Red Lily

downstairs.

    She found the adults in the library, the most usual meeting spot for ghost talk. The sun had yet to set, so the room was washed with light that was just hinting of pink. Through the glass, the summer gardens were ripe, sumptuous, spears of lavender foxglove dancing over pools of white impatiens, brightened with elegant drips of hot-pink fuschia.
    She spotted the soft, fuzzy green of betony, the waxy charm of begonias, the inverted cups of purple coneflowers with their prickly brown heads.
    She’d missed her evening walk with Lily, she remembered, and promised herself she’d take her daughter out for a stroll through the gardens the next day.
    Out of habit, she crossed to the table where a baby monitor stood beside a vase of poppy-red lilies.
    Once she was assured it was on, she tuned in to the rest of the room.
    “Now that we’re all here,” Mitch began, “I thought I should bring you up-to-date.”
    “You’re not going to break my heart and tell us you researched during your honeymoon,” David put in.
    “Your heart’s safe, but we did manage to find some time to discuss various theories here and there. The thing is, I had a couple of e-mails from our contact in Boston. The descendant of the Harper housekeeper during Reginald and Beatrice’s reign here.”
    “She find something?” Harper had chosen the floor rather than one of the seats, and now folded himself from prone to sitting.
    “I’ve been feeding her what we know, and told her what we found in Beatrice Harper’s journal, regarding your great-grandfather, Harper. The fact that he wasn’t her son, but in fact Reginald’s son with his mistress—whom we have to assume was Amelia. She hasn’t had any luck, yet, digging up any letters or diaries from Mary Havers—thehousekeeper. She has found photographs, and is getting us copies.”
    Hayley looked toward the second level of the library, to the table loaded with books, Mitch’s laptop. And the board beside it that was full of photos and copies of letters and journal entries. “What will that do for us?”
    “The more visuals, the better,” he said. “She’s also been talking to her grandmother, who’s not doing very well, although she does have some lucid moments. The grandmother claims to recall her mother and a cousin who also worked here at the time talk about their days at Harper House. Lots of talk about the parties and the work. She also recalls her cousin talking about the young master, that’s how she referred to Reginald Jr. And saying the stork got rich delivering that one. That her mother told her to hush, that blood money and curses aside, the child was innocent. When she asked what she meant, her mother wouldn’t speak of it, except to say she’d done her duty by the Harper family, and would have to live with it. But the happiest day of her life had been when she’d walked out the door of this house for the last time.”
    “She knew my grandfather had been taken from his mother.” Roz reached down, touched a hand to Harper’s shoulder. “And if this woman is remembering correctly, it sounds as though Amelia wasn’t willing to give him up.”
    “Blood money and curses,” Stella repeated. “Who was paid, and what was cursed?”
    “There would have been a doctor or a midwife, perhaps both, attending Amelia during the birth.” Mitch spread his hands. “Almost certainly they’d have been paid off. Some of the servants here might have been bribed.”
    “I know that’s awful,” Hayley said. “But you wouldn’t call that blood money, would you? Hush money more like.”

    “Bull’s-eye,” Mitch told her. “If there was blood money, where was the blood?”
    “Amelia’s death.” Logan shifted, leaned forward. “She haunts here, so she died here. You haven’t been able to find any record of that, so we have to assume it was covered up. Easiest way to cover something up is money.”
    “I agree.” Stella nodded. “But how did she get here? There’s no mention of Amelia in any of Beatrice’s journals. No mention of Reginald’s mistress by name, or of her coming to Harper House. She wrote about the baby, and how she felt about Reginald bringing him here, expecting her to pretend she’d given birth to him. Wouldn’t she have been just as outraged, and written of that, if he’d established Amelia in the house?”
    “He wouldn’t have.” Hayley spoke quietly. “From everything we’ve learned about him, he wouldn’t have brought a