Read Online Margo Maguire by Not Quite a Lady - Free Book Online

floating in the garden. And it hadn’t been just a vague shape. It had clearly been a woman with long, dark hair, and Sam had been able to discern her distinctly medieval style of gown. It had even had some color.
    Sam wondered how Miss Tearwater had done it.
    Perhaps Fletcher was responsible. The man had been conveniently absent all day. He must have returned sometime earlier to set up whatever contraption he used to project gaslight through the smoke, to illuminate it.
    Sam had to admit it had been an excellent performance.
    But he wondered how the window had broken.
    “This should be boarded up.” He searched the floor for whatever object must have been thrownthrough the window, but didn’t find anything. It was curious, but certainly not supernatural.
    “There’s a hammer and nails in the garden shed. And wood planks in the barn, but I don’t expect you to take care of this, Mr. Temple. You’re my guest—”
    “I don’t mind.” It would give him a good excuse to get down to the garden and catch Fletcher in the act of putting away his projection apparatus.
    As Miss Tearwater began to sweep up the broken glass, Sam went downstairs. He picked up an oil lamp, then went out through one of the back doors. The same people who’d watched Fletcher’s filmy projection were still out there, chattering excitedly among themselves. Sam shook his head in disbelief at their gullibility and started his search before it became entirely dark.
    He began behind a tall hedge, the most likely place to conceal whatever equipment Fletcher had used. Bending low, Sam illuminated the ground, but found nothing suspicious along the entire row. He expanded his search to the surrounding area, and to the small garden shed and behind the garden wall.
    But nothing turned up.
    Sam knew there had to be a device somewhere. It was just going to take him a bit longer to find it. And the job would be made a lot easier once he had Miss Lilly Tearwater in his confidence.
    “Mr. Temple, is it?”
    The man’s voice startled Sam as he came out of the shed with a hammer in one hand and nails in the other.
    “Henry Dawson,” the fellow said, holding out one hand.
    Sam managed to avoid it, wondering how Dawson happened to know him. They hadn’t been introduced, although Sam had seen him in and around the inn at various times throughout the day.
    “Quite an exhibition,” Dawson said.
    “Yes. It was.”
    “What do you make of it, Temple?”
    Sam turned and closed the door to the shed. “Why do you ask?”
    “I understand you’re a man of science. You, if anyone, would have an objective opinion about this haunting.”
    “I prefer to have sufficient data before I draw conclusions,” Sam replied, taking an instant dislike to Mr. Dawson. Sam was unsure what it was about the man that bothered him. There was an indolence about him that grated, but Sam had known plenty of sluggish people.
    From what he had seen of him, Dawson seemed to have hung about the inn all day, when everyone else had gone out—hiking or boating, visiting Asbury. At supper, he’d sat alone in a far corner of the dining room, watching—no, observing—all the activity around him, with flat, emotionless eyes.
    Like some of Sam’s jailers in Sudan.
    To Sam’s annoyance, Dawson followed him through the garden and walked with him toward the barn. “Seems odd that every time a ghost appears, there’s a crash of some kind. Or a weird spate of weather.”
    “Frisky ghosts,” Sam said. He didn’t like the other man’s insinuations, even though Sam had madesimilar ones himself. It was one thing for him to believe Lilly Tearwater guilty of chicanery. But for some inexplicable reason he didn’t care for it much when Henry Dawson made the same assumption.

Chapter Five
    L illy held the lamp high to give Mr. Temple enough light to hammer the large plank across the attic window. She didn’t know why she was allowing him to do this work—he was a Ravenwell guest. This was something