“Certainly not,” Nicole said, much too quickly. “Uncle Dickie says it’s absolute nonsense.”
“I’m sure he’s right,” I said.
“He’s such a dear,” Nicole went on, her face brightening. “He restored the fabric of the building, updated the wiring and the plumbing. He even furnished the lower rooms for us. The third story’s still unfinished, but I seldom go up there.” She shot a nervous glance at the ceiling, then pointed toward a door to our left.
“The bathroom,” she informed me. “And the red room—”
“—is next door,” I interrupted.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“Lucky guess,” I replied. “If this were my house, I’d put my guests close to the bathroom.”
“That’s what Jared thought,” said Nicole. “I hope you like the red room. He selected it for you.”
She opened the next door to our left and stood back. I stepped past her, stopped dead on the threshold, and shuddered.
“Oh, Lori, you’ve taken a chill. Go sit by the fire while I run your bath.” Nicole draped her gorgeous shawl around my grubby shoulders and left me standing mutely in the doorway.
I was glad of her absence. I needed a private moment to come to terms with the red room’s sheer awfulness.
CHAPTER
5
It looked like a funeral parlor. Every ponderous piece of furniture was made of time-blackened oak or covered in blood-red fabric, and everywhere I looked, dead animals stared back at me. A stuffed ferret frolicked on the mantelpiece, a monkey crouched rigidly atop the wardrobe, and a flock of silent songbirds perched coyly in a glass dome on the dressing table. Reginald, I knew, would be appalled.
The fire crackling in the tiled hearth only made matters worse. The monkey’s shadow quivered ominously on the ceiling, the songbirds’ eyes glittered pitifully, and the ferret’s fur gleamed in a grotesque parody of good health. The furniture’s carved figures seemed to writhe in the firelight, and the crimson damask bedcover glistened like a spreading pool of blood. I could easily picture a hollow-cheeked cadaver lying in state on the canopied four-poster. It was harder to imagine me lying there.
I forced myself to step into the room and stand before the fire. The heat was so oppressive, the room’s decor so claustrophobic, that a wave of nausea rocked me and I sank, wobbly-kneed, onto the red velvet fainting couch.
“Your bath is running.” Nicole bustled into the room and opened the wardrobe. “I’ve put some of my things in here for you—normal things, not vintage clothing. I wouldn’t dream of imposing Jared’s taste on you.”
“Thanks.” I put a hand to my damp forehead. “Ruffles don’t really suit me. It’s like spraying whipped cream on a horse.”
“Nonsense,” Nicole exclaimed. “You’ve a lovely figure.” She gazed at me expectantly. “Do you like your room?”
Nothing warms a mother’s heart more than being told she has a lovely figure. I carefully swallowed the absolute truth and replied with a close approximation. “It’s stunning. Were the stuffed animals always in it?”
“No,”Nicole said. “Jared brought them up from the study as a finishing touch. We think the room must have been used as a nursery at one time. It’s the only way we can explain the bars.” She crossed to the windows and pulled the heavy drapes aside, revealing a row of stout iron bars set four inches apart in the stone sill.
The barred windows and the lifeless animals suggested a zoo, but the words that came to my mind were: a prison. I must have spoken the words aloud, because Nicole shook her head.
“The dungeons are down below,” she told me. “Jared plans to use them as an annex to the wine cellar, once we clear them of rubbish.”
“You have dungeons?” I said weakly.
“What would a castle be without a dungeon? My great-grandfather, Josiah Byrd, built Wyrdhurst, and he didn’t believe in half-measures.” Nicole peered past the bars. “We would have had a drawbridge and a moat if the workers hadn’t gone away to the war.”
A haze rose before my eyes. Despite the heat, my teeth began to chatter. I was about to ask Nicole to call for Dr. MacEwan when a pair of black button eyes twinkled at me from the bedside table.
“Teddy,” I whispered.
Nicole followed my gaze. “His name’s Major Ted,” she told me. “He’s been in the family for donkey’s years. Uncle Dickie gave him to me when I was very small. I thought you might enjoy his company.”
Major Ted was a toffee-colored bear costumed in the khaki field uniform and stiff, high-peaked hat of a British army officer. The jodhpurs, puttees, and flared tunic with its brass buttons were vintage World War I, as were the monocle and the brown leather strap running slantwise from shoulder to belt. The monocle was held in place—rather brutally, in my opinion—with a pin.
Nicole looked at me uncertainly. “Jared thought it a bit childish, but I—”
“It’s not childish,” I said. “Teddy’s wonderful.”
“Major Ted,” Nicole corrected gently. She still looked concerned. “You don’t seem at all well, Lori.”
“I just need to get out of this room,” I muttered, “and into a hot bath,” I added hastily, when I saw Nicole flinch. “I’m really looking forward to a good soak.”
“You know where to find it.” The young woman gestured toward a telephone on the dressing table. “Ring zero-five when you’re ready. Mrs. Hatch will show you the way to the dining room.”
I nodded silently, unwilling to tear my gaze from Major Ted’s. Teddy was the only hint of normalcy in the room, and when Nicole had gone, I walked unsteadily to the bedside table and clasped the uniformed bear in my arms.
“You’re not Reginald,” I murmured, removing the offending monocle. “But you’ll do.”
The bath, the clean clothes, and Teddy’s comforting presence made me feel almost human. A hearty breakfast far away from the horrible red room would, I firmly believed, finish the job. I pulled on the fawn slacks, nut-brown lambs-wool sweater, and soft leather slippers provided by my hostess and decided that I could do without Mrs. Hatch’s services.
I didn’t need anyone’s help to find the dining room. All I had to do was follow my nose. The mouthwatering aroma of frying bacon drew me down the main staircase to the door beside the gong in the entrance hall. I was reaching for the knob when I heard Nicole’s voice coming from inside the room. She sounded upset.
“Oh, Jared, must you go? You know how I hate staying on here without you.”
“You won’t be alone this time.” Jared’s bass rumble came through clearly to the entrance hall. “Mrs. Willis will be here to keep you company.”
“But will she stay the whole week?” Nicole fretted. “She seemed ill-at-ease in the red room. If she decides to cut her visit short, I’m leaving. After what happened last time, I refuse—”
“How often do I have to tell you that it was all in your head, my dear? Old houses make noises. You must simply accustom yourself to them.”
“But it wasn’t just the noises, Jared. It was the—” Nicole fell silent, and when she spoke again, her tone of voice had changed. “Yes, Hatch, the kidneys are lovely. Would you kindly bring fresh toast for our guest when she arrives?”
As I entered the room, a portly, middle-aged man in a black suit was leaving through another door, a silver toast rack in his hands.
“Mrs. Hatch’s husband,” Nicole informed me, when he’d gone. “They’re both from Newcastle. We tried a local couple, but—”
“There’s no need to bore our guest with tedious domestic affairs, my dear.” Jared rose to pull a button-backed velvet chair out for me. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Willis?”
I sat opposite Nicole, with Jared taking pride of place at the head of a polished walnut table long enough to seat twelve. Behind me, a mirrored breakfront held an array of covered warming dishes. While Nicole poured tea for me, Jared crossed to the breakfront and took up a plate.
“What may I get for you?” he asked. “Egg
s, kidneys, bacon, tomatoes, kippers?”
“All of the above,” I replied. Adam’s broth was but a distant memory and my stomach felt as empty as a pauper’s pockets. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Not at all,” said Jared. “We rarely breakfast before nine.” He placed the laden dish before me and resumed his seat.
Hatch returned briefly to present me with a rack of fresh toast and I helped myself to the marmalade.
The dining room was another Victorian time capsule, richly papered, splendidly carpeted, and overburdened with objets d’art. My hosts, however, had made a concession to modern times by exchanging vintage for contemporary clothing.
Jared was all business in a natty black three-piece suit with a crisp white shirt and a silk tie. Nicole was more casually attired, in a flowing black wool skirt, an oversized black sweater, and woolly tights.
I attacked my plate in silence, aware of the tension in the room, but too ravenous to care. It wasn’t until I’d quelled the worst of my hunger pangs that I decided to risk conversation.
“Nicole tells me that you collect Victoriana, Mr. Hollander,” I said gamely. “It must have taken you years to find so many splendid pieces.”
“Time is immaterial when one’s passion is engaged.” Jared twirled his mustache and surveyed the dining room with a benign, self-satisfied air.
“Most of the larger pieces were here when we arrived,” Nicole pointed out. “Great-grandfather left virtually everything in place when he closed the hall. Uncle Dickie simply removed the dustcovers.”
“My wife’s uncle has been very helpful, in his way,” Jared admitted, with a sour smile. “Though I dare say that my own collection has added polish to what was a somewhat mundane assortment of period furnishings. By the time I’ve finished,” he added smugly, “people will pay to see Wyrdhurst.”
“You won’t have to pay, Lori.” Nicole looked up from her plate with a bright, brittle smile. “But I’m afraid my husband won’t be able to give you a tour. He’s leaving in an hour. Going to be gone all week. Isn’t it rotten of him, to abandon us while he goes off gallivanting in Newcastle?”
“It’s hardly gallivanting.” Jared scowled at his wife, then turned to me. “I’m needed in Newcastle, Mrs. Willis, to interview a new housekeeping service and attend several important auctions.”
“We’ve been through three cleaning crews already,” Nicole said, the smile tightening on her face. “Three crews in three months. It must be some sort of a record.”
“It’s too quiet up here for them,” Jared commented.
“Don’t they go down to the village?” I asked.
Nicole opened her mouth to reply, but Jared cut her off.
“Blackhope is an uncivilized backwater,” he declared. “What amusements it provides cannot compare to those offered in Newcastle.” He pulled a hefty gold hunter from his watch pocket and consulted it. “If you’ll excuse me, I must throw a few things together before I leave.” He leaned over to touch my wrist. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for deserting you, Mrs. Willis.”
I’d forgive him without a second thought, but I wasn’t so sure his wife could. She watched with wide, anxious eyes as he left the room, and didn’t touch her food after he’d gone.
I went back for seconds. “When I’ve finished breakfast,” I said, piling on the smoked kippers, “would you show me the library?”
“The library?” Nicole’s eyes took a moment to focus on me. “Of course. The library. That’s why Uncle Dickie sent you.”
As I watched my hostess slip back into a preoccupied silence, I began to suspect that the library wasn’t the only reason Uncle Dickie had sent me.
CHAPTER
6
Dickie Byrd was a down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of guy. It wasn’t hard to imagine what he thought of his new nephew-in-law. Nicole might put up with Jared’s highhandedness—love could be incredibly stupid as well as blind—but it wouldn’t go down well with her adoring uncle.
Was Dickie worried about his niece? Had I been sent all the way to Northumberland to be a playmate for little Nicole?
Or was I an unwitting spy?
I turned the thought over in my mind as Nicole maintained her silence. The Serenissima prayer book was, as I’d told Stan Finderman, an awfully big payoff for a rough-and-ready library survey, but there might be more at stake here than the value of Wyrdhurst’s books. Perhaps Uncle Dickie wanted an impartial observer to report back on the state of his niece’s marriage.
I knew what I’d tell him, if asked. Bill frequently accused me of jumping to conclusions, but even he would have to agree that I was staring at an open-and-shut case: Nicole Byrd had married a pompous, pigheaded prig, and the sooner someone put him in his place, the better.
“Is it the kippers,” Nicole asked, “or my husband?”
I looked up from my neglected plate. “Sorry?”
“To judge by the stormy look on your face, you’ve either swallowed a bone or choked on my husband’s bad manners.” Nicole had regained her composure. She sat with her chin in her hands, smiling wistfully. “Jared rubs people the wrong way, sometimes, but you mustn’t think ill of him. He can be terribly sweet.”
Marriage counseling wasn’t part of my job description, so I kept my thoughts about Jared to myself.
“I am replete,” I announced, pushing my chair back from the table. “Will you take me to the library? I’d like to get started.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Nicole asked.
“Absolutely,” I replied, ignoring the slight headache that had begun to tap at the base of my skull. Nothing short of broken bones would induce me to spend the day cooped up in the red room.
We had to pass through the drawing room, the billiards room, and the study to reach the library. Each room was awash in bric-a-brac, rich fabrics, and period furniture. It was so much like a museum that I found myself unconsciously looking for explanatory labels.
Nicole proved to be a knowledgeable, if mildly depressing, guide. She pointed out collections of jet mourning jewelry, samplers stitched with morbid sayings, and a black veil allegedly worn by the grieving Queen Victoria at Balmoral. When she paused in the study before a framed landscape made entirely of human hair, I searched for a change of subject.
“Is the village really called Blackhope?” I asked, averting my eyes from the weirdly intertwined tresses.
“It’s not as hopeless as it sounds,” Nicole said. “‘Hope’ is a corruption of ‘hop’. It means ‘secluded valley’.”
“And ‘black’ comes from the blood of a thousand massacred Scotsmen,” I intoned.
Nicole’s mouth fell open. “How perfectly awful. Wherever did you hear that?”
“Captain Manning,” I said, and relayed his gruesome version of the legend behind the Little Blackburn’s name. When I’d finished, Nicole shook her head.
“Great-grandfather wouldn’t have built his country retreat here if he’d known the legend,” she said. “Josiah thought bathing in the Little Blackburn was good for his health. He loved it here.”
“Why did he leave?” I asked.
“There were any number of reasons,” Nicole said. “For one thing, the Great War brought a good deal of business to the family firm. Josiah must have been too busy to tear himself away from Newcastle.” She crossed the study and stood before a pair of finely carved oak doors. “I should warn you,” she said, “that the library’s almost exactly as Josiah left it. Uncle Dickie asked us not to touch it until after you’d completed your survey.”
She reached for the oversized door-handles and pulled hard. The doors opened with a nerve-wrenching screech, and together we entered a dreamscape of dust and old leather. Gray sunlight filtered weakly through a rear wall of tall windows overlooking a flagstone terrace and a tangled, matted jungle of a garden. The sun reflected dimly from the massive, clouded mirror above the fireplace, igniting fragile, furtive gleams on gilded leather.
“Oh,” I moaned, my headache van
ishing, “how beautiful.” I sat in a high-backed armchair and gazed upward at the shelves, at the filmy cobwebs on the fine morocco, at the ancient, wheeled steps that would allow me access to the remotest corners of this precious and abandoned paradise.
“Beautiful?” Nicole flapped her hand at the cloud of dust that had risen from my chair. “You sound like Uncle Dickie. He’s never happier than when he’s clambering about a filthy old bookshop. I’ll have Mrs. Hatch turn the room out before you—”
“No,” I said. “Please, it’s not necessary, unless you don’t want your clothes to get dirty.”
“I was thinking of you, not the clothes,” Nicole said.
“Then leave the room just as it is,” I told her. “If you’ll give me some cotton rags, I’ll dust things as I go along. A flashlight, er, torch, would come in handy too, and I’ll need—”
“I stocked Josiah’s desk this morning,” Nicole interjected, “after we heard about your car. You’ll find pencils, pens, notebooks, everything I could think of.” She looked past me at the wall opposite the fireplace. “There he is, the old devil.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, as if the old devil had crept up behind me. I rose from the armchair and turned in the direction of Nicole’s gaze.
The portrait hung in a recess above a sturdy rolltop desk at the far end of the room. The oil paint had darkened with age, but it hadn’t been very bright to begin with. The patriarch’s black frock coat seemed to merge with the murky landscape, giving an eerie prominence to his stiff white collar, wispy white hair, and lavish side-whiskers. The effect was unsettling, as if the old man’s head hovered, disembodied, in darkness.
His craggy face was hard, unyielding, his mouth set in an uncompromising line beneath a haughty beak of a nose and a pair of hooded eyes. Here was a man who saw life in black and white, I thought, who knew for a fact that God was, like himself, a stern Victorian.
“Great-grandfather would have abhorred Captain Manning’s legend,” Nicole was saying. “He had a great admiration for the Scots. That’s why the library faces north.”
[Aunt Dimity 06] - Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil Page 4