To Find Him and Love Him Again (Volume 1): Book Ten (1) in the Tyack & Frayne Mystery Series Read online

  To Find Him and Love Him Again (Book One)

  Book Ten in the Tyack & Frayne Mystery Series

  Copyright © April 2020 by Harper Fox

  ISBN 978-1-910224-32-8

  Cover art by Harper Fox

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from FoxTales.

  FoxTales

  www.harperfox.net

  [email protected]

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  To Find Him and Love Him Again (Book One)

  Harper Fox

  Author’s Note:

  This book was first published in serial form

  via the author’s Patreon. She is, and will always remain,

  deeply grateful for the support she received there,

  and to all her readers wherever they are

  who have loved Tyack & Frayne.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Launceston – Just Another Gig

  Chapter Two – And Damned If You Don’t

  Chapter Three – Badgers, Bleujyow, Buster

  Chapter Four – Depends Who’s in the Changing Room

  Chapter Five – A Day in the Lives

  Chapter Six – Into the Heart of the Night

  Chapter Seven – Lee Tyack-Frayne’s Summer of Love

  Chapter Eight – All Too Short a Stay

  Chapter Nine – Somewhere in Between

  Chapter Ten – What Goes in Wonderland

  Chapter Eleven – The Weight of the Whole World

  Chapter Twelve – The Widening Gyre

  Chapter Thirteen – The World According to Alice

  Chapter One

  Launceston—Just Another Gig

  The ghosts of Beaumont Hall were playful, cooperative as if paid per apparition by the Cornish tourist board. Lee’s team had caught shadows in the cellar, uncanny laughter bouncing off the old kitchen walls. Privately, Lee had sat down with the lovelorn maid in the attic, and agreed with her that two hundred years were long enough to stare out to sea after faithless Johnny’s mast. Did he die, she’d asked him, in wingbeat flutters inside his head, the pomander scent of her muslins poignant in the air.

  Well, yes, Peg. It’s been two hundred years.

  No, stoopid. On that voyage?

  Oh. No, he never got his sea legs, and he skipped overboard at Falmouth when the captain put in for supplies. If it helps, he wasn’t faithless after all. He was making his way home across Wheal Plenty moors when he fell down a mineshaft in the dark.

  That would be just his rotten luck, then. Yes, it helps.

  Scrambling out of the mineshaft, where he’d allowed himself—stoopid indeed—to tumble to the depths with luckless Johnny, having to confirm that the lad had broken his neck and died straight away, in case Peg wanted to know, in case any one of the thousands of mums, friends, siblings and kids wanted to know—did he die easy, Mr Tyack? Did he suffer, was he scared, was he all alone—Lee had blinked at her. At the empty, sunny space she’d occupied. “What helps?”

  Knowing he loved me, of course.

  A pomander-scented handkerchief had drifted down out of nowhere into his lap, and Lee had gone back to work. There was a particular Beaumont tale about a grumpy old colonel who’d passed his final years carving out walking sticks in a parlour room overlooking the gardens. Very fussy, the old man had become, insisting that his canes be set in a rack in strict order of size. After his death, if anyone moved them, he’d rattle them in his wrath, loud enough to wake the entire house.

  If Lee let himself follow the colonel, as he’d followed poor Johnny Tremaine, he’d have to know that a soldier’s brave soul had soured in this room, eaten up with loneliness and pain. Lee would have to know that leaving a few sticks in the right place was a damn small kindness to bestow, and then he would have to march out of Beaumont, overturning camera props and lighting frames with a biblical fervour more suited to his dog-collared brother-in-law. Then his series finale would never get made, and the hard work of all the brave souls around him in this time and place would go to waste. He didn’t have to know anything at all. His control was good, his home life with his husband and his little girl such a sanctuary, that he could choose what he saw. It was just that lately, over and over again, he’d been choosing wrong.

  The parlour was full of movement and life. Gratefully Lee stepped into it. Anna and Jack, once his whole crew, now proudly headed up a dozen production staff. Cables snaked across the Turkish carpets. The curtains had been artfully drawn to minimise glare whilst keeping the lovely effects of sunlight on oil paintings and the colonel’s hand-carved oakwood rack. Spirits of Cornwall was a hit. Lee had received an offer to lift the whole series from the uncertain internet world and into the hallowed realms of the BBC. A set piece about the colonel and his canes would round out the series nicely, especially if Lee could persuade the old chap to a broad-daylight rattle or two. What about it, Colonel Henry, he asked the bright air unhappily, as certain of the name as of his own. I’m sorry. We’ll clear off after this and leave you in peace, I swear.

  Well, since it’s you. Since you cleared out that wretched girl from my garret at long last.

  I didn’t... evict her, sir. She wanted to go.

  I’m not complaining, lad. Just be careful what you wish for, that’s all.

  The usual warning. Lee would have loved to take it. He was tired, despite Chy Lowen and his life there, despite Tamsyn and Gid. He felt sick. Would it be possible, just this once, to switch off the lights, stand down the dozen and go home?

  Anna whipped round from a final adjustment of the roses in their great marble vase. She strode across the room to meet him. As far as the lights went, Jack could’ve turned off his ten-K LEDs in favour of her smile. “Isn’t this great?” she demanded, gesturing around the room. “Look how the pillars frame that alcove. We’ll have you standing there while you tell the story about the colonel and his sticks, I think. There’s something poetic about the space—not exactly solemn, but not light-hearted either. Just right for your piece.” She fell silent, focussing upon him as if for a close-up shot. Her smile faded out. She’d worked with Lee for years, and had quietly worshipped the ground he trod since the now-famous footage he’d got for her in the fogou beneath Drift church. “What’s up, love? Have we worked your whammy too hard?”

  “Not likely. You’ve only got to look at a wall in here for something to walk through it. You hardly need me at all.”

  “The owner said the place was quiet as the grave until you got here. The ghosts couldn’t wait to meet you.” Something in her own choice of words made her expression shadow. “Have you got a vision coming on? Do you want me to call Gid?”

  Yes. Call him. Let him come blazing up in the patrol truck, sweep me off my feet and carry me home. Sternly he pushed the fantasy aside. “I’m fine. I like your pillars and the poetic alcove. We’ll do the back story there. Did Jack get his exterior shots?”

  “Well, yes and no. The gardens are perfect for the era, but none of our ghosts had to cope with Lee Tyack-Frayne fans popping out of the bushes to get a glimpse of their hero.”

  “Don’t be daft. They’re here for the show, not me.”

  “Right. That’s why they’re carrying I heart Lee placards. If you go
to the window right now you can see for yourself.”

  Lee did as she suggested. He hardly knew why: had no desire to see his name up in marker-pen lights. But Launceston was lovely at this time of year, the hawthorn snowdrifts of May giving way to deep green summer, mantling oaks in full leaf-burst all the way from the hilltop mansion to the river and over the border into Devon, just visible from this breathtaking vantage point. The famous Beaumont roses filled the air with citrus, spice and musk, old-breed blossoms drooping sleepily under their own weight. He leaned his elbows on the open frame.

  Yes, there was one beanie-clad head peering over the garden wall. Crowded into the gateway behind a wrought-iron door, a clutch of eager faces. They brightened as Lee offered a diffident wave, and some clown wolf-whistled. One placard was visible, though Lee couldn’t make out the lettering from here. “See?” Anna said, proudly as if she’d invented him. “You’re a star.”

  Shaking his head, Lee began to duck back in. Then he froze, one hand on the sill. There in the gateway—half-hidden behind the placard, serious as an undertaker—was Sergeant Rufus Pendower.

  Not for the first time, either. Lee retreated back into the room, dismay chilling him. This was the downside of working locations this deep into eastern Cornwall. Rufus, on secondment to the Devon squad, had found his way to the previous three. Always in uniform, so he must be finding a way to extend his lunch breaks or make business for himself nearby. He’d never tried to speak to Lee, and never hung around. A backward glance showed only the cluster of fans: already he was gone. “Shit,” Lee whispered, and followed Anna’s beckoning gesture back across the room, glad of the distraction. “Much more of this and I’ll need my own bouncer. Okay, are we ready to shoot?”

  “Just about. There’s one more thing about these canes the colonel made, Lee. This is the best part of all—really creepy. It seems one of them’s a flute, or at least he carved a flute and fitted it into the end of one of the sticks. Nobody wants to find out which one it is, because the family legend is that if anyone hears it, somebody who loves them will die.”

  “Oh, that’s just great.”

  She glanced at him in concern. “But... it is great, isn’t it? Just the kind of thing our viewers like.”

  It was. Just the kind of thing Lee liked too, generally speaking—a banshee wail or the howl of a local Black Dog, all good audio backdrop for his tales of the haunted West. He made a strong effort and pulled himself together. “It’s perfect. We’ll have post-production fill in something suitably eerie on a synth.”

  “Cool. We’ll get going. Oh, one more thing—I thought about laying on a special lunch for the owners today, after we wrap up. We’re maxing out on finance, though, so I wanted to check with you first.”

  “They’ve put up with us for a week. Can’t think of a better way to spend our last few quid.”

  “I knew you’d say that.” She rested her hands on her hips and gave him a speculative glance. “Of course, if we took up the offer from Auntie Beeb, a tray of fancy sarnies and a bottle of screw-top Riesling wouldn’t break us. We might lose a bit of independence, but...”

  Lee scratched thoughtfully at the back of his neck, where his silver chain was for once chafing him. Normally he scarcely noticed it was there: perhaps the catch was misaligned. “Honestly? That’s a chance I’d be prepared to take, if it meant a bit more security for the show and our motley crew. I’ve thought it over a lot, but...”

  “It’s the licence fee, isn’t it? The BBC deciding to make pensioners pay for it again, I mean. You don’t like that. The bigger they come, the more they should be generous and kind.”

  She was nodding in satisfaction, as if she’d picked up the credo from him. But Lee had learned it from his big, endlessly generous and gentle other half, who was moving every day further into his maturity of power, and had learned—strongly now, purely, after a halting first couple of steps—to adapt his behaviour accordingly. Lee wanted him, with pained and prickling urgency. “Yeah,” he said shakily, trying to hide the sudden rush of need. “Old Colonel Henry could never have paid that. They’d barely invented the box in his day, but he didn’t half take to it. Everyone thought he was rich, but he’d spent everything to keep hold of this place. The television was his one companion in the end.”

  “Lee? Did the owners tell you that?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About the colonel and the TV. Did they tell you his name?”

  “No, of course not. Why should they? Everyone in Launceston knew old Colonel Henry.”

  Blindly she reached one hand towards the camera crew. “Jack,” she whispered, snapping her fingers to get his attention. “Jack, we’re in business. Roll.”

  She didn’t have to tell him twice. Three years on the job with Lee had primed him to drop everything, from his lunch to a chat-up of the latest production assistant, and dive into action. He abandoned his trainee and the Arri on its Steadicam, swinging a portable Sony onto his shoulder instead. Anna stepped out of shot to give Lee room. The background chatter from the crew sank to a pindrop silence. “Everyone in Launceston knew old Colonel Henry,” Lee said again, conversationally, making his way to the alcove where Anna had said he and his story would be nicely framed. He pushed his hands into his pockets and turned to find the camera. “He got a bit of a rep for being grumpy in his later years, but really he’s a nice old chap. Sense of humour, too. He made these canes in his spare time—the ones in the rack here, you see?”

  The light was falling poetically on the oakwood, not too solemnly, just as Anna had wished. He loved Anna in a way, and Jack too. They’d both hung their careers off Spirits of Cornwall, taken a punt on a series anchored by a relative unknown. He’d gladly do anything for them. “Colonel Henry,” he said, distantly noting in the feedback monitor that his eyes had turned to the sightless-looking silver that spooked the hell out of new friends and guilty strangers alike. “They say you can’t abide your sticks left untidy and disordered. They say it makes you angry, so you bang them around at night and wake people up. I don’t think that’s true. I think you’re just sorry about the flute you carved, the one you put a curse on to scare your rotten nephew who tried to make you sell up, and you rattle the sticks these days to make your great-grandchildren steer clear of them. You don’t want any of the family living now to hear the sound of that flute. You love them.”

  The sunlight became crystalline. A coppery tang filled the air, like the warning of a storm. Anna stepped back into shot as she’d been trained to do, a state-of-the-art barometric sensor held out to the camera’s lens. “Atmospheric pressure drop,” she said levelly. “Five millibars. Six. My ears just popped. Room temp is diving too, fifteen degrees C. Ten. Eight. Lee, what would you like me to do?”

  “Put the unit on the table so everyone can see it. Then would you mind... going and rearranging the colonel’s sticks? He won’t hurt you. Camera, please note that I can see my breath. Anna’s too. It’s a bright and sunny afternoon, no weather change outside. Air-pressure drops and plummeting temperatures are common phenomena before apparitions. No-one knows why, but there’s an interesting line of research connecting the sudden cold to superconductivity... Toby, will you just step up and confirm there are no physical means of communication between me and that wooden rack over there?”

  Toby came forward. He was white-faced and looked ready to die of fright, and Lee made a swift mental note to talk to him about presentation: Spirits audiences liked to see calm onscreen staff, no matter how wild the action. Nevertheless the boy managed to walk a circle around him, to pass a hand over his head and then beneath each foot as Lee lifted them. That would do. Lee flashed him a smile and let him scuttle away. Over by the rack, Anna had finished disarraying the canes and was standing back, dubiously scanning her work.

  “All right,” Lee continued, quiet tone unaltered. “Colonel Henry? It looks as though some careless house wench has untidied your rack of hand-carved sticks. Will you show us how you fix that? Will you hono
ur us with your presence, sir?”

  Briefly he thought the old man would renege on their deal. He was in violation of his own rules concerning the summoning of spirits, but in this house where things went bump at all hours, what could he do? Henry didn’t want to go into the light. He didn’t want to surrender his essence to the quantum magic of the universe for renewal and return. He liked it here, watching his grandkids grow up and scaring the pants off visitors. There he stood on the hearthrug, large as life, thumbs hooked into his blue tweed waistcoat.

  Nobody else could see him. Anna and the rest of the crew were watching the canes, Jack panning slowly between the rack and the monitor. Temperature and pressure were returning to normal, as if, having thinned and cooled the air for his arrival, Henry could dispense with the special effects. As visions went, he was a benign one, but still pain sliced through Lee’s head, new to him in its intensity and depth. Why could no-one else see?

  Fiercely he controlled himself. He shoved the ache and the sense of weary unfairness into a box in his mind; slammed down the lid. A perfectly good manifestation was in progress. Henry’s shoulder passed straight through Anna’s, making her frown and twitch. He couldn’t interact directly with material objects, but he’d found a way around that. Standing in front of the rack, he ran his fingers across the upright sticks as if they’d been harp strings.

  They jumped and rattled in their stand. Anna jolted back, and a shriek or two rang out from the production crew. Then came nervous laughter, and a patter of applause. Lee let the reactions run. Feedback from behind the camera added to the realism of his shows. Maybe that would be all, he thought. Not much, but at some sites they might film for a week and get less. He waited, offering Jack a smile when he panned back to him and zoomed in. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I think we’ll call a halt there. We’ve had a wild few days here at Beaumont, and I for one would like to thank the inhabitants of this place, the living ones and... the rest of ’em, too. I’d like to offer our blessing, and...” He paused. The colonel was watching him, hands on his hips, showing no signs of fadeout, but that was just too bad. Whatever was going on here, Lee was too tired to channel it further. “And as our friends the witches say, merry have we met. Merry will we part, and merry may we meet again.”