A Haunting at Hensley Hall (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery) (10 page)

With Freddie tucked between them, they approached. “I see you have brought a little visitor, though it isn’t “Pet” day today, is it? Always the third Wednesday in the month. You might want to mark that on your calendars!” she told them condescendingly.

“We’re sorry. We didn’t know. We just can’t leave him in the truck or his brain will fry,” Meg told her with one of her most melting smiles. The very kind that had got her out of trouble, as a child, not that she was ever in much, thought Charlie with a wry grin.

The woman smiled way too sweetly. “If I make an exception, everyone will be bringing their pets in willy nilly and how would that be?”

“Wonderful! It would be just wonderful. How many of the people you have in here had to leave a beloved pet behind? Nell Arnold wants to see this dog. I think you should let her, don’t you?” Charlie asked quietly, but with steel in every word.

The woman, whose name-tag read ‘Cynthia’, blinked rapidly several times. “Just this one time and don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. Now sign in. That’s one rule I must insist on! We like to keep track of everyone. Room 114 is just down that end of the hall”

Meg tightened Freddie’s leash, as his exploratory nose took over. At the command “sit!” he looked up at Meg and seemed to consider his options, then, to her complete surprise, he, actually
, sat
and both waited while Charlie filled in the “Visitor’s Log’.

As they headed down the hall, an aide in bright yellow brushed past them on her way to answer a call light. Otherwise, it was quiet. From the rooms they passed, doors gaping widely, they saw that most of Sunnyvale was either fast asleep or headed in that direction.

Both sisters had expected to find Nell asleep, but she was standing by the window talking to her African Violets. “Now you know I have to pull off your leaf, don’t you, Doris? A yellow leaf will never turn green again. Just a quick pinch and it will all be over.”

Charlie cleared her throat and she turned around. “Time to nap already? I’m not going to do it. You know you can’t make me,” she told them with a shake of her head.

“We’re not here to make you do anything you don’t want to do, Nell. See we brought you a visitor and a treat.”

“Come closer. My eyes aren’t what they used to be along with the rest of me. I don’t think I know you girls, do I?” she asked, as she moved across the room, pushing a walker with tennis ball feet. Her hair was a wisp of gray…like feathers…flying about the tiny wizened face. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes a faded blue lit with the inquisitiveness of a squirrel. She was wearing a floral print dress now several sizes too big for her.

Meg handed her the box of chocolates they had picked up on the way there. She had had her doubts about the wisdom of gifting her with chocolates without asking the nurse first. “What if she’s diabetic and we kill her?” she’d asked her sister, who predictably replied, “Death by chocolate! What a way to go!”

“Chocolates! How did you know? Haven’t had a full box of chocolates since…. Well, in a very long time. Let me get situated in my chair and you can tell me what brings you to Sunnyvale, where no one would go in their right mind,” she laughed. “It’s a joke. Get it?”

It didn’t seem funny to them, but it apparently it did to Nell. When she’d quite finished laughing, she reached for the box of chocolates and tore off the gold foil wrapping. Popping one in her mouth, she closed her eyes and moaned in pure delight. “You two go right ahead and tell me what you want, while I sit back and savor these. Scrumptious! I suppose the polite thing to do would be to offer you two girls one, but I’m hoping you’ll say ‘no’.”

Which they did. While Nell popped her third chocolate in her mouth, Meg began, “We’re the Ravynne sisters. I’m Meg and this is Charlie….Freddie is the short furry one. He’s a Ravynne too.”

“Looks like he got the looks in the family,” she said with a twinkle in her eyes, as she squinted down at Freddie. “Cute enough, but I never much liked pets in the house…hair everywhere…dirty beasts every one. Not like my flowers.”

Charlie smiled. “No, they’re not. Quite different in fact. Would you mind if we asked you about a family you worked for a long time ago? The Hensleys of Hensley Hall? You were the twins nanny.”

Nell looked at them for a long moment and then seemed to slip away. Just as the sisters were beginning to think their trip had been a waste of time, she said, “Breanna and Devon. Pretty things, both of them. Dark hair and big gray eyes. Taught them both in that schoolroom. Kind of a nurse and nanny combined. They had a tutor, too, later…can’t think who that was…looked like a weasel…beady close set eyes”

“About the twins. We live in Hensley Hall now and we need to know everything you remember. Please, it’s really important!” Meg said.

“Hensley Hall! Big place and old long before I came there to tend those two. She didn’t trust doctors or hospitals…had her reasons…so they were born at home with just the midwife and me there. She had a hard time with the birthing, but they were both born healthy. Devon first by a minute or two. The mother never took much of an interest, which was fine by me. Never liked a lot of interference in the nursery.

“But as time passed she took to Breanna, but never Devon. Dressed her up. Paraded her around. Quite the little miss she was, though I don’t think she liked it much. Breanna, that is. Mostly, she was her happiest when she was with her brother. The father,
Lord
Hensley the staff called him behind his back, though I thought he’d be pleased to hear it, was a big man in more ways than one. Big of stature…played college sports. Big in the community. Old family name and old family money. President of the bank. Wanted his son to be just like him, but…”

“But?” Charlie prompted.

“It didn’t happen. Son was slight of build and small for his age. No interest in sports. It was agony for him when his father took him down to the bank with him. ‘Devon his Disappointment’ is what he called him.

“His father beat him, he said, ‘If it takes a good beating to bring him to heel, by God he’ll get one’. His very words. Used his cane on him, the one he liked to carry everywhere. Would beat him up in the schoolroom, then lock him in his room afterwards. Sometimes for days. I had my own key and took him food and dressed his wounds. Never cried like any normal boy would have. Just lay there and let me tend him without a word or a whimper. But then.he…”

Charlie and Meg exchanged glances. “What is it, Nell? You can tell us,” Meg asked for both of them.

Nell began rocking back and forth in her chair. “He did things. Mean things though I don’t think he meant to. He was just acting out…getting even with his father and his mother, too. She knew what was going on and never stopped him.”

“What do you mean? What kind of things?” Charlie asked, her eyes narrowing.

She sniffled and took the tissue Meg pulled out of the box on her bedside table “He hid one of his mother’s rings in the maid’s room and told on her. He didn’t like her for some reason. He told me what he’d done, after she was dismissed. I made him tell his mother the truth and I think he hated me for a while. I found my best dress slashed to ribbons.

“Then one day a new neighbor brought their daughter over for a visit and Breanna and she took to each other as young girls will. Devon was jealous and pushed the girl into the rose bushes. She was scratched pretty badly, but Devon told everyone it was an accident. He had tripped and fallen against her.

“There were other things. It went on and on. Mostly small, petty things that earned him a beating, though I think he would have gotten one anyway. But some were bad…real bad. Someone set rat traps in the barn next to a litter of kittens, the ones Breanna loved. She would plead with cook for scraps every day. They found two dead in the traps and one badly injured. They questioned Devon but he denied it, though no one believed him. They said he was jealous of the attention she gave them.

“The stable incident was the worst. The
master
, he made us call him that, insisted they both take riding lessons. Breanna was a natural, but Devon never took to it. Then one day he was thrown and the stable boy, Tommy, no Timmy, caught him slashing the mare with a whip and told George, the stable master, who then told Devon’s father. Poor Timmy. He saved the mare from a beating, but she trampled him to death in her stall less than a month later.” Charlie slid a sidelong glance at Meg, who met her eyes.

Charlie poured Nell a glass of water and handed it to her. “Please go on. We need to hear anything you can tell us.”

“There were other things too. He liked to wander around at night…especially if the moon was out and usually took his sister with him. I remember what he said the first time I caught them sneaking down the back stairs. He said, ‘We like the feel of the night against our skin.’ And he smiled the kind of smile that made me wonder, if I knew who he was any more.”

Charlie saw the beginning of an old horror bloom in her eyes and started to stop her, but she continued, “I was worried about them both. They were
too
close. It was unnatural! Always together, touching, finishing one another’s sentences and smiling at each other…smiles full of secrets that had me wondering.”

She took a sip of water and handed the glass back to Charlie. There was a long pause before she continued. “I had the room next to the schoolroom, you know where I mean? The children had been moved down to their rooms on the second floor some time before, though I doubted the wisdom of it. But I had only my suspicions and I was afraid of branding the children with what might only have been my imagining. I continued to watch them…surprised the Hensleys kept me on with the children past the age of needing a nanny, but they did. I think they needed someone to keep an eye on Devon. But I failed them and, most of all, I failed Breanna.”

Nell dropped her eyes to her brown speckled hands that were twisting the edge of her dress. Her voice was tremulous, when she whispered. “It was late at night when I heard a cry. It was faint and I thought I’d been dreaming, but then I heard a scream. Muffled but unmistakable. It was coming from below. I took the servants’ stairs to the second floor…it opened right outside their doors. I looked in Devon’s room but it was empty. I tried Breanna’s door, but it was locked. I began pounding and pounding on it over and over. Doors were opening all along the hall. Their father was headed my way, when Breana’s door opened and Devon stood there. He looked at me and smiled, “You, too?” Then he walked into his room and locked the door. The next day he was on his way to military school. She was sent to a private girls’ school in town. And I was dismissed,” she said, brushing away, with a trembling hand, the tears that streamed down her cheeks.

Meg gathered the old woman in her arms, ” That was all a very long time ago, Nell. Please don’t distress yourself now.”

Nell touched Meg’s cheek and smiled into her eyes, “You’re a good girl. You want to believe that people are like you. But if you believe in good you must also believe in evil. Especially if you want to live in Hensley Hall. Evil has left its mark there.”

“Did you hear about what happened there later?” Charlie found herself asking.

“I was gone, but I kept in touch with some of the staff, at least in the beginning, you know how it is. Devon didn’t last long in military school. Was back home in two months over some incident that nobody talked about. I read later about the murders and Breanna going missing. After that, I just didn’t want to hear any more. But I prayed for both children. Often wondered how things would have been if someone had given Devon what he craved so much…love…attention. What he got from me was not nearly enough and afterwards, when I discovered him in her room, he didn’t even have that,” she told them wearily.

“I’m afraid we’ve quite worn you out, Nell. We’ll be going. Thank you for everything,” Meg said with a smile.

“I hope it helps. Who are you again? I don’t think I know you,” she said looking from one to the other with a worried frown.

“The Ravynne sisters and Freddie, remember? Why don’t you let us tuck you in for a nap?” Meg asked gently.

She shook her head, “Plenty of time to sleep when I’m dead. You girls come back and bring your little dog. Like dogs. Just not messing about in the house. Always wanted one. Maybe I’ll get one when I get back home,” she said around an enormous yawn. She was already nodding off, as the sisters, quietly, exited the room.

***

Both sisters were quiet until they climbed in the truck, started the motor and headed back home. “Well, we know more that we did,” Meg told her, fishing a chocolate bar out from under the seat. “I knew you’d be drooling over Nell’s box of chocolates, so I picked up a Hershey bar for you. Kind of squishy. I’ll feed you chunks while you drive otherwise we’ll probably end up in a ditch while you satisfy your feeding frenzy.”

“How about less talking and more feeding,” Charlie told her pointedly. “At least we know his name now.”

“Devon. Not evil enough. Damien would have been better.” Meg told her, moving the Hershey bar out of Freddie’s reach.

“We know now he had sadistic tendencies and, if the trampling of Tommy was his doing, which I kind of lean towards, we know he was capable of murder,” Charlie told her.

“
Timmy
not Tommy. We also know he was ‘Devon the Disappointment’ to his father, who beat him with a cane. Which was something I think I heard that first time we explored the schoolroom, but didn’t tell you.”

“The reason being?’