But Maria shook her head again and laughed. She stood up abruptly. "Time to tear the clable -- clear the table," she corrected with a puzzled frown. And then she laughed again, nervously this time, as if she no longer knew or trusted herself She reached for her wineglass but knocked it down instead, sending burgundy flying across the lace tablecloth and into Emily's lap. "Oh, no!" Maria cried, horrified. "Your silk blouse!"
"Not silk at all," Emily said reassuringly. "Plain old wash-and-wear."
"Let me wash it for you, then," Maria begged.
Emily demurred, but Maria was so distressed that finally she gave in. Maria went off to find her something to wear, and Mrs. Gibbs murmured, "Poor child. I don't think she's used to spirits."
"I wonder," Emily said dryly.
Her own mind had become a little dulled by wine, but not enough to stop an idea from bubbling up in the last few minutes. She must stay the night. It was the only way to look at the three drawers in the slant top desk. Frank Salva was away, and Maria obviously would sleep soundly after the wine. There were very few guests, the third-floor rooms were empty. The coast was as clear as it was going to get.
It would, of course, be simpler to come right out and ask Maria for permission to rummage through the desk. But whenever Emily brought up either the Talbots or the tower that afternoon, Maria had turned her resolutely aside. The subjects were off limits. Emily wanted to know why.
By the time Maria returned, Emily and Mrs. Gibbs had cleared the table and were loading the dishwasher. Maria handed Emily a crisp, linen blouse much finer than the one she'd stained and directed Emily to a bedroom which lay just beyond the receiving room.
The circular layout of the ground floor really was ideal for an owner-occupied bed and breakfast, Emily decided. She made her way to what was once a music or morning room, as exquisitely fitted out as every other room downstairs. Emily couldn't help wondering how long it would be before Frank nailed drywall over the tapestried paneling. After changing, she hurried out, then noticed a carpenter's wooden toolbox in the hall with a small flashlight tucked neatly between the hammer and the cordless drill. She picked up the minilight and slipped it in the pocket of her mid-length skirt.
Emily's blouse and the wine-stained tablecloth were soon sloshing side by side in the front-loading washer, exchanging tales of woe. Mrs. Gibbs poured coffee, and Maria set out a tray of petits fours. The last course took place in the drawing room, where the women perched gingerly on horsehair-cushioned chairs. "We have a small sitting room off our bedroom, which we prefer," Maria admitted. "Frank finds this room gloomy. Even our guests seem to avoid it."
"It is a somber room," Mrs. Gibbs agreed. "But then the Victorians weren't exactly party animals," she added.
Emily was thinking about the effect a room like this would have on a courtship. "I wonder," she mused, "if Hessiah Talbot was ever kissed here."
It was a thought best left unspoken. Maria dropped her cup on its saucer with a crash and began to choke. It was a ghastly sound; her eyes were wide as she leaped up from the love seat and began to flail ineffectually at her chest. Emily was at her side instantly, prepared to perform the Heimlich maneuver, when Maria suddenly waved her away, swallowed hard once or twice, and took a sip of coffee. She sat back down, and so did Emily.
Mrs. Gibbs said mildly, "Went down the wrong pipe, I expect." And that was that.
But the incident added to Emily's sense that Maria was connected to the Talbots in some way other than shared real estate. She wondered why the outspoken Mrs. Gibbs hadn't brought up Hessiah Talbot once during dinner. Perhaps she'd given up on the subject long ago. And now the evening was clearly winding down and any opportunity fading.
"Dear me," Mrs. Gibbs said after a few minutes, "I should be running along before the sun goes down. I don't like to drive after dark. Thank heavens for June twilights."
Emily rolled out her plan. "As for me, I've had altogether too much wine to drive in the light or dark. I think I'll book a room here for the night."
"Here?" Maria repeated, stunned. "But . . . have you packed anything?"
"Nope," Emily answered cheerfully. "I'll have to wing it."
"Not me, thank you," said Mrs. Gibbs. "I need my Serta. Besides, I'm sober as a judge. The problem with you two," she added with a wink and a pinch of her ample waist, "is you don't have the weight to offset the wine."
Mrs. Gibbs packed up her Crockpot and bade them both good night. "You will let me know how your little article turns out, won't you?" she asked Emily with a deliberately bland look. She'd guessed that Emily was up to something; obviously she was a very shrewd old lady.
That left only Emily and Maria.
Emily said no to another cup of coffee, protesting that she was keeping Maria from her duties. Maria replied that she had no duties, and Emily suspected she wasn't just being polite; the place really did seem to run itself. She wondered whether Maria had any domestic help. Somehow she felt sure she did.
"It really is a grand old house," Emily said. She decided to drag up the Talbots one last time. "Have you ever been visited by descendants of John Talbot? You know, great-great-grandchildren passing through on their way to Disney World, that sort of thing?"
"There are no direct descendants," Maria said sharply. "None." She let out a little gasp, as though she'd been indiscreet again. "That's what I've heard anyway. No ... I'm sure someone would have said."
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," Emily said carefully. "It's always sad when a line dies out." She tried to chat away the moment. "There's no danger of that happening in my family. I have four brothers -- four Bowditches -- and every one of them is married with children." She sighed heavily. "And I suppose I will be the spinster Bowditch."
It was the most irrelevant little confession; Emily had no idea why she'd made it. It had to be the wine.
"I don't think there's anything wrong with never having married," Maria admitted in her sad, dreamy voice. "Nothing at all."
A thought occurred to Emily. So that's where the faraway comes from. She's unhappy with dear old Frank. She wondered just how old Frank was. A young and beautiful wife, a steady turnover of male visitors, and a plumber-husband working all the time—it didn't look promising.
Still, it was none of Emily's business. She stood up and said, "Is there any chance that you sell toothbrush kits from that charming reception desk?"
"I do, but not to you," Maria said with a pretty wave of dismissal. "Come, and I'll give you one as well as your key. You'll want to freshen up. Room six is very quiet."
"Can I be on the third floor, above an empty room instead?" Emily asked quickly. "I have an exercise routine in the morning. Nothing that your plaster can't handle, but I'd hate to disturb anyone."
Maria started to say something, then stopped. "If you prefer," she said at last.
They parted with polite phrases, and Emily made her way up the elegant staircase to the inelegant third floor. The finished half was neatly separated by a sheet of plastic from the unfinished gutted part that ended in the new door to the tower. Emily went to Room 8 and waited. Sometime past midnight, when the light on the staircase was dimmed and the flow of distant traffic muted, she crept out of her bed and tiptoed behind the sheet of plastic that separated the world of the Salvas from that of the Talbots.
At the end of the hall she took hold of the knob of the tower-room door, turned, and pulled. The door wouldn't open. Damn! she thought. Was there a key? She shined the flashlight on the right stile: no lock. But she discovered a barrel bolt mounted vertically at the top of the stile, with its bolt drawn down. That meant that Maria had gone back and bolted the door since the afternoon. Why? Why have a barrel bolt there in the first place? Emily slid the bolt, opened the door, and went into the tower room on tiptoe —- why, she didn't know, since she'd just determined that no one could be in any of the three tower rooms.
Emily was grateful for the full moon; it washed the top floor in pale white light. She was able to make her way without
a flashlight to the slant-top desk -- the desk that she was absolutely positive stored secrets she should know. The top drawer slid open easily. Holding the tiny flashlight between her teeth, Emily flipped through a pile of papers, then another, and quickly determined that some college kid named Kyle Edwards had used the desk for his own, a generation earlier.
Disappointed, she opened the second drawer and found more term papers and a packet of airmail letters bound by a rotted rubber band. She shined the light on the top blue tissue envelope. It was postmarked Paris, 1972. Flipping through the lot, she found them all addressed, in the same European hand, to Kyle Edwards. She held up the packet to her nose, inhaling the faded fragrance that hinted of words of love. She tossed the packet back into the drawer.
That left the bottom drawer. Heart hammering, Emily pulled it open to find ... nothing. It had been completely cleared. Yet earlier that afternoon she'd noticed that it had been partly open and stuffed full of papers and bound books or possibly journals. Bitterly disappointed, she slid the drawer back. It resisted. She pulled it open again, carefully, then reached in and back and around, searching for the hindrance. Something was caught between the drawers, and when she removed it, she saw that it was a very old photograph of a family posed in classic formation next to a pedestaled fern: father, mother, son, son, infant in mother's arms.
Emily turned the crumpled photograph over and read "July 1862." She did some quick arithmetic. In 1862 Hessiah Talbot was about a year old. Yes! Her hunch was right! The drawer must have been a treasure trove of Talbot history, and Maria had carted off the contents sometime that afternoon, because -- Emily had no idea why, but one way or another she was going to find out. What a lucky break, finding the photograph that was left behind, the photograph ...
The photograph that had one too many children in it.
Oh, hell, Emily thought, deflated. This is just some family or other from about Hessiah's time period. She stuck the photo in the voluminous pocket of her skirt and removed the drawer altogether, searching with the flashlight for more. But there was nothing. She was in the process of replacing the drawer when she realized that her eyes were smarting and that the overwhelming mustiness of the tower room had turned into another smell altogether.
The smell of smoke.
Chapter 11
Smoke! It couldn't be happening! Emily jumped to her feet, hitting her head hard on the edge of a marble tabletop. She rubbed the back of her head furiously, willing away the pain, fighting a woozy disorientation. "You have a nose for news, Emily," her mother used to say, "but not for anything else." Her mother was right, she thought, rushing for the door. How had she not smelled smoke? And where was the fire?
She grabbed the doorknob and pushed instead of pulled. Then she pulled. It didn't matter. The door was obviously bolted on the other side. Panicky now, she turned back to the room, looking for another exit. The original door stood across the room, dark and massive in the moonlight. Beyond it must be the crumbling old stairs, situated between the tower and the main house. Emily ran for the door, lifting the folds of her skirt to her mouth, filtering the thickening smoke. She groped at the doorknob, felt a giant key still in the keyhole, turned it, swung the impossibly heavy door inward. She staggered two steps toward the old hail landing. Her foot caught a wire hanger that was on the floor and sent it flying.
Into empty space. There was no hall landing, she realized with horror as she peered over the threshold. All she could see was part of a shadowy framework for a stairwell; it would be suicidal to try climbing down it in the dark. She gulped a few mouthfuls of fresh air and tried not to panic. There was no evidence anywhere yet of flames. She could scream for help, here or at the bolted door. Being caught as a snoop was the least of her problems now. She closed the heavy door and made a sprint across the room; she wanted to be at a viable exit.
But the smoke was heavier now, obscuring visibility, making breathing impossible. Emily swung open the first casement window she found and drew in enormous gulps of clean night air. She should cry for help, rouse the neighborhood. But the thought was repugnant to her.
The moon was absolutely brilliant. She couldn't imagine why there wasn't a hook and ladder already on the side lawn. The lack of one infuriated her and at the same time jogged her memory: Mrs. Gibbs had said that the phobic John Talbot had ordered a kind of fire escape cut into the granite walls of the tower. And Emily could see, leading from the casement window to her left, a series of steps carved into the tower, each no more than half a foot wide, zigzagging to ground level.
Without hesitating she ran to the exit window and climbed out onto the sill. Without looking down -- if she did that, she would faint from fear -- she began backing down the steps of the tower, clinging to the rusted iron handholds that were set every couple of feet in the granite wall, picking her way step by step down the three-story vertical drop. When she was fifteen feet from the ground, she tripped on the hem of her skirt, and the handhold she grabbed gave way completely, making her lose her balance and go flying off the side of the tower like a cat through an unscreened window. She landed on a hedge of boxwood, breaking a few branches, and tumbled onto the lawn more or less in one piece.
God in heaven was the only thought that filled her mind.
But two seconds later she was racing for the front doors, which were already thrown open, and running up to warn Maria, who gave every indication that a fire was in progress. The innkeeper was hurrying the guests out of the house in a surprisingly calm way. When she saw Emily she did a violent double take.
"I banged on your door and no one answered," she managed to say amid the cries and shouts and what's-going-on's of her guests. She turned back to the confusion and counted heads. "That's everyone, then. Everybody out now. Please!"
Trucks were arriving, their sirens wailing, their red lights slashing the length of the entry hall. Emily never got a chance to respond to Maria's challenge; she was gathered up with the rest of the group and herded out by a fire fighter approximately twice her size. They all huddled on the lawn, clinging to themselves not so much with cold as with anxiety, and watched black-slickered men move through the house and grounds with purposeful efficiency.
Maria joined them in a little while and was instantly set upon by her guests while Emily hung back. Maria murmured a few things that Emily couldn't hear, but she had the sense that she was being discussed as the Obvious Suspect. Which was of course crazy. If anything, it was Maria who had some explaining to do.
Why couldn't I get out through the new door?
The closeness of the call began to sink in. She could have died of smoke inhalation. Who would have heard her calls for help? After all, she and Maria hadn't heard the telephone ringing when they were in the tower, nor had they been able to hear Mrs. Gibbs at the front door. Of course, there were the neighbors. Maybe they would have got to her in time; maybe they wouldn't.
Emily walked a little way apart and stood on a grassy knoll that overlooked the orderly chaos taking place alongside the tower. The fire truck was in position, its turntable aligned, its hydraulic lifters sending the ladder skyward. A tiny burst of flame from the tower drew a cry from the crowd on the street and sent a shudder through Emily.
"What is going on?" she whispered to herself.
"Ye're a damn fool, that's what."
She turned to see the ghost standing between her and a lilac tree. "Fergus!" She was incredibly relieved to see him.
But Fergus was blistering with anger. "How could ye be so stupid, marching into a house of iniquity once I said not to?"
"You didn't tell me not to," she said, taken aback by his fury. "You only said you couldn't. I assumed you were barred from entering by some kind of ghost regulations. Or that -- well, never mind."
"Jee-sus, woman, that ain't a tearoom ye went into. The house is empowered."
"To do what?" she asked without thinking.
He stood there, dark and shadowy, his anger dissipating into an ominous stillness. "I don'
t know. I only know that there is a power there. I can sense it."
She shuddered again. "Don't, Fergus. You're frightening me."
His anger erupted anew. "I'd like to shake ye till yer teeth rattle! Don't ye understand? Ye could have been killed. I'm trying to frighten ye, goddammit!"
"Excellent work, in that case," she said, plunging her hands in her pockets and drawing her arms close to her sides for warmth. "Naturally I know why you're concerned," she added with sullen nonchalance. She was watching the fire fighters go through their paces: Two were inside at windows, and a third was on the ladder, snaking a hose through to one of them. he saw no flames, only small curls of smoke billowing from the open casements. "You're concerned that I won't be around to figure out who killed Hessiah," she said to Fergus. "Because where would that leave you -- literally?"
There was an iron garden bench nearby. Emily sat down wearily on it, idly fingering the crumpled photograph still in the pocket of her skirt. Fergus came and took a place beside her; his silence spoke volumes. She knew she shouldn't care whether or why he cared, but she did.
In the pale cast of moonlight he looked truly spectral, as did every other player in the drama that was playing itself out on the stage below them. She stared at the pallor of her own arms in the silver light and thought, What difference is there between us that a speck of time won't settle? She felt very alone, and very mortal.
"Fergus ... I think Maria Salva tried to kill me," she said quietly.
"Ye couldn't get out of the room, I take it."
She shook her head. "If she didn't lock me in, I don't know who did. I suppose it's possible that when I rattled the door in my panic, the bolt on the other side dropped down into place. But I didn't start the fire. It seems too coincidental."
"She may be an instrument. Or she may have had nothing to do with it. The house is empowered," he repeated.
"I won't ask to do what, anymore," Emily said with a short laugh. "I don't want to know." She drew in a deep, deep breath and exhaled, clearing her lungs once and for all, and then forced herself to stand up. "I guess I'll thank my hostess for her hospitality and head home after all. Is there anything," she asked dryly, "you'd like to see while we're still attached to each other in Newarth?"
Emily's Ghost Page 13
