Ashes to Ashes

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  She was suddenly very aware of being the outsider. “I knew it’d been too quiet around here,” she said aloud, “like the calm before the storm.” She stamped out of the room and up the stairs.

  Michael was surrounded by scrapbooks, folders bulging with papers, a mail gauntlet, a miniature of Mary of Guise, and a cream pitcher shaped like a cow. “Guess what?” called Rebecca as she strode into the room.

  He looked up, his expression partly annoyed, partly amused, but not at all surprised. “I’d really rather not.”

  “The key to the mausoleum is gone.” Rebecca cleared several squashed cardboard boxes from the bed and sat down. “I don’t suppose you took it.”

  Michael looked at her with his patented guileless gaze. “I don’t suppose I did. Did you?”

  “Then why would I be asking you about it?” He shrugged, as if to say her plots were unfathomable. She really ought to be flattered, she reflected wryly, that at least someone suspected her of having a plot. “Did you see either Phil or Dorothy go downstairs?”

  “Neither of them came down these stairs, at the least.”

  “Maybe Warren took the key.”

  “Maybe he wants to keep it safe. We’ve no good record about the keys here, mind you. And his friend James is planted there in the doocot.”

  True enough. Rebecca said, “Did you get the impression he was trying to cover up for Steve and Heather, not to mention Dorothy?”

  “He’s known the kids since they were weans, and he’s probably an old school pal of Dorothy’s. Why shouldn’t he protect them? As long as he’s told them to leave us alone, he can do what he wants wi’ them.”

  Rebecca exhaled. “All right. Say I stop wondering why they picked on me and let it go. What about the mazer?”

  “Let Lansdale and Adler decide,” Michael said. “They’re the ones responsible. We only have— what? Six or seven weeks left to go through this mixtie-maxtie. The museum is keen on gettin’ it all, not just the mazer.”

  “But we’re missing another key. What next? Is the mysterious perpetrator going to back a U-Haul up to the door and cart away Mary’s sarcophagus? Has he or she already found and absconded with the Forbes treasure and the Erskine letter?”

  “Come off it. The museum’ll no be wantin’ the sarcophagus. There is no treasure, and there’s no guarantee there’s a letter.”

  “So you have it all compartmentalized?” asked Rebecca. “You worry about your own territory, let everyone else worry about his?”

  He offered her his sweetest, most irritatingly condescending smile. “You’re always tongue-waggin’ about me doin’ my job. So I’m doin’ it.”

  “Give me the pip, why don’t you?” Rebecca demanded.

  “I’m no chargin’ you for it, am I?” His smile broadened into a grin, every gleaming tooth a testament to the British National Health Service.

  She bounced to her feet, stalked out of the room and up the stairs. As soon as she was around the bend in the stairwell she stopped, swearing and laughing at the same time. Such confrontations were as much a part of the background static as the undercurrent of the supernatural. Their skirmishes always ended the same way, a cloud of dust and verbiage but no conclusion. She had to admire him for protecting his territory so fiercely.

  So they’d inadvertently glimpsed the vulnerable bellies hidden beneath each other’s spiky shells. She hadn’t had enough glimpses beneath his shell to keep her from wondering if it also concealed harassment, embezzlement, and theft. Michael had said he’d been frightened enough that night in the pantry to cut his losses and push off home. But what losses did he have to cut? His job at the museum was waiting. Unless he expected some greater return on his investment of time and energy than a visit to the United States.

  Rebecca walked on past the fifth floor and John Forbes’s painted glare. Probably it was simply the same obstinacy that had made her persevere through the alarms and excursions of her first days here that had kept Michael here, too. His pride would never let him return to the Museum empty-handed.

  “What is it?” said Dorothy from the sixth floor, and Rebecca jumped.

  Phil said, “A loose brick. A hidey-hole. I’ll go tell them.”

  “No, keep your voice down. Let’s see what’s in it first.”

  “What if it’s some kind of artyfact thing?”

  “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” said Dorothy.

  Time for reinforcements. Rebecca was not the only outsider here. She skimmed back down the stairs and into the bedroom. “Phil’s found a secret cache in the fireplace,” she said to Michael. “Want to see?”

  He dumped the scrapbook and was out of the room so quickly he would’ve mashed her against the door frame if she hadn’t dodged. She clung to his heels all the way up the stairs.

  The ballroom’s white walls and pale hardwood floor glistened in the sunlight. A cold draft moved like a sluggish ocean current about ankle height. As usual, Elspeth’s window was open. The air was fresher now that Phil had fixed the windows and cleared away the birds’ nests in the tiny room below the platform. Now the occasional blackbird coasted by the ballroom windows, its beady eyes staring indignantly but futilely inside.

  Dorothy stood in front of the fireplace, arms crossed, a dust rag dangling from one hand. Phil squatted, prying at a brick about two feet above the hearth. It inched painfully away from its neighbors with a shrill sound like chalk scraping across a blackboard.

  Rebecca said, “Can you get it out?”

  Dorothy spun around, her hand clutching at her heart, eyes bulging.

  “I was just outside on the stairs,” Rebecca said, tempted to imitate Michael’s sweetly condescending expression. Michael himself bent, his hands resting on his knees, so close to Phil that he almost got an elbow in the eye. The fringe of his hair hung over his face, but Rebecca was ready to swear his expression was more intense than simple curiosity.

  With a patter of dust Phil levered the brick far enough away from the others so that his fingers could get a grip on it. He jerked it out. He and Michael bumped heads looking into the aperture. Dorothy craned over their shoulders. Rebecca hung back, arms crossed, toe tapping on the floor.

  Michael reached into the hole. He extracted a string of beads and a crumpled piece of paper. Dorothy took the paper from his hand and smoothed it out on the mantelpiece. It was an advertisement from a magazine of the turn of the century, an elegantly dressed woman touting soap.

  Michael blew on the beads and rubbed them with the hem of his shirt. Flakes of red paint adhered to the fabric. “Cheap clay,” he pronounced. “For these you could’ve bought New York, back when prices were somewhat less.” He tossed the beads to Rebecca, turned on his heel, and walked away.

  The necklace was cold and gritty. A toy, probably, stuffed behind the loose brick with the picture in some childish magic ritual. Louise was an adolescent when she first worked here, and had probably lived in the rooms just off the ballroom. “May I have the clipping?” Rebecca asked Dorothy.

  Dorothy, her face curdled with something Rebecca suspected was disappointment, handed it over. She turned to inflict her dustcloth on the closest piece of furniture. Phil laid the brick on the hearth. “I’ll bring some mortar tomorrow and fix it,” he said tonelessly.

  Rebecca nodded. Glancing sharply at Dorothy’s back, swathed in a shapeless pink sweater, she headed for the stairs. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” the housekeeper had said. Very helpful. What weren’t they supposed to know— about items listed but missing from the house?

  Just as Rebecca walked past the fourth floor the phone rang. Michael reached out of his room to answer it. “Hello? Aye, she’s here. It’s your boyfriend,” he told her, holding out the receiver.

  She said to him, “I thought you didn’t believe in the Forbes treasure. Your body language speaks better English than you do, you know.”

  His eyes flashed, his lips thinned, his chin snapped up like a shield. She ducked toward the staircase, call
ing, “Hang up the phone in just a minute, please.” No Forbes treasure, huh? Not that it mattered whether he believed in it or not, but his inconsistency was unsettling.

  Leaving the necklace and the clipping in her room, she picked up the phone in the kitchen. An emphatic click on the line assured her that Michael had not only hung up the extension, he’d probably slammed it through the table. “Hello!” she said.

  “What was all that about?” said Eric’s velvet baritone.

  “What was what about?”

  “Something about the Forbes treasure speaking English.”

  “No, no. Michael’s always been adamantly against there being any such thing as a treasure, and then when Phil finds a loose brick upstairs he practically tramples me to get there. All it was was a cheap necklace and an old ad. Louise’s, I bet.”

  “We’ll ask her on Sunday, at her birthday party,” Eric said. “So Campbell is doing his dog in the manger routine? I tell you, he’s up to something.”

  “Well he’s damned lousy at it, whatever it is.”

  Eric laughed. The sound smoothed Rebecca’s feathers. The last time she’d seen Eric was last Saturday night when they’d returned to Dun Iain after visiting two other castle follies near West Liberty. They’d sat under this castle’s enigmatic facade, the lamp beside the door and the window of her room shining, the stars cold and still overhead, until the car windows were opaque with the steam of their breaths.

  She’d gone inside glowing with pleasure and frustration. Fortunately Michael hadn’t stayed up, honing his armory of snide remarks and amused glances, to see her blouse misbuttoned. Well, it had been dark in the car, Eric’s sturdy hands had done their best— which was very good indeed. She was always embarrassed after such an encounter, not during. Like indulging in a sophisticated meal and then getting indigestion.

  Eric was saying something about the mazer. “Oh,” Rebecca replied, grateful he couldn’t see how hot her cheeks were, “Warren’s already been here. Nothing this week at all about the mazer, about the cards, about anything. Except that now the mausoleum key is gone.”

  “What?”

  “I put the key into one of the diaries, and had that one in the kitchen when Warren was here, and now the key’s gone. I’m afraid it looks like Warren took it, although I guess Dorothy or Phil or Michael could’ve rushed down the stairs when my back was turned. Not that Dorothy or Phil knew the key was here.”

  Eric said, “Great. Now what? I’ll call Warren about the key and tell you about it tomorrow night. Five o’clock?”

  “Yes, with bells on. I even ironed my dress, I’ll have you know. I haven’t been to a real symphony concert in ages.”

  “You’d look lovely in a gunnysack, Rebecca.” She smiled; that was a line, but she enjoyed swinging on it. He went on, “I thought we’d go to a special place to eat. My condo. I’m pretty good with a wok, if you don’t mind my cooking Chinese for you.”

  Rebecca’s chest went fuzzy. She leaned against the cabinet, trying to keep herself from hyperventilating with trepidation or delight or both. They were going to his place. She’d have to wear the lacy teddy that had survived the night of the vandals… . God, she was acting as if going to bed with the man was as casual as ordering dessert; I’ll have one silver-tongued lawyer, please, with a dusting of habeas corpus. Giddily she asked, “You can cook?”

  “I refuse to live on fast food and TV dinners. I thought something out of the ordinary would be in order since I have to leave town for a few days next week. I’ve finally turned up something about Rachel Forbes.”

  Grateful he’d changed the topic— chicken, she said to herself— she asked, “Have you contacted Rachel’s children?”

  “No,” he answered, “I don’t do seances. John was born in 1847, remember? And since Rachel was the older of the two, I’ll be lucky if I find her grandchildren still alive.”

  “I should’ve figured that out.” Rebecca sternly ordered her corpuscles to stop doing backflips through her brain. “Where are you going?”

  “Nebraska. A Rachel Forbes Dennison is listed in the census for 1890. I’ll have to hit several county seats, checking property records and that type of thing. Every other courthouse has had at least one major fire that’s wiped out the relevant information.”

  A horn honked outside. “Oh! Eric, the Sorensons are here. Peter’s going to do some work for Phil and they brought the kids along. I have to run.”

  “And I’m doing lunch with the district attorney. Keep me posted if anything comes up. I’ll check with Warren about the key. See you tomorrow.”

  “I can hardly wait.” She hung up, wondering whether she could wait or not. Anticipatory fantasy was so enjoyable it might be difficult for reality to compete. Reality did have its hard edges.

  One of reality’s harder edges, Michael Campbell, strolled into the kitchen. “The Sorensons are here. Steve’s puttin’ the Hound of the Baskervilles into the shed. Wi’ no good grace, but I doot he has his orders.”

  Rebecca nodded abstractedly. She leaned against the counter, smoothing the tousled edges of her libido with little strokes of self-discipline. Michael began cutting vegetables into the pot of broth. A good thing he hadn’t heard her exclaiming over Eric’s ability to cook when he’d been capably shouldering his share of the cooking duties all this time. Even though she did have to dump pepper into everything but the raspberry trifle.

  A tap-tap-tapping sounded from the entry. Poe’s raven, no doubt… . Rebecca wrenched herself into coherence. That’s right, she’d left the door locked, fending off vandals in U-Haul trailers. She hurried into the entry, absurdly grateful for Jan, someone she’d known for ten whole years.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Sorensons looked refreshingly like Beaver Cleaver’s next door neighbors. Jan had a firm hand on the back of each miniature T-shirt; Mandy’s sported a unicorn, Brian’s read “Here Comes Trouble.” The children’s scrubbed faces peered upward at the height of the castle.

  “Thank you for coming out on a weekday,” said Phil, clomping down the staircase. “I want to fix the stain on the ceiling tomorrow so the plaster can dry over the weekend.”

  “No problem,” Peter returned, hoisting his toolbox. “I had some comp time.” The men went off talking about wiring and water damage.

  Rebecca left the door gaping and settled with Jan on the stone wall where she had first seen Darnley. The children chased a ball across the lawn. Steve crept around the side of the building, rake held like a halberd over his shoulder. Slash whined, his feelings hurt, in the toolshed. Dorothy shook her dust rag out of a fifth floor window.

  And there was Darnley himself, ejected through the front door. “Get on wi’ you,” Michael said to him. “You’ll no be gettin’ the soup bone quite yet.” Then, going back inside, “Aye, I’ll take it down.”

  “How are you getting along with yon braw lad?” Jan asked.

  “Been listening to the tapes he lent you?” returned Rebecca.

  Jan grinned, producing a couple of Battlefield Band cassettes from her duffle bag of a purse. “It’s contagious. You should hear me when we’re at Peter’s grandparents in Minnesota. Ya, it’s a fine lutefisk, huff da,” she said, perfectly mimicking a Norwegian accent.

  Rebecca laughed, and answered Jan’s question. “Amazing— if I’d said to my brothers some of the things I say to Michael, I’d have been mincemeat. That wee tartan chip on his shoulder can take it as well as dish it out.”

  “Sounds as if you can be honest with him.”

  “I guess so. The question is whether or not he’s being honest with me.”

  Jan tilted her head curiously. “At least his chip isn’t a giant four-leafed green one. Louise got a letter the other day from a group in Belfast wanting money from Americans with Irish ancestry. For Irish orphans, they said, but I told her to forget it, they were probably buying guns to create more orphans.”

  Brian and Mandy linked hands and sang, “Ring around a rosy, pockets full of posies, ashes
, ashes, we all fall down.” They collapsed giggling onto the lawn.

  “Didn’t I hear once,” said Jan, “that that song is really a grim little ditty about people dying of the pox or something equally nasty? You know, the rosy ring is the rash, and you leave flowers on a grave, and it’s really ‘achoo, achoo, we all fall down dead.’”

  “Yeah, I heard something like that, too. Except I thought it was the Black Death, and it really was ashes, because they had too many bodies to bury so they burned them. And the Great Fire of London in 1666 finally wiped out the Plague— there, at least.”

  Jan shrugged. “Whatever. The point is that nothing is really what it seems to be, nursery rhymes or anything else.”

  “You can say that again,” replied Rebecca, with a sideways glance at the inscrutable face of the castle.

  Michael appeared in the doorway, carrying the claymore from the prophet’s chamber. He struck a pose, declaiming, “Once more into the breach, for Charlie, Scotland, and Saint Andrew!”

  The children goggled at him. Rebecca laughed. Jan applauded. Michael lowered the sword and rested its tip on the ground. “How’d they carry these things about? No wonder they adapted so quickly to firearms.”

  Jan called, “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.”

  “I’m no livin’ wi’ one,” Michael returned. “I’m takin’ it to the ballroom, so Peter’ll no drop the ceilin’ on it.” He vanished into the house.

  “Honestly,” Rebecca said, “every time I’m ready to roast him over a slow fire he about faces and does something appealing. His bad moods blow over instantly. But then, so do his good ones.”

  The children, scratching their heads dubiously at the weirdness of adults, swarmed forward demanding food and drink. “I got some Animal Crackers yesterday,” Rebecca told them. “Come on in the kitchen.”

  Jan resumed her clutch of their T-shirts. Rebecca left the tapes in the sitting room and explained that the pile of cloth and polished wooden tubes on Michael’s chair was a set of great Highland pipes under renovation. “The reeds came in the mail last week,” she concluded.