Stranger by the Lake

by Wilde, Jennifer;

  “You looked so absorbed, I hated to disturb you. You actually cringed once. You must have been reading the passage about——”

  “Aunt Agatha asked me to bring the chapter down,” I said hastily, interrupting him. “I—I thought I’d read a few pages.”

  “I’m flattered. What do you think of it?”

  “It’s awful,” I replied.

  “Oh? Remind me to keep the rest of the manuscript away from you. I don’t know if my ego can stand such frank evaluation.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. It—it’s brilliantly written. It’s just so—vivid. All those details—were they really necessary?”

  “Certainly,” he replied. “Gordon believed the Foreign Office wanted to get rid of him and assumed that was why he was sent to Dahomey. I had to show the blood and bones in order to justify his suspicions to my readers. Fortunately, he got along famously with King Akhosu Gelele and was able to leave with his head still on his shoulders, foiling his rivals at the Foreign Office and adding another episode to his legend.”

  Craig strolled over to the desk, carrying two reams of paper and a box of pencils he had obviously purchased in town. He was still wearing tennis shoes and the loose sweat shirt, although he had changed into khaki pants. We stood facing each other, the desk between us. Craig smiled at me, his eyes filled with amusement.

  “You look terrified,” he said.

  “What—what makes you say that?” I asked, trying to control the tremor in my voice.

  “Your expression, luv. You look like a tiny bird paralyzed by a cobra. Tell me, am I really that offensive?”

  “You’re imagining things,” I replied, tossing my head and pretending to be totally unconcerned. I was supposed to play it cool. I was supposed to be the intrepid girl detective, undaunted, and yet he had sensed my attitude at once. I would have to try and repair the damage.

  “It—it’s just the chapter,” I said. “I really was shaken by it. I don’t know when I’ve read anything so—totally real. I was impressed. I had no idea you were such a wonderful writer.”

  “That’s more like it,” he replied. “Maybe I’ll let you read the rest of the manuscript after all. I may even let you help me with the chapters that deal with romance. There’s a good love story there, Lady Arabella so prim and proper yet so devoted to her lord and master. I’m not sure I can do as good a job with the sentiment as I’ve done with the savagery.”

  “I’m sure you’ll do an excellent job.”

  “Ah, now you’re really after my heart.”

  “Hardly that,” I retorted.

  I mustn’t overdo it, I realized. I couldn’t do a sudden about-face. I couldn’t be too friendly, too responsive. That would surely arouse his suspicions as much as my fear had just a few minutes ago. I walked over to one of the shelves and pretended to examine the titles. I could feel him watching me. His very presence seemed to permeate the air, leaving an indelible impression as real as smell and yet just as intangible. I had never known anyone with such a forceful personality, nor had I known anyone who caused me to react in such a strange way.

  “You’ve got some explaining to do,” he said in a stern voice.

  “Oh?” I continued to examine the book titles.

  “This morning. Why did you go off like that?”

  “To have my shoes repaired. I thought I mentioned that.”

  “Is that the only reason you went into town?”

  “Why should I answer these——”

  “Is that the only reason?” he asked sharply.

  “Of course.”

  “Then why was it so important that you leave immediately? I told you I had to go to the stationer’s to pick up some items. Why couldn’t you wait and go with me?”

  “I don’t know if your ego can stand such frank evaluation.”

  “Don’t get smart, Susan.”

  “I didn’t want to go into town with you, Mr. Stanton. I don’t want to have anything to do with you. I made myself quite clear last night.”

  “You made yourself clear, all right,” he replied, “but not by anything you said. You didn’t want me to leave your room last night, Susan. That was the only thing you made clear.”

  “I take back what I said earlier. Your ego could stand anything. It’s incapable of——”

  “Christ!” he muttered. “You’re impossible!”

  I was pleased with myself. I had convinced him that I had left in the Bentley merely because I had wanted to avoid him. My performance had been almost as good as the one I had given for Stephen Kirk.

  Stepping over to the window, I looked outside, one hand holding back the long green velvet draperies. The sunshine was weaker now, and the sky was turning gray, clouds forming. It looked like we were going to have one of those abrupt changes of weather. It might storm before nightfall. When I turned around, Craig was standing in the middle of the room, looking at me with a bewildered expression.

  “What’s bothering you?” he asked quietly.

  “Nothing is bothering me.”

  “You’re quite sure of that?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “You’re acting strangely.”

  “Because I don’t hurl myself into your arms?” I said acidly.

  “It’s not that. There’s something else. I can sense it.”

  “Whatever are you talking about?”

  “Last night at the lake, when I first came up to you, I had the impression you were trying to hide something from me, and then you acted so enigmatically this morning. I have the feeling something’s going on.”

  “What could possibly be going on?” I inquired.

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

  He moved closer to me, knees dipping foward a little as he walked. He was incredibly appealing in his khakis and sweat shirt, exuding an animal vitality, but I was immune to his magic now. He stopped a few feet away, folding his arms across his chest. I felt the same icy calm I had felt at the inn.

  “What are you hiding from me, Susan?” he asked.

  “Nothing at all.”

  “I wish I could be sure of that.”

  “I suppose you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “I suppose I will—for now. I’ve got work to do. I don’t have time to get to the bottom of this now, but I will. I can assure you of that. If you’re meeting some man——”

  “Is that what you think? You think I’m—oh, how absurd. How gloriously absurd!”

  I couldn’t restrain my laughter. It pealed merrily, but it wasn’t an expression of mirth, it was the laughter of relief. He thought I was meeting a man! He had failed in his attempts to woo me and his strong male ego couldn’t stand the thought that someone else may have succeeded. I laughed, and he glared at me angrily and finally went back over to the desk, turning his back to me and straightening the books and papers with furious energy. I stood in front of the window, feeling quite superior.

  “I don’t know what you plan to do for the rest of the afternoon,” he said irritably, glancing over his shoulder, “but I suggest you find a good book and stay in your room. I’m going to be immersed in revising this chapter, and I won’t have time to look after you. Don’t go wandering off by yourself. I won’t be there to get you out if you——”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, Mr. Stanton,” I said in honeyed tones. “I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

  “I strongly doubt that!” he snapped.

  I gave another short laugh and left the library, a smile on my lips. I felt strangely elated. I had won the first round hands down, and he had proved himself a very vulnerable opponent. Craig Stanton was a clever man, but he was not as clever as he thought. Not quite. Sooner or later he would give himself away, and when he did I would be there, waiting. I climbed the stairs, flushed with my success. It was not going to be so difficult after all, I thought, and what I had said to Craig was undoubtedly true. I was quite capable of looking after myself.

  CHA
PTER NINE

  The stairs across the hall from my bedroom were dark and narrow, one flight leading down to the kitchen area, another- leading up to the attics. They had once been bright golden oak, but the wood had darkened with age and the varnish had started to peel. Hesitating only a second, I started up, putting all thoughts of Craig Stanton out of my mind and thinking now only of the Gordon papers which I might be fortunate enough to discover. It was not very likely, I admitted, but as I moved up the stairs I felt that curious fever I had felt earlier, a combination of excitement and expectation. The stairs were steep, and there was little light, but surely I wouldn’t need an oil lamp in broad daylight.

  The door at the top of the stairs creaked on rusty hinges as I pushed it open, stepping into a small, narrow room with low beamed ceiling, empty of everything but dust and cobwebs. Dust stirred as I crossed to a doorway and stepped down three shallow steps leading to a second room, as narrow as the first, cluttered with ancient furniture and old lampshades and piles of yellowing magazines. The room didn’t look very promising, so I passed on through another doorway, down five steps, and walked down a hallway barely four feet wide, one wall solid, the other with tiny windows set high up under the eaves. Beams of weak sunlight slanted down, swirling with motes of dust.

  I remembered the attics only vaguely from my first visit. Aunt Agatha had brought me up here to hunt for an old China doll she wanted to give me. The doll had had a beautiful painted face and painted black hair and had worn a red muslin dress and tiny gold slippers. I still had it, a treasured keepsake. It had taken us some time to find it, and we had gone through several of the attic rooms before eventually locating it, covered with dust, tucked in the corner of a shelf. I had been amazed then at the number of rooms up here, at various levels, connected by narrow halls and wooden steps leading up and down from level to level. There were twelve rooms, some large, filled with fascinating relics, others mere cubbyholes.

  Leaving the narrow hall, I stepped into a large, dusty room with ceiling high in the center and sloping down sharply on one side in conformity to the roof. Three small windows permitted the weak sunlight to filter in, pale rays shimmering with dust motes affording just enough light to permit me to search. The room was an antique dealer’s dream. Old tables and chairs were piled high in one corner, and there were cupboards and cribs and teakwood boxes, all layered with dust. I saw an old spinning wheel, a dressmaker’s dummy with the stuffing coming out, a big chandelier dumped on the floor, crystal pendants yellow from neglect. Cleaned and repaired, most of these items would bring an impressive price in some chic shop. I began to search and was immediately lost to the world of the past.

  One of the cupboards contained old clothes, limp, worn, smelling of camphor and moth crystals. I examined a white lace dress trimmed with velvet rosebuds and black ribbons, an elegant ballgown that must have caused sighs of admiration at some party over a hundred years ago, and there was a dark green velvet traveling suit trimmed with brown fur, a purple silk tea gown, a brown and green plaid skirt, and a white blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves. Lady Arabella must have worn these garments, I thought, looking at the plump dressmaker’s dummy that must have been used to fit them. I could visualize some prim, underpaid seamstress working diligently to finish the ballgown while her employer entertained friends downstairs in the big drawing room.

  A small teakwood box held a withered rose and a dance program, Robert Gordon’s name in violet ink after each dance listed. The rose disintegrated into dust as I lifted it to take out the stack of letters neatly tied with a faded blue ribbon. They were love letters, written by Arabella Radcliff to Lieutenant Gordon, the stiff, yellowed pages covered with the same violet ink as on the dance card. I sat on a footstool beneath one of the windows, reading the letters, handling them very carefully. They were frightfully intimate, hardly the sort of letters a prim Victorian maiden should have written to a proper suitor. I could sense the passion and impatience of the young Arabella, stifled by the society she lived in and eager to join her lover in a life of adventure.

  I realized that these letters were extremely valuable, shedding much light on the character of the young Arabella. Aunt Agatha had given Craig access to all the family papers, but for some reason or other this little teakwood box had not been among those other trunks and boxes that contained the diaries and letters and documents the family had preserved. The letters I was reading hadn’t been touched in all these years, or else the rose sitting on top of them would have been destroyed. I had happened upon them by accident, and it was an exciting discovery.

  The light gradually faded as I read, turning the priceless pages with great care. The love story that unfolded was thrilling, charged with drama and conflict. They had met at a fashionable French watering place where the whole Radcliff clan had come for the waters. Arabella chanced to be walking along the embankment by the sea at the same time Lieutenant Gordon strolled in his dashing uniform. He was already world weary and disillusioned by his experiences in India, cynical and brooding, and she was a healthy eighteen year old, just blooming into womanhood. It would have been hard to find two such dissimilar individuals, yet they had fallen in love on sight with typical Victorian fervor, and Arabella’s parents had been horrified that such a rake would dare pay court to their treasured daughter. They had forbidden her to see him, but she had slipped out to meet him by the sea, even after they locked her in her room. Robert had gone to Paris to make arrangements for his next trip into Africa, and it was while he was there that she had written these impassioned letters. They planned to elope, and Arabella outlined the arrangements she was making with the aid of a sympathetic housemaid.

  I finished the last letter, holding it in my lap and thinking about the elopement as I had read of it in books. Sir Robert had come back to the watering place under the cover of night, bidding the coachman wait for him while he collected the young girl who had flung her bags out of her bedroom window and climbed down a drainpipe to grab them up and flee into the darkness, meeting her lover by the embankment while great waves crashed on the ancient sea wall. They had hurried to the waiting coach which carried them back to Paris, and there a priest married them in a shabby old church just as the first rays of morning sun stained the bricks with rose-colored light and woke the pigeons roosting under the eaves.

  How bold they had been, how daring and unconventional, even more so when one considered the age they had lived in. Arabella had made her decision and cast everything else aside, rushing into the arms of the man who would love her and torment her, making her life a hell at times, at times a heaven few women could hope for. She had been as flamboyant as he, yet in middle age she had turned to religion and charity, assembling about her all those staid Victorian conventions she had defied in youth, going as far as to destroy priceless manuscripts that might have offended a straightlaced Queen and her more pious subjects.

  I put the letters back in the teakwood box, closing it and setting it aside. I would tell Aunt Agatha about the letters and let her decide what to do with them. The letters had distracted me from the business at hand, and I continued the search with renewed vigor, going through all the boxes and cupboards, finding countless interesting objects but nothing of any real importance. Through the windows I could see that the sky had turned a dark, brooding gray, hanging low, swollen with rain, and the wind soared about the rooftops with a sharp, whistling sound.

  I really should have gone down then, but it wasn’t late, and there was still enough light to search by, even though everything seemed to be tinged with gray and shadows were beginning to form. Leaving the large room, I passed down another hall, going down four steps, turning a corner, following the narrow hall to where three steps led up to another room. The attics were like a labyrinth, I thought, rooms stuck here and there with no apparent rhyme or reason. The next room I entered was filled with old statues that must once have stood in the gardens, white marble gods and goddesses covered with dust. I pitied the poor workmen who must have l
ugged the heavy figures up here. The statues seemed to stare at me accusingly as I passed through, as though I were to blame for their banishment.

  A short passageway led to another room that looked more promising. One side of the room was filled with tattered Persian carpets tied up in rolls, and heavy chests stood across from them. Overhead was a skylight of murky glass panes that gave me all the light I needed. I pulled out the drawer of one of the chests and saw a coconut and took it out, wondering why on earth anyone should keep such an item. I held it up to the light and then let out a bloodcurdling scream, hurling the object away.

  It rolled across the floor and stared up at me. It wasn’t a coconut at all. It was a shrunken head, lank black hair hanging down, lips sewn together, eye sockets vacant. I shuddered, wiping my hand across my slacks vigorously. The drawer was filled with shrunken heads, one of them with long blond hair. I slammed it shut, wondering if I dared open another. I finally summoned enough courage to do so and found a drawerful of brightly colored African masks, exquisitely painted but hideous nevertheless. These chests obviously contained curios from Sir Robert’s travels, I assumed, and further examination proved that assumption to be correct. I found no more shrunken heads, but there were knives and feathered pouches and grotesque little idols carved in wood and ivory, some graphic in detail. All belonged in a museum.

  I forgot all about the ugly black and gray head on the floor behind me and was soon immersed in my task. I found maps on heavy parchment, crudely stained with red and black and green dyes, and there was a necklace made of bones, the kind a witch doctor would wear in a jungle movie. Such items were fairly commor in museums all over the world, and none of these things was particulary valuable in itself, but the collection as a whole was most unusual. I could see Sir Robert trekking through the jungles, picking these pieces up as he searched for lost cities and recorded the customs of pygmy tribes along the way.

  I was examining the contents of the final chest when the rain began to patter on the skylight, gently at first, gathering momentum until at last great drops pounded on the glass like showers of pebbles, making a furious racket. The light was almost gone, and I realized that I should leave the attics immediately if I didn’t want to be caught in the dark. It would only take me a few more minutes to finish searching the chest, and then I would leave. The last drawer held beautiful silk prayer mats, sadly faded with age, smelling of mildew. No manuscripts here, but there were several more attic rooms, and perhaps I could search them tomorrow.