Page 50 of The Missing Pages
I arrived at Bayswater Road five minutes before seven, but Ada was already waiting for me outside. Wearing a black dress with lace detail, her auburn hair was twisted in a smooth coil behind her long, white neck.
The driver opened the door for her and she slid in next to me. Her perfume, so unlike the rose and gardenia flowers of my mother’s, smelled of lavender and sage.
“Good evening, Miss Lippoldt,” I said, turning to her. I was incapable of not smiling whenever I was in Ada’s company.
“And good evening to you, Mr. Widener,” she answered. Her teeth sparkled like pearls.
“Onward to Regent Street,” I told the driver.
“Yes, sir!” his voice clapped up front.
We drove through London as the night stretched before us. I could not wait to see how our next chapter together would unfold.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Violet’s morning had started off with a dose of unexpected drama. When she arrived at Widener, two Cambridge police officers were in the lobby talking intently with Madeline. “The book slasher,” it seemed, had struck again. A graduate student discovered that one of the books in her study carrel had pages torn from it, and also a disturbing message scribbled on the inside cover. The culprit had allegedly written in thick black Sharpie:“I won’t stop until the voices in my head tell me to stop.”
As Violet passed Madeline in the atrium, she could see how visibly distressed she was. Later, when she was able to catch her by herself, she discovered that Madeline had been the one who had notified the outside police.
“It’s no longer something we can solve internally,” Madeline said. “The person causing the damage is clearly unwell and might do even more damage soon.”
“How terrible,” Violet said. “Can I do anything to help?”
“Not yet, but the police might reach out to you for questions. Have you seen anyone suspicious in the stacks?”
Violet shook her head. “No, only students and staff. Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.”
Still, she understood the reason for Madeline’s concern, and didn’t mind the police asking her questions. Like everyone else, Violet had no idea who was defiling books in the Widener. And while she had the strange sensation that Harry’s ghost might be wafting through therooms of his library, she never for a moment thought he would ever desecrate a book. He loved them too much for that.
Violet then headed quickly over to her class at Emerson, relieved to have a few moments to speak to Professor Gupta. She wanted to see if he’d allow her to change the topic of her thesis. She told him she now wanted to focus on how various esteemed writers had started to investigate the existence of life after death following their own personal losses. She explained that she’d become fascinated by the establishment of the Ghost Club at Trinity College in Dublin and a subsequent group of scientific and literary luminaries in England, including Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, who explored the spiritual world after suffering the death of a loved one. Dickens had lost his beloved sister, Fanny, to tuberculosis and Doyle began engaging in spiritualism at the onset of the First World War, when so many young men, including his son, Kingsley, were dying at the front.
Violet proffered that the reading she longed to do would be best served if she could also channel it into her seminar writing.
“An interesting premise,” Professor Gupta said, as he looked through her proposal and the bibliography she’d attached to it.
“I checked, but I didn’t find any past student’s thesis on the subject,” she added. “Though there are quite a few about William James, who founded a psychical institute here about a hundred years ago. The college appears to have embraced his studies back in the day, if you can believe it.”
“I can.” Gupta looked up from her proposal and grinned. He put the paper down on his desk. “I think you should do it,” he said. “And I look forward to reading what you come up with.”
“Thank you!” Violet felt a rush of adrenaline flood through her. “Isn’t it just amazing? I had no idea James Hall was named after him. And to think I have my psych class there!”
Professor Gupta laughed. “A beautiful synergy to your studies then. And I have to say, I’m so delighted to see you looking happy again.”
Violet smiled. “Yes. It feels good to just feel like a regular student again,” she said. She left his office invigorated. Now she could write about something she was really vested in and getting school credit for it to boot.
She couldn’t wait to see what more she would discover and, more importantly, to learn if there would be any more messages from Harry. Perhaps there might even come a time she’d hear a message from Hugo. Violet wanted to remain open to every possibility.
Violet hid her new Ouija board underneath her bed. She hated to think about any of her roommates, even Sylvia, finding it and thinking she’d lost her mind.
So after her last class that afternoon, she pulled it out and brought it to her bed. She unpackaged the board and placed the planchette on top.
She had only used one once before, at a childhood sleepover party at her friend Nancy’s house. A group of her friends performed a mock séance and chanted “Light as a feather, stiff as a board” in trying to evoke the spirits to lift one of their classmates off the ground.
Of course, it hadn’t worked, despite Karen Lombardi’s insisting that she felt her body rise a few inches off the carpet. The rest of the night, Violet and her friends had asked the Ouija board question after question, their hands rolling over each letter (who could tell if Mary Flaherty or Francis O’Reilly were pushing it themselves, though they insisted they weren’t!). They also got out Nancy’s Magic 8 Ball, believing both objects had the power to reveal information from the other side.
But now, close to a decade later, she was still asking for the same thing—information that she could find nowhere else.
She realized it all felt crazy. But Violet believed she had to at least try to find another way to communicate with Harry, since she’d been reprimanded for sitting at his desk in Widener. But maybe—though she knew it was a long shot—Harry would communicate with her again, this time with the board.
