The Ghost and Miss Demure

by Melanie Jackson

  “Poor kitty,” Karo sympathized, though Frankenstein didn’t notice. “But you know, Tristam, it’s not all junk. I mean, some of this stuff is quite hideous, but it isn’t garbage.”

  “I suppose it’s all in the eye of the beholder. My job is to preserve the history of Belle Ange as much as possible while making an attraction for the moneyed wanderers who come to Virginia. You’re the sop to the local historical society the house’s current owner belongs to, and your job is to keep me from burning any treasures when we torch the rubbish heap out back. Uh, those antlers aren’t at all historic, are they?”

  “Not hardly, but those pyxis at the gates make a great start for the list of true treasures to attract tourists,” she told him with renewed fervor. “They’re what lured me out of the car yesterday.”

  “Ah! Well, if you like the funeral urns, wait until you see the cemetery. Pure Southern Gothic, I assure you!” Tristam got up and prepared another cup of coffee with an efficiency that said he and the machine had reached an understanding. Leave it to a man to enjoy fiddling with all those gears and levers first thing in the morning.

  “Are you feeling strong enough to take the grand tour?” he asked after a moment, flashing her another killer smile.

  “Definitely,” she agreed.

  “I warn you, this won’t be pretty. Better take your coffee with you.”

  “Of course.” Karo stood up. “I’m anxious to see what we’ll be working on. There could be just about anything hiding in this house. A few good paintings or some furniture would go a long way to making Belle Ange a starred attraction in the Visitors Center’s catalogue of historic sites.”

  “Then let us be up and doing while you still have some of that enthusiasm.”

  “That’s probably best. ‘For by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.’ ” Karo wasn’t sure why she added this.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Tristam muttered.

  After another moment, he asked, “You like our bard of Avon?”

  “Of course. We’re not all literary heathens out here in the Colonies. Some of us are quite bookish. Of course, more often than not I was assigned to the role of a loyalist when they were passing out costumes at the reenactments where I last worked. I was sent out to die for the British at Yorktown—twice. And in one hundred degree heat!”

  Tristam chuckled and began their tour. “Perhaps you aren’t a godless heathen, but Old Vellacourt certainly was. Well, he certainly wasn’t a God-fearing soul. Take a look around.” He waved a long-fingered hand at the hall into which they walked, and then around at the room at the end of it. “This is probably the best of the lot, and it is hardly what one would call early American normal. It would, in fact, have been banned in Boston.”

  The room was huge, large enough to house the Lost Tribes of Israel. It was also determinedly and depressingly medieval—and completely inappropriate in its architecture. What had the space ever been used for? A ballroom?

  “I see what you mean. We will have to hope that deficient light will hide the greatest um…oddities. If you mean to keep them.” Among the strange architectural features were a collection of shallow balconies, each perhaps eighteen inches deep, sprouting like mushrooms randomly on the walls. The lower ones were loaded with maces and morning stars. “How do you get to those?” she asked.

  “You don’t. Not without a ladder.”

  “I guess they could be decorated with garlands at Christmas.” Karo knew she sounded doubtful. “In the meantime, I don’t know what to suggest. Is most of the displayed stuff copies?”

  “I don’t think anything less than complete blackout will help, but the insurance company says it’s too dangerous to have visitors inside without lights. Your point about romantic lighting is well taken, however, and we will restrict this part of the house to the lowest possible wattage of bulbs.”

  “Good idea.”

  “And, the pieces are not copies. There were most likely…um…how shall I say this?”

  “Liberated without permission? Maybe when the Protestants were busy killing Catholics?”

  “Perish the thought. Though, that might be better than having had them just sitting around the old family home like they were. It isn’t reasonable to expect to have bills of sale lying about after all this time, though. Provenance would be difficult to prove, which therefore makes it tricky to sell anything.”

  Karo shook her head. “The pieces are valuable, but I don’t see how we can…”

  “They’re not period. Or, not the appropriate period. I know. We’ll just put aside the most egregious offenders for storage elsewhere and get them appraised later.”

  “Do you think the owner will try to sell everything off?”

  “I doubt Clarice Vellacourt will sell anything, but the appraisals must be made. For insurance purposes. And there has been no proper inventory in decades.”

  “Is there a family tree?” Karo asked.

  “Yes, but it is badly gnarled in places. If you stick with the matrilineal and patrilineal lines, all is well. But there are many questionable affinal and even fictive relationships to take into account.”

  “Bastard children?”

  “By the busload. And questionable marriages. At least one great-grandson was a bigamist.”

  Karo signed. It was often the case with families that owned slaves.

  “Okay, on to the history lesson. Here is the first thing you might want to know about the house and its builder. Old Vellacourt had had it with Europe’s religious wars, plagues and various other persecutions, which reached an exceptionally brisk pace in the sixteen hundreds. He decided that it was time to pack up and move to some locale where he could enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of degenerate happiness without the constant threat of torture and execution. He chose Virginia since King Charles was handing out land grants and he knew the governor.”

  Tristam opened a door and gestured her through. They walked back out into the entry hall and Karo braved herself to take a second look at the house’s dim interior. It was, if such a thing was possible, even worse by morning light.

  “ ‘I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee,’ ” she murmured.

  “My sentiments exactly. But how brave you are to be quoting scripture before ten o’clock. I haven’t the stomach for it until I’ve had lunch and two cocktails.”

  “Sorry. But I stand by my words. It’s horrible.” She pointed at a portrait on the wall. “That painting can’t be original, can it? Stoker didn’t popularize vampires until the late eighteen hundreds.”

  “Isaac Newton said that it is best to shadow as if it were not shadowed. Maybe that was the artist’s intent. It is starkly realistic.”

  “I don’t think the artist read any Newton. Did he have a drinking problem?” That seemed like a more likely answer.

  “Unknown. She did have an anger problem, though. The slaves were afraid of her insane rages brought on by religious mania. They believed that she saw dead people.”

  “I believe it, too.” Two words the picture would never bring to mind were kind and benevolent. Sane probably wouldn’t apply either.

  There was a long pause; then Tristam said, “To continue the unpleasant tale about old Hugh Vellacourt…Though sincerely interested in avoiding religious persecution, neither he nor any of his descendants can be found in stories about Pilgrims or later colonial patriots hanging out at Raleigh Tavern with Jefferson, Washington or Patrick Henry. No Vellacourt male ever said ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ At least, not considering the liberty of any man but himself. So we won’t be able to cash in on that patriotic sort of thing.”

  They both stared at the next portrait, an unpleasant offering at the base of the stairs. The pictured gargoyle looked as sour as turned wine. Karo was inclined to blame part of the be-ruffed man’s satirical expression on his hairstyle, which was not the usual, fluffy wigged headdress favored by the founding fathers, but his own silvery locks scraped back fro
m a pasty face into a band that looked tight as torture. It left one with the impression that his eyebrows were pulled back almost to his ears. The lipless mouth seemed likewise out of scale and unappealing, and the effect of the little edges of pointy teeth was definitely reptilian.

  If pets and their owners tended to have strong resemblances, so too did homeowners of certain kinds of houses, Karo decided. Both Vellacourt and his cluttered mansion looked like they were being eaten by termites, moths and rats.

  “I really don’t know what to say,” she confessed. “I don’t see any way to make this man likeable. Are there any other likenesses we might use? I don’t suppose we can just not mention him?”

  “Not likely. And there are no other likenesses that I’ve found. This wasn’t taken from life,” Tristam explained. “It was done by one of Vellacourt’s grandchildren, long after the fact. Several of her paintings grace this house. You find them planted at turnings in dark hallways and lying in wait on the backs of bedroom doors. I’d like to think that they were her idea of a joke but…Such an odd choice of colors, too. Maybe the paint has turned with time.” His tone was wry as he added, “Perhaps tourists will adore the high-camp Dracula touch. No?”

  “I guess. There’s really no dungeon here? What with everything else…I can really picture waxworks figures chained to moldering walls while they wait to be pressed to death,” Karo suggested facetiously. “Or maybe something like that church in Italy—the one with all those dead Capuchin monks stacked up like cord wood.”

  Tristam made a face. “Don’t laugh. It’s nearly that bad, especially below stairs. There are a few rooms that I don’t think will ever go on the tour. They’re just not mainstream. I certainly wouldn’t use waxworks in them. My reputation would be ruined if word got out.”

  “Wax would likely melt in summer, anyway,” Karo mused. “Unless…are you going to put in air-conditioning?”

  She was hopeful, but he shook his head in a mildly pitying way. “Recall our impoverished budget. I believe I mentioned it once or twice.”

  “Well, in a perfect world this room wouldn’t be on the tour, either,” she said honestly. “It’s bound to put people off straightaway. If they haven’t paid for their tickets in advance…Well, better charge them at the gate before they can change their minds.”

  “I intend to, and it is nice to know that we think alike.” He beamed at her. “However, I don’t consider this as one of the problem spots. Furniture and tapestries and proper lighting can hide a multitude of sins. Not all of it is obscene and violent in content. Some is simply sadistic.”

  Karo was contemplative. “The rooms in this house are strange. Did Hugh Vellacourt entertain? The rooms are certainly large enough.”

  “Of course. And records suggest his guests played some interesting games.”

  “Like Pin the Tail on the Devil,” Karo muttered, swatting at a cobweb that had drifted down on her shoulder.

  “Maybe.” Tristam smiled, but it was more wry than happy. “So…since you ask, the two worst rooms are the master suite and the garret. I’ve already stripped most of the pornographic paintings out of the bedroom, but the architectural features are still pretty racy—as I’m sure you saw. We may have to hang curtains everywhere.”

  “That’s where you were yesterday when I arrived, right—in the garret? So, what’s wrong with the place? Why does it look like it was designed by someone caught in a nightmare? Did they keep the mad wife up there? Tell me any scandals now. I think I’d like to get the pain over with all at once.”

  “Yes, well, you’ve seen the master suite. Pornographic, unquestionably, especially before I cleaned it up. You don’t know the half of it. As for the garret…I’m afraid that part of the third floor was built as a sort of torture chamber, and I strongly suspect that successive generations of Vellacourts found actual use for it, or it would have been changed. The sadism wasn’t a one-off that we can bury, not if we tell any kind of truth.”

  “A…a torture chamber? Still?” Karo blinked, trying to ascribe something other than the obvious meaning to his words. Were she and Tristam having a trans-Atlantic miscommunication? He couldn’t mean an actual torture chamber.

  “Yes. Though, it’s not exactly a proper one.”

  Ah. “A proper one?” she repeated, faintly confused, staring at Tristam’s distracted profile as he grimaced at the ceiling. After a moment, she looked upward, too. The old chandelier was gray with dust but might clean up into something rather pretty if they could ever clear the cobwebs.

  “I’m afraid it was used for sexual fun and games.”

  Karo made a strangled sound of protest. Tristam’s golden eyes turned her way and began to gleam. Her own expression, she was sure, was openly horrified. She had read about things like this but never actually encountered anything like it in the real world.

  “Fun and games,” she echoed, wondering if he was pulling her leg. Maybe her dream boss had some screws loose after all. It figured that there was some fly in the ointment of her new life. A man with a taste for mixing sex and torture was on par for the kind of week she was having.

  “Yes. Fun and games. You know, ala the Marquis de Sade—except the own er of this house was practicing his violent pornographic fantasies long before de Sade was born. I’m afraid that S and M was Vellacourt’s hobby and main claim to fame, even if the terminology was yet to be invented. He was rich enough to pull it off—to make an art of it, even. Fortunately for everyone, rich as he was, he never went into politics. There’s no telling how it might have changed history if he’d been a governor. After all, there are the quirky, and then there are the true degenerates.” Tristam English gave a wry laugh.

  Karo stared and tried to think of something to say. Tristam shrugged and went on with his lecture.

  “Belle Ange is equidistant from Williamstown and Jamestown, and people tend to lump every place in the area together because they were all built in the sixteen hundreds. But there are significant historical, political, architectural and philosophical differences between the three locales. Jamestown was built in tribute to the inefficient King James, Williamstown is named after William of Orange…and Belle Ange was built by a man who was loyal to neither. The entire—”

  “Please tell me that you’re kidding,” Karo interrupted as she found her voice.

  “About what?”

  “About the whole S and M thing. About torture. About that being this place’s main claim to fame.” She was a trained art historian with some pretense of professionalism, a former assistant curator to a modest but respectable museum of modern art in San Francisco. She had apprenticed under the head honcho at Williamstown and written several articles for the Journal of American History on the evolution of female artists in post-colonial government. Her father was considered one of America’s foremost authorities of World War I military history. People like her did not get associated with sexual torture chambers, no matter how historical the project!

  “I wish I was kidding. Sorry about that. I should have warned you, I suppose, but I was afraid you’d run the other way and I really do need your help. I’ve been given three months and a tiny budget to whip this place into shape—though there is a bonus if we get things done ahead of schedule. Try and think of this as going off on a holiday where you expect an occasional bit of rain. It may not be fun to slog about in the damp, but it should still have moments of fun. At the very least it will be instructive!”

  Karo thought about the Williamstown debacle and the horror of making another call to her parents with another change of address less than a week after the last. It was too humiliating to consider. This job had been a gift without a guarantee, just like the rest of life.

  Her spine stiffened, at least metaphorically; the rest of her body was still rather battered for such exercise. “So, they really did this sort of thing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? I thought that it—um, spanking and things like that—was brought on by the repressive Victorian era…at least in Britain,�
� she added. She felt entirely out of her depth.

  “This sort of behavior is definitely that old. The garret is part of the original house, built in about 1670 and then remodeled in 1812, I think, but the Vellacourts have a quiet history of unnatural behavior even back in Europe—hence the religious persecution.” He paused. “Oh, do you know any of the family history? They were a bit obscure, which is why de Sade steals the spotlight for inventing this sort of thing, but the family manages to show up at some of the battles and in most of the scandals.”

  “No, I’ve missed this family entirely. Do I really want to know about them? Aren’t they all nuts? Going by this house…”

  Tristam gave a weary sigh. “That is a judgment you’ll have to make yourself. You can do your part of this task without full context, but…well, I find it wise to know the enemy. And you can count on at least one clever clog in every historical society who knows something about this house or family. I prefer that it not be me.”

  Karo sighed. “Okay, let’s have it. Give me whatever else you know. Give me the family history.”

  “The Vellacourts were mostly undistinguished feudal lords until the Protestant Reformation. They did well under Henry the Eighth by sensing which way the ecclesiastical wind was blowing and running before the storm. However, once titled by Henry, and after the family coffers were sufficiently filled with loot from the legal plunder of various monasteries, they wisely switched sides and reverted to Catholicism for the reign of Bloody Mary. They again reversed their political and religious beliefs for the sovereignty of Elizabeth. Things were rougher under James and Charles the First—”

  “Also known as Charles the worst,” Karo quipped, though she soon realized it was wholly inappropriate. She got frowned at. Apparently Tristam didn’t do forced levity before noon.