They trooped up the outer back stairs and Brendan let them in to the tiny servants’ kitchen. Laurel and Brendan hung back and let the two students go first. Laurel noticed Katrina looking around her with a faint moue of distaste. The house was fairly clean, considering how long it had been empty, but Laurel imagined Katrina was used to far more elegant circumstances. The girl’s shiny pants and embroidered blouse were casual, but Laurel recognized couture when she saw it.
They moved through the kitchen, past the servants’ bedrooms, the linen room, and the lounge. Both students stopped in the hall outside the lounge and Laurel could see they were suitably impressed by the weirdness of the long upstairs hall. Tyler had stopped joking and was looking around him shrewdly, like a camera recording everything he saw.
“There are about a million bedrooms,” Laurel said. “Why don’t you both just choose one that feels comfortable for now and we can always switch later?”
Brendan added. “There are larger rooms in the next wing, but let’s stay close for the first night.”
“No doubling up, huh?” Tyler murmured, but somewhat lacking his usual swagger. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He half-bowed mockingly to Katrina (Too practiced, that gesture, Laurel thought wryly) and said, “Ladies first.”
Katrina unhesitatingly chose the best room in what Laurel had come to think of as the “upper hall”—the large one with the balcony and the hearth.
Then they followed Tyler as he walked deliberately down the hall, then back all the rest of the way, and then slung his Calvin Klein bag on the single bed in the room across from the kitchen and back stairs, without comment.
“Any particular reason?” Brendan asked.
Tyler shot him an oblique look, shrugged. “Bathroom, kitchen, quick exit. What more could anyone ask?”
Laurel noticed a definite charge between the two men, a masculine jockeying for power, but Brendan neutralized the moment by choosing not to respond. “First thing on the agenda is exploring the house. Why don’t you two take about fifteen minutes to wash up and compose yourselves, and then come back downstairs to the office at the bottom of those first stairs and we’ll explain your first assignment.”
Twenty minutes later, with the group assembled in the house manager’s office, Brendan handed out floor plans of the house, two clipboards with both blank paper and questionnaires, and two voice-activated microcassette recorders to the students.
“We’re not going to tell you much to begin with,” Brendan told them. “We’ll get into that later. We simply want you to walk through the house at your own pace and record anything you think or feel. There’s no right or wrong, here—we just want your impressions. If you come across a spot where you sense anything worth noting, then mark the spot on your floor plan and make notes about it, either with the recorders or by written notes. The questionnaire sheets give you a list of adjectives that may help you define your impressions; you can use those word sheets or not, that’s completely up to you.
“But we’d like you to start by filling out a checklist relating to your current mood—it’s the first sheet on your clipboard. Just take a few minutes to answer the questions and then we’ll begin the house tour.”
A silence fell in the small office as Tyler and Katrina bent over their clipboards to do the questionnaires. They were simple checklists that Laurel and Brendan had culled from books and articles about haunting investigations, mostly lists of adjectives to get at the subjects’ current emotional states, but Laurel knew the act of concentrating on the questions, of having to tune into your own mood, was a kind of meditation in itself, a preparatory relaxation and awareness exercise.
The two students finished their questionnaires and looked up at precisely the same moment, like unwitting twins.
“All done?” Brendan asked brightly. “Excellent. After you’ve been through the entire house, we’ll give you a break, and we’ll reconvene to talk about the walk-through and give you some more background information. Any questions?”
Katrina and Tyler looked at each other, then at their two professors. “Bring it on,” Tyler drawled.
“Okay, then.” Brendan propelled himself to his feet, in that familiar leap. “We’ll split up and work from opposite ends of the house, so that you two can have your own independent perceptions. Dr. MacDonald, you and Katrina can start at the north end of the house, and Tyler and I will work our way forward from back here.”