The upstairs hall sitting room, on which several bedrooms opened, was illumined at this hour by a single table lamp. At the front it opened onto a small balcony two stories above the front door. I stood for a moment looking about, listening intently. I’d slept deeply for several hours, but I was wide awake now and both curious and uneasy. The other bedroom doors were closed and nothing stirred, so Amelia and her mother must not have heard what I had heard.
Since there was no sound now coming from anywhere, I stepped out on the balcony beneath the stars. On either side the splendid white houses of South Battery slept peacefully and regally in the glow of streetlights. The balconies of the houses in either direction repeated patterned white balustrades over and over. Along the near shore paths of yellow light floated across harbor waters. Somewhere behind me on another street someone was playing a jazz piano, clearly improvising.
For a few moments the night seemed to quiet me, and then the thumping sound began again. This time it didn’t stop when I returned to the sitting room, and I could tell that it did indeed come from the screened area of the dark storeroom.
I moved quietly in that direction and found a light switch. At once the wooden rocking horse ceased its vigorous movement, slowing gently to a stop. No one rode its back, and no one hid among the trunks and boxes, except for Miss Kitty. I might have suspected her of rocking the horse, but she stood poised on the lid of a trunk with her fur puffed to twice its size. Even her tail bristled in alarm. Yet out at Mountfort Hall she’d seemed happy playing with Nathanial’s “spirit.” So whatever presence moved the rocking horse must have seemed inimical to the cat.
I shook myself impatiently, dismissing such nervous and exaggerated imaginings. But when something touched my shoulder, I almost screamed. I swung around to find Valerie Mountfort behind me, smiling apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Cecelia. I didn’t mean to startle you. I heard the horse rocking so I came out—and here you were, ahead of me. But of course it stopped, as it always does when someone comes near it.”
In her long white nightgown, with ruffled lace at her wrists, she looked like a beautiful ghost herself. Fair hair curled about her forehead in short locks, while the rest hung in its long braid down her back. In this light she looked amazingly young—younger than Amelia. As though life had been arrested for her somewhere in the past. As illusion, of course, since I’d seen her sad, worn look by daylight.
She perched herself on the rounded top of a low old-fashioned trunk, her knees pulled up under her voluminous gown and her hands clasped about them. Nearby, Miss Kitty relaxed, her fur subsiding.
This strange woman who was supposed to be my mother regarded me calmly. “Don’t go back to bed right away, Cecelia. Stay a little while and talk to me. I’ve rested so much today that I’m wide awake, and I won’t sleep now. It must be around three o’clock.”
I was wide awake too, and I sat down on a stool, waiting uncertainly for whatever would happen next. Miss Kitty suddenly sprang past me and flew through the air to land on the back of the rocking horse, setting it gently in motion. Apparently whatever had alarmed her was gone, and the rocking horse was her friend again.
“Is it the cat who does this?” I asked.
“It happens when she’s not in the house, and she could never rock the horse that hard. I haven’t heard our visiting spirit for some time. Perhaps it’s your presence that has brought it back—to see what you’re up to, Cecelia? The horse really belongs out at the plantation, along with other family ghosts. I must have it sent out there soon.”
She spoke calmly, as though she took such matters as visiting spirits for granted.
When I didn’t comment, she went on. “How did you hurt your head, Cecelia?”
I touched the small bandage. “It’s nothing. I was exploring the theater tonight. I got lost backstage in the storehouse of props and fell over some steps. I banged my head pretty hard. Unpleasant, but not serious.”
“How did the rehearsal go?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid. Garrett Burke upset Honoria, and when she got peeved with him, he walked out.”
Valerie lowered her knees, her bare feet on the floor, and Miss Kitty stopped playing king-of-the-hill on the rocking horse and sprang onto Valerie’s lap, asking for attention. When my mother smoothed her fur affectionately, the little cat began to purr.
“I wish she could talk,” Valerie said. “Sometimes I think she knows more about what’s happening than anyone else.”
“What do you think is happening?” I couldn’t call her either Mother or Valerie, and I felt disturbed by the spark that I sensed in her in these dark hours of the morning, as though a conflagration might be starting that I wouldn’t he able to put out. Perhaps she wasn’t as frail as everyone seemed to think.
She went on, quietly reminiscing. “Sometimes I make a comparison with the swamp at Cypress Gardens. We used to go there sometimes for picnics. Especially when the azaleas were in bloom. My mother was old then, but she loved that eerie place.”
Her mother—my grandmother. The connection was there, if only I could find a way to pick up the thread and accept a past that still didn’t seem real to me.
“The swamp can be utterly still,” she went on dreamily. “Its green surface reaches like a carpet in all directions, with cypress trees growing out of it singly and in clumps. The green color is because of the duckweed that covers the surface and never shows a wrinkle unless there’s a ripple of wind. Then it drifts and you can glimpse the black water underneath. On the surface it all seems still and peaceful—the way our lives used to be. When Porter and I were young, and Simon was—different. He was my first love, my only love. I looked up to him as I’d never done to anyone else. Until I married him, and found out what he was really like.”
Once more I found myself shrinking from her criticism of my father.
Her voice quickened. “The swamp is quiet, smooth—until a storm blows up. Then it comes to life and roils itself over, as though the bottom were being dredged up and all its secrets exposed. Strange objects float to the surface that no one knew were hidden beneath all that peaceful green. Are you the storm, Cecelia? The storm that’s causing hidden secrets to float to the top of our lives and reveal themselves?”
“If that’s what’s happening, it’s not my choice,” I told her. “Though perhaps what has been buried for too long ought to surface.”
“No!” Her sudden vehemence startled me. “Let the swamp hide all that’s ugly and shouldn’t be revealed. Then we can be safe and happy again. I think that’s what Simon wanted. I was often too impatient with him. I asked too much of him. I wanted my baby returned, and he couldn’t give me that. If I hadn’t been the way I was, perhaps he needn’t have died.”
She seemed to be of two minds, reversing herself.
“I’ve been told that he was ill. His heart.”
Valerie steadied herself, grew quiet again—too carefully quiet. “Yes. He never told me. He didn’t trust me enough. Perhaps he had reason not to trust me.”
In spite of her apparent self-criticism, I wondered how aware she really was of her effect on my father. Simon’s attitude might not have had anything to do with “trust,” but might have grown out of a desire not to cause her pain.
She went on as though she mused aloud, stroking the cat absently. “I stopped loving him long ago. I was too young and I married an imaginary man. I’d thought of Simon as strong and wise—like my cousin Porter—but, in reality, he was only weak and ineffectual.”
Porter strong and wise? My sympathy was entirely with Simon Mountfort.
Abruptly, Valerie pushed the cat off her knees. Miss Kitty did a corkscrew turn in the air and landed on her feet, immediately sitting down to wash her face.
“I have an idea, Cecelia. You don’t really want to go back to bed, do you?”
Mischief had touched her, and it made me all the more uneasy. “What do you have in mind?”
“Let’s get dressed. Quietly, so Amelia won’t suspect what we’re up to. Amelia would stop us and I don’t want that. We can take my car—it’s only a little way to go.”
“A little way to where?”
“It’s a surprise. You’ll see when we get there.”
“At three in the morning?”
“That’s the best hour. The time of dark bewitching! Don’t be stuffy, Cecelia. Get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Our roles had been reversed. She seemed the younger one now—a girl bent on some escapade. Yet if I awakened Amelia, I might never find out what Valerie intended. I needn’t like or trust this woman to go with her. I just needed to be watchful. Of course, at that time, I had no suspicion of her trickery.
Miss Kitty came with me to my room, and observed me as I put on gray pants and a light jacket. She seemed to find my behavior interesting, but normal. I wondered what went on in her little cat brain. Sometimes she showed her own special intelligence, but she had no way to analyze or evaluate except by interest. Certainly I had no desire to go back to bed.
“Go to sleep, cat,” I told her. “And don’t inform anyone that I’m going off with my mother.”
She gave me a slow blink, and curled up on the bed, closing her eyes, her tail wound under her chin.
When I went down, Valerie was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs.
“You took forever, Cecelia.”
It was the first time I had seen her out of her frilly lounging clothes. She’d put on a swirly flowered skirt and a light pink sweater to protect her against breezes that could sweep up the peninsula from the ocean. What startled me, however, were the clip earrings she had chosen to wear—coral carved in the form of a lotus and set in gold. Duplicates of the single earring I’d seen earlier today, except that the one Garrett had shown me was set in silver. Apparently, whatever the mystery of the single earring, it had nothing to do with Valerie Mountfort, whose earring set was intact.
She touched one ear with a finger. “You wanted to see them, so I put them on.”
“They’re beautiful,” I said, and let it go at that.
When she opened the front door and ran down the steps to the sidewalk, I followed more slowly. A passageway led along one side of the house to where she kept her car in a rear courtyard. I got in beside her, aware of her strange excitement, and of that sense of mischief that still held and made me distrustful.
I had no map of Charleston firmly in mind yet, so I couldn’t follow the turns she took—a fact that would be of no help to me later on when I might need to know where I was.
The streets were empty and quiet, except for an occasional all-night party going on. Even the gardens seemed more mysterious than by day, and were alive only to night creatures. Flower scents were sweeter than ever. From river to river, and clear to the ocean tip of the land, where the two rivers met, Charleston slept.
A few blocks along what Valerie told me was Broad Street I saw an impressive building built squarely across its end, stucco over brick. Valerie turned the car toward the curb and parked in front of the building. Streetlights made it clearly visible and I saw high steps mounting on either hand to a white Palladian doorway.
Valerie’s excitement held, and a strange eagerness drove her. I wondered if I could handle whatever might be about to happen. For now I could do nothing but go along.
When she got out of the car, I followed her up the right-hand flight of steps between iron railings. At a landing we turned up a longer central flight to the door of the building. As I went up, I glimpsed arched windows and a closed door set at ground level between the two wings of steps.
“Where are we?” I demanded, suddenly feeling very vulnerable.
She took a key from her pocket and waved it at me exultantly. “This is the Old Exchange Building—one of the oldest in Charleston. It used to open on the river, where ships could unload onto its stone floor. It was built while the town was still a royal colony. Such history here! I can’t wait to show it to you.”
She used her key to open the door, and laughed at my questioning look. “I still take children’s tours through once in a while, and I’ve kept my key.”
I looked nervously over my shoulder at the street, where nothing moved.
“We won’t turn on any lights,” she assured me. “Then if a police car comes by, they won’t see a thing. Don’t dawdle, Cecelia—come along.”
In dim light from the street I saw the reception desk near the door, piled with brochures. The stone floor stretched out across the enormous room, worn and uneven.
“This is where trading used to take place, with ships unloading back there on the river. All that began more than two hundred years ago, yet the old bricks and stones are still standing. Of course the building was used for other purposes during the Revolution. I’ll show you later, but first we’ll go upstairs.”
I had no idea why she had brought me on this historic tour at such an hour, and with such secrecy. An electric quality still drove her, and I wished I knew what she intended.
Stairs opened on one side and we climbed to the floor above. Again streetlights threw patches of yellow through the windows, so nothing was completely dark. Here the bare floor was polished wood, and two fireplaces gleamed white in the dim lighting. Graceful white columns, whose scrolled tops supported the ceiling, stood out from the walls around the great room. Above twin mantels hung portraits that Valerie said were Queen Henrietta Maria and King Charles I of England (the father of Charleston’s namesake). All this would be lighted by the marvelous overhead chandeliers for a party. It was a ballroom, undoubtedly. But why were we here?
Valerie flung out her arms as though she moved to unheard music. “What wonderful parties have been held here in the Great Hall! What splendid dances! How many times Simon and I have danced in this very room! This is background you need to know about, Cecelia.”
Why did I suspect that this was not her reason for bringing me here?
As I watched, her arms accepted an invisible partner and she moved into the steps of a formal waltz. I could almost see her swirling skirt change into a ball gown of satin and lace as she danced with her tall husband—perhaps in that distant time of her youth when she had loved him dearly. Or loved what she thought him to be? And what about Simon? Had she been what he wanted and expected?
My mother and father, I told myself, and began to believe a little in this fairy tale. As I watched, I could almost hear the music. Not Strauss. Cole Porter perhaps, or Irving Berlin. She dipped and whirled and I knew that a strong arm supported her. The room was peopled in my vision with a throng of dancers.
She whirled to a stop, applauding the invisible orchestra, and came running back to me, light as a young girl.
“I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve wanted to dance once more in this room with my own partner. Usually I’m herding schoolchildren through and trying to make them understand how real history is. The Federal Government was going to sell this building at one time, and it could have been torn down. Can you imagine? Back in 1913 the DAR got the United States Congress to deed the Old Exchange to be held as a historic memorial in perpetuity. Of course, I am a Daughter of the Revolution, and so are you, Cecelia. Our Daughters of the Confederacy came later.”
I knew very little of what the DAR stood for today, but the sense of connection with history mesmerized me. Maybe this was why my mother had brought me here.
“Now I’ll show you the real treasure this building holds,” Valerie ran on. “This is the dark time before dawn when you can really experience what is hidden here.”
She hurried toward the stairs and as I looked to where they descended to the bottom floor, I held back. “Is it necessary to go down there?” My alarm suddenly increased again. Her words about the “dark time” and something hidden were far from reassuring.
“Of course, Cecelia!” She ran down the steps ahead of me. “There’s living history here. Don’t you want to know where you came from?”
I came from an old white house on Long Island—a place that carried no history of intrigue and war and murder. Did I need this eerie world into which Valerie Mountfort was leading me? Nevertheless compelled, I followed her down.
When we reached the brick floor at the bottom, she tapped me on the arm. “Step carefully—these bricks are very old and uneven. They’ve been worn down by centuries of feet. This is the dungeon, Cecelia.”
The area smelled dark and warm and shut in, though probably by day there would be air-conditioning for the comfort of tourists. Blind in pitch darkness, I groped until Valerie switched on several lights that hung about the cavernous space. Illumination remained dim and shadowy, so that for a moment I thought we were not alone. Then I realized that former happenings in this place had been depicted with small dioramas of life-sized figures in costumes from the past.
Valerie was playing her role of tour guide now. “Isaac Haye, a patriot of the Revolution, was held here before his execution by the British. There were common criminals, as well—the pirate Steve Bonnard, among others. I’ve always thought it strange that I’ve never felt a sense of the dead in this place. Honoria says that’s because life was so miserable here that they’d rather do their haunting elsewhere. Just the same, if we are very quiet and listen, we may hear the human cries that were impressed on these walls and pillars and arches. Cries that will echo forever!”
I tried not to listen to the silence. She hadn’t told me her reason for bringing me here, but I still felt too vulnerable and alarmed.
She’d brought a flashlight, and when she cast its beam forward I saw the intricacy of groined brick arches rising from the pillars, intertwining overhead. The very artistry of the arches gave the place a terrible beauty.
“Take my hand and we’ll go up on the bridge,” she directed.
Her hand was hot when I touched it, as though she burned with some blood fever that drove her.
I stepped with her onto a runway built over the remnants of an ancient brick wall. Valerie swept it with her flashlight beam and continued her patter.
“Charleston was the only British walled city in North America. The Old Exchange Building is built over what’s left of the seawall. You can see a section of the old wall down there below us. Bits of that wall crop up in other parts of historic Charleston.”
Even as her words sounded reasonable and informative—words she could probably say in her sleep—something ran beneath the routine pattern, and I heard a tremor of anticipation that upset me. But when I tried to persuade her to return upstairs and leave this unhappy place, she dismissed my words carelessly. Leaving was not in her immediate plans, and I had no intention of leaving her until I knew why we were here.
We wandered into another part of the great dungeon, where lifelike figures played out more tragic prison scenes. Great brick arches collected menacing shadows that seemed to move as Valerie’s flashlight moved. Suddenly I’d had enough. I would go no farther into what had begun to seem like a maze. Any sense of direction I might have had was lost, and I no longer knew where to find the stairs. I stood with my back against a brick column, trying not to see the suffering displayed by a ragged figure a few feet away. Suffering that had once been horribly real in this place.
“I’m not moving another step until you tell me why you’ve brought me here.”
A chuckle of amusement escaped her lips before she became serious again. “You can’t call me Mother, can you?”
“I’m sorry—” I began, but she broke in quickly.
“Of course you can’t! You can’t use that word because I’m not really your mother. And you aren’t really my lost Cecelia. I don’t know why you came to Charleston—or perhaps I do. You knew there was an inheritance involved, didn’t you? An inheritance you would share with my daughter, Amelia. Simon took care of that in his letter to you and in his will. If you returned within a period of thirty-five years, you were to share equally with your sister. If Amelia were dead, you would receive it all. The amount has been growing all this time, so this might put Amelia in jeopardy. Though at the end of the period of restriction if you hadn’t claimed your share, what has become a fortune would revert to her. Which might put you in jeopardy.”
“I don’t know anything about this . . .” I began.
“But of course you are an impostor,” she went on, paying no attention. “You fooled Charles and some of the others, including Amelia. But I was never fooled. The likeness startled me at first—even shocked me. But I was able to go behind that with a mother’s true feelings. You aren’t my darling lost baby, and I mean to make you so sorry you came that you will go away and never come back. Tonight you’ll have a taste of the punishment I can manage for you. Just a hint to show you what the real thing might be like.”
Her delusion was complete and I realized there was no way I could reach her. I wondered if it had been her hand that had placed that halberd beside me backstage at the theater—even though she was supposed to be home in bed.
I knew I must escape and find my way to the stairs, then I could reach the street and get help. If only I didn’t feel so lost and confused. This was worse than losing my sense of direction at the theater, where at least there had been adequate light.
Valerie gestured with the beam of her flashlight. “There’s a barrel over there, Molly Hunt. You might as well sit and be comfortable. You won’t have more than a few hours to wait before the building opens and someone finds you. Perhaps you can even catch up on some sleep.”
She meant to leave me here, and I couldn’t let that happen, but even as I reached out to grasp her arm, she touched a switch that extinguished the lights around this cellar area. At the same moment she turned off her flashlight and moved out of my reach. I hadn’t noticed the location of the switch, since it had all happened so fast. Once more, her beam flashed across my face and then went off for good.
Valerie Mountfort, who knew this place by night and day, ran away from me, her feet sounding on the bricks and echoing among the arches of the ceiling. Echoes seemed to come back to me from all sides, so I had no sense of the direction she had taken.
When all the sound died away, the silence seemed as dismaying as the darkness. I couldn’t hear her feet on the stairs, or on the heavy stone floor overhead. I knew she would return to her car and drive home, leaving me here without the slightest qualm.
I made myself be quiet. Primitive fears would be my worst enemy here, and I must keep my imagination from taking flight. I was disoriented—that was all. There was nothing to harm me. I groped my way to the barrel she’d shown me, and sat down to think about my circumstances. I might even entertain myself by thinking like a writer. I must stop the shaking that was affecting my limbs. This experience would work wonderfully in a mystery novel, but I didn’t care for it in real life.
Perhaps, after all, I could remember the direction of the stairs. I would simply open my consciousness, ask for help—and let myself be guided. I sat very still, trying to relax every part of my body, waiting for some—enlightenment?
All around me the silence pressed down with the weight of those mysterious arches. Nearby something rustled and crept across the floor. Mice—rats? Once ships beyond the seawall had unloaded their wares and brought them into this building. Rats must have had a lovely time in those days. I felt sorry for prisoners chained to these dungeon floors. They, at least, would have been allowed candlelight. And surely all the rats would have been driven out by now.
Darkness—the complete absence of light—can have a strangely stifling effect. Not only because my physical eyes could no longer see anything—but because my inner vision had gone sightless from fear. I hadn’t even a blind man’s stick with which to find my way. Nevertheless I couldn’t wait hours to be rescued. I must find the stairs that would lead me to the floor above. Streetlights would show me the way to the reception desk and a telephone. Someone would come for me when I called. Though I wasn’t sure whom I would call. But that was a problem that lay ahead—when I found my way up.
I’d closed my eyes, since it was better not to stare into blank nothingness. When I opened them to make my first steps toward escape, I realized that the darkness was not absolute—as it had seemed at first. My eyes had begun to adjust, and in the direction of what must be the front of the building a faint sliver of light came through. I remembered that I had seen arched windows under the high steps when we had come in. And there’d been a door between them.
Moving with my hands outstretched against collision, I found my way past pillars that rose into arches, and over rough brick toward the goal of lesser darkness. Once I bumped into a cabinet with a glass top that rattled and set echoes crashing around me. An exhibit of some kind, I supposed.
A few more steps brought me to the cold outside wall, where windows and a central door had been set into the brick. Useless, of course. The door was locked and the shuttered windows wouldn’t open. Now I was farther than ever from the stairs, but at least I knew they must rise against the wall opposite from this one—clear across the building.
Thanks to the tiny flittering of light and the adjustment of my vision, I could at least see the deeper blackness of brick columns, so I didn’t run into them. Nevertheless I moved with my hands reaching straight out, still more or less blind.
When bricks turned to wood under my feet, and the floor sloped upward, I swept my hands to the side and found the rails of the “bridge” above the old seawall. I didn’t want to go deeper into the dungeon, and I struck out in another direction.
Step by groping step, I moved toward what I hoped was the location of the stairs. They couldn’t be that far away now. Hands outstretched, I could step ahead a little more confidently. Until, without warning, my fingers touched something that made me cry out in alarm. I had placed my right hand fully on warm human flesh. My recoil was one of terror. To come upon someone hiding in this place, knowing I was here, sensing me in the darkness! I screamed, as I’d done in the theater, and the echoes went crashing horridly around the groined ceiling, smashing silence with sounds that surely weren’t coming from me.
Almost at once, I recognized that these were sounds I wasn’t making. Someone—that face I’d touched—was laughing, and I knew the laughter was Valerie Mountfort’s. I stood back against a column of brick, shaking and angry, unable to speak.
She flashed her torch on my face. “I’m sorry, Molly. I didn’t dream you’d frighten that badly. I really wouldn’t have left you here for five hours. I just wanted you to have time to realize how unwelcome you are in Charleston. We don’t like pretenders here. So this was just a hint of the unpleasantness to come—more serious unpleasantness that could happen if you don’t go away. But I’ll get you out of here now. First, though, tell me what you would have done if I’d left you here.”
Somehow I forced myself to speak quietly, and regain some shred of lost dignity and control. “I’d have found the stairs and gone up to the telephone on the reception desk. Then I’d have called someone to come and get me. When they did, I’d have told them all about your trickery.”
“Which wouldn’t matter,” she said lightly. “They’re all used to my impulsive ways. In the past I suppose the family would have locked me in the attic and kept me a secret. Now I have the devotion of my sweet daughter, silly though she can sometimes be. And no one talks about madness. We use words like ‘neuroses’ and ‘psychoses’—all treatable, of course. Only I refuse to be treated, and I am looked after and my wishes considered. Of course, I don’t do anything too outlandish—most of the time.”
She spoke with an amusement that didn’t sound in the least mad—which made it all the more frightening. Probably the psychotic rationalized their own madness.
“I think you know exactly what you are doing,” I told her. “It’s why you are doing it that I don’t understand. I appear to be Amelia’s twin—but how can you really be sure? I don’t know or care anything about an inheritance, though you may not believe that.”
“Who would you have called?” she asked. “After four in the morning?”
I’d been thinking about that as I groped for the stairs. Not Amelia—she would be too stricken by our mother’s actions. Not Honoria, who would rouse Porter. Not Charles. Never Charles—for some reason I couldn’t explain. I might have called Garrett, but I needed a woman with me now—a woman’s kindness and sympathy. So it was Daphne I’d decided upon. All along she had struck me as the most sensible of the clan, and I knew she would come for me at any hour without any fussing.
“I would have called Daphne Phelps,” I said.
“A good choice. Give me your hand, Molly, and I’ll take you to the stairs.”
Again her fingers seemed hot as I touched them, and I didn’t trust her. She used her flashlight until we reached the bottom step of the stairs. Then she turned it off, leaving me in blackness again. I knew what she meant to do, and grasped her hand tightly. Her strength surprised me as she twisted away and ran up the stairs. I leaned on the banister as darkness returned to smother me.
She called to me from the floor above. “That’s a good idea, Molly—to phone Daphne. So do it!” She ran away across the stone floor, and I heard the opening and slam of the outer door as it closed after her.
I was angry all over again, and just as futilely. At least she had led me to the stairs. I went up easily enough, guided by the rail, and into the welcome radiance from streetlights beyond the windows. The phone waited for me, reassuring me of help. I called information and asked for Daphne’s number.