Page 69 of Haunting the Deep

She frowns. “Are you trying to be funny?” Myra takes note of the candles by my feet and all the items on the floor. She assesses each one of us, stopping on Elijah. “What am I supposed to make of all this?”

“There is no bad intent. Of that, I can assure you,” Elijah says.

She looks unsure.

“I know how strange this is going to sound,” I say. “But I’ve been having dreams about theTitanic,whole and floating, like it was before it sank. Only they’re not quite dreams. I think the people I saw there might all be…spirits.”

“I don’t understand. You say you saw my husband in your dreams, but you think he might really be on theTitanic? Where?”

“I’m not exactly…How about this? I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you everything I know in exchange for you telling me what you know about these items.” I wave my hand at the floor.

She pinches her lips together. “That does not seem unreasonable.”

I take a breath. “So it goes like this…My grandmother was a Haxtun, Charlotte Haxtun Mather. She would have been your great-niece. And a dress was sent to my house a few days ago, a green evening gown. The card was signed with your name. Aunty Myra H.H.”

Myra listens carefully.

I point at the painting. “In this crate is a painting of you. However, I could have sworn that it used to be of youandyour husband, only he seems to have disappeared from the canvas. I have no idea how it happened. It was hanging in the hallway downstairs. Then, about a week ago, it got moved up here.”

The girls watch me without saying a word, even Alice. Maybe she has more restraint than I give her credit for.

“That’s very odd,” Myra says, giving me her full attention.

“When I put that dress on, the one the card said was from you, I wound up on a shiny newTitanic;don’t ask me how. And since then, every time I go to sleep, I return to the ship. Everyone keeps referring to me as your niece, even your husband. And I had dinner with him. Hammad was there, too.”

“Hammad?” Myra asks, surprised. “We haven’t seen him since right after the ship went down. We heard he went back to Egypt.”

“And you said that currently you cannot locate your husband?” Elijah says.

Myra shakes her head. “Henry disappeared some time ago.”

“And what led up to his disappearance? Did he do anything unusual?” Elijah asks.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Myra says. “For a brief moment I thought he passed on without me. But we spent all our years after death together. Henry would never leave me by choice. It frightened me.”

“What about fellowTitanicpassengers? Have you seen any of them?” Elijah asks.

Myra furrows her brow. “Some, yes. Others, I believe, passed on. But I haven’t seen any of them recently. Why?”

Elijah shakes his head. “I have not been able to find a single one. And I have been looking extensively.”

Myra frowns. “So what are you saying, then? That you think something is happening toTitanicpassengers?”

“As far as we can tell, the ship might be a spell, an illusion of some kind,” I say. “And for whatever reason…your husband is currently with the other passengers there.”

“If my Henry somehow did go to a spell ship, why hasn’t he returned? I do not understand this at all.” Myra lifts her long skirt and walks toward the crate. “Now, let me see what you have here. You say this portrait was altered?” She examines it, and the corners of her eyes narrow. “But how can this be? Henryhasvanished…and yet the canvas looks undisturbed? Who would do such a thing?” Her tone is demanding.

“That is precisely what we aim to find out,” Elijah says in a reassuring voice.

“I remember the day we had this commissioned,” Myra says, her hand clenching her skirt. “We had just bought our first home. How proud Henry was in that moment. I had no idea the painting was here.”

“There was a letter taped to the back of it telling how you and Unc—” I wince at the ease with which I almost called him my uncle. “Henry survived. It was written by someone named Helen Hopson.”

She nods. “My niece.” She bends down near the items on the floor, and the green dress catches her eye. “I’ve never seen this before. But I must admit that green silk was always a favorite. I wore it as often as I could.” She lifts a candle, and the girls’ eyes follow the seemingly floating flame. “And what is this, a dog collar? It is similar to ones I owned, but it does not belong to me.”

“What about the hat? Could it have belonged to your husband?” I ask.

“It is very hard to tell with men’s hats. They all look the same,” she says with no humor. This must be taking a toll on her. “But do you know what this makes me think of? That fellow who filmed theTitanicwreckage. He found my husband’s bowler hat still sitting on top of the remains of his wardrobe.”