“Is this where Arthur died?” Mark asked.
Preston answered. “Yes. Of a stroke, very suddenly. He was starting his memoirs. Why he never did them before I don’t know.”
“Thought he was immortal,” said Jenny, “despite the illnesses that were finally catching him up. The illusory glow of a young wife and family. This will have to go to Nathan, too, I suppose.” She picked up the notebook and fanned the pages. Dust eddied. Page after page contained the dark, scrawled, handwriting of a desperate man.
Hilary murmured, “I bet Arthur would’ve given every precious thing he owned to be able to travel and explore again.”
No one bothered to agree with the obvious. Mark peered through a yellow pane of glass and saw the roof-prow of the Lloyd bathed in golden light. Tiny figures moved along York Boulevard and through the surrounding neighborhoods. Arthur would have seen houses and shops crowding Osborne; now it was isolated by the forlorn expanse of rubble. Wind blasted the tops of the trees, and leaves bronzed by the window glass spun by. The tower was like a wheelhouse on a Mississippi steamer, riding land instead of water. And like a steamer the house was old and outdated, Dolores’s ambitions the only thing that kept it from the wrecking ball.
Jenny guided them down from the tower and out of the study. “The house is top-hole. When Dolores asked me to keep an eye on it, I was only too pleased to agree. A shame to let a place so young go to wrack and ruin.”
Hilary folded her arms. “I bet it’s spooky here at night.”
“I’m quite accustomed to living alone.”
Nerves of titanium, Mark thought again. He tasted Osborne’s aura of decay dank and fetid in his throat. It was annoying—he saw new meaning in the term “dog’s breath”—but, oddly, it wasn’t frightening.
Jenny led them down a back staircase. “The pantries are empty save for some institutional dishes. That door leads to the cellars, where Dolores plans a shop selling Arthur’s books and an audio-visual display showing his films. Nothing there now but a furnace and water heater and an empty workshop. Arthur’s wine collection is gone, I’m afraid. But I’ll put on the kettle for a cuppa.” She pushed through another door, and they were in the kitchen.
“All right!” Mark said. Hilary drew an audible breath. Preston shook himself, like a dog climbing out of water.
“Bar the nursery upstairs,” Jenny continued, “this was the only part of the house Arthur let Dolores change. Just peeling off the battleship lino must’ve been a big improvement.”
Stripped of linoleum, the floor was of wide planks that matched the cabinets. A red brick fireplace anchored one side of the room. On the other, an antique iron stove was a pot rack for a modern range, and an ancient icebox served as an ivy planter next to a new refrigerator. The windows—the ones that had been lit so warmly last night—were clean, covered with bright calico curtains. The center of the room was graced by a refectory table, one end occupied by a computer, a stack of papers weighted by a flashlight and a camera, and a box of archaeological supplies. Beyond a door at the far side of the room, Mark glimpsed a pine bedstead, its bright Navajo blanket a welcome contrast to the faded opulence of the house.
Jenny threw her hat on the table. “Butler’s room. Now mine, appropriately.”
“You don’t care much for the Coburgs, do you?” Mark asked.
“I wasn’t born to any kind of privilege, and I certainly haven’t married any. I have little patience with toffs who think they’ve somehow earned it all, no.” She filled a teakettle, placed it on the range, and dumped tea into a brown glazed pot. “I suppose the Coburgs have problems of their own,” she added, straining for generosity.
Hilary inspected her own ritzy tennis shoes, apparently wondering just what she’d earned with her privileged birth.
Preston laid the drawing board he’d been so faithfully carrying on the table. “No tea for me, thanks. Y’all may be mingling with society tonight, but my lady is expecting me, and I’d put her up against Dolores any day!”
“See you tomorrow, then.” Jenny escorted him through a porch and out the back door, opening its dead bolt for him.
The kettle hissed, but it didn’t drown out a sudden faint squeaking sound. Hilary’s chin went up as she strained to identify it, but the squeak was eclipsed by Jenny’s voice as she returned. “Lucia Hernandez welcomed me the first night I was here. She gave me that—thing—on the mantelpiece.”
Mark saw a matchstick sculpture of spindly skeletons wielding pick and spade, just as well digging an archaeological trench as a grave. “A Dia de los Muertos decoration. The Day of the Dead—All Saints’ Day, in November. In Mexico, you go out to the cemetery, clear off your ancestors’ graves, and have a party. When I finished my thesis last year, Lucia gave me a skeleton hunched over a computer.”
“Rather like the old English sarcophagi showing a rotting body?” Jenny went to rescue the insistently whistling teakettle.
“Similar, I guess,” said Hilary. “Thinking of death not as some ghastly end, but as a normal stage in existence. I wonder sometimes if people today don’t put too much emphasis on the physical body.”
No, Mark thought with weary sarcasm, nothing as transitory as flesh should be savored. He accepted a mug of tea and doctored it with milk and sugar. Its sweet heat scoured his throat of the taste of decay. The light and air in the kitchen was a welcome antidote to the stuffy silence of the main house. He wasn’t sure whether he was relieved or disappointed that, as a haunted house, Osborne had turned out to be a damp firecracker. Nothing like facing one’s fears to defeat them, he told himself.
Jenny drank deeply from her steaming mug. British throats were lined with asbestos, Mark told himself with a smile.
Hilary sipped. “You know, I think there’s an animal outside.”
“Eh?” Jenny listened, then put down her cup. “Let’s make a recce.”
Outside the air was like glycerin in the shadowless glare of the sun. The braided branches of the oaks whipped in the wind. Scraggly azalea and crape myrtle crowded the foundations of the house. With visions of scorpions and fire ants, Mark pulled Hilary back and plunged into the narrow tunnel behind the hedge.
At the edge of the veranda he found a small scruffy cat. Its piteous mews increased in volume as he picked it up, and its paws flailed, leaving parallel red scratches on his hand. “Hey,” Mark protested, dropping it, “I’m trying to help you!”
The cat squeaked indignantly like a rubber squeeze toy.
“What is it?” shouted Hilary from beyond the shrubbery barrier.
“A cat. Kitten. Feline teenager. Real scared.”
“Half a minute,” Jenny called. Footsteps receded, returned. A bath towel came flying over the bushes.
Mark wrapped the little creature so that only its pointed face, whiskers, and outsized ears emerged from the towel. The cat’s squeaks subsided. By the time he crawled free of the hedges, it was purring. “Thanks,” he told it, and wiped his torn hand on his shirt.
“Oh, poor baby!” Hilary trilled, referring not to Mark but to the cat. “Is it hurt?”
“Too loud to be hurt—mostly hungry and dirty.” Jenny took the towel and cat bundle and gingerly unwrapped it. Sensing a patsy, the animal turned on the charm, rubbing its head against the Oxford logo on her shirt and blinking its golden eyes. After a quick inspection, Jenny pronounced, “A female. She can stay here with me—plenty of room for the both of us.”
“Is she all right?” Hilary asked.
Jenny laughed. “My mum and I always had cats in our cottage. I’ve been through more feline crises than I have pottery shards.”
“She’s in good hands, then,” said Mark.
“She’s such a pretty gray,” Hilary said. “Or will be when she’s cleaned up. What was it they called witches’ familiars in the Middle Ages?”
“Graywacke,” Mark replied. He swore the cat was smirking at him.
“That’s a variety of stone,” Jenny told him. “You’re thinking of ‘Graymalkin
’. Appropriate name for her. Not that I’ve ever been called a witch, but I’ve certainly been called something that rhymes.”
Mark wasn’t sure whether she meant that as a joke, but was saved from reacting inappropriately when Hilary spotted his scratches. “Wounded in the line of duty, I see. Come on, let’s get that hand cleaned up—I’ve got some antibiotic ointment….” She saw his raw fingertips and flinched, knowing full well why he’d been playing his guitar so intently.
“I need to clean all of me up,” he told her, “if they’re going to let me in the Lloyd.”
“I’ll feed Graymalkin some milk and egg and make her a bed,” Jenny said. “Tomorrow will be time enough for a wash and brush and a visit to the vet’s. You’d best be off—I imagine Lucia’s flat has only one bath.”
Uh-oh, Mark said to himself. Jenny thought Hilary was living with him. Among other activities, no doubt.
Hilary’s rosy complexion became even rosier. “Actually, I’m staying at a townhouse over there.” Her gesture could’ve included anything from the Lloyd to San Francisco.
Jenny had the class not to compound her mistake by trying to apologize for it. She definitely didn’t recognize its implications. “Right. I’ll be seeing you tonight, then.”
“Thanks for the tea,” Mark and Hilary called, and walked, each in a cocoon of personal space, toward the driveway. Behind them, Graymalkin’s demanding meow was cut off by the shutting of the back door.
Hilary unlocked her car and leaned on the roof, eyeing the house. “I’d hate to stay there all by myself. And I sure wouldn’t be walking around at night. Jenny’s something else, isn’t she?”
Mark eyed Hilary’s profile. Here he was worried about the house spooking him, and it had spooked her. He felt obscurely guilty, as though he should’ve protected her. But she would have rejected his solicitude, just as he’d rejected hers. “Yeah,” he said neutrally.
“Did you notice that the clock in the entrance hall was the only thing outside of the kitchen that wasn’t covered with dust? Jenny frowned at it.”
“Because she knew it was getting late.”
“If she was in a hurry, why did she ask us to stay for tea?”
Mark hadn’t a clue as to what Hilary was getting at, and suspected she didn’t either—the house had simply made her nervous. Symptom of a choked libido. He opened the door of the van. “I’ll pick you up at seven-fifteen.”
Hilary shrugged off her uneasiness. “No, my turn to drive. Where’s your apartment?” Using his toe, Mark sketched a map in the gravel. “Got it,” she said. “Seven-fifteen, best bib and tucker.”
“Can’t I just wear a suit?”
Hilary laughed, then drove away with a jaunty wave.
The turret of Arthur’s Camelot was a green and yellow gleam beyond the trees. Mark wondered if Arthur, or his mother, Vicky, or his wife Felicia, had believed death was just a stage in existence.
Time was wasting. He, too, turned away from Osborne House and drove off toward the sunset.
Chapter Four
Hilary pulled on Mark’s arm, stopping him just outside the doorway of the atrium. “I feel as though we’re entering the palace of Versailles for an audience with Louis XIV,” she whispered.
“No kidding,” Mark returned.
Not that the classical marble entrance hall of the Lloyd was as ornate as that of Versailles. And the people in the atrium were reflected not in tall mirrors but in windows, so that their forms swam eerily in the shadowed depths of the gardens outside. But the banks of flowers, the long tables with their white linen cloths and silver trays, and the string quartet playing tasteful music in the corner reminded Hilary of a scene from a costume drama.
Her own costume, a short black satin sheath with puffed sleeves, was going to stand out like a crow among a group of peacocks. Most of the other women were wearing voluminous gowns reminiscent of Scarlett O’Hara or Madame de Pompadour. Among the billowing pink and apricot taffetas, the men in their tuxedos looked like exclamation points.
Hilary recognized political candidates and business tycoons whose photographs had been in this morning’s paper. Oh my, she thought. She hadn’t been at a gathering this sophisticated in years. It reminded her of her brother Gary’s wedding reception at the country club, when she’d been a little girl in frilly socks and hair ribbons.
Mark cleared his throat, as if the pressure of his tie on his Adam’s apple was choking him. “You want me to duck out before I embarrass you?”
“Why?” Hilary asked. “So you don’t have a tux. The invitation said semi-formal, not full ball gown and monkey suit. Look at me, for heaven’s sake—this isn’t even a Dior, I got it around the corner from Dior….”
“Maybe it has some Dior lint on it,” Mark said.
“Lint? Where?” She’d already started brushing at her shoulders before she realized he was joking. The weight of her gold earrings and necklace must have shorted out her sense of humor. She pushed at him. He laughed.
The charcoal wool of his suit shaded his gray eyes with the translucence of early morning. The jacket was cut along unconstructed European lines, emphasizing the depth of his chest and the slenderness of his hips rather than the weight of his checkbook. The red and blue of his tartan tie was a touch of the cheerful impudence Hilary so admired and envied in him. “You look very nice,” she told him.
“The suit’s a guilt gift from my father. Every time he gets some fancy toy for my little half-brother and sister, he gets something for me, too.”
“I get status gifts. Like the money that eked out my fellowship—heaven forbid my father’s daughter should live in a Parisian garret. But I’ve got a real job now. Better late independence than never.”
“You’ve never been dependent. There’s too much going on in there.” Mark tapped her forehead. “Come on, we can’t stand here all night.”
He wasn’t intimidated, was he? How did he do that? Hilary toyed with the concept of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread—no, Mark was no fool—and familiarity breeding contempt—it wasn’t familiarity, his background was middle-class—and finally decided that it was simply his stubborn refusal to be cowed. “Lead on,” she said, and they entered the atrium.
A white-jacketed official checked their invitations and directed them toward the refreshments.
“Glass of wine?” Mark asked.
“Just a sip, please. I’m driving.”
“Coming up.” Mark strolled over to a table and asked the steward dispensing from a dozen sleek bottles, “Como estas?”
The man was so pleased someone recognized his existence that he answered with what must’ve been his life history. Mark blanched, responded in labored Spanglish, and finally obtained two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc. Hilary rolled the wine around her mouth. California, she decided. Very good.
The atrium was a carousel of baroque human figures bobbing up and down among potted ficus trees decorated with tiny white fairy lights. Overhead spotlights brought out the sparkle of jewelry, hair spray, and polished teeth. The string quartet played in mime, their music overwhelmed by chattering voices. A calliope, Hilary thought, might have been more appropriate.
“Well if you aren’t the prettiest little thing I’ve ever seen!” said a hearty voice in Hilary’s ear, and she jumped.
Mark’s brows went lopsided, one up, one down. “Travis Ward, Hilary Chase. She’s the new assistant curator here at….”
Travis seized Hilary’s hand and held her away from him in the attitude of a fisherman considering his latest catch. “Here at the Lloyd? Now, sugar, you’re much too good-looking a gal to waste in those musty old storerooms.”
Hilary managed to swallow her mouthful of wine. A large air bubble went down with it. She croaked, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Ward.”
“Travis, sugar. Just Travis. We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”
She pulled her hand away from his damp palm. His eyes weren’t quite focused and his bow tie hung a bit askew. Judging by the faint
miasma of alcohol he exuded, he’d gotten a head start on the evening.
Hilary could step closer to Mark, asking for his protection and therefore inferring his ownership. Instead she planted her pumps on the marble floor and said with earnest breathlessness, “I’m looking forward to working in the storerooms. I can hardly wait to see the Bastianini quattrocento forgeries—in the style of Desiderio da Settignano, you know, quite the cynosure in the nineteenth century. And the Tintoretto of the Gonzaga family, a gallery picture, but worthwhile as an example of Renaissance excess.”
Travis stared as though she’d suddenly started speaking in tongues.
“Of course Leonardo’s ‘Ginevra dei Benci’ was for quite a while not accepted as genuine. There’s a reference to it in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu.”
Muttering excuses, Travis retreated into the crowd, walking with the bowlegged deliberation of a man accustomed to high-heeled cowboy boots.
Hilary looked shamefacedly around at Mark. Suffused with silent laughter, he raised his glass to her and said, “I hereby award you both ears and the tail.”
“For heaven’s sake, Mark, I never got past the first few pages of Proust.”
Travis was intercepted by a woman whose blond hair flared around her head in defiance of gravity. “There you are,” she said. “Go find the boy from the florist’s and see what happened to that tea rose arrangement for the bar.”
“The bar has some flowers on it.”
“Those aren’t tea roses, are they? They’re gladioli. I swear, you’re slower than Christmas.”
Travis seized another glass of sustenance as he passed the bar. The woman flounced—her dress was appropriate for flouncing—toward another table and demanded that a half-empty tray of finger sandwiches be replaced.
“Sharon, right?” Hilary asked Mark. “Imitating Dolores?”
“We’re about to find out. Here comes the materfamilias herself, turned out to the best standards of Neiman-Marcus.”
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