Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  It was after five when Meg walked slowly down the hill, glad to see Seth’s car in the drive, and hoping he had remembered his promise to make dinner. She let herself in by the back door and found Seth absorbed in reading one of her cookbooks.

  “All you need now is an apron, and this would be the perfect picture,” Meg said with a smile when he noticed her.

  “Glad to be of service. You look beat. Where’s Bree?”

  “Bringing the tractor back down the hill for the night. It’s not much, but I’d hate to lose it. There are probably other farmers worse off than I am who might decide to drive off with it. And I am beat. I think I’ll claim executive privilege and grab a shower before she gets here.”

  “Go for it. Dinner should be ready soon.”

  “Sounds good.” Especially since I don’t even have to cook it. Meg trudged up the stairs, feeling every muscle. Twenty minutes later, minus a layer of dirt, she passed Bree coming up the stairs as she went down. “It’s all yours,” Meg said. Bree grunted in return and kept going. Meg ran her fingers through her hair, almost dry already, even though she’d been out of the shower for only a few minutes.

  Back in the kitchen, Meg dropped into a chair, and Seth handed her a glass of chilled wine, a thin sheen of moisture beading the outside. Meg accepted it gratefully and took a long sip. “Oh, that’s good. So, how was your day?”

  “Interesting. I saw the house and went over it with Donald and his insurance assessor. The car did a real number on it—took out the corner altogether, so we have to shore that up so the second story doesn’t collapse. An original eighteenth-century corner cupboard is now in splinters, and a lot of the wainscoting is beyond salvage. A number of windows are gone. Donald is in mourning for every fragment.”

  “I assume you got the job?”

  “Yes. Donald knows my work and trusts me.”

  “How much can be repaired or replaced?” Meg asked, feeling pleasantly buzzed by the wine.

  “All of it, for a price, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. I’ll check out some of the salvage places locally—you remember Eric, over in Hadley?—and see if there are any windows of the right size. But most likely we’ll have to reconstruct them. Matching the boards for the wainscoting is going to be a bigger problem, since they’ve got to be eighteen inches wide, like yours.”

  “Is that kind of stuff still available?”

  “Not at your local box stores, but there’s an old family-owned sawmill not far from here that can probably help us out.”

  “There used to be a sawmill at the back of this property,” Meg said. “I remember seeing a picture at the historical society in town.”

  Seth sat down across the table from her, with a bottle of beer. “Back in those days it didn’t take anything fancy, and you weren’t supplying more than your own needs and maybe a couple of neighbors. Once the insurance comes up with a figure, I need to go back and get some measurements so I can give Donald estimates for materials, and since he’s got the budget for it, I may call in a professional cleanup team, although I’ll have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t take away any of the good stuff that can be reused. Even if it’s only a piece of board, it can be recycled somewhere in the house. Did you ever notice that some of the timbers in this house in the attic were recycled?”

  “No, sir, I did not. How can you tell?”

  “A few of the long beams have mortises that don’t match any timbers with tenons. And they’re pretty major beams. Why waste a perfectly good piece of lumber? Especially one that nobody was ever going to see?”

  “Why is it that you know more about my house than I do?”

  “You know plenty. I just have an eye for construction.”

  Bree came loudly down the stairs from her room, her hair wet. “Something smells great. Are we ready to eat?”

  “Sit and I’ll dish up,” Seth said.

  He looks so cheerful, Meg thought. It can’t be because he likes cooking so much, so it has to be the new project. “You look like a kid with a new toy,” she told Seth.

  He distributed filled plates and sat down. “I feel like that. Historic renovation and reconstruction really are what I like to do best, and I don’t get many opportunities. Hey, you should come see the place, while its bones are bared. Bree, can you spare her for a few hours?”

  “Tomorrow’s okay,” Bree said, her mouth full. “We’ve just started irrigating, and I’ve got to measure the soil moisture. We probably didn’t give it enough today, but I’ve never tried it in this orchard and I didn’t want to waste water. I’ll check it in the morning, but let’s assume it’ll be every other day for the moment.”

  “If your boss is going to give you the time off, Meg”—Seth smiled at Bree—“figure on most of the day tomorrow. That way I can take you to see the sawmill, too.”

  Meg sat back and watched the two of them plan her week for her, but she had no objections. She enjoyed learning about old houses like her own, and she loved sharing Seth’s enthusiasm. For him, his job was the perfect blend of work and pleasure—and how many people could say that?

  “Let me know when you’ve figured out my schedule,” she said with a smile, then dug into her dinner.

  And keep reading for an excerpt from

  Relatively Dead by Sheila Connolly

  She didn’t want to be here. But Brad had told her she ought to get out more, find some interests of her own, so here she was standing in front of the last house on the walking tour of Waltham’s most noteworthy mansions, relics of the town’s nineteenth-century industrial heyday. Could she summon up the energy to go through one more? She’d already seen four, and her feet hurt. How could this one be any better than the others?

  But she wanted to be able to tell Brad that she’d taken the house tour today. Not part of the house tour, not some of the house tour: the whole tour. That meant she had to grit her teeth and go through this one. Then she could go home, make a nice cup of tea, and take her shoes off.

  The house looked nice, she had to admit. It was not too big or too posh-looking. Friendly, almost. The house sat on a rise, and when she reached the broad terrace Abby turned to contemplate the low roofs of Waltham below. Not much of a view, but at least the house nestled proudly on its land, lawns spread out like skirts around it. She turned back to the house to study the details. High Victorian, the house sprouted chimneys, dormers, porches, a porte-cochere, and a wealth of gingerbread trim. It was a full three stories, with a turret on one end. She made her way to the front door.

  When she stepped into the paneled hall, a man about her own age greeted her and handed her an information sheet. A name badge in a plastic sleeve, clipped to the pocket of his blue-gray Oxford shirt, identified him as Ned. Abby noted that the shirt was exactly the same color as his eyes, or what she could see behind his gold-rimmed glasses. She smiled timidly.

  “Is it too late to take the tour?”

  “No problem,” Ned replied cheerfully. “Take your time. It’s self-guided, and you can wander anywhere on this floor, but not upstairs. Let me know if you have any questions.”

  Abby drifted into what must have been the main parlor. With her newfound architectural expertise, she observed that the dropped ceiling was not original, but the wavy glass in the many windows was. The room had been furnished in a cheerful chintz in light colors, and the woodwork was painted white. It had probably been much more somber a century ago. She crossed back through the spacious entry hall to a small sitting room opposite. This was more charming, intimate. There was a small fireplace surrounded by pretty decorative tiles, with a mirror inset over it. This would have been where the family spent most of its time, she decided. On the far side of the fireplace was a door; passing through it, Abby found herself in the kitchen. Nothing of great interest here. At the back of the house, it was dark, and it had clearly been remodeled, in the 1930s, she guessed. The house was surprisingly small, Abby mused; it had appeared much larger from the outside. Maybe that was the point of all t
hat gingerbread.

  If the house was as square as it had appeared, there should be one more room on this floor: the dining room. She chose another door out of the kitchen and crossed through a small, richly paneled hall, from which she could see the front hall. She stepped into the dining room. Plainly this room hadn’t been modernized. Her eyes followed the soaring lines of the elegant woodwork to the original coffered ceiling, then to the elaborate carved mantel at the far end. She laid one hand on the doorjamb—and then something changed.

  So much anger, so much pain.

  She knew she was standing in the same place in the same room, its tall windows draped in opulent swags of peach-colored damask, its fireplace surrounded by colorful tiles, flanked by columns. She could make out the gleam of polished silver on the sideboard, the colorful arabesques on the fireplace tiles.

  But now there were people in the room, and Abby strained to hear any words. An older woman—in her fifties, maybe?—sat at the broad mahogany table in the center of the room, her hands flat as if to stop them from trembling. Without wavering, the woman watched a man pacing nervously on the opposite side of the table. He was slight, with a receding hairline, balanced by a luxuriant mustache. His suit collar was stiff and high, a stickpin anchoring his broad tie. He looked both sheepish and belligerent. She—who was she?—looked down to see a blanket-wrapped baby in her arms.

  “Miss? Are you all right?”

  Abby nearly jumped out of her skin at the touch of a hand on her elbow. The man from the hallway had come up behind her.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Maybe you should sit down.”

  Abby was fighting between embarrassment and the lingering remnants of the irrational fear that had swept over her. “I, uh … I’m fine. It’s just that you startled me. I’ll go now.” Abby wanted nothing more than to escape from this stranger’s kind attention.

  He still held her elbow, watching her face. “Please, no. There’s no rush. Why don’t you sit for a minute, just to be sure you’re all right? Come on.” When she didn’t resist he led her not to the parlor but to the smaller sitting room. Apparently he agreed with her that it was a friendlier room, she thought. He settled her into a wicker chair plump with cushions. “Now, just stay there for a moment. I’m going to make a cup of tea. All right?”

  Bewildered, Abby nodded. She sank back into the chair. Ned disappeared toward the kitchen, and she could hear the sound of water filling a kettle, the clink of china, a refrigerator opening and closing. She closed her eyes and made a conscious effort to relax. What on earth had happened? And then the memory came back. She shut her eyes: to remember it better or to blot it out? She wasn’t sure.

  She opened them again when Ned reappeared with a silver-plated tray bearing a teapot in a tattered cozy, two cups, a sugar bowl, a milk pitcher, spoons, and a delicate flowered china plate with some store-bought sugar cookies. He set it down on a low table next to Abby’s chair, then took the chair on the other side of the table. Leaning forward, he studied her face.

  “All right, now. I wish I could say you were looking better, but you’re white as a sheet.”

  Abby stared at him for a moment, and then to her horror she burst into tears. Even as she attempted to control her sobs, she felt a moment of pity for poor Ned, stuck with this dripping female that she didn’t even recognize as herself. He was trying so hard to be helpful, and she just kept making things worse. Wordlessly he handed her a small napkin from the tea tray, then sat back to wait out the storm. Finally, Abby swallowed a few times, blotted her eyes, and ventured a watery smile.

  “I’m sorry. This is so not like me. But …” She hesitated, afraid that if she went on, he would think she was loony. Oh, well, what the heck—she didn’t have anything to lose. “When I walked into the dining room, something weird happened. It was like I was watching a film of people in that room, except … they weren’t real. They weren’t there, were they?”

  She looked at Ned to see how he was taking her odd statement. He didn’t look contemptuous. In fact, he looked curious.

  “Interesting. Was there something that triggered it, or did it just start up out of nowhere?”

  She gave an inward sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to laugh at her. “All I know is, one moment I was about to walk into the dining room, and the next minute I was watching some kind of melodrama. There were three people there, and one of them—the one I was seeing through or something—was holding a baby, and they were all upset. Well, not the baby, but the others were.”

  “Did you recognize anyone?” Ned asked, concentrating on pouring two cups of tea. “Sugar?”

  “And milk, please. No. They were dressed like people were a hundred or more years ago. Is that part of the house tour? Some hidden projector shows you what life used to be like in the house?” That would be such an easy solution—but it hadn’t felt like that. She accepted the cup of tea that he held out to her, and when she took it, she realized her hands were trembling. She tightened her grip on the cup and sipped cautiously. It was hot and delicious. “Is this Darjeeling?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s good.” Now that Abby was feeling almost normal, she was beginning to wonder about this man. “Don’t you have to watch the door or something? And how come you know where all the tea things are? Do you live here?”

  Ned laughed. “It’s okay. It’s nearly time to close up, and I doubt that anyone else is going to show up today. Saturday’s usually the big day. Anyway, I’ve done this for a couple of years, so I know the house. Actually, no one lives in it these days—it belongs to the private school next door, and they use it for functions, entertaining, and such, so they keep it stocked with basic supplies. Not that I’ve ever had to deal with a problem like yours until now, but I’m glad that I was prepared. Tea and sugar make most problems better, don’t you think?”

  He has a nice smile, Abby thought.

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked again.

  “I’m fine. I probably tried to do too much today, and it caught up with me. I’m just embarrassed about causing you so much trouble.” She sipped again at her tea, at a loss for words.

  “Well, don’t hurry. We can sit here until you’re sure you’re all right. Do you live around here?”

  “I just moved to Waltham last month, and I read about the house tours, and I thought it would be nice to see some of the big old places like this. They’re beautiful.”

  “They are grand, aren’t they? This city’s had its ups and downs—there was a lot of industry here in the nineteenth century. Watchmaking, mostly. You’ve heard of the Waltham Watch Company? This was the place. You saw the Paine house? A lot of that was built by H. H. Richardson, and Frederick Law Olmsted designed the grounds. You know—Richardson’s the one who designed Trinity Church in Boston, and Olmsted laid out Central Park in New York.” He looked at her expectantly, and Abby wondered if she was supposed to know what he was talking about.

  “Yes, I started with the Paine house today. It’s gorgeous. But I guess I didn’t do all my homework. You certainly seem to know a lot about the houses. Are you from around here?”

  “More or less. I work in Lexington, and I’ve lived in the area for most of my life.”

  “What do you do?” Not an original question, but it was the best Abby could do.

  “I work for a company that does DNA analyses—that’s my day job. But my avocation is historic architecture, and New England history. That’s why I help with the house tours, things like that. It means I get to see more of the behind-the-scenes stuff than I would if I was just a visitor. You know—attics, basements. The bones of the old houses.”

  Abby was silent for a few beats. Then she said slowly, “What’s the history of this place?”

  Ned lifted the teapot, and when she nodded, he refilled her cup, and his, then sat back. “Well, it’s kind of interesting. For most of the nineteenth century, it belonged to a family named Hawley. They had a nice big farmhouse here. Then in the 1890s, a
successful businessman named Flagg bought it and started making some major changes, at least to the way it looked. The structural core is still the farmhouse, but everything that you see, inside and out, is late Victorian.”

  “He certainly threw himself into the decorating part—I’ve never seen so much gingerbread in one place!” Abby said, smiling.

  “Yes, he was determined to put his stamp on it. I can show you some of the newspaper articles about it. William Flagg brought in woods from all over the country, and if you look around, you’ll see that every doorknob is different. There’s some really beautiful work here.” He took another sip of his tea. “And then something happened—after about ten years, he ups and sells the place to the school next door. After all the fixing up he’d done.”

  Abby’s curiosity was piqued. “Did he lose all his money or something?”

  Ned shook his head. “He may have—I haven’t done any detailed research. But I do know that he stayed in Waltham—in fact, he ended up living in a smaller house about a mile south of here, for the rest of his life, and he’s buried here.”

  “Did he have a family?”

  “Yes—a wife and two daughters. The younger one went to the school here. His wife outlived him, but she’s buried next to him. Don’t know what happened to the girls.”

  Abby shut her eyes for a moment, trying to remember. “Was one of the girls a lot younger than the other?”

  Ned looked at her quizzically. “Yes, I think so. Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s what I saw. There was a man and a woman, and I think they were fighting, or at least they were very angry. And there was a younger woman with a baby. I didn’t think the baby was hers, from the way she held it. Like she wasn’t used to babies.” Was that baby the one they raised as a daughter? And why was the wife so angry?