House of Many Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  “Damn that woman! She’ll drive me into an early grave. Meg, darling, have you got a drink? Just a little, teeny sip of Scotch—or bourbon—or rubbing alcohol—”

  “You’d better not risk it yet,” Meg said, smiling. “I promise, Georgia, we’ll all get drunk after she leaves. Where are Andy and Courtenay?”

  “They’ve gone to the caretaker’s cottage. Andy said to tell you they’d open a can of soup or something. Probably he means a bottle of gin. I should have gone with them.”

  “I’m getting lunch for all of us,” Meg said. “Go tell them to come here.”

  “Uh-uh. Sylvia doesn’t eat with the help, honey. Oh, don’t look so shocked. Courtenay is supporting six grandchildren, and he wouldn’t have a job if Sylvia hadn’t kept him on.”

  “I don’t understand people at all,” Meg muttered.

  “That’s because you expect them to act like stock characters—all good or all bad.”

  “I know the rest of the lecture—I’m still young. I’ll know better when I get older. What do you want, chicken noodle soup or cream of mushroom?”

  “I don’t care. My God, how that woman can work!”

  They had no more time for gossip; Sylvia joined them sooner than Meg had expected. She decided she had exaggerated Sylvia’s exhaustion. Sylvia looked fine; she ate her soup and cheese sandwich with the air of a prize Persian who has been offered scraps instead of his accustomed creamed liver. When she was finished she glanced at her watch.

  “Goodness, it’s almost three. I must be off. Where is Courtenay?”

  “Waiting in the car,” said Andy, making his entrance via the back door. “We’ve had lunch, Meg. Don’t worry.”

  He winked at her. Meg suspected that Georgia’s guess was accurate. They had probably been sitting around drinking beer.

  “Well,” said Sylvia. “Is there anything we haven’t settled? The old place looks nice. I always hated this house,” she added.

  Meg and Andy exchanged startled looks.

  “Why, Sylvia?” Meg asked. “I’m very fond of it.”

  “It’s too isolated, for one thing. You’ll be bored to death in six months.”

  “I don’t think so,” Meg said. “I can’t imagine being bored. I certainly haven’t been, so far…” Andy emitted a choking sound, and Meg said hurriedly, “I want to tell you, Sylvia, how much I appreciate your letting me stay here. I really do love it.”

  “You do? Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Meg said, wondering.

  “Well, we’ll see how you feel after a winter here. As for you, Andy, I spoke to Jack Gordon last week in New York. He’s furious with you. Apparently you are already six weeks behind schedule, and he wants to know when the first half of the book will be finished. He has a big publicity campaign all set up.”

  “Oh,damn,”Andymuttered.“Sylvia,Iwishyou wouldn’t—”

  “Someone has to keep after you,” Sylvia said. “I think you need an agent, Andy. Or a wife.” She giggled.

  Meg looked at her in astonishment. Sylvia never giggled—or looked coy. She certainly had an odd expression on her face right now.

  Andy looked peculiar too. “Hands off, Sylvia,” he said. “I admit you’re smarter than I am; if you hadn’t approached your buddy Gordon, the big-time publisher, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Wherever that is… But I’ll pick my own wife, thank you. If I ever decide to indulge in that aberration.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of interfering,” Sylvia said loftily. “I must go now. I don’t like driving at night.”

  Andy went out for a last word with Courtenay. After Meg had helped Sylvia with her coat, Sylvia turned.

  “Are you all right, Meg?”

  “I’m fine. Really.” “And you really like it here?” “I love it, Sylvia.”

  “How are you and Andy getting one?” “Oh… fine.”

  “You used to fight,” Sylvia said. “I thought at the time… Well. Good-bye, Meg. I’ll keep in touch.”

  She held out her hand; they exchanged the ritual embrace. Meg thought the older woman’s arms clung rather more tightly than usual, but she decided she had been mistaken; when Sylvia stepped back her face wore its habitual expression of cool composure.

  Sylvia didn’t like long farewells, or nods and smiles from the doorway. Meg went back to the kitchen, where Georgia was slumped in her chair like a floppy rag doll. Neither of them spoke till Andy joined them a few minutes later. He leaned over the kitchen counter, looking from one of them to the other, and smiled.

  “We can drink to celebrate, or drink to forget,” he said. “Or we don’t have to drink at all—”

  “Not that.” Georgia sat up straighten Her lipstick was gone, except for a ragged pink rim on her lower lip, and the bags under her eyes looked like wrinkled tissue paper. At six o’clock Andy and Meg hauled Georgia upstairs and Meg put her to bed. When she came out of the bedroom, from which snores already reverberated, Andy was waiting in the hall. His eyes were anxious. “Is she—”

  “Sleeping like a baby. She’s just worn out.” They moved a few steps down the hall. Andy, who had matched Georgia drink for drink, showed no signs of intoxication. His eyes were brighter than usual, that was all.

  “We shouldn’t have let her work so hard,” Meg said guiltily. “I keep forgetting she isn’t so young.”

  “Neither is Sylvia,” Andy said. “She doesn’t look too good, does she?”

  “No.” Suddenly, to her surprise, Meg felt her eyes flooding with tears. She looked helplessly at Andy. He put out his hand as if to pat her shoulder and then pulled it back.

  “It is sad to be old and worn out,” he said gently. “But you do as much as you can for them, Meg. I never realized it before, but in her funny way Sylvia thinks a lot of you. Here, now, cheer up. I’ll tell you something that will make you good and mad, and then you’ll stop feeling sorry for Sylvia. You know what she’s up to, don’t you?”

  “I never know what Sylvia is up to,” Meg muttered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “She’s matchmaking,” Andy said calmly. “She more or less hinted to me that she’d do well by us if we decided to get married. Jim—Jim Courtenay, he and I were buddies when he worked for Dad—told me she made a new will recently. He drove her to the lawyer.”

  Andy had been right; this news made Meg forget her sympathy for her cousin.

  “But that’s—that’s medieval,” she exclaimed. “You mean she’s got some kind of clause in her will, making your inheritance contingent on our getting married? You and your friend Jim are crazy, Andy. How could he know what Sylvia put in her will?”

  “Sylvia is medieval, love; she thinks she can boss everybody, and, by God, she’s usually right. As for Jim’s info, he’s known Sylvia for years, and she’s not what you would call subtle. She asked Jim a lot of questions about me and the house and so on—the gracious chatelaine chatting with the serf.”

  “It’s the weirdest thing I ever heard of,” Meg muttered. She was finding it difficult to meet Andy’s eyes.

  “The sad thing about Sylvia is that she’s defeating her own purposes. If she hadn’t tried to bribe me… Look at me, Meg. Don’t worry, I’m not going to crush you to me, a la the Sheikh.” He laughed softly. “It’s the damnedest situation, isn’t it? I can’t even make love to you; every time I touch you, a whole crowd of ghostly spectators pops into sight. Talk about chaperones!” “We could try ignoring them,” Meg suggested. Andy stared at her. “I guess we could,” he said, and took her in his arms.

  The kiss was longer and more desperate than either of them had meant it to be. Meg’s head spun; every nerve in her body leaped in response to his touch. And she knew, for there is no mistaking these things, that his response was equally strong. But after a while his arms loosened their hold and when he raised his head, freeing her lips, his eyes were dark with doubt.

  Slowly he turned and stared down the length of the long, empty corridor.

  “There’s nothing there,” Meg
whispered.

  “No. This is the wrong part of the house. But it’s still waiting. What are we going to do about this, Meg? Hell’s bells, we’re too old to cut off our noses to spite Sylvia. I think maybe—just maybe—we could make it work. But not yet. Not while the other thing is hanging over our heads.”

  “Then we’ll have to solve it,” Meg said, wishing she could feel as certain as she sounded.

  It was easier than she had expected to fall back into their old relationship. They had gone too far too fast, and the resumption of the former roles was a relief. The barrier could not be broken down, it had to be removed piece by piece, with knowledge and understanding.

  “So,” Andy said, as they were getting a light supper, “how do you feel about moving some more furniture?”

  Meg moaned. “I don’t ever want to touch another table.”

  “Neither do I. But we’ve almost cleared that room. When we shift the slate-topped stand, we can reach the door under the eaves.”

  “How odd,” Meg said slowly. “I’d almost forgotten about that.”

  “We’ve had a lot of other things to do. When you read about cases like this, investigations of various kinds, they always read so smoothly. But that’s just the author’s arrangement of the facts; he leaves out the distractions and interruptions. Life isn’t like that. The kids get measles, the puppy chews up the carpet, guests drop in, meals have to be prepared… Don’t forget, also, that we’ve been pursuing a dozen different avenues of research at the same time. Instead of driving straight down the road toward the goal, we’ve been distracted by side roads and detours. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. We have a lot of pieces in place, but there are still gaps.”

  “Okay, we’ll look. But I don’t really expect to find anything.”

  “It’s a missing piece. It may be blank, but we’ve got to look at it.”

  Darkness had fallen by the time they went upstairs. Meg paused to look at Georgia. She hadn’t stirred.

  As soon as they entered the small attic room, Meg knew she had been wrong. There was something waiting for them in the space under the eaves. She felt it, as tangible as a gust of cold air.

  Andy’s face was sober. Neither of them spoke, except to exchange brief suggestions, as they shifted the few remaining pieces of furniture.

  The door was still ajar, as Meg had left it. She looked at Andy.

  “Give me the flashlight,” he said. Meg knelt down beside him as he opened the door all the way. He made no move to enter the dark space, but directed the flashlight beam inside.

  “Boxes,” he said. “Or chests. Something else. Jeez, it’s filthy in there. Hold the light.”

  He had to crawl into the hole in order to reach the contents. He worked methodically, removing all the objects before making any attempt to look at them, and feeling around the dust-covered floor to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  “That’s it,” he announced, crawling out. His hair was festooned with cobwebs. It looked like an eccentric gray wig.

  Meg brushed off encrusted dirt with a cloth. There were two fair-sized wooden boxes and another oblong container of wood bound with rusted metal, plus a roll of indescribably filthy, rotten fabric. This, upon examination, turned out to be draperies. The material had once been bright-green taffeta, as the patches of color in the folds showed. “Somebody’s old drawing-room curtains,” Meg said. “Your ancestors were a saving lot.”

  “Not so saving, or they would have wrapped this up a little more securely.” Andy sneezed. Dust billowed up from the fabric as he pushed it away.

  The wooden boxes were filled with old clothes. Andy removed the garments one by one, his nose wrinkled fastidiously. A strong smell of camphor accompanied the withdrawal of the garments.

  “Mid-nineteenth century,” Meg said, as Andy held up a woman’s gown. Black satin had turned brown with age, and the jet beads, their fastenings rotted, pattered down like particles of hail. “It’s someone’s formal mourning attire. They packed it away, for future use; then decided it was out of style when the next death occurred, I suppose. Even the children had to wear black…”

  Andy folded the child’s black wool pinafore that had come last out of the box. He started replacing the clothes. Then they both looked at the iron-bound chest. Both knew it was their last hope, and something about its looks of venerable antiquity told them it might be old enough to have something they wanted.

  The box was locked. There was no key; Andy had to go all the way downstairs for a chisel and hammer. The blows of steel on steel echoed hollowly, followed by a sharp crack as the hasp gave. Andy wrenched the top back.

  “You were right about my ancestors,” he said. “They didn’t throw anything away.”

  He began removing the contents of the box, piling them on one side after a cursory examination. Bundles of old letters; account books; diaries, with tarnished gilt clasps; ragged brown pages clipped from newspapers…

  They contemplated one another rather blankly across the little mountain of papers.

  “That will keep us busy for a month,” Andy said gloomily. “We can’t even ignore diaries and letters from a later period; someone might have referred to the time we’re interested in.”

  “Yes, we’ll have to read every word,” Meg agreed, picking up a bundle of letters. “Good God, look at these—crossed and recrossed, and the ink had faded out to nothing. I’ll bet some of these stamps are worth money, Andy.”

  “Why the hell do you suppose anyone would save an ad for Jordan’s Finest Horse Collars?” Andy demanded, holding up a crumbling piece of newspaper.

  “Maybe it was a bargain… Look at this—someone’s old recipe book. ”Take fourteen eggs and a pound of butter…‘“

  “These look interesting.” Andy had untied another bundle of letters. “The guy was in the army during the Civil War. ”Your affectionate husband, Captain Harold Emig; somewhere in Virginia.“”

  Meg giggled. “Here are forty-five installments of a serial that was running in the local paper. ”The Desperate Heart: A Tale of Old Pennsylvania.“ Listen to this Andy: ‘Annabelle reeled. Kneeling at her feet, Sir Edward wrung his hands and cried, ”Dearest lady…“’ You ought to learn to write like that, Andy.”

  She glanced up, and the amusement died on her lips.

  Andy was holding a small leather-bound book. The crumbling calf left a dusty brown stain on his hands. Silently he held it out so that she could see the inside front cover.

  The marbled paper bore a bookplate with a design Meg knew. The colors—blue and silver—were delicately hand-tinted, and the space under the design had a man’s name, in a firm, ornate script. Christian Huber.

  Meg’s mind was a jumble. The first thing she said had the inanity of utter confusion.

  “I didn’t know they had bookplates then.”

  “I remember seeing one that belonged to George Washington. We’ve lucked out, Meg. This is his journal. And it looks as if your hunch about his name change was right on the mark. Listen. ”Entering upon a new life in a New World, with a new name, what could be more fitting time to begin a new volume of notes and meditations? I have abandoned title, family and home; I abandon my native tongue as well. This alone I retain, for the quest for Eternal Life and Wisdom cannot be abandoned. It has cost me all I possessed, but the price was not too high.“” “I don’t understand,” Meg murmured. “What is he talking about?”

  Andy was turning the pages. “My wild hunch was right. This confirms it. I know why Christian Huber was murdered.”

  Chapter 12

  They took their prize to the library, and Meg picked up her embroidery. Andy held the diary; but he was too full of his theory to do more than read isolated excerpts.

  “Christian Huber was a Rosicrucian, Meg. Also a Swedenborgian, a Hermetic philosopher, a Gnostic, and probably an Ophite. Before I started reading up on the subject I hadn’t heard of half those terms myself; but when you mentioned a cross with a flower as one of the symbols on the sampler, I was r
eminded of the rose and the cross which are the symbol of Rosicrucianism. Some of the other motifs on the sampler reminded me of things I had read, years ago, when I was a kid interested in the occult. I got a book from the library on magic, and sure enough, it was all there.

  “The Ophites considered the serpent in the Garden of Eden to be a good guy, not an evil spirit; it had given man the gift of knowledge, which he was entitled to have. The tree and the serpent became favorite symbols of alchemy.

  The Greek letters alpha and omega, which were also on the sampler, indicate eternity; they’re the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The two in combination are a Christian symbol, but it was also used by various Gnostic sects. Gnosticism was regarded as a heresy by the early Church, and was vigorously persecuted. The Gnostics believed in the pursuit of wisdom. They dabbled in magic, which included a lot of things in those days that we wouldn’t consider particularly mysterious. Alchemy was one of those pursuits. You could call it the great-grandfather of chemistry, although in the beginning it was based on mystical ideas that have no scientific value. Still, in their quest for the Philosopher’s Stone, which could change base metals to gold and grant eternal life, the alchemists hit on a number of ideas which they handed on to modern chemists. “I suspected Huber—I can’t think of him by his real name yet—was an alchemist when we saw his study-bedroom. You remember the bottles and boxes and retorts?”