The Phantastic Apparition Social Society Presents: A Murder of Sorts at Unlivington Manor, Chapter 4

Shaughnessy the singing ghost was never without a melody to croon. When he first became a spirit, he enjoyed the haunting scales and eerie arpeggios. But somewhere around the sixth hundredth boo-re-mi, he thought to himself, ‘Why not jazz it up a little?’ And jazz it up, he did. Syncopated sonatas, crescending cantatas, pentatonic polkas, and that was just the overture. His voice was his powerful magic, and as much as the Phantastic Apparition Social Society complained, they were used to his comforting tunes, in the same way one might appreciate a jovial neighbourhood rat. They really couldn’t imagine life in the quiet anymore. And so, when Shaughnessy’s head met the sharp, brass mount of an antique globe, it was the first time the group had really known silence. It felt a bit odd.

Vincenzo and Rex each grabbed a foot and dragged him out into the library (yes, that’s where the secret passageway from the conservatory ended up). Mildred didn’t grab a foot, and instead grabbed Camille, who had grown frustrated in trying to prove her innocence and had the look of a girl about to run. “It’s obvious you booby-trapped the door. What else have you planned, Camille?” Mildred located a trunk filled with historical memoirs, waved them aside, tossed Camille in, and locked it. One ghost on the loose was enough, even if that ghost was now alive. At the thought of Iggy, Mildred turned to the remaining guests. “We must track down Iggy and figure out what we are going to do.”

A muffled conversation from out in the hall grew louder and clearer. It was Polly and Todd.

“Palette cleansing cocktails are to be enjoyed in the library, as planned.”

“Yes, but—” Polly was pushed into the library, which was impressive of Todd, as he carried a tray of cocktails in one hand and a purple hair ribbon in the other. How he managed not to spill while thrusting Polly in to join the others was a true demonstration of his years in hospitality. One look at Shaughnessy’s concave skull, however, and the lemon wedges went flying. It was a good thing the vermouth stayed in the glass, because by this point, everyone needed a drink.

Todd looked like he was about to panic, so Vincenzo got ready to do him in. Not even Rex wanted to go via exorcist, so it had been agreed long ago that if worse came to worse, dead human staff were better than screaming-to-the-police human staff. And Todd looked like he was about to scream. His mouth opened wide, and a sound pierced everyone’s ears.

The sound did not come from Todd. It came from Shaughnessy, who managed to scream in a perfect B minor harmonic scale.

“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!” He was up on his feet and rubbing his skull, with a glare that was very unlike him (he was usually quite cheery). Todd gathered his bearings and addressed the group.

“I think we define a fun evening differently,” he cleared his throat. “The dining room is a mess with broken dinnerware, so I’ll serve the entrée here.” He turned on his heel and left.

Vincenzo was inspecting the room. “Camille planted a booby trap that almost took out Shaughnessy,” he pointed at the thin wire attached to the globe, which now lay on the floor.

“No I didn’t!” cried the trunk.

Mildred kicked the trunk to shut it up and turned to Polly. “Where is Iggy? We absolutely cannot have her re-alived and leaving the manor! What if she runs into some townspeople and causes them to come here! I’ll say it again, I’m not up for finding another manor to host our parties!”

“You want to host another party after this?” Rex begrudgingly handed Shaughnessy a paperweight, who was trying to reshape his skull. “After sixty-six years, I say we end this here.”

Polly was on the ground, picking up the purple ribbon Todd had thrown in his fit of fear upon seeing Shaughnessy. Her eyebrows furrowed as she stood up. “Every year you complain, Rex. Yet every year, you still show up. No one is forcing you to be here. You can leave, Rex! It’s not like you are cursed to haunt this manor!”

The words had barely left her lips when everyone—including Camille in the trunk—inhaled sharply and loudly. Rex’s eyes looked like they were nearly about to bulge out of their sockets. He growled and backed into an armchair. “Stop looking at me. Don’t we have a bleeding girl on the loose and a contorted criminal in a trunk?”

Shaughnessy hummed while skimming a bookshelf. Vincenzo tried to pry the lock open to let Camille out. Polly gently tied the purple ribbon in her hair. And Mildred began to circle around Rex, her nose pointed in a way that only happened when she was about to reveal highly important information.

“Rexford Carnegie Stonegraves. Only son to Penelope Lillian Stonegraves, who was the only daughter to Oswald Agustus Stonegraves and his wife Eugenia Violet, née … “

The clock on the wall ticked.

The metaphorical sweat on Rex’s brow dripped.

The heels of Mildred’s boots clicked. “Unlivington.”

Rex was indeed an Unlivington, but it wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew that his family owned the manor; it was what kept the party going every year. His great-grandfather was Old Man Unlivington, whose portrait in the dining room now dripped with bisque. But it had never occurred to them that Rex might be cursed. Gruff, insensitive, and likely to watch you choke, yes, but not cursed.

Shaughnessy had a book, and as he sang a ghoulish arpeggio, the pages flipped, landing on an old photograph of Rex. Mildred snatched it up and began to read aloud. It was the tale of Rexford Stonegraves, and it was not a pleasant one. In fact, it went something like this:

Rexford Stonegraves, tall and mean,

Burns your toes with kettle steam.

Once you cry he laughs out loud,

Then locks you up in the underground.

He waits until your life sucks out,

Then laughs some more and dances about.

He did this once to a little witch,

Before she died, she cried out this:

‘You’ll grow bored from being mean,

I curse you in this house for eternity!’

Well, it went exactly like that. And right around the time Mildred was saying life sucks out, Todd had entered with the canard à l’orange. He placed the plates on the reading table, left the room, and told himself that perhaps Hollywood dinner theatre was more his style after all. He went off to help Daisy in the kitchen and plan their resignation.

Rex, who very much did not enjoy this attention, stewed in the corner as Mildred shut the book. “You’ve never stopped us from hosting a party. You always claim you’re unattached to the manor and couldn’t care less with what we do with it. But you show up.”

“Shows up? Or is always here. You met me at the gate today and we walked up together, but come to think of it, I’ve never seen you leave the grounds.” Polly pointed at Rex with a sneer.

Mildred continued. “You always threaten to leave our dinner party, but you never do. I thought perhaps secretly you liked us.”

“No, I don’t. I’m cursed. There, cat’s out the bag, and Camille’s out of the trunk.”

Camille had finally gotten free and stretched her toes as she ate. “Back in the secret passageway, you said: ‘let’s see where this leads,’ but you know where everything in here leads. You’re full of lies!”

Rex grew defensive as he chomped on his duck. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want people to know I’m cursed? Being cursed means people look at you and ask questions. You really want to know? Fine. I’m stuck here for eternity, and now Iggy is running around in my house. I just want this evening to be over!”

Mildred continued to interrogate the reclusive ghost. “Is going after each of us your way of ending our tradition of dinner parties? You could simply uninvite us to your home, Rex. There’s no need for this horrific scheme! We’ll host it someplace else next year, and you don’t need to come! My goodness, this sauce is delicious!”

The only one who was not eating was Vincenzo. Instead, he looked as if he was about to curse an entire town. “When you told me earlier this evening that Opal had died, was that because you had done to her what you had done in that awful poem?” He grabbed the antique globe and hurled it at Rex. Polly screamed and Shaughnessy caught it mid air, gently placing it on the table.

Opal was Vincenzo’s childhood sweetheart, who broke his heart at eighteen and rekindled their romance twenty years later, before Vincenzo’s death. Ever since Vincenzo had become a ghost, he had watched her grow old from afar. And so while Shaughnessy was singing in the conservatory during hors d’oeuvres, Rex had gone up to Vincenzo and told him that Opal had died. That is why Vincenzo was crying behind the Chloris statue, and why he was now ready to shove a duck bone through Rex’s eye.

“Opal died because she was a hundred and eight. I’m sorry if she didn’t come to find you, but I guess she wasn’t holding on to anything, and crossed over peacefully.”

They all chewed their duck in silence. Ghastly deaths and torturous re-alivements were one thing, but that bit about Opal was just sad.

Finally Rex spoke. “I didn’t do this to Iggy. I’ll admit, I unlocked my trap door, in the hopes of re-aliving all of you and killing you down there. Quick and painless, not like a horrible exorcism. And starting with Iggy, because she was just so annoying.”

Camille sipped her cocktail. “So you did do this.”

“No, someone ruined my plan. They re-alived her before I had both latches open to toss her underground.”

Mildred shook her head in disappointment. “You were going to do this to all of us, after all these years. The poem says you’re meant to grow bored of being mean, but decades later and you haven’t changed at all!”

“I have,” Rex’s voice was low. He coughed and mumbled the following words. “I was going to re-alive myself as well, so we could all cross over together.”

“All these traps were planted for a crossing to the other side …” Shaughnessy’s twisted lullaby hung in the air.

“I didn’t plant all the traps. The knife wasn’t me. And killing Iggy wasn’t me, either,” Rex sighed and stood up to demonstrate. He picked up the globe and pointed. “This globe, if you’re coming from the passageway is a direct hit, yes, but if you’re in front of the bookshelf as planned, it’ll just knock you down, then you’ll fall through a trap door that chutes you out through a fake fireplace in the ballroom and should plummet you though another trap door that goes underground.” He pointed to a spot on the floor where a floorboard lay slightly askew. The group stood, gobsmacked. Rex continued, “But I didn’t unlatch the second trap door in the ballroom, because … well … I changed my mind! You’re all very annoying, and Rexford Carnegie Stonegraves should torture you all while laughing and dancing, but for some reason you’ve all grown … ahh ….”

Rex could not admit that there were times when he didn’t want every member of the Phantastic Apparition Social Society exorcised. The rest felt strangely touched.

“Well then, who was it?” Vincenzo demanded.

“I don’t know! I didn’t cause all that blood gushing from her stomach—that’s the work of a weapon, not sliding down the chute through the fireplace! And I didn’t get an eyelash, remember, Camille did!”

“But I didn’t knock her out and send her flying from room to room!”

“She wouldn’t have been knocked out if someone didn’t walk her to the library!”

“Don’t bring me into this, Rex, you set a proper trap!” Mildred paced the room. 

“And speaking of traps, someone reset mine! This globe knocked Iggy through the chute, which is why we all saw her on the ballroom floor. How did it get strung back up to smack into Shaughnessy? You can attest that I’ve been with you all this evening, so someone else reused my globe, and has it in for us!”

“That, unfortunately is trueeeeeee.” Shaughnessy’s note lingered until Mildred piped up.

“Where has Polly gone this time?”

A duet of screams came from the hall, followed by a shattering of glass.