15.8

"Have I done what?" Gilet de Sauvinage asked with irritation.

"Why," Alice said, her tone suggesting that he ought to have know exactly what she meant, "I meant exactly that. Have you sent a ransom request to my family?"

De Sauvinage blenched at her inquiry. "How can you ask such a question?" he asked, his voice losing all trace of Gallic sanguinity.

"I ask because I must know," Alice responded with more than a little forceful disapproval. As unaccustomed as she was to finding herself in a position of some authority, Alice nonetheless deciphered that there had been a kind of shift in the balance of power between the two of them. Invigorated by the story of the poor young woman's travails, Alice found herself determined not to give in to the same fate.

"Have you sent a ransom note to my family?" Alice reiterated. "Tell me now!"

Gilet de Sauvinage quailed. Visibly, this was apparent.

It was not, Alice was certain, in the nature of villains to quail before heroines. She was somewhat disappointed to find that this was the calibre of villain she had attracted. Somehow it seemed a poor reflection on her.

If I were a better heroine, I would have attracted a more accomplished villain, Alice thought sadly.

"I have had some delay," de Sauvinage began.

"Why?" Alice demanded.

"I do not have a normal household staff, for one thing," de Sauvinage blustered. "If you knew what kind of efforts were required to keep a situation like this running smoothly, you would be surprised to say the least, Miss – er, Miss."

Alice shrugged with a nigh on Gallic casualness. "As the kidnapped person, I have no responsibility for those details. However, as the kidnapped person, I am horrified to find that you have done nothing toward securing my eventual rescue and ransoming. It is too shocking, too shocking by half," Alice said with more than a touch of her mother's oft-exercised sense of high dudgeon.

"Do you know how long it takes to make porridge?" de Sauvinage asked with more than a touch of bitterness.

Alice raised an eyebrow in a gesture that would have made her sensible cousin Lizzie nod with approval. "It is not my concern to know what porridge requires. You must ransom me or let me go."

De Sauvinage looked more than a tad perturbed at her suggestion. "Let you go? When it took me so long to acquire you? I do not think so." He shook his head, but Alice was not yet daunted.

"Then ransom me," she reiterated. "My family will be grateful to have me returned to them, I am certain. I wish to be free."

"I'm not sure that can be arranged," de Sauvinage said with ominous intent.

15.7

"That's too horrible!" Alice exclaimed, leaping up in alarm. "Was it this very window?"

Gilet de Sauvinage shrugged in a not especially Gallic way. "I don't know which room it was, just that it was in this wing."

Alice blanched. "It could have been this very room. Oh, the poor unfortunate! Did her family demand justice?"

He shook his head. "They never knew what had happened to her. The terrible Comte Sangsue never even sent them a ransom note or any kind of threatening message."

"How awful!" Alice said, feeling an unaccustomed sense of faintness come over her. It had been some time since she had felt so weak. Perhaps she should eat more of her breakfast.

But there was also something niggling at the back of her mind. What could it be?

"Ever since," de Sauvinage continued, unaware of Alice's wandering thoughts, "many people have reported that they have seen wandering the corridors, a pale ghostly figure of a woman, searching, always searching."

"What is she searching for?" Alice asked as she ate some of the porridge.

"Perhaps her killer," he replied. "Or perhaps she just wants someone to blame!"

"Well, it's not my fault," Alice said with what had become her usual decided air. "She can't want to haunt me. I suppose this Comte is also dead."

De Sauvinage shrugged again. "I don't know. It's possible that he's still alive, but he is not here."

"Do you know where he is?" Alice set her spoon down as an idea occurred to her.

"I haven't the slightest idea," de Sauvinage said, sounding more than a trifle irritated with the line of questioning. "I suppose he returned to his estate, wherever that might be."

"I shall certainly tell the spectre if she returns," Alice said, returning once more to her porridge. "It is only fair that she know he is not here. She can seek her vengeance elsewhere." The latter was less than entirely distinct as Alice was still masticating a mouthful of porridge during the speech, a collision of activities that would have well and truly scandalised her mother and most of the household had they been there to experience it.

"Well, one never can tell with ghosts," de Sauvinage said. One might have caught a hint of irritation in his voice. Whether he was simply fed up with Alice's failure to be impressed with his tale or with her poor manners in speaking with her mouth full, it was difficult to ascertain.

However, he was startled when Alice suddenly dropped her spoon in horror. The utensil made an unpleasant wet smacking sound as it fell back into the porridge. She stared at de Sauvinage, her eyes round and her cheeks flushed.

"What is it, Mademoiselle Alice?" he asked, his voice choking up to a higher register and his French accent deserting him completely.

"Have you done it?!" she shouted in a most unbecoming way.

15.6

"Murder!" Alice said with alarm. That was rather more than she had expected. "Murder?" she repeated, her voice decidedly less audible. "Here?"

De Sauvinage nodded. "It was more than forty years ago, when this villa was still occupied by the Duke."

"Which Duke?" Alice asked, forgetting her terror for a moment.

"The Duke of this villa," de Sauvinage said with a touch of irritability. "I don't know his name."

"It's a rather important fact," Alice said, her tone conveying a distinct shade of disapproval.

"Well, it is not one that I possess," de Sauvinage said with finality. "About forty years ago -- no, I cannot be more specific than that," he added, anticipating another interruption from his audience. "The Duke was away on business, of some unknown type," he rushed to say, regarding Alice with a severe look, or so it appeared from behind the disguise. "His younger brother was in charge of the estate and had some very questionable companions allowed as guests in his brother's absence."

"One of these men was the notorious Comte Sangsue, a reviled man of irregular hours and unpardonable tastes."

Alice shivered. It was quite too horrible to contemplate.

"The Comte had, unbeknownst to his host, had his henchmen spirit away a noble young lass and he received her in secret in this very house."

"No!" Alice interjected. The horror of it all! She thanked her lucky stars once again that having had to be kidnapped, she had at least been spirited away by men who knew their place. Her heart went out to the poor unfortunate even as her finely honed sense of morality shrank from the likely (and only vaguely understood) fate the poor young woman suffered.

"Indeed," Alice's own kidnapper continued. "Sequestered in a room of this villa--"

"On this floor," Alice filled in, her voice breathless with terror and excitement.

"On this floor," de Sauvinage agreed, though once again reminding her, "but probably not this room, he had her secreted away to use her for his filthy Gallic purposes."

"How terrible!"

"Indeed," de Sauvinage repeated. "When night fell, he crept away from the other revelers and made his way to the room where the frightened young woman awaited her unspeakable fate."

"Unspeakable," Alice repeated with dread fascination.

"The story was told that she did her best to resist him, shrieking in terror and fighting off his advances with all decent outcry."

"And did he…?" Alice could barely bring herself to ask.

Gilet de Sauvinage leaned toward her, his voice dropping to a whisper. "At the very last minute--"

"Yes?!"

"She evaded his advances--"

"Hurrah!"

"By falling out the window and plunging to a horrible death!"

15.5

"Shall we set the tray down, first?" Gilet de Sauvinage asked Alice. It was a bit awkward with the two of them holding on to either side which held them immobile in the doorway.

"Just as you say," Alice agreed, more intrigued by the thought of the mysterious story of the apparition than even with the idea of breakfast, although her stomach rumbled an appreciative reminder of the importance of that meal.

After some awkward fits and starts, Alice at last relinquished the tray with a sigh and retreated into the room so de Sauvinage could place the tray on the small table. The repast, once uncovered, proved to contain no kippers or even kedgeree, so Alice sighed and began to eat some of the toast.

"Now tell me of that apparition that haunts the hallways of this villa," Alice demanded, pouring herself a cup of tea with the beginnings of a cross look etching into the furrows of her brow. If she had seen this furrowing, doubtless Alice would have been worried that such furrowing would lead to later wrinkling, but she remained blissfully unaware of that physical development, instead turning a severe eye upon her capture as she chewed her breakfast. It was impossible to see if that were having the desired effect, cloaked as he was by his mysterious disguise.

However, his words seemed to suggest that her look had prompted him to mindfulness. "Yes, of course, miss. It is a strange and wonderous tale that may frighten you."

Alice shrugged. A most unladylike gesture, but she had so far fallen form gentility on this journey that she failed to even notice the common tone of her body's movement. Her mother would have been shocked indeed, so it is just as well that she was not present to see Alice's shrug.

"I don't wish to frighten you," de Sauvinage continued, now seeming more than a little reluctant to begin, which only increased Alice's irritation.

"I have been kidnapped and sailed with pirates," Alice said, more than a little crossness slipping out between her lips with not a few crumbs of toast. "I hardly thing I will faint away at the mere story of a haunting."

"As you wish, then, miss," de Sauvinage said, his words and manner somewhat stiff.

I believe I have offended him, Alice thought, and smiled quietly to herself. It was quite enjoyable to have the whip back in her hand, so to speak. "I do," Alice said, feeling rather smug and superior. "Tell on, please." She stuffed the last bit of toast into her mouth and chomped it with satisfaction.

"Many years ago, in this very place," de Sauvinage began.

Alice returned to the habit that annoyed her governess so, and immediately broke in for an explanation. "In this very place, meaning this very room?" she asked somewhat pedantically.

"Well, I don't know for certain," de Sauvinage said, nonplussed by her interjection. "I--I believe it was in this wing, though perhaps in a different room. I cannot be too certain."

"I think it would be very distasteful if it were this very room and I would have thought it odd of you to choose to sequester me here," Alice said enjoying the use of this very important word, which had welled up from her admittedly spotty memory. "Go on."

"It was, in a word," said de Sauvinage with a dramatic pause, "murder!"

15.4

For a moment, there was no further sound after the knock. Alice quivered behind her protective bedclothes. She blinked a few times and then began to wonder if perhaps her visitor might be corporeal. A second knock at the door and the growling in her midsection convinced her that it was well worth ascertaining whether the apparition had returned or whether her breakfast might be waiting outside the door even now.

With trembling hands, Alice folded back the bedclothes neatly and swung her feet back over the edge of the bed. Gingerly she crossed the floor to the door, listening for any discernable noise on the other side of the door. Hearing nothing, she at last drew a deep breath and pulled on the knob.

Outside stood Gilet de Sauvinage, holding a tray with her breakfast. "Mademoiselle?"

Alice looked quickly down the corridor in either direction. There was no one else to be seen.

"What is it, mademoiselle?" Her kidnapper seemed to speak in tones of concern, though it was hard to tell behind the kerchief that masked his face.

"I thought--," Alice began, then paused. "Perhaps it was nothing." Her nervous tone did not match the nonchalance of her words. "Is that my breakfast?" she asked with more of her usual brisk tone.

"Oui, mademoiselle, le petit déjeuner. Let me bring it in to your room," de Sauvinage said as he attempted to make his way into the room.

Alice blocked his entrance with a subtle movement. "Do you think that is strictly necessary?" Alice asked though her stance clearly indicated it was not. "I can take the tray myself."

The unusualness of this statement in the context of her past did not strike the young lady at that time, unaware as she was of the many changes wrought by her adventures since the funeral of her father. The changes had been of a subtle nature, one by one. It was difficult for our heroine to glimpse that now increasingly distant time when she had been wholly dependent upon a range of servants and considerable parental guidance.

The Alice of not so many weeks ago would not have imagined demanding of her kidnapper, "Have you heard or seen anything in the corridor this morning?"

"I do not know what you mean, Al--er, mademoiselle," de Sauvinage said somewhat haltingly.

"I think you do," Alice said. She wished very much for a lorgnette just then, for her mother had wielded one with such aplomb that no one could countenance her perusal with equanimity. Alice had seen many a stalwart young man cave before her scrutiny.

"I assure you--" he stammered, but Alice was not convinced.

"Tell me the truth! I insist."

He seemed to be somewhat abashed at her insistence, at least as far as one might surmise under the disguise. "The truth?"

"Indeed! You must admit the truth. There is an apparition haunting these halls, is there not?" Alice accused.

De Sauvinage appeared to pause and then nodded hastily. "Yes, indeed there is, miss. It's quite a chilling story in fact."

Alice gasped. "Tell me more!"

"I shall," said de Sauvinage.

15.3

After some time had passed, Alice peeked up over the bedclothes. All was silent. More light shone through the window now and its slightly cheerier ambiance helped to strengthen her resolve. Perhaps it was a dream, Alice told herself.

But she knew it was no dream. It was comforting, though, to try to make the incident turn hazy in her mind -- as unpleasant things should become as quickly as possible. However, the fear still made her heart beat a little bit faster just thinking about the strange vision that had appeared in the doorway.

It did no harm, Alice thought with some relief. Perhaps it did not mean to frighten her. As she recalled its spooky black garments she could not suppress a shudder which roamed through her limbs like a gypsy wagon. Picturing the way its weeds moved to a wind that was not there made her feel distinctly unwell.

But it had done no harm. It had not even spoken to her. Perhaps it was seeking help. Alice tried to dredge up from her memory stories of ghosts and whether they had caused injury to anyone. Surely Mrs. Radcliffe had presented more than a few ghosts, many of whom seemed to be more suffering that suffered from.

Alice looked out the window at the breaking morning and could feel hope and confidence return to her. A blackbird whistled merrily and the sound revived her spirits. Perhaps, like so many of Mrs. Radcliffe's ghosts, this one was offering a warning to her.

What sort of warning?!

Alice's heart began to race again, fear propelling her thoughts and veins. What if she were in some kind of danger?

Foolish girl, told herself with a shake. You've been kidnapped: of course you’re in some kind of danger. But how much? Alice fretted for a moment, but the combination of the bright sunlight pouring in through the window, the blackbird's cheerful song and the complete lack of breakfast conspired to distract her thoughts from their morbid course.

Where is my breakfast, Alice thought. It should have been here by now. Even though it was generally a simple and entirely unexciting repast, the habit of breakfasting was one she was keen to keep, even if it had not yet included kippers much as she might keep hoping.

It must surely be kippers one day, she sighed. Even kedgeree would be a welcome respite from the sad porridge and toast. If one were going to go to the trouble of kidnapping a person, Alice speculated, it would be a welcome gesture to also plan for the kidnappee's keeping with a reasonable kitchen and some kind of staff.

Alice glanced out the window at the rather sad and unkempt garden, and thought for the hundredth time that it would be very nice indeed to be able to walk out in that garden, even if it had few delights for the eye. Alice had come to regard her mother's constant reminders about the importance of daily exercise as surprisingly well-chosen.

She had nearly forgotten her fright when the sound of footsteps in the hallway jolted her back to contemplation of the door. As the steps grew louder and their maker closer, Alice sunk behind the bedclothes again, fearful and trembling as her anticipation grew. A knock came at the door and she gasped.

15.2

"Who are you?" Alice demanded with far more confidence than she felt.

From the figure on the other side of the door, there came no reply. Its raven-black garments seemed to fluctuate with the passage of breezes, though there could surely be few such winds in the corridor. Alice could see now face beyond the chin, which poked out with an eerie paleness from below the hood that encovered the rest of the head.

"Why do you not speak?" Alice said with considerably less gusto. She could feel a strange sensation trying to crawl up her spine toward her head and she had a terrible feeling that when it got there something awful might happen.

The figure in the doorway made a strange gesture with its hands -- or what appeared to be its hands. The long sleeves of its accoutrements concealed any digits that might be found therein and Alice realised that the sensation rising to her brain was in fact panic and any moment now it might well be unleashed which would doubtless result in some sort of undignified outburst such as a scream or yelp. Either of which would surely convey a sense of terror that really ought not be revealed to apparitions of this sort, surely, Alice thought with an ever-so palpitating heart.

What would Lizzie do? Alice turned her swiftly scattering thoughts to the reliably comforting image of her cousin. In such a situation, Lizzie would be resolute even though frightened. She would think of something to say or do that would restore a sense of order to the chaos of the unknown.

Amidst the rapidly rising strangulation of alarm, Alice thought she must make some attempt to take control of the situation even as the strange figure swayed disturbingly before her.

"Did you bring my breakfast?" she blurted at last, the words squeaking out of her throat at a slightly higher pitch than normal.

The thing in the doorway began to utter a sigh that stretched into a kind of disturbing moan that made Alice want to curl her toes right up. It seemed to speak the wordless misery and hopelessness of a deeply buried hell that it had risen from only momentarily and would soon be dragged back down into without mercy or respite.

"Well then," Alice said with a decisiveness she did not feel. "I will say 'good day' to you." She closed the door with panic on her shoulder, leaping onto her head as she span around and galloped most ungracefully toward the bed. Leaping into its center, she pulled the bed clothes up to her chin and stared at the closed door.

Minutes ticked by and all remained silent. Alice could hear her own breathing in the small room and tried in vain to silence its noise. There was no movement or sound at the door. Perhaps the figure had moved on, seeking another door or another visitor to haunt. With luck it would not be back and there were surely many such rooms to investigate.

But it knows I'm here now, Alice thought. The realisation made her sink under the bed clothes and grow very quiet.