The Spirit of Grace

by Terry Lynn Thomas

  “Wait here.” She went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. After a few seconds she opened it again, thrusting the pearls at me. Her eyes never met mine.

  “Thanks.”

  Grace didn’t hear me. She had already slammed the door.

  A line had been drawn between Grace and me. She was my father’s wife and, as such, was the mistress of Bennett House. When I defended Anca and demanded my pearls, I had crossed that line. I hoped Anca wouldn’t be the one to suffer the consequences.

  Back in my room, Anca left my mended garments on the bed. I assumed she had gone downstairs to see to--one could only hope--closing the curtains and preparing dinner. I dressed myself, managing as best I could with one hand, trying to make my shaggy hair look presentable and wishing for some new make-up. I opened my last pair of silk stockings, grateful once again that Anca had hidden them away from Grace. I somehow managed to pin my hair up, and although it looked passable from the front, I had no idea what the back looked like and hoped that the hairpins I had used to hold the style in place weren’t sticking out randomly. I pinched my cheeks to give myself some color and headed downstairs.

  ***

  The blackout curtains were pulled. The ferns that graced the fireplace when I first arrived had been removed. Now a fire burned brightly, but the room was still cold. From now until May, long sleeves would be required in Bennett House. One could get warm by staying near the fire, but the rooms were too big, the ceilings too high in the old house for the fire to heat the rooms thoroughly. On the drinks trolley, an open bottle of champagne sat on ice. I poured myself a glass and walked over to the fire.

  “You look absolutely fabulous, darling,” Grace said as she glided over to me and planted a kiss on my cheek. She had on the blue dress again, but she hadn’t bathed, which surprised me. Her hair was dirty, its greasy roots noticeable because of the tight chignon in which she wore it.

  As she came over with the champagne bottle, she said, “Here, let me top off your glass.” I smelled booze on her breath. It seemed as though my darling stepmother had started a little early.

  I wanted to ask her what she had been doing for the past hour, for she hadn’t been taking pains with her appearance. I was suspicious of her sudden change in attitude and had every intention of keeping my distance. Zeke came in looking gorgeous, despite the cuts and bruises on his face. He smiled at both of us as he picked up the champagne bottle, but decided against it, instead opting for a dollop of single-malt in one of the Waterford highball glasses that had been in the Bennett family for over a century. The crystal glass looked right in his hands. He swirled the glass a couple of times, but did not drink. He turned around and saw me standing before the fire.

  I hoped Grace wouldn’t notice the way Zeke and I looked at each other. No such luck. She sat curled up on the settee in the corner, sipped her drink, and watched us with a smug look on her face.

  Zeke walked over to the sofa and we sat down next to each other.

  “How do you like working for my father?” I asked.

  “We haven’t done much actual writing yet. We spend a lot of time discussing plot lines and characters, and I make some trips to the post office,” he said. “Most of my time is spent scheduling book signings and speaking engagements. I’ve never had this sort of job before.”

  “How on earth did you manage to get hired?” Grace piped in. “I thought Jack would be more discerning than that.”

  “I’m afraid he might’ve felt sorry for me,” Zeke said.

  The front door opened and slammed shut. Footsteps clicked on the wooden floor. Gran burst into the room, her face red with fury. She didn’t speak. She marched to the drinks trolley, poured herself a scotch, drank it in one go, and poured another. Zeke, Grace, and I stared at her in silence.

  I had never seen her take more than a sip or two of champagne. She took her drink back to the couch and sat down.

  I moved next to her and took her hand in mine. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Sarah Jane.” She shook my hand away. “Everything will be fine. I just need to speak to your father.” She stood up.

  “Jack’s not here, Patricia. He had a last minute speaking engagement in Atherton at some women’s club. Can I help you?” Grace asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Gran snapped. She turned her back on Grace and lowered her voice when she spoke to me. “Sarah, send him to me when he gets home. It is imperative that I speak to him immediately. He must come to my house tonight.”

  I had no idea why Gran would entrust me, rather than Grace, with such a message. But I agreed to relay it.

  “I must go. Sarah, don’t forget. It’s important.”

  “I won’t. Are you not staying for dinner?”

  “I’ve no appetite.” She finished her scotch, set her drink down, and left the room without saying goodbye to anyone.

  After she was gone, Grace stood up and left the room without a word.

  “That was awkward.” Zeke poured himself another drink. He came over with the champagne and poured some in my glass.

  Anca came in to say that dinner was ready, and since Grace had gone up to her room and my father wasn’t home, we dispensed with the formality of Anca serving at table, opting instead to eat in the kitchen. Before we ate, I slipped into my father’s office and left him a note about Gran’s earlier visit and her urgent need to see him.

  We served ourselves and feasted on vegetable soufflé and tomato soup, along with crusty bread and fresh butter from the Bennett Cove dairy, all by the light of an oil lamp.

  Anca regaled us with stories of her family in Romania. Her brother--so she claimed--was the finest horse trainer in the world. “My brother, he could get a horse to do anything. He even taught one how to pick pockets.”

  Her sister apparently was a fine musician and could play the fiddle better than any man. She told us about her family’s gypsy lifestyle, traveling from place to place in their vardo--what we would call a covered wagon--and setting up their encampment along the countryside.

  After we finished dinner and Anca started clearing the plates, Zeke excused himself, saying that he needed to take care of a few things for my father.

  “He is falling in love with you.” Anca washed the dishes while I finished clearing the table.

  My heart beat faster. I couldn’t bring myself to meet Anca’s eyes.

  “But that is a good thing, no? You have feelings, too.”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  Anca set the dish towel she was using down on the counter and came over to me. She put her hands on my shoulders, and looked at me, forcing me to meet her eyes. “You are a beautiful, intelligent woman. You deserve a loving husband just as much as anyone else.”

  “But what about my past? Should I tell him that I may have--”

  “No. You did not push your mother down those stairs.” Anca made the sign of the cross over her heart. “You get to know this man, when you trust him, you share your truth. If he is good, your past won’t matter.” Anca nodded, picked up the dish and said with finality, “He will love you for who you are.”

  I wish I had her confidence.

  Our kitchen was a spacious room, designed for feeding and entertaining large parties. Off the kitchen was a long corridor which led to Anca’s room, the washing machine, and the servant’s staircase. The whole area was shrouded in shadow, the only light coming from the utilitarian overhead bulb, which was useless now that the storm had taken out the power. A long row of hooks graced the walls, holding the bulk of our raingear, warm coats, and hats. Below the hooks, a row of ancient Wellingtons in all sizes stood lined up, along with Anca’s shopping bags and the linen basket. Grace’s camera bag sat closest to the staircase.

  I had just put the silver away and was in the process of laying the used dish towels near the stove so they could dry overnight, when I saw Zeke in the back corridor. Something stopped me from speaking to him or asking what he was d
oing back here. He must have gone upstairs and come back down again on the servant’s staircase, which no one ever used except Anca and me.

  I ducked behind a huge parka and watched as Zeke bent over Grace’s camera bag, unzipped it, and slipped out a black canister of film, all in one quick fluid motion. After he did that, he took another canister of film out of his pocket and slipped that into the camera bag in place of the film he had taken. He didn’t see me standing in the shadows spying on him. He headed back up the stairs, his footsteps quiet as passing time.

  I walked back into the foyer and up the main staircase to my own room. Once inside, I locked the door behind me. I changed out of the black dress, fumbling with one hand. The image of Zeke switching the film in Grace’s camera bag ran over and over in my head. I tried to convince myself that he hadn’t been doing anything harmful. Maybe he just needed to borrow some film. But I knew what I had seen. I knew what I had heard this afternoon--Zeke speaking flawless German on the telephone.

  The magic I had felt earlier, the possibility of a future with him had been clouded now. Our future together wouldn’t be a happy one. How could it be? I had fallen in love with a spy.

  Chapter 7

  The fire in my bedroom diminished during dinner, leaving my room as frigid as if there were no fire at all. I did nothing to warm it. Instead, I opened the window, letting the bracing sea air flood the room. Under cover of darkness, I changed into the thick corduroy trousers that I used for gardening. I put on a fisherman’s sweater with a hood over a wool turtleneck. Then, so bundled, I lay down on the bed and settled in to wait. My father came home, and soon the bedroom doors near mine opened and shut for the night as Zeke, Grace, and, finally, my father readied for bed. I figured he had found the note I left him; whether or not he contacted Gran tonight was his business.

  The house fell silent. Outside the owls hooted. Bennett House slept. I lay on my bed trying to stay awake.

  I awoke with a start to the sound of the deadbolt unlatching and the front door opening with a familiar creak of the ancient hinges. I got out of bed and stood on the chair by my window, craning my neck just in time to see a figure step out the door into the front yard. Whoever it was had on dark trousers, a long dark coat, and a hat pulled low over his face, a disguise which would allow them to move about unseen in the cover of darkness. I watched as the figure headed to the mountain trail. I grabbed the gloves from my nightstand, hurried down the servant’s staircase, and let myself out the kitchen door into the darkness of night. Using the high bushes near the house for cover, I followed the figure as he slipped into the dense woods at the base of the mountain.

  We trekked along the trails that wove up the mountainside. Whoever I followed moved quickly, with knowledge of these trails that impressed, forcing me to work hard to stay out of sight. My breathing became labored, but I remained undetected as I followed the person up the narrow trail onto the dirt road.

  When the distant hum of an approaching car broke the still night, the person who I followed moved into the shadows. The car approached. Only a fool would drive at night without headlights on this dangerous road. One false move and the car would tumble hundreds of feet down the face of rocky cliffs into the ocean below. I peered out from the bushes and saw a dark, nondescript car, a Chevy or a Studebaker--I couldn’t tell in the darkness--approaching at a slow crawl. The car came to a stop and flashed its headlights twice before it turned them off again. The person I had followed--I had to face the fact that, in all likelihood, I followed Zeke--stepped out of the shadows and got into the passenger seat. Keeping the headlights off, the car pulled onto the narrow dirt shoulder, turned around, and drove away. I could not follow the car on foot, so I turned back and took the road home, no longer worried about staying out of sight, no closer to the truth about Zeke than I had been earlier.

  By the time I arrived back at Bennett House, my hands and feet were numb with cold. I slipped in through the front door, surprised to see firelight come from the library.

  My father was still awake. He sat in his winged chair before the blaze, holding a picture of my dead mother in his lap. He didn’t hear me come in and was oblivious to my presence as I stood watching him from the doorjamb. I had been so preoccupied with my own problems I hadn’t noticed the gray hair that used to be at his temples had now taken root everywhere.

  His hands, which held a picture of my mother, had noticeable age spots. They had become the hands of a man at the tail end of middle age.

  I coughed so he would know I was there, and by the time I had stepped into the room, the picture of my dead mother had been tucked out of sight.

  “What are you doing up so late?” he asked.

  I pulled the ottoman that rested beside the fireplace up close to his chair and sat down. “I need to talk to you.” I explained how I had followed the masked figure out the front door and about the rendezvous with the car. “He got in and drove away.”

  He stared at his glass and swirled the amber liquid that glistened in the firelight. “Do you think it was Zeke?”

  I nodded, fearing that the simple act of uttering the words would open the floodgate that held my emotions at bay. My father set his drink down on the table and stood. He walked over to the fire and held his hands out for its warmth.

  “What are we going to do?” The tears I had almost shed were gone now, pulled in and galvanized into a hard lump in the back of my throat.

  “We are not going to do anything.” He turned around to face me. “I’m going to call Colonel Matthews tomorrow. If someone in this household is a spy, they must be stopped.” My father refilled his glass from the crystal decanter. “I know I don’t do a very good job of showing it, but I’m glad you’re home, Sarah. I’m hopeful that you will remember what happened the night your mother died, if only so you can have some peace in your life.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll do anything to help you, Sarah. You know that, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “You got my note? Gran was quite anxious to speak to you.”

  “She’s fine now. We sorted everything out.”

  “I’m going up to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.” I stood up, squeezed my father’s shoulder, and headed out of the room

  It wasn’t until I had closed my bedroom window, pulled the curtains, and stoked the fire that exhaustion set in. I changed into my warm flannel pajamas and got under the covers, but alas, sleep didn’t come.

  Zeke plagued my thoughts and kept me awake. I tossed and turned until the covers were knotted around my ankles. I got up, straightened the bed, and tried once again to fall asleep.

  I turned on my side, couldn’t get comfortable, so I flipped to my other side and tried putting an extra pillow between my knees. My mind raced. I would start to fall asleep, until images of Zeke with a noose around his neck floated through my head.

  I dozed off, only to be jolted awake by loud shouting. The tortured cries came from down the hall.

  I got up and pulled my robe on, tying the sash around my waist as I headed toward the source of the screaming. My father’s bedroom door opened as I hurried past it, and he joined me in the hall, his wool bathrobe hanging loose and unbelted over his street clothes.

  “What in God’s name is that racket?” We stopped outside of Zeke’s room. My father pounded the wooden door with his fist. “Zeke, open up. What’s wrong, man?” He pounded on the door again.

  The screams had morphed into groans, then into a pathetic whimpering before it stopped altogether. The hallway was silent for a moment. My father and I looked at each other, waiting to see if the nightmares had ceased. They hadn’t. The whimpering started again, followed by shouting, this time louder than before.

  “William,” Zeke screamed.

  “Do something.”

  “Move away from the door.”

  I stepped out of his way. In a surprising show of strength, he stepped back and charged the door with all his might. The heavy door didn’t budge. The screaming on the
other side of it became louder. Fully awake now, my father, rubbing his shoulder, reached down into a holster that he had hidden under the leg of his trousers. He pulled out a gun.

  He didn’t have to tell me to cover my ears. I moved far back and stuck my fingers in them. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s jammed.” He took the bullets out and reloaded. He aimed and fired once again. This time the bullet discharged and the lock shattered. The shouting had stopped. The only sound was the door as it swung open on squeaky hinges. We entered Zeke’s room. My father struck a match and lit the oil lamp that sat atop the old rosewood dresser. The door to Zeke’s wardrobe was open, revealing three suits, a camel hair overcoat, two fedoras, and three pairs of shoes, all neatly arranged. The right side had rows for shirts and collar stays.

  There was no sign of the dark clothing that he had worn earlier, if indeed it was Zeke I had seen having a rendezvous in the middle of the night.

  He lay on his bed on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest. His covers lay on the floor in a tangled mess. His skin glistened with sweat. His eyes were open, but they were glassy with fever. He whimpered, oblivious to our presence.

  My father went over to the bed. I went after him, pushed him aside, and sat down on the bed next to Zeke.

  I reached out and placed my hand on his shoulder. His skin was hot with fever, slick with sweat.

  “No,” he cried out, cowering at my touch.

  “Zeke, it’s me, Sarah.” I didn’t take my hand away.

  He closed his eyes and seemed to slip into unconsciousness. I sensed Anca standing in the doorway.

  “Tea and brandy, please, Anca,” my father ordered.

  She made the motion of the cross, offering Zeke a silent blessing before she left us.

  I rubbed his shoulder. “Zeke?”

  His breathing, which had been ragged and sharp, slowed a bit. He shook his head from side to side, as if to clear the thoughts that haunted him. When he opened his eyes, they were filled with tears.