"Fergus! How could you!" she cried, shocked.
Immediately he opened his eyes and grinned. "Well, that's just it; I can't any more, can I?" He scrambled to his feet and fell in alongside her. "Still, I thought I'd show ye what Hessiah Talbot was up against the day she run into me."
"I don't blame her for shipping you off to the mission," Emily said, annoyed. "You make a disgusting drunk."
"Wasn't me fault. I dropped by at harvest, innocently looking for work. Turned out I knew the gardener, who invited me in to sample the cider. He spiced it with a wee bit o' something, and before long his wife is shooing me out the door with a broom. I got as far as the apple tree."
Emily remarked, "Nothing is ever your fault; have you noticed?" But her mind was puzzling over the déjà vu business. Fergus had told her of the incident with Hessiah Talbot, but not the details. How had she known to stop at the apple tree?
"'I love what ye do fer me!'" Fergus shouted with sudden glee.
"What?"
"Toy-ota," he answered with an elfin grin, pointing to a Corolla parked in the lane. "I saw that in yer picture box." Then he did the Toyota leap -- about twenty feet into the air.
"Oh, for -- look, Fergus, number one, we call that picture box a television, a T.V.. And number two, you can't just be out here in broad daylight shouting ad slogans and jumping up and down."
"Yes I can. Ye're the only one who knows I'm here."
"What are you saying? That believing is seeing?"
For an answer he pointed silently and somberly to her necklace--or to her heart. Either way, it meant that she'd never be able to parade Fergus past Lee Alden in the flesh, so to speak. She wanted to ask Fergus what would happen if she took off the necklace, but she had a real dread of alarming him, so she let it go. "Don't watch so much T.V.," she said instead. "It's bad for you."
"T.V. is wonderful. Ye have a Sony. And that's no baloney," he said happily.
"Stop it. Stop making me react. Either disappear, or walk alongside in silence."
They were approaching a frail, elderly man trimming his hedges with an electric shears. Fergus watched in amazement as the old man flattopped the sprouting bushes in one clean sweep. Emily saw that Fergus was aching to comment, but he held his tongue as they walked by. His silence lasted until they came to a souped-up red Camaro parked in the middle of the lane with its engine growling through dual exhausts. Fergus stopped in his tracks -- or whatever they were -- and walked slowly around the car.
"'The heartbeat of America,'" he said with awe. "'Today's Chevrolet.'"
"Fergus, for Pete's sake; the owner could come out any second --"
"You got a problem with it, lady?" the owner himself asked from behind her. She turned to see a menacing-looking youth dangling a cigarette from his lips.
"Hi!" she said, all too brightly. "I was just thinking out loud that ... that your car had begun to roll down the hill! Look! There it goes!"
She watched bemused as the Camaro took off at a pretty good clip, with its owner in hot pursuit. Fergus rejoined her, smiling beatifically. He was loving every minute of every step of his little stroll.
"How did you do that?" she asked under her breath.
"Ain't really sure," he said. "Should we try another one?" He looked around, spied a little blue Escort, and said, "'Have ye driven a Ford -- lately?'" He rubbed his hands together.
"No! That isn't what they mean. You're supposed to get actually behind the wheel."
Emily looked up to see a middle-aged woman who'd been shaking out a dustmop from the second-floor window yank the mop back in and slam the window shut, then peer down suspiciously at her. Perfect. She was terrorizing the whole neighborhood.
She resolved not to be provoked again; Fergus was too dangerously exuberant, too uncontainable. But a minute later they passed a parked Oldsmobile, and she saw his eyes light up.
"Fergus! This is not," she said wryly, "your father's Oldsmobile."
He threw his head back in a belly laugh. "What a world! What wealth! Everyone has a car! When I think what me life could've been -- but a motorized carriage was a fantasy then. There was talk in Finchie's Tavern of a man, a German, who was said to be designing a horseless carriage in the year before I was tried -- but who knew? Daimler! That was his name."
"Today that name has a long and venerable history, Fergus," Emily said, smiling despite herself. He reminded her of her brother Gerry, an automotive nut who'd spent his puberty under a car chassis and now had his own thriving mechanic's shop back home.
She sneaked a look at Fergus in profile, so animated, so raring to go. O'Malley's Auto. Yes. It had a ring to it. If she could, she'd co-sign a loan for him.
They were at the top of the hill now, at the entrance to a circular drive leading to Talbot Manor. The manor gates, pitted and rusted in their hinges, were swung open in a permanent position. "Hush, now," she commanded Fergus. "Not a word."
"Just one," the irrepressible ghost begged. "Look at this rose," he said, pausing before an enormous bush buried in rose-pink blossoms. "I remember it well. It's a Bourbon--Madame Isaac Perriere--and there is no finer smelling rose in all the world. The gardener had half a dozen of 'em out back in Talbot's rose garden. Only do this one thing," he said in a voice gone heavy with emotion. "Smell the blossom for me, would ye?"
"You want me to smell the roses?" she murmured. "That's pretty funny." But she said it in a shy and thoughtful way, and when she leaned her face into the petals of a huge, cabbagy blossom, it took her breath away. It was heavenly, glorious; and, until Fergus O'Malley made her stick her nose in it, just another pink flower.
When she straightened up again, Fergus smiled and nodded forlornly. "I thought so."
They walked up the flagstone walk in companionable silence, but as they got nearer the house the ghost began to hang back. Emily slowed her pace to his, thinking he was enthusing over something or other, but his steps dragged, and finally he stopped.
"I cannot go in there," he said in a choking voice. His voice was breathless, his eyes wide with alarm; his arms were raised up against the looming presence of the huge house as if he were warding it off.
And then he disappeared, leaving Emily standing alone on the threshold of a set of huge, oak-paneled double doors swung wide in greeting.
Chapter 10
The woman who greeted Emily had the kind of beauty instantly recognizable as Mediterranean: glossy blue-black hair; dark brown eyes ringed by thick black lashes; olive-skinned cheeks setting off a straight nose and white teeth. Her smile was not so much reserved as it was otherworldly: Maria Salva knew things that other people could only begin to guess at. When she took Emily's hand in her own, Emily had to resist an urge to fall on one knee and kiss her ring.
And yet Maria was a young woman. As they exchanged pleasantries about Mrs. Gibbs, Emily tried to pin down the essence of Maria's spirituality. Maybe it was her voice, soft and low and breathless. Maybe it was her size: She was thin and fragile and dressed in flowing challis. Or maybe it was something as basic as the look in her eyes, which was unfocused and vague.
"Have you owned the manor for long?" Emily asked as they walked through an entry hall of gleaming paneled walnut. She could see that the restoration work was first-rate, right down to the electrified verdigris chandelier that hung a dozen feet above the slate floor.
"We've had it for two years," Maria said in her strangely faraway voice. "We bought it from a man who'd spent the previous five years working on the main floor restoring the entry hail and living rooms. He ran out of money and, perhaps, out of heart. Later he bought a condo."
She stopped and gestured rather vaguely around her, while Emily took in the sheer magnificence of the place. From the central core where they were standing she looked up at soaring open arches trimmed in serpentine carving that supported the third story. The effect was of a Gothic cathedral. Emily slid her fingers over the sensuous, gleaming wood paneling.
"All the wood was stripped of paint, sanded, oi
led, and hand-rubbed by the owner," Maria said with a sigh, as if she were reciting a very difficult lesson.
Somehow she made Emily feel reluctant to ask questions. The phone rang, Maria went over to a small reception desk to answer it, and Emily was left alone to apply what bits and pieces of history she'd been able to gather on her own.
She knew that John Talbot, the mill owner who'd built the new manor, had had two children: his daughter Hessiah and a son, Stewart, who was four years older than his sister. The house apparently was built to please Talbot's wife Celeste, a Frenchwoman who was homesick for the grand cathedrals of her country. Celeste scarcely had time to enjoy the house; she died in a riding accident. John Talbot never remarried. Emily had no idea who'd brought up the two children; from the accounts of the trial she deduced that a series of wet nurses, governesses, and housekeepers had come and gone. She wondered why the turnover was so high. Did the problem lie with the master, his children, or the help?
While Emily was peeking into the open door of the drawing room, Maria returned and said in her trancelike voice, "All the antiques were left by the previous owner, who furnished each of the downstairs rooms as soon as he finished it. The brocade love seats and the inlaid gaming table actually belonged to John Talbot. Most of the other pieces were bought locally."
Emily said, "And you have eight guest rooms?"
"Yes. When my husband is finished, we'll have twelve, not counting the tower."
"Would it be possible to see any of them? I'm very interested in the history of Talbot Manor, as Mrs. Gibbs mentioned on the phone. I'm, ah, doing a piece on historic houses in Newarth."
"How nice," Maria said vaguely. "But there isn't much history except for someone being killed once in a burglary. In the early 1970's it passed on to someone who rented it out to some sort of religious commune, and then one winter all the pipes froze and there was a lot of damage, and after that the man we bought it from began but never finished his restoration. But if you're curious..." she said, inviting Emily to precede her up the beautiful curved staircase.
It seemed intensely ironic to Emily that Maria Salva was so uninterested in the house's original inhabitants. She saw Talbots, old and young, everywhere: sliding down the curved ebony banister; playing a good rubber of long whist on Thursday nights; curled up with a Pekingese on the velvet-tufted window seat that looked out on the morning sunrise; brooding over a meerschaum pipe in the library; decorating the staircase with garlands for the annual Christmas ball; flirting in a discreet corner of the drawing room.
But then they reached the second floor, and it was as if the Talbots and their Victorian lifestyle had been suddenly drywalled from view. Frank Salva had converted the entire floor into a warren of dull square rooms, each neatly papered with the same beige print, each fitted out with an identical reproduction bed, bureau, horse print, and brass-plated lamp. Each floor was covered, like the hall, in industrial-strength beige carpet, and each window hidden under beige miniblinds and brown drapes. Every room -- it was true -- had been provided with its own bath. No one had to share. It was all very clean, very neat, very...
"Is the third floor the same?" asked Emily, depressed. It would be impossible to learn anything about Hessiah Talbot here.
"Half of it is. The other half is gutted. My husband works nights and weekends on it, but it's slow going, as you can imagine."
"And the tower?"
The dreamy look on Maria Salva's face turned wary. "The tower is just as we found it. My husband says it will be very expensive to plumb because of the asbestos everywhere that has to be removed first. It's too far from the flow of traffic, and it's very cold in winter. What we do with the tower depends on how successful we are at renting rooms in the rest of the house. At the moment the first two floors of the tower are empty. The third is pretty much as we found it, a storage place for discarded furniture." She looked exhausted, as though she wished the conversation to be at an end.
"May I see it?" Emily asked in a cheerfully oblivious voice.
Maria smiled faintly. "There isn't much to see."
"I'd love to mention it in the article."
"Very well," Maria said with one of her breathless sighs. She took Emily up to the third floor. "The tower had its own stairs from the lower rooms, but they're in disrepair and unusable. For now this is the only route," she explained, leading Emily through a newly installed door that opened directly into the top floor of the tower.
The inside of the tower was much larger than it appeared from the shaded glimpse Emily had caught from the street. A worn and faded Persian rug that curled up against the walls and a four-poster bed, still draped in torn velvet, dominated the room. The walls were papered in a Venetian water scene that was peeling off in long, shredded strips. Evidence of water damage was everywhere. A jumble of broken furniture -- three-legged chairs, small warped tables, drawerless bed stands and a set of carved Oriental screens -- made walking around difficult. From where they stood, the view once must have been wonderful. But today they looked out at a sea of black rooftops and utility poles and, beyond them, eight lanes of east-west highway traffic.
Maria flipped on the light. A single bulb flickered and went out. It didn't matter; the room was bright with sunshine. Emily made ooh-and-ah chitchat about the furniture, edging her way deliberately toward an enormous, battered slant-top desk buried under piles of papers. Talbot papers? She lined herself up behind the Oriental screens and said, "What a striking view," while she scanned one or two of the piles. Nothing. Just utility bills made out to people she didn't know and old typewritten theses on subjects she didn't care about. It was all too recent to be of use. But the desk had three large, half-open drawers bursting with papers, and she wasn't leaving without a peek.
She was in the process of sliding out the top drawer when Maria Salva suddenly said, "I think we ought to go now." Her voice was anxious, almost angry.
"I'm sorry. I'm holding you up," Emily said, and promptly crawled out from behind the piled-high furniture. "Was this John Talbot's room?" she asked casually.
"I doubt it. His must have been on the first floor. Perhaps this was the nursery." Maria surveyed the room and added, "When we first bought the place, we found some small ... bones ... in this room, and strange, ritualistic objects. It seemed ... ungodly."
"Maybe the religious group that rented the place was really a witches' coven," Emily said, peering out the casement window at the grounds below. "Well, Maria, thank you for the tour. For goodness' sake, there's Mrs. Gibbs turning away from the front door!" Emily swung open the window and greeted the librarian. "We're coming right down!"
Mrs. Gibbs looked up and waved, and in a moment they were all together in the drawing room and Mrs. Gibbs was saying, "I phoned, but no one answered, so it seemed just as easy to pop over. Won't you both come to dinner tonight? Emily got me started thinking about an idea for Talbot Manor, Maria. Frank -- even Frank -- will like this one."
Maria smiled her vague smile and said, "Frank is away tonight, Mrs. Gibbs. I have to be here at the desk."
"Oh, dear. And I have such a wonderful stew in the Crockpot -- all right, here's what to do. I'll bring it over here!" the librarian said. "What do you think of that?"
Probably not much, Emily thought.
But Maria smiled limply and agreed to let herself be drafted as hostess. She was so very passive. Emily had a sudden flash of Fergus being forced to work with Maria Salva instead of with her. It'd serve the chauvinist right.
The thought made her smile, until she remembered Fergus's faintheartedness at the front door. Of all the ones to get weak-kneed at the scene of a crime, she wouldn't have expected it of him. If she looked at it another way, she could make the case for Fergus's looking pretty darn guilty as he fled. It was a troubling thought.
****
Dinner was a success. Maria set a lovely table in the ornately paneled dining room,, with lace and candlelight. One or two of the guests peeked brazenly around the corner, but for the most p
art Maria Emily and Mrs. Gibbs were left in peace to enjoy the librarian's Crockpot of Secret Stew. They finished one bottle of burgundy, then opened another.
The talk during dinner had focused mostly on the hard times Newarth was having. Mrs. Gibbs had very precise opinions on how to turn around the Massachusetts economy. "As for Talbot Manor, there's an obvious way to double your business," she was insisting to Maria. "Cut your price in half!"
Maria went off into gales of tipsy laughter, and Mrs. Gibbs said, "No, my dear, it's not as wild as it sounds. Lots of B and B customers are repeat customers, so it's money well spent if you introduce them to Talbot Manor with two-for-one weeknights. You won't have any more laundry than for one night, and an extra doughnut and coffee are no big thing. You must do whatever it takes to get them in here," she said, rapping her knuckles emphatically on the dining table.
Maria rested her cheek on her hand and twisted the stem of her glass dreamily. "Oh, I know what it takes to get them in here," she murmured, staring into the rich red liquid. "You think I don't, but I do. I could get them here tomorrow. With just one... little ... word."
Emily felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She leaned on her forearms confidentially and stared into the bottomless depths of Maria's dark eyes "What little word is that, Maria?"
Maria shook her head so vehemently that her long black hair whipped around the front of her face "So that you can print it?" she demanded, throwing her head back and laughing. "Oh, no. My secret. Mine alone. Not even Frank, dear ... old ... Frank..."
Mrs. Gibbs topped off Maria's glass. "Maria, if you have a brilliant idea, share it with us. It may need tweaking."
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