Lord of the Wings

by Donna Andrews

  I was relieved to see that as we progressed down the room we moved away from recent history. One stretch of wall contained a series of photographs of soldiers and sailors in uniforms ranging from the Civil War to the Gulf War. The signs beside the photographs revealed that most of these were from the archives of the Caerphilly Clarion, our local weekly newspaper.

  A couple of mannequins had strayed over from the faux wax end to model gowns. One was a black silk mourning dress from the 1890s, complete with intricate jet beading and enormous leg o’mutton sleeves, purportedly worn by Sophronia Pruitt to William McKinley’s presidential inauguration. The other was a drop-waisted flapper dress, covered with silver beads and matching fringe, in mint condition except for the bullet hole and bloodstain near the left shoulder.

  “That’s the dress Arabella Shiffley was wearing when the G-men shot her,” Dr. Smoot explained.

  “What had Arabella done to upset the Feds?” I asked. Randall had never mentioned this particular black sheep.

  “They weren’t aiming at her,” Dr. Smoot said. “William Pratherton, her boyfriend, was the county’s biggest bootlegger. They went down in a hail of bullets, just like Bonnie and Clyde.”

  “Here in Caerphilly?”

  He nodded.

  “Why isn’t this better known?”

  “Well, there probably weren’t quite as many bullets as with Bonnie and Clyde,” he said, looking at the single bullet hole in the dress. “And they didn’t actually die in the attack. They eventually got married and lived to a ripe old age. Billy Pratherton died in the sixties, and Arabella lived on to see the millennium.”

  I noted on the sign beside the dress that it was on loan from Arabella Pratherton Walmsley.

  “So the owner is a descendant of the once-wicked Billy and Arabella?” I asked. “Nice that she appreciates her family’s colorful history instead of being embarrassed by it.”

  “She was their great-granddaughter,” Dr. Smoot said. “Poor young woman—she was killed only a couple of months after she brought me the dress.”

  “Killed?”

  “Very sad,” Dr. Smoot said. “Hit-and-run. Not here, of course—out in California.” His tone implied that such dire consequences were only to be expected if one foolishly left the safety of the Old Dominion for the Wild West.

  “So the Prathertons also left Caerphilly for California,” Michael said.

  “Oh, no!” Dr. Smoot shuddered. “They moved to Richmond. And the Walmsleys are an old Chesterfield County family. Early on they made their money in tobacco, but they switched over to banking and insurance long before tobacco became problematic. Big donors to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Library of Virginia.”

  “And you’re hoping they’ll add the Caerphilly Museum to their charities?”

  “Alas, no.” Dr. Smoot’s face fell. “Not now. I’m afraid they rather blame me for their daughter’s death. Apparently she came home from her visit here all fired up to track down her ancestry. That’s what she was doing when she was killed. I’m not sure they’d ever be willing to donate to the museum. I’m more than half expecting them to yank away the dress any time now. I wrote them a letter of condolence when I first heard the news. They haven’t responded, so we’re rather in limbo. I’d like to clarify the dress’s status. But one doesn’t like to press at such a difficult time.”

  He gazed sadly at the dress for a few moments. Then he shook himself and put on a deliberately cheerful expression.

  “On a happier note, here’s another prize.” He pointed to a painting that hung in a place of honor with its own little light shining down to illuminate it.

  A prize? Clearly whatever value or interest the painting had was in its historical value rather than any artistic merit. It was a family portrait from the Colonial era, and although all the people in it looked awkward and misshapen, I was pretty sure this was as much the painter’s fault as theirs. The father, stern, large-jawed, and jowly in a powdered wig and a fawn-colored coat, sat at the far left of the canvas, while the mother sat to the far right, leaning away from the rest of the family as if hoping to slip off the canvas when the painter wasn’t looking. Between them were seven or eight children—all girls, with the possible exception of the infant who was about to slide headfirst off his mother’s lap. Most were seated behind or playing in front of a table that formed the center point of the painting and all shared their father’s unfortunate jawline. The oldest daughter stood behind her father, plucking the strings of a lute and looking soulful, which might have been charming if she hadn’t had the profile of a pit bull. The other children were all holding flowers or wearing headdresses made of flowers, and they all looked stiff, lumpish, and uncomfortable. Well, who could blame them? I had a hard time getting the boys to stand still for my camera. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if I asked them to pose for a painting.

  “The Paltroons,” Dr. Smoot said with pride. “A very distinguished old Virginia family.”

  I noticed he didn’t call them a very distinguished old Caerphilly family, probably because at the time the painting would have been done, Caerphilly was occupied mainly by cows, sheep, and a few early ancestors of the Shiffleys.

  “Colonel Habakkuk Paltroon was a great patriot,” Dr. Smoot went on. “And fought in the Continental Army.”

  “Is that why he’s missing a leg?” Michael asked.

  “Missing a leg?” Dr. Smoot peered at the painting. He sounded agitated. “He wasn’t missing a leg when he got here.”

  “I don’t think he’s actually missing a leg,” I said. “I think his other leg is just hidden behind the tablecloth.”

  We all three studied Habakkuk’s one visible leg for a few moments.

  “You’re right,” Michael said finally. “It just looks as if he is because from the waist down he’s facing the table, while from the waist up he’s looking out at us, with no real indication that his waist is twisted. A very uncomfortable-looking position.”

  And anatomically improbable, but I stifled the urge to say so. Dr. Smoot was so proud of the painting.

  “You had me worried for a minute,” Dr. Smoot said. “I was afraid maybe his leg had flaked off. There are a couple of areas where the paint is starting to buckle slightly. I’m afraid it may not have liked being moved. I’ve notified Mrs. Paltroon.”

  “The Mrs. Paltroon who runs the local DAR?” I asked.

  “That’s her,” he said. “A very formidable lady.”

  I’d have called her a snob and a pain in the neck, but yeah—formidable also applied. Mrs. Paltroon treated the Caerphilly DAR chapter like a personal fiefdom, and her presence probably accounted for its remarkably small size—only half a dozen or so local women seemed to be members, even though I suspected a lot more were eligible. Most of them were probably like Mother, who was an active member of the DAR in our hometown of Yorktown, but turned up her nose at the local chapter because of Mrs. Paltroon.

  Not someone I’d want to upset, though. I could tell from the anxious expression on Dr. Smoot’s face that he wasn’t keen on doing so, either.

  “Well, we have a restoration expert coming in tomorrow to take a look,” he said. “And do any necessary conservation.”

  Now that Dr. Smoot had pointed it out, I could see the slight irregularities in the surface of the paint. It looked as if Habakkuk’s coat was in danger, and also the blank back wall of the room. If I had been the unknown artist, I would have painted something along that back wall. A window, a fireplace—anything to break up the rather large area of muddy tan wall that loomed behind the assembled Paltroons.

  “Well, we’ll see what the restoration expert says,” Dr. Smoot said, visibly wrenching himself away from the painting and looking back at us. “Meanwhile, you haven’t seen the pièce de résistance.”

  He pointed to a glass case at the very back of the museum. It was a display of jewelry. Some of the pieces looked old—Victorian, Art Nouveau, or Art Deco. Others looked modern and implausibly sparkly—like a r
hinestone tiara once used, according to its label, to crown winners of the now defunct Miss Caerphilly Contest. But Dr. Smoot was indicating the object in the center of the case—the most spectacularly ugly brooch I’d ever seen. It was shaped like a black cat arching its back. The body was entirely covered with sparkly blackish stones, except for the green eyes and the colorless claws.

  “Impressive,” I said. Actually, I started to say “interesting,” but stopped in time. Michael managed to repress any urge to call it “ingenious.”

  “The body is covered with black diamonds,” Dr. Smoot said. “The eyes are emeralds, and the claws made of white diamonds. It used to belong to the Duchess of Windsor.”

  I looked back down at the brooch. Knowing it had once belonged to a famous fashion icon didn’t change my opinion of it. Spectacularly ugly.

  “What’s it doing here?” I asked.

  “The Griswalds have lent it to the museum for the time being,” Dr. Smoot said. “Mr. Griswald bought it in 2013 from Sotheby’s, and gave it to his wife as a twenty-fifth anniversary present.”

  I wondered if Mother would have pointed out that the proper gift for a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was silver, not expensive but tacky jewelry.

  “So you think this is what your intruders were after?” Michael asked.

  “It’s the most logical explanation,” Dr. Smoot said. “It’s the only really valuable piece there.”

  “The ruby ring’s fake, then?” I pointed to a white gold ring with what to my inexpert eye looked like a ruby the size of a small cherry.

  “Cubic zirconia,” Dr. Smoot said. “And the rest of this is costume jewelry, of mainly historical or sentimental value.”

  “Still, I hope you’re insured.”

  “The Griswalds insisted,” he said.

  “Any idea how the intruders got in?” Michael asked.

  “Through the back door,” Dr. Smoot replied.

  He pointed toward a black curtain that covered the back wall. I lifted one side of the curtain and saw a small, rather utilitarian black door.

  “This leads outside?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Smoot pulled the curtain aside so I could see better. “There’s an outside stairway that leads to the surface. I’d really rather close it off entirely, or bolt it securely, but the fire marshal would have a fit. So I installed one of those one-way emergency-exit-only doors.”

  There was a window in the top part of the door—small, and reinforced with a metal mesh grille over the glass. Outside, I could dimly see a concrete stairwell—painted black of course—and steep black concrete steps leading upward and then disappearing into the shrubbery that overhung the stairwell.

  “I keep the curtain over it down here,” Dr. Smoot said. “And it’s mostly hidden by a holly hedge outside.”

  “May I?” I gestured to the door, which in addition to a push bar carried a sign that warned EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY—ALARM WILL SOUND.

  “Wait till I disarm the system.” Dr. Smoot stepped over to the far wall and removed a picture of a group of World War II soldiers from its hook, revealing a keypad. He punched in a four-digit code and a disembodied female voice said “The security system is disarmed” in a tone that suggested she was disappointed with us for scorning her protection.

  “Go ahead,” Dr. Smoot said. “Of course, the police have already checked the stairwell out.”

  I opened the door and stepped out into the stairwell. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Maybe just a minute or two out of the basement, breathing fresh air instead of the slightly musty atmosphere of the museum. I climbed to the top of the stairs and looked around.

  The hedge that hid the stairwell continued all across the back of the house, and apparently also provided camouflage for an outdoor spigot and several hoses, a wheelbarrow, and various other assorted yard and garden accoutrements. A break in the hedge at the head of the stairway gave access to the yard. Beyond the chain-link outlining Dr. Smoot’s backyard, I could see the now-silent Halloween Fun Fair and beyond that the gently rustling stalks of the giant Maize Maze.

  At night, when the Fun Fair was in operation, it would be hard for anyone to notice if someone climbed over the fence to hide behind the hedge. For that matter, it would be even easier for someone leaving the Haunted House to slip sideways into the shrubbery instead of walking out to the road, and then make his way to the back of the house.

  I heard a noise and glanced over at the fence. A few tourists dressed as vampires or ghouls were peering through the fence with their fingers twined in the chain-link. They reminded me a little too much of some of the zombie apocalypse movies I’d seen, in which the menacing hordes of zombies surrounded the few surviving humans and reached through the barriers with clawlike hands—

  Then one of the tourists dispelled my dystopian vision by sticking his phone through the fence and taking a selfie of himself peering through the chain-link. Zombie hordes, maybe, but not the kind that were apt to eat any of our brains.

  I shook off my creeped-out mood and went back down the steps to where Dr. Smoot was holding the basement door for me.

  “Anything interesting?” he asked.

  “Anyone who poked around here long enough would probably assume this was the best way to sneak into the house,” I said as I slipped past him into the basement again.

  “But they’d figure out that the door was locked.” Dr. Smoot was pulling on the door to make sure it was completely closed. “So they come down here and try to prop open the door so they can sneak in later, and the alarm goes off, and I catch them and kick them out and resecure the door.”

  He walked over to the keypad and pressed in a code.

  “The door is alarmed,” said the disembodied female voice. The door might be alarmed, but she sounded profoundly indifferent.

  “Mind if I go around and check out the rest of the Haunted House,” I asked. “The chief and I think it would be a good idea to take a lot of pictures of how things are supposed to be, so we’ve got evidence, in case one of these intruders steals or damages anything. And you never know what could turn out to be evidence in the murder case.”

  “What an excellent idea!” Dr. Smoot smiled so broadly that we could get a clear view of both fangs. “Let me give you a tour!”

  I soon realized that my project might have been easier if Dr. Smoot hadn’t been quite so keen on documenting the contents of the house. He wanted to show me every item in the museum and tell me every single shred of information he knew about it, while I snapped photos from every possible angle. The inauguration ball gown alone took up seventeen photos—Dr. Smoot wanted to be sure I appreciated all the intricate tailoring, beading, and embroidery. We managed to cover Arabella Shiffley’s skimpy flapper dress in a mere ten or eleven, and then moved on to the military photographs. Dr. Smoot seemed to know every biographical detail of every soldier or sailor who appeared in them—at least the ones from Caerphilly. Fascinating to know that soldiers from tiny little Caerphilly had served in nearly every war our country had ever fought. But I wished we could postpone the full tour to a day when I didn’t have dozens of other things to do.

  Michael finally intervened.

  “Oh, my goodness!” he exclaimed, looking ostentatiously at his watch. “It’s getting close to your opening time! I think I hear one of the shuttles arriving! You must have a million things to do!”

  “Oh, dear.” Dr. Smoot looked harried. “But this is important.”

  “I tell you what,” Michael said. “You go and get the house ready to open. Meg and I will race through the photography part of the documentation, and then we can come back before you open tomorrow to record the provenance of all the objects.”

  “An excellent idea! Thank you!”

  Dr. Smoot raced away and Michael and I both let out sighs of relief.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” I said.

  “Let’s hurry up and finish this,” Michael said. “Before he decides that what we’re doing is more important than whatever
he’s doing.”

  Without Dr. Smoot’s involvement, we finished off the rest of the basement in five minutes. Another ten minutes took care of the less-cluttered first and second floors. He’d set up each of the rooms as a spooky tableau. In one room, flickering candelabra and arrangements of black flowers surrounded a coffin that slowly opened to reveal a grinning, fanged vampire. In another, he’d set up a trestle table covered with herbs and flasks and other alchemical accoutrements. Jars with labels like EYE OF NEWT and FILLET OF FENNY SNAKE suggested that this was intended to represent a sorcerer’s potion lab, and I suspected he’d be throwing bits of dry ice in some of the flasks and test tubes from time to time to produce suitable fumes.

  Still, the rooms weren’t cluttered—he’d left plenty of room for people to crowd in to admire each tableau—so photographing them was quick. Since the third floor contained only Dr. Smoot’s private quarters, we decided it fell outside the bounds of our project—though we did test to make sure he’d locked the door at the foot of the stairs that led to it.

  The whole time we were working, I couldn’t help thinking about that clearing outside the zoo fence, where Cousin Horace and the other police officers were probably taking pictures of their own. By now they’d probably already found my father, who had succeeded Dr. Smoot as the local medical examiner. Maybe the sad, rat-faced dead man was already on his way to the hospital, where Dad would perform the autopsy. And perhaps it was illogical, but I felt bad that I hadn’t stayed long enough to learn his name.

  “Mission accomplished,” Michael said, rousing me out of my preoccupation.

  “Some mission,” I said. “I know we’re mainly doing this to document how the Haunted House looks now, and maybe I should feel happy that we didn’t find anything that looked like an important clue to the murder. But still—not sure we need to rush down to the station to deliver these photos to the chief.”