, I was able to
bring down no less than four pictures from the walls as I passed by them in
my rage. This was something that I hadn't been able to do for years now.

   There were gasps from the table and I could see that they had gone white
in the face as each successive picture crashed to the floor as I passed it.

   `He's here,' Sophie cried out. `I can feel his presence,' which was more
than I could say or believe. She hadn't felt me for years now and I think
it was the falling pictures that gave rise to that supposition, but I was
there and I couldn't think of any other way to get their attention to move
in the right direction. Now that my rage was dissipating, so was my power
to move things, try as I might, I couldn't even move a single spoon or
whatever that was upon the table.

   `Give us a sign Richard,' Sophie called out in anguish and they all
waited expectantly, but no sign was given as I tried to comply with her
wish.

   `I think that's all we are going to get,' said Hugo in a quiet voice
after waiting several minutes.

   `All? There's got to be more,' Sophie cried as she sat back down and
Thomas patted her hand.

   `There dear, there dear. If there was more, we would have seen or heard
it by now.' So, dinner was continued without any further interruption from
me, though I did try.

   From there on, the interest to find my resting place seemed to dwindle
and it was only by listening to snippets of news that told me of how the
years were passing and I was no nearer having my remains found than I was
over fifty years ago.

   England was at war again with France against that upstart Napoleon and
Sir Harold Cholmondley died, Mary's husband, of influenza that I found out
that it was now 1804. She, plus the children, Catherine and Peter came back
to Stapleton Hall because Sir Harold's house that had been her home, still
belonged to the Cholmondley family. Rather than now be the widow living
there under their patronage, she opted to return to the place of her birth
taking her children with her. She had managed to extract some money and
possessions from her home before his family took over and with this,
returned.

   To Thomas, it was another blow to his and the family's precarious
financial position, but he couldn't deny her the right to come and live
back in her old home. Even with the money she brought with her was nowhere
near enough to stave off the ultimate collapse of the Stapleton estate that
was forever looming nearer. They had managed to sell off the house of
Wetherby, strangely enough to one General Sir Wilberforce Spencer, a
distant cousin of Sophie's father. He only wanted the house for his
retirement and wasn't interested in buying the land that went with it.

   Though Thomas hadn't wanted the extra mouths to feed, the other children
were most happy that their cousins had come back to live with them. So the
Hall now had six boys and six girls racing around the Hall and grounds
ranging in ages from twelve down to six. It also was an extra burden on
Percy and Hugo in their attempts to teach and educate them up to their high
academic standards.

   It's to Thomas's credit that he refused to sell any more land but rather
let workers go. The Wetherby land was untouched and left to grow wild as he
didn't had the men to handle it as well as Stapleton apart from the fact
that it was the river that stopped them from joining the two together.

   But the pressure of looking after the family and the estate was making
itself felt on the health of Thomas. Even though he was only thirty six
years of age, he looked closer to fifty as the constant worries wore him
down. What didn't help was the irascibility of Grace, Henry's widow, as she
got older though she was only forty years of age. But she became a victim
of the flu epidemic that winter along with two of the children. Nearly the
whole family went down with it but most recovered except for Grace, her
daughter Alice and Arthur, Elaine's third child. Clare also died that
winter though not because of the epidemic. She'd been bedridden for the
past two years, but her time had come and so just before Christmas, all
four were laid to rest in the family vault to much weeping and sorrow.