Seance on a Summer's Night

by Seance on a Summer's Night [MM] (retail) (epub)

  She shrugged. “Almost never.”

  “Well, but what about when her friends drop by?”

  “None of her friends visit anymore. Nor your aunt’s. No one visits. Roma Loveridge is the only one who makes the drive out here. And the chief of police. Not even he comes so often now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She shook her head. “Things changed after the accident.”

  “Sure. But even so.”

  She gave me an uncertain look, uncomfortable to be gossiping but clearly needing to tell someone. When she spoke, her voice was so low, it was almost a whisper. “It started with Mrs. Hyde-Kent.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” I wasn’t much fonder of Liana than I had been of Ogden, though in fairness, Liana had never, to my knowledge, betrayed Aunt H.’s trust. Maybe her slavish devotion to Ogden got on my nerves.

  “She was so strange after the funeral. Like she was sleepwalking. For weeks. Months. Then suddenly she seemed to snap out of it. But it wasn’t a good change. It was her idea to close up the drawing room and the dining room. Her idea to stop taking guests.”

  “Her idea? Technically she’s a guest in this house herself. Why would she get a vote?”

  “I heard her talking to Mrs. Bancroft. She said, ‘We must get out the dustcovers. We must close up the rooms where people gathered. This is a house of mourning.’ And Mrs. Bancroft, er, Mrs. Hyde that is, said, ‘Liana, we can’t hide from the world. Life goes on for the living.’ And do you know what Mrs. Hyde-Kent said?”

  “No. What did she say?” I asked grimly.

  “‘You and I are no longer of the living.’”

  For a second I was too angry to speak. “She needs to go.”

  Betty shook her head. “She won’t.”

  “No?” I smiled. Probably not very pleasantly. “We’ll see.”

  “It wouldn’t help, Mr. Artemus. This house… Green Lanterns isn’t the same. I don’t know… It’s hard to put into words. It was such a happy place before. Warm. Safe. Gracious. Everything the way it should be. It’s all gone now.”

  “It isn’t the house, Betty. The house is just…wood and stone. People make a house a home.”

  Jesus. I’d be sewing samplers in a minute.

  In any case, Betty wasn’t buying it. “I thought that way once too. It’s not true. You’ll see, Mr. Artemus. There’s something here now.” She leaned toward me. “The house smells of death.”

  I drew back instinctively. “That’s ridiculous.”

  A strange light seemed to glow in her pallid eyes. “It’s true. I won’t go upstairs anymore. The other girls left! There’s something h—”

  Tarrant’s hammering had grown louder and more ferocious. Now it seemed to shake the wooden cabinet against the wall, and a china cup fell, smashing on the tile floor.

  Betty looked at the cup and then stared at me in horror.

  “Snap out of it,” I said. “The vibrations knocked a cup off the shelf. You don’t really think some supernatural presence is having a ghostly temper tantrum?”

  Honest to God, I don’t think she heard me. Utter terror filled her eyes. She turned and ran from the kitchen.

  I stared at the smashed cup, then at the door Betty had vanished through.

  It was a relief to step outside.

  The morning was already starting to warm, but the air was still cool and smelled clean and rainwashed. The bricks of the terrace were dark and damp, the potted shrubs glittering with raindrops. A puddle near the iron table reflected a weathered-looking rainbow. Gray-olive eucalyptus rose in a windbreak to the west of the house, the grass under it littered with broken branches and leaves from the night’s storm. Elsewhere the lawn looked ragged, marred by patches of brown fungus and devil grass.

  I followed the curve of the terrace to the back of the house and walked down to the garden. The situation was no better here. Once carefully primed and weeded, the flower beds were a tangle of thorns. Wild mustard, chickweed, and ragwort grew rampant, all but engulfing the heirloom roses and peony bushes that once had so delighted generations of Mrs. Bancrofts. Here and there, above the sea of meadow, a spindly bush waved a tentacled branch in disinterested greeting, blown and fading blooms scattering their petals like bedraggled confetti. The garden had a dusty, moldering scent, like dead things were buried there.

  In the center of the upper garden stood a small dusty fountain, the basin clotted with leaves and browned blossoms. A moss-stained and muddy marble Diana, bow drawn, was as wide-eyed and indignant as if she’d been splashed by tires while waiting on a street corner.

  I started down the brick walk leading to the lower garden but found the path ended in a tangle of weeds. Looking down the hillside, I saw that the maze, an intricate pattern of hedges covering an acre of ground, was as neglected as the rose garden. Good luck finding your way out of there now. The shrubs, which had always been clipped to geometrically precise forms and whimsical topiaries of deer and lions, were now unkempt blobs. New leaves poked through iron ribs like pale, green tongues. The smooth velvet lawns that had rolled like a carpet down to the swimming pool were dotted with yellow dandelions.

  What the hell was the excuse for this? Okay, Aunt H. and Liana were currently living like nuns, but what did their lack of social life have to do with the upkeep of the grounds?

  I turned back toward the house, cutting through a break in the vegetation. Turning the corner, I spotted a man leaning on a hoe and staring intently at the house. He wore one of those brown felt Aussie hats, and though it was still early and cool in the shade, he was shirtless. Though his back was turned to me, I knew he was a stranger. Presumably the new gardener, who wasn’t afraid of ghosts. He had an exceptionally nice back—lean and lithe. Wide shoulders and narrow hips. What was he looking at so intently?

  The gardener must have heard something because he turned suddenly, studying me with a hard, blue appraisal. Or maybe I imagined the hardness, because the next instant he was smiling cheerfully.

  “Hey there. Lose your way through the woods?” He was about my age, his voice friendly.

  That broad, white grin was hard to resist, like stepping into sunlight after miles of deep shade. My spirits rose for the first time since my return to Green Lanterns.

  “Nope. I’m Artemus Bancroft, Mrs. Hyde’s nephew.”

  “Ah.” He cocked his head, his gaze quizzical. Really, his front was just as appealing as his back. In fact, he was unexpectedly good-looking in a rugged, dirt-under-the-fingernails way. His eyes gleamed in his sunburned face. His dark stubble looked almost fashionable. “Right. Ulyanna said something about you visiting. Well, I’m Cassidy, the head—and so far only—gardener.”

  “Nice to meet you, Cassidy.”

  To be honest, he was not like any gardener I’d ever met before, a feeling reinforced as he reached automatically to shake hands but then realized his were stained with mud. Not that I’m a big believer in the Upstairs-Downstairs paradigm, but I’d never known one of the gardeners to try and shake hands before. I stared at his hand. His fingers were long and slender, his palm newly blistered.

  “I was weeding the dahlias,” he said.

  I glanced down at his feet. He wore boots, which were firmly planted in the midst of a clump of flowers he had been weeding. “Those aren’t dahlias,” I said. “They’re begonias. Or were.”

  His brows knitted. He gazed down at the flowers, hastily removed his feet from their necks, then offered that grin again. He probably got a lot of mileage from that expression. “You say potato, I say potahto.”

  “Oh? Because it seemed like you were saying tomato,” I retorted.

  He laughed. “Nobody told me you were a horticulturist.”

  “Nope, just a regular subscriber to House and Garden.”

  “Gotcha.” He continued to smile at me. “What is it you do, then?”

  Again, I couldn’t ever recall a gardener—or any employee at Green Lanterns—asking me what I did for a living. It wasn’t that I mi
nded him talking to me like a peer—he was a peer, if we were going to get philosophical about it—but it wasn’t typical behavior.

  “Theater critic.”

  His brows rose. “You don’t say.”

  “Sure I do.” I had the funniest feeling he’d already known what I did for a living before I answered.

  He continued to give me that direct blue stare. Not just direct. Admiring. It had been a while since anyone looked at me like that. And while I can’t say I minded, this too was kind of odd coming from the new gardener.

  “So you’re out here taking your morning constitutional?” he inquired. There was a little edge of mockery in his tone.

  I responded in the same tone, “Surveying my domain.”

  “It’s Mrs. Hyde’s domain, isn’t it?”

  “True.”

  “Your aunt’s a late sleeper, is she?”

  “Not really. She didn’t use to be.”

  “And the other lady. Mrs. Hyde-Kent? On the eccentric side, I’ve heard.”

  Yeah, not like any gardener I’d ever met.

  “Where did you hear that?” I inquired.

  He shrugged. “I’ve heard she holds séances.”

  I stared back at him. Said nothing.

  His eyes flickered. “Well, duty calls.” He lifted his hat in a parody of servility. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d tugged on his forelock. Assuming he had one under that wide brim.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  His eyes continued to search mine, and disconcertingly, I saw a smile lurking in those blue depths. “I’ll see you around.”

  My momentary irritation vanished. Rude, impertinent, odd, whatever, there was something inexplicably likable about Cassidy.

  “Like it or not,” I said.

  The smile was back. “I do like it,” he said.

  I decided to get the last word by saying nothing.

  As I went up the stairs to the front portico, I couldn’t help considering Cassidy. He was attractive, no question, but there was something…off about him. Kind of like his clothes. It wasn’t that they were wrong—although I’d never seen a gardener in one of those Akubras before—but they reminded me of a costume rather than work clothes. That was it. Something about Cassidy reminded me of an actor playing a part—and a slightly miscast actor at that.

  Never mind not knowing the difference between a dahlia and a begonia. Shouldn’t a gardener, someone who worked day in and day out in the open, be a lot more weathered-looking? He was as sunburned as any frat boy on the first day of spring break. And surely, if he used garden tools over any length of time, his hands would have become hardened, calloused, stained. They weren’t. He had blisters.

  The way he spoke too. Not merely the choice of words. His very voice. He sounded, well, more educated than was usual in the gardeners I’d known through the years. And a hell of a lot nosier. Not just nosy—there had been a certain assumption of authority. Like he thought he had the right to ask questions. No, not even that he thought he had the right, because no thought was involved; he simply took it for granted he had the right.

  Interesting.

  And strange.

  And…I was making a mystery out of nothing. Gardeners went to college too. Gardeners had to suffer through their first job like anyone else. Finally, why wouldn’t he be curious about Liana? Who wasn’t?

  I was.

  Chapter Three

  Liana was a changed woman.

  I guess that could have been a move in the right direction, but in this case—and considering the implications for Aunt Halcyone—no.

  After all the discussion of Liana’s reclusiveness, I was surprised when later that morning Aunt H. informed me Liana wanted me to visit her in her crib. I think it was the uncharacteristic timidity with which my aunt conveyed the royal summons that persuaded me to march upstairs forthwith. The idea that Aunt Halcyone was tiptoeing around her own home infuriated me.

  I suppose Aunt H. was afraid of a confrontation because she hotfooted after me, not speaking, but hovering almost nervously as I rapped briskly on Liana’s sitting-room door.

  A muffled voice asked me to come in, and I opened the door.

  The room was in deep gloom, the only light radiating from a couple of small accent lamps. It smelled of incense and dust. Liana stood by the bay window. She hadn’t been looking out, though, because the drapes were drawn tightly shut. A small table was positioned between two velvet-upholstered wingback chairs. Cards covered the tabletop. Though I was too far away to make out their faces, I was pretty sure Liana had not been playing solitaire.

  I was prepared to see a change, but Liana’s haggard, disheveled appearance came as a shock. She had always been so consciously, calculatedly elegant—from the shining tips of her manicured toenails to the feathery ends of her blue-tinted hair, everything about her announced (in cultivated tones, naturally) the kind of style only money can provide. This woman looked like that woman’s bag-lady sister. She wore a shapeless silk dressing gown of indeterminate color. Her sallow face was bare of any makeup, and her gray hair frizzed around her face and shoulders. There were pouches beneath her eyes and grooves of anguish carved into her crepey skin. No question she was suffering, and I was a little ashamed I’d doubted she had that much capacity for genuine feeling.

  Which didn’t change my belief that she was an unhealthy and worrying influence on my dear old auntie, and needed to exit stage left STAT.

  “Artie, oh, Artie,” Liana said in a tearful voice, stumbling forward to meet me. She threw herself into my arms and began to cry. Those harsh sobs raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  “It’s all right, Liana,” I said. Idiotic, because of course it wasn’t all right.

  “My dear, dear Ogden is gone.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” It was kind of bewildering because we’d already covered this at Ogden’s funeral. Maybe she didn’t remember I’d been at the funeral. Maybe she didn’t remember she’d been at the funeral. Either way, it was disturbingly déjà vu.

  Aunt H. came to the rescue, stepping forward and capably, kindly transferring Liana’s limpet-like clutch from me to her. “Liana, you really must pull yourself together, my dear. After all.” Her worried eyes met mine over Liana’s bowed head.

  “It’s just so unfair…”

  “I know…”

  I shook my head at Aunt H., and she shook her head back at me, although we were telegraphing very different messages to each other.

  “That life should be so cruel…”

  Aunt H. sighed and continued to pat Liana’s bony back.

  I took a couple of unobtrusive steps toward the bay window, and yep. Just as I feared. The colorful, macabre faces of tarot cards were spread across the small table in a large cross.

  As though aware of a sudden drop in temperature—possibly emanating from my part of the hemisphere—Liana gave a couple of final gulps and wiped her face. She pulled out of Aunt H.’s supporting hold and blinked her red, watery eyes at me. “I’m sorry, Artie. You must think me a total fool. It’s just that seeing you again reminded me of all our happy times in this house.”

  Uh…yeah. No. Maybe happy times for Liana. Maybe even some happy times for my aunt. But from the moment Ogden had moved into Green Lanterns, my happy times had ended. Not that I blamed Liana for that. In fairness, I couldn’t even really blame Ogden that things had changed. A certain amount of change was inevitable. Even necessary.

  “Of course,” I said. “I understand.”

  Her pained grimace was a shadow of her old smile. “Of course you do. Such a sensitive, thoughtful boy you were.”

  “I had my moments.”

  “You must tell me what you’ve been up to these past months. I want to know everything.” She kept a ruthless grasp of Aunt H.’s hand, leading us toward the table and chairs by the window. “Come and sit with me.”

  “I’ll just ring for coffee.” Aunt H. gently freed herself.

  I tried to communicate with my gaze t
hat she not leave me alone with Liana.

  “Yes, do that.” Liana seated herself and gazed across at me with unnerving intensity. “Are you back for good, Artie?”

  “Me? Oh, no. No,” I said quickly, unable to hide how appalled I was at the idea.

  Liana’s face fell. “No? But I thought—”

  “Liana, dear,” my aunt interjected quickly, “Artie’s life is in New York now. You know that.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course.” Liana looked unconvinced. Her gaze fell automatically to the cards spread out on the table in front of her. I stared down too and spotted a skeleton knight riding a skeleton horse. At the bottom of the card was the word Death.

  Naturally. What else?

  She continued to study the cards as she said, “How do you like New York?”

  “I love it.”

  “But you loved it here too?”

  “Well, yes, but… My job is in New York.”

  Liana began to slide the cards out of formation and into a small pile. Still not looking at me, she said, “Jobs are a dime a dozen for a handsome, talented young man like you.”

  “Uh…not really.”

  “I’m sure you’re wrong, Artie. The cards say otherwise.” She looked at me then, and there was something oddly alive and alert in her previously dull eyes. “Will you let me do a reading for you?”

  “That’s nice of you, but I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  She smiled. It was a stranger’s smile, and it did little to transform her drawn, colorless face. “Halcyone didn’t use to believe either. She does now.”

  I’m not sure Aunt H. heard. Her back was to us as she stood in the doorway of Liana’s bedroom, her attention caught by something beyond my sightline.

  Liana patted the cards into a tidy rectangular stack, scooped them up, shuffled them in a manner more reminiscent of Vegas cardsharps than practitioners of the occult, and began to lay them out across the table.

  The Magician.

  The High Priestess.

  “Things are changing in your life,” she murmured. “The cards indicate that recent choices have brought you sadness and loss on an emotional level.”