House of Many Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  He looked up as she entered, his gloomy face brightening. “Time to eat?”

  “No. I’ve got an idea.”

  “Out with it then, before it injures your brain.”

  “I was in the attic just now,” Meg began, “and it dawned on me, I’ve never seen any visions up there. When we’re in this room, we consistently see the same room of the other house—the kitchen. In the drawing room, it’s another room—the parlor, probably. You said the other day we’re seeing the house as it once was, occupying the same space as this house. Andy, we could draw a plan of it, practically.”

  “Hmmm.” Andy scratched his chin. “Maybe we could. But why should we bother?”

  “We might learn more if we saw the rest of the house,” Meg argued. “We don’t even know how many rooms it has.”

  “That’s true.” Andy reached for a pen and a sheet of paper. “Let’s see. This house is divided by the hall and the stairs. On one side is the drawing room with the dining room behind it; across the hall we have, from front to back, the small parlor, the library, and the kitchen. If the kitchen of the old house was here”—he reached for a red pen and began drawing over the black lines of the first sketch—

  “and the parlor was here, where our drawing room is… Yes, it fits. The back part of the drawing room is just across the hall from the library, which was their kitchen. The old house occupied an area that lies smack in the middle of this house. Do you know anything about the architecture of that period? How many more rooms should we expect?”

  “I imagine a farmhouse of that early date, almost anywhere in the American colonies, would have been small and simple. Two rooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. They cooked in a separate building, a smokehouse and bakehouse combined, outside; in cold weather they would use the kitchen fire. There would be outbuildings, too—sheds, barns…”

  “Servants’ quarters?”

  “Outside, maybe. A shed next to the kitchen.”

  “We haven’t seen the bedrooms,” Andy said thoughtfully.

  “We have! We saw Anna Maria’s room. Remember, that time on the stairs? I saw her bedroom again in a dream, but I guess you won’t count that.”

  “Dreams aren’t kosher evidence. However, the episode on the stairs is interesting. The old house would have had lower ceilings than this one. Which would put the bedrooms about midway between the first and second floors of this house.”

  “Right. And if her bedroom was near the landing, where the stair turns…” Meg watched Andy scribble on his plan, which was beginning to look like an unholy mess. “It’s hard to visualize in three dimensions. The landing isn’t halfway up the stairs, it’s about three fourths of the way up. The upper-floor level of the old house was—oh, say about four feet below our second-floor level. The stairs turn to the right; so her room was above the kitchen—the library. The other bedroom must be over their parlor.”

  “That makes it out of bounds for us,” Andy said, scowling at the plan. “It’s hanging somewhere near the ceiling of the drawing room.”

  “What’s above the drawing room in this house?”

  “One of the guest bedrooms.”

  “Well?” Meg looked challengingly at him.

  “You mean—go up there and—”

  “Yes. That’s a room we never go into. Let’s try.”

  The room was the central one of the three that, with the bathroom, filled this side of the second floor. It had no rug on the floor—Sylvia seemed to have a fetish about the rugs—and was furnished with a brass bedstead, a battered chest of drawers, and a table… Meg did a double take. The chest of drawers had a serpentine front and broad fluted corners.

  “Gostelowe!” Meg exclaimed.

  “Abracadabra,” Andy answered. He eyed her warily. “What happens now, do you turn into a zebra?”

  “Jonathan Golstelowe of Philadelphia, flourished about 1765,” Meg said. She ran her fingers over the surface of the chest. “I’ll eat my hat if this isn’t his work. It’s solid mahogany. Wouldn’t you know Sylvia would outfox herself? Imagine leaving a thing like this down here! There’s a chest very similar in the Philadelphia museum.”

  “Are we going to hold hands or look at furniture?” Andy demanded. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Hold hands, is it! What a euphemism.”

  Meg’s amusement faded as the image formed. The overlap of the two houses, which had been mildly disturbing on the lower level, was much worse here, where the floor levels were utterly uncoordinated. The legs of tables and chairs, the lower part of the bed went down below the floor level of the room in which they were standing, and faded into invisibility.

  This was a room they had never seen before. It was unoccupied, but it was obviously a man’s room. Yet it was a strange room to find in a primitive farmhouse. Hanging bookcases held rows of heavy volumes. Tables were covered with an odd assortment of objects—books and papers, boxes large and small, bottles of all sizes and shapes, filled with a variety of substances. Over the whitewashed chimney hood hung a sword, its hilt gilded.

  The image faded before Meg had time to see more.

  “How about that,” she said triumphantly. “Our plan was correct.”

  “Are you sure we’ve got the right house?”

  “The right house and the right room. And I was right about Herr Huber. He was no simple farmer.”

  “No.”

  “Not all the settlers were uneducated,” Meg said. “Mrs. Adams was telling me about that the other day. Pastorius, who led the first group of German immigrants, was a distinguished scholar and theologian. There were thirty printing houses in Pennsylvania before the Revolution; did you know that? The first Bible printed in the colonies was Christopher Sauer’s German Bible. And Mrs. Adams says—”

  “You really did pump the old lady, didn’t you?”

  “I got a letter from her yesterday,” Meg said, following him out of the room.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. She invited us to tea on Wednesday.”

  “Us!”

  “Yep. It’s your clout that got us the invitation. She’s discovered that you are the grandson of her dear old school chum Matilda’s brother. She apologized profusely for not having recognized your name—”

  Andy’s comment would have made Mrs. Adams regret her invitation.

  “Don’t be vulgar,” Meg said. “I don’t know why she should apologize. You didn’t give her time to say yes, no, or boo; you just dragged me out. I take it you are the grandson of her dear old school—”

  “I had a great-aunt named Matilda. Damn it. Look, if you think I’m going to have tea with a little old lady, you’re crazy.”

  “She says she knew your mother quite well. And she remembered you as an adorable curly-headed moppet… She’s the one who’s crazy, poor thing. Anyhow, it was sweet of her to ask us. She says Wednesday is her day off—she put quotes around the phrase—and not to bother to answer, she knows we must be busy, just come if we can.”

  “We can’t,” said Andy, and led the way to the kitchen.

  III

  Georgia arrived next morning at nine o’clock. Meg had not expected her till much later; she was brooding over the presumed Gostelowe chest when a hail from below informed her of Georgia’s arrival. Meg yelled down and Georgia came up.

  She agreed that the chest might well be by the Philadelphia cabinetmaker, and then demanded, “Don’t you lock your doors around here? Somebody even uglier than me could walk right in.”

  “I unlocked it this morning when I went out to sniff the weather,” Meg said. “I thought this was the safe countryside.”

  “Culver was in town this morning, looking for trouble.”

  “I don’t have to worry about him now that I have a resident hero,” said Meg, glancing at the doorway, where Andy lounged against the doorframe, looking as boneless and unheroic as any man could look.

  “Hi,” said Andy to Georgia.

  “Hi,” said Georgia.


  “Coffee?” said Andy.

  Georgia’s jowls quivered.

  After she had been primed with coffee, Georgia cheered up, and they put in a long, productive day. There was only one thing Georgia didn’t see. The box and its contents, except for the sampler, was at the back of Meg’s closet covered with dirty clothes.

  Georgia’s most useful suggestion was that they move some of the furniture from the attic down to the empty bedrooms on the third floor. They cleared two of the smaller rooms this way, leaving only the heaviest objects in place, but the chief discovery of the day was found in a tiny back bedroom that had belonged to a son or daughter of the nineteenth-century Emigs. Painted a dull brown, it was about the size of a cedar chest and had probably been used as a toy box. It was Georgia who spotted the sunken arched panels on the front. She looked at Meg with triumph in her eyes.

  “Dower chest,” she said.

  Meg stared doubtfully at the ungainly object. “One of those beautiful painted chests, with unicorns and tulips and birds? How could anyone be vandal enough to slap brown paint on something like that?”

  “Not just brown. There are two or three coats of paint. It’s almost two hundred years old, and for most of its history this style of work was considered crude and ugly. It’s a good solid piece of furniture, though, too good to throw away.”

  “What a shame!”

  “Not necessarily. Project for you, Andy…” And she proceeded to explain the technique of removing the paint, layer by layer. “It may work or it may not,” she concluded. “But it’s worth a try.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Andy.

  They had a late lunch. Meg had baked the night before, amid a barrage of sarcastic commentary from Andy, but he ate the chocolate cake with relish, and Georgia had three pieces. It was a pleasant, relaxed meal; they were all on casual terms by now. Georgia seemed genuinely reluctant to leave.

  “I’d better get started,” she said finally. “It’ll take me an hour to walk back.”

  “What happened to the bike?” Andy asked.

  “Wheel’s bent.”

  “I’m not surprised, the way you throw it around. You can’t just get off the thing and walk away, like you do with a horse. Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

  Georgia made token protests, but allowed herself to be overruled. Meg agreed to come along for the ride. Andy went off to get the car, and the two women waited on the porch. It was a bright, balmy day, but Georgia looked pessimistic when Meg rhapsodized over the weather.

  “It’s due to break anytime. You’ve had the best of it, girl. I hope you don’t chicken out when the rain and snow begin. It can be pretty dreary out here in winter.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. Peace and quiet magnified. Reading, and working on the house, and my embroidery—”

  Meg stopped short. She had not mentioned her project of copying the sampler, and felt a strange reluctance to have Georgia find out about it. But Georgia heard nothing unusual in the list of hobbies.

  “You really like it here, don’t you?” she asked, with a sharp glance at Meg.

  “Yes,” Meg said, surprised. “I never really stopped to think about it, but… yes, I do.”

  “How are things working out with Andy?”

  “We get along pretty well.”

  Georgia nodded. “He sure has improved. I think I could learn to like the guy. He was a mean little kid.”

  “He used to tease the life out of me.”

  “He had problems,” Georgia said with a sigh. “I used to blame him for being so rotten to Sylvia; but now I can see the kid’s life wasn’t all that easy. He was nervy and sensitive, and Sylvia—well, she isn’t the maternal type.”

  “No.”

  “Boy, that sure was a loud and hearty no. I guess you didn’t get much TLC from her either.”

  “She was always perfectly correct,” Meg said slowly. “Never unfair, never cruel. But… she never had children of her own. You’d think she would have been overly affectionate with a stepson, and later, with me. But mere was never any warmth. Never any love.”

  “And you resent that?”

  “No.” Again Meg was surprised at her own feelings. “I feel sorry for her. You can’t give what you don’t have. And it’s worse not to give love than not to get it.”

  She glanced at Georgia and saw that the older woman’s eyes were damp. What a sentimental old cuss she is, Meg thought affectionately. She knew Georgia would hate to be caught in a display of maudlin emotion, so she gazed interestedly out across the lawn while Georgia got herself under control, and then said briskly,

  “Tell me something, Georgia. How the hell did Sylvia talk Andy’s father into leaving this place to her? Wasn’t that an outrageous thing to do?”

  “Especially since the estate belonged to Andy’s mother,” Georgia agreed. “It isn’t as bad as it looks; I mean, Andy wasn’t disinherited. There was some property in California and some money. Andy gets it when he hits thirty.”

  “Thirty! Why so long?”

  “His dad thought he was too immature to handle money. He was in with a pretty wild crowd when the old boy made his will; they were afraid he’d be conned out of it or spend it on riotous living.”

  “You gave yourself away with that ‘they,” Georgia. It was Sylvia who decided Andy was too irresponsible to handle his inheritance, wasn’t it?“

  Georgia’s face was a study, a blend of enjoyment and guilt.

  “Oh, hell, so long as we’re letting our hair down—you know Sylvia as well as I do. Andy’s dad was a meek, good-natured spineless darling. Any woman could wrap him around her little finger, and Sylvia is an expert. I’ve wondered for years how she does it. What’s she got that I haven’t got?”

  “I’ve wondered myself,” Meg admitted.

  They exchanged conspiratorial grins.

  “Meow, meow,” said Georgia cheerfully. “God, I adore gossip. Next to drinking and fornication it’s more fun than anything. I don’t shoot my fat mouth off to everybody, Meg, don’t think that. I’m going to enjoy having you around to talk to.”

  The car came around the corner of the house just then, ending the conversation. Meg noticed that Georgia was particularly nice to Andy during the drive—nice in her own way, which consisted mostly of friendly insults. But she did not invite them in, explaining that it was time for her to start her serious drinking, an activity that required privacy and concentration.

  Andy left the car in a vacant lot next to Georgia’s and they walked to Main Street to buy a few groceries.

  “I wonder what she really does when she’s alone,” Meg mused. “She can’t really drink that much; she wouldn’t brag about it if she did.”

  “Oh, yes, she would. Most people lie about their secret vices, but there are a few rare birds who flaunt them just for the hell of it. Georgia is probably one of the few honest people you’ll ever meet.”

  “Do you like her better now?”

  “She has her charms. All this sweetness and light is beginning to get to me,” Andy said aggressively. “I can’t concentrate on hating people with your cooing and making excuses for them all the time. A few more months with you and I may even have a kind word for Sylvia.”

  Like many men, Andy objected strenuously to going grocery shopping and then had to be forcibly restrained from buying bagfuls of exotic food. Meg finally pried him away from the pickled artichokes and they started back to the car. As usual, the few groceries had stretched into two large brown bags. Andy had offered to take them both, but Meg made remarks about male chauvinists and flexed her muscles, to the unconcealed amusement of everyone in the grocery store. They left each carrying a bag.

  Georgia’s house had a closed-up look; the shades were all pulled. A strip of trees hid the house on the other side of the vacant lot. There were no spectators, therefore, when Culver stepped out from behind the car and confronted them. Cherry followed him. She was uneasy, although she tried to conceal it under a sullen glower. Culver was high
er than a kite on a breezy March day. He wasted no time in preliminary courtesies.

  “This is your last chance,” he said loudly.

  “Good.” Andy stopped; Culver was standing in front of the car door. “You mean you’ll leave town when we say no?”

  “What are you gonna say no for?” Culver asked, looking confused.

  “No to anything you suggest.”

  “Okay, I gave you your chance. It’s your fault now if you get hurt.”

  Sunlight flashed off the blade of the knife as he pressed the switch.