Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 1
“. . . I think that little dog in the comic strips had it right. It really was a dark and stormy night. Don’t you think so?”
I smiled and feigned interest to my table-guest’s epiphany. “Yes, it was raining quite hard last night,” I looked to my left and out the nearby window, “and it’s still pretty miserable outside now, if not worse.”
“Absolutely,” said Mrs. Prosper as she took a peek for herself at the conditions outdoors. “I was born and raised in Vermont, and I have never heard the wind howl so, nor have I seen it rain so hard until last night. I had the television on to lull me to sleep. I always sleep with the television on since Fred, my husband, passed away some weeks ago . . . But about two in the morning, the television signal went out. I was stuck in the dark with nothing to watch. It was so, so discomforting. When I came downstairs early this morning, I overheard Mr. Hograve tell one of his staff that the inn’s phones, cable TV, and the computer system had stopped working.”
The old woman carried on as if we were friends for years — which we weren’t — and as if I cared — which I didn’t. I had only met the five foot high, gray-haired octogenarian briefly the previous evening, when my wife, Morgana, and I arrived at The Whyte Post Inn after our harrowing drive through the storm-troubled mountains.
“. . . I remember,” continued Mrs. Prosper, “when I was a girl — a very young girl, I might add — there was a tornado. I must have been six years old at the time. No, I was eight. I remember now. It happened soon after my birthday; it was the same year that my older brother bought his first pair of brown shoes . . . .”
Mrs. Prosper droned on and on about her personal experiences with weather events and her brother’s Oxfords. I tipped my head several times showing acknowledgement when I felt it was appropriate. I anxiously waited for Morgana, who was uncharacteristically late that morning, to come downstairs and rescue me. Until then, I sipped my coffee and listened.
“. . . With those gales hitting the building so hard, why it sounded like a convocation of banshees were meeting just outside my window. I thought that the roof would fly off. It was terrible, absolutely terrible.” Then, like the eye of an advancing storm, there was an unexpected silence. My guest ceased her soliloquy. Being the fool that I am, I opened my mouth.
“T’was a rough night,” I quipped using a line from the Scottish play.
“Oh, how droll,” quickly countered Mrs. Prosper. “Are you a devotee of the theatre, perhaps?”
What? The old lady actually wanted me to speak — that was a surprise. “Well, I have directed several high school and amateur plays over the years — ” My attempt at conversation was a mistake. I had just said enough to feed the beast. With a new topic to discuss, Prosper renewed her insipid yattering which surged on like the tempestuous bouts of rain outside.
“How interesting. I always loved the theatre. Mr. Prosper, Fred, my dear, late husband, he loved the theatre too.”
“Really. Well, I have — ”
“My first walk across the boards,” spouted the old woman, “was many years ago. It was in our college’s production of John Webster’s The White Devil. We received wonderful reviews in the local and school papers. Can you believe that I still dabble in the thespian arts today, at my age? Oh yes, I do. In fact, later this month, I will be in the Stark Monument College’s Senior Alumni Association’s September theatrical production.”
“Really.”
“ Yes, and I play the mother of the leading character.”
“Oh, what is the name of — ”
“The play is The Secret Rage of Lizzie Borden, by John Basil.”
“A musical comedy?” I sarcastically said to myself — perhaps, too loudly.
“What was that?”
“I wish you well.” I took another sip of coffee and reminded myself to be nice.
“You ought to have said, ‘break a leg.’ That is theatre jargon for good luck.”
“Of course, break a leg,” I said while having pleasant, but guilty, thoughts that she should break something else as well.
Mrs. Prosper peered over my shoulder. “I don’t see your wife. Is she okay?”
“She was quite well when I left her in our room — ” I quickly glanced at my watch— “eh, twenty minutes ago.” I furtively scanned the dining room for any sight of Morgana, but she was nowhere to be seen. In fact, Mrs. Prosper and myself were the only people in the dining room at that time, which I thought was odd considering it was breakfast hours.
“There seems to have been an increase in colds, flu and respiratory illnesses going around this year,” Prosper remarked.
I nodded to which the old lady wasted no time in converting her observation into a lengthy narrative of her health history.
“I had a very stubborn cold several years ago which refused to go away, no matter what I did, and . . .”
As I listened, I came to the conclusion that Prosper had some deep seated need to fill her immediate surroundings with the sound of the human voice. It was in the middle of the old lady’s saga about her getting the chickenpox, in her sixties, when I reached a second conclusion. Mrs. Prosper undoubtedly believed that only her voice had the capability to satisfy and fulfill her aforementioned need.
She prattled on about catching childhood diseases. Then she went on to discuss the effectiveness of aspirin as a blood thinner and her preference for particular brand names of over-the-counter medicines. She even told me where to buy the said items at their lowest price. The relentless woman journeyed into an in-depth account regarding the proper intake of vitamins for women in their eighties. She rambled on about every illness or malady that she had the misfortune to have gotten during the last eight decades. In those exceptionally long, mind-numbing minutes, she had become, for me, a perverse embodiment of Marshall McLuhan’s axiom “the medium is the message.” When she showed me her blue, fourteen-day pill, organizer, which she had tucked away in her large handbag, I seriously began to question the proverbial prohibitions about the killing of messengers, whether they bore bad news or not.
As she talked about the number of pills that she took each day, my mind wandered. I daydreamed about American plains Indians attacking and scalping Pony Express riders. I don’t know how long my mind luxuriated in that Wild West fantasy when it was interrupted. In the manner of a doting aunt, my jabbering acquaintance reached over to me and tapped my hand. “I hope that your wife hadn’t succumbed to anything.”
“I am sure she hasn’t,” I politely answered.
“One should count one’s blessings,” Mrs. Prosper advised, “because if one loses one’s health, one loses everything.”
At that time, losing Mrs. Prosper would have been a blessing. All that I wanted, when I came downstairs, was some quiet time with my pre-breakfast coffee, but Madame Fate had different plans. As part of some cosmic practical joke, she found the garrulous Mrs. Prosper, e
scorted her to my unsuspecting self, and, taking advantage of my good nature, let the old bird loose on me. Truly, I was Fortune's fool when I took pity on the old woman and asked her to share my table as I waited for Morgana.
My reward for showing empathy for a fellow human being was to be entrapped in a brain-draining, spirit-sapping, living hell with no way to escape gracefully. I couldn’t return to our room in fear that Morgana would resume her conversation about the two of us going antiquing — an activity that I have little interest in doing, and no interest in talking about. The weather was too inclement for me to duck outside on the pretense that I needed fresh air. The cable TV was out of commission so I couldn’t excuse myself by saying that I had to watch an important program on the lobby television. I did think about retreating to the men’s room, but how long could I stay in there?
“. . . I hope that your wife is all right.”
“I’m sure that she’s okay,” I said nonchalantly, trying to hide my true feelings about my present predicament. “She was in the shower, shaving her legs, when I spoke to her last.”
Suddenly, there was silence. My shaving remark must have given Mrs. Prosper a bit of a start. And so, in a moment of stupidity and orneriness, I tried to befuddle the old woman further. “You must remember how it was,” I said, somewhat unctuously. “Back in the day, with all that shaving, plucking and basting to look . . . oh, how shall I say . . . more appealing to a gentleman’s esthetic nature — ” Mrs. Prosper’s eyes widened. “And just between the two of us, if Morgana doesn't keep her legs well groomed, especially right above her ankles, her legs would look like those of a Clydesdale.”
“Like those horses in the beer commercials?”
I grandly nodded and took another sip of my coffee, which, sadly, had gone cold.
“Oh my,” softly declared Mrs. Prosper, who then quietly sat for a moment, staring at her half filled teacup on the table in front of her.
But my reprieve from Mrs. Prosper’s banter was short lived. Within a cycle of several heartbeats, she asked, “Did you know that the Whyte Post has quite a pedigree of distinguished visitors?”
I hadn’t a chance to respond before she barreled on.
“President Calvin Coolidge stayed here. He lodged in the Presidential Suite, he did. It’s the inn’s largest room, and it has been called The Presidential Suite ever since. And the inventor John Deere visited here for a while. The room that he was in is now called the Harvest Room.”
“Oh, how interesting,” — I lied.
“It is, isn’t,” the old gal affirmed with a dash of pride in her voice. “And Admiral Dewey stayed here at the inn when he returned from the Philippines, after The Spanish-American War.”
“And that room is called?” I asked.
“Room 245,” Prosper answered like a sage proclaiming a tenet of wisdom.
“245, hum. Why is that? Was that his flagship number?”
“Because it is next to room 243. At least I think the admiral’s room is 245. It could be 246; I’m not quite sure. Fred and I stayed in that room once, some years ago. I ought to remember. Yes, now that I think about it, it was room 245. It is decorated in a nautical motif, adorned with pictures of boats, ship lanterns, and large nets which reminded me of those ropey things used in the Second World War on landing ships. And of course Rudy Vallee stayed here many times, though I haven’t a clue which rooms he had. There are photos of him taken during his visits here that are displayed in the inn’s lobby.”
“Coolidge, Deere, Dewey, and Rudy Vallee are all notable sons of Vermont, are they not, Mrs. Prosper?” I said, in an attempt to end, politely, the tedious history of the Whyte Post.
“Very good. Quite right.”
Again, the hope for quietude dissipated as fast as a New York minute.
“Did you know that this place is haunted?” asked Mrs. Prosper, who undoubtedly sensed that the fifteen-second lull in the conversation had reached its maximum.
“No, I — ”
“Oh my, yes, quite haunted indeed by a ghost of a seven-year-old girl, people say.”
“Has anyone actually seen the — ”
“Well, Simon Hograve, the owner of the inn, has seen Ariel. Oh, that is the name of the ghost, Ariel. He has seen her numerous times. Simon told me that he met her again just last week in the basement while he was putting away chairs or something.”
Then the old woman leaned toward me and spoke in a hushed voice. “I even heard Ariel moving about the halls outside my room during the small hours this morning.”
“It was most likely the storm that — ”
“It wasn’t the wind,” said Mrs. Prosper with a tinge of annoyance. “The wind doesn’t walk down the hall and cry. No, what I heard was definitely not the wind.”
“You heard the ghost crying and walking down the hall outside your room, you say? It could have been one of the guests.”
Mrs. Prosper sat straight as an arrow and fixed her eyes on mine. “What I heard was a female crying,” she said with conviction. “There weren’t any female guests registered at the inn last night other than your wife and myself. And before you say that the noise could have been made by someone from the cleaning staff, I know for a fact that Maria, Consuelo, Anita, Arezoo and that new girl, whose name I didn’t catch, don't start their shifts until six in the morning.”
“How do you know — ”
“Mr. Hograve told me,” she snapped.
“You spoke to Hograve about — ”
“Yes, I certainly did.” Then for an uncomfortable moment, she looked deeply into my eyes as it if she were examining me for a pair of eyeglasses. “My, you are unusually inquisitive and talkative for a man, not like my husband, Fred. He wasn’t much interested in anything, except his importing business. He died quite unexpectedly, you know.”
I didn’t, nor did I feel deprived because I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t even know who this irritating woman was twelve hours ago. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said out of an ingrained habit.
“Thank you. Yes, he died most unexpectedly,” said Mrs. Prosper as she leaned back into her chair. “Fred never complained; he was never sick a day in his life. He never said a word about not feeling well . . . God bless his soul. We met, overseas, several years after the war. Julia Child and her husband introduced us at a dinner party . . . .”
A new thought tumbled into my mind. Poor Fred probably couldn’t get to say a word edgewise during his entire marriage to this woman. So one day he must have just simply exploded.
“. . . He always seemed to be the picture of health. Until one day, my Fred‘s heart, without a sign or an inkling that anything was wrong, ruptured. It ‘sort of exploded,’ as his doctor put it to me. He died instantly.”
I knew it!
I nodded slightly, acknowledging again, her loss. But Mrs. Prosper paid no heed. She kept her steady pace down memory lane. Again, I looked about for Morgana, but still there was no hide or hair of her to be seen.
The fire blazing away in the fieldstone fireplace caught my attention. The rustic hearth stood at the far side of the dining area; its heat and light dominated the room. The munching flames cast strange morphing shadows on the dark stained plank floor and freed my mind again to drift. For some inexplicable reason, I began to think about sati, the old Hindu practice of immolation of widows at their husband’s cremation ceremonies.
“ . . . You see, we’ve . . . Fred and I have been coming here to the Hograve’s Whyte Post Inn every year for the last forty years or so. Over that time, I have come to know the Hograve family fairly well, don’t you see. Presently, Simeon’s wife, Jane, is away visiting her sister in New Jersey. I don’t think she is as fond of the place as Simeon is. She takes little vacations away from here without Simeon. It’s a pity because it is a very charming hotel.”
“You and Fred liked this — ”
“Ah, yes, Fred and I loved this place. It’s quiet. You can forget the outside world. Those cell phone things don’t work well
here in the valley; it has something to do with iron deposits in the mountains, or so I’ve been told. And there are no towers nearby. In any case, Fred could really relax here and not worry about the office finding him. But there were times that we were forced to plan working vacations at the inn. Fred would arrange to meet business associates here, and I helped him by doing secretarial work and such. After the meetings, my Fred would relax, go hunting or fishing, or just sit around and read. I, on the other hand, would attend my annual meetings of The Heroic Daughters of Molly Stark, which are usually held here in October. I'm on the executive board, and — ”
“There you are.” The approaching familiar voice immediately alleviated my aching impatience.
“Morgana, you’re here, good,” I said with subdued glee. “Mrs. Prosper here has told me so much about the inn and — ”
“I’m so sorry, Richard,” said Morgana cutting me off, “I had to — ”
“No, need to explain my dear, no need to be embarrassed,” said Mrs. Prosper. “Your husband told me all about it. I was once your age and know what it was like for a woman to prepare herself for her man.” Mrs. Prosper gave me a knowing glance, while, on the other hand, Morgana gave me a look that would scare a nun.
“Richard?” said Morgana in such a saccharine manner that I knew she had dozens questions on her mind.
“Don’t worry my dear,” reaffirmed Prosper. “Your secret is safe with me. I found using plenty of warm water, not hot mind you, a steady hand, a good edge, and the proper finger placement always did it for me. The trick is to get the perfect angle. But one must be slow and steady about it. One shouldn’t rushed or be distracted. It’s funny to think about it now, but after all the years that my husband Fred and I were married, I couldn’t have him watch me do it. In fact, I couldn’t do it even if I knew that my husband was in the next room.”
With her head turned away from Mrs. Prosper, Morgana shot me a look that could only be read as, “What in the world did you say to her?”
I took another sip of coffee and tried to hide behind the mug.
“But when you get to be my age,” continued Mrs. Prosper, “you don’t have to worry about unwanted and unsightly hair.”
FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2) Page 1