The Curse of Malenfer Manor
Book One
Iain McChesney
Genre:
historical mystery / paranormal
Publisher:
Wayzgoose Press
Date of
Publication: October 1
Cover
Artist: DJ Rogers
Book Description:
Those
in line to the Malenfer estate are succumbing to terrible ends –is a
supernatural legacy at work, or something entirely more human?
Young
Irish mercenary Dermot Ward retreats to Paris at the close of World War I where
he drinks to forget his experiences, especially the death of his comrade,
Arthur Malenfer. But Arthur has not forgotten Dermot. Dead but not departed,
Arthur has unfinished business and needs the help of the living.
Upon
his arrival at Malenfer Manor, Dermot finds himself embroiled in a mystery of
murder, succession, and ambition. Dermot falls in love with the youngest
Malenfer, the beautiful fey Simonne, but in his way are Simonne’s mismatched
fiancé, her own connections to the spirit world, Dermot’s guilt over the circumstances
of Arthur’s death… and the curse.
Chapter 1
Dermot Ward (Paris 1919)
On the way to Montmartre, halfway up the Rue des Trois Frères, is a
small tight lane to the left. It is poorly lit and uninviting and not obvious
to the passerby. If you did manage upon it, you would have to follow it
trustingly, for it gives no hint of a thoroughfare, but it would soon reward
you and open out, delivering you into a pleasant courtyard.
This cobbled, treed oasis was the home of an old
long-established brasserie – Le Jardin des Cygnes. When the weather was good,
life took place under the shading poplar branches around the white painted
tables of this garden of swans, but in February its patrons stayed huddled and
bundled, comfortable behind stained glass doors. There they nested, warm and
dry, waiting for spring’s migration.
In the center of the café window
hung a large cured ham, smoked in acorns. Propped against it, a dusty
chalkboard showed the day’s menu written out large. There were gaps in it, like
missing teeth, where popular fare had sold out. And there were two flags, both
tricolors, hanging limp in the absence of a breeze. One was most familiar: the
blue, white, and red of the French republic, though this specimen had its
colors washed soft by time, its cloth worn nightdress-thin. The other flag was
new and bright, its fresh dyes almost wet: an independence flag for a pregnant
nation, one conceived but not yet delivered. The green, white, and gold of an
Irish Free State hung presumptuously from its lanyard.
A local would have noticed
Paris was suddenly full of such adornments, totems of petitioners to the
battered colonial powers. This new trade in patriotism could be seen almost
everywhere; it had arrived in the night only weeks before as the delegations
drew nearer. It had started before the appearance of David Lloyd George,
Britain’s Prime Minister, who was soon joined by President Thomas Woodrow
Wilson, who had sailed from his native Virginia. France’s Clemenceau, the host
of the Peace Conference, was flanked by a sizeable contingent, as if in scale
he might overawe the charisma of Orlando the Italian. The victors were all now
settled in town and eager to slice up the cake.
Why was he so sure, Arthur
asked of himself, that Dermot was somewhere near? But was this not Paris and
1919, was the world not gathered today? Everyone to see empires carved up as
the treaty was inked at Versailles. History was being made, Arthur conjectured,
and Dermot would surely be drawn. He’d fly like a moth to the radiant flame of
intrigue and prospect and hope.
Arthur pressed forward in his
search for Dermot, now in its fourth day since his arrival, his own sobriety
increasingly at odds with the scenes he had encountered. Things had got worse
as his route climbed into the hill that was Montmartre. With each step he
fought the despondency that grew with the prospect of failure. He had been
walking for almost fourteen hours, and the confidence of a noonday sun had
dipped with the fading light – doubt had long been plaguing him; it gnawed like
a boneyard dog.
What if Dermot died in the war, one amongst the many? Maybe he was
wounded and sent home, or he languishes still in a hospital. He could have
stayed on with the regiment? It’s not a far-flung idea. He could be anywhere,
even gone home, so why am I searching today? Am I wasting time and hope on a
friend I don’t know even lives?
But no, Arthur decided. If
Dermot was still alive, then he would be here, somewhere, right now. The friend
he remembered was a man who could not settle down, a man in search of an
elusive peace beyond the conflict of nations. Paris was an island where the
flotsam and jetsam of humanity washed ashore. Where a man like Dermot would
surface.
Arthur turned left into a
narrow alleyway to avoid a ribald group. Drawn onwards by the lilt of music, he
continued up the lane. At the sight of a pair of hanging flags and the sign of
the hissing swan, Arthur felt as fresh and hopeful as when he’d stepped down
from the train.
~~~
Dermot, as usual, had come
alone. He shoehorned himself into a horseshoe booth across from a boisterous
group. Two men of disparate age were pressed round a painted Mademoiselle. The
older man was either doing all right, or the younger could be doing much
better. The trio were partners in libation, however else things sat; there was
a dozen empty glasses on the table.
The Swan was a mixed crowd,
popular with the working poor – the porters and the tradesmen. There were
students too, and a gaggle of artists, and a diversity of conversations. Only a
few of the patrons were in uniform compared to the other bars in the
neighborhood. That was another reason Dermot liked the place – that it helped
with the forgetting. Dermot was a man on a mission, a one-track mind: he
intended to get drunk before sleeping.
“Your best health, father,” he
toasted his tablemates, loud enough to be heard above the din. He raised the
glass he’d acquired at the bar and saluted their momentary attention. He had
been thinking of the letch in La Cousine
Bette but the name of Balzac’s old man escaped him.
“Father?” the woman repeated
and broke into a hysterical cackle. Her amusement redoubled as the younger man
made predictable jest of his accent. Dermot’s labored pronunciation always got
a comment from the locals. Dermot took their fun in good stride.
Dermot felt the older man eye
him warily. Judging him perhaps. Deciding for himself whether or not the
foreigner was harmless. And what did he see, Dermot wondered to himself, how
did he look through those eyes?
Dermot Ward was not yet thirty,
but the boy had long since left him. Nearly five years in France had gifted him
the language and nightmares to last him a lifetime. His arms and legs, once
long and awkward, were knitted hard with sinew and muscle. He was animate when
he spoke and agitated at rest, which sent his piles of curled hair to bouncing
– blond streaked with red, or red bleached by the sun, but already when he
shaved he saw gray. His fair complexion, as much as his accent, marked him as a
different to the natives.
Annoyed, perhaps, by his
interruption, the man begrudgingly returned his salute. The collection on the
table grew larger. Dermot cast a look out for the waiter, his mouth already
grown dry.
“English?” The older man asked
him, uncomfortable in the tongue of that country.
Dermot’s mind was wandering off
by itself, as it was wont to do. Two
hundred feet in a standard spool. Grade two has one hundred fifty. Continent
wire is always in meters: fifty meters to a French blasting spool. Three feet,
three and four-tenths inches in every meter is three point two-eight feet. One
hundred sixty-four feet – and a hair – in a spool of Frenchy’s best blasting
cord. The mathematics gave him comfort. There was a certainty to it he
could cling to.
“No, I’m not English, father.” He answered the
question in passable French.
Two spools of anyone’s gives you three hundred feet, at least three
hundred feet; ninety-one point four four meters. You don’t want to be closer
than that.
“I’m from nowhere really,
father. Not anymore. This is home now; good as any.”
“But you served?” the older man
persisted. He stroked his stiff right arm, as if from habit, and Dermot saw it
was unwieldy. A memento, he thought, a souvenir from the war. Such a lot of men carrying those.
Dermot momentarily seemed not
to hear the question, his mind once more whirling away.
Treat glycerine with sulfuric acids and nitric and you have yourself
nitroglycerine – Alfred Nobel’s precious gift to engineers and warmongers
everywhere. Characteristics (remember the manual): high detonation velocity;
shattering action; high grades resist water well. Poor fume quality – take
extra care underground – sensitive to shock and friction. “You only drop the
box once, boys.” Lesson number one well learned.
Where was that short-assed
waiter to be found?
“Oh, I served, father. I saw my
share. More than I’d care to remember.” The older man waited for more. “I
served for France. In the Legion. I was a mining engineer.”
Dermot had eyes like shallow
water that you find in warmer seas, an effect enhanced by coral eyebrows that
sat high upon his face. Usually they bore a look of incredulity at what the
world sent his way. But not always. Sometimes, when the memories returned and
he was forced to revisit those days, his eyes would darken, as beneath a
hurricane sky, and his eyebrows would draw tight in. The older man caught
something of this now and let the topic be. He followed another string.
“So where were you from before
the Legion took you? Not American, I think. Australia perhaps? Ireland?”
Inspired, he dipped his head to the flag in the window.
Where do you start? What is a nation? How do you define a people? Is it
a matter of resistance; is it who you are not? Is it a matter of what you fight
against?
“You’re right there, father. I
was born in Donegal. It’s a small enough town in Ireland, so it is, if that is
important to anyone.”
“Irish. I told you so!” The
older man cheerily claimed a victory, but no one but he seemed to care.
Everyone wants a label: “Irish”; “Foreigner.” How do you define a
nation? Do you go back before the plantations and the colonization of a country,
when the new world was barely discovered? Or does Ireland really start with
Oliver Cromwell and his war that killed half of the people? Is it slaughter and
famine on an apocalyptic scale that is required to cement an identity? We grew
potatoes for an English economy and a million of us died from starvation.
“What did you give your arm
for, father? Was it France, perhaps? Or Liberty?” The older man’s interest was
sliding away. “Do you have a job yet, father? Are they giving you a pension?
How many friends did you lose these past years?” No one liked this sort of
talking. “I’m from the same place you are, father. All of us are bloodied
together.”
Dermot could see he had lost
his attention, and why not, with a handful like her beside him? The bars and
streets were full of men being demobilized – carousing before being sent home.
Dermot didn’t mind, he bore him no ill will, but he knew the man’s suspicions
were wrong. He wasn’t crazy or grinding an axe; he only wanted to forget. But
he wasn’t drunk enough to sleep. Not nearly drunk enough. The war would be
waiting if he tried too soon, and the tunnel would beckon him under.
Their waiter was an Anjou dwarf
whom the patrons called Maximilian.
“My name’s Henri!” He’d get
annoyed and somehow that was funnier.
“Two more, Maximilian!” Dermot
waved his empty glass as the little man scuttled by.
“Odd nut,” said Dermot. “Hey,
you want something else?” The table declined him politely.
A long wooden counter along one
wall served up drink to the crowd in the brasserie; here, upstairs, they had
the seclusion to indulge in the forbidden drink despite its prohibition four
years prior. Wine and beer could be had in the main room, spirits too, or
coffee. But if you were known or invited and vouched for, the Swan would admit
you back here. A museum of bottles terraced the back, stacked from the till to
the ceiling. At its apex hung a tarnished silver tray. It was nailed securely
to the beam to fend off boisterous pilferers. It bore an inscription in painted
rhyme that Dermot had committed to memory:
Here can be found the men
serving absinthe;
Alchemists pour the green into
tumblers;
Crowned with a spoon, plated in
silver;
One cube of sugar suspended
o’er each.
Queued aproned waiters hoist
jugs of iced water;
Assemble their trays of
lime-colored cordial.
Ethereal creatures, procurers
of promise;
Melt round their patrons;
together the host!
Dermot loved the enthusiasm of
it – Together the host! His people.
Exactly. Why would they ban something so good? Not that it did them any good.
The dwarf returned. Dermot took two glasses from the attendant Maximilian and
settled his account with loose change. Each tumbler held a single finger of
absinthe, the color of a rank algae bloom. With a practiced hand Dermot emptied
one into the other – the twixt into the
twain – and returned one empty glass to the tray. The Anjou waiter knew his
customer’s habits and departed following this exchange.
Dermot reached for the jug that
bore the ice and topped up his glass with chilled water. The next part he did
very slowly. It was the drip, drip, drip he liked the most – a hypnotic
dissolution – the sugar cube crumbled and ran through the holed spoon and mixed
in the bottom of the solution. It was sheer chemistry. A science of the
impossible. Numerology and divination. The mystery of relative gravities. The
Philosopher’s Stone in a glass. The color now swirled, thickened and clouded,
and spun milky and turgid before him; he watched while the louche effect
gradually evened and the potion he’d brewed came to settle. For Dermot, it was
like watching a mind churn an infinite computation and decide on a definitive
answer. Here was the certainty and the peace of escape. His mouth began to
salivate.
“To alchemy.” He raised his
glass in a toast to the Fates, and then put his lips to the welcome cold rim.
The cut of alcohol kicked in
sharply, a punch behind his ear. The ice water and sweetener was an antidote,
and enabled his palate to take the aniseed. A rush of blood surged through his
limbs, and his mind slipped from its leash. With the tremulous pleasure of
anticipation served, the café faded away. Dermot’s head flopped to the side and
he gazed through the colored glass window.
How long had he sat that way?
When he looked back on it he could not say. The light at first drew his attention
because it appeared strange, clustered as it was around the tree. Dermot
pressed his face to the window and squinted to make his view clearer. It was
there all right, sharper than before, and the figure began to take shape.
“Jesus Christ!” he exploded,
startling the table from its nuptials.
A dish of oily fish was knocked
and spilled. It soiled the laughing woman. “What the hell’s the matter with
you?” The two men helped to brush her down, which led to lots of slapping.
“I just saw someone,” Dermot
explained, putting his hand to his head and wiping a clammy brow.
The drinkers, recovered,
laughed at him then, the three of them joined in the joke.
“Feeling all right over there?”
“Back with us, Irish?”
“Want to cut that green stuff
out.”
Dermot felt a pall of fear, but
he chanced another glance. The man he had seen was nowhere in sight. The tree
in the courtyard was alone.
“What’s the fairy brought you
tonight, then? What’s hiding there out in the shadows?”
The green fairy. The gift of
the absinthe. A foot into another world. Dermot had heard of hallucinations
before, but nothing like this had happened– yet the vision had looked so real.
Dermot drew his hands to his lap, conscious that they were shaking.
“I just saw a man,” Dermot
confessed. “He was a friend from long ago.”
“Then bring him in. What’s all
the noise for, Irish?”
“The man I saw died in the
war.”
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About the Author:
Iain is
a writer of gothic mysteries.
He was
born and raised in Scotland. He studied History and Geography at the University
of Glasgow.
The
World Wars left Iain’s family with generations of widows. As a result, Iain has
always been interested in the tangible effects of history on family dynamics
and in the power of narrative to awaken those long dead. For the characters in
The Curse of Malenfer Manor, he drew on childhood reminiscences and verbal
family history—though he hastens to add that his family had barely a penny, far
less a
manor,
and any ghosts dwell only in memory.
He
lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife and two children.
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