The Dark Closet

by Beall, Miranda

  But he never did.

  There was no two and two for this. It was then that she realized that Jake was not what she had thought he was. He was a fraud. Bellicose and aggressive though he was, he would miss things—like the absence of the bullets. He terrorized her with words to keep her from leaving. And it was this revelation, this epiphany, that finally gave her the courage to leave. And there was only one way to do it. There would be no marching out the door. Jake had somehow through words alone insulated the entire apartment with an invisible fence that would spew and spatter its electricity should she touch it.

  No, there was only one way to do it: leave on a mundane errand and never come back. Pristine in its simplicity. She wondered how long it would take for him to realize she was gone.

  But for all Jake’s bullying, he finally appeared to have a few secrets of his own. It was not until several years ago that she learned quite accidentally while flipping through a friend’s coffee-table book Civil War Soldiers that the history behind Jake’s Company of New York Zouaves of which he so often and so proudly claimed his great grandfather to be a member. Apparently, men of this regiment had come from the cream of New York’s society, and membership in it was as much a social coup in New York as membership in the Barrow Garden Club was a social coup there. Its men all supplied their own equipment and uniforms and drilled on a monthly basis until the regiment was called to Washington in 1861 when General George B. McClellan was called to command the Army of the Potomac against an invasion of Maryland by General Lee. At first she laughed. So where was Jake’s ancestral money?

  “What happened?” she had boldly asked him. “Don’t tell me the family fortune was squandered?”

  He had laughed a guttural, throaty, truculent laugh, throwing back his head and exposing his knobby Adam’s apple. The sound had made her feel as though she was standing naked, and she felt the muscles of her pelvis begin to draw up.

  “No, Lieutenant Shadrack Hawkins preferred poverty to not finding the Wighte emerald necklace.”

  It was such a bizarre thing to say that she never questioned it. Instinct told her in sudden swift revelation that the answer marked her place in a continuum of time along which she slipped according to the orchestrated movements of a confederacy of souls bound for the same destiny, fated to live it regardless of the number of human lives it took to do so, regardless of the eons of time it might consume. The intensity of the moment convinced her for its split second of the truth of the vision, but it passed in the exhalation of a breath leaving her with only the memory of it to ponder.

  Crossett was studying the article again. If ever the necklace were found, he thought, its finder would be wealthy indeed. Seven four-carat emeralds set in a 24-carat gold rope, a gift from King Henry VII to May Lamerie Wighte in the hopes that she would return the largesse. The stuff of legends. Such fabulous pieces of jewelry simply did not exist except in tall tales (The Rambler had that right) of local history. And the silver? Probably that did exist and as many pieces as The Rambler reported: 18 caudle cups; 14 sterling silver candelabras; ten keyhole-design porringers; a Sheffield plate monteith bowl; two snuffboxes, a fruit basket, six tureens, and nine wine coolers; twelve sets of silverware dating from 1653 to 1860; the list was almost endless. Their marks included those of John Hull; Paul Lamerie; Hester Bateme; Philip Syng, Jr.; Abraham Dubois; Benjamin Wynkoop; Gerrit Onckelbag; and Bartholomew LeRoux. It was likely, Crossett mused, the silver had been buried when the family realized Union troops were headed their way, and it was even more likely it had all been unearthed long ago, when slaves who had run off the night the mistress of Wightefield was killed returned to sift through what the troops had left behind. Or maybe the Union soldiers found it and carried it all off. Or carpetbaggers, looters, runaways, maroons—

  Who knew?

  Strange, he thought the article appearing now. Why, it was just a few weeks ago Twynne and he were talking about Barrow ghosts—in fact, Twynne had mentioned the Wighte ghost but said he did not know much about it. What had he said? Perhaps he should look into it? He certainly was absorbed in the history of the region. Maybe he found something out and spoke to the mysterious Rambler himself; perhaps he encouraged him to write such a piece as was spread before him now. He would have to ask Twynne sometime.

  He looked back down at the article.

  “ ‘The figure of a woman has been seen in the front parlor of Wightefield,’ “ he read aloud. “ ‘She performs no determinate actions but reportedly has appeared on several occasions in close proximity to the hearth. Descendants say—‘That can’t be you.’ “ He twisted to look at Lamerie, but she did not answer, “ ‘—reports of a woman’s appearances date back to shortly after the Civil War, the earliest of which was an eyewitness by Ester, a house slave who returned to Wightefield a few months after its attack under the leadership of Lieutenant Shadrack Hawkins of the Company of New York Zouaves. The slave claimed—‘ “

  “Who?”

  ”What?”

  “Who led the attack?” Lamerie was on her elbow now, pulling herself over top of Crossett.

  “Somebody named Hawkins.”

  “The full name,” she said grabbing for the paper. “What is the full name?”

  “Wait!” Crossett exclaimed, holding the paper out of her reach. “Let me look. Here. ‘Lieutenant Shadrack Hawkins.’.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked softly, dropping back.

  “Yes, that’s what it says. ‘Shadrack Hawkins.’ An awful name, huh? You should be glad you’re married to a Jake Hawkins.”

  Lamerie felt the rush once again, the sensation of being levitated for a hollow second in time, as if she had been transported to a different dimension just long enough to know she had been there and that it existed. Then the weight returned to her body, as if she had landed again in herself.

  “Where was I?” Crossett trailed his index finger down the page. “Oh, yes. Here—‘to have seen the deceased Mrs. Wighte in the parlor and being relieved to find her mistress unharmed and still living in the house, fell at the woman’s feet weeping, but found when she looked up that the lady had vanished. She and another prodigal slave searched the house but found no other living soul. The did, however, find a fresh shallow grave in the family cemetery many yards from the house which they claimed was the grave of Lamerie Tailler Wighte and produced her engraved wedding ring as proof.’ Well that’s quite a story,” he interpolated. “ ‘Trespassers,’ , “ he continued reading, “ ‘have narrated like experiences but as their presence at the house raised certain legal questions they were often unwilling to elaborate on their stories or commit them to paper.’ “

  “ ‘It is pure conjecture to suppose that these sightings are in any way connected with the fabled Wighte emerald necklace passed down from mother to daughter since 1552. Not seen since Lamerie Tailler Wighte wore it on the day of the sixth anniversary of her marriage to Robert J. Wighte on June 21, 1858, the necklace has inspired much conjecture as to its whereabouts over the last century and more. One theory holds that the necklace is in the possession of its rightful owner.’ “ Crossett paused in his reading and looked at Lamerie with intense interest. “ ‘Lamerie Wighte also received on her wedding day 800 acres, including the house, of her father’s 2,000-acre holding, called Wightefield. It was another custom of the Wightes to pass on to the eldest daughter, along with the necklace, the house at Wightefield, referred to locally as both the Wightehouse and Wightefield. Much of the enormous land holding that constituted the original land grant to Jacob Wighte in 1657 was lost during the Civil War. The remainder of the property, excluding the house, now belongs to Mr. Harford Saxon.’ “ Crossett lay the paper down.” Nothing much new in that,” he said softly.

  “The front parlor is awfully cold,” Lamerie murmured. “Always was.”

  “How can you tell? There hasn’t been heat in there for decades.”

  “All of Wightefield is mine, not Jake’s, but the front parlor belongs to someone else.”


  “Too many stories,” Crossett said loudly as he folded the paper and slid it across the polished wooden floor. Its journey was ended by the obstruction of the door against which it landed with a light thump. He twisted around to look at Lamerie’s face framed by the white muslin pillow case. Her dark hair was breathtaking, her deep brown eyes like earthy pools stranded from a wooded stream, the lines of her jaw and cheeks as finely chiseled as that which the winds fashion on the rocky face of a cliff with the temperance of time. He drew her bare body to his beneath the heavy woolen blankets. It was too bad Lamerie did not have the money. But she did have the name, and that was important.

  She was suitable as a mistress.

  Chapter 7

  “You’ll be interested to see this,” Twynne smiled as he handed the newspaper to Crossett who was stepping back to let Anne enter first. The flickering twinkle in Twynne’s eyes did not escape Crossett as Twynne raised the folded newspaper to hail a friend walking up the icy path to his door.

  “You’re mighty brave to go through with this anyway, despite the weather,” laughed the newcomer.

  Twynne waved a hand. “No trouble a ‘tall,” he replied smiling broadly.

  “But how does Maragret feel about it? Someone further back in the line of new arrivals called.

  “You know Maragret. She loves a party!”

  The statement was not entirely true. While she loved a party as much as anyone, she was not partial to holding one in the dead of winter after the second worse snowstorm of the century. It posed all kinds of problems. Where the guests would park was a monumental one. Usually a section of the post-and-rail fence of the nearest fallow field was taken down to admit cars, and the rolling hills undulated with reflective chrome and questing antennas. In the snow there was no problem with removing a section of fence, but while the cars might get in, there was no guarantee that they could get out. So the cars were parked all up and down the half-mile driveway, their antennas tentatively examining the icy nodules frozen to the brittle needles of the elephantine pines lining the drive.

  “Someone’s going to get stuck, Twynne,” another jovially said as he stamped the snow from his heavy, black rubber boots before stepping over the wooden threshold onto the Oriental runner.

  Maragret had fled to the kitchen to seek solace among the boiling pots and smoking hors d’oeuvres of the caterer. His hustle and bustle was a comfort. The chattering and intermittent impatient orders of first this one and then that among the corps of caterers were more soothing to her nerves than the deep drone of conversation swelling up in the library, hall, and parlors. Twynne’s insistence on having the party—regardless of whether they had regained their current only two weeks before and whether all the party food purchased prior had spoiled—had kept her in a state of anxiety since he had decreed that the fete would be held as planned. One of the caterer’s trucks had gotten mired in the driveway on its way up, and they had spent the afternoon shoveling gravel beneath its enormous rear wheels in an attempt to free it. Finally, a tow from the tractor pulled it loose enough to send its rubber wheels whining along the slick, packed snow of the drive. After that, one of the caterers slipped on a gelid patch along the walk to the kitchen, along which the procession marched with large aluminum trays of prepared foods, their metal so whitely silver on so lactescent a cloudy day they could scarcely be distinguished from the snow when set down upon it. The injured caterer had to be carried inside and laid to rest on a sofa in one of the parlors before first aid could determine if a bona fide sprain had been perpetrated. Once the young woman acquiesced to stand on the injured limb, everyone sighed with relief when she announced she could put her full weight upon it.

  Then there were not enough silver forks, though Maragret could not figure out why since she had laid out the twelve full sets herself and there should have been plenty and more. Luckily, the caterer had brought some of his own, but she did not see hers among them, although she looked very carefully. The next mishap involved the monteith punch bowl, which showed up with an ugly scratch along its softly polished side. No one confessed.

  Then the silver chocolate pot fairly evaporated on its own leaving behind only its gleaming stirring rod. It later rematerialized in an upstairs bathroom where a server had gone to rinse it out because she could not get near the kitchen sink.

  In the height of comestible preparations, the gutter along one side of the house gave final way under the weight of the water frozen in its flume. The wrenching creak that ensued as it twisted to its descent sent every coal-black eye in the kitchen to the ceiling with a breathless hush and served to resurrect stories of attic and stairwell ghosts roaming about Forster’s Choice, slaking their eternal thirst in the gutters and pipes of the family estate. The caterers whispered among themselves for the rest of the afternoon, casting furtive glances at Maragret as she frantically telephoned Barrow, Walsall, and Taunton gutter services. As dusk fell and shadows elongated from the corners of rooms into their more central parts, the servers grew more reluctant to set up the bars and place the bowls of nuts and crackers until Maragret, sensing their unwillingness, went around flipping switches and pulling copper lamp chains.

  “A perfect night for a party, Twynne! Just what the doctor ordered,” bellowed Judge Winthrope as he escorted his wife to the wide, heavily-paneled front door. “We’ve all been cooped up like chickens for too long! I for one am ready for some Southern Maryland hospitality!”

  “You will find it here,” Twynne said confidently as he bowed slightly, his pipe parked between his teeth.

  “What is this?” Crossett asked as he finally made his entrance after holding the door for several people. He waved the paper slightly at Twynne.

  “Get a drink, Crossett and find a chair in the library,” he smiled.

  “What would you like?” Crossett asked as he tapped Anne, who was engaged in conversation.

  “Oh, a bourbon and soda, I think,” she replied.

  “And you, Laura? Can I get you something?”

  “Why, thank you, Crossett, but John has already gone to the bar. You’ll probably meet him there.”

  Each of the bars boasted a line as the guests continued to arrive. At the bar closest to the fireplace, the smell of bourbon clung to the warm air. The bartender stood at attention with each request, producing water and mixers and ice that clattered into glasses as liquids swirled around them. The din began to rise as the house filled up, the smoke settled into a kind of mist that enveloped the crowd, the odor of tobacco competing with that of the liquor. Women in black shirt waist dresses and white chiffon aprons pinned about the neck at their square tops and tied about the waist came through with silver monogrammed butlers to collect the ashes and expended cigarettes piling up in the china, silver, brass, and glass ash trays on nearly every surface. Bowls of nuts were within reach of every guest and trays of melted cheese on flavored squares of bread bobbed above the chattering crowd supported by brown hands slipped through black waistcoats.

  Crossett finally sat down in one of the huge leather wing-back chairs in the library, oblivious to the humming crowd as he sipped his Manhattan and prepared to open the folded paper now upon his lap. He pulled out his cigarette case and lighter and puffed until the end of the cigarette glowed ocher with his inhalations. He opened the paper.

  He did not bother to read the article. The headline was enough.

  “Twynne!” he bellowed not noticing for a few minutes the curious stares he had aroused already by sitting in the midst of a party reading a newspaper. Realizing he could not call for Twynne again, he abandoned both his drink and his cigarette to struggle through the crowd in search of the host.

  “Twynne!”he said peremptorily as he strode up to his friend’s back. Twynne turned expectantly.

  “Got to talk to you.” He continued pulling Twynne away. “What the hell is this?”

  “There’s no reason to be secretive,” Twynne smiled affably, warmed by his cocktails. “Everyone in Barrow has seen it but you, apparen
tly.” The ice in his glass tinkled as he turned it up to drain it.

  “This is abominable. Are you responsible for this?”

  “Me?” Twynne answered incredulously, his face suddenly animated with surprise.

  “You’re the only one I told about that…that…whatever it was.” He rubbed his eyes roughly with the fingers of one hand. He felt a powerful headache coming on.

  “I never proposed it was the Wighte ghost,” Twynne said defensively.

  “You’re the one so full of ghosts and The Rambler. What did you do? Call him up?”

  “Certainly not, Crossett. Besides, no one knows who he is.”

  “Nobody but you.”

  “You are mistaken, Crossett,” Twynne said, drawing himself up and assuming a haughty air. “You are accusing me of betrayal—“

  “It wouldn’t be the first time—“

  “—of a close friend—“

  “—you decided to have a little fun—“

  ‘—in the most—“

  “—with me by—“

  “You’re yelling, Crossett. What are you talking about?”

  “—locking me in closets!”

  “What? That’s ancient history!”

  “History, yes. But not ancient!”

  The two men stood glowering at one another. A little space had grown around them where the crowd had come to recognize the perimeters of their association.

  “It’s just a newspaper article, Crossett—‘

  “It makes a mockery of Winterhurst!”

  “Call the paper tomorrow. Prosecute. Do what you have to but don’t ruin my party. I haven’t given one in months. Have another drink, Crossett, a cigarette, some fresh air …” Twynne led Crossett out the main hall toward a side door. The cold air paralyzed the smoke from his cigarette as he sighed over and over.