by Willa Blair
While he did that, Caitlin flicked on the torch and moved the beam over the entire front surface. Careful of the things stacked around the chest, she picked her way to the other side and examined the back as well. The hinges appeared to be in good shape, and she didn’t see any obvious damage.
“That’ll have to do,” Holt finally said. “Let’s open it.”
“Not so fast.” She moved back to the front, knelt by Holt, and shone the torchlight on the lock plate. “We don’t have a key. I don’t suppose you’re any good at picking locks.”
“Not one of my many talents, sorry. As old as this looks, we could probably break into it pretty easily.”
Caitlin shook her head. “Nay. We don’t know how old this is. The trunk might have value of its own, more if it’s intact. Before you got here from California, I found a ring of keys in your great-aunt’s chamber. Perhaps one of those…”
Holt stood. “Where?”
“In her dresser, bottom drawer, back right corner, I believe.” She’d looked at and into so many pieces of furniture since she’d arrived, she hoped she remembered the right drawer and wasn’t sending Holt on a fruitless search.
While he was gone, she took pictures of the trunk and the surfaces of a few other pieces the light reached, and then she moved further into the recesses of the attic. A wrought-iron headboard leaned against one wall, the tops of its curved posts visible above a stack of pasteboard boxes. A good home for insects, Caitlin thought, like the spiders responsible for those ghastly cobwebs. But perhaps they contained old dishes or something else of value. A set of metal shelves held bits and bobs—broken crockery, lamp parts, even a few bolts of fabric she recognized as having been used for the draperies downstairs.
“Ordered too much, did ye?” she muttered as she swept the light over the next shelf.
A small wooden box caught her eye. For jewels? Or fishing lures. One never kenned until one opened it. She reached for it but heard the stairs groaning under Holt’s heavy tread as keys clinked in time with each step. So she returned to the trunk, their primary focus at the moment.
“Found them,” Holt announced as he crested the stairs. He held the keyring aloft and shook it, making the keys rattle together.
Caitlin took the ring from him and flipped keys aside as she studied each one. “Four of these look like modern house keys, but one of the smaller ones might be what we need.” She knelt and gently inserted one after the other, some fitting better than others, but none releasing the lock. “Damn.” Caitlin sank back on her heels and thought. “I haven’t found any other keyrings in the pieces I’ve cataloged, but there might be more kept where other keys are used, like in the kitchen.”
“Why would anyone keep the key to something like this in the kitchen?”
Caitlin shrugged. “They wouldn’t, not usually. If the keys were for something special, they’d hide them, or at least put them out of sight, as your great-aunt did.”
“Let me try them.” Holt held out his hand, palm up. “Maybe the lock needs more encouragement.”
Caitlin handed over the keys and scooted out of the way. “Try not to break it, please.”
Holt fitted the first key and attempted to turn it in both directions, to no avail. He inserted it upside down and repeated the procedure, then moved on to the next key and the next. Finally something clicked and the key turned. Holt caught the hinged lock plate as it fell open, then turned to Caitlin with a grin. “We’re in.”
Caitlin flipped open one catch as Holt opened the other, then she grasped the lid’s corners.
“Well?” Holt gestured for her to open it.
“Just taking a second to appreciate the moment,” she scolded. “Whatever is in here could change your life.”
“Or be a box of rocks,” Holt replied and gestured up.
Nodding, Caitlin lifted the lid, the hinges creaking as it moved.
“Needs a bit of WD-40,” Holt remarked.
Caitlin didn’t bother to answer. She was entranced by what the chest revealed. Stacks of stereographic prints, and wrapped in muslin that she carefully unfolded, the stereoscope used to view them.
“Old postcards?” Holt asked, derision in his tone.
“Ye have never seen these? Or their like before?”
He shook his head. “What are they?”
She examined the viewer before lifting it to show Holt. It appeared to be in perfect condition. “This is called a stereoscope. Put any of these stereograph cards in here,” she said, pointing to the slot they fit into, “look through the eyepiece, and the two images become one 3-D view.”
“No kidding.” He reached into the trunk for a card.
Caitlin slapped his hand away. “Don’t! Don’t touch them, yet. I dinna ken what condition they’re in. The paper might fall to bits.” She held up a hand as he looked ready to object. “Just wait.”
She set the stereoscope back on its bed of muslin, then dug her cotton gloves out of her back pocket and donned them. The corner of the top stereograph felt solid and didn’t stick to the one below it when she shifted it. She slid her hand under and picked it up, then moved it into the nearby lamp’s light. It showed a street scene, carriages and horses, mostly, with a few men in garb from another century.
Confident now that the card wouldn’t fall apart, she placed it into the stereoscope and looked through the viewfinder. Protected from dust by its wrapping and the trunk, the lenses were clear.
Smiling, she passed it to Holt. “Take a look.”
****
Holt had never seen a contraption like this one, but he had to hand it to its creators. It did just what Caitlin described. The card with two images became one with depth and detail. He studied the carts and the clothes the men wore, trying to place the image in time. “How old is it?”
“I’ll have to examine it, and the pictures stored with it, but I’d guess it’s Victorian or Edwardian. Nineteenth century to early twentieth to you Yanks. The viewer was invented in the early nineteenth century.”
“I wonder how long it’s been sitting in this attic,” Holt remarked, handing the viewer back to her.
Caitlin replaced the card in the stack and tucked the cloth wrapping around the viewer. “No telling. But these pictures might tell us more about your family’s background, or at least about what interested your ancestors.”
If they weren’t worth much, Holt wasn’t sure he cared. “So not rocks,” he prompted.
“Nay. But perhaps something quite valuable, I think, at least to the right collector.”
Good. Someone might buy the lot. “Or a museum?”
“Doubtful. These were quite common until the mid-twentieth century when they couldn’t compete with modern photography or later, entertainment such as television. Their value will be in the uniqueness of the images, I’d say.”
Holt surprised himself by spending the rest of the morning, once Caitlin forced him to don a pair of cotton gloves, going through stacks of stereographs, helping her photograph and sort them. He’d found a small rectangular table at the other end of the attic and moved it into the circle of lights, giving her an adequate, she said, workspace. Her detailed notes impressed him, both with the seriousness with which she approached the investigation, and her apparent competence. Any lingering concern about why the estate’s executor had hired her vanished over the course of the morning.
Eventually, a loud growl from the region of his stomach reminded him they’d been at this for hours, so Holt called a halt. “Let’s get some lunch. You need a break.”
“Speak for yourself.” Caitlin’s stomach chose that moment to answer the growl his had made. She blushed and quirked an eyebrow, then set aside her notebook and the stereograph she’d been studying, stretched and stood, looking anywhere but at him. “Yeah, okay. You’re right. I guess I am hungry.”
The color flooding her cheeks captured Holt’s attention. Did she blush like that all over? Pink. No, dusky rose, at least in this light. She’d blushed redder at lunch
, but that might have been the malt vinegar she used on her fish and the difference in lighting. He tore his gaze away and gestured toward the stairs. “After you.”
Over lunch, Caitlin filled him in on the history of the stereograph, convincing him that in and of itself, it was nothing unusual.
“But I hope to find some interesting and unique images, or images of clear historical value, among the stereographs. I’ve already found a few possibilities, but going through that trunk is going to take time.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I found some old tools and broken bits on a set of metal shelves on the opposite side of the attic. Maybe you could take a look at those and see if there’s anything interesting. Tools are not my area of expertise.”
Holt couldn’t resist the chance to pounce. Payback for all the times she’d lectured him about this house. “Because I’m a guy, you think I’m a tool expert, is that it?” She seemed to enjoy the challenges of her profession. She wouldn’t be able to resist if he challenged her in other ways.
Caitlin paused with her sandwich halfway from her plate to her mouth. “I never said—”
“No, you assumed. Don’t they call that gender bias now?” He was tempted to grin, to soften the implied criticism, but he wanted to get a rise out of her. She was too professional, too set on doing her job. He wanted her to have the same sense of enjoyment he’d felt yesterday. Enjoyment she seemed to have, and he lacked, their first few days here. Funny how their moods had reversed. A little teasing seemed in order.
Grimly, Caitlin set down her sandwich and met his gaze. “I am one of the foremost experts on late medieval to Jacobean furnishings. That doesn’t make me an expert on everything likely to be found in a dusty, cobwebby old attic on the other side of the Atlantic. Since you asked what you could do to help, I’d have asked you to take a look at those shelves, whether you were male or female or from another planet.”
Her voice had increased in volume as she spoke, but then she pulled her napkin from her lap and tossed it on the table, muttering something under her breath that sounded like Does he think me head zips up in the back? That couldn’t be right. But she did look furious. No, insulted. Holt decided a tactical retreat was in order. “Okay, okay. I was kidding.” He held up both hands, palms out. “I’m not questioning your competence. I was making a joke. A poor one. Not funny. I get it. Finish your lunch. Please.” Getting a rise out of her was one thing. Pissing her off to the point that she stormed out again, or worse, decided she’d had enough of him and quit, was just damn stupid.
To his great relief, Caitlin replaced her napkin across her lap and picked up her sandwich, though her eyes still sparked when she glanced his way. What he needed was a change of subject. Like now. While she was chewing.
“So the people in those images, do you think they’re related? To me?”
Caitlin shrugged and swallowed. “Maybe. I dinna ken how we’d ever prove it, though, unless someone wrote names and dates on the backs of some of the pictures.”
Holt had noticed that the more emotional Caitlin got, the thicker her Scottish brogue became. She was still angry. He wasn’t out of the hole he’d dug for himself yet.
“We haven’t looked at all of them,” Caitlin continued, frowning, “but I noticed a lot of single people. Or one adult with only one or two children. Not many couples, no big families. I do wonder why that is.”
A frisson of awareness ran along Holt’s spine, tightening his muscles and making him draw his brows together. He dropped his gaze to the table, unable to look at Caitlin while uneasiness chilled his blood. Could they have been looking at proof of the family curse all morning? As much as he wanted to laugh it off, his mother had sworn it was real. The only way to be sure was to find some names or find another way to identify some of the people in those stereographs.
“Holt?”
Caitlin’s voice jerked him back to the real world, and he looked up. “I don’t know. Or maybe I do.”
“What do you mean?”
He crossed his arms. “My mother used to insist the family was cursed.”
“You’re joking again, and again, not funny.” Caitlin regarded him under lowered brows.
“No, I’m not.” He heaved a sigh, resolved to give her the whole crazy story. “She swore that earlier generations of the family had only one or two children and that no heir found a love that lasted. In every generation, the heir’s spouse left. Or died. Or somehow disappeared, never to be heard from again. None grew old together.”
“Did your great-aunt have children?”
“No. My grandfather was her heir. Had he outlived her, all this would have been his, then my mother’s. But he didn’t. Unfortunately, since she named me heir, there must not have been any other family to carry the curse, so his line acquired it. Her parents died. My mother was left alone…with me, an only child.”
Caitlin leaned back and regarded him, disbelief plain in her furrowed brow. “And your father disappeared…”
“Exactly. Before my mother told him about me. Before she even knew about me. She told me once my father was dead, too.”
“I’m so sorry. What happened to your grandmother? Did she leave your grandfather?”
“In a way. She died long before him, after giving birth to my mother.”
“Ach, Holt. What a sad tale.”
“If you believe in the curse, it could explain a lot. And if it’s true, any woman foolish enough to marry me will die after giving me an heir, or divorce me, or disappear in the Bermuda Triangle.” She needed to know that. It should send her running back to Scotland all the faster. He wanted to laugh it off, but those pictures. He fought a shudder. “Those sad faces, adults’ and children’s, have begun to haunt me. Ghosts of Christmases past, I suppose.”
Caitlin reached over and grasped his hand. “Ye canna think that way.”
Then she paused, and Holt swore the color fled her face for just a moment, then came back even stronger, painting her neck and cheeks in that lovely dusky rose. “What’s wrong?”
“Would ye believe me if I told ye I have seen a ghost? Many times? We have them in Scotland, aye.” She smiled at that, then became serious again. “And curses, too, or so the grannies say.”
Holt pressed his lips together. “No, I wouldn’t believe you—or I don’t want to. I’m sure of that.”
Caitlin squeezed his hand, then removed hers and crossed her arms, frowning at her empty plate. “Well if we’re going to get to the bottom of this, we’ll no’ do it sitting at table. Are ye done?”
With his food, yes. With her touch, no. But the same unwelcome thought coiled in his belly like a snake, fangs dripping poison. He couldn’t get involved with her. If the curse was real, she could die.
****
Hours later, Caitlin stood, stretched her arms above her head, and then rubbed her eyes. With Holt’s help, she’d emptied the chest of its hoard of images and examined them, one by one. Holt had given up about halfway through, convinced there were no answers to be found and tired of wasting his time.
She knew her frustration could not match his—he had a greater reason for it—but she had been sure they would find something in the hundreds of stereographs his great-aunt, or someone before her, had saved. As much as she loved solving a mystery—which she did with every piece of furniture she appraised—this one worried her, if only because Holt, despite his denials, seemed to take the idea of a curse seriously. Well, she hoped something would turn up soon.
In the meantime, she needed to get out of this dark attic and take a walk. She checked the time on her phone. Another half hour until sunset. A short walk then, and a chance to give her eyes something distant to focus on. She turned off the desk and other lights and made her way to her room to grab a coat, hat, and gloves, then went outside.
Her first breath of cold air nearly sent her back indoors, but the lowering sun had painted the broken clouds to the west in shades of gold and crimson, pink and purple that lit the remain
s of earlier snows in watercolor streaks. She stepped off the porch onto the circular drive, her gaze on the sky.
“Where are you going?”
The sound of Holt’s voice made her whip around. She’d been so focused on the sunset, she hadn’t heard the door open and close. “Having a walk,” she replied, more breathless than she expected, surely from the cold and not from Holt’s sudden arrival. “To rest my eyes.”
“Want some company?”
“Sure.” She turned back to the west. “Look at that sky.”
Holt came up beside her, and she saw him nod out of the corner of her eye.
“Sunsets like that are rare in winter. Let’s walk while we can enjoy it.” He took her hand and led her toward the setting sun, old snow and frozen grass crunching under their boots. They crossed the lawn for a better view as the sun sank between some trees. Caitlin felt her muscles loosening as she moved, a welcome relief from the tension caused by hours of sitting and concentrating.
“Still didn’t find anything?”
She knew her answer would disappoint him. “Nay. Lots of interesting images, but no names or dates penciled on the back.”
“Interesting? How?”
“How much do ye ken about the Victorian era?”
Holt stared at the sky, then took a breath. “I’ve got nothing.”
“Well, Queen Victoria loved spending time in Scotland. She’s the reason the royal family has the Balmoral estate in Scotland today. Her husband, Prince Albert, bought it for her, a private sale, so rather than belonging to the Crown, it belongs to the family. Anyway, all things tartan became popular during her reign. Many of the images in those stereographs are of men in plaid clothing, even in kilts. I’d wager they’re not Scots, but it’s possible.”
“What time period are you talking about?”
“Nineteenth century. Her reign lasted sixty years, until 1901. Those images may indicate the age of many of those stereographs.”
“I don’t see how that helps us.”
“I’m not certain it does.” She sighed and forced her focus back to the sunset, now dimming, colors fading into the gloaming. “I wish I had answers for you.”
