Chapter Eight

 

 

The sauce was thickening nicely. Rebecca stirred it with one hand and arranged the broccoli in the baking dish with the other. Meowing pitiably, Darnley wove himself in and out of her legs, his eye on the chicken breasts simmering on the stove.

“Oh, all right!” she exclaimed, and peeled off a portion of the meat. As the cat trotted away with his booty Michael’s voice shouted, “Good mornin’!” Rebecca was not at all surprised the final syllable had the upward twist of a question. “Good morning,” she called. “In the kitchen.”

The night had lasted, it seemed, well into eternity. Rebecca had dozed fitfully, waking again and again to find the rain still pouring and the wind still blowing through the darkness. At least, she told herself, if there had been footsteps, she had not been able to hear them.

When at last a blessed glimmer of dawn lightened the overcast, she had ventured out, only to discover the window in her bathroom was open. The lid of the toilet, which she had left lowered, had been raised, so that the seat was covered with icy raindrops. She had not been amused.

Rebecca poured herself another cup of coffee and set the teakettle on the burner. She’d also not leaped to the assumption that the open window had been Michael’s doing, despite his comment about the adventure of going to “the loo”. Ghosts must be capable of practical jokes; she’d heard a giggle outside her door. She suppressed the quick ripple of her spine.

Today Michael was wearing a “Monty Python” sweatshirt. He approached the stove and observed, “You’re cookin’,” with the diffidence he might have accorded Lucrezia Borgia. Maybe, Rebecca told herself, he’d spent half the night wondering if he should be afraid of her.

She took the saucepan off the burner, wiped her hands on her apron, reached for her coffee mug, and took a long grateful swallow. The cobwebs in her mind shriveled and disintegrated. Eric deserved a medal for providing Dun Iain with a coffeepot. “Yes,” she said, “I’m cooking. We have to eat the food I brought day before yesterday, but we’re going out tonight.”

“We are?” Michael asked, with a bright blue sideways gleam. He checked the temperature of the kettle and dumped tea leaves into the pot.

Oh. She’d never told him. “My friend Jan in Putnam invited us to dinner tonight. If you’d like to come.” Rebecca poured sauce over the broccoli, arranged the chicken, finished with a dusting of cheese. “Move,” she ordered, and as Michael skipped aside thrust the baking dish into the oven. “Ah,” he said. “Americans, are they?”

For a fleeting moment she thought he meant the chickens. “Jan and Peter Sorenson? Americans are mostly what grow around here.”

“I’d like to meet some normal Americans,” he said wistfully.

Rebecca laughed. So far the poor Scot had met only the occupants of Dun Iain, who probably reminded him of the cast of Arsenic and Old Lace.

Michael deftly poured boiling water into the teapot. “You don’t think they’ll be servin’ tuna casserole?”

“Jan’s a good cook, never fear. I was supposed to warn you, though, that they have kids.”

“I have three nephews. My sister and I call them Huey, Dewey and Louie. If I can put up wi’ them I can put up wi’ anything.” He poured a mug of tea, added milk and sugar, drank. His expression went as blank and mellow as Ray’s did after successful completion of a page in The Joy of Sex.

She had to think of that. Grimacing, Rebecca warmed up her coffee. She and Michael leaned against their respective patches of counter, exchanging wary glances over their individual mugs of restorative. In the cold, gray light of morning her suspicions of him the night before seemed absurdly paranoid. “So you think the house is haunted?” she asked, taking the plunge.

He shook his head. “It could be that Steven Spielberg’s set up a special effects lab in the attics.”

“Cognitive dissonance. Your mind isn’t equipped to deal with unfamiliar input. So you try to familiarize it.”

“Telling yourself it’s all in your imagination. I don’t know,” Michael confided, “whether I was more frightened of the unfamiliar, as you say, or of goin’ mad. But when it happened to you, too—well that was all right.”

“Thanks,” she replied dryly. “Although having ghosts in the house does add flair to the proceedings. If there weren’t any, we’d have to make some up, just to spice up the state’s advertising brochure.”

“Old things do have an air about them. Rizzio’s guitar, for example; you can just feel what it must’ve been like, can’t you?”

“Oh yes.” He was a closet romantic, no doubt about it. She’d have to stop teasing him about it. “James used to say the things wanted to go home.”

“They wanted to, as if they were alive? Aye, I think they probably would have done.”

Plunging even further, she admitted, “I dozed off in the prophet’s chamber and dreamed I was at Culloden.”

“Culloden,” he repeated sadly. “What a waste.”

Rebecca sipped her coffee. That had been more of a vision than a dream. Dreams didn’t move objects around and turn on lights.

“The question,” said Michael, “is whether there are ghosts, spirits, psychic forces—whatever you want—or just bloody-minded humans. And whether it really matters. We still have to live with it.”

“I’ll tell you what would help with the human element,” Rebecca said. “Changing the lock on the front door and being very careful who gets a key.”

Michael topped up his mug. “Good idea.”

“Eric’s idea. He mentioned it last night.”

“Ah? Timely suggestion, what?”

She ignored his implication. “And as for the ghosties and ghoulies, maybe I can work them into my dissertation.” That didn’t come out quite as lighthearted as she’d intended, but it would do to serve notice she was staying. If she had to pretend the supernatural existed in order to get her Ph.D., so be it.

Michael fished a cat hair out of his mug and didn’t respond.

“Here.” Rebecca picked up the bread and handed it to him. “Make some toast. The chicken’s almost ready.”

“Chicken and broccoli?”

“Chicken Divan. Not quite up to Mrs. Beeton’s specifications, maybe, or even Betty Crocker’s, but it’s what we had on hand.”

“For breakfast?”

“You can’t live forever on eggs and pork,” Rebecca told him, thinking of the identical breakfasts in every hotel on her British tour. “Be adventurous. Be daring.” She pulled out the baking dish.

Michael set the toast to attention in the toast rack. A slightly rueful, slightly calculating glance made Rebecca wonder if just putting up with her was as daring as he wanted to be. It rankled, that he’d rather be alone with assorted spooks than have her around. But they weren’t being paid to like each other, just to work together without bloodshed. Even though he was, every now and then, actually likable.

Darnley sat in an empty chair washing his face while they ate. Or rather, while Michael ate. Not only had Rebecca not quite finished digesting last night’s sumptuous repast, she was so fascinated with the way he mashed his food onto the back of his fork with his knife that he finished long before she did. She gave him the rest of her portion and he ate that, too. “Very good,” he pronounced at last.

“Thank you. You go on. I’ll get the dishes—this time.”

Michael refilled his mug and wandered off, looking more like the laid-back academic than Rebecca had ever seen him. Funny how food acted as a tranquilizer. Not that physiology was her field.

She’d barely piled the dishes in the sink when his bellow reverberated down the staircase. “Rebecca! Get yoursel’ up here!” Well, she thought with a roll of her eyes, peace had been nice. She took off her apron, tempted to shout back, Ah, don’t get your y-fronts in a twist!

Even with the chandelier shining, the Hall was a murky gray, reflecting the morning outside the windows. At least the rain had stopped pouring and was now reduced to a dispirited drool. Michael stood staring at the long table as though a cobra lay coiled next to his mug. When Rebecca stepped over the threshold, he demanded, “Where did you put the mazer?”

That big silver goblet? “I didn’t put it anywhere. The last I saw, it was right there. You were looking at it.” As if you were appraising it, she added to herself.

“It’s gone missin’,” he said.

“You didn’t put it back in the sideboard for safekeeping?”

“Why? This is a castle, no a news kiosk. It’s quite defensible. . .”

Rebecca waited while the horrible comprehension washed over him, draining the color from his face. As if on cue his carefully smoothed hair collapsed onto his forehead. “Damn,” he snarled. “I didna check the place last night. Whoever broke in had plenty o’ time tae do a flit wi’ the mazer.”

“I didn’t check it either. I must’ve assumed thieves wouldn’t call attention to themselves with vandalism. Unless it was meant as a distraction. Nothing of mine was missing.” The coffee that had a moment ago been so delicious was now acid eating away Rebecca’s esophagus. No one would want anything of hers, anyway. “You’re not blaming this on ghosts?”

Michael pounded his fist on the table, then lunged and grabbed the pile of cups that threatened to fall over at his blow. “Is that why. . .” he started to ask, and then stopped, his face hidden, holding the cups.

“Is that why what?”

The words came in a rush. “Is that why you gie me the whiskey, sae I’d fall asleep and you and your toffee-nosed boyfriend could. . .”

“Trash my own things and steal the mazer?” she demanded. “Don’t try that on me. You had every opportunity while I was gone to do it yourself. We’re both suspects in this, whether you like it or not.”

For a long moment the room was silent. A gust of wind rattled the tall windows. Michael and Rebecca stood staring at the jittery teacups. “All right then,” he said at last. “We’ll search the hoose. First, tae see if the mazer’s been moved aboot by the spooks. Second, tae see if anything else has gone missin’. I dinna suppose it would’ve helped if we’d reported the theft last night. We do have tae report it.”

“Now you’re talking sense. I’ll call Eric. He’s the executor, isn’t he?” she added hurriedly, to forestall explosions.

But even though Michael’s eyes flared, all he said was, “Aye, that he is. Call him and tell him what’s goin’ on.”

Rebecca stamped irritably into the kitchen and consulted the list of numbers posted by the phone. Garst, Pruitt, Adler, work and home. She dialed. Darnley, still curled on a chair, opened an eye and closed it again. The door of the lumber room opened with a crash that reverberated through the entry. Rebecca turned her back on the kitchen door. If it wasn’t Michael making the noise she wasn’t going to acknowledge it.

“Hello!” With just the one word the velvet voice smoothed the hair bristling on the back of her neck.

“Eric, it’s Rebecca. We’ve got a problem out here.”

“What’s happened?”

“We had vandals last night. At least, we think we had vandals last night. And this morning we’re missing an artifact. Or we think we are, at least—Michael’s looking for it now.” That sounded really incisive and vigilant, she scolded herself.

“What’s missing?”

“A thing called a mazer, a big silver goblet. I was wondering if you could find a locksmith who’d work on Saturday. . .”

“The mazer? It’s been stolen?”

Rebecca wondered if the faint static echo on the line was Eric grinding his teeth. “We don’t know for sure yet,” she repeated. “We’re checking to see if anything else is gone, too.”

“Rebecca, I’ll be right out. And I’ll bring Lansdale, the sheriff. I’ll bring a locksmith, too, if I have to tie him up in the back seat. And you, you take care. Keep an eye on Campbell.” He hung up.

Now there was incisive. Rebecca nested the receiver tenderly in its cradle. Poor Eric, he was probably envisioning lawsuits with the museum, the state, and any heirs extending into the next century. In a way it was comforting to know that his polished veneer could be scratched.

The mazer, he’d said, knowing what it was. The newspaper it’d been wrapped in was dated last spring. Maybe he’d wrapped it up himself and tucked it away, thinking it would be safe.

Good grief, people were coming and she hadn’t cleaned up the kitchen! Rebecca wrapped the apron around her sweater and jeans and started juggling dishes. Somewhere between the cutlery and the saucepan Michael charged through into the pantry and back out again. “I’m up to the top,” he said. He hadn’t found it on the lower stories, then.

Rebecca arranged the clean dishes in the drainer, ran to her room to tidy both it and herself, then went up one more flight. Judging by the slams and crashes, Michael was looking in the storerooms on the sixth floor. She had the fourth to herself—she hoped. She stood outside Michael’s door, her hands clenched at her sides, arguing with herself. I have a responsibility to my employers. I have a responsibility to myself. I have to live with this man.

Feeling less like Mata Hari than Gomer Pyle, Rebecca took a deep breath and walked into Michael’s room.

Even though her hands itched to make the bed, she simply patted down the tangled blankets. Two empty suitcases were beneath the dusty box springs. She slid open the dresser drawers, wincing at each squeak, peered into the wardrobe, checked the bathroom. She found nothing she wouldn’t have expected to find: shirts and jeans, toothpaste and comb, a pair of the green rubber boots called wellies that Britons are born wearing. The mazer was too big to be hidden just anywhere.

Books lay scattered on every surface. Textbooks, a travel guide, paperback science-fiction novels. There was the spiral notebook. She opened it. Every page was filled with the columns of items and numbers prefaced by pound signs she’d already seen. “Coalport vase. 50. Acquire.” Sounded good to her. If he was into double-entry bookkeeping, she’d never notice it.

On the bedside table an envelope was tucked behind the clock-radio, a newspaper clipping dangling like a cigarette from its lip. The headline said something about a firebombing in the Western Highlands. Goodness, Rebecca thought, and hoped no one Michael knew had been there at the time.

Footsteps. Her face flaming with embarrassment, Rebecca catapulted through the bathroom into the big bedroom and started ransacking the cabinets there. The only thing out of place was a cut-glass perfume bottle on the bed. It was icy to the touch.

She trudged up the stairs and returned the bottle to the dresser. The chandelier in the big bedroom, set amid plaster garlands on the ceiling, glared off the windows in the turrets as if each pane of glass were a mirror backed by mist instead of silver. Michael bounded in the door just as she was counting the other perfume bottles. “Did you find it?”

Five, six. There had been seven yesterday. “No, I haven’t found it. Is there a bottle missing?”

“This one?” He set down a small crystal decanter. “They move aboot on their own. Subduction currents or something.”

“I’ve put this one back twice now. I guess you could be moving them around. So could I, for that matter.”

“And who’s been sleepin’ in the bed? Goldilocks?”

Rebecca turned. The pillow was hollowed as if by the print of a head. They had each smoothed it out at least once. “That might be. . .” she began, but her voice trailed off. The house creaked and the windows rattled.

“Elspeth?” asked Michael. “It’s the bed where they laid her oot.”

Rebecca wondered, in a sort of dispassionate horror, if she was going to scream or faint or be sick. But even though her skin crawled, all she found herself doing was folding her arms and setting her jaw obstinately.

Michael’s eye moved from the pillow to Rebecca’s stubborn expression. “That’s all right, then. Keep your pecker up.”

Rebecca disintegrated in laughter. “I wouldn’t use that expression quite so loosely around here.”

He grinned. “Has a double meaning, does it? I’ll remember that.”

Neither of them moved to fluff the pillow. As they began opening and shutting cabinets and drawers Rebecca decided he knew perfectly well that expression had another meaning on this side of the Atlantic, and had used it to make her laugh. Maybe it was time for her to do some tension-breaking, too. She asked, “Did you search my room?”

“Oh,” he said faintly. He turned on his heel and stalked off. She followed him down the stairs quickly enough to see him pause in the door of his own room and survey the contents. Then he shrugged and loped on down the next flight. Rebecca called, “Put everything back where you found it.” His reply was some muttered idiom she didn’t try to decipher.

She went into James’s room and poked desultorily around. The clothes in the wardrobe were even more heavily scented with lavender than they had been the day before. Elspeth’s hatboxes contained nothing but Elspeth’s hats, the feathers disgustingly molted. The tissue wrapped garments turned out to be a baby’s long lacy dresses and tiny caps. A hundred years ago even baby boys wore dresses.

Rebecca was sitting back on her heels admiring the fine stitchery when Michael returned. “Naething’s there that wisna there last night,” he announced. “You’re clean. Am I?”

“You will be as soon as you tell me why you don’t want me here.”

He sat down so heavily in a rocking chair he almost went over backward. Catching himself, he said, “Excuse me?”

Well, that chair wasn’t sabotaged. “Why don’t you want me here?”

For once he was at a loss for words. “It’s no that—I mean, I dinna mean—I. . .”

“Count to ten,” she told him caustically. “Then try again.”

He rocked back, the chair squeaking in protest, and fixed the wall above her head with his most candid gaze. “The state sent you tae check on me.”

“My instructions were to work with you. That I was to look out for my own country’s interests was merely implied. Not to mention my own interests.”

“I already had Adler breathin’ ower me. He should’ve been enough.”

“But he’s not living here. And he doesn’t have the background to do more than glance superficially at what you’ve been doing, which is probably why. . .” She bit her tongue, but it was too late.

“Aye?”

“He’s a little suspicious of your accounting. Just as you are of his.”

“Damn cheek!” Michael said to the ceiling.

Rebecca took a deep breath that didn’t quite fill her lungs. “You haven’t been setting up any little practical jokes, have you? Like fixing the chair in the prophet’s chamber?”

“What aboot the chair in the prophet’s chamber?”

“It broke in half when I leaned back in it. The connecting piece, the bracket, it was sawed through.”

He looked at her in disgust. “Now why would I do that? It was probably dickey from old age.”

“I don’t have the pieces to show you—Phil took them away.”

“Aha!” exclaimed Michael. “That might be significant!”

“Or it might not.” Rebecca began to fold the baby clothes back into their brittle sheets of tissue. Michael rocked briskly back and forth, mouth crimped. She glanced up at him. His reply to her questions had merely confirmed her original suppositions, not told her anything new. No telling what, if anything, he was up to. She laid the crinkly bundles in the wardrobe and said, “I’d thought this was going to be an interesting job, but I didn’t bargain for just how much!”

“Interestin’ is an understatement.” Michael bounced out of the chair, offered her his hand, and hauled her to her feet. “No matter if the yobbos who’re causin’ the trouble are human or supernatural or both—and I incline to think they’re both—they’re keepin’ us from doin’ our jobs.”

Accepting the existence of either human or supernatural malefactors in her life was a dizzying leap of perception. Rebecca wondered how long she could postpone brain meltdown. “All the more reason to get on with those jobs,” she replied staunchly. “Right?”

“Right,” he said, equally stalwart, and they shook on it.

 

 

1Chapter Nine

 

 

The silence was shattered by the slam of the front door. Michael’s and Rebecca’s handshake turned into a convulsive clutch. As one they raced to the stairs. When Michael shouted “Hello?” the word echoed into the depths of the house as though down a well.

“Hey,” called Steve Pruitt’s nasal voice. “Anybody home?”

Rebecca and Michael met him on the landing between the Hall and the study. Today he was wearing a shabby black vinyl jacket. His lock of hair hung lank as a piece of seaweed over his face, and instead of a gold stud in his ear he wore a dangling silver skull. “Didn’t get finished yesterday,” he said to Rebecca’s feet. “Came back.”

You mean your father sent you back, Rebecca said silently.

“Fine,” said Michael. “Can you find everything you need?”

“Mm,” Steve replied, and shuffled back down the stairs. This time it was his back pocket that was distended by the massive key.

“We should tell Steve to knock, not let himself in,” Rebecca said.

“Next time he comes he’ll no be able to let himself in, remember? In fact,” Michael added with a grimace, “there’s no point to startin’ anything, Adler’ll be here any minute.”

“I’ll mull some cider.” Rebecca went down the stairs thinking, Poor Steve. His persona, instead of being tough, was that of a pathetic little boy. Well, what future did he have? That was one thing Rebecca had to say for her father—he’d insisted each of her brothers attend junior college and learn a skill, auto mechanics, food processing, electronic repair. “History?” Joe Reid had demanded when Rebecca told him of her academic ambitions. “Can you get a teaching job with that, to tide you over until you find someone to marry?” His assumptions had been so different from hers she hadn’t bothered to say more than “Yes, Daddy. Don’t worry about me.”

Her family had thought Ray was a good catch—they’d be shocked she’d broken up with him. They’d think Eric was an even better one, except that marriage was hardly what Rebecca wanted from Eric. Proof of her independence, mostly. Except she hadn’t written to Ray yet. . .

The front door was standing open. Someone was in the cab of the pick-up outside, a girl with hair like a dust mop and hula hoops in her ears. She was gazing apathetically at Steve as he pecked at the marigold bed with his hoe, her eyes so heavily outlined in black they seemed to be holes torn in the pallid skin of her face. Rebecca paused, her hand on the huge doorknob. That might be the girl who’d run in front of Eric’s car last night, looking like a hapless mouse or vole caught in the spotlights of a PBS nature special.

If Slash was here he’d run into the woods. Rebecca knocked at the window of the pickup. “Hi! I’m Rebecca.”

The girl started violently, recovered, and whispered, “I’m Heather.”

She couldn’t be more than sixteen. “Would you like to wait inside? It’s awfully cold out here.”

“No,” said Heather. “Thanks.” She huddled into her shapeless black clothing, her tights-clad legs knotted together. Steve watched them expressionlessly. Blackbirds exploded like shrapnel from the trees, whirled overhead, and disappeared toward the roof. There was Slash, emerging from behind the mausoleum. On the whole, Rebecca would rather have Heather than Slash hanging around. She hurried back inside.

The drizzle had become a thick Scotch mist. Michael must feel right at home. So, she thought, shutting the door and eyeing the marble tomb, must Mary. Except for the insistent peal of the telephone in the kitchen. Dutifully she ran to answer it.

“Miss Reid, this is Phil Pruitt. Is my son Steve out there?”

“Why, yes. He’s finishing up the flower beds.”

The line hummed expectantly. “Oh. I see. Well, thank you.”

Rebecca hung up and found a large saucepan for the cider. So Phil hadn’t sent Steve; the boy had come on his own. She’d had students who went through these spasms of responsibility. She found a can of cinnamon, sprinkled some into the cider, set out a row of cups.

The front door snicked and her ears perked like the cat’s. She heard a patter of feet on the staircase. No one was in the entry. If I stay here until January first, she thought, and then corrected herself: by the time I stay here until January first, I’ll have a nervous system so sensitive I could sell it to the CIA.

She walked upstairs. Michael was in the study, eyeing the copy of the Declaration of Arbroath. A floorboard creaked in the hallway above. Maybe it was Elspeth. Maybe it was the Ghost of Christmas Past. But this time Rebecca was pretty sure just who it was. As Michael turned and registered her presence she held her finger to her lips and beckoned. Getting into the spirit of things, he tiptoed to the door. Together they started up the staircase.

Car doors slammed outside. Eric. Maybe the sheriff. Even the locksmith. Great, the more the merrier.

Heather stood at Rebecca’s dresser, inspecting a tube of lipstick. Michael chuckled under his breath. Rebecca exhaled—right, for once.

Downstairs the door crashed open. Heather spun around and saw the two people watching her. Her face went even paler, the whites of her eyes glinting below the black rims. She slapped the lipstick onto the dresser and sprinted between Michael and Rebecca from the room and down the stairs. The rapid fire of her steps against the stone mingled with shouts of surprise and warning not only in Eric’s voice but in two unfamiliar ones.

Rebecca collided with Eric on the landing outside the Hall. “What’s going on? What was she doing?” he demanded, clutching her shoulders.

“She was just poking around. We frightened her; that’s why she ran.”

A stocky middle-aged man in a brown uniform and a jacket whose insignia read “Harding County” stood in the entry, Heather dangling like a kitten from his massive hand. “You’re sure, ma’am? She wasn’t taking anything?”

Michael skidded to a halt beside Eric and Rebecca. “She’d only been upstairs for a minute, lookin’ at Rebecca’s pretty things.”

“Please let her go,” Rebecca asked.

“She almost fell,” the sheriff explained, releasing the girl. Heather fled out the door.

“Pathetic kid,” said Eric. “Wait here.” He freed Rebecca and strode back down the steps and out through the front door. She flexed her shoulders experimentally; no, Eric’s fierce grip had not left bruises.

“Warren Lansdale,” said the sheriff. He took off his broad-brimmed hat and nodded affably. Probably he smiled, but it was hard to tell what was happening beneath his broom-sized and -colored moustache. “I hear you’ve had some mysterious goings-on out here. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Rebecca and Michael exchanged a knowing look—not the first time?—and introduced themselves.

Eric’s voice wafted in the door past the cadaverous little man who squatted on the stone flags amid an array of tools and metal pieces. In the parking area the pickup was boxed in by the Volvo, by Lansdale’s squad car, and by a van labeled “Kwik-Fix Hardware”. Steve and Heather stood like identical bookends, hunched, arms crossed, faces sullen, while Eric’s admonitory forefinger counted out the riot act, his tone compelling attention even though the words were unintelligible from inside. Slash loped up and nudged Eric in the side. Absently he fondled the dog’s ears.

Michael leaned negligently against the sarcophagus. Lansdale commented, “I figure Eric will take off for New York or someplace now.” Yes, thought Rebecca, a goldfish like Eric might find even a city like Columbus too small a bowl. And his work here was almost done.

Eric opened his hand, palm up. Steve laid the door key in it. Eric gestured. With inspiring briskness Steve picked up his hoe, Slash gamboled away, Heather scrambled into the truck and crouched so far down only the spikes of her hair showed over the dashboard.

Eric came in the door and stopped dead, realizing four pairs of eyes were fixed on him. The locksmith quickly picked up his tools. Eric grinned at the other three. “Did the cavalry arrive just in time?”

Rebecca eyed him appreciatively. The fine rain had silvered his dark hair and sheened the burgundy leather of his jacket. His idea of casual clothes was an open-necked knit shirt and loosely cut canvas slacks. If lawyering hadn’t paid off, he could have been a model. With his smoldering Heathcliffian looks he didn’t need to smile and reveal the awkward teeth.

Michael spoke and her bubble of admiration popped. “Do you think they were the ones who mucked us about?”

“We saw them in front of that pizza place on our way into town,” Rebecca answered. “I suppose they could’ve had time to get out here and get into the house with Phil’s key. Seems awfully well timed, though, for kids that scatterbrained. And why?”

“A lot of them get real perturbed,” offered Lansdale, “when they find out the world doesn’t owe them a living.”

“Even if they didn’t have the key,” Eric said, putting the item in question into his own pocket, “they might have been able to pick the lock. Dorothy and I told James over and over he needed a newer lock on that door, but he hated for anything to change.” He looked suddenly down at his feet.

“Hard to believe he’s gone,” Lansdale said. “I used to mow the lawns for him when I was just a kid back in the forties. For years we played chess every week. Fine old gentleman. A little strange, but we all have our quirks.” He looked up the stairs as though he expected the old man to come hobbling around the corner. “It was a real shocker when Phil called to say James was dead. He hadn’t been out of bed alone for months. The Good Lord only knows what he was up to, trying to get around at night. Dorothy certainly earned the little legacy he left her, nursing him for so long.”

Rebecca asked quietly, “Who else did he leave money to?”

“Phil,” Eric replied, still distracted and somber. “A few local tradesmen. The mail carrier. Me.”

“Even me,” said Lansdale. “He said we were his family. But we’re not talking large amounts. I took the missus out to a fancy place in Columbus and we went to the opera; that pretty well blew it all.” He cleared his throat. “What we’re concerned with now is who broke in and stole the—the thing.”

Michael patted Mary’s cheek and stood up. “I’m no so sure that whoever messed Rebecca’s room stole the mazer.”

“Your room was vandalized?” exclaimed Eric, focusing abruptly.

“Everything was thrown around but nothing was destroyed.” Except the glass on Ray’s picture, but she wasn’t going to complain about that, especially to Eric.

“I suppose you’ve already picked everything up,” he chided gently.

“Yes, we did. . .” Oh. But she couldn’t see the Putnam forensics lab dusting her underwear for fingerprints.

“They didn’t leave any clues lying about,” Michael said.

“Let’s let Warren decide about that,” retorted Eric.

The sheriff made soothing noises in his moustache.

“But,” Rebecca said, “it may not even have been. . .” Michael quirked the outer end of an eyebrow as though watching a trapeze artist do a death-defying trick. “. . .human beings,” she finished. And added to Michael, “You brought it up, remember?”

He grimaced reluctant assent. “Oh aye, there’s something none too couthy about the place.”

Lansdale, surprisingly, nodded. “James wasn’t the only one convinced there were—what do you call ‘em, poltergeists—out here. But they don’t send around Wanted posters of ghosts. I’m not sure how to deal with one.”

“Me either,” said Rebecca.

Eric looked annoyed and uncomfortable, as if he had a rock in his shoe.

Michael shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled his feet. “Come up to the Hall. I’ll show you the drawin’ of the mazer in the inventory.”

“I’ll bring something to drink.” Rebecca found a tray in the pantry and poured out the fragrantly steaming cider. When she returned to the entry she found Eric lingering at the foot of the staircase. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’m not only worried about the house but about you. I don’t like the thought of people breaking in.”

“No more people are going to break in,” said Rebecca. She diverted to the front door long enough to offer a cup to the locksmith. “Why thank you, ma’am,” he said.

In the Hall Michael was walking Lansdale through the inventories. The sheriff watched him with the fixed stare of the linguistically bewildered. Michael, taking pity on him, had lapsed almost into his BBC accent, except for the burred r’s that clung to his words like thistles to a sheepdog.

“Do you think there’d be a market for that, that mazer?” Lansdale asked. “It’s sure not something you could fence easily.”

“Collectors,” said Eric, pulling up a chair. “If you were familiar with the museum and antiques trade, it might not be too difficult to find a buyer. Under the table, of course.” He sipped from his cup and did not look at Michael. He hadn’t heard Michael say the mazer was “worth a packet in the right places,” but he might as well have.

Michael eyed the lawyer as though he were a worm in a half-eaten apple. Rebecca handed Lansdale a cup and set one down before Michael. He included her in his aggrieved glare. “The thief needn’t have a market in mind,” she said hurriedly. “It looked like something expensive, so he took it.”

“If the thieves had simply wanted valuables,” said Lansdale, “they would’ve taken the silver cutlery, too, wouldn’t they?” He drank, managing not to trail his moustache in the cup. His skull glistened through sparse strands of sandy hair—the moustache was probably compensation.

“You said that this wasn’t the first time there’d been mysterious doin’s out here,” Michael said to the sheriff.

“Over and beyond James’s talk about ghosts, and his idea that the papers and things wanted to go back home. . .” Lansdale glanced at Eric and Eric gestured encouragement. “. . .he was convinced things had been stolen—old letters, bits of jewelry, artwork—his stories were never the same twice.”

“What happened,” Eric said, “was that he resented having to sell a few items to help keep up the estate. And he forgot about the things he sold years ago. That’s why you’ll probably find things listed in the inventories that aren’t here—he refused to mark them off.”

Rebecca’s heart sank. He couldn’t have sold the Erskine letter. Michael leaned his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table.

“But I think there really were some things taken,” the sheriff went on. “After all these years half the people in Putnam probably have keys to the house. Had keys, that is.” He drained his cider and drew his clipboard across the table. “All right. Let me take down the information. Dr. Campbell said something about you and a chair, Miss Reid.”

Rebecca filled the sheriff in, concluding, “. . .so Phil took the pieces to the shed.” It all sounded foolish now, almost as much as stories of footsteps, objects moved around, and lights going on and off by themselves.

“The way I see it,” said Michael into his fist, “a few odd bits of hauntin’ are happenstance. A broken chair and a room mucked about might be coincidence. But the missin’ mazer—now that’s enemy action.”

Rebecca grinned. “Very tidy summary. Thank you.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lansdale commented, scribbling away.

“Dr. Campbell,” said Eric, plunking his cup down on the table, “why don’t you take care of the formal reports. I’d like Rebecca to show me her room, just in case you—she—missed anything.”

Michael’s eyes gazed unblinkingly out over his knuckles, hard and cold as blue srctic ice. “Very well, Mr. Adler, why don’t I do just that?”

Eric seized Rebecca’s elbow and whisked her out of the room. “Is Campbell always like that?” he hissed when they were halfway up the stairs.

“No. Mostly to you, I think. How do you expect him to act when you practically accuse him of taking the mazer? Why didn’t you accuse me as well? I had almost as much opportunity as he did.”

“You don’t have the museum background he does,” Eric reasoned. He glanced around Rebecca’s room, spending a moment or two inspecting smudges on the typewriter and clock.

“Yes,” she said, “there’re probably fingerprints. You know typewriter ribbons—the ink gets all over everything. But it was Michael who tidied them up. . .” She stopped in midphrase. “All right, even if you got any good prints off those smudges, half of them would be Michael’s.”

Eric’s lips thinned. He seized her coat from the wardrobe and bundled her into it. “Come on. I want to talk to you. Up here.”

She buttoned the coat, feeling both gratified and betrayed that his polished veneer could not only be scratched but gouged. He steered her to the sixth floor, then up the steps to a tiny room just beneath the roof platform whose broken windows were lined with birds’ nests. Even in the chill draft the room smelled of droppings and decay. When the trapdoor in the ceiling slammed open a brief riot of chirps and flutters erupted from above. Then there was only the moan of the wind.

Guided by Eric’s hand, Rebecca climbed the ladder onto the roof. Fine raindrops struck her face like a slap. And yet the view from the platform was spectacular. She could see all the way to the rooftops of Putnam, brown and green smeared into a uniform gray. The dark crimson of the trees below her was muted by the mist. Shadowed land and overcast sky blended so subtly at the horizon that Dun Iain seemed to be encapsulated in a huge murky crystal ball. It was frightening and exhilarating at once—just like the last few days.

She stood cautiously in the very center of the platform, her ponytail flapping like a banner, and considered Eric. He was certainly masterful, the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove. She wasn’t sure she appreciated that. She’d have to see how he handled this crisis.

He stood right at the low balustrade, surveying the landscape laid out at his feet like Napoleon plotting new conquests. “Sorry for the bum’s rush,” he said. “The walls inside have ears.” One corner of his mouth tucked itself into his cheek, acknowledging that he wasn’t quite joking.

“They have eyes and noses, too, I think,” Rebecca returned. “But aren’t you overreacting just a little?”

“Probably. Making a living in the law courts doesn’t do much for your opinion of human nature.”

“Whose nature? Michael’s?”

“I ought to call Edinburgh and make sure he is who he says he is.”

“But you wrote to him just like you wrote to me!”

“I wrote to a Michael Campbell, yes.”

“Sure, the international art thief bumps off the old professor and takes his identity,” she groaned. “Michael knows his history too well to be an imposter, for one thing.”

“He’s a foreigner. . .” Eric stopped short at Rebecca’s frown.

“Then we should give him the benefit of the doubt. I have.”

“Oh, I see that you have,” Eric said softly. “How did he manage to convince you of his sincerity?”

Rebecca turned her back on him, planted her hands in her pockets, pulled her head like a turtle into her collar, and looked out across the lawn behind the house. A few scraggly flower beds showed where once had been a formal garden. Surely she wasn’t defending Michael just because he liked the maudlin old songs. “Like I said last night,” she answered, grasping at some reason, any reason. “Intuition. He can be pretty obnoxious, but he just doesn’t seem to be any more a criminal than anyone else around here. And it’s not fair to pick on him because he’s not an American.”

The wind wept and wailed. Rebecca shivered, her entire body clenched like a fist; she’d contradicted him, now he wouldn’t like her anymore.

“You’re right,” Eric said, and she spun back around. His stern, arrogant mask cracked into a rueful grimace. The wind tousled the dark strands of hair across his brow, making him look less formidable. “Keep reminding me that I can act pretty obnoxious, too. There’re hazards to having been trained in adversarial relationships.”

“Oh,” said Rebecca. “I see.”

“I suppose a real international art thief would expect a better return on his efforts than some old bric a brac from a Victorian folly.”

“Unless the stories about treasure are true, and the mazer was taken just for an appetizer.”

Eric stiffened. A tiny flame flickered deep in his eyes. “Rebecca, I worked for James Forbes for three years. If there were anything to that treasure rumor don’t you think I’d know about it?”

She contemplated that flame. “Would you? Or are you denying the existence of a treasure because you’re hurt he wouldn’t tell you about it?”

He stared at her the same way Lansdale had stared at Michael. She could almost hear the gates opening and closing in his mind, computing comprehension.

“Who does know about it?” she went on. “Phil? Steve? Warren? What better cover than being the sheriff? What if Dorothy didn’t think her legacy was enough payment for all her work? How do I know you don’t have some scam going to rake off more than your fair share of the Forbes money?”

She stood with her mouth open, the damp, earthy wind scouring her teeth. My God. She’d actually said it. She snapped her mouth shut—too late, damn it—and waited for the deluge of contempt.

The flame in Eric’s eyes sparked and went out. He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re the devious one, aren’t you? Should we, just for the sake of argument, assume there is a treasure of some kind? Should we suspect everyone, even ourselves, of being after it?”

“Probably,” she replied. She felt as if she’d picked up a brick and found it to be papier-mache.

Still laughing, he opened his arms. She went into them. His jacket was freezing; shocked by her own boldness, she opened and dived beneath it to embrace the warmth of his shirt. His mouth wasn’t cold at all. Amazing, she managed to think, how comforting a hug and a kiss could be.

“Did James ever say that the place was haunted?” she asked at last, when Eric’s warm breath migrated to her ear.

“He was convinced of it. I’ll admit I never believed him. None of the ghosts ever performed for me.” He drew away, brows puckered. “Do you believe there are ghosts here?”

“I’m not sure. Michael has seen and heard some of the same things I have—if you’ll accept the consensus of a couple of social scientists, not parapsychologists.”

Eric shook his head, confused, she judged, and irritated at being confused. “Look, Rebecca, if you’re scared to stay here, maybe you could stay with your friend in town.”

“No, if I’m going to work here I need to be here. I’m not going to run away just because the place makes me a little nervous.”

He clasped her even more tightly. “But what if there’s real danger?”

“It’s probably dangerous standing up here! What isn’t dangerous? Driving on the freeway, eating pesticide-laced food. . .”

A catcall wavered on the wind. Eric and Rebecca looked at each other, then over the balustrade to the ground. Far below Steve leaned out of the pickup, hooting some thankfully muffled remark as he started the engine.

Rebecca blushed, her face burning against the cold leather covering Eric’s shoulder. Eric’s eyes narrowly followed the pickup along the driveway and into the trees. “Sorry,” he said when the vehicle had disappeared. “This is hardly the time or the place, is it?”

He was implying there would be a time and place. “I never made a public spectacle of myself before. I’m having all sorts of new experiences.”

“Like being in danger.” He helped her back through the trapdoor.

Rebecca made a mental note to ask Phil to fix the broken windows. Leaking rain wouldn’t help the plaster ceilings, that was for sure.

The ballroom seemed oddly close and quiet after the airy platform, except for a cold draft. The window that had slipped when Rebecca leaned against it was partially open again. She shut it and checked the locking lever, even though it would probably open itself again as soon as they were gone. She returned to Eric’s side, grateful for his presence.

“Rebecca,” he said, guiding her past the storerooms to the back stairway, “last night you offered to keep an eye on things here. Is that offer still good?”

“Of course.”

He planted a grateful kiss on her nose. “If you say Campbell knows his business, then he does. Just—well—make sure everything’s on the up and up. You have the historical expertise. You’ll know if something’s wrong.”

Rebecca smirked into her coat collar. So Dorothy thought Eric liked his women decorative. And here he was complimenting her intelligence.

Michael was alone in the Hall, looking over a carbon of the sheriff’s report. He glanced around, his jaundiced eye making a silent comment on Rebecca’s pink cheeks. No lipstick, she told him silently. No smudges. Nyah.

Michael scooted back his chair and stretched elaborately before Eric’s scrutiny. “The sheriff’s gone to see if he can find the broken chair. We were wonderin’ if you’d happen to know where the key to the mausoleum is. Lansdale hasn’t seen it since James’s funeral.”

“It’s in the Chippendale secretary in the study,” replied Eric. “Would you like me to show you?”

Michael waved toward the door. Eric strolled off. As Rebecca passed the staircase the locksmith called, “Ma’am?” She changed course toward him.

“I can’t remove the mechanism of the old lock without leaving a hole in the door. I’ve disabled it, though. And the new lock is all fixed.”

Rebecca checked it over. It was a sturdy bolt that could be slipped back from the inside, but that, if closed, could only be opened from the outside with a key. She took the four keys the man handed her and hung them beside the door. “Did Mr. Adler pay you?” she asked.

“Sure. Gave me a check when he came by the store this morning.”

Voices echoed down the staircase, Eric’s intense velvet semi-monotone contrasting with Michael’s rhythmic swing and sway, like the hem of a kilt. Both tones were crisp with exaggerated courtesy. “Thank you,” Rebecca told the locksmith.

As he was going out the door Lansdale came in. “I can’t find that chair in the shed,” he announced, hanging that key, too, by the door. “Phil must’ve taken it away with him. James usually let him have broken things. Are you sure it was deliberately sawed through?”

“No,” Rebecca admitted. “And no one else saw it, either.”

Eric and Michael appeared at the foot of the stairs. Eric held out his hand. “I’m sorry I implied you were suspect number one. I’m responsible for the place, you understand.”

Michael looked from Eric to Rebecca and back as if unsure whether this was some kind of trap. Rebecca shook her head—if Eric was not quite as smooth as he pretended, neither was Michael as prickly. Michael shook Eric’s hand and said, “Oh aye, I understand. You’re just earnin’ your screw.”

Eric gaped incredulously. Lansdale stopped writing and started wheezing. Rebecca, wavering between mortification and hysteria, said brightly, “Here the word is salary, Michael. Pay packet. Wages.”

Michael, his complexion ruddier than usual, backpedaled toward the kitchen. “I’ll fix some tea, shall I? We still have work to do the day.”

“Please,” Rebecca called after him. Since the stones of the floor weren’t going to swallow her, she brazened it out and grinned sheepishly. Eric, slightly cross-eyed, muttered something about work in town, since he was here anyway, and escaped out the door.

Rebecca realized Lansdale was waiting for her to sign the report. She signed. The sheriff settled his hat on his head and zipped up his jacket. “Miss Reid, if you have any more problems, you let me know.”

“Thank you. I will.” Rebecca shook his hand, her fingers disappearing into his voluminous grasp, and then he, too, was gone.

Eric waited by his car, equilibrium restored. He said, “The key’s in the secretary. I guess it’s safe there. If anyone breaks into the mausoleum we’ll know we have a bunch of weirdos on our hands.”

“True enough.” Just as they turned to look at the tomb a fluff of butterscotch and white emerged from the dovecote and settled down to wash its paws. Rebecca laughed. “I bet that’s great mouse territory.”

Eric shuddered. He leaned over and gave her a perfunctory kiss, missing her mouth by an inch. “I’ll be back out on Monday to look through some papers, if you don’t mind. Sorry to have to rush off.” He was in the car, the door locked, the window rolled up, almost before he finished speaking.

She watched with affectionate exasperation as the Volvo zoomed past the mausoleum and vanished. Why, she asked herself, doesn’t he just admit he’s afraid of cats and have done with it? But no, he wouldn’t, would he? Endearing, to know he had more than one chink in his burnished armor.

She looked up the dizzying height of the castle, to the platform where they’d stood looking like the lurid cover of a paperback romance. She laughed at the absurdity of it all, and went back inside laughing, to the warm kitchen where the teakettle was whistling merrily.

 

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