Annie clapped the book shut.
“Basically this … priest to the stars,” she said, “confirmed the duchess lived at the Grange. And the author agreed. Where’s the big mystery?”
“Well, if you can’t trust a writer, then whom can you?” Gus said, a sparkle playing at the corners of his gray eyes. “Writers are never fib-tellers or fabricators of any sort.”
“You’re really going to string this out for me, aren’t you?” Annie said, smiling in return.
“What do these paragraphs tell us?” he asked. “An old man claimed to see her, once a year, on Christmas. Odd date, given the duchess hated the holiday. And the author?” He snorted. “Well, here’s a piece of advice, something you should’ve learned at primary school. Don’t believe everything you read.”
“That’s the damned truth,” she grumbled. “So the woman at the Grange. She was crazy? Demented? Violent? All of the above?”
“All, some, or none of the above,” Gus said. “Depending on who you’d ask. Walking around naked and wielding firearms does not typically lead to a reputation for sanity. On the other hand, some thought it was a ruse, that she pretended to be crazy in order to keep people away.”
“Like with the angry geese.”
“Yes. Or the powerful weed killer she used to spray ‘fuck you’ in her front lawn.”
“Not for nothing, but this woman, if she was ‘the duchess.’” Annie rolled her eyes and held up air quotes.
“Let’s call her Mrs. Spencer. She would’ve preferred it.”
“Works for me. Well, this Mrs. Spencer was a real piece of work. Maybe even, how do I put this elegantly?”
“A bit of a bitch?” he said with a wink. “You’re going to have to get that blushing under control if you plan to sit around pubs with the likes of me. But you are correct. Mrs. Spencer and the duchess were both described using a host of unflattering terms, such as sociopathic, ruinous, and out for blood. Of course Pru, our American assistant, knew none of this.”
“You have to feel for the old broad,” Annie said. “The woman was alone for decades. That’d make anyone nutty. Why’d the family wait so long to hire someone?”
“Mrs. Spencer didn’t want anyone else to live at the Grange. Her niece Edith tried to intervene dozens of times over the years, a promise to her mother that she’d look after Auntie. But just as the old woman shooed away priests with gunshots and cold water, she used decidedly less pleasant tactics with people not of the cloth.”
“‘Fuck you’ in the lawn,” Annie guessed.
“Precisely. Bows and poisoned arrows, too. Unfortunately, over time, Mrs. Spencer’s behavior grew more erratic. Perhaps she was becoming increasingly senile, or suffering from lack of attention. Whatever the case, third-party complaints about her increased. Phone calls were placed overseas. The family could no longer ignore the situation.”
“Something had to be done,” Annie said. “Still. It’s pretty remarkable that she was living independently at ninety-plus years.”
“If she truly was independent,” Gus said. “Because of course there was Tom.”
“Tom? Who the heck is Tom?” She opened the book and flicked through some pages. “I don’t see any Tom in here. I thought she lived alone?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Tomasz was a displaced Polish man. He’d been with Mrs. Spencer since 1951 or so the story went. A handyman, she claimed. The only loyal man in her entire wretched life.”
“So what happened to him?”
“No one knew. Was he alive? Dead? Had he even existed in the first place? Because though townspeople had heard his name, took for granted rumors of his existence, no one reported seeing him after 1955, though he’d lived at the Grange some twenty years by the time Pru showed up.”
“Did anyone recall meeting him? Ever?”
“A few people,” Gus said with a shrug. “In the early fifties. After that, nothing, although Mrs. Spencer referred to him often. To would-be visitors she’d screech ‘Watch out! Tom will get you!’ Or ‘Don’t go near the barn! Tom is in there!’ Tom was almost always ‘in the barn.’ A queer place for the handyman of a falling-down estate.”
“Why didn’t anyone check?” she asked. “Sneak a look?”
Gus tossed his head back and laughed, deep and low and from his gut. She felt her face redden and burn.
“It seems a simple enough solution,” she sniffed. “I don’t know why you find it so hilarious.”
“Sure. Simple enough if you don’t mind a bullet to the arse.”
“But it’s a big property, right? Why wouldn’t someone prowl around? See what was up?”
“A brilliant idea. That is, aside from the aforementioned bullets, the barbed wire, a herd of wild boars, a few poisoned spears, as well as about a dozen other hazards. Other than that, a winning plot!”
“I get it, the estate was impenetrable.”