Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Charlotte, though, a citizen in good standing of the eighteenth century, had not been so impressed with her gift that she hadn’t written her note and drawn her sketch on the back. Where better to expand on the topic, after all? And then she’d tucked the page away, just another curiosity in the curiosity-laden halls of the aristocracy.

  “All right! Cool!” Jean said aloud, with a fist-pump that caused the cats to look up, ears pricked watchfully.

  An electric tingle ran from the crown of her head down to her toes, making them curl with glee. And with trepidation. Jessica was right. There was a lot at stake here. More than a note from Lady Dunmore, historical figure that she was. More than a sketch of the Witch Box, interesting artifact that it was. At stake was an original Shakespeare document.

  Was that enough to motivate murder? Maybe so. Factoring in the Dingwalls’ Bacon mania, probably so. Factoring in ambition, jealousy . . .

  The tingle contracted into a wintry prickle. Frost formed on the back of her neck, thickening, weighing her down so that she seemed to be pressed into the chair. The sound she for a fraction thought was sleet against a window was the hiss of the cats. Forcing her stiff, frozen, heavy muscles to respond, she turned toward the fireplace.

  The Bellarmine bottle glided through the air, slowly, gracefully, from the mantel to the coffee table. Perhaps Jean caught a shimmer in the air around it, pale hands, pale garments, pale face, nuance reflected on nothingness. Perhaps she merely imagined that human shape, knowing that in some dimension it was there.

  Bushrod and Bucktrout backed toward the door, heads down, fur bristling. Jean stared at the bottle that now sat on the table next to the Historic Area schedule of events and Alasdair’s newspaper. The chill slowly flowed down her limbs and away, her shoulders lifted and her head tilted. A car passed in the street. The clock ticked. With a gentle thump the heating system came on and its draft lifted one corner of the newspaper and released it again.

  Jean shuddered, throwing off the last of the chill. Now what, Thomasina? She picked up her cup of cocoa and gulped. It was so cold a wave of pain splashed against her eye sockets and obliterated the faint clink of something that might have been a bell, or might have been a couple of exhausted brain cells falling from their perches. Thanks.

  After a moment’s recovery, she folded the paper and slipped it into her notebook. She got up, opened the door, let the still-agitated cats escape into the free air. Then she picked up her phone—Alasdair was raking Quentin over a pile of peat-fired coals, Michael and Rebecca were playing happy families instead of sleuths, Miranda, though was . . .

  “. . . not available just now,” said the dulcet voice. “Please leave a message.”

  As comprehensively and yet as tersely as she could without a word-processing program at her fingertips, Jean backtracked to Thomasina in the Palace kitchen, then gave Miranda a guided tour of Matt’s office, the theater, Dunwich Pond, the missing computer, and, last but a far cry from least, the Charlotte document.

  “And if there’s anyone from the Folger Library at the reception tonight or the seminar tomorrow,” she concluded, “please ask them to contact Stephanie Venegas and fax her a copy of the back, er, front, er, non-Charlotte side of that paper!”

  She flipped the phone shut. Only then did it occur to her that Stephanie might already have located the document elsewhere in D.C., assuming she would use her resources on something that was peripheral to her investigation. Well, nothing ventured. It wasn’t that she wanted to steal a march on the official and quasi-official investigation, oh no.

  Jean made herself another cup of cocoa and, sipping the sweet warmth that was both soothing and invigorating, she sat down in the wingback chair and read through her notes. No patterns that she hadn’t already noticed leaped out at her. Instead of wasting her own resources creating some out of wishful thinking and whole cloth, she fished Witches and Wenches out of its sack.

  At first she couldn’t help but edit Jessica’s prose as she read, and wonder again how much Jessica owed to her husband and her mother-in-law. However, each was properly referenced in the back even if Sharon Dingwall was not.

  What had Matt said? You’d think the damn Dingwalls had cast some sort of spell on our family. Like Wesley’s workmates saying he seemed to be under a curse. Like the charm stone, healing, cursing, whatever.

  Offensive witchcraft bad, Jean thought. Defensive witchcraft good, even if it was still witchcraft. Not that the sides were as evenly divided as those on a football team.

  The human thought process hadn’t changed all that much over the years. Something’s gone wrong, so let’s find someone to blame. The other side started it, it was their fault, we’re just fighting fire with fire, we’re giving the bad guys a taste of their own medicine. There were any number of ways of saying that their end never justified their means, and then turning around and justifying your means with your end. And “all’s well that ends well” didn’t excuse a thing.

  That was Alasdair’s manifesto as well. She’d have to talk to him about it. Later.

  Jean turned back to Witches and Wenches and this time let herself be transported to colonial Virginia. When she looked at the clock again, it was almost five.

  She’d changed her clothes and was applying lipstick when the front door opened. She peered around the corner to see Alasdair closing it behind him. “Hi. How’d it go?”

  Once again he indulged in a grimly satisfied smile. “No one’s turned up either Matthew Finch or Dylan Dingwall, but Quentin’s turned Queen’s evidence.”

  “Quentin’s turned state’s evidence,” Jean corrected.

  “Ah, but the state after dealing with the theft of the replica is the U.K. Stephanie’s had Kelly in, but she’s saying Quentin’s winding her up and Hugh’s after making trouble because she’s a, how’d she say it, independent womanist entrepreneur.”

  “Quentin wouldn’t gotten himself into such bad trouble just to tease her. And how could Hugh have known anything about her?”

  “Q.E.D.” Alasdair started toward the bedroom door, loosening his tie. “The replica Witch Box is not at the Dingwalls’ house in Rosslyn—I reckon it’s sitting in a warehouse waiting for the Monday. ’Til we turn it up, we’ve got no real case against Kelly. Nor Quentin. But they’re being watched. Stephanie knows to see through a brick wall in time.”

  That last was Tolkien, not Scots. Jean had to smile, if thinly.

  “Stephanie’s after making inquiries at the Folger Library also come the Monday, and thank you kindly for the suggestion. I doubt there’s a rule that everything’s happening on the weekend when staff’s not available.”

  “Like getting sick on a Friday.” But Jean wasn’t feeling sick. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, she diverted Alasdair toward the desk. “I’ve got Miranda maybe raising someone from the Folger this evening. Look at this.” Like a magician popping a rabbit out of a hat, she presented the document, Louise’s testimony, and her own theories.

  No need to explain the ramifications to Alasdair. His eyebrows rose. His eyes widened. He exhaled with a whistle. “Shakespeare, eh? Well now, there’s a motive for you.”

  “No kidding. Except you’d think Sharon would have murdered Jessica to get control of something so valuable, not the other way around. If Jessica did murder Sharon. But if Sharon murdered Wes, maybe she didn’t just want to keep him from testifying about the provenance of the replica, maybe she also wanted to keep him from testifying about the provenance of this document.”

  Alasdair held the paper up to the light, inspected it, then handed it back. “Jessica’s not said anything more about this or anything else, come to that. But perhaps we’ve outflanked her. Well done, Jean.”

  “Thanks.” Her own smile having more than a little grim satisfaction, Jean tucked the paper back into her notebook and the notebook back into her bag.

  “Half a tick, I’m needing a wash and brush-up.” Again he started for the bedroom, then stopped beside the coffee table and cast his col
d stare at the bottle.

  “No,” Jean told him. “I didn’t move it. This time Thomasina made sure I knew she was doing it. Everyone else wants something from us, why not her, too?”

  “There’s a comforting thought, that the ghost’s sensing us the way we’re sensing her.” With a flash of his eyes, light glinting off cold steel, Alasdair went on into the bedroom.

  Jean forced her taut shoulders into a shrug. On her extensive list of things making her uncomfortable right now, you’d think a ghost reaching toward her across infinity would occupy a slot near the bottom. And yet it didn’t.

  Her satisfaction ebbed into uncertainty, leaving only the grim.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Darkness had fallen across the Historic Area like a curtain across a stage. And what was waiting in the wings tonight? Jean asked herself, turning her gaze from the shadowy houses and trees to the lanterns lining the front walk of Governor’s Palace. The tiny flames shivered, making the stone eyes of the lion and the unicorn on either side of the gate appear to wink smug assurances of empire. A faint scent of smoke hung delectably on the still, cold air.

  She and Alasdair stood well back in the line of people waiting to get in, having opted for a meal before the concert instead of after. Now Jean’s sandwich, laden with too many rich dressings, hunkered sullenly beneath her ribs. She choked down a garlicky burp and tried to re-direct part of her blood supply from her brain to her stomach.

  Alasdair faced the darkness beyond Robert Carter House, using his own particular version of X-ray vision to see through it or else not seeing anything at all, just contemplating his own digestive processes, or the interlocking criminal cases, or the case of Jean Fairbairn, his significant other, who might turn out to be of questionable significance in the greater scheme of his life.

  If she’d stumbled on the uneven brick sidewalks, he’d have offered her his arm. She hadn’t. He was almost too adept at leaving her personal space, personal space being so important to him. But just as affection could become intrusion, courtesy could become a cold shoulder.

  Her shoulders were cold beneath her coat, with the temperature, not with the paranormal. Her hands were cold. Her nose was cold.

  Alasdair hadn’t touched her since he’d grasped her arm while they watched Thomasina Napier revisit the site of her lonely death. Or had Thomasina in life thought of herself as solitary rather than lonely? There was something to be said for solitude. There was something to be said for freedom.

  Jean’s unfocused gaze suddenly sharpened. Was that a human shape slipping along behind the wooden gate now closing off the Palace’s kitchen yard? A living, breathing human being, not a ghost, moving so furtively he—or a she not wearing period costume—might just as well have a neon sign proclaiming, “I’m up to no good!”

  “Look!” The word left her lips as fog. She grasped Alasdair’s arm, like granite beneath the cold fabric of his coat. “Over there!”

  He glanced around, eyes sparking in his shadowed face. “Eh?”

  “There, behind the gate . . . Rats. They’re gone.”

  “A rat?”

  “No, no, I saw someone sneaking through the kitchen yard.”

  Alasdair scanned the gate and the wall, but now the only movement was a swirl of dead leaves across the gravel threshold. “An interpreter, like as not. One of the cooks clearing away.”

  “One of the cooks . . .” Just as she groped after an elusive tinkle of the mental bell choir, a couple of long-skirted interpreters opened the front gate. The customers pressed through, across the small garden between the two one-story dependencies, and up the steps. Alasdair and Jean brought up the rear. “Moo,” she whispered, and beneath her hand his arm twitched as he chuckled.

  Candles in glass sconces cast tortuous patterns of light and shadow across the weapons interlaced on the walls and fanned on the ceiling of the entrance hall. More candles flickered feebly along the paneled walls of the narrow passage beyond, struggling to drive back the darkness.

  While the Palace, like the Capitol, was a replica built on the original site, Jean knew she wasn’t the only visitor who eyed the shadow-clogged doorways and alcoves cautiously. Conventional wisdom said that nothing was concealed by the darkness that wasn’t there in the daylight. But she knew better. Darkness, enclosed spaces, idiots—her phobias were a fairly dull collection, considering.

  Alasdair pressed her hand against his rock-ribbed, iron-bound side. Yes, he was there if she asked. She pressed back. Thanks.

  Footsteps echoing, interpreters herded the visitors toward the ballroom. Rachel Finch stood just inside the wide double doors, handing out programs. Her eighteenth-century garments were displayed to good effect by her erect posture, and her face beneath her ruffled cap was pristine—so much so that even in the dim light, Jean could see how pale the girl was, and how much stronger a resemblance she had to her mother tonight than forty-eight hours ago.

  Rachel’s eyes, the pupils huge in the gloom, showed no sign of recognition as Jean and Alasdair collected their programs. No, this wasn’t a good time to ask about Matt, Jessica, Dylan—any of the actors in the ongoing drama, one which was proceeding to a final curtain. Some sort of final curtain. Any sort of final curtain, releasing the players to deal with that greater scheme.

  Alasdair and Jean found seats in the last row of heavy wooden chairs, backed against the tall windows now concealed by shutters. Voices murmured. Chairs scraped. Electronic trills and chirps signaled the hibernation of various cell phones. Jean joined in the chorus.

  At night, the Palace was transformed from museum to stage set. The blue walls of the ballroom that seemed startling during the day now seemed bright and cheerful. Against those walls hung huge portraits, James II and Queen Catherine, George III and Queen Charlotte, draped with lush fabrics and jewels that almost overwhelmed their human features, imperious as they were.

  Alasdair exchanged stare for stare with the painted faces that now commanded nothing more than a room in a lovingly restored capital. Had his ancestors, free agents, fought for or against theirs?

  Candles blazed in the chandelier, their light scattered by its dangling crystals. Candles blazed in sconces and on the three music stands arranged with chairs around the harpsichord. Wesley Hagedorn’s harpsichord, Jean assumed, its wood shimmering like silk.

  Perhaps there was a slight smear of smoke in the air. Perhaps her eyes were adapting to what was still a very dim light. Romantic, she thought. Sensual. Your eyes no longer dominant, your other senses kicked in—a slight draft at her back, the people next to her talking about ghosts, the scents of aftershave and mildew. Holding up her program, she could actually make out the printed letters listing Handel, Corelli, Rameau, composers of the period and earlier.

  Right on time, the doors of the supper room, at the far end of the ballroom, opened. Barbara Finch stepped through. She was consumed by a froth of a dress, pleats, folds, layers of fabric, sleeves dripping lace. Her white wig was the same color as, if heavier and longer than, her real hair. Jean couldn’t tell where the wig ended and Barbara’s forehead began. If Rachel was pale, her grandmother was almost transparent. The necklace glinting at her throat hung awkwardly over the knobs of her collarbones.

  Following her came three men in knee breeches, long coats, lace cuffs, and curled white wigs. One carried a thick-bottomed viola, the others long wooden wind instruments that Jean guessed were flutes. They sat down while Barbara stood to attention beside the harpsichord.

  “Good evening,” she said, her voice projected from her throat rather than her chest, so that it sounded slightly strangled. “Welcome to this special concert in honor of our late friend, Wesley Hagedorn. This harpsichord—” Her hand, covered by a white glove that ran all the way up her forearm and disappeared beneath the lace, stroked the wood lovingly. “—was Wes’s masterpiece, patterned after the harpsichord played by Governor . . .”

  Alasdair stiffened. For a moment Jean thought he was going to run for it—Hey, she thought
at him, it’s not opera. Then his elbow hit her in her ribs and his chin pointed toward the supper room door.

  Which was slitted open. Through the narrow gap eased Matt Finch. His body contracted into a furtive huddle, he soundlessly closed the door and sat down on the closest chair.

  A flurry of skirts by the main door was Rachel slipping out into the entrance hall. She must be intending to go out the front, around the side of the building through the garden, and in the back door, so as to sit with Matt.

  Jean caught Alasdair’s eye. It’s a family reunion, all we need is Jessica.

  If Barbara saw her son’s arrival or her granddaughter’s exit, she showed no sign. “. . . a true gentleman, Wesley Hagedorn.” She sat down, removed her gloves, and laid them aside. She sent a directorial nod toward the other musicians, and with perfect timing they began to play.

  The delicate, intricate music was as richly embroidered as their clothing. One flute was played vertically, Jean saw, and the other horizontally. She couldn’t see Barbara’s hands, just her back and elbows swaying gently, a willow in the stream of melody. The viola player leaned forward over his instrument, his wig coming perilously close to the candles flaming on either side of his sheet music. Would a violin player have to avoid running his bow through a candlestick?

  Alasdair shifted, looking from Matt to his watch to the front door. The minute this piece of music was over, he’d ask for the phone, tiptoe out, and call Stephanie. Who was no doubt still working, trying either to assemble a case against Jessica or demolish one before the charge-by deadline ran out.

  Jean glared at Matt’s tense expression, eyes front. Where’s my computer?

  Where was Rachel, for that matter? Unless she hadn’t seen her father come in after all, and had disappeared on some other errand. She needed to be in the ballroom, shushing whoever was talking, low and urgent, making an annoying hum below the music.