Mask of Silver

by Rosemary Jones

  Fred did not see Arkham quite the same as me.

  The hedges leaned in, I realized. Not a great deal. Just enough to make it clear that their purpose was as much to keep people inside the grounds as to protect the house from strangers. Or to hide the house from prying eyes. To keep the Fitzmaurice family and their doings invisible from the rest of Arkham. Except Arkham had a very long memory.

  “I don’t know Sydney,” I said, and realized it was true. “I know the man that he’s pretending to be. The one that the press wants him to be, the one that the studio wants him to be.” The one that my sister said loved her. “I don’t know the Sydney that Arkham remembers.”

  “And do you need to know Arkham’s version of Sydney?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think we do.” Because a woman in a diner talked about Sydney killing someone. Because there was something wrong, very wrong, with the crooked shadows creeping across the lawn toward me. With the crows wheeling overhead and then streaming towards the woods pressed up against the back gate. We’d barely started filming but I felt like we were caught on the wrong side of the camera. That we’d all become characters in one of Sydney’s horrible stories.

  But I couldn’t explain it properly to Fred.

  “It’s just the jitters,” he said. “Get a few more days filming in and everyone will settle down, even Sydney. We’ll know how it all turns out. Let’s go move some paintings and set up the next scene. Time to put a few of Sydney’s ancestors to work in the movies.”

  The shadows crept across the lawn. The house waited for us to return to it and start playing at hauntings within its walls. It was beyond foolish what we had done already and would do in the days to come, but it was all because we did not know enough about the Fitzmaurice family and Arkham then.

  Chapter Eight

  The ghost scene took a couple of days to stage but looked good by the time we were done. The paintings seemed ominous clustered together at one end of the long library room. Fred and Humbert did a little carpentry that created a false wall at one end of this grouping to hold the empty frame. Surrounded by other paintings, it deceived the eye at first glance, especially when somebody stood behind the wall and pretended to be a portrait. Paul and Jim shifted furniture around and moved in a few mirrors from the hall to reflect light from the windows. It set up much like we would at the studio, with the actors at one end and plenty of room for the camera and the rest of us behind it.

  We stationed Pola, Betsy, and Jim behind the fake wall, peering through the empty frame, one after the other. Fred cranked the camera slow and steady, muttering at them if they twitched. The idea was to keep them as still as possible for this bit of fakery. Later Fred would cut the film between the long shots of the oil paintings hanging in what appeared to be the same spot and the close-ups of the trio so the audience would be convinced that the paintings turned into ghosts.

  Betsy had the hardest time being still, as she was distracted by two Arkham visitors that morning.

  One was Darrell, who shadowed Renee around the room, taking various photographs every time Renee paused. She wasn’t happy about it. Renee wanted to concentrate on Sydney’s directions as he went over his ideas for how the sisters would enter the library and be surrounded by their ghostly relations.

  The other distraction was the violinist that Sydney hired to play during the scene. He’d read somewhere that United Artists were starting to use musicians to create a mood on their sets. She was a pleasant, round little lady who taught violin but also played the piano at the local movie theater, which was how Max had found her. She arrived at the house still in her Sunday best, complete with a new cloche hat, and clutching a well-used violin case.

  The violinist, Virginia Murphy, listened patiently while Sydney insisted that he wanted a dreaming mood for the sequence. “It is not a nightmare,” he said. “Not yet. The sisters are enthralled to see the ghosts of their ancestors. They teeter on the edge of terror, as will the audience, unable to deny the melancholy attraction of the tomb. Your music will convey that to the actresses, and they shall in turn create a living embodiment of the grief-stricken melody.”

  Like everyone encountering Sydney for the first time, Virginia seemed a bit overwhelmed. “Chopin?” she finally said. “His Nocturne in C Minor?”

  Sydney shrugged. “If that is what you think is appropriate for ghosts.”

  She pulled out her violin and played a few bars.

  Sydney turned to Renee.

  “Does that evoke a haunting mood?” he said.

  Renee crossed the room away from Darrell. “It’s fine, but you know I don’t need music to act,” she said. Then turning to the violinist, she added, “Not that I have anything against your playing. You’re very good. It was kind of you to come.”

  Virginia smiled. “I was so excited to be asked to work on a movie set. Everyone in town is talking about it since the Arkham Advertiser published that story yesterday. Florie told me about meeting you.” The photos of Betsy pouring coffee in the local diner had dominated the front page of the little newspaper. “And, of course, Mr Fitzmaurice being back in town.”

  “Did you know Sydney when he lived here?” I asked.

  Virginia continued to adjust her violin, trying out a trilling run of melodies. “Not really. I heard talk about the Fitzmaurices. Every time one of the pictures opened in the movie house, somebody would mention that Sydney Fitzmaurice came from an old Arkham family. And that his grandfather had been a very famous actor as well.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Everyone seems to know about Sydney’s grandfather. I’ve never heard anything about his parents.” It was odd. Nobody ever mentioned anyone but the actor grandfather who was obsessed with family history and artifacts as well as the more distant ancestor who brought those objects to Arkham. It was as if the rest of the Fitzmaurice clan were bit players in their own story. Except for Sydney. He would always insist on being center stage.

  “No, I don’t know much about the family,” said Virginia. “I haven’t lived in Arkham that long. You should ask Darrell. He writes the most curious articles, weaving the town’s history into the news. Some of his stories read just like a Fitzmaurice picture.”

  I watched my sister dodge the eager photographer. “He’s quite a fan of Renee Love.”

  “Oh, yes. I’d see him every time one of her movies played the theater. For the siren picture, I swear that Darrell sat in the front row the entire run,” Virginia said. “I do enjoy a long run. Doing the same picture several times gives me a chance to adjust to the film. It’s always much better the second or third time, when I know what’s coming next.”

  She was right, of course. I’d seen movies done in small houses and in larger theaters where they were beginning to bring in full bands. Even with cue sheets, the music could vary wildly and the mood created didn’t always match the action on the screen. Good accompanists, the best really, reacted to the film as it progressed. The worst were like that poor chap who played “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie” and “Love Me and the World is Mine” no matter what was happening on the screen.

  Sydney had argued several times that the studio should pay for musicians to go out and accompany his movies from town to town, just to ensure that the mood was correct in every showing. They wouldn’t do it, of course, but they did let him hire a composer and then printed sheet music to be sent around with the reels of film. The stunt had earned a certain press, especially since the composer famously jumped off a bridge and drowned after writing the music for The Return of the Siren.

  None of which I discussed with Virginia. Instead we talked about the practicalities of living the artistic life. For as much as she adored playing the great composers, she was not above rehashing a ragtime melody or other popular song if it meant a payment at the end of the evening. “I teach and play for parties,” she said. “Mostly University events. There’s a few of us in town, enough for a quartet
or a trio, if they want to add some dancing. Those professors, going round and round the room in a stately box waltz, it’s something to see. There’s one old dear, a very tall and thin Scot, with a darling plump German wife. They’ve been married almost fifty years. They always ask for a proper waltz to end the evening. And pay promptly, too.”

  “It must be nice,” I said, “to live in a town where you know everyone. It’s a bit like that in the studio, where we work with the same people all the time. Sydney’s crew, they call us. But in Los Angeles, it seems like there’s hundreds getting off at the train station every day. It’s changing so quickly.”

  “Oh, you should see New York,” said Eleanor, who left Sydney fussing over some business with Lulu. “When I got back from Europe, I couldn’t believe the crowds and how they all seemed to have arrived yesterday.” She turned to Virginia and held out a hand. “Eleanor Nash, writer. So here I am, having proposed that they see ghosts. Now we are all waiting for the ghosts to appear.”

  At her words, Virginia shivered a little. “How odd,” she said. “I felt as if something cold brushed my back.”

  I felt it too. A chill, not like a draft, but more like some cold creature had settled on my head and then writhed slowly down my neck. Once, in the orphanage, another girl dropped a small frog down the back of my dress. The feeling was the same damp, cold touch. I tried not to shriek but whirled around, craning to glimpse my back in one of the omnipresent mirrors. Everything looked normal.

  Across the room, the others made hesitant steps and glances at each other. Max, who had been moodily watching from an open door, probably calculating the expense of having a violinist on set, began slapping his back like a man suddenly overwhelmed by small creatures crawling across his skin.

  Lulu screamed. Eleanor, who had been uneasily glancing over her own shoulder, twisted around. She strode over to her lover. “What is it, dear?” she said, catching Lulu’s hands.

  “Ugh,” said Lulu. “It must have been a mouse. It ran right over my foot. I could feel its horrible little cold paws on my skin.” At the edge of the room, Lulu’s pug, Pumpkin, growled at something that wasn’t there.

  Sydney shouted for everyone’s attention. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get started. The sisters enter the room. They hesitate in the doorway. Something chills them. A feeling of foreboding.”

  I shuddered as Sydney’s words seemed to intensify the feeling of frogs and other creepy things crawling across my skin. The rest looked just as tormented. Only Sydney seemed immune.

  “Where’s that violinist? I need the music playing!” Sydney shouted.

  Virginia lifted her violin and bow. Settling her instrument under her chin, she drew the bow across the strings in the same quick motions as before. But no melody emerged. Rather, it gave out an unearthly wailing noise.

  Sydney blinked. “Not Chopin. But that works. Fred, begin. Renee. Lulu. To your places.”

  Virginia dropped her bow and said to me, “That’s not what I meant to play.”

  “Try again,” I said with as much confidence as I could. Just like the day that we arrived, I felt something, something unwelcoming, gathering in the shadows of the house. Something watching and judging, most unsatisfied with our actions and malicious in its reaction. Then I glanced across the room and saw Fred bending to the viewpiece, taking in the scene as the camera would see it. Beyond him, Betsy and Pola took their places. Jim, ordinary Jim, stepped behind the picture frame to play the ghost of an ancestor. It was all the very normal fakery of a movie set, a tale to cause the audience to shriek a little but no great threat to any of the actors I told myself, and hoped that I was not lying.

  “Play. This should be fun,” I said with greater confidence than I felt to the woman standing beside me.

  Virginia nodded and with trembling hands began to play. This time the melody stayed true. The nocturne sounded throughout the room. Fred began cranking the camera, and its resounding clack nearly drowned out the violin. Renee entered first, heading to the end where the portraits hung. As the elder sister, Sydney informed her as she walked across the room, she must take the lead. “You are drawn to the picture!” he yelled. “You know that it reveals a terrible secret. A secret you long to know.”

  Lulu stepped across behind her. “You are frightened!” Sydney yelled at her. “You tremble in anticipation of what your sister will find. You fear the reveal of the stranger.” Lulu stumbled a little and glanced at Sydney. “No, no,” he yelled, “eyes on your sister. React, react, you stupid girl!”

  “Well, that’s the end of that,” said Eleanor as Lulu froze in place.

  “What did you say to me?” Lulu asked Sydney.

  “Fred!” Sydney screamed. “Cut.”

  Fred stopped cranking. Renee walked back to her starting point with exaggerated care. Virginia wobbled through a few more bars of the nocturne, looked confused by the sudden lack of action and silence, and then stopped as well. We all waited for what would come next.

  Lulu and Sydney lit into each other.

  “Don’t scream at me when I’m acting,” said Lulu. “I’m trying to concentrate on my character. How can I do that when you’re calling me names?”

  “I am the director,” Sydney reminded her. “You do what I tell you to do.”

  “I’m open to notes,” she said. “You can give me notes when the scene is over. But during the scene, I’m working. Don’t distract me.”

  Renee shook her head. “We do our notes while the camera is rolling. This isn’t the theater where you need to stay silent for an audience.”

  Lulu stamped one foot. “This is ridiculous. That violin. Sydney screaming. You walking off your line.”

  “I am never off my line,” said Renee with chilly finality.

  “Of course you are,” Lulu returned. “You are supposed to be going to the first portrait of our ancestor, not the frame that Jim is hiding behind. The picture with the soldier in the stupid uniform.”

  “That is my great-grandfather Saturnin Fitzmaurice,” Sydney said. I could hear his teeth grinding against his cigarette holder from across the room. “A descendent of French nobility.”

  “Well, Renee is supposed to be walking to his portrait. And why is she always entering first? And if she’s supposed to be walking to it, why is the portrait over there?” Lulu pointed across the room to where the painting hung upon the wall, considerably to the left of where it should be.

  “That’s not right,” said Fred, looking up from his camera. “I hung him with his ladies.” By which he meant the old woman portrait of another Fitzmaurice, the one that Pola was playing in her broad skirts, and the empty frame that Betsy filled playing the young Madame Saturnin.

  Sydney changed the story for the film, making out that his young and handsome nobleman successfully saved his child and wife, sacrificing his own life for love. At least that was how he told it to Darrell during the young reporter’s interview. The part about Saturnin handing off his real children to a maid, insisting his portrait be saved, the wife burning to death, and Saturnin himself being reduced to a single charred hand, none of that came up in the tale that Sydney spun to Darrell. But he convinced Darrell that this movie was based on actual Arkham history. Darrell was nearly breathless with excitement about this “exclusive” for his newspaper.

  “It’s all a bit complicated, isn’t it?” Virginia said to me as I whispered explanations of what was supposed to have happened next while Sydney and Lulu continued their argument.

  “Sometimes Sydney changes things around. He probably moved that portrait” I said, although I couldn’t remember seeing him near it at all. “Just to shake up the actors. He says it makes the reactions more real.” But Sydney usually told Fred, so he knew where to point the camera. And I’d been by Fred for most of the morning and never heard any new instructions. It was all very strange.

  Because now Monsieur Saturnin’s real
portrait was clearly exiled from the group, hanging some distance away from where we put it earlier.

  “Who moved that picture?” Sydney roared.

  Nobody answered. Looking around the room, everyone appeared confused. It made no sense for somebody to have moved that prop. It would have been physically difficult, too. The frame of Saturnin’s portrait was made of the same metal painted over to look like gilded wood as the empty frame that we found earlier in the attic. The portrait made for a heavy burden, as Fred and I learned when we had shifted it about.

  Darrell turned his camera on the portrait and snapped a few pictures. “Ghostly picture moves across the room, does it warn of doom to actors?” he intoned. Then he laughed. “That’s quite a trick, Mr Fitzmaurice. You shook them up good.”

  Sydney looked confused for a moment, then a little shifty around the eyes. “Yes,” he said, drawing it out as he considered both Dennis and Virginia, two outsiders who might tell tales around Arkham. “Never reveal all your secrets to your actors. That’s the signature of a Fitzmaurice nightmare picture.”

  Darrell nodded eagerly, slinging his camera to one side and drawing out his notebook. “I thought so,” he said with satisfaction. “Can you tell me more about what’s planned for this picture? Is it a haunted house story? Is this the picture where you reveal the meaning of the hooded man?”

  “Yes, darling Sydney,” said Eleanor with a snap. “Do tell us what all this spookery is leading to.”

  “Isn’t that your job, my dear Eleanor?” said Sydney. “Didn’t your scenario call for the sisters to feel as if their eyes are playing tricks on them? That the ghosts of their ancestors are drawing them into a waking nightmare from which they can only be freed by a masked stranger.”

  Renee gave a little theatrical yawn. “Are we going to film the scene or discuss it? Sydney, if you want me to walk in a different direction, just say so. Don’t make me hunt for that portrait of your ancestor.”