Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

D espite my protestations, Rhys and Dawn insisted on keeping the lights off, to protect the mood. We didn’t know what was causing these hauntings to be so powerful, what combination of factors were in play, so they said it made sense to us not to disturb things unnecessarily.

Squinting in the lantern light, we scoured the information boards in the lighthouse’s sitting room, trying to find out everything we could about Howard Baines. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a great deal of information about him. We read about how he’d been a keeper for over twenty years, how he’d served at a handful of other lighthouses before coming here. How he’d been a navy man before that, but nothing about the man himself. We couldn’t find out if he’d been married, had children, or anything about where he came from.

“Here’s a piece about William Jessop,” I said. “He was a noted troublemaker and had been to jail for a couple of months for assaulting a coach driver in London.”

Dawn tutted loudly. “That’s no big surprise.”

I kept reading. “Huh. He campaigned to have cottages built on the island so keepers could have their families nearby.” I ran my finger along the board. “And he wrote many letters asking for better pay and working conditions.”

“A killer with a conscience,” Rhys said.

“Here’s a bit about his role in the death of Howard Baines. They can’t prove he was directly involved, of course, they can only point out what the official report said and what the rumours were at the time.”

“How do we know any of this is true?” Rhys asked. “If we’ve only got one report and some rumours to go on? Weren’t there any official investigations or newspaper articles? Anything written down?”

I kept scanning the board. “It says that Mr Squirrel wrote an account detailing what happened the day Baines died. William Jessop came back a year after he’d been let go, looking for his old job back, but the position had already been filled. The new keeper was away on a supply run and so Mr Squirrel had to leave Jessop and Baines talking while he tended to the light. He heard an argument, went to check on Baines, and found him strangled in his bed.”

“This all happened the same day the Branwen sank, didn’t it?” Dawn lay her hands on the cold glass of a display cabinet. She closed her eyes. “How can we help you, Mr Baines?”

I held my breath and Rhys hugged himself. “Listen.”

We became aware of muffled voices, like an argument heard from another room. Just like Rhys and I had heard during our first break earlier that evening.

Dawn walked slowly across the museum floor to a dark corner. “I didn’t notice this door before.”

I would swear that was because it wasn’t there before. It was different from the other doors, dark brown, panelled, and with a brass knob high up. Before I could warn her to stop, she opened it.

My boots crunched gravel but not the same white gravel of the lighthouse, but the grey, rough gravel of a vast lane that circled around a sprinkling fountain. The air was crisp and our breath gathered before us like clouds. Brown leaves lay scattered about like dead crabs, their limbs curled towards the full moon hanging in a clear, starry sky. A horse and carriage stood outside a grand house — the same one Rhys and I had been in, I was sure of it.

The thin, fair young man from the dinner table slung a suitcase into the carriage. His mother, still wearing her ivory gown from dinner, pleaded with him not to go. Neither of them was aware of us, though the horses whinnied when we approached.

“You cannot simply leave like this! Everything is arranged. You made a promise to marry her. A promise before your family, before hers, and before God!” The man’s mother was crying. She wore gloves to her elbow and clasped her hands together.

“A promise made for me, not by me. I will marry for my heart, Mother, not my honour.”

“Be reasonable, Howard! You cannot throw your life away on some fantasy!”

The young man shook his head. “I would rather wait a lifetime for someone I love than waste my life with someone I do not.”

“You cannot know what this will do to your family, to your father!”

“I care as much about what happens to him as he cares about me.” He climbed into the carriage.

“Where will you go?”

He tapped the ceiling of the carriage, indicating to the driver that they should leave. “It is better I should die at sea than live a lie.”

The horses trotted, pulling the carriage away. The man’s mother scurried after it for a few yards then gave up. The carriage disappeared along the tree-lined laneway. She stood there for a time, crying and shouting at the stars.

I couldn’t speak for Rhys and Dawn but I was afraid to say a word, afraid to move in case I broke the vision, or dream, or time slip, or whatever this was. All around us, the grounds of the manor stretched out. Field after field, lined with bare trees. In the far distance, the sea glistened in the moonlight and on the farthest shore, the beacon of a lighthouse flashed on and off. The beacon grew brighter with each passing sweep. Brighter and brighter until it forced me to shut my eyes.

When I opened them again, I was standing at a dockside in the early morning, facing a tall sailing ship. I craned my neck at the towering masts and their unfurled sails. A stench of fish guts and boiling tar stung my nose and throat. Gulls noisily fought for scraps nearby. Hard-looking and shabbily dressed men tromped down a gangplank, bags over their shoulders, most wearing heavy overcoats.

One of them, a gruff bloke in his forties, I’d say, full-figured, with bushy sideburns, stopped and took something from his pocket. Another man asked him what he planned to do now that he was back on dry land. The man with sideburns put a pipe in his mouth, then lit a match. He touched the flame to the tobacco in his pipe and it sparked, bright as the sun. The light of it swallowed me and dazzled my eyes for a second.

When my vision cleared, I was back out on the sunny, warm gallery of Stag’s Head Lighthouse. I grabbed the neatly painted railing as the fresh sea air rushed around me. I tried not to look down. Behind me, the low door to the lamp room lay open and the man with bushy sideburns who I now knew to be Howard Baines stood whistling with a cloth in his hand, polishing one of the huge lenses.

“Mr Baines?” Another man — sharp-featured and flinty eyed — who I assumed to be Mr Squirrel called to him from inside the lamp room. “Like you meet Mr William Jessop. He’s our newest recruit.”

A handsome, stocky man with a dimpled chin and a duck-egg blue cravat around his neck nodded politely. He was a little younger than Baines but still with some grey in his chestnut temples. He held out his hand. “ Neis i cwrdd a chi. ”

Baines slung the cloth over his shoulder. “Nice to have some fresh blood in here. You’ll notice English is the first language of this light. A tradition started by the man who was Principal Keeper before I took over. You can speak in Welsh when you’re not on shift if you must, but it’s the King’s English when you’re working. Have you worked a light before?”

William Jessop shook his head. “This is my first posting.”

Baines drew himself up to his full height. “There’s a lot to learn.” He took the cloth and flung it to Jessop, who snatched it out of the air. “We’d better get started.”

Though it was daylight, from behind Baines the beacon flashed and again I shut my eyes to avoid being blinded.

Baines — older, white-haired, easily in his fifties — stood leaning over Jessop’s shoulder. Jessop sat at the writing desk, carefully putting slim sticks inside a bottle, building the hull of a ship. He worked by candlelight.

Baines gently laid his hand on Jessop’s bare forearm and helped him to guide the silver tweezers inside the glass bottle. “You’ve been foolish and far too trusting. You should know by now to be careful how you talk to Mr Squirrel. Tell him nothing about yourself that you wouldn’t want everyone to know. He’s fond of gossip, that one, with a wicked and spiteful tongue.”

Jessop looked up to him and thanked him for his help. They held each other’s gaze for a moment. The candle flame grew and grew until it filled the room with light.

“I defended myself, is all.” Jessop swabbed the floor with a wet mop.

I was in the sitting room now, though it had none of the ships in bottles, none of the museum information boards. The chairs were clean and new.

“The coachman attacked me,” Jessop said. “I punched him, he ended up injured, and I ended up before the magistrates. They locked me up before I knew what was what.”

Baines — younger once again, with hardly a trace of white in his hair — huffed in one corner, fussing with his pipe. “A likely story.”

Jessop slammed the mop into a bucket of soapy water. Bright sunlight sparkled in the ripples, forcing me to turn away.

I stood alone in the kitchen of the lighthouse. The moon shone through the little window above the sink. The kettle whistled and white-haired Baines stomped in to remove it from the stove.

Jessop followed, agitated, red-faced, and now wearing oval, copper-coloured spectacles. “Please, Howard, be reasonable.”

“Keep your bloody voice down!” Baines poured out two cups. “What if Mr Squirrel overhears?” His muttonchop sideburns had more white in them than ever. “He already suspects.”

“He’s tending to his little vegetable plot out in the garden, as always.” Jessop pulled out a chair in the same spot where I had sat. “We need to talk about this.”

“What is there to talk about? You want to piss off to America, to leave us in the lurch. Leave me in the lurch.”

Jessop ran his hands over his own face. He tapped the table. “Sit down. Please.”

“I’ve got to attend to the beacon.”

“Two minutes. Please, Howard.”

Baines huffed and sat, all but slamming the second cup in front of Jessop. Tea splashed out.

“My brother left me shares in his mine. Now they might be worth nothing or they might be worth, well, everything. I won’t know until I go over there and get the paperwork sorted. I don’t like leaving. You know I don’t.”

“How can you even afford to? It costs a fortune to travel over there.”

“There’s a packet ship, the Branwen . I know the captain. He’s agreed to take me over and back again for a small fee. He’s got some nice cabins. He takes passengers all the time.”

“Well-to-do ones,” Baines said.

“He can’t let me have one of the cabins, but I can bunk in with the crew.”

Baines drummed his fingertips on the table. “It means you have to leave your post here. They’ll fill it, you know. You might never get another posting again.”

Jessop nodded. “I know going over there is a risk, but it’s the best decision for me.” He put his hand on top of Baines’ and squeezed. “It’s the best decision for us.”