Maskerade

her.
    “I’ll scream!” she said. “And if I do your eardrums will come down your nose!”
    The writhing stopped.
    “ Perdifa? ” said a muffled voice.
    Above her, the curtain rail sagged at one end and the brass rings, one at a time, spun toward the floor.

    Nanny went back to the sacks. Each one bulged with round hard shapes that clinked gently under her questing finger.
    “This is a lot of money, Walter,” she said carefully.
    “Yes Mrs. Ogg!”
    Nanny lost track of money fairly easily, although this didn’t mean the subject didn’t interest her: it was just that, beyond a certain point, it became dreamlike. All she could be sure of was that the amount in front of her would make anyone’s drawers drop.
    “I suppose,” she said, “that if I was to ask you how it’d got here, you’d say it was the Ghost, yes? Like the roses?”
    “Yes Mrs. Ogg!”
    She gave him a worried look. “You’ll be all right down here, will you?” she said. “You’ll sit quiet? I reckon I need to talk to some people.”
    “Where’s my mum Mrs. Ogg?”
    “She’s having a nice sleep, Walter.”
    Walter seemed satisfied with this.
    “You’ll sit quiet in your…in that room, will you?”
    “Yes Mrs. Ogg!”
    “There’s a good boy.”
    She glanced at the money bags again. Money was trouble.

    Agnes sat back.
    André raised himself on his elbows and pulled the curtain off his face. “What the hell were you doing there?” he said.
    “I was—What do you mean, what was I doing there? You were creeping around!”
    “You were hiding behind the curtain!” said André, getting to his feet and fumbling for the matches again. “Next time you blow out a lamp, remember it’ll still be warm.”
    “ We were…on important business…”
    The lamp glowed. André turned. “We?” he said.
    Agnes nodded, and looked across at Granny. The witch hadn’t moved, although it took a deliberate effort of will to focus on her among the shapes and shadows.
    André picked up the lamp and stepped forward.
    The shadows shifted.
    “Well?” he said.
    Agnes strode across the room and waved a hand in the air. There was the chair back, there was the vase, there was…nothing else.
    “But she was there!”
    “A ghost, eh?” said André sarcastically.
    Agnes backed away.
    There is something about the light of a lamp held lower than someone’s face. The shadows are wrong. They fall in unfortunate places. Teeth seem more prominent. Agnes came to realize that she was alone in a room in suspicious circumstances with a man whose face suddenly looked a lot more unpleasant than it had before.
    “I suggest,” he said, “that you get back to the stage right now, yes? That would be the very best thing you could do. And don’t meddle in things that don’t concern you. You’ve done too much as it is.”
    The fear hadn’t drained out of Agnes, but it had found a space in which to metamorphose into anger.
    “I don’t have to put up with that! For all I know, you might be the Ghost!”
    “Really? I was told that Walter Plinge was the Ghost,” said André. “How many people did you tell? And now it turns out that he’s dead…”
    “No, he’s not!”
    It was out before she could stop it. She’d said it merely to wipe the sneer off his face. This happened. But the expression that replaced it was no improvement.
    A floorboard creaked.
    They both turned.
    There was a hat stand in the corner, next to a bookcase. There were a few coats and scarves hanging from it. It was surely only the way that the shadows fell that made it look, from this angle, like an old woman. Or…
    “Damn floors,” said Granny, fading into the foreground. She stepped away from the coats.
    As Agnes said, later: it wasn’t as though she’d been invisible. She’d simply become part of the scenery until she put herself forward again; she was there, but not there . She didn’t stand out at all. She was as unnoticeable as the very best of butlers.
    “How did you get in?” said André. “I looked all round the room!”
    “Seein’ is believin’,” said Granny, calmly. “Of course, the trouble is that believin’ is also seein’, and there’s been too much of that round here lately. Now, I know you ain’t the Ghost…so what are you, to be sneaking around in places where you shouldn’t be?”
    “I could ask you the same quest—”
    “Me? I’m a witch, and I’m pretty good at it .”
    “She’s, er, from Lancre. Where I come from,” Agnes mumbled,