Trapped in Time

by Evangeline Anderson

  “Oh, magnificent,” the other mother breathed reverently as they followed the brass butler through the entryway and into a kind of atrium. Here there were potted tropical plants—and even trees—everywhere. Overhead was a domed glass ceiling which let in the murky light of the afternoon.

  The butler halted at the entrance to the atrium and, to Caroline’s surprise, at last began to speak.

  “Mrs. Lambert and her daughter, Caroline, here to see you, Lady Harkens,” it said in a high, tinny voice that sounded like a scratchy old recording. It didn’t open its molded brass lips to speak—indeed, Caroline didn’t think they could open. Instead, the sound seemed to come from somewhere around the vicinity of its brass chest.

  “Eh—what’s that?” someone asked.

  Looking around the butler, Caroline saw a tiny, wizened old lady with silvery hair perched on a dark maroon horsehair sofa with elaborately scrolled back and sides. Sitting opposite it was a chair and a loveseat, both the same shade of maroon and both clearly part of the set.

  Surrounded, as they were, by the tall, leafy potted plants and trees, it looked like someone had taken a fabulously expensive drawing room set and plunked it down in the middle of the rain forest.

  “What did you say?” the little old lady asked again. Picking up a curly silver ear trumpet, which looked to Caroline a little like a miniature French Horn, she put the small end to her ear and looked expectantly at the butler.

  But the other mother was, apparently, too eager to wait for a second introduction from the mechanical servant.

  “Oh, Lady Harkens,” she bawled, stepping forward and raising her voice until Caroline winced. “I am Mrs. Lambert and this is my daughter, Caroline. We are so honored to be taking tea with you today!”

  “Tea, is it?” At first the little old lady looked confused, but then she seemed to recollect herself and nodded eagerly. “Ah yes—tea! Quite right—William said you would be coming. Please—be seated.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” The other mother gave her a deep curtsey and Caroline did her best to follow suite, though she had never learned to curtsey in her life. After a moment, she and the other mother were seated across from Lord Harkens’ mother.

  The other mother took the love seat, so Caroline settled herself on the chair. This way, she reasoned, she was out of elbowing or pinching range—the other mother wasn’t above such tactics to let her know when she was doing something wrong—which seemed to be nearly always.

  “Now then, Jock.” Lady Harkens addressed herself to the Tick-Tock butler. Perhaps because of her hearing loss, she misjudged the sound of her own voice so that she was practically shouting at the mechanical servant. “Bring tea!” she yelled at him. “Lots of cucumber sandwiches! Oh, and that new sweetening syrup too—I like that!”

  The butler bowed jerkily. “Yes, Milady,” the tinny, mechanical voice said, issuing again from its chest. Then it walked off with its stiff-legged gait, leaving the three of them alone.

  Caroline sat quietly while the other mother attempted to make polite conversation with Lady Harkens. She might have tried to join in—as revolting as she found the Viscount himself, his mother seemed nice enough—but the other mother talked so much there wasn’t much for her to do but nod at intervals in the shouted conversation.

  At last another brass Tick-Tock servant came into the atrium, pushing a silver tea service on a rolling cart. This one was a maid, with a molded brass dress that seemed to be part of her legs for it split down the center when she walked. She lifted the heavy silver tea tray and placed it down on a low table in front of Lady Harkens. Then she looked at the old lady, her yellow lamp-like eyes glowing.

  “Will there be anything else, my Lady?” she asked. Once again, the voice issued from the chest and Caroline was startled to find that it was the exact same voice the butler had used. Maybe whoever invented these things only had access to one voice and had used it for all the Tick-Tocks. Whatever the case, it sounded just as eerie coming from the maid as it had from the butler.

  “No, Matilda, you may go!” bawled Lady Harkens. Then she addressed herself to pouring out the tea. Caroline was a little afraid that the steaming silver teapot might be too heavy for her to handle, but the little old lady seemed to be stronger than she looked because she handled the tea pouring with ease.

  “Now then,” she shouted at the other mother. “Will you have sugar or sweetening syrup in your tea? I have a new kind that comes all the way from the New World and it’s very tasty indeed—it gives one such a lift.”

  “No sugar for me, Lady Harkens if you please!” the other mother shouted back. “But Caroline will have some—she takes her tea quite sweet.”

  “Yes, yes—sweets to the sweet!” Lady Harkens cackled as she dropped three sugar cubes into Caroline’s teacup and then added a heavy dollop of pale golden syrup from a brown glass bottle.

  Caroline wondered if her tea was going to taste like pancakes—was the stuff from the “New World” maple syrup? But luckily when she took a sip, there was no maple flavor at all—it was simply very sweet tea.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?” the old lady asked loudly, smiling at her. “I only take a little myself because too much gives me heart palpitations but a young miss like you can certainly have more and appreciate the flavor.”

  Did too much sugar really give her heart palpitations, Caroline wondered. How strange—but whatever.

  “It’s very good, thank you, Lady Harkens,” she said loudly and distinctly.

  “Yes, yes—you enjoy it, my dear!” The old lady nodded at her eagerly, making a motion for her to drink up.

  Since Caroline liked sweet tea and because Lady Harkens was watching, she went ahead and drained the cup. But only moments after setting it back down on her saucer, she began to feel strange.

  First, a rush of heat seemed to go through her and then her heart began to pound like a drum. Her palms began to sweat inside her proper lace gloves and she felt suddenly as though she was tingling all over.

  Oh my God—what’s wrong with me? What’s happening? Is something affecting me? What was in that tea?

  She glanced at the silver tea service and her eyes fell on the brown glass bottle sitting beside the sugar bowl. There was a label on it, but Caroline couldn’t read it from where she was sitting.

  “Excuse me, Lady Harkens,” she said loudly. “But could I see that bottle of sweetening syrup please? I’d like to know what’s in it.”

  “What’s in it, you say?” the old lady shouted. “Why nothing but cane sugar and a bit of cocaine—that’s all, my dear.”

  “Cocaine?” Caroline looked at her, wide-eyed. “You poured cocaine in my tea?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she jumped up and grabbed for the bottle. Turning it over, she read the label.

  “Mrs. Winslow’s Delight—a sweetening concoction which will lift your spirits!” it read. “Made of only the finest cane sugar and the purest extract of cocaine.”

  “Oh my God,” Caroline muttered, her heart pounding harder than ever. “There really is cocaine in this!”

  “Caroline, whatever is the matter with you?” the other mother demanded. “You’re being abominably rude! Sit down at once.”

  “Cocaine—she put cocaine in my tea! Right in my tea and I drank it—I drank it all!” Caroline exclaimed. She was aware that she was talking very loud and fast but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

  “What of it?” The other mother looked irritated. “There is cocaine in a great many things, as you know. My friend, Mrs. Fellows, swears by the cocaine throat drops she takes to control her allergies. And only yesterday Mrs. Bunting was telling me of the miraculous cocaine soothing syrup she uses on her youngest child, Violet—she tells me it helps her overcome her excessive shyness.”

  “I’m sure it does—she’s probably tripping balls,” Caroline said bluntly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. You can’t talk like that! whispered a worried little voice in her head. You can’t, Caroline—eve
ryone will think you’re mad and they’ll throw you in the mad house. You have to be careful—you can’t let anyone know where you’re really from or they’ll call you crazy and lock you up tighter than Mr. Rochester’s first wife!

  “What are you talking about?” the other mother demanded, glaring up at her. “Why would cocaine syrup make poor little Violet trip on a ball?”

  “I have to go,” Caroline babbled, putting the cocaine sweetening syrup down on the tea tray. “I have to use the ladies room—the necessary room, I mean.”

  This seemed to be something that Lady Harkens understood.

  “Oh yes, the necessary,” she said loudly. “That way, my dear.”

  She pointed to the exit from the atrium, opposite the way they had come in.

  “Caroline Lambert, don’t you dare—” the other mother began but Caroline had already fled, hear heart pounding and hear palms sweating as she tried desperately to get away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Caroline had never been good at recreational drug use. She’d tried smoking pot in college with her roommate and the result had been comical—well, for anyone watching her, that was. For Caroline herself, it was terrifying.

  “I swear, Caroline—I never saw anyone get so paranoid so fast,” her roommate had said. “Pot is supposed to make you feel relaxed—not stress you out!”

  But it didn’t work that way for Caroline—it made her feel miserable and anxious and extremely dizzy. She felt a little bit like that now, as she wandered through the bewildering maze of Thrashings Hall. Only this time, her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to shake her entire body and she was beginning to feel sick to her stomach.

  God, how much did she give me—how much cocaine did I actually ingest? she wondered shakily. She knew that, as a stimulant, cocaine was supposed to produce a feeling of euphoria, but it wasn’t working like that for her. Then again, lots of drugs didn’t work right for her—her mother—her real mother—had told the story countless times of how she’d tried giving Caroline half a Benadryl when she was little to help her sleep through a long plane ride.

  “Oh my God, she was practically climbing the walls!” her mother used to say. “For a solid four hours! It was a wonder they didn’t stop the plane and kick us off! As it was, they just asked us never to come back. I didn’t fly Southwest again for ten years because of that!”

  It was a funny story that always made people laugh, but the way her system reacted to drugs—even over the counter drugs—was no laughing matter to Caroline. And now she was stuck trying to process what was basically a huge shot of cocaine without even access to a modern medical facility to help her.

  There was no poison control center to call—and no phone to call it on. And probably if she went to see a doctor here, they would prescribe her more cocaine, since the stuff was apparently in such common use. Probably they would…

  “Wait—where am I?” Caroline asked herself out loud. She didn’t like how high and shaky her voice sounded—or the fact that she had somehow wandered into a long, dark hallway with patterned wallpaper and thick carpeting that looked like something out of The Shining.

  There were doors on either side and she still needed to find the “necessary” in case she puked. Also, she wanted to get out of this hallway. She half-expected to see two twin girls inviting her to play with them forever and ever appear at any minute.

  Blindly, Caroline grabbed for the nearest doorknob—an elaborate silver filigreed affair that felt cold to her sweating palm—and twisted it to the right. With a shove, the door moved inward and she found herself in a magnificent set of rooms.

  First was a sitting room with a delicate set of furniture—a sofa and two chairs—all with spindly legs and pale blue satin upholstery. Two tall gaslight floor lamps with beaded blue and pink shades that looked like something from Tiffany’s sat on either side of the couch. The walls had hand-painted pastoral scenes of a happy blonde shepherdess leading a flock of fluffy white sheep over a green field.

  There were two other doors on the far wall and Caroline hoped that one of them might be a necessary room or “water closet.” Did they have en suite bathrooms here? These rooms certainly appeared opulent enough to have one. She walked past the pretty, feminine furniture and opened the nearest door.

  But instead of a bathroom, she found herself in a bedchamber as elegant as the sitting room outside it.

  This room was done in rose pink and gold, with a vast, canopied bed fit for a princess. But it wasn’t the elaborate silk comforter or the dainty white dressing table that drew Caroline’s gaze.

  Hanging on the opposite wall were two pictures of two completely different women. Were they somehow related and why were they hanging in this room?

  For some reason, she felt drawn to the pictures. Before she knew it, she found herself drifting around the corner of the vast bed to stand before them and see them better.

  The first was a young woman with dark, laughing eyes and curly blonde hair—at least, Caroline thought she was blonde. It was difficult to say since the picture had been taken in black and white but her hair seemed light enough. The girl was smiling and she had on full skirts and a dark dress that showed off her curving hourglass figure to a T. She was really pretty, with a soft oval face and a tiny mole near the right corner of her mouth—no doubt they would call it a “beauty mark” here.

  Blonde hair, full figure…it struck Caroline that the girl in the picture didn’t look unlike herself.

  She could be my sister—if I had one, she thought uneasily. What was going on here? Why had she been drawn to this room to look at this particular picture? Was someone playing an elaborate prank on her?

  Of course, if she hadn’t still been feeling the effects of the cocaine, she never would have suspected such a thing. But at the moment the idea that some darker force was at work and it had drawn her to a specific room in this gloomy mansion seemed perfectly plausible.

  Feeling more and more uneasy, Caroline turned to stare at the second picture, which was surrounded by a braided wreath made of some kind of thin string or yarn. She thought—as she had at first—that the second picture must be of a different woman. A much thinner, paler, older woman. But then she saw the beauty mark, by the right corner of the mouth—a mouth that was no longer smiling.

  Indeed, the mouth gaped open in this picture, showing teeth that had been eroded into crumbling nubs. The profusion of curly blond hair was so much thinned there was almost none of it left. The poor woman looked like she’d undergone some kind of chemotherapy, only Caroline knew for a fact that there was nothing like that kind of advanced medical technique available here. And her eyes…

  Her dark eyes were sunken and ringed with bruised-looking circles. They were staring, apparently right into the camera, only you could tell they weren’t seeing anything. In fact, her eyes looked…

  “Dead—she looks dead,” Caroline whispered to herself, her heart pounding.

  “Ah yes, well I’m afraid she was—my poor darling,” a voice behind her said.

  It startled Caroline so much that she jumped and let out a scream that was really more of a shriek.

  She turned to see who had spoken and found herself faced with Lord Harkens. She tried to say something but found that she couldn’t. Her heart seemed to have crammed itself into her throat, making it impossible to breathe, let alone speak.

  “What…how…?” she finally managed to pant out.

  “I might ask you the same thing, my dear.” His voice was mild but his eyes flashed dangerously. Today he was dressed in a magnificent blood-red waistcoat with golden embroidery. That, along with his black frock coat, made him look like a black and red billiard ball, Caroline thought.

  “I…I was looking for the…the necessary room,” she got out at last. “But I got lost.”

  “Yes, Thrashings can be quite a maze. Still, I have to wonder at the luck which sent you here, to the apartments of my last Viscountess. My poor, sad Sylvia.”

  “She…sh
e was your last—your late wife, I mean?” Caroline asked.

  He nodded. “She died in that very bed, poor dear. I had the Daguerreotypist take her likeness after she was at peace.”

  “You…you had her picture taken after she was dead?” Caroline couldn’t keep the revulsion out of her voice.

  “Well, naturally—as one does.” Lord Harkens spoke as though it wasn’t at all unusual to take pictures of dead loved ones before they were buried.

  “But that’s horrible! Why?” Caroline heard herself asking. Maybe if she hadn’t had the cocaine in her system she could have just nodded politely. But having the stimulant coursing through her bloodstream seemed to have erased all the barriers between her brain and her mouth. Whatever she thought just came right out.

  The portly Viscount looked surprised and possibly offended at her question.

  “Why, to have something to remember her by, of course,” he said stiffly. “For the same reason I had her maid save all the hair that fell from her dear head—to make it into a wreath.” He nodded at the pale wreath surrounding the picture which Caroline had assumed was woven of some kind of thin string.

  Hair, she thought sickly. Oh my God, it’s actually made of a dead woman’s hair! He saved it as she was dying and then he made it into a wreath and used it to frame her picture—a picture he took after she was already dead!

  It was something a serial killer would do—Caroline was sure of it. She remembered what Richard had said about the suspicious way the last Lady Harkens had died.

  Poison, she thought. You awful man—you poisoned her! And then you took a picture of her and saved her hair as a trophy! You’re a serial killer!

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Lambert—or shall I call you Mrs. Vii? I am not a killer of any kind—let alone a poisoner—and how dare you accuse me in my own home?”

  Lord Harkens’ face was as red as his waistcoat and he was looking at her angrily. Caroline realized with a sinking feeling that the words hadn’t just been in her brain—she had actually spoken them aloud.