House of Many Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  Meg had replaced the top. It looked as if it had never been removed.

  “Of course not,” she said smoothly. “Andy, get some meat out of the freezer, okay? I’m in no shape to do gourmet cooking tonight, so make it something simple.”

  “Want me to get dinner?”

  “No, it’s my turn. I’m just warning you that it won’t be pate de la maison tonight.”

  When they met later, in the kitchen, Meg saw that Andy had changed his shirt; but his hair was still speckled with confetti chips of wallpaper. He looked at her long blue robe with raised eyebrows. Flushing, she pulled the belt tighter.

  “It’s cold in here,” she said defensively. “Can’t you turn up the heat?”

  “What, and waste fuel? Sylvia anticipated the national crisis by ten years; if the temperature of this house goes over sixty-five, she knows about it, by some tingle of the subconscious, and writes me a nasty note.”

  “You can’t even mention her name without a dirty crack, can you?”

  It was Andy’s turn to flush—with anger. “You aren’t especially charitable yourself.”

  “All right, all right. Drop it.”

  Meg put the box on the table. It distracted Andy; he reached for it eagerly.

  “Careful,” she warned hypocritically, as he wrenched at the lid. “The wood is dried out. You don’t want to break it.”

  The lid was as hard to remove as it had been the first time, but Andy got it off without doing any damage. He lifted out the scraps of wrapping paper.

  “This looks as if something has been removed,” he announced, eyeing Meg suspiciously.

  “Maybe they put in scrap paper to keep the contents from rattling.”

  “Maybe.”

  But he seemed to accept the suggestion, all the more readily because the objects he removed from the box were small and hard.

  The first was a small disk, black with tarnish. It was attached to a ribbon that had once been blue; the color was now visible only in the folds. Meg picked it up from the table.

  “It’s a medal,” she said, answering Andy’s inquiring look. “Or would you call it an order?” “Let’s see.” Andy snatched it and held it up to the light. “Can’t make out the design,” he said, after a moment. “A bird, maybe, like an eagle with outstretched wings. And there’s a motto, but it’s too tarnished to read. These things around the edge…”

  He moved the metal shape, and sparks of brilliance leaped. “Diamonds?” Meg asked uncertainly. “I wouldn’t know. They’re too small to be worth much, anyhow.” Andy discarded the medal and picked up another piece. “The jewels around this aren’t diamonds,”heannounced. “Not even dirty diamonds.”

  “Garnets?” Meg suggested, trying to peer over his shoulder. “Rubies?”

  “They don’t sparkle. And they aren’t red. They look black. What’s this in the middle?” He held it close to his eyes and then withdrew it, with a disgusted noise. “Hair. Dusty, dried-up hair.” He handed it to Meg.

  “It’s part of a locket,” she said slowly. “There’s a ring on top, where the chain went through, and the broken halves of hinges and catch. The stones could be jet. Later—I mean, at some period, they used to make mourning brooches like this, with a lock of the dead person’s hair.”

  Andy didn’t appear to notice her slip of the tongue. “White hair,” he said.

  Meg nodded and put the locket aside. Time yellowed many things, including white hair, but she had a feeling there were two different tresses inside the glass frame. One white, one silver blond.

  Andy’s next discovery was a collection of small round objects wrapped in a fragment of rusty black velvet.

  “Buttons,” Meg said, as he spilled them out onto the table. “Silver buttons; see how badly they’re tarnished?” She went on resolutely, banishing the memory that widened Andy’s eyes and confirmed her own growing unease. “There’s a design or something on them. What else, Andy?”

  The last object was also wrapped in cloth. As Andy shook it out onto the table, Meg gasped. It lay in a jumble of glowing color—blue and fiery crimson and pearly white, amid a tangle of gold. Gently Meg lifted it.

  The object was a necklace of opals set in gold. It was a massive thing, too heavy for modern taste—a collar rather than a necklace. But the stones were glorious, fire opals, all of them splendidly colored. The blue depths shone as if sparks of flame were imprisoned within.

  “Well, now,” Andy said appreciatively. “That’s better. What is there about gold that gets to you?”

  “It doesn’t get to me. The value of this rests in its age. The setting is old-fashioned, and although the stones are good ones, opals are not all that precious. Not like diamonds or sapphires.”

  “Yes, but it has some value. Why would it be packed away, instead of being part of the family jewels?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe all these things form a sort of collection. I mean, they belong together. And opals are considered unlucky.”

  Andy was fascinated by the necklace. He dangled it from his fingers, watching the glow of light on gems and gold.

  “How much is it worth?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Meg said warily. “A few thousand, maybe? Peanuts, to our rich relative.”

  “Have you ever known Sylvia to be indifferent to any amount of money? She’d strain her back picking up a quarter from the gutter.”

  Meg stood up. She was more tired than she had realized, and the rest had stiffened her muscles.

  She put together a quick meal while Andy brooded over the treasure trove. Meg watched him out of the corner of her eye. His interest in the necklace, the only object of monetary value, aroused her worst suspicions. He was the one who had suggested they investigate the past in search of clues; didn’t he grasp the implications of what she had found? But then, Meg reminded herself, Andy hadn’t seen the sampler. That item would have aroused his ghost-hunting instincts with a vengeance. If the curious little collection of objects did belong together, it could be dated by the sampler, and that date, well before the building of the present house, could hardly fail to arouse his interest. They ate quickly, without conversation. Andy only spoke once, but the question indicated that she had underestimated his intellectual curiosity. “How do you clean silver?”

  “I thought you claimed to be the little handyman,” Meg snapped.

  “I’m not the butler,” Andy replied coolly. “But I’ve seen my share of TV commercials. Maybe Sylvia has some of that metal-cleaning gunk.”

  “You’d better take it easy with that stuff. If it’s too strong it could damage the metal.” “I’ll be careful.”

  “You’re on your own.” Meg stood up. “I’m bushed. I think I’ll go to bed.” “It’s early.”

  “I’m going to read for a while.” “Likewise. I’ll be in the library if you want me.” He didn’t look up; he was pushing the buttons around with his fingertip, arranging them into patterns.

  When Meg got upstairs she went straight to the bureau drawer where she had hidden the sampler. Kneeling, she spread it out on the floor. She meant to examine it in detail, calmly and dispassionately. Her familiarity with this form of folk art was of the slightest, but since needlepoint and crewel embroidery were back in style, she had acquired some information from enthusiastic friends who carried embroidery to work, to restaurants, and Meg suspected, to bed with them.

  The making of an embroidered sampler was part of the education of a young girl during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The ones that had survived were now collector’s items, and moderns marveled at the proficiency attained by children of ten or twelve; for the young ladies usually signed their work and stated their age. As its name suggests, the sampler employed a variety of different embroidery stitches and patterns; thus the girls learned the tricks of the trade, and they used the stitches to decorate bed hangings, cushions, and clothing for themselves and their equally fashion-conscious husbands. Probably a hardworking colonial housewife looked forward to t
he hours she spent upon embroidery as a pleasant change from the other backbreaking chores that filled most of her eighteen-hour day.

  But after the first moment Meg forgot analysis in sheer delight. Around the edges of the sampler a scrollwork of flowers and fruit wove a bright border; acorns, strawberries, carnations, wild roses. The picture inside the border showed a small house, rather out of perspective, but quaint and pretty; in the front yard, before a picket fence, stood a little lady with a high white wig and full skirts. Her dog lay at her feet; cat and pony attended her. There were stiff green trees and vines, and scattered decorative motifs had been added with a cheerful disregard for perspective. Several lines of text included the embroidered alphabet, which was an essential feature of a sampler.

  More and more fascinated, Meg leaned forward to examine the details of the work. It was done in silk on linen; the seamstress had fashioned her cross-stitch design by counting the threads of the ground fabric instead of following a pattern printed on the cloth—or, as would have been the case in her day, a pattern painted or drawn by her own hand. Carefully lifting the sampler, Meg sat down on the bed and spread the cloth out so that she could see it in a better light. Its beauty and charm had made her forget momentarily her real reason for wanting to examine it more closely. She had hoped to find a discrepancy between the reality and the vision. If her battered brain had chosen to present her with a hallucination that included a sampler, it was no more, and no less, unreasonable than an elephant or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Given the initial insanity, the discovery of a real sampler could be a wild coincidence; for all samplers were more or less alike.

  But as she admired the delicacy and the fine stitches, a cold certainty continued to grow. This was the sampler she had seen in the visionary room. She had not discerned the details, but the shape of the pattern was unmistakable—the solid form of the house, the flowery border, the shapes of the animals and trees.

  Or was she backtracking—readjusting the vision in terms of what she now saw?

  Meg groaned. She began to sympathize with the psychic researchers she had criticized in her discussion with Andy. Was it possible to keep the layers of memory distinct and separate? How could she possibly remember a momentary impression seen some days before?

  Sitting quietly, in the glow of light cast by the bedside lamp, Meg folded her hands in her lap and did something she would never have considered a week ago. Deliberately she made her muscles go limp and cleared her mind of thought. She invited the intrusion of what might be waiting to come.

  Nothing happened. She felt the effects of this form of self-hypnotism—a soft ringing in her ears as she strained to hear unreal sounds, a flicker of shadow movement | beyond the bounds of actual vision—but she was wise enough to recognize these things for what they were. They were inno way akinto the hallucinationsshehad I experienced.

  The knock on the door broke through the shell of silence. Her hands went out, snatching at the sampler, but she was too late. The door opened and Andy looked in.

  “I forgot to ask you—”

  He stopped speaking as he saw what she was holding. It lay exposed, under the light. A hiss of indrawn breath told Meg that he was as quick mentally as he was in other ways. He crossed the room in a series of acrobatic leaps and grabbed. Meg relinquished her hold at once; the fabric was old, so old; she didn’t want to risk tearing it.

  After one quick comprehensive glance at the sampler Andy looked at Meg.

  “I thought you were acting funny,” he said. “This was in the box, wasn’t it?”

  Meg nodded dumbly. She didn’t know what an appealing picture she made as she knelt on the bed amid the folds of her soft blue robe, her hands clasped on her lap, her eyes wide with apprehension: Andy’s angry face relaxed as he looked at her. He sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Why didn’t you show it to me?”

  Meg lifted her hands and let them fall; it was a gesture of bewilderment which Andy understood.

  “This is what you saw the other day—framed, on the wall of that room…” It was not a question. After a brief pause Andy went on. “Are you sure?” “I’m not sure of anything.”

  “I know what you mean.” Andy smiled mirthlessly. “Meg. Are you scared?”

  “Yes. No…” Meg thought about it. “I don’t know. Andy, what made you suppose that what we saw might be a genuine psychic intrusion? No, don’t look away, I’m serious. Why did you think of ghosts when there was a perfectly good medical explanation?”

  “It isn’t good enough.” Andy was staring at the sampler. “Good God, how can you talk about medical explanations with this in front of you? This is evidence, Meg. Don’t you think this business is worth investigating?” “How?”

  “We’ve got a whole list of data. I cleaned one of the buttons; that’s what I came up to show you. Look.”

  It lay in the palm of his hand, shining dully. Andy had not overdone the cleaning process; dark tarnish still lay in the sunken lines of the design, making the pattern easy to distinguish.

  “It looks like a crest,” Meg said. “A diagonal line, with three round balls on one side and—what is it, a bird?—on the other.”

  “It’s not my family crest. Cousin Emig, the one who wrote the book you found upstairs, managed to dream up a family crest for the Emigs; it’s quartered with the fleur-de-lis, of all things. Probably a fake. It certainly doesn’t resemble this. We can look it up, Meg. There are books.”

  Meg nodded speechlessly.

  “Then there’s the sampler,” Andy went on. “It’s almost as good as a diary. We’ve got a date and a name. Do you think this could be a picture of the kid’s house? Maybe the same house that once stood here?”

  “You’re getting carried away. They copied patterns for needlework in those days; ships brought pattern books to | the colonies, and the women exchanged them among: themselves. I’ve seen houses on other samplers.”

  “Well, how about the text?” Andy held the sampler up to the light and read aloud: “Lord Give Me Wisdom to Direct My Ways I Ask Not Riches Nor Yet Length Of Days, My Life’s a Flower the Time Is Morn To Last Is Mixt, With Frost and Snow with Every Blast. This work in hand my friends may have when I am dead and laid in grave. Anna Maria Huber, her work in ye year 1734, Aged eleven years.” Morbid little creature, wasn’t she?“

  “It was a morbid age—if you want to call it that. Life spans were short, infant mortality was high; many of the Protestant sects were fundamentalist and grim. It’s fairer to say that they were realists, about the difficulty of life and the certainty of damnation.”

  “That sounds impressive. You seem to know quite a bit of history.”

  “I read a lot.” But Meg was beginning to share Andy’s curiosity. “I wonder who she was—Anna Maria. Not one of your ancestors?”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s check. The genealogy book is downstairs in the library.”

  “Okay.” Meg scrambled down off the bed. “Be careful with that, Andy. I saw a sampler that was no nicer, and not nearly as old, selling for two hundred and fifty dollars in an antique shop in Connecticut.”

  “Maybe we ought to do something with it—to keep it from getting damaged,” Andy said vaguely.

  “We should do something about lots of things. After working in that attic, I’m beginning to feel overwhelmed.”

  “I can imagine.” Together they walked down the hall and descended the stairs. “I think I’ll go to Philadelphia tomorrow.” Andy went on.

  “What for?”

  “I want to look up the crest on that button. Some genealogical research is also in order. Maybe we can find Anna Maria. I don’t trust cousin Emig’s scholarship. I’ll bet he made up half his information, especially the earlier part.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Meg’s enthusiasm was growing. There was something to be said for Andy’s approach; the prospect of ordinary, everyday library work lessened the supernatural awe of the coincidence. “I think I’ll go to Wasserburg and take the sample
r with me. One of the antique dealers ought to be able to tell me what to do with it, and maybe I can get some free lectures on old furniture while I’m at it.”

  Andy looked dubious. “None of that crowd would give you a free ‘Good Morning.” They’ll steal the clothes off your back.“

  “Some of them must be honest.”

  “Oh, they’re all honest…”

  Andy opened the library door and followed her in. The room was cozy and warm, despite its vast size and high ceiling; the worn velvet draperies had been drawn to shut out the rainy night, and Andy had kindled a fire on the hearth. Meg sat down in one of the leather chairs before the fireplace and held out her hands to the blaze.

  Andy stood beside her. He was pulling at his lower lip and frowning, as if puzzling out some problem. Finally he said reluctantly, “If you want advice, you might try Georgia Wilkes. Her place is called the Antique Market.”