Annabelle rolled her eyes. Dealing with the incorporeal was exasperating at times, but what could she do? After heaving a heavy sigh of resignation, she went out the back door to the garage where her Mercedes was parked. As she opened the driver’s door, Edmund appeared in the passenger seat still looking very dapper in his scarlet despite a few smudges here and there.
Looking at Edmund’s permanent formal wear revived Annabelle’s curiosity about his rather singular situation, and she couldn’t restrain herself from asking what she felt was an obvious question.
“Can’t you just ‘materialize’ at the house?”
“Well, I could, but don’t you think this is more fun?”
Annabelle agreed that it certainly was, and they drove the relatively short distance to Edmund’s house in companionable silence. As they turned onto the long driveway to Edmund’s hunting box, Annabelle asked where she should look for the hidden door key.
“Guess,” stated Edmund with a grin. Annabelle assumed it was payback time for all of her nosy queries.
“Edmund, I really don’t have time for games right now,” said Annabelle impatiently. “I need to do what I have to do and get out of here.”
“Oh, loosen up, Kiddo. Guess where the key is—you’ve looked right at it a hundred times.”
For a moment, Annabelle tried to remember if Edmund had been this irritatingly smug when he was alive, but decided it was neither the place nor the time for such an inquiry. She dutifully looked around the property, a well known gathering spot for fox hunters over the past twenty-five years. A pang of regret and sadness swept over her as she remembered attending her first Hill County Hounds party there five years earlier.
On the Saturday of her first hunt with them, the after- hunt party had been hosted by Edmund at Huntersleigh. Annabelle would never forget her first glimpse of the place tucked back into a little grove of trees with one of Guilford’s famous hills rising behind it. Although the house appeared deceptively small and cottage-like when viewed from its front, numerous additions over the years had added up to 4,000 square feet. Painted a warm cinnamon color with dark green trim, Huntersleigh looked warm and cozy even when the rest of the landscape was harsh and frozen.
“Guess where the key is,” Edmund said again, interrupting Annabelle’s momentary reverie.
“I don’t know, Edmund. Just tell me and let’s get the fax and get out of here.”
“Under there!” said Edmund proudly, pointing to a resin figure of a Jack Russell Terrier near the front door. The figure was hind end only, made to appear the dog had dug his entire front half into the ground. It had fooled many of Huntersleigh’s guests over the years who’d momentarily thought it was one of the live animals Edmund always kept about the place, but were now living at the Hill County Hounds kennel alongside the foxhounds.
“Oh, that’s clever,” said Annabelle as she lifted the half- terrier and put her hand on the front door key.
She trotted on tip toe up the stairs and across the porch with Edmund half floating and half walking behind her. The night was very cold and deathly quiet. Nick had always insisted she carry a flashlight in the car and now it had come in handy, although he probably never anticipated she would use it to sneak into a dead man’s house accompanied by his ghost. She opened the screen and gave a quick look around to see that no one was near to disturb the silence, then fit the key into the lock. She felt the key turn and the door gave slightly as it opened, smiling with pleasant surprise that the mission was going smoothly, thus far. Edmund followed her inside and then went over to a keypad by the window.
“Alarm system,” he explained, and began entering the code so the alarm wouldn’t be tripped. To their dismay, his ghostly fingers slipped cleanly through the keypad and disappeared into the surface, much like the faux Jack Russell Terrier on the front lawn.
“Here, let me do it”, said Annabelle, moving quickly in front of him. “Okay, what’s the code?”
Edmund hesitated momentarily, and then said, “Try 64…68”.
Annabelle keyed in the numbers. “All right, now let’s look for the fax.”
The interior of Huntersleigh lived up to the promise of comfort delineated so clearly by the outside of the house. The old wood floors shone, brightly polished between thick oriental rugs in varying hues of crimson. The sofas and chairs, though undoubtedly costly, had been gratefully used by many a tired fox hunter over the past twenty-five years and were now worn and inviting. The ceilings were low in most of the house, some of them showing their wide oak beams that added to the nest- like sense of coziness. The bar had always been fully stocked, and a fire always roared in the huge old fireplace in winter. There were six spare beds upstairs and plenty of fresh eggs and Bloody Mary mixes for Sunday mornings. In short, it was everything a tired fox hunter needed after a long, exciting day in the saddle, and Annabelle sighed to think that the glorious hospitality was no more.
Edmund led Annabelle through his library where every shelf was filled with books on hounds and hunting, then into his small office just beyond.
“I know I was here when I received that fax,” said
Edmund. “Look through the stack of papers, there.”
Annabelle began flipping quickly through the pile of paperwork he had indicated, seeing nothing that looked like a message of any kind. She grabbed the waste can and dumped its contents onto the desk and was trying to flatten a wadded sheet of paper when she heard a sound like a cross between a car horn and the mating call of a bull moose. Annabelle instinctively clapped her hands over her ears.
“Edmund, the alarm! That must not have been the right code!” she hissed, horrified at the blaring sound tearing through the quiet winter night.
Edmund looked bewildered. “I must have given you the code for the house in Nashville,” he said lamely, shaking his head.
“We’re going to rouse the whole county!” cried Annabelle, growing more furious and frightened by the second. Then, she thought of something.
“Does this fax have a memory?”
“A what?” he replied blankly, plainly made uneasy by the continuing blare of the alarm.
“The fax machine! If it has a stored memory, we can print out a copy of the one the murderer sent you.”
Without waiting for a reply, Annabelle went over to the machine and trained her flashlight on its many buttons and controls.
“How did you know that?” asked Edmund, whose grasp of technology was tenuous.
“A friend of mine went through a divorce awhile back. She said she’d read all of her husband’s faxes from his lawyer that way.”
“Hmm,” said Edmund. Annabelle thought unkindly that he was probably wondering if any of his ex-wives had employed that technique.
In the meantime, the alarm continued its obnoxious, discordant complaints and made it difficult for Annabelle to concentrate. She cursed and began pushing buttons on the fax machine. It was a new model with a multitude of options, so she knew better than to ask Edmund how to access its memory. How like him to have purchased the very latest technology, but never bothered to learn how to use it! At last, a paper with the word “Test” printed on it began to eject from the top of the machine.
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” said Annabelle triumphantly.
“Annabelle, there’s someone coming!”, Edmund whispered, as if in his fear for Annabelle’s safety he’d forgotten that only she could hear him.
Annabelle hurriedly pushed another few buttons on the fax machine hoping desperately it would stop ejecting paper, then ran out of the office and into the library holding the flashlight. She was not sure where she intended to go, but sensed that it was imperative she not be found in Edmund’s office. She was already halfway through the room when she realized she was running straight toward the barrel of a shotgun.
CHAPTER VI
HUNTERSLEIGH REVISITED
Annabelle gasped and threw her hands up, dropping the flashlight as she did so. Just then, she heard a familiar voice cry, “Annabell
e! My, god! I might have shot you!”
To her immense relief, the voice belonged to Charles Collins, Edmund’s closest hunting box neighbor and Joint Master. While Annabelle collapsed in a heap on a nearby sofa, Charles entered an alarm code—apparently the correct one as the hideous blaring stopped immediately—and turned on the lamp beside her. As she took several deep breaths in an attempt to regulate her heart rate, Annabelle thought how typical it was of Charles to come charging over like the Cavalry instead of calling the police like an ordinary person. Charles led the First Flight of fox hunters who rode at breakneck speed over jumps. He was well known for leaping first and asking questions later, so it was not hard to believe he would grab the nearest firearm and fearlessly confront a would-be burglar. Annabelle had already mustered a smile by the time he joined her on the couch.
“Annabelle, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry I frightened you, but I thought you were a burglar. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
As Annabelle struggled to formulate a plausible answer, Edmund whispered in her ear, “Tell him you missed me so much that you thought it would make you feel better just to be here with your memories.”
Annabelle shook her head, both to refuse Edmund’s suggestion and to encourage him to keep quiet. “I had loaned Edmund an out-of-print fox hunting book of mine that I’d had a terrible time locating. I just wanted to retrieve it before anyone thought it was part of his estate.”
“Why didn’t you wait until daytime?” asked Charles, as if he did not really disbelieve Annabelle, but felt she had put them both in a dangerous situation and he needed an appropriate answer. Annabelle was tempted to ask him a few questions of her own, mostly regarding his knowledge of firearm safety, but decided she’d better play nice under the circumstances.
“Tell him you dreamed about me and couldn’t go back to sleep without coming over here first,” said Edmund, now beside Annabelle’s other ear.
“Will you get lost!” said Annabelle sharply. “Hmmph!” said Edmund.
“What? I’m only trying to help, Annabelle,” said Charles in bewilderment.
“Oh, not you, Charles,” said Annabelle, realizing he must think, like the rest of her friends, she was losing her mind.
“Nick is working late and I was bored at home, so I decided to come here to look for my book,” she answered sweetly, thinking that having a reputation as an airhead had never come in so handy. “I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble. I just didn’t think, I guess. What are you doing down here on a weeknight?” Annabelle attempted to turn the conversation away from her unexpected presence in Edmund’s house and knew that Charles usually spent his time in Nashville during the week.
“I’m having company this weekend and I needed to do some things around my place to get ready,” said Charles, visibly relaxing.
Annabelle wanted him to continue talking of other subjects. She looked around the library. “Boy, we’ve had some grand times here over the years,” she said, hoping to distract him further.
“Yes, we sure have,” he replied, standing and walking in the general direction of Edmund’s office.
“Damn!” thought Annabelle, remembering the mess she had left on Edmund’s desk and on the floor in front of the fax machine. She rose from the sofa and took Charles’ arm. “Remember that morning I had to cook breakfast in the dark?” she asked, guiding him toward the kitchen.
Charles smiled, “Of course. I still wonder how Edmund was functioning around here without any light.” Charles referred to an incident that had occurred several seasons before, one that was illustrative of Edmund’s lack of ability to do anything himself.
Edmund had invited Annabelle and Nick over for Sunday breakfast and provided a grand assortment of uncooked foods—steak, eggs, grits, and bread for toast—but had needed Annabelle to prepare them. Edmund and Nick made a quick run to the hound kennel while she obligingly went into the kitchen to begin cooking. Unfortunately, she was unable to find a working light fixture. She tried switch after switch, of which there were many, but the kitchen remained in winter morning darkness.
Charles had also been invited to breakfast, and upon his arrival he and Annabelle had agreed there must be a problem with one of the breaker switches. When located, however, the breakers all proved to be in working order.
Finally, Charles decided to try simply replacing a light bulb. Annabelle didn’t really expect any results because, surely, no one would allow all of the lights in the kitchen to just burn out one-by-one, but that was exactly the case. Edmund had simply done without light rather than replace a single bulb.
Charles and Annabelle had teased him about his indolence many times, to which he responded by smiling and shrugging his shoulders as if he didn’t see anything so remarkable about his behavior.
“That was before he had Tiller,” said Charles, referring to Edmund’s hired man who had begun working for him a year or so before his death. “He was such a tremendous help to Edmund. Did I tell you I’ve asked him to work for me, now that Edmund is gone?”
Annabelle agreed that Tiller was a valuable employee. She breathed a sigh of relief as she followed Charles into the great-room, continuing to reminisce as they went.
“Just don’t let this young buck lead you into my bedroom, Annabelle,” said Edmund wryly. He seemed to be hovering somewhere around her left ear.
“Not everyone thinks like you!” Annabelle quipped aloud.
“Pardon?” asked Charles, and she saw, to her dismay, that he was looking back at her apparently thinking she had spoken to him.
“Oh, I just meant that you have a great memory for past events. You really should write some of this down.”
Charles smiled broadly at the compliment. “Why, thanks. Maybe I’ll do that.”
As Charles turned back to examining the house and recalled parties and dinners they had all attended there over the years, Annabelle waited until his back was to her and made an angry face toward her left side. She hoped this would indicate to Edmund that she had had enough of his interference for the moment. Then she tried to focus on Charles as he rambled on about various Hunt members who had over-served themselves at the buffet table, sometimes with humorous and memorable consequences.
It was a glorious setting for such excesses, but there was even more to appreciate when one was sober. Edmund had an incredible collection of antique books on tweedy topics. Along with early editions of the works that every fox hunting antiquarian has on hand, such as Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man and Gordon Grand’s Silver Horn, Edmund had some rare and unusual tomes such as the autobiography of Squire Osbaldeston, a nineteenth century rake, who could easily have been Edmund’s role model.
“It would be such a shame if this fantastic library is sold piecemeal”, said Charles. “Too bad none of Edmund’s kids have an interest in fox hunting.” Annabelle could imagine what Charles was thinking. He had been Edmund’s heir-apparent in the eyes of the fox hunting world, but unfortunately not in the legal sense. Annabelle made sympathetic noises and tried to hide her anxiousness to be out of there.
However, a tour of Huntersleigh was certainly not complete without at least a cursory glance at Edmund’s sporting art. Paintings of famous horses and hounds by even more famous artists such as Sir Alfred Munnings and Heywood Hardy adorned the walls, along with humorous sketches by John Leech and Cecil Aldin. There were scenes of steeple chasing, fox hunting, thoroughbred racing, polo—all immortalized by the best artists of the last two hundred years. This time, though, Annabelle was much too distracted to enjoy listening to Charles recite the history of each piece. Finally, when Annabelle thought she would die of frustration, he returned full circle to the library.
“Well, I need to be going, Annabelle,” said Charles, at last.
“Oh, did you find your book?” he asked solicitously.
“Oh, yes. I have it right here,” said Annabelle, holding up an old leather-bound volume. “Thanks so much for your help. And, again, I
’m so sorry you had to come over here. I just didn’t think about the alarm.”
“Oh, no problem—I’m just glad I didn’t shoot you!” shaking his head at the thought.
Annabelle turned out the lights and she and Charles left the house. She locked the door and replaced the key beneath the faux half-terrier beside the porch.
“Crazy of Edmund to tell me where the key was and then not mention there was an alarm,” said Annabelle, hoping Charles would infer Edmund had shared the information before his death instead of less than an hour ago.
“Oh, that’s typical Edmund,” Charles said with a sigh. This time, Annabelle managed not to flinch when the voice in her ear loudly proclaimed Charles Collins to be the illegitimate son of a cur dog.
Annabelle drove home as quickly as she dared, hoping for the first time in her marriage that Nick would be really, really late. When she was about halfway there, Edmund appeared beside her in the passenger seat. His arms were crossed and his lower lip stuck out angrily. He said nothing for a few minutes and then sputtered, “I can’t believe you told me to get lost!”
“Edmund,” said Annabelle in a placating tone, “I couldn’t think of what to say to him with you talking in my ear. I had to come up with something believable, and quickly. Can you believe Charles? Nothing untoward is going to happen to your art collection with him around!”
“Hmmph,” Edmund said somewhat less angrily. Annabelle knew he couldn’t help but be just a little amused by Charles’ behavior, even though he had been cursing him only moments ago.
“Actually, I have to admit he appreciates my collection much more than my own children do, even if he did cause us to leave the fax.” He stared moodily out of the window until they pulled into Annabelle’s driveway. “Well, that was a big waste of time,” said Edmund. He sounded depressed and was starting to de-materialize.
“Think so?” asked Annabelle, holding up the book she had taken from the library. As he watched, she opened it and pulled out several sheets of paper with a fax machine address at the top.
The Masters Ball Page 4