Spectral Strains Read online

  Table of Contents

  Spectral Strains (Sybil Ingram Victorian Mysteries)

  Spectral Strains

  I. Roderick

  II. Sybil

  III. Roderick

  IV. Sybil

  V. Roderick

  VI. Sybil

  VII. Roderick

  Bonus Story: One Good Turn

  Afterword

  Books by Amanda DeWees

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  “Spectral Strains” and “One Good Turn” copyright © 2018 Amanda DeWees

  SYNOPSIS: In the short story “Spectral Strains,” Sybil must free her husband from the spell of a haunted violin. Bonus story: In “One Good Turn,” Sybil and Roderick investigate the haunting of two children.

  Spectral Strains

  Note: This story takes place in December 1873, after A Haunting Reprise and before “Christmas at Gravesend.”

  I. Roderick

  The devil of it is that the professor and I only meant do something nice for Sybil. While she’s the last person in the world to mope, she had nevertheless been a bit subdued after recently losing both her father and her former mentor—neither worth mourning, if you ask me, but she is far more tenderhearted than I. So although I was doing my best to keep her entertained, taking her to concerts and plays and encouraging her to plan a new theatrical production with her friend Sophia Atherton, a patroness of the arts—all of which she seemed to enjoy—something more was needed.

  On the Thursday afternoon when it all began, we were window shopping and discussing what Christmas presents we would give each other. I already had her gift well in hand, as I suspected she had mine, but it was an enjoyable game for both of us to pretend to be baffled. This would be our first Christmas together, after all.

  The street was crowded with Christmas shoppers. There was a festive air thanks to colorful window displays and posters advertising events like the holiday concert series at the Royal Albert Hall. We passed a group of carolers singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” while one of their number accompanied them on a squeezebox, and a mischievous look came into Sybil’s eyes.

  “That’s what I should give you,” she said. “A squeezebox. I know you would enjoy the challenge of learning to play a new instrument.”

  “You’d regret it after a few days of listening to me practice,” I said. “For you I was thinking of an exotic pet of some kind. During the hours when I’m rehearsing you may be lonely. A parrot might keep you from pining away, or perhaps one of those dogs from the Orient that are mostly hair.”

  She squeezed my arm. “Don’t be silly, darling. Whenever we’re apart I just gaze wistfully at a picture of you—like the rest of the women in my family.” Then she smiled. “At least they should be easy to find gifts for.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I can give each of them a framed photograph of you. You’re their hero, you know.”

  “That doesn’t mean a thing—as long as I’m yours.”

  She laughed up at me, and my heart stuttered in my chest at the sight: her blue eyes full of delight, snowflakes beginning to settle on her eyelashes, and golden tendrils of hair curling around her temples. Her cheeks were pink with the cold, and she wore a saucy red toque with a black cockade that gave her a dashing air—an air that was wholly warranted.

  And this delicious vixen was my wife. Sometimes I still marveled at it.

  Now she reached up to run her fingers through my hair. “At this rate your hair will soon be soaked since you’re too stubborn to wear a hat. It’s a good thing I came prepared.” Releasing my arm, she opened her large black umbrella and raised it over our heads. “There, isn’t that better?”

  I drew her to a stop before a shop window where an awning protected us from the falling snow. Placing my hand over hers on the umbrella shaft, I tilted it down until it shielded us from passers-by. Now we were alone in a private cavern even in the midst of the bustling street.

  “Yes,” I said, “this is much better,” and took her face in my hands to kiss her.

  Her lips were cool but quickly warmed against mine, and when we parted she gazed up at me with wide, luminous eyes. For a moment I regretted the surprise that the professor and I had planned and wished I could simply whisk her back to our suite at the Langham Hotel and—

  Well, a gentleman should say no more.

  But since I’ve never claimed to be a gentleman, I will admit that the thought of unfastening the thousand buttons on her red walking costume and baring all the soft, smooth skin beneath was very tempting. And I could tell from the way her rosy lips curved in a slow smile that similar thoughts were unfolding behind her deceptively guileless eyes. One of the most exciting discoveries about marriage had been finding that my wife’s appetite for what is politely called dalliance was equal to my own... and that our love heightened the pleasure we took with each other beyond anything I had known before.

  A rapping sound interrupted this seductive reverie, and I found a white-haired sales clerk frowning at us through the shop window. “Take your unseemly display elsewhere!” I heard him say, and I grinned down at my wife.

  “It seems that the sight of wedded bliss is too much for some fragile constitutions,” I said.

  “Poor sad creature,” she said, dimpling. “Let’s move on. I do want to find a new set of toy soldiers for Linden.”

  By the time she had selected gifts for her nephew and nieces it was time for tea, and at my suggestion we returned to the hotel. After we had taken the elevator to our floor as usual, she was quite confused when I led her past our door to another farther down the corridor.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “Have they moved us to another suite?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “Consider this an early Christmas present, sweetheart.”

  I knocked at the door, and almost at once we heard footsteps approaching. The door opened swiftly, and Professor Hartmann stood beaming before us.

  “My dear Sybil,” he said, and she gave a cry and threw her arms around him.

  The professor had been a second father to me after the death of my own. Not only had he trained me in the violin and sponsored my first European tour, but he even came to my rescue years later when, sunk in despairing dissolution, I had exiled myself to a Paris garret. The professor extracted me from the city before the Prussians laid siege to it and helped wean me off all the wine and laudanum with which I had dulled the pain of a disastrous love affair and still more disastrous duel. If not for the professor, I would not have been alive today—and would not have known Sybil.

  In fact, it was he who had first shown the two of us that we had common ground. When she and I had first met, I was bitterly distrustful of women as a whole and made no secret of it. For her part, she had viewed me, quite rightly, as an obstacle to the new life she was trying to build for herself. In a sense the professor had shown us that we could be friends—and more.

  Sybil was breathless with delight. “Professor! How wonderful! Did you and Roderick plan this together?”

  His kind brown eyes dwelled on her with pleasure—but who could not be pleased by the sight of so beautiful a woman as Sybil, especially with such joy and affection shining in her eyes?

  “It was Roderick’s idea, liebchen,” he said, drawing us into the room, “but I was delighted to comply. I have missed you both, and he mentioned that you... but I am going about this in a clumsy way. Forgive me, my dear. May I tell you how sorry I was to learn of the death of your father—and your friend, Mr. Atherton?”

  The light in her face dimmed slightly.

  “Thank you,” she said softly. “Losing Atherton especially was difficult. Roderick has been wonderful, though. And to se
e you again is so cheering! How long will you be able to stay?” Then she gasped as another thought came to her. “Are you going to conduct Roderick’s concerto?”

  He took her hand and drew it through his arm. “Come, my dear,” he said in his warm Austrian accent, as familiar to me as the sound of my own voice. “Sit by the fire and warm yourself. Have some tea. And I shall unfold all to you.”

  The hotel staff had laid a lavish tea in his sitting room before the fire. Although the Langham boasted modern conveniences like steam heat, I knew that the professor relished the primal comfort of a fire, and I had to admit that the effect was quite cozy. The firelight playing softly over Sybil’s face was a sight every bit as warming to me as the tea, which she poured with an air of domesticity that was as charming as it was deceptive.

  The professor beamed at us through the vapor curling up from his teacup. He was a distinguished man, short and slender, with silver hair and goatee. His eyes behind their pince-nez were shrewd yet kind. He had the energy of a man decades younger, probably due to his unending curiosity and delight in life.

  “Roderick did ask if I could assist him with the concerto and its orchestration,” he told Sybil. “Naturally I shall do everything I can to help.”

  “And I can’t tell you how grateful I am, sir,” I put in. The concerto was my first attempt at composing, and it had not been going smoothly of late. “I have to admit I’ve started to get the jitters about bringing it off. But with your help, I won’t have to worry about embarrassing myself.”

  “He’s not even played it for me,” Sybil told the professor. “Parts of it, yes, but not the entire thing.”

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to,” I said. “But it’s not ready.”

  She looked at me with a face so trusting and loving that it reproached me for my secrecy. “I promise,” she said, “whatever you create, I shall love it.”

  How could I tell her that the concerto was too personal to share yet with her? For it was Sybil herself who had inspired me to take up the violin again after I had given up playing. As I had written the first movement, I realized that the shape it was taking was the story of our time together. The early wariness, distrust, and explosions of temper—mostly mine, I admit—followed by the detente that the professor had nurtured, the tentative beginnings of trust and sympathy—mostly hers—and then the full exuberance of love, with all its giddiness and rapture.

  That was the first movement—rapid, stormy, emotional, full of passion masked as conflict. A time when we were stimulated by what we both thought was animosity but turned out to be something much, much sweeter.

  After that, then, as I dared to show her more of myself, warped and foolish though I had been, the heart-stopping beauty of her continued love for me was like the strong, eternal chord underlying everything else, solid and steady, the promise that her devotion would never falter. That was the lyrical middle movement of the piece, the certainty I was living now, knowing that Sybil and her love had become a constant in my life—unwavering, sweet, and true.

  The final movement was giving me difficulty, though. The structure of the concerto demanded that it be a faster movement, but to return to a more turbulent state didn’t feel right. Not to suggest that married life with Sybil was slow—far from it. She was an exciting woman, and life with her would never be dull. But somehow I hadn’t yet found a way to express that musically or to draw the entire composition to a satisfying close. I hoped that the professor could help with that.

  Especially since I began rehearsals with the orchestra in little more than a fortnight.

  “I must admit to another motive for coming here,” the professor said, startling me out of my train of thought. “One that even Roderick does not yet know about.”

  “Really?” Sybil exclaimed. “What’s that?”

  The professor sent a side glance toward me that seemed to have a concealed excitement to it.

  “There is a family of my acquaintance living here in London,” he said. “The Howell family.” He paused as if expecting me to respond, but the name meant nothing to me. “They have fallen upon difficult times, I am sad to say, and are forced to part with a precious violin.” He paused again. “A violin by Guarneri del Gesù,” he said slyly, and I sat bolt upright in my chair.

  “A Guarnerius? Are you going to buy it?” I exclaimed.

  He made a noncommittal moue that was very European. “I promised to have a look at it with an eye toward its value.”

  As an American, I preferred directness. “And will you purchase it if it’s authentic?”

  He chuckled. “I am prepared to do so, but I shall not stand in your way if you wish to acquire it, my boy.”

  Sybil looked from one of us to another. “What does it mean, a Guarnerius? Is it valuable?”

  The professor nodded to me to answer.

  “It’s likely to be quite valuable,” I said. “Joseph Guarneri del Gesù was one of the most gifted luthiers of the last century, and his output wasn’t large. I had the chance once to play one of his instruments, and the tone was exceptional. To actually own one—! I can’t even put into words how fine that would be.”

  “You mean it would replace your father’s violin?” she asked, her eyebrows drawing together in surprised concern.

  “Not at all! But to own both—to have two violins with different voices, so to speak, befitting different compositions—that would be well worth the investment. Professor, do you know how much the family wants for the violin?”

  He smiled slightly, but he looked suddenly grave.

  “I do not,” he said. “There is one important factor that may determine whether the family is able to sell the instrument at all.” He turned his gaze toward Sybil, and his expression softened into fondness. “If it is an imposition, liebchen, I beg you to forgive me—but I hope that, imposition or not, you may be able to help.”

  She looked perplexed. It was probably as hard for her as it was for me to imagine the professor imposing on her. “I’m happy to help if I can,” she said. “What is it that you think I can do? What is the difficulty?”

  The professor looked down at his cup of tea, then placed it on the table. Sitting back in his chair, he folded his hands together across his waistcoat.

  “The violin is haunted,” he said.

  II. Sybil

  Ghosts seemed out of place in this cozy scene. Here were the three of us, happily reunited and taking tea before a crackling fire, while outside the snow came down in whirling flakes. I could hear “Good King Wenceslaus” faintly from the hotel orchestra downstairs. I was pleasantly fatigued from Christmas shopping, warmed by the presence of our dear friend and also by the knowledge that my husband had planned this surprise for me. He was so good at making mischief that I was all the more touched when he made a grand, thoughtful gesture like this.

  So it was a bit difficult, even despite my experience with these matters, to feel any alarm or foreboding at the mention of ghostly matters.

  “A haunted violin,” I said. “I haven’t yet encountered an object with a spirit attached to it. Only places, and sometimes people.”

  Roderick shifted in his chair. His expression, so alert and eager just moments ago, had clouded. “Is this really something we need to trouble Sybil with, sir?”

  “It’s no trouble,” I said. “What can you tell me about it, professor?”

  As was so often the case, the professor’s clear brown eyes looked as though they contained more than one lifetime’s worth of wisdom and experience. “Alan Howell and I studied for a time under the same music teacher,” he said in his charming accent. “Howell was a few years older and more advanced—a naturally gifted artist—and I confess to some hero worship on my part. It is not overstating the case to say that he was a genius, and it was only a matter of time before the world came to know it. He seemed to have a brilliant future ahead of him. He was even engaged to be married to a talented young singer who adored him.” The distant sorrow in his eyes told me even bef
ore his next words that the story would not end happily. “But his gifts did not make his path smooth,” he said. “His father was violently opposed to his musical ambitions.”

  That brought a bittersweet smile to my lips. My own father had refused to countenance my becoming an actress even to his dying day. I wondered if Alan Howell had been hurt by his father’s obduracy or if it had glanced off him without so much as denting his resolve.

  “They had a dreadful falling out,” the professor continued. “Howell came into a legacy from a relative and used it to purchase a costly violin, the Guarnerius. This was nearly fifty years ago, but already these violins were known to be valuable. It would have been a shrewd investment even if Alan had never intended to play a note. His father was furious, however, at what he perceived as his son’s irresponsibility.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “His father stole the instrument and hid it. Hid it so well that my friend never set eyes upon it again.”

  “Truly? How hard did he look?”

  The professor gave a chuckle. “Quite hard indeed, liebchen. Perhaps you are thinking that so large an object must have been conspicuous, but that was not the case. He searched for weeks without success. Of course, he could not tear the house apart; his father would have been happy for such an excuse to summon the police. And then, all too soon, he died.”

  “Your friend?” exclaimed Roderick, who had been as absorbed in the story as I. “How did that happen?”

  The professor gave an expressive little shrug. It was fascinating to see him and Roderick together. While Professor Hartmann was small in stature, his voice and gestures managed to convey much with very little. My husband, in contrast, was marvelously big—in the emotion and Romantic drama of his posture, his gestures, his voice. As a musician, these expressive gifts enhanced his stage presence, rendering his body no less an instrument than the violin and bow.