by Peter Straub
Marian shook her head and checked to make sure that no one could overhear their conversation. “Norman, you can’t go around saying these things in front of Margaret.”
“Try to stop him,” Nora said.
“I understand,” Dart said. “Divine handmaiden to the diviner arts. Natural aristocrat. My problem is, I can’t stand women like that.”
Marian calmed down enough to say, “We don’t admit it very often, but I’m sure Georgina Weatherall could be hard to deal with.”
“Not her, Madame Director,” Dart said. “Women like that might as well grow beards and smoke cigars. Nonetheless, I promise you a tremendously entertaining evening.” He touched a finger to her chin. “I want you to have a glorious time. Still depending on you to drop in for that nightcap.”
“This man,” Marian said. “You can’t stay angry with him.”
Portraits lined the broad staircase. “This one used to hang in Georgina’s bedroom.” Marian was pointing at an oil painting of an elderly man in a business suit coiled in a leather chair. He had a tight, fanatical face dominated by a heavy nose and a protruding chin. “George Weatherall.”
“’My Heart Belongs to Daddy.’”
Marian smiled at him from the top of the stairs, then conducted them down a hallway darker and narrower than the one below. Despite the framed book jackets and photographs of Main House in various stages of restoration on the walls, the second floor was more utilitarian and domestic than the first. They had moved from the public life into the private.
Nora asked, “Why don’t you let people into her bedroom?”
“Wait’ll you see it. That’s not the way we want people to remember Shorelands.”
“I thought you were after historical accuracy.”
“Accurate accuracy is too raw for the public. The longer I stay in this job, the more I wonder if there is any such thing as historical accuracy. But I can’t say that’s very helpful when you have a painting contractor standing in front of you who wants to know right now what exact shade of purple to put on the wall.”
“I thought Lily said that you were given a lot of the original paint. How could there be a problem with the shade?” Nora asked.
“We did have the original paint, but only about half the amount we needed, and it had turned into glue. The whole thing was a nightmare. In the end, we mixed whatever we could salvage in with new paint.”
“How did you know what shade it was supposed to be?”
“From Georgina’s room.”
“The paint you got for Honey House was actually the kind used in Main House?”
“Nobody really knows what kind of paint was used in the cottages.” Marian gestured at the doors lining the hallway. “The two rooms on the left are Margaret’s bedroom and office, and she’d rather not have us go in there. In the old days, Georgina Weatherall kept this entire floor for her personal use. Emma Brotherhood, Agnes’s sister, her personal maid, lived in this first room. The second was a wardrobe and changing room, and it’s connected to the bathroom, the third door along, directly across from Georgina’s bedroom. Next to that was the morning room, where Georgina wrote her letters and planned the menus. These days, that’s where we store all the donations we can’t use.”
Marian smiled at Dart. “Anyhow, behind the door on the other side of the stairs is the staircase to the third floor. I have the two rooms immediately across the hall at the top of the stairs, and Lily has the two rooms next to me. Margaret’s secretary, who’s on her vacation this week, has the room next to Lily’s. All the other rooms up there are empty. This room on the right, which we use for meetings, was where Georgina met special guests.” She opened the door to a small, efficient cham-ber dominated by a boardroom table. “This was where Miss Weatherall would complain, gossip, get recommendations about new writers. And in here, people like Lily and Agnes could pass along anything she ought to know.”
“KGB,” Dart said. “Ears at the keyhole.”
“We had a thief here once, you know.”
“You surprise me,” Nora said.
“A young woman took off with a valuable drawing just before she was to be asked to leave. Can you imagine? It was worth a fortune. By Rembrandt, or maybe Rubens, I don’t remember.”
“Neither one,” Nora said. “It was by an artist named Redon.”
“Somebody with an R name, anyhow,” Marian said. “Geor-gina’s bedroom is next. During the last two years of her life, she almost never left it. It’s cleaned and dusted twice a week, but we never go in there ourselves. Personally, I think it’s a little creepy.”
She ushered them into a dark space where dull glints of glass and metal and a sense of hovering presences suggested a spectacular jumble of objects. “Georgina never opened her curtains, so we keep them closed. I always have a little trouble finding the light, because the switch is in back of . . . Here we go.”
Layer after layer, the room emerged into view. In delirious profusion, silks, faded tapestries, worn Oriental rugs, and swags of lace dripped from the top of the canopied bed and over the backs of chairs, and hung on the crowded walls, folding behind and draping over a riot of ornate clocks, mirrors, framed drawings, and photographs of a woman whose face, a replica of her father’s, had been softened by enthusiastic makeup and a surround of shapeless dark hair. An impressively ugly Victorian desk lay buried beneath a drift of papers lapping against porcelain animals and glass inkwells. A gramophone with a bell-like horn stood on an ormolu table. Other small tables draped with lace held stacks of books, silver-backed hairbrushes, and much else.
The room reminded Nora of a more chaotic Honey House. A second later, she realized that she had it backwards: Honey House was a more presentable version of this room. As her eyes adjusted to the clutter, she began to take in the real condition of Georgina’s bedroom. Ancient water stains had leached the purple to blotchy pink. The fabrics strewn over the furniture were ripped and discolored, and the lace canopy hung in tatters. Stains mottled the white ceiling. Beside the bed, in front of an anachronistic metal safe with a revolving dial, brown threads showed through the pattern of the rug.
“I’d better see if Agnes is up to company,” Marian said, and disappeared.
Here was the real Shorelands, the one room in all of the estate where real history was still visible. Concealed at the center of the house, it was a shameful secret too important to erase. Georgina Weatherall, whose greatest advantages had been wealth, vanity, and illusion, had risen day after day to admire herself in her mirrors, brushed her hair without ever managing to push it into shape, painted on layers of makeup until the mirrors told her that she was as commanding as a queen in a fairy tale. If she noticed a flaw, she submerged it beneath rouge and kohl, just as she buried the stains on her walls and the rents in her lace beneath layers of fabric.
Monty Chandler had never entered this room to repair the water damage: no one but Georgina and her maid had been allowed here. The maid had loved Georgina, who had so demanded love that she had seen it in people who mocked her. This monolithic ruthlessness was what was meant by a romantic conception of oneself.
Nora could almost respect Georgina Weatherall. Georgina had been sick with self-importance, and if Nora had met her at a party, she would have fled from the airless closet such people always create around themselves. But Georgina Weatherall had worked heroically in the service of her illusions. In her, perhaps for the first time in his life, Lincoln Chancel had met his match.
Marian opened the door and said, “Wonder of wonders, you could have a word with Agnes now, if you like.”
92
“SHE REALLY IS SICK, I know, but boredom makes her cranky, and when Agnes gets cranky she lays it on a little too thick. I can’t promise you more than a couple of minutes.” Marian paused. “A couple of minutes will probably be enough.”
An irritated voice came through the door. “Are you talking about me?”
“Why don’t you let us see her alone?” Nora said. “I know you hav
e work to do.”
“I shouldn’t.” Marian looked up and down the hallway. “You might need help getting away.”
“We’ll manage.”
“Maybe just this once. Margaret doesn’t . . .” She bit her lower lip.
Margaret doesn’t want strangers left alone with Agnes? “Margaret doesn’t have to know.”
“All right. If I can get my work done, I’ll be able to come up for that nightcap.” She knocked once and opened the door. “Here they are, Agnes. I’ll look in on you later.”
“Bring me some magazines. You know what I like.”
Marian moved back, and Nora and Dart stepped into the doorway.
The old woman lying in the bed was about as thick around as a kitchen match. The straight hair, dyed black, falling from a center part on either side of her shrunken face, looked like a doll’s wig. Her eyes were bright, lively, and suspicious. She had inserted one twiglike finger into the book in her lap, as if she had to see who these people were before deciding how much time to give them.
Marian introduced them and left.
“Come in, close the door.”
They walked up to the bed.
“I’m surprised she left. You’d think I was a mad dog, the way they carry on.” She examined Dart. “You’re this fellow who’s supposed to be a poet? Norman Desmond?”
“And you’re the historical monument, Agnes Brotherhood.”
She gave him a close inspection. “You don’t look much like a poet.”
“What do I look like?”
“Like a lawyer who spends a lot of time in bars. Should I know your name?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Dart said. He was enjoying himself.
“Don’t pretend to be modest. You don’t have a modest bone in your body.” Agnes turned her eyes on Nora. “Does he?”
“Not a one,” Nora said.
“Marian wouldn’t be wasting her time on you if you were a nobody. Have you published a lot of books?”
“Alas, no.”
“Who’s your publisher?”
“Chancel House.”
Agnes Brotherhood waved a hand in front of her face as if to banish a bad smell. “You’d leave them in a hurry if you’d ever had the misfortune of meeting the founder.”
“In a class by himself,” Dart said. “Villainy personified.”
“You might as well stay a while. Move those chairs up to the bed.” She nodded at two folding chairs against the wall and slipped a card into her book, the Modern Library edition of Thoreau.
Agnes noticed Nora’s interest. “I reread Walden once a year. Do you like Walden, Mr. Desmond?”
Dart lifted his chin and recited, “ ’When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself,’ so on and so forth. Does that answer your question?”
“Let’s hear the rest of the sentence.”
“. . . ‘on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.’ “
“Not quite the truth, I believe, but lovely all the same. Now what would you like me to talk about? The great hostess and her noble guests? What D. H. Lawrence ate for breakfast? That kind of thing?”
Dart glanced at Nora. “You’re not as reverent about the great hostess as Lily Melville, are you?”
“I knew her too well,” Agnes snapped. “I had a job, and I did it. Lily had a cause, the adoration of Georgina Weatherall. I used to laugh at her sometimes, and she didn’t like it one bit.”
“You used to laugh at Georgina?”
“At Lily. Nobody laughed at Georgina Weatherall. She had her qualities, but a sense of humor wasn’t one of them. If you were going to make fun of Miss Weatherall, you had to do it behind her back, and a lot of them did, but that isn’t something you’re going to hear about these days. Were you on Lily’s tour?”
Nora said they had been.
“Tour of the shrine, that’s what you get with Lily. When the mistress got sick and she was let go, she went around being the Shorelands expert in front of all these groups.” She laughed. “It’s a lot more fun meeting people without Freckle Face listening in. She used to interrogate people from my groups to see if I’d said anything I shouldn’t. Hah! As if I didn’t know my job. I know more than they like, that’s what bothers them. I know things they don’t know.”
“Reason they keep you around,” Dart said.
Agnes frowned at him. “I devoted my life to Shorelands. They know that much.” She nodded at a pitcher and a glass on the window ledge. “Could you get me a glass of water? I keep asking them to get me a table on wheels, like in hospitals, but do I get one? Not yet, and it’s been days.”
“Would you mind if I asked what’s wrong with you?” Dart said. “Do you have an illness?”
“My illness is called old age,” Agnes said. “Plus a few other disorders.”
Dart peered into the pitcher. “Empty.”
“Take it into the bathroom and fill it up, please?”
“Well . . .” Dart drawled. “Can I do that, honey? Dare I leave you alone? Hate to miss anything.”
“I’ll fill you in,” Nora said.
Dart shook a warning finger at Nora and carried the pitcher from the room.
Agnes fixed Nora with bright, suspicious eyes. When Dart’s footsteps had crossed the hall, Nora leaned toward her. “Do you have a telephone?”
Agnes shook her head.
“Have you ever heard of a man named Dick Dart?”
Agnes shook her head again. Across the hall, water splashed noisily into a container.
“Can you get to a phone?”
“There’s three or four in the director’s office.”
“As soon as we leave, go to the office and call the police.” The water cut off. “Say that Dick Dart is having dinner at Shorelands. Agnes, this is extremely important, it’s life and death.” Footsteps left the bathroom. “Please.”
Dart surged into the room, and water splashed out of the pitcher. “Filled to overflowing. What have we been talking about, my dears?”
“My health,” Agnes said. “Present and future.” She turned her puzzled, now decidedly alarmed, gaze to him.
“What are your health problems, sweetheart?” He poured several inches of water into her glass. “Dehydration?” She reached for the glass and he pulled it back, laughed, and allowed her to take it. “Little joke.”
“Arrhythmia. Sounds worse than it is.” She took two swallows and handed him the glass. “Put it on the floor beside my bed. I’m going to be back on my feet in a couple of days. I can still lead a tour as well as Lily Melville.”
“Of course you can, lots better than that old fool,” Dart said. He sat down, crossed his legs, and patted Nora on the back. “Did you miss me, my sweetie?”
“Horribly,” Nora said.
Agnes was staring at him as if she were trying to memorize his face. “What are the names of your books, Mr. Desmond?”
He looked, smiling, toward the ceiling. “The first one was called Counting the Bodies. Surgical Notes was the name of the second.”
Her hands twitched. “What are you especially interested in, Mrs. Desmond? You don’t want to waste time listening to me complain.”
“The summer of 1938.” Agnes held herself utterly still. “I’m interested in whatever happened that summer, but especially in a poet named Katherine Mannheim.”
The old woman was staring at her with even more concentration than she had given Dart. Nora could not tell what she was thinking or feeling.
“I’m also interested in the renovation that happened the year after that.”
“Who are you? What do you want?” Her voice trembled.
“I’m just an interested party.”
“What is this about?” Agnes looked back and forth between Dart and Nora.
“History,” Dart said. “Flashlight into the past. What Honey House is supposed to be.”
He grinned. “’Fess up now, did it ever look like that antique shop we saw today?”
Agnes was silent for a time. “I went in and out of the cottages every day of my life, and the only one that ever had what you could call a lot of stuff in it was Mr. Lincoln Chancel’s Rapunzel, and he put all of it in there himself. If our guesthouses had been like that, some of these noble individuals would have waltzed off with whatever they could stuff into their suitcases. The trust people, they don’t care, as long as it looks pretty.”
She turned her gaze to Nora. “By and large, this was a fine, decent place. I won’t say otherwise. And the things I think, I’m not going to say to any policeman, that’s for sure.”
“We mentioned policemen?” Dart asked.
“Not at all.” Nora tried to communicate silently with Agnes and saw only anxiety in her eyes.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Agnes wailed.
Nora leaned forward. “All I want to talk to you about is that summer. That’s all. Okay?” She saw a looming panic. “Whatever you have to do afterwards is fine. You can do whatever you want.” She waited a beat, and Dart turned his entire body in her direction. “Call down and talk to Margaret. Call anyone you like. Do you understand?”
The dark eyes seemed to lose some of their confusion. “Yes. But I don’t know what to say.”
Nora remembered her conversation with Helen Day. “I know this is difficult for you. Let me tell you what I think. I think you don’t want to be disloyal, but at the same time you’ve been keeping something secret. It isn’t pretty, and people like Marian Cullinan and Margaret Nolan wouldn’t want it to come out. But they don’t even know about it, do they?”
“They’re too new,” Agnes said, looking at her in mingled wonder and suspicion.
“Lily knows part of it, but not as much as you do, isn’t that right?”
Agnes nodded.
“And here come two people you never saw before. I think part of you wants to get this thing off your chest, but you don’t see why you should tell it to us. I’d feel the same way. But I’m interested in what happened that year, and almost no one else is. I’m not a cop or a reporter, and I’m not writing a book.”
