by William Bell
She placed the tea tray on the table, then added a plate of steaming biscuits and a bowl of pale yellow butter. She sat, her erect spine at least ten centimetres from the chair back.
“Are you enjoying this lovely weather?” she enquired woodenly.
I hated small talk. “Yes. Nice riding weather today. Motorcycle, that is-not horse.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I ride a motorcycle. A Honda Hawk 650.”
“Indeed.” Mrs. Stoppini poured the tea. “Milk? Sugar?”
I said no thanks to both and accepted the cup. Close up, her long face, with its wan complexion, was startling. She had unusually thin lips and had applied her lipstick beyond their borders to make her mouth appear fuller. The effect was both comical and eerie.
She seemed to sense that I wasn’t up for a lot of chit-chat and got right to the point. “Mr. Grenoble has informed me that you may wish to lease the coach house,” she began.
“I’m interested,” I said. “That’s the building to the right of the house as I came in?”
She nodded, took a sip of her tea, and whacked the cup back onto the saucer, rattling the spoon.
“But I’ll have to take a good look at it before I make up my mind,” I added.
“Let us assume for the moment that you find it suitable,” she countered.
“And you need to realize that a woodshop can be noisy now and again.”
“That will not be a problem.”
I didn’t have much experience at negotiations. My father was a championship haggler who enjoyed bargaining over antiques at the store. He handled all the sales. I stayed away from that part of the business as much as I could. But if I wanted my own shop, I’d have to learn how to be a businessman. Sooner or later we’d have to talk money. Should I bring it up now? I wondered. I took a sip of tea to stall a little.
“With your permission, Mr. Havelock,” she put in, beating me to the punch, “I wish to put to you a proposition.”
I nodded, relieved that she’d taken the initiative. “Okay.”
“You may find it a trifle unusual.”
If it’s half as unusual as the person making it, I thought, it’s bound to be strange.
“And,” she went on, “I am obliged to inform you that I have made certain discreet enquiries.”
“Er, I don’t follow.”
“Concerning your family-and, of course, you. Please don’t be offended. What I am about to propose-and I would not have agreed to this meeting had I not received a glowing report on the Havelocks-requires that I place in you a considerable degree of trust.”
“You had me and my family investigated?” I blurted. “Who do you think-?”
“Do calm yourself, Mr. Havelock, I beg you,” she exclaimed, eyes bulging. “I merely enquired of my lawyer, who is well acquainted with the town, whereas I am not. The late professor and I have led an extremely reclusive life here. All it took was a phone call. I say again: please do not take offence. My precaution-you will agree, I am sure, once you hear my ideas-was quite necessary.”
I struggled to hold down my anger. Well, you horse-faced, dried-up old stick, I can push too.
“I’ll have to look over the coach house before we go any further,” I said, setting my cup and saucer on the table and getting to my feet.
Mrs. Stoppini’s thick dark brows dived toward the bridge of her nose. She was about to object, but she checked herself. She seemed used to getting her own way. Not this time.
“If you insist,” she said.
II
I KEPT MY ENTHUSIASM reined in as I looked the coach house over from the inside. There were three overhead garage doors at the front, with a standard entrance on the side facing the main house. Big windows on three walls provided lots of natural light to supplement the overhead fixtures. The concrete floor looked recently painted and was as clean as a dinner plate. The building was fully insulated, and there were electrical outlets spaced every two metres or so along the walls. The power supply-unusual for a garage-looked adequate for my needs.
When I returned to the kitchen Mrs. Stoppini was at the sink rinsing the tea cups.
“Will it suit, do you think?” she asked, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
“It’s perfect,” I was tempted to say. But I settled for “I think it might.”
“Very well. Shall we sit down again and discuss the details?”
Like an awkward kid assembling a difficult Lego figure, Mrs. Stoppini made what she probably thought was a smile.
“Mr. Havelock, I very much hope that you will permit me to describe my proposal in full before you respond,” she began, with her precise enunciation.
“Okay.”
“Splendid. The enquiries I made of my lawyer yielded certain information which I found very much to my satisfaction, and which allowed me to hope you could be of considerable assistance to me and to the late Professor Corbizzi.” She cleared her throat. “I am prepared to lease the coach house to you, exclusively, for a period of three years, for the sum of one dollar.”
“One d-”
She held up a bony hand, palm toward me. “If you please, Mr. Havelock. There is more.”
I recalled Marco Grenoble’s warning: with the Corbizzis there are always strings attached.
Mrs. Stoppini rolled on. “I must share certain information that I will rely upon you to treat with the utmost confidence.”
Meaning, don’t tell anybody. I nodded.
“Indeed, as the late Professor Corbizzi was, and I remain, an extremely private person, everything I am about to tell you must remain confidential. I have been his housekeeper and companion for the past twenty years, first in Italy and then, for a decade or more, here. Professor Corbizzi was a Renaissance scholar, specializing in Tuscan history. He published several books and many articles. He was always devoted to his studies, but toward the end he became more reclusive, even secretive, spending most of his day behind the closed doors of his library. He passed away suddenly-this is, of course, common knowledge. What is not well known is that there was… an incident that immediately preceded his death. An accident. A small fire. These details are my affair, and mine alone.”
She paused and looked at her hands folded in her lap. It was the first time since I’d met her that she seemed to soften, even to search for words. But then she looked up, her composure restored.
“That is the first fact that is pertinent to your decision. The second is this: I am the executrix of the late Professor Corbizzi’s last will and testament. I now own this estate and most of its contents, but nevertheless I require an inventory of Professor Corbizzi’s effects, for legal reasons. A person in my position must conduct matters transparently, so as to satisfy relations who may or may not benefit from the late professor’s will. A certain university is also a beneficiary of a number of items. The objects in the rest of the house I can deal with myself, but to note all the contents of the library is too daunting a challenge even for me. Besides, I… do not wish to be in the library. At all. The late professor seldom permitted it, and in any case I am not… comfortable there.
“This brings me to the third and last item apposite to this discussion, and one that relates directly to your skills and experience. The fire-it was small and easily brought under control-occurred in the library. The authorities concluded that the fireplace was the source, and that the professor, felled by the seizure that ended his life, somehow dislodged a burning log, which then rolled onto the carpet, setting it alight. There is damage to the fireplace mantel, which is of wood, and perhaps the bookshelves on one side, as well as the floor. I trust I have been clear so far?”
“Yes,” I answered, my mind darting about, chasing dozens of questions flushed by her story. “Very clear.”
“I now come to my proposal. In exchange for the three-year lease on the coach house, I require you to complete two tasks. You will repair all damage done by the fire, and you will make the necessary inventory of the library’s contents. You may,
within reason, take as long as you deem necessary. I shall provide you with an electronic key to the gate, and you may come and go as you wish. I am always here. I never leave the estate.”
The impulsive angel on my right shoulder whispered, “One dollar! Go for it! Now, before she changes her mind! This is a sweet deal!” The logical angel on my left shoulder cautioned, “Maybe this is too good to be true. Remember? The Corbizzis? Strings? Tell her you need a day or so to think about it. Don’t rush into something you might regret.”
Mrs. Stoppini saved me from being pummelled half to death by two imaginary and opinionated spirits. “I should think you’ll want a day or two to think it over,” she suggested.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Fine. Shall we say two days from today? You may telephone at any time. In the meantime, perhaps you’d care to examine the library?”
I followed the wiry black form of Mrs. Stoppini as she glided along panelled halls, this time to the east wing of the house. Our feet whispered on the oriental rug that covered the central part of the dark hardwood floor. She stopped before a beautifully carved double pocket door sporting a set of brass lion’s-head knobs-smaller versions of the ones on the front door. Mrs. Stoppini rolled the doors open.
Stepping back and to the side she said, “Please enter. I shall be in the kitchen.”
“But-”
“I don’t go in there,” she reminded me.
I heard the doors closing behind me.
III
THE LIBRARY WASN’T in the east wing of the house, it was the east wing-a spacious room full of light, with a view of the lake through wide corner windows, a stone fireplace, antique rugs arranged on the hardwood floor among trestle tables and leather club chairs, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall. I could easily imagine that it had once been a comfortable, restful place where a scholar might spend the day reading for pleasure, doing research, or writing a thesis.
But it didn’t seem that way now. Dozens of books lay scattered on the floor at the end of the room, as if someone had frantically yanked them off the shelves and flung them to the ground. A dark oblong on the hardwood floor indicated that a rug had once lain in front of the hearth between two chairs. One of the chairs lay on its back. Charred wood and blistered varnish scarred the wooden mantel, and tongues of soot streaked the wall and ceiling above the fireplace.
Mrs. Stoppini had said that Professor Corbizzi had suffered some sort of deadly seizure, and the appearance of the room told me it must have been violent. He had probably knocked the heavy chair over when he fell, and when his body hit the rug, the tremor caused a log to roll off the hearth, starting the fire. I shuddered, picturing an old man lying amid smoke and flames, helpless, unable to save himself. I hoped he was dead before the fire got to him.
The professor must have hurled the books to the floor before he fell. Why? What had sparked the kind of rage that made a scholar throw his books around and wreck his own room? Had his anger brought on the fit that killed him? Or had it been panic rather than fury? Had he been searching desperately for something before the seizure came?
The atmosphere of the place was oppressive and vaguely threatening, despite the sunlight streaming through the windows. The heavy air stank from the damp ash and charred logs in the fireplace. The odour of smoke clung to the window curtains. Against my will, I imagined the professor sprawled before the hearth, dying as the rug smouldered around him. Were his sudden attack and the damage to the library the causes of the uneasiness that seeped into me like cold water? Why was I weighed down by the impression that the room didn’t want me there?
Unconsciously, I shrank back. Then I swallowed, took a deep breath, and reminded myself that I was there for a reason. I had work to do.
I took a slow tour of the room, moving instinctively away from the fireplace and toward the windows on the south side. To the right of the door was an escritoire with an ancient, clunky-looking black Underwood typewriter on top, along with a small brass lamp and an old-fashioned straight pen and inkwell. A chair was tucked under the desk, and a low filing cabinet stood to one side. There was no computer or printer, not even a telephone.
Trestle tables had been placed along the south and east walls, leaving room to walk between them and the bookshelves. Set into the northeast corner, where most of the displaced books lay scattered on the floor around a square oak table lying on its side, was an alcove with a small cupboard built into the shelves.
I was anxious to get out of there, but I forced myself to calm down and think. I returned to the fireplace and sat in the upright club chair. Mrs. Stoppini had described two jobs-inventory and repair-as part of the deal. The first would be mostly a catalogue of the books in the room-the contents of the escritoire and cupboard shouldn’t take more than a day. I counted the volumes on one shelf, then multiplied by the number of shelves, which, not including the alcove, were pretty much the same length throughout the room. Well over four thousand books-a huge, time-consuming, and phenomenally boring job. But possibly simple, depending on how much detail Mrs. Stoppini wanted catalogued. A list of titles, or titles with authors’ names, was easiest because these were printed on the books’ spines. I wouldn’t have to take the books down from the shelves.
But if Mrs. Stoppini required copyright date, publisher, and edition-the kind of information Dad noted carefully whenever he found an old volume that might be worth something-then every single book would have to be examined. A forever job. I’d be as old as Mrs. Stoppini, and probably just as eccentric, before I finished. I made a mental note to find out exactly what she needed before I committed myself. It seemed strange that an academic wouldn’t keep a catalogue of his own books, though. Maybe I’d find one somewhere and knock off one of Mrs. Stoppini’s tasks right away.
Feeling more optimistic, I got up and examined the shelves to the left and right of the mantel, looking for signs of heat damage. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was intruding into something that had nothing to do with me, and that I was being watched. I forced myself to concentrate.
The shelves seemed unharmed, but they’d need to be cleared to make sure. The mantel itself was a fussy, old-fashioned design in thickly varnished oak, finished in red mahogany. A little railing, about four centimetres high, with tiny urn-shaped balusters, skirted the outside edge of the shelf. The panels down each side of the fireplace opening had small decorative shelves also bordered by little dowel fences. The mantel was not only charred from the heat of the fire but also warped beyond hope. So, another question for Mrs. Stoppini: replicate the mantel or replace it with a simpler design?
Conscious of the resentment that seemed to seep from every corner of the silent library, I left the room without looking back.
UNLIKE RAPHAELLA, I had always been a two-brained personality. I had a sort of divided and contradictory way of looking at the world. One part of me was scientific and logical, with a love of gadgets and gizmos. The other I didn’t know how to describe-spiritual? intuitive? Raphaella called the first one “techno-mode,” and until getting to know her I saw things from that perspective most of the time. She brought out the other side of me, the part that realized some of the best things about my life, like love, exhilaration, friendship, couldn’t be measured or explained and weren’t always predictable. Both of us had learned from experience that spirits and what we called “presences”-the remains of minds or souls who came before us-existed all around us, and that Raphaella had been born with a gift that allowed her to sense them much more deeply than I could. I wasn’t New Age, or whatever it was called. I wasn’t about to change my name to Prairie Sunburst or something. But the threatening undercurrent in the dead professor’s library was as strong-and as real-as the chaos of scattered books and the stink of smoke, and I knew there was no way I could ignore it.
Three
I
“HOUSEKEEPER AND COMPANION, she said?”
“Yup. Her very words.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm
indeed, as Mrs. Stoppini would put it.”
“Of course, companion could mean a number of things,” Raphaella mused.
“My theory is that they lived common-law because one of them was legally tied to someone else.”
“But why describe yourself as a housekeeper if you’re partners?”
“Who knows?”
As I set up the rice steamer, chopped vegetables, and arranged spices at the counter in our kitchen, I filled Raphaella in on the offer Mrs. Stoppini had made me earlier that day. Raphaella was sitting at the table with a cup of green tea, watching me work.
I crushed a green and a red chili, a couple of cloves of garlic, some black peppercorns, and a bit of shredded ginger, and put them in a small bowl. In another dish I piled the vegetables-snow peas, whole baby corn, diced red bell pepper, and chopped spring onion. Rice noodles were soaking in a bath of warm water beside a platter of raw shrimp, shelled and de-veined. I hauled a big iron wok out of the cupboard beside the sink and set it on the stove.
“Are you going to accept?” Raphaella asked.
A polished copper ankh hung from her neck on a leather thong. As usual-and, I sometimes thought, only to tempt me-she wore her hair long, caught at the back of her neck with a sterling silver brooch. She was wearing black denims, leather sandals, and a canary yellow T-shirt depicting a street sign in crimson across the curvy front.