The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page B

papa is a hero. He will beat up this bad spirit, he will hurl him back into this abyss. He will protect both you and P.C.” And his precious son patted Miranda’s hand.
    She looked down at the beautiful little boy and gave him a shaky smile.
    “Thank you, Pip. Now, let’s all sit down.”
    “Nine minutes,” P.C. said.
    It was really eight minutes.
    Grayson asked, “Is there anything you know that P.C. doesn’t know, ma’am, that would assist me?”
    Miranda said slowly, “Mama-in-law doesn’t want us to leave. She was very upset that she didn’t hear a thing last night, but what she admitted to me this morning made me absolutely certain the Great knows what’s going on here.” She shot a look at the children. “It’s disturbing.”
    “Go ahead, Mama, we can take it.”
    “Very well. About a month ago, your grandmother was in the library with the Great, trying to speak to him about restoring some portraits in the gallery. This is very difficult to believe, but here is what she told me. A huge black funnel burst through the open window and roared right at him, twisted and turned around him, then went straight through him, she said, at least a part of it did. It blasted all his medals from the wall, made them fly out of the frames, shattering the glass covering them, and then went flying. Then those medals the Great collects and polishes, the ones in the big basket—the basket itself was thrown into the air, scattering the medals everywhere. Then, Mama-in-law said, the black funnel whooshed back out the window again and was gone. Nothing more happened, she said. She said she nearly fainted, but the Great only stood there, his mouth working, but he didn’t say anything. He told her to keep her mouth shut because no one would believe her, and so she had.
    “She said she eventually convinced herself that it had been a shared hallucination. She said to think anything else would give her a heart seizure. But after what I told her happened last night, she knew she had to warn me.”
    “A month ago,” Grayson said. “When did you and P.C. have the dream?”
    “The first dream came two weeks later.” She paused, cocked her head in thought. “This is the final proof for me that what is going on here involves the medals. I mean, why else would the funnel hurl them about like that? I’ve come to think the black funnel was trying to communicate to the Great, but he didn’t understand and the voice became angry and thus came after P.C. and me. But why?”
    Grayson said simply, “Because the Great loves the two of you more than anyone else in the world.”
    “Oh,” P.C. said. “Perhaps that is true. Do you think so, Mama?”
    “Perhaps,” Miranda said. “Mr. Straithmore, the Great has collected medals for many years now, all of them Waterloo medals. Since Max Carstairs came, he’s the one who buys them from pawn shops, and the Great polishes them up and returns them to the soldiers or the soldiers’ families if they were killed at Waterloo. I asked him why he did this. He said so much was owed to all these brave men, it was the least he could do since after Waterloo times were hard and so many soldiers had to pawn their medals.”
    Barnaby shouted, “I see ye, Mr. Bickle! Ye keep yer distance from the sprat!”
    Grayson looked over to see a small man dressed all in black slink from one oak tree to the next. Then he crept to stand behind a sapling, and he was so thin Grayson couldn’t see him. He pulled Pip closer. Since Pip was still holding Barnaby’s hand, the three of them ended up huddled together on the bench.
    P.C. said, “He’s not moving now, but you know he’s listening.” She lowered her voice. “This funnel—the voice—do you think it wants a particular medal? Maybe the spirit wants its medal returned to its family? And it wants the Great to find it?”
    Miranda said, “I think that must be it. But who or what is hoos ?”
    Barnaby said, “I agrees, it’s got to be a dead soldier