by Gail Banning
There was a sickening meaty smell and, an instant later, warm, wet breath on the back of my neck. I turned. Inches from my own were the cloudy brown eyeballs of Great-great-aunt Lydia’s old basset hound. It was a moment before I realized that Great-great-aunt Lydia was standing there with him.
“Stand up,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Stand up, Rosamund, and come with me.”
I did as Great-great-aunt Lydia told me. I stood up and I went with her.
I was scared, and I thought about running. Great-great-aunt Lydia was extremely slow, so I could obviously outrun her. But maybe, I thought, I was meant to be found by her there, outside the Manor. Maybe this was visualization turning things into reality! Great-great-aunt Lydia led me along the concrete walkway, her sensible shoes crushing the little yellow weeds in the cracks. At old-lady pace we went up the big front steps, and across the threshold. As I stepped into the unknown space of Grand Oak Manor and heard the door close behind me I had a sudden sense of captivity, as though I’d been swallowed by a whale. I fought an urge to leave. I would get no other chance, before Panther-Lamp Day, to befriend Great-great-aunt Lydia.
She brought me down a long, long hallway to a gigantic room, deep within the Manor. At the doorway she paused and changed direction. “This way,” she said, and led me up a castle-type staircase. She opened the door to a small room that had six walls, like the treehouse. I realized it was the turret. “This will do,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Sit down.”
I sat in an armchair that rose about a yard above my head. It had a cushion like a sack of concrete. I folded my hands in my lap. Obedience was my strategy. I hoped that my perfect behaviour would demonstrate to Great-great-aunt Lydia that I was nothing like my maniac murderer of a great-grampa. The basset hound lay down beside me, rested his head on his front paws, and shut his eyes. “Wait here,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said, and she left the room, clicking the door shut behind her.
I waited with the patience of the obedient. On the table beside me were a pair of binoculars, and a pen, and a box of blue stationery.
From the Desk of
Lydia Florence Augustine McGrady
Grand Oak Manor
Number 9 Bellemonde Drive
On the other side of the turret was the desk that the stationery was talking about. I wanted to tiptoe over to look, but I didn’t want to risk my obedient image. I could see the treehouse through the spring foliage of our far-off oak tree, and I wished I was there.
Great-great-aunt Lydia was gone a long time. I started to wonder what was going on. Then I thought of something. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. I’d never taken that sign any more seriously than the one that said Warning— Electric Fence, but I began to take it seriously then. Was it possible, I wondered, that when Great-great-aunt Lydia had told me to come with her, she was conducting a citizen’s arrest? Had she gone to call the police? She had, I thought, and she was waiting for them to arrive. They would take me to the police station, and after that I would be prosecuted in Youth Court, where I had been warning Tilley that she and Eveline would end up. At Youth Court, there would be a crime reporter from the local newspaper, and then when we studied current events in social studies my whole class would read about how I had a criminal record for trespassing at the house I claimed to live in. It would be even more humiliating than Panther Lamp Day.
Should I leave, I wondered. If I left and managed to find my way out of the mansion, Great-great-aunt Lydia would not be able to prove my trespass beyond a reasonable doubt. But could I leave? I remembered that click of the turret door. Had it been the click of a lock? Was I imprisoned there, among the worn out fancy furniture, in the dim afternoon? Had Great-great-aunt Lydia’s basset hound been left behind to guard me?
At my feet the basset hound breathed slowly. “Hey boy,” I said, stroking his neck in a careful test of ferocity. “Hey there! Hello boy! Good dog!” I said, scritching under his collar. Without lifting his head, the basset hound opened one eye, then shut it again. I felt better for a moment, until new thoughts formed.
I had come inside with Great-great-aunt Lydia to show that, unlike my violent great-grandfather, I was nice and she didn’t have to be nervous. But if Great-great-aunt Lydia was nervous, would she have brought me inside the Manor all by herself? I had written Great-grampa Tavish’s letter out in normal format, and I took it from my wallet.
I did not ever think a pair of scissors could do
so much harm. I have to leave this bloody house.
A bad destiny awaits me here.
A life is so easily lost.
Let us escape. Let us elope.
Isobel meet me: the treehouse at ten.
X.
I had interpreted the letter the way Bridget did, because Bridget was smart. But I had not given Bridget all the facts. Come to think of it, some of the facts that I had given her were wrong. There was another way to read the letter, I realized. Maybe Great-great-aunt Lydia was the one wielding the scissors. Maybe she had done the harm. Maybe Great-grampa had escaped to save himself. Maybe his own murder was the bad destiny awaiting him at Grand Oak Manor. My scalp prickled. Maybe, I thought, I should get out of here.
NOTEBOOK: #26
NAME: Rosamund McGrady
SUBJECT: Footprints
Just as I’d decided to flee the doorknob turned. In the turret doorway stood Great-great-aunt Lydia, in her tartan skirt and her knit stockings that were like athletic bandages. She looked so old and incapable of harm that my fears suddenly seemed crazy. Fleeing seemed rude. I stayed in my chair.
Great-great-aunt Lydia crossed the room. She took small, careful steps, as if checking the floor for booby traps. Finally she reached the armchair opposite mine. She sat down in ultra slow motion, all except for the last couple of inches, which were speeded up by the force of gravity. She gave me a long look. Her face had no expression at all, only wrinkles.
A man entered the turret. He was not a police officer. He was old, and he was wearing a cardigan and a tie. It was the same man who had been with the workman putting up signs on the so-called electric fence. I recognized his hair, gushing out of his head in big grey waves. He advanced on us with two mugs and a stout brown teapot.
“Not that one, Mr. Bickert,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. This time she did have an expression, which was annoyance. “The good teapot! The good one! And teacups, not mugs!”
Mr. Bickert pursed his mouth, nodded once, and disappeared with his tray.
Great-great-aunt Lydia looked at me. “I’ve been waiting for you Rosamund.”
“Waiting for me?”
“Waiting for you to come back.”
“Come back?” I repeated.
“You left so suddenly, that time you were here,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Just an introduction, and then you were gone. I expect I scared you away somehow. I’ve thought and thought, but I never could determine how. I expect I was curt, was I? I know I can be curt. Heaven knows, I’ve been told.”
She meant the time that Paige had driven me home and I had hugged her at the front door of Grand Oak Manor. “No,” I said. “No, you weren’t curt. I just— dropped by to say hello. That’s all.”
“Ah,” said Great-great-aunt Lydia. “I’d hoped you were accepting my invitation.”
“Invitation?” I asked.
“Yes. My invitation to afternoon tea.”
“I never got an invitation to afternoon tea,” I said. “I would have come if I had.”
“You most certainly did get an invitation to afternoon tea,” she said. “With the flowers, on the day you moved in.”
“We got the flowers,” I said. “And thank you, they were so pretty. But there was no invitation with them.” Before I could mention the torn letter in the stream, Great-great-aunt Lydia spoke again, the turkey wattles of her neck swinging with her words. “Nonsense! There was. I attached it to the arrangement myself. My memory may not be what it was, but that I am sure of.” She pushed herself out of her hard thron
e. At her desk she picked up a file. She turned toward me, a shaking paper in her hand. “Just as I said. The invitation. I keep a copy of all my correspondence, Rosamund, and I’d advise you to do the same. It’s useful when disputes arise, as they so often do.”
She handed me the paper. It was a photocopy of a letter on her stationery.
From the Desk of
Lydia Florence Augustine McGrady
Grand Oak Manor
Number 9 Bellemonde Drive
June 30
To the McGrady family:
I must confess it was a shock to hear from family lost so long. I had forgotten the clause about the treehouse, if I ever knew of it. I am afraid that I felt some suspicion, and called my lawyers. I do hope you won’t be offended. They took the will from archives. It turns out to be authentic, the copy that you unknowingly possessed all these years. They considered whether in law the treehouse is indeed yours, as you four now claim that it is. It turns out that it is. They checked also to see whether in fact you are who you say you are. Of course, as you know full well, it turns out that you are. So, finally, I am in a position to reply. Please forgive my tardiness. To the treehouse, meadow and woods, you are welcome. I’ve not been there in many long years in any case, since old bones like mine are broken easily in a fall on rough ground. I nonetheless hope we’ll become acquainted. Please accept my invitation for lunch or afternoon tea here at Grand Oak
Manor someday soon. Please write or ring me at (406) 189 4666.
Yours truly,
Lydia McGrady
I recognized some of the words from the torn blue strip we had found in the stream. Great-great-aunt Lydia lowered herself carefully back into her chair, free-falling the last couple of inches. “There. That’s one invitation we’ve confirmed that you received. As well as the verbal one my manservant delivered the time I saw you and your sister by the hedge. Perhaps you’ll be so good as to tell me why you chose not to come.”
I was too scared of Great-great-aunt Lydia to insist that we’d never received her letter, and that Mr. Bickert had never spoken to Tilley and me. “I just—got the feeling that you didn’t want to know us,” I said.
“Why ever did you think that?”
“Um. Well. I guess maybe because you didn’t answer our party invitation.”
“Your party invitation! What party invitation? I got no party invitation. I don’t receive so many that I could have forgotten, I’m quite sure of that.”
“Well, we mailed it. Mom said she mailed it. And then there were the signs.”
“The signs?”
“The signs telling us to stay away.”
“What are you saying? That some silly omen told you to avoid Grand Oak Manor?”
“No,” I said. “I mean actual, physical signs. The signs on your fence.”
“Signs on my fence? There are no signs on my fence,”
Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Signs on my fence. Grand Oak Manor isn’t a shopping mall.”
I still didn’t have the nerve to argue. “Oh,” I said.
“Maybe I imagined it. Somehow I just thought I saw some signs.”
“Saying what?” she asked.
“Um. Well. I think they were about trespassing,” I said. “That is, I thought they were. But you must be right. I mean, you know what’s on your own fence, obviously.”
“Is that obvious?” Great-great-aunt Lydia considered. “It’s really not, you know. I don’t know what’s on my fence, now that I think of it. Not on the outside. Not first hand. I haven’t been out into the meadow for years. Not since my hip replacement.”
“But....”
“But what, Rosamund?”
“But then, how did you leave us the flowers?”
“Through my manservant, of course. It’s Mr. Bickert who makes the deliveries to the treehouse. Not that there have been many. Just the Christmas card, and the posie of herbs when you were so ill.”
She meant the dead plants stabbed to the tree. “What were they for?” I asked. “The herbs?”
“What were they for! They were for exactly what I described in some detail in the letter attached to them. They were medicinal herbs, for boiling. There is nothing like them to clear the lungs and sinuses. Don’t tell me you didn’t try them.”
I didn’t tell her that I didn’t try them. I also didn’t tell her that there had been no letter attached. I didn’t want that argument all over again. “Yes, no, you’re so right,” I said. “I’ve never tasted anything like them.”
“Tasted! They’re not for drinking, those herbs, they’re for medicinal steam. Really, Rosamund, you should pay more attention to the written word. It’s a wonder you didn’t poison yourself, and make yourself even sicker than you were.”
“How did you know I was sick?” I asked.
Great-great-aunt Lydia nodded at the binoculars that sat on the table beside us. “I have a good vantage point from here,” she said. “And plenty of opportunity to observe. To put it mildly. You didn’t leave the treehouse for days. I was concerned. It was quite the relief to see you again, crossing the meadow to your outhouse.”
Mr. Bickert appeared in the doorway of the turret. Instead of his tray he had a trolley with a silver teapot about the size of a fire hydrant. There were also flowered teacups, and a sugar bowl and cream jug, trimmed in gold.
“Mr. Bickert,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said sharply. “Tell me what you know about No Trespassing signs on my fence.”
“No Trespassing signs?” he asked. He looked from Great-great-aunt Lydia to me, and back to her again. “No Trespassing signs. Hmmm. I don’t believe I know anything about No Trespassing signs.”
I distinctly remembered seeing him hand one to the workman, so I knew that he was lying. Besides, you could tell by the way his eyes were zipping all around. They reminded me of minnows that have just been caught in a saucepan. Maybe Mr. Bickert was feeling a bit like those minnows. Great-great-aunt Lydia was watching him carefully.
“What exactly did they say, Rosamund?” Great-great-aunt Lydia asked, without looking away from Mr. Bickert.
“Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted,” I said. It seemed embarrassing to quote the ones about the guard dog and the electric fence.“
‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’,” she repeated. “Tell me about those signs, Mr. Bickert.”
Mr. Bickert frowned and closed his eyes and drummed his fingers against his temples. “Oh, the signs,” he said. “Oh, wait a moment, now, I do remember something about signs! That’s right! The fence-builders put them up. Of course, I just assumed they said Fence by Wedgewood Construction or something of that nature. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted! Dear, dear, dear. I had no idea.”“
No idea, Mr. Bickert?” Great-great-aunt Lydia asked. “No idea such as scaring off my next of kin? No idea, such as keeping potential heirs away until I’m safely dead?”
“Certainly not, Madam,” he said, doing a shocked face. “Why, I’m delighted to have your young great-great-niece as our visitor.” He switched from his shocked face to give me a bare-toothed smile. It was so phony it looked like someone had cut it out of a magazine and stuck it on his face.
“No doubt,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. Mr. Bickert clutched the humongous teapot as though it were his only friend. “Milk and sugar, Rosamund?” he asked.
“Yes, please. Four sugars,” I said. He poured the tea and handed me a fancy cup. He handed another to Great-great-aunt Lydia, and left us alone.
She raised her teacup almost to her lips, but she didn’t sip. She stared into the teacup as though she had forgotten what to do with it. “The fence,” she said very quietly. “I wonder if Mr. Bickert told me the right thing, about this legal advice that I was to build a fence. I just wonder now.”
She took a sip from her teacup, put it down, and looked at me. “Well. Grand Oak Manor can’t have seemed very welcoming,” she said. I could see that she was trying to smile, but she seemed sort of out of practice.
I shrugged. “I
thought it was because of our family’s big split.”
“Our big split,” Great-great-aunt Lydia said. “Is that what your parents call it? And what do they say about it, the big split?”
“Not much, really. Dad doesn’t even know what caused it, so he mostly just wonders.” I hesitated. “I wonder too.”
“You wonder, do you?” Great-great-aunt Lydia was silent for a while. “Well, it has affected your family a great deal, there’s no doubt of that. And I suppose you’ll never know if I don’t tell you. So I will tell you, Rosamund, if that’s what you want.” I nodded. She lifted her rattling cup for a sip. I felt a thrill, because I knew the story I was about to hear would be a genuine grown-up drama.
“Well,” she began. “Your great-grandfather was a young man when the falling out occurred. He was still living at Grand Oak Manor then, along with me and Father. Your great-grandfather, Tavish, was my younger brother—I expect you know that. A year and a half younger, although he always seemed much younger than that. In those days I enjoyed my needlework and I had bought myself some special scissors. They were very well-made scissors, razor sharp.” She paused and stared at the shreds of steam rising from her cup. I waited in suspense for the violent part. Great-great-aunt Lydia took a sip and spoke again.
“My scissors suddenly disappeared. When I asked Tavish about them he said he had no recollection of any scissors, but that didn’t convince me he hadn’t taken them. He was a scatterbrain, Tavish. Eventually, it occurred to me to search the treehouse, the one you live in today. Of course, Tavish ought to have outgrown the treehouse by that age, but even at seventeen he often slept there. He always was mad for that treehouse. You see, he was not a very serious young man: certainly not so serious as Father would have liked. Father had great plans for Tavish. He intended Tavish to take over the family lumber business. He intended Tavish to take his place in high society. Tavish would have none of it. He didn’t want to ‘lose his life’ to Father’s plans, was how he insisted upon putting it. Always dramatic, was Tavish. Where was I?”