Day 11

“Want to talk about it, Harry?” Lee asked me early this morning as he sat down beside me on the floor, where I was leaning my head back against the living room sofa.

“No, I don’t think so...” I returned my concentration to the embers in the fireplace. It was still last night for me. And I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I don’t think I ever will.

It happened like this...

“I still don’t think this is such a good idea,” Sharkey was complaining to Lee and Joe as he sat a just dusted fishbowl upside down on the heavy dining room table and lit a couple of candles. “I mean, what if some other spook decides to respond to the séance, a spook like... Captain Krueger.”

“Chief,” Lee sighed, “we’ve been through all this. And it’s a risk we’re just going to have to take.”

“I agree with him, Skipper,” Riley pouted as he lighted incense tapers on both sides of the dining room’s blazing marble fireplace. It was a bit different from the one in the living room, and looked as if it had probably been part of the original structure which had been altered again and again over the centuries.

“At least make Lee go hide someplace Admiral...”Jackson said.

“I’m not going to go hide anywhere!” Lee responded, incredulous, “besides, Krueger’s moved on...and I don’t want to hear one more word about him.”

Before I could implore him that it really would be a good idea for him to go upstairs, (just in case), Kowalski and Patterson both whistled as Edith, Mrs. Crane and Miss Bates entered the room. Each was dressed in what appeared to be a Hollywood rendition of classic gypsy fortune tellers. Their full skirts were embroidered with bangles and beads, they wore white ruffled ‘peasant style’ blouses, and their hair was decorated with multi colored ribbons and veils.

“I do wish you’d let me see Miguel,” Miss Bates told me, “he’s probably   very  frightened by all of this.”

“I’ve already spoken with him, Miss Bates,” Lee  said. “He’s doesn’t like the idea, but he understands the need for us to contact Captain Nelson.”

“Very well...oh dear,” she spied the fishbowl, “can’t we do better than that? Well, never mind. It’s almost midnight. Everyone, sit down and hold hands,” she ordered as she dimmed the lights and joined us all at the table. The high backed and heavily carved wood chairs were uncomfortable, and  I supposed in the early days, the heavy layers of clothing everyone wore kept anyone from complaining too much.

“Did you have to wear those, Mom, Edith?” Lee hissed as he sat down beside his mother, “those blouses show too much...er...” he flushed, finding the word impossible to say.

“Cleavage,” I helped him. “In fact, I’d like  Edith to go change into something less revealing myself.”

“These clothes are historically accurate,” Miss Bates said, “even if we had to settle for a couple of sizes too small for the blouses. It’s  all the museum had. We do want accuracy, don’t we? ”

“Not when my men are looking at my sister with their tongues almost hanging out of their mouths, we don’t.”

The clock interrupted by striking 12.

“Too late,” Miss Bates said. “Now, quiet everyone.”

“Oh spirits of the night,” Miss Bates groaned, “head our call. Come to us, Sheamus O’Hara Nelson...we summon you...”

Only the ticking of the grandfather clock responded.

“Maybe he knows that’s just an upside down fishbowl, and not a crystal globe,” Mrs. Crane whispered sarcastically.

“You’ve complained enough about this, Mrs. C.,” Edith said, “you don’t have to be here you know.”

“Edith,” I warned.

“Just how many séances have you hosted anyway?” Mrs. Crane asked Miss Bates.

“This is my first, but I’ve read up on them,” she took out a ‘Ghost Hunting for Dummies’ book and a history of the Borgia’s and sat them on the table next to her.

“Oh good grief,” Mrs. Crane rose. “I don’t care what you think you experienced with that U-Boat Captain, Lee, I don’t like all this hocus pocus. And it smacks of blasphemy. Good Christians aren’t supposed to dabble in contacting spirits or using black magic.”

“Shut up and sit down woman!” a familiar voice (familiar to me that was,) ordered.

“Is...is that him, Harry?” Edith asked looking around for the voice’s owner.

“Pretty sure,” I said.

“What’s he waiting for?” Lee asked me, then, “C’mon then Captain Nelson, show yourself.”

“We need your help,” I added.

“You need my help, now, do you?” my ancestor appeared, in the same seafaring costume of old,  his hands on his hips.

“Ohmygod,” Edith said. “He could be your twin, Harry!”

“Never mind that,” Sheamus said, ‘”as I were a sayin’ “so’s you need my help. What about when I needed yours, Harriman?”

“This is quite different and you know it.”

“Please, Captain Nelson, er, great great great, gandfather,” Edith said, “if you help us, maybe you can finally go to your rest. Isn’t that right Miss Bates? Miss Bates? Oh Lordy, she’s fainted.”

As Edith went to her side to rouse her, Sheamus leered at Mrs. Crane’s cleavage.

“Watch it buster!” Lee rose and stood in front of his mother.

“And just how are you a goin’ to stop me, Captain Crane?”

Suddenly Lee was flung into air as if struck even though Sheamus hadn’t laid a hand on him, crashing against the carved oak sideboard and knocking himself out.

“Lee! Lee!” his mother screamed and rushed to kneel beside him, while Miss Bates groggily awoke to chaos.

“There was no need for that!” I was yelling at my ancestor, as I, Joe, and the crew also hovered over Lee’s unconscious form,  “damn it, man, you were ogling his mother! How is he, Ski?”

“Pupils are uneven. Lump forming on the back of his skull, looks like a concussion.”

“All  this fuss over a wee bump on the noggin?” Sheamus shook his head, “and him a captain!”

“Shut up!” I yelled, far more concerned about Lee than the visiting specter.

“Ohhh,” Lee roused, saw Sheamus and pointed to him, then to me, and back to Sheamus, “fantasma! Fabtasna!”

“What?” Sheamus asked. “What’s this fnatasma he’s  a talking about?”

“I believe it’s Spanish for you, you ill  mannered ghost, you!” Mrs. Crane shouted, then, to her son,  “Lee?”

“Lee? Me hermano? ” he looked about for Lee Crane.

“No,” Jackson grabbed Lee’s shoulders. “You’re  Lee, not Miguel.”

“Miguel, si,” Lee pointed to himself.

“Oh dear,” Miss Bates, apparently fully recovered,  came over and ran her hand through his hair, Mrs. Crane looking a bit miffed at that, “that was a nasty bump. Perhaps we should ask Miguel to come down to show Captain Crane that he’s really the captain, and that Miguel is Miguel.”

“Er, no ma’am,” Ski said after he’d caught my brief shake of the head, “I’ve um, seen things like this before. It’s best not to confuse the Skipper.”

“Skipper, me hermano,” Lee kept saying.

“Who’s this Miguel you’re all a talking about?” Sheamus asked.

“Lee Crane’s adopted brother.” Miss Bates said. “Why they’re practically twins.”

“Miguel, si?” Lee pointed to himself, still wary of Shaemus.

“Er, yes, Miguel, si, ” I said, “now, why don’t we all sit down again...er...Let Captain Crane...er...let Miguel stay where he is...Joe would you and Ski stay there with him? The rest of you sit down.”

As they did so, Lee shook his head angrily then,“Volver a dormirse!” he shouted, pointing to the ghost.

“He’s telling you to go back to sleep,” Mrs. Crane said.

“Sleep?” Sheamus laughed, “Hah! I ain’t had no sleep since I died, Now, as you were saying, Harriman?”

“Senor Nelson! No!” Lee shouted, as Joe and Ski held him down.

“Miguel?” I looked at Lee, “Quiet...Mrs. Crane?”

“Silencioso,” she said as she took her seat sadly, “that’s it...be a good boy Miguel.”

“Bueno,” Miguel pouted, then felt the lump on the back of his head, “ow...”

“We’ll get him to the hospital and a doctor in a few minutes,” I said, calming the crew, who were understandably upset.

“Doctor? Médico? No! Miguel Bueno. ”

“Calmar!” Mrs. Crane ordered. “Será bien.”

 “Si Senora,” Lee pouted and furrowed his brows. He was not happy.

“I told him it will be all right,” Mrs. Crane said. “Now, do hurry up with things. I really want him to go to the emergency room.”

“Captain Nelson,” I continued my inquiry, “ we asked you here...”

“Bah! You didn’t ask, you summoned. Never did like superior officers,” he said as he sat on the edge of the table turning his attention to Miss Bate’s cleavage, then Edith’s.

“Do you mind!?” I think I shouted.

“No! Senor Nelson, no!” Miguel pleaded. “Usted hará el fantasma enfadado!”

“He says you’ll make the ghost angry,” Mrs. Crane said.

 “I’m that already! Will someone shut him up?” Shaemus asked, exasperated.

“Then keep your eyes elsewhere! Especially off of your own great great great granddaughter,” I ordered.

“You missed a ‘great’. ‘Sides, I weren’t looking to do no harm. I  was just appreciating the scenery. She’s a fine looking wench for a Nelson, so she is. Now, what here is this all about?” he picked up the fishbowl.

“We need to know if you made a will,” I said, trying very hard to be calm while Lee kept shaking  his head back and forth and crossing himself. (Which I suppose was understandable, in his delusion as Miguel, but I knew for a fact that Lee wasn’t catholic and had even had to ask me what lighting candles was for.)

“A will that made Lorelei  O’ Malley and your son by her your beneficiaries, ” Edith said, “the will you made then denied you had.”

“That’s what you brought me here for?” Sheamus asked, incredulous. “ Oh Gawd. That accursed wench can’t leave me alone, even in death?”

“Miss Edith asked you a question, bud,” Sharkey  said.

“You can’t be ordering me to say anything. Neither can you Missy, or your brother, so I’ll be taking my leave of yer,” he began to fade.

“Wait, please,” Edith  pleaded. “Grandfather! Grandfather...please, do you really want us to lose everything? Even our home? ”

 “What be ye talkin’ about?” he asked as he reformed, his brows furrowed more in confusion than care.

“That’s right,” I said. “If the current Chief of Police, Chief O’ Malley, can prove descent from you and Lorelei, and there’s a will, it’s quite possible that the law will force us to hand over everything we have to him.”

“Please, grandfather,” Edith said, “we need to know. So if it’s true we can get the lawyers started on what we can do to save something.”

“I thought you were  ashamed of how I earned my fortune,” Sheamus directed his comment to me, “and now you wants to protect that same ill gotten gain, as you called it?”

“I don’t understand,” Miss Bates whispered to Edith.

“Captain Nelson was in the tea trade,” I explained, “but he was also a slave trader. That’s why he’s caught between this world and the next. I’ve done everything in my power since I found out about it, to use what funds the Nelson estate has for good in the hopes of making up for the shame he put on the Nelson name. But now this,” I ran my hand through my hair,” just because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”

"Whoa, laddie," Sheamus said, "she weren't no virgin, that's for sure.Why she bedded every man within a foot of her if he was inclined for it. Was her trade, you know. She said the bairn was mine, but...”he shrugged his shoulders, “could have been anyone’s. Though,” he grinned, “the boy did look a tad like me. Red hair, blue eyes...”

“Did you write the damn will or not?” I demanded.

“I wrote it, true enough, but..”

 “While you were still married...” Edith moaned.

“He were my first born son, or so she claimed.  I figured why the hell not since she was withholding her favors until I drafted it up. Don’t look at me like that either, me boyo,” he glared at me, “My wife had her  own sizeable inheritance she’d already got from her folks. She’d never go without.”

“Where’s the will?” I asked.

“I kept such things all locked up at the bank. Besides, when me true born son arrived I writ a new will! Had to pawn a valuable trinket to make Lorelei stop a pestering me about me leaving her high and dry.”

“Is the new will in the bank too?” Edith asked hopefully.

“Ach Lass, wouldn’t do no one no good. Was going to sign it when I got back from sea to make it all legal like. But,” he sighed, “Poseidon, well, he had other ideas.”

“Well, I guess that’s it then,” I sighed. “I wish, though, that you’d managed to find something else to pawn  for your whore than the Nelson Ring.”

 “The Nelson Ring? What’re you talking about? I never pawned the blasted thing!”

“I could have sworn it was. It met all the critera...” Miss Bates muttered.

“The  family ring’s all safe and sound, so it is.”

“But the ring we saw,” Miss Bates was still muttering.

“Well I didn’t say the bauble I pawned wasn’t old or worth a great deal of money. In fact, it came from the old sod too, only it weren’t mine to begin with. Won it in a game of cards...oh, down in Jamaica so it were. Somebody named O’ Shaunessy.”

“Oh, Lord,” I sighed. “Not him too.”

“Well, if you’ll be needin’ nothing more...” Sheamus said.

“Wait,” Miss Bates said, “where is the Nelson ring?”

“Why it’s safe and sound just like I told you. Here,” he took it out of his pocket, “perhaps you should be the one a caring for it now.”

He tossed it on the table. It was  similar in that it had a celtic design, but it also had a miniature enameled cameo imbedded in it.

“Be careful not to touch it without protecting yer hands. Tis cursed, so it is.”

“What do you mean?” Edith asked.

“It’s been the family ring true enough, but it weren’t given to a Nelson on the field of battle. No indeed.”

“Go on,” I asked as Miss Bates looked at me for permission to pick it up herself and examine it.

“Ow!” she yelped.

“I warned ye. It won’t hurt if you put something next to yer skin first. It were given to another  lad,” Sheamus continued, “only my father, and his, and his afore and so on back to the day, ever told the secret to anyone else but to the son they passed it on to. Anyhow, it was glorious made, held a lock of the king’s own hair, so it did, and the boy’s too. It was a pact betwixt them, so it were. Claimed the boy as one of his own sons, so he did. Then it  was stole by the same Nelson that the boy had saved. So the ring’s accursed. Anyone that tries to wear it, even touch it, well, it burns like hell.”

“The other ring did too,” I said.

“Aye, it probably has a curse on it as well. Anyhow, the legend says it can’t be worn by no one excepting that first boy’s  rightful heir. And nobody but nobody’s been able to open the damn cameo to take a peek at the old hing’s hair. Or the boy’s.”

“Do you know anything about this other boy?” Miss Bates passed the ring to me  in her handkerchief, and I to Edith. Then it made the rounds of all present.

“Only that he were from some  far off place. A lanky lad. Black curly hair  and eyes that were said to bore right through  a man’s soul. Eyes that changed color. From brown to green to gold...like...like his!” Sheamus pointed to Lee. “I guess yon Captain could be the very same boy all growed up, it the tales be true. Men were afeared of him and his strange ways from that far off place, wherever it were.”

“Ara, ” Lee said, studying the ring, in an almost trance like state. It didn’t appear to cause him any discomfort as the handkerchief slipped off, but that could have been due to his concussion and limited brain /nerve conductivity I explained.

“Miguel?” Mrs. Crane asked as she came over to his side and knelt beside him. “Miguel? Lee?”

“Tamborines. Mount Ararat,” Lee was muttering as he handled the ring some more, without apparent harm.

“Who’s Ara, Lee?” I knelt beside him myself, and took the ring, which burned, until I placed it back into the handkerchief.

“Who? What? Harry?” Lee looked at me, confused, his pupils still uneven. “What am I doing on the floor? Why’s Miss Bates fainted again?” he asked, then suddenly pointed, “Captain Nelson? Er..I take it I missed the main event ?” he asked me. “What’s wrong? Did you find out about the will?”

“That, and other things...It’s a long story,” I helped him up as Ski and Joe and Riley and Pat  and Mrs. Crane helped  to steady him as we brought him to take his seat where Mrs. Crane hugged him, ruffled his hair and kissed him on the cheek. All while Edith tried to rouse Miss Bates.

“Oh boy, do I have a headache," Lee said.

“If there’ll be nothing further,” Sheamus interrupted, “I’ll be a goin’.”

“Er, yes,” I said and he vanished.

“Wait,” Edith said, “we forgot to ask him which bank he used!”

As Miss Bates, fully recovered, again,  took her leave of us, a bit overwhelmed by actually having summoned the dead, she advised us  that the Nelson Jewel should be examined for valuation and insurance purposes, and that she expected Miguel at work as soon as he was well enough for it.

I wasn’t sure what Lee would think about that, as he had been spirited away (under protest) to the hospital by his still concerned crew, so I simply had to say I’d let him know, and thanked her for her assistance with our family matter.

Edith and I spent the rest of the night on the internet and with dusty old account books to narrow down to three banks where the will might be filed.

I still wasn’t certain if the 2^nd will would keep O’ Malley from demanding his ‘fair share’ of the Nelson estate however.

It was nearly 4 a.m. when Edith went to bed, and Lee’s crew brought him home from the E.R.

“I’m okay,” he said before I could even ask.

“That’s right sir,” Sharkey said. “They took X rays.”

“It’s a mild concussion,” Ski said, “but I sure would like to know how that bump turned the Skip into Miguel.”

“And how he knew all about that ring stuff, like, weirdsville, man,” Riley said.

I wasn’t in the mood to start hypothesizing even though there was the distinct  possibility that Lee had seen something that must have been carried in the ring’s history, or even that he himself might be connected in some way to the boy on the battlefield. After all, he was the only person who the ring hadn’t burned or even tingled.(I’d checked with everyone, all of whom had tested it out without the handkerchief.)

I invited the men to stay the night, what was left of it,  and retired to the living room to be alone. I don’t know why I sat on the floor. I guess I was pretty much still in shock. It was bad enough to have a slave trader ancestor, but now to find out that our family hero was actually a thief and the tale of the ring's history  a lie which had been willingly handed down from one son to another. It was like being betrayed.

I was in my deep funk when Lee found me and asked if I wanted to talk about it. But I just couldn’t. Until now.

What tomorrow, or actually today, will bring I have no idea. But at least we’ll be prepared for whatever legal battle O’ Malley and perhaps O’ Shaunessy brings against us.