Free The Haunted Season by G. M. Malliet

mysterious Nunswood, which brooded on a crest overlooking the river Pudmill.
    The manor house had replaced an earlier country house, a sprawling, quirky Tudor edifice that had fallen into disrepair and had, in any event, been not nearly grand enough to showcase the ambitions of the family as it took firm root in the area. Later generations wanted increasingly to sweep away any history that suggested humble or tawdry beginnings, and so over the old hall’s footprint they erected a much-admired stately home. Private bedrooms and reception rooms replaced the communal areas, where once the lord of the manor and his family had been lulled to sleep by the sound of snoring servants (more about those later). Gilded rooms were made larger and more golden, and glittering windows replaced the defensive stone of old.
    Although Totleigh Hall was not a vast, gloomy, chain-rattler of a house in the accepted tradition, it was said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman from the time of King George III, the wife of the then lord. This nobleman had inconveniently found himself to be enamored of a servant girl, despite continuing to father children with the lady of the house, and despite all the social prohibitions surrounding such an attraction, and despite the reputation of his wife for having an evil temper. On the same day each year—legends varied as to which day, but most held the fifth of May to be the day—a woman’s voice could be heard, wailing down the corridors of the house. There was disagreement as to whether this voice belonged to the lady or to the servant girl, but what was indisputable fact was that both women had disappeared one night, and as it was unlikely they had run away together, the rumor of course started that they had both been murdered. The lake was deep enough to accommodate both bodies—a thousand bodies. The lord’s reputation, never very good, was reduced to tatters, and it was some centuries before his numerous heirs could claw their way back to their places in high society.
    Max Tudor himself knew of the legend only from reading the chapter entitled “The Ladies in the Lake” in Wherefore Nether Monkslip, an unreliable source if ever one there were, a best-seller written by local worthy Frank Cuthbert. Still, Frank’s opinion on what had happened at the manor house had quickly solidified into fact. He’d even given the servant girl a name (Jamaica), although her real name had been lost to history.
    Max reflected on all this as he walked to Totleigh Hall on an evening soon after the latest Bowls for Souls gathering. He was going to meet with the lord of the manor, Viscount Bayer Baaden-Boomethistle, and hoped to catch him in a good and generous mood. He wondered idly if the lord were superstitious—if living in a great rambling house of echoing hallways would cause one to believe in ghosts.
    It was just after Evening Prayer, and although the sun was still lighting his way, Max took a shortcut to the manor house, where lowering trees shaded his path. The days were beginning to gather in on themselves, and the end of daylight saving time soon would cast the region into gloom each afternoon. By nightfall, the path would be in darkness save for crescent moonlight to guide him back home, where Awena would have dinner waiting for him in a cottage softly aglow with lamp- and firelight.
    The family at Totleigh Hall was rarely in residence nowadays, and even when they were, their attendance at St. Edwold’s Church could not be said to be regular. They would sometimes attend Sunday services, taking the front pew as if by right, although the tradition of pew rent had long been abandoned. They would stumble through the service, flipping aimlessly about their prayer books and singing from the wrong page in the hymnal. On occasion, Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, in an unusual concession, could be induced to read the Epistle. He would strut importantly up the aisle and make his way to