She peered around the incapacitated barkeep to watch the ghastly scene continue to unfold. The Shrieking Lady kept demanding to see her degenerate husband, all the while hurling things about the room. The bar patrons were cursing and bumping into one another in their haste to steer clear of the ghost, although they didn’t seem to be particularly interested in vacating the pub. They were probably used to it.
What a mess, thought Jane glumly as the Shrieking Lady sent a huge jar of pickled eggs crashing to the floor. By now she was feeling markedly less pity for the woman. This ghost is definitely troublesome, she concluded. So where was the blooming—oh dear, pardon her French—Society?
At that exact moment, as if her thoughts had conjured him, a man in a black mask jumped onto a table in the center of the room. He took a small object out of his pocket and threw it against the wall.
It exploded with a flash and a bang.
The crowd stilled. Then all faces turned to stare in open-mouthed silence at the masked man.
Jane caught herself staring, too, her breath catching—although, again, that could have just been her corset. She shoved the barkeep aside to get a better look.
The agent was a young man—even wearing the mask, that much was clear—although Jane wouldn’t call him a boy, either. Most of the men of this era had a mustache or, at the very least, sideburns, but he had neither. Jane wouldn’t call him handsome. (In the pre-Victorian age, a truly handsome man should be pale—because being out in the sun was for peasants—with a long, oval-shaped face, a narrow jaw, a small mouth, and a pointy chin. We know. We can’t believe it, either.) This young man’s jaw was decidedly square, and his hair was too long. But he was obviously of the upper class, wearing a fine wool coat and expensive-looking leather gloves.
“Everybody out!” he shouted, and Jane ducked behind the bar.
The crowd immediately exited in an orderly fashion. The room was now empty save for another masked man, this one younger than the first, definitely a boy, and wearing a much shabbier suit. Apparently they came in pairs.
The one with the exploding thing jumped down off the table.
“Now pay close attention,” he said to the second agent. “First we clear the room. Then we confirm the identity of the spirit.”
The spirit. Jane had almost forgotten. She glanced up to see the ghost. The Shrieking Lady had long since stopped shrieking, too busy staring at the agents.
The one in charge produced a small, black leather-bound notebook from an inner pocket of his coat, and a pencil. He opened the book gently, in a way that reminded Jane of Charlotte, and turned to a marked page.
“Tell me your name, spirit,” he directed at the ghost, sounding almost bored.
The Shrieking Lady pressed her back against the ceiling but refused to answer. The other agent, the short one with the mop of red hair and glasses—which Jane noticed he wore over his mask—stepped forward. “You should really answer him,” he said, looking at the ghost. “Please.”
The one in charge shushed the redhead. He turned to the ghost again. “You are Claire Doolittle, are you not?”
“I lost him,” the ghost whispered. She sounded suddenly forlorn. “They took him.”
“Took who?” The agent consulted his notebook. “Your husband? He was thrown into debtors’ prison, if I’m not mistaken. A gambling problem.”
The ghost swayed from left to right, but said nothing.
The agent glanced down at his notebook again. “His name was Frances Doolittle.”
“Frank,” the ghost sneered. “He was a hornswoggler.”
“Frank,” said the agent, jotting that down. “Hornswoggler.” He reached into his pocket again and drew out a silver pocket watch. “All right,” he said to the second agent, “now observe this closely. When capturing a spirit—”
The ghost let out a wail so loud and so mournful that Jane’s stomach twisted with a new wave of pity. Then the Shrieking Lady snatched the watch from the agent’s grasp. At least that’s what she tried to do, but failed, as the watch passed through her insubstantial hand and clattered onto the floor.
The next events happened in quick succession:
The agent in charge reached for the pocket watch on the floor.
The ghost sensed an escape window and darted downward from the ceiling.
“She flees!” cried the redhead.
The agent in charge leapt nimbly through the air and landed beside the ghost. “Get the watch! It’s—” But he couldn’t finish the order because the redhead clumsily lunged forward and dove to tackle the ghost, but instead of tackling her, he—naturally—flew right through her and landed in a pile next to Jane’s hiding place behind the bar.
At which point Jane shot to her feet.
All eyes fell on Jane, including the ghost’s.
“Uh, good evening.” Jane waved. “I was, um . . . sleeping . . . sweeping . . . then sleeping.”
A moment of complete silence passed. Nobody moved, except the redheaded one, who groaned and rubbed his temple. But the ghost began to drift purposefully toward Jane.
“Sleeping,” the first agent said skeptically.
“I . . . I . . .” Jane stammered. “I was drunk. From the drinking of . . . the brandy.”
“Right.”
By now, the Shrieking Lady was uncomfortably close to Jane, who tried with all her might to pretend she couldn’t see the wayward spirit.
“Hello,” the ghost said.
Jane could feel the masked man’s eyes on hers. She quickly glanced at the ceiling. A table. The painting on the wall. Anywhere but at the ghost.
“You are so beautiful,” the ghost breathed.
Jane’s cheeks went red. She never knew how to answer to this, mostly because living persons had been telling her all her life how very plain she was.
What a commonplace girl.
And . . .
Oh dear. I do hope she can secure a position . . . somewhere.
And . . .
Oh goodness. How unexceptional. (She always wondered why, if she was so unexceptional, did people feel the need to comment on it?)
To ghosts, however, she was the epitome of beauty.
This left Jane to believe that something was seriously askew in the afterlife.
“You’re so like my Jamie,” the Shrieking Lady continued. “With the sun setting behind him.” Jane didn’t know who this Jamie person was, but the dead woman obviously felt entirely different about him than she had about her husband. “A soft breeze ruffling his red hair,” she cooed.
Jane’s hand, almost of its own accord, reached up and brushed away a few strands of her unexceptional hair from her unexceptional eyes, as she tried desperately, tenaciously, to ignore the ghost.
The agent in charge glanced from Jane to the ghost and back again, his head tilted to one side.
“Oh my, would you look at the time.” Jane gestured to where, until a few moments ago, the clock had been hanging on the wall. “I must go.”
The dratted ghost breezed even closer. Jane had seen this type before. This could turn into a fly-on-flypaper situation. Which she could not let happen now.
She took another two steps back. The ghost floated two steps forward. “I’ve never seen anything so lovely,” she said in a sigh. “You’re truly radiant.” She wrapped her arms about Jane.