Ashes to Ashes

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Very smooth, she thought; in taking the typewriter he brushed her fingertips so lightly with his own a pleasant tremor rippled up her arm.

  Eric set the typewriter inside the door and pointed toward the stone fretwork structure across the lawn. “Did you know that that’s the mausoleum where the Forbeses are buried?”

  “Here? On the grounds?” Again she crossed her arms and hugged.

  “John thought he was too good to mingle with the peasantry in the Putnam cemetery, I suppose. At any rate, he had a vault dug to accomodate his wife. Do you know about her? Very unfortunate.” Eric’s jaw twitched, as if he’d clenched his teeth.

  “Yes,” Rebecca murmured. She scuffed the gravel with her toe. These particular pebbles wouldn’t have been here then.

  “Later on John built the dovecote behind the vault, to camouflage it, perhaps. If he’d been at all a romantic soul, I’d say he was equating doves with the goddess of love— the usual Victorian sentimentality. But he probably just wanted an inexpensive source of fresh drumsticks.”

  Rebecca grinned. How gracefully he’d smoothed over his macabre revelation. “If John could stand having Queen Mary in his front hall, I guess he could stand burying his wife in his front yard. He became a recluse after she died, didn’t he?”

  Eric nodded, his eyes fixed on the structure that was Elspeth’s only memorial. As if to dramatize the scene a ray of sun peeked out and the stone sparkled. It must be Connecticut granite, Rebecca thought, like the house.

  “He lingered on another thirty years,” said Eric, “without speaking to anyone but James and the servants. I’d feel sorry for him, except… ”

  “He brought it on himself?”

  “Yes.” Eric made a precise about-face and offered Rebecca a grin of his own. Glancing at his watch, he said, “I have some business in Putnam this afternoon, but I should be finished by five. Would you like to have dinner with me before I go back to Columbus?”

  His unfortunately crowded teeth made his grin look like a cartoon wolf’s. Rebecca had to laugh. “I’d love to.”

  “Great. In Putnam most of the places are franchises or hole-in-the-wall diners suitable only for a truck driver’s stomach. Unless you’re a Big Mac freak I suggest Gaetano’s, a new Italian restaurant.”

  “Sounds much better than a Big Mac. I ate altogether too many of them when I was putting myself through school.”

  “So did I,” Eric confided. He pulled out his sunglasses, considered the sky, replaced them in his pocket. She half expected him to kiss her hand, but he only nudged her shoulder toward the door. “Go back inside before you get a chill. I’ll be here at five-thirty.”

  But the inside is as cold as the outside, she thought ruefully. I’ll have to get some long johns. “See you then,” she called.

  He responded with a jaunty wave. She watched the gray car until it had disappeared among the trees, following it in her mind as if it were a camel caravan traversing trackless wastes. Dun Iain seemed as isolated as a desert oasis, thousands of miles from civilization. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she assured herself, she was just used to the bustle of the campus.

  The wind and the trees danced a Highland fling, the rush of air around the turrets providing the skreel of the pipes. Rebecca strolled toward the dovecote thinking, when the state turns Dun Iain into a museum, or a youth hostel, or a scout camp, or whatever they’re going to do with it, they need to move the parking area away from the house. Rather ruins the facade to have all these old heaps parked below it. Not counting Eric’s Volvo, of course.

  Steve’s pruning shears lay half in, half out of the marigolds, draped by the tangled cords of the Walkman. A faint thumping and whining emanated from the tiny machine. He was nowhere in sight.

  The dovecote loomed under the dark red eaves of the forest, larger than it had appeared from the door. Now Rebecca could see that only the side facing the castle was perforated with openings for the birds. In several places the narrow, undressed stones had pulled loose, leaving gaps the size of her typewriter case into the black and featureless interior. She followed a path around the circumference of the building, the grass brittle beneath her feet. The back looked much more like the mausoleum it was.

  Beside a door glistening with the mottled green patina of copper was a brass nameplate that read, not surprisingly, “Forbes”. Above it the rough granite blocks climbed in uncompromising tiers, contracting at the top to make a domed roof like an Irish monk’s beehive cell. Or, in keeping with John Forbes’s ambitions, an ancient tomb of a king of Mycenae. Close under its archaic bulk Rebecca could no longer see Dun Iain’s Scottish baronial splendor.

  She stepped onto the top of a short flight of steps that cleft the turf before the entrance. The lock that secured the door required a key even larger than the one for the castle. Its hinges were streaked with copper grooves; it had been opened two months ago for James, the last of the line. John had probably intended many generations of his descendants to be interred here. He must be looking down— or up, as the case may be— with a very bitter eye at his dynasty’s premature demise.

  Here beneath the trees the air was still, heavy with the fetid odor of mold. Rebecca drew back, her limbs prickling. She had thought it was quiet in the upper room of the castle, but here it was oppressively silent. The rush of the wind among the leaves seemed to be filtered through the stone of the mausoleum, as if she stood not outside but inside, enveloped by the dark tranquillity of the grave.

  No, not tranquillity. Not Mary Stuart’s serene smile. A brooding silence, as though something or someone waited on the other side of the massive door. The hair on the back of her neck lifted, drawn by a subliminal static charge. Rebecca whirled back up the step onto the path and hurried around the side of the building. There was the castle, raising its whimsical turrets toward the sky. Whimsical, not sinister, never sinister… .

  A huge black shape leaped from the trees. Rebecca gasped. The dog barked, shattering the silence so abruptly that Rebecca felt the noise slice through her head. Don’t run, she ordered herself. He’ll chase you. She planted her feet in the grass and stood her ground as the huge animal came to a halt just in front of her, barring her way back to the castle.

  “Hi there,” she tried. “Nice dog. Good boy.”

  The dog’s head seemed as large as a lion’s, its ears reaching to her waist. It stank that peculiar doggy smell of wet dirt and raw meat. Slowly she raised her hand and offered it to the gargantuan muzzle. “Nice dog.” It regarded her with liquid brown eyes scummed by suspicion, and sniffed.

  “Hey, Slash!” yelped a voice. Steve emerged from the forest. For a moment Rebecca thought she glimpsed another human shape among the tree trunks. “Get away, Slash,” Steve ordered. “Can’t you see she’s scared of you?”

  “I think he can,” Rebecca said. “Good boy, Slash.”

  Slash licked her hand with a hot, wet tongue the size of a dish towel. She jerked away and suppressed an automatic “Yech”. When Steve reached around her to grab the dog’s collar, she saw he was wearing a gold stud in his ear. His black T-shirt reeked of sweat and something else, an elusive scent of sweet smoke that reminded her of a certain passage in the student center at Dover. Marijuana. That was why he’d been weeding the marigolds with pruning shears.

  He dragged the dog into the trees. It whimpered— gee, boss, I was minding my own business and this crazy woman jumped out at me!

  “Thanks,” said Rebecca, and made tracks to the castle. She stood on the threshold catching her breath. A breath of fresh air would steady her nerves. Sure.

  The front door, the only door, stood open before her. A coat of arms carved in the stone above, three ships, was the arms of Danzig Willie of Craigievar. Somehow she was surprised John Forbes hadn’t had his own arms carved there, three locomotives, maybe, on a field of stock certificates. Above the coat of arms, at the base of the turrets, the small gargoyles concealing the shot holes leered down at her. The holes themselves had been filled
with glass, so that each bizarre creature seemed to be holding in its mouth a diamond chip like that in her late, unlamented engagement ring.

  Odd how she wasn’t cold anymore. Nothing like fear to get the circulation going. Even if the fear was only partly based in reality. For years she’d tried to deny her imagination— perception hurt. But all it took was a spooky old house and her fancies returned to haunt her. No pun intended, she assured herself.

  Her thoughts cycled into their usual rhythm. All right then. Time to start earning her keep. With a wry smile Rebecca walked back into Dun Iain.

  Chapter Five

  Rebecca paused inside the door to inhale the already familiar must and dust scent of the castle. Compared with the reek of mold behind the tomb the odor was not unpleasant at all. The enclosing walls seemed snug and almost peaceful. Dun Iain, she decided, had its moments of Alice in Wonderland, but a version that had been annotated by Edgar Allan Poe.

  Dorothy came out of the kitchen door, coat buttoned, head swathed in a scarf, handbag securely under her arm. “Are you all right?”

  What do I look like? Rebecca wondered, and smoothed her hair. “That humongous dog of Steve’s startled me. I’m not a dog person, I’m afraid.”

  “That dog was the cutest little pup you’ve ever seen. Skippy, Steve called it then. That’s before he dropped out of school and started hanging out with those punkies and their loud music— if you can call it music. The company you keep tells a lot about you, you know.”

  Ray, Rebecca thought. Dover’s all-star couch potato. “I know.”

  “I keep telling Steve that animal will end up in the pound,” Dorothy persisted. “He lets it run loose and it tears open garbage sacks waiting on the curb. But kids! You try to help them and their ears fold up on you.”

  “Steve’s mother,” said Rebecca, leaping into Dorothy’s inhalation, “must be very patient to put up with the dog.”

  “Oh, she ran off with an auto parts salesman from Cleveland six or seven years ago. Right after Chuck died— my husband, that is. Went into the hospital for gallbladder surgery and the next thing you know, pffft!”

  Rebecca’s head swam. “Steve’s mother’s gallbladder… ?”

  “No, no, my husband. Would’ve done better to have lived with the gallstones.” The lines in Dorothy’s face deepened, her expression settling like a house on uncertain foundations.

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. And after an awkward pause, “Steve has no mother. I see.” The two women briefly met on common ground.

  Dorothy’s expression lightened from grim back to merely dissatisfied. “Have to run. I promised my son Chuck I’d help them get settled in their new house. Just between us, Margie’s a dear, but no housekeeper. I hope she’ll improve now they’ve got the nicest new place in the development out toward Dayton. Savoy of Nob Hill Ranch. Real brick veneer fireplace in the family room.” She swept the stone walls, the huge wooden door, the queen’s effigy, with a withering glance. “This place makes you appreciate a real house.”

  “Yes, it does,” replied Rebecca, but she meant the opposite. She’d grown up in a series of tract houses and apartments so similar she couldn’t remember which was in Denver and which in Atlanta. Dun Iain had character— if maybe a little too much character.

  “I told Dr. Campbell about the tuna casserole I left you for dinner.”

  “Why thank you. I didn’t realize your duties included cooking.”

  “They don’t, but I thought you might be too busy to eat properly.” Her glance started at the crown of Rebecca’s head, traced a path to her toes, and moved back up. “Some women believe those fashion magazines with the models who look like they’ll blow away in a strong wind.”

  “I never read fashion magazines,” Rebecca replied, and added to herself, I’m not that far gone. She found her keys in the pocket of her jeans but had no memory of having put them there. That was Eric’s blinding effect. “Actually I won’t be here tonight. I’m going out to dinner with Mr. Adler.”

  “Oh?” Dorothy’s pale, drained eyes lit with a conspiratorial smile. “He’d be a great catch, wouldn’t he? Such manners. The kids today think manners are old-fashioned— they just honk their horns at each other. Good luck to you. Just remember not to act too smart. Men like their women decorative.”

  Rebecca knew for a fact that she and Dorothy were from different planets. She picked up her typewriter. “Thank you,” she said with finality.

  “See you next week.” Dorothy at last left.

  It took Rebecca a moment to remember that today was Friday. She set the typewriter down again, went into the kitchen, and washed her hands.

  That casserole had better go into the refrigerator; already there were punctures along the rim of the foil, made, most likely, by cat incisors. In the refrigerator Rebecca found additional odds and ends of food provided by Dorothy’s culinary altruism. She took enough pressed ham for a quick sandwich and completed her lunch with vile instant coffee and a stale Oreo she found in the pantry. One of the wooden shelves, she noted, was rickety.

  Judging by the dishes in the sink, Michael had been in here calmly eating crackers, cheese, and tea while she’d been outside running an emotional gauntlet from elation to terror. Fine. She didn’t need a champion.

  Out of habit she started to wash Michael’s dishes, too, then caught herself and washed only her own. She hauled her typewriter upstairs. Again the cloying reek of lavender hung on the air of her room. She looked again for an air freshener, still couldn’t find one, and opened the window.

  Michael was in the Hall, down on his knees scrounging in a sideboard. Bits of crystal and cutlery were scattered on the floor around him. At her step he said to the depths of the cabinet, “Good of you to come back.”

  If he was implying she hadn’t been working, she’d concede the point. By way of explanation she asked, “Have you looked at that bizarre mausoleum/ dovecote combination out there?”

  “Technically it’s only a tomb, not posh enough for a mausoleum. Only a miser like Forbes would’ve thought of addin’ a doocot. Like feastin’ on his own dead.” Michael sat back on his heels and inspected a decanter.

  “Yeah.” Even here in the brightly lit Hall Rebecca’s nape crawled.

  “Gave me a cold grue.” He shivered, suiting action to word. “So austere. When I go I want to be planted in Tomnahurich, the firth gleamin’ beyond the yew trees and fairies pipin’ beneath the sod.”

  “The big cemetery in Inverness built on a fairy mound? That’s an awfully romantic image for a skeptic like you.” Caught him, but his quick glance and dismissive gesture wouldn’t admit it. He didn’t have to. It was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one affected by the atmosphere of the tomb. She eyed the stack of black notebooks on the table. “Do you have any preference where I start?”

  Michael stood up, dusted his hands, and started to stack his booty on the table. “I did the kitchen, the lobby, and the sittin’ room when I first got here. No much there. Been spendin’ most of my time here. Startin’ at the bottom and workin’ up seems as good a plan as any. There’s no order to this rat’s nest.”

  “I noticed. What about the store— er, lumber room?” She wondered if he was dragging matters out just to irritate Eric, or if he was more meticulous in his working habits than in keeping his room tidy.

  “Take more than one pair of hands to fetch and carry around that lot. I was thinkin’ of savin’ it for last.”

  Rebecca wouldn’t have minded saving the cold, quiet upper room for last, but it wouldn’t seem so daunting after she’d grown used to the place. “Because the lumber room might have the most valuable things?”

  “No.” He tossed a yellowed linen tablecloth onto a paper and twine package that might have contained anything from a Tupperware canister to the Holy Grail. “I doot it has the least value. Wouldn’t John have put his dearest things out where he could show them off?”

  “But you said this morning he probably didn’t know what he had.”


  “We’ll never ken what he had if we dinna look at it!” he retorted, a little louder than was necessary. Rebecca felt a prickle of shame; she’d been baiting him. Odd, she never acted like this normally, she was always Miss Meek and Mild, the harmless drudge. With a sudden laugh that made Michael’s brows knit, nonplussed, she chose a notebook labeled “Prophet’s Chamber” and asked, “There?”

  “Be my guest,” he said, bowing her out the door.

  In a chair in the study Rebecca found Dun Iain’s presiding genius, Darnley, curled up in the feline version of the fetal position. He acknowledged her entrance with his usual salute, a blink of the eyes and a stiffening of the whiskers. She paused a moment to stroke his sleek, warm head. Give me, she thought, an animal smaller than a bread box.

  Just inside the door to the prophet’s chamber were two snuffboxes and a miniature portrait of a Tudor lady. Hilliard? Rebecca flipped open the notebook. Hilliard it was. That was a valuable piece the museum would want. She found a pencil on the desk and checked it off.

  A faint gurgling and rumbling must be water pipes. Above the desk a brown stain spread like a Rorschach blot across the plain plaster ceiling. A pipe had leaked, or else someone had let the tub in what was now her bathroom overflow. Rebecca found a sheet of paper and made a list of repairs: shelf in pantry, stain on ceiling.

  The armchair in front of the desk was a dilapidated affair of heavy varnished wood, the kind of chair Rebecca associated with bank presidents in prewar movies. It was not only not an antique, it probably wouldn’t even make a decent pile of firewood. She perched on its edge, opened the roll top of the desk, and winced. The jumbled contents threatened to spew into her lap. Sparring with Michael and flirting with Eric were all well and good, but now it was time to prove herself. She dug in.

  Three hours later she sat back with a sigh. She had scrounged through the desk and the filing cabinets, searched the walls and the floors, and uncovered two other alcoves. No, Michael wasn’t dragging the inventory out just to irritate Eric. He was being remarkably efficient. It would take at least a forty-hour week just to catalog the papers in this room, let alone decide what was valuable, what was useful, and what could be used to wrap the garbage. And she had envisioned herself spending quiet evenings typing away at her dissertation. As usual, reality fell far short of fantasy.