The Ghost and The Haunted Mansion: A Haunted Bookshop Mystery

detectors, not to mention the cameras, lights, and our camera crews.”
    “I see.”
    “But I do think you’ve got a good shot at being approved for a segment. Your frightened-to-death story’s a real grabber. And the look of this house is fantastic, real Dark Shadows creepy.”
    “Thanks!” Seymour said.
    “After the papers are signed, we should get around to filming in, say, six to eight months.”
    “Six to eight months !”
    “We only do thirteen shows a season, Mr. Tarnish, and two segments a show. We’ve got a huge backlog.”
    “Thank goodness,” I muttered.
    Kenny waved and headed for the steps. “So long,” he called. “We’ll be in touch.”
    Seymour closed the door and faced me. “I need action now. Not in six or eight months.” He slapped his forehead. “Damn, I forgot to tell him about the magic circle!”
    I touched his arm. “Don’t worry about it. You heard Kenny. He said you were a good enough prospect anyway. But now that you mention it, didn’t you say something earlier? Something about finding that fleur-de-lis pentagram design in another part of the house?”
    He nodded. “Upstairs.”
    “Show me.”
    We climbed the wide wooden staircase to the second floor, passed through a long, dim hallway dominated by a suit of armor at one end and a loudly ticking grandfather clock on the other. Seymour guided me through a door and into the master bedroom.
    “Check out the front of that nightstand,” he said, pointing to a boxy piece of furniture beside a massive canopied bed.
    About the size of an old-fashioned television set, the stand appeared to be mahogany stained in black. Bolted to the front of the piece was a sterling silver relief the size of a serving platter. Just as Seymour said, the relief’s design was that odd fleur-de-lis pentagram. I bent down to touch the metal, and discovered the design had a use. It was a handle.
    “This isn’t just a nightstand, Seymour. It’s a cabinet.” I tugged the handle and the front opened wide.
    “Holy secret compartment, Batman!”
    Inside the cabinet were three glass tiers. A delicate tiara made of silver rested on the top shelf; the middle held a silver hatbox. A leather-bound book rested on the bottom shelf. Embossed in silver on its cover was the fleur-de-lis pentagram. There was no title above the design, and the spine was blank. I lifted the book and paged through handwritten incantations and drawings of magical circles as well as other occult symbols.
    “Did Miss Todd write that?” Seymour asked, peering over my shoulder.
    I shook my head. “The person who scribbled these notes had a much bolder hand. Heavier, too. See the large size of the letters and numbers? I’ll bet this was written by a man.”
    Seymour took the book from my hand and paged through it. “I see some Latin in here and some Greek, but almost everything else is gibberish. I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
    “It must be important, because Miss Todd wanted you to have it.”
    “Huh?”
    “Don’t you remember the ‘special book’ she cited in her will? I have a pretty strong feeling this is the book.”
    Seymour glanced at the cabinet. “What’s in that hat box?”
    As I pulled out the box, my eyes drifted to the object behind it—a polished steel dagger with the pentagram design on its hilt.
    “Leo Rollins has a dagger like this one!” I lifted the blade and examined it. “It looks exactly like the one J. J.’s mother had, too.”
    “Whose mother?”
    Watch it, baby. You’re speaking of things long past.
    “Not so long,” I silently replied. “This very dagger—or Leo’s, for that matter—could be the very same one you showed me from your case.”
    “Earth to Pen? Who is J. J.?”
    “J. J.? Oh, he’s, um, a—”
    A customer, doll.
    “A customer, doll,” I repeated to Seymour. “I mean, a customer of the bookshop! Anyway, don’t you think it’s odd that Leo has a knife just like this?”
    “I guess.” Seymour took the knife. “I wonder where Rollins got it.”
    “According to him, an antiques store in Newport.”
    I pulled out the hatbox, moved it onto the bed, and opened the lid. The box contained a tape recorder. I took it out.
    “There’re audiotapes in here, too.” Seymour grabbed the tapes and scanned them. “They’re all dated recently—a few days apart.”
    I shuffled through the four plastic cases and recognized Miss Todd’s tiny, precise handwriting on each label. The tapes were time coded, each