Seance on a Summer's Night

  His face was still flushed, but his expression grew sullen, secretive.

  “Aunt H. has always looked on you and Betty as part of the family.”

  Okay, wrong thing to say. Because no, Aunt H. did not consider the Tarrants part of the family. She viewed them—valued them—as loyal retainers, but that’s really a very different thing than family. I was rattled, though.

  Tarrant turned several darker shades of red and burst out, “Family? Is this so? No! I say no! Servile toady, that is for what Mrs. Bancroft wishes. Bowing and scraping and smiling. That is for what she is requesting. Years and years we have been putting up with it. Yes, ma’am. No, sir. My Ulyanna bent over that damned stove in hot weather and cold, her ankles swelling, her hair turning gray. She has grown old in this house. Why? Why? To feed bunch of rich, greedy hogs. Family? We are slaves!”

  I was flabbergasted, and I’m sure it showed. “I— If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you get— Why do you stay?”

  “Where is it we would be going? I am old man. Ulyanna, she will soon be old woman. No. Here we will stay, and when it is over, we will be collecting our pension.” His eyes met mine in open defiance before he turned and left the kitchen.

  It was a surprise to find the sun shining and birds singing when I walked outside a few minutes later.

  Frankly, I was shaken by my exchange with Tarrant. That outburst wasn’t the result of a sudden flash of temper, nor indicative of any recent change of heart. He had to have been harboring his resentment for years. How long exactly? Before Ogden had come on the scene? Or after?

  Did it matter?

  Regardless of when or why Tarrant’s attitude had changed, changed it had.

  “When it is over, we will be collecting our pension.”

  When what was over? What the hell had he been referring to?

  For all I knew, the reason Aunt Halcyone could no longer keep staff was Tarrant. Even if he wasn’t actively faking ghostly activity, that black attitude would scare off any reasonable person.

  Under normal circumstances, I’d have gone straight to my aunt and told her she needed to dispense with Tarrant’s services. Or, if she wanted to be more merciful than I felt, award him a gold watch and his pension on the spot. But given the difficulty in hiring these days, she couldn’t afford to lose even Tarrant, let alone Betty, who was only too likely to take her father’s side in a labor dispute.

  Since I was already batting a thousand with the help, I decided to have a chat with our new head gardener. I knew his apartment was over the garage. I decided to walk down there and see if he was part of the proletariat uprising as well.

  As I headed across the freshly mown expanse of lawn, I had to give Cassidy credit. He might not know his flora from his fauna, but he could cut a mean swathe of grass.

  The ivy-covered garage had begun life as a carriage house and was large enough to contain a small fleet of cars. At one time the upper story had provided living quarters for the chauffeur, but there had been no chauffeur at Green Lanterns since Aunt Halcyone had been old enough to drive.

  As I approached the long white building, I saw that two of the overhanging black doors were wide open. The lighted interior revealed a shining row of cars and, in the far corner, a winding staircase leading up to the overhead living quarters.

  There were four cars parked on the floor of the garage: a 1927 Silver Ghost Rolls Royce, Aunt H.’s 1957 baby-blue Chevrolet Bel Air, which she’d been driving as long as I could remember, the green station wagon provided for Tarrant and Ulyanna’s use, and a white MG. The MG threw me. I was expecting to see Ogden’s silver BMW—before remembering it had been smashed to bits with Ogden.

  Did that mean our mysterious new gardener drove a vintage classic car?

  I ducked into the garage and was halfway up the circular staircase when I heard a loud clang and then the reverberation of a heavy metal object hitting cement.

  “Hey there!” I called after the echo had died down. “Cassidy?”

  A second later his muffled voice answered, “Yo!”

  I jogged back down the stairs and strode down the length of cars until I came to where the MG was parked. A pair of brown leather boots and blue-jean clad legs protruded from beneath the chassis of the car.

  I couldn’t help thinking that those boots did not look like they had spent a lot of time in mud and muck. I also couldn’t help thinking Cassidy had nice, long legs.

  I was still dwelling on those legs as Cassidy suddenly rolled out from beneath the MG on a creeper. My gaze traveled the lean length of him, from narrow hips to his broad shoulders, before self-consciously rising to meet his brightly curious blue eyes.

  He winked.

  It was such a cheeky, knowing signal, I felt my face heat. I made a disapproving sound.

  Cassidy sat up, wiping at a smudge of grease on his cheek—and making it worse. “Well, well. It’s the lord of the manor.”

  His hair was dark and springy. He was grinning, his teeth very white against the frame of that GQ stubble, but after the argument with Tarrant, I didn’t find the “lord of the manor” crack all that funny.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “Not really.”

  “What can I do for you, Artemus?” He got to his feet, wiping his blackened hands along his Levi’s.

  He was taller than I remembered, a few inches taller than I was, and for some reason, having to look up into his eyes threw me. As did the fact that he called me by my first name.

  Who was this guy?

  I said, “You’re from New York? I didn’t realize.”

  I thought I’d imagined that hint of Staten Island in his delivery.

  His eyes narrowed. He followed my automatic glance toward the front of the car and its license plate, and he gave me a wide, practiced smile. “Me? No way. This baby originally belonged to a transplanted New Yorker.” He tilted his head inquiringly. “What was it you needed?”

  It belatedly occurred to me that what this situation required was a little finesse. The pricy classic car and New York license plate seemed to confirm my suspicion that Cassidy was not what he seemed. Or rather, he seemed like a lousy gardener and probably was that, but he was something more too. Something he didn’t want us to suspect. Something it might be better to pretend we didn’t suspect.

  Which wouldn’t be hard since the vaguest suspicion was all I had so far.

  “Uh… I wanted to know if you’re happy here,” I said at random.

  That caught him by surprise. “If I’m happy?”

  “Right.” I scrambled for solid ground. “That is, it’s been so hard to keep help over the past few months, I—my aunt—we wanted to make sure everything is going all right for you so far.”

  I could see him thinking that one over and deciding that maybe it made sense, given that we were all a bunch of kooks. He relaxed a fraction, and until that instant, I hadn’t realized he was on guard.

  “Sure,” he said. “I don’t have any complaints.”

  “The others didn’t have complaints either. They just suddenly left.”

  His eyes lit with interest. “True. Come to think of it, I do have a couple of questions if you have a minute or two.” He moved as though to usher me by the elbow, then remembered the grease on his hands. “Maybe we could go upstairs so I can wash up?”

  I hesitated. Not that I thought Cassidy was up to anything nefarious—not in broad daylight—but I could feel my control over the conversation rapidly slipping away.

  As though he recognized my hesitation, he coaxed, “What do you say? We can have a cup of coffee and a chat before I begin my duly appointed rounds.”

  There it was again. The feeling that he was enjoying a private joke at my expense. At the same time, I didn’t sense any malice or meanness in him. He was smiling at me with that unexpected twinkle in his eyes.

  It was hard not to smile back, and actually, not smiling back would defeat the purpose. I wanted him disarmed. I wanted him to open up to me. Right? I gave him an answering sm
ile, my charming best, and watched him blink in the radiance.

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great…er, I don’t know your first name.”

  “Seamus.” He continued to gaze into my eyes, then seemed to recollect himself. He turned to the staircase.

  “That would be great, Seamus. Betty wasn’t feeling well this morning, and Tarrant was reheating yesterday’s coffee.”

  He glanced back at me. “Who’s Betty?”

  “Ulyanna. Long story.”

  “Oh, right.”

  We reached the top of the stairs, and he opened the door to a large sunlit room.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been up in the chauffeur’s quarters, but it hadn’t changed much. White walls and built-in bookshelves and fireplace. A row of large windows with swoops of white dotted-swiss curtains. Comfortable battered chairs and sofa in a blue and white cabbage-rose print. There were a couple of framed so-so watercolor landscapes circa the 1950s, which, according to legend, had been painted by the next to last of the chauffeurs.

  “Excuse me,” Seamus said. “Have a seat while I try to get some of this grease off.”

  While he was busy in the bathroom, I glanced at the mostly empty bookshelves. Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace; Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more; and finally, Cults That Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult Crime.

  If it hadn’t been for a dog-eared copy of Cooking with Booze: From Beer Batter to Vodka Jelly, 101 Recipes from the Liquor Cabinet, I’d have been genuinely alarmed.

  Okay, so maybe our gardener was escaping from a cult. Maybe he was planning to start a cult. Maybe he just liked to read himself to sleep at night with the kind of thing that gave most of us nightmares.

  Something on the fireplace mantel caught my eye. A small wooden-pipe display rack. I stepped over to get a better look. Five beautifully carved pipes rested on the rack. Seamus Cassidy, the guy interested in cults and the occult, also smoked a pipe.

  Interesting. What was his tobacco of choice? Balkan Sobranie?

  I jumped as Seamus said from the doorway behind me, “I was thinking of growing a beard; now I’m not so sure.”

  I turned. Above his beard, his face was scrubbed clean. His cheeks were pink, and his dark hair was slick and shiny and wet. He certainly seemed to enjoy his cleansing ritual.

  “What do you think?” He walked toward me.

  I said warily, “About?”

  “Beards.”

  For one crazy minute I thought he must know something, that he was making some oblique reference to me and Greg. I stared at him. He was rubbing his bristly jaw and smiling ruefully, and as I gazed into his eyes, I understood that no, he was not talking about Greg, nor did he want my views on facial hair—his or anyone else’s.

  “No opinion,” I said. “I see you’re a smoker?”

  He had been in the process of reaching for me—body leaning in, lips parting—but that brought him up short.

  He straightened imperceptibly. “Um, not really. The occasional weed to relax.”

  I’m embarrassed to say that because of his gardening gig, I was momentarily confused. I had an instant and befuddling image of dandelions on fire.

  My puzzlement must have shown because Seamus said helpfully, “Grass.”

  Which didn’t help either.

  “Pot,” he said in the tone of one starting to have his own suspicions.

  “Oh. Right. Of course.” I nodded to the pipe rack. “But you smoke a pipe, don’t you?”

  It was his turn for confusion, but then he shook his head. “That’s not mine. It was here when I moved in. I kind of like it, though, so I left it.”

  “These aren’t yours?” I wasn’t a pipe smoker, but Ogden had been, and I knew quite a bit about expensive pipe tobacco and even more expensive pipes. Nobody would deliberately leave pipes like these behind. The least expensive one on there had probably cost sixty dollars.

  Seamus was eyeing me oddly. “No. I don’t smoke. Not cigarettes and definitely not a pipe.”

  Chapter Six

  Had he said that last too casually? I wasn’t sure. In fairness, I was the one who’d brought up the subject of smoking and pipe tobacco.

  I studied him doubtfully. He studied me back.

  “How do you take your coffee?” he asked finally, when the conversation continued stuck in idle.

  “Coffee? Oh. Black.”

  “Me too.” He winked as though that was some kind of in-joke and motioned to the blue and white flowered sofa. “Have a seat. I’ll get the coffee.”

  He stepped into the kitchenette, and I walked over to the row of windows. Seamus had a perfect view of the back of the main house—including Ogden’s study—from his own easy chair. I considered that for a moment or two, absently listening to a yellow bird singing sweetly in the branches of the nearby apple tree.

  “It’s so quiet out here,” I said. “Do you mind being this far from the house?”

  “I like it.” Seamus returned with two fat, red cappuccino cups of steaming black coffee. He handed one to me. “Anyway, it’s not that far away. Did you want to sit down?”

  I glanced at him and then moved over to take a seat on the sofa. I swallowed a mouthful of coffee. It was very hot and very good. I took another appreciative sip. The world began to seem less sinister.

  “Sorry if I seem like I’m being forward here, Artemus”—Seamus folded into one of the club chairs opposite the sofa—“but it seems like maybe there’s something you need to get off your chest.”

  “You could say that.” And he just had. “Can I ask you something?”

  His brows rose. “Sure. Anything.”

  Anything? Probably not. But I intended to start small and build up.

  “Why exactly did you take this job?”

  Seamus looked surprised. “Because I needed it.”

  “I see.”

  He smiled quizzically. “Why? Is there something wrong with the job? Something I should know about?”

  “No. Well… No.”

  He laughed. “That’s reassuring.”

  Smart-ass. I decided to be forthright. “I hope I’m not being forward either, but you don’t really seem like any gardeners I’ve known.”

  “You don’t seem like any theater critics I’ve known,” he retorted.

  “See? That comment right there.” I pointed at him. “That is not the way gardeners talk. Not even gardeners from New York.”

  “I’m not from New York.”

  “Still.”

  Seamus shrugged. “I can’t help it if your experience with gardeners has been limited up to now. Mrs. Bancroft-Hyde didn’t seem to have any problem with my references.”

  He was still smiling, but as he delivered that line—gazing right into my eyes—I knew without a doubt that he knew Auntie H. had not checked his references. How? How could he possibly know that—unless his references were faked?

  I smiled back at him. “As a matter of fact, she hasn’t checked your references yet. I was going to do that today.”

  His smile grew slightly less pleasant. “Check away,” he said.

  “Anything you’d like to declare for customs?”

  He gave a funny laugh. “Nothing to declare. You’ll find my papers are in order.”

  “Ha.” I tilted my head consideringly. “I wonder. How do you sleep at night?”

  At that, he looked taken aback. “Sorry?”

  “We had a prowler last night. But maybe on second thought, it wasn’t a prowler after all. Tell me, Seamus, do you enjoy long walks in the moonlight?”

  “A prowler,” he repeated slowly.

  I knew I wasn’t imagining the guarded look that crossed his face.

  “That’s right. Last night, around midnight, maybe a little after, I was in my—the late Mr. Hyde’s—study when I spotted a man peering through the windows.�
�

  “You did?” He set his cup on the coffee table between us. When he glanced up, his expression was rueful, his smile winning. “I’m embarrassed to admit it, but that was me.”

  “No!”

  He threw me a doubtful look, but Seamus wasn’t the only one with experience at playacting. I blinked at him in astonishment.

  He said, “Um, yes. Sorry if I startled you. I didn’t realize anyone was up at that hour.”

  To be honest, I’d been prepared for evasion, defensiveness, even denial. Frank admission sort of threw me. It took me a moment or two to recalculate.

  Seamus said into my silence, “It never occurred to me anyone saw me.” He sank back into the chair. I could practically see his nimble hands working the loom as he spun another web of lies. “By coincidence, I did have trouble sleeping last night, so I decided to go for a walk in the garden. And while I was strolling around, falling over rakes and wheelbarrows, I happened to spot a light go on downstairs.”

  “I see.” That first light would have been the drawing-room chandelier.

  He nodded absently, as though gazing inward at some memory. “A minute or two later, I spotted another light go on two rooms over.”

  That would have been when I turned on the lamp in Ogden’s study. He had certainly memorized the layout of the house. How? No, more to the point, why?

  Seamus was still blithely running along, telling his tall tales. “Of course, I know the Tarrants occupy the other wing of the house, and it was hard to imagine the old ladies running around in their nighties at that hour.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “I’d forgotten all about you.”

  That was payback for dodging his kiss. I smiled blandly, as though nothing pleased me more than to be instantly forgettable.

  “Naturally, the first thought that popped into my head was a burglar.”

  “Naturally,” I said. “Because the first thing burglars do is turn the lights on.”

  “Since I happened to be standing right next to the terrace, I ran up and had a look in the window. I recognized you, of course, but then the light went out. I felt like an ass racing around peering through windows in the dead of night, so I took myself home to bed.”