“Jewels?” Hilda echoed uncertainly, her eyes curious. But the smile did not leave her face. She was like a doll in a shop window.
“Knock it off,” Guy Warmsby said in a weary, suddenly defeated voice. “Thanks, Hilda. We’ll catch Mr. Carteret later. Come on, Peter. Let’s go dig up a drink.”
“Why, for heaven’s sakes? Just as Hilda and I were getting on so famously—weren’t we, Hilda?”
“Yes, Mr. Cowles,” Hilda giggled. “You talk so sweet. Yet so funny. You should write books, Mr. Cowles. Not only poems. You are fine with words. I can tell.”
“Yes, indeed,” Peter Cowles snapped churlishly. “You can tell.” With that, and a sudden forlorn flicker of despair in his smile, he quit the vicinity of the desk, waving a gallant farewell to Hilda, who giggled again, and joined Guy Warmsby on his way to the main room. Like all writers, even a Peter Cowles knew the depths and limits of his own talents. He would never be able to write a book, and Hilda’s well-meaning remark had cut into him like a dagger.
“Guy,” he intoned solemnly, covering up again as usual, “you sure do know how to hurt a guy.”
“Maybe; maybe not,” said Guy Warmsby with a very curious glint in his dark brown eyes. “But then again, maybe not half so much as someone else around here might. And will.”
Peter Cowles blinked.
On that enigmatic note, both men sauntered into the main room.
The logs in the hearth crackled merrily, ablaze with flame.
Craghold House was a nice place for one to be.
Even if one did not want to live there.
Learns A Lesson
“Tell me about yourself, Kathy. And Guy. Please. I want to know. And I don’t want to talk about that terrible tree anymore. I’d like to forget it ever happened.”
“Oh, Anne. About myself and Guy—does it show as much as all that? I thought I was very clever. And bright. And stylishly brittle. What fools we female mortals be!”
“I’m sorry. It is obvious. Very obvious. And I like you. Very much. I wouldn’t want to be the cause of any more trouble.”
“You’re a fool, Miss Boston. You know that, don’t you? The dirty rules insist that you should never talk to the other woman about a man you might be setting your own cap for.”
“I came here for a vacation. Period. Not a man, I assure you—”
“Baby! You too? Even you. What was the scoundrel’s name?”
“George. George Twemble. And it wasn’t that he was a scoundrel so much as that he just wanted to—oh! You are a witch, Katharine Cowles. I never intended to talk to anyone about George. Not ever! It makes me so ashamed of myself!”
Both women laughed, caught up in the sudden and intimate rapport of being alone together in a room in a hotel in the dead of Fall, of being intimate and sharing secrets. It was as if the near tragedy at the Lake had brought home to each of them that Life could be too short and why waste it on petty feminine deceits and trickeries? By mutual consent, over steaming cups of tea—which once again the unseen Wentworth had managed to leave outside the door of the room, without announcing himself with other than a low knock, and then departing as silently as he had come—Anne Fenner and Katharine Cowles met on common ground. They had only known each other a few hours, but already there was that fine hum and whirr of mutual respect and fondness in the air. As Kathy so succinctly put it—“as one stunning woman to another.” Who wanted to argue with a compliment like that? Certainly not a Boston girl unused to the sophistication and world-knowledge of a beautiful and rare woman like Katharine Cowles.
Anne lay on her bed, her head propped against a pillow. Kathy’s Cardigan was slung over one of the chairs. The windows allowed a good deal of light into the room, and, if anything, it was cozier than ever—a genuinely homey atmosphere in which to talk. Katharine had locked the door when she brought the tea tray in from the hallway. Now she sat at the foot of the bed, her lithe figure inclined against the brass handrails. The jet black of her rayon two-piece slack outfit, coupled with her gleaming ebony hair, white teeth, and beautifully-formed face, was altogether stunning. There just was no other word for her.
Guy Warmsby must be seven kinds of a fool, or blind. Or both. With a long filter-tipped cigarette tucked airily in her slender elegant hand, Katharine Cowles looked like the cover of Vogue. All the covers of Vogue.
Anne found it hard to convince herself, by daylight, that last night this room had known a silvery fantasy and a red-eyed, bleeding military ghost at the window. And that flickering, glowing, traveling light in the pitch darkness of night. Maybe she was losing her senses. Maybe she was—but the memory of that awful falling tree and the terrible din that followed still filled her heart and soul. She shook it off, concentrating on what Katharine Cowles was saying—about herself and Guy Warmsby. And so many other things. Yes, women in love could be fools, too!
“—first time I clapped eyes on him, I fell like a ton. Who wouldn’t? Peter brought him home one night from New York. Ran into him on Broadway. We were living on the Island, then. Oh, I’d heard all about Guy for years from his devoted and faithful dog, Peter, but I never really believed such male magnificence was possible until I actually saw him. From that moment forward, I was Poor Pitiful Kathy. Crazy world, huh, baby? With all I’ve got going for me, I can’t get that monster away from his archaeology. So that’s how it’s been for a few seasons now. We three tag around the world and the country. Peter writes a few poems, Guy gallivants after historical finds—once we spent three weeks in the Death Valley area searching for the clavicle of a dinosaur or some such—and I wait around for some crumbs of the great Warmsby charm. Oh, he kisses me now and then, but I want much more than that. I’m a very wicked woman, you see. Or don’t you see?”
Anne Fenner blushed, in spite of herself.
“You’re saying—”
“I’m saying, you adorable bunny, that as much as I want him—I practically begged him on one historic occasion—Mr. Guy Warmsby refuses to sully my virginal reputation. Ain’t that a kick in the head?”
“Oh, Kathy. How awful for you.”
“Yes, I like to think so. I’ve a lot to give him, the idiot. But then again—perhaps that is your own sad history with dear George Twemble, eh? Fess up, now. Just between us girls.”
It was impossible to hold anything back from this woman. Anne had learned that already. So with sheer bravado and, what amazed herself, a lack of sham or apology, she did recount the Saga of George. When she had done, Katharine Cowles flicked her cigarette ash into a tray on her lap and sighed with deep conviction.
“Men. Brutes. All of them. Why do we waste our time? But I much prefer the animal heat of George to the indifference of Guy. Though I will admit the circumstances are not quite the same.”
Anne Fenner sighed too.
“Let’s drop the subject, shall we? What about this place?”
Katharine Cowles’ eyes narrowed. Strangely, Anne thought.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing in particular. I know why you’re all here. Guy told me. Something about exploring the Hex legends and such. But what about Carteret? And this Wentworth I’ve never seen? And the Ghost?”
The stunning brunette threw back her head and laughed. Not unkindly. Her shoulders shook in the black jersey and her lithe shape tremored with amusement. “Oh, Anne—” she sighed again, still chuckling. “Can’t you see through all the hocus-pocus? The tourist trap? After all, you are from Boston. That is a big city.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Anne, Anne.” Katharine Cowles reached forward and patted her on the knee with the hand that did not hold the cigarette. “It’s all atmosphere. Trappings. Something for the tourists. Don’t you see? You haven’t seen. Wentworth? None of us have seen him. Carteret—all dressed up and talking and looking like a third-rate Dracula in a road company show. And that doll-faced Hilda. You haven’t seen her yet, perhaps, but she’s Dutch as they come, wears a Hex sign around her neck all th
e time. Just like the plaque over the fireplace. This is goblin town, honey, and they play it up to the hilt. Remember all your brochures? ‘Come To Kragmoor.…’ Sweetie, they’d be lost around here if they didn’t play up to the trade. Heck, it’s exactly what drew the Great Warmsby here, looking for finds. They know what they’re doing, all right. Hicks. I have to laugh. Maybe they’re smarter than all of us. These hotel rates are astronomical, even for a place like this.”
Anne Fenner stared at Katharine Cowles.
“I’ll admit all you say is possibly true but—”
“But what?”
“Suppose I tell you I saw a ghost last night. The Craghold Ghost. The Colonel. Suppose I tell you about something that happened in this very room. Last night—”
“Suppose you tell me,” Katharine Cowles agreed, readily enough. “I promise not to laugh. Just to listen and to ask you to remember the old adage—you yourself said it—‘there are no such things as ghosts.’ You said it this morning. I heard you with my own two ears.”
“Very well. I’ll remember that,” Anne Fenner said firmly. “But first you hear me out. Listen to what I have to say.”
“I’m listening, Anne.”
“All right. Here goes. I arrived here about ten last night. You all must have been in your rooms, and only Carteret was at the desk. After I signed in—”
Katharine Cowles listened, at first with raised-eyebrow cynicism, but soon she was as rapt as any child hearing her very first ghost story. Anne Fenner, for all her naivete and youth, was a very good story-teller. Caught up in her own belief and emotion, she made of her entire account a particularly vivid narrative. One that had Katharine Cowles spellbound from start to finish.
At the close of the recital, Anne Fenner drew a deep breath.
The sudden quietude of the room was so thick it could have very well been touched, weighed, felt. In the interval, she saw, rather than heard, Katharine Cowles sit up, cross her legs, and shake her lovely tresses, as piled as they were atop her head.
“Well,” Anne Fenner said. “Say something.”
“Wow,” Katharine Cowles murmured in a faint, far-off voice.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Give me a minute to think. I know you’re no flighty young thing. You look level-headed as a Baptist minister.”
“But what do you think? About any of it—your very first impression? Tell me truthfully, Kathy.”
“I can’t, just yet. It’s all too soon. Too weird. And it upsets all my notions and theories about this place. Which I’ve just told you, haven’t I? You poor honey. After all that last night, and then this tree business this morning—”
“Exactly,” Anne Fenner interrupted her. “Do you think there is any connection at all?”
“Don’t say it,” Katharine Cowles almost begged in a funny, suddenly less invulnerable voice. “Not just yet anyway. I told you, I don’t know what to think. Right this second, that is. Give Kathy baby, time to think.”
“Take all the time you want,” Anne Fenner sighed despairingly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
That, for the cheerless yet cozy moment in the homey room at Craghold House, was all too true.
Devilishly so.
If there had been any doubts in Anne Fenner’s mind, the legend around the numbered face of the Grandfather’s Clock in the alcove in the main hall would have driven her even closer to the brink of fear. You had to step up close to the clock to read the small gilt lettering that ran in a semi-circle around the upper half of the dial face. Yet there it would be, and was, for all the world to see and read.
It was that ancient German maxim so dear to the hearts of herrs and fraus in the Old Country, from which had come the very Dutch people who had settled in the valley beyond Goblin Wood. They, in fact, believed it too—with all their minds, hearts and souls.
Rather like a nursery rhyme, yet all too chilling for soothing anyone, least of all children, were the warning words.
For warning it was, pure and simple:
In a house where there is dread
Place the beds at head to head.
Old-fashioned, quaint, certainly a superstition.
Hardly a proverb dealing with eternal verities—such as Love Thy Neighbor or Be Kind To Animals.
Still, there it was.
On the face of the clock in the downstairs alcove of Craghold House. For anyone to see and read if they cared to.
Or believe or disbelieve, as they wished.
Superstition, like Religion, is definitely a matter of choice.
Ask any churchman.
“Hex,” Peter Cowles read aloud in his clipped and cryptic voice, his eyes mockingly set on the thick standard dictionary held in his right hand, opened to the designated page. “American Colloquialism. Verb—practice witchcraft on. Semi-colon—bewitch. Noun—first meaning—witch. Second meaning—a magic spell. Now, there, Guy, there is a rich and valid interpretation for you. Pure, plain and simple. And you came all the way up here to this Godforsaken wilderness to explore an A-B-C like that? You could have found that in a witch’s coven in Central Park! Or even on the penthouse floor of one of those buildings on upper Madison Avenue.”
Guy Warmsby, seated in one of the armchairs in his own quarters at Craghold, Number Twenty-Four, smiled bleakly. Peter Cowles’ room was down the hallway, Number Nineteen, and Katharine Cowles had Number Twenty, just across from him. Anne Fenner’s Number Seventeen room was at the beginning of the corridor just above the first landing. All the rooms were in the west wing of the house, the east wing being closed owing to the paucity of guests.
Even after several brandies from the well-stocked liquor cabinet in the main room, Peter Cowles had insisted on joining Guy in his room. They had discussed the incident at the Lake no further, because Peter had gotten off on this tack about Hex and related superstitions and Guy had given him his head. He recognized Peter’s need for sounding off after the brief glimpse into his own soul provided by Hilda’s unerring shaft of innocent error. Guy Warmsby also knew that Peter Cowles would never write a book. Anything beyond quatrains and couplets and sonnets taxed his stamina and concentration. Brevity was the soul of the Cowles brand of creativity.
Guy Warmsby’s room was a replica of Anne Fenner’s and all the rest of the rooms in the house, except for the more masculine appurtenances it contained, such as sturdy wooden bureaus and a heavy-set desk in one corner of the room that appeared to weigh tons. Thick, floor-length maroon drapes rode down both sides of the casement window. Warmsby’s retreat commanded a fine view of the dun-colored, distant Shanokin Range when the weather was clear, and not leaden as it now was—and had been for most of the week. Worse luck!
“I’m surprised at you, Peter,” he responded mildly to Cowles’ theatrical reading from the dictionary and his rather testy remarks.
“You’re surprised at me?”
“Yes, I am. I’m here to find things. Tangible things. A rock, a site, a relic. Something I can carry back with me. But what’s your passion? You’re the occult bug, the voodoo collector, the man who accepts all these hoaxes and myths. I should think you’d be happy we came. Don’t you want to see the Caves of Hex?”
“That’s not fair, and you know it. I’m just as interested in artifacts as you are.”
“Then what are we arguing about?”
“Are we arguing?”
Peter Cowles was smirking now, the dictionary forgotten and tossed carelessly on the desk. Guy Warmsby frowned across the room at him, taking his measure again. Sometimes, as well as he thought he knew him, it was very difficult to understand Peter Cowles.
“Peter.”
Cowles raised his eyes innocently, an inquisitive look on his surly but bland Cupid face. He said nothing, however.
“Level with me, will you?”
“Level with you? What kind of a crack is that, Guy? Has there ever been anything but the truth between us? I wasn’t aware of any lies or falsehoods existing between us.”
<
br /> Guy Warmsby put his teeth together and controlled his temper. If there was anything he truly despised about Peter Cowles, it was this easy assumption of the injured-party role. The spoiled rich brat.
“Stop it, Peter. Don’t behave like I stole your skate key. You know what I’m talking about. You’re angry with me about something. What is it? If I said anything—”
“No, you didn’t say anything,” Peter Cowles said with sudden malice. “You didn’t really have to. I think your solicitude for this ladybird from Boston is just a bit too much.”
“So that’s it.”
“That’s it. I should think you’d have a little more concern for Kathy’s feelings. After all, we’ve been together a long time now, and you certainly know how she feels about you. So what do you do? This long-legged creature shows up this morning, and in less than ten minutes you’re being your best roguish self. You want me to dance with happiness to see you making a fool out of my own sister? I have feelings too, you know.”
Guy Warmsby couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Nor could he equate the Peter of old with this new Peter standing over his chair waving his arms like a peddler, the outraged brother incarnate. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. But it wasn’t long before Guy Warmsby’s amazement had firmed up into solid, cold, and determined anger. Before Peter could continue with his harangue, Guy cut him short with a sweep of his own arm in the air.
“You’ve said enough, boy. Hold it. I won’t sit still for any more of it. You understand—”
“Oh!” Peter Cowles snarled. “You don’t want to hear any more. And now you’re going to play detective, too. Find out all about the big plot to kill somebody. A regular Sherlock Holmes! Just because a stupid old tree suddenly fell over. Damn my eyes but you’re a scream sometimes, Guy. You really are.”
Guy Warmsby started to laugh. His mirth was unbridled, rolling around the room; it was such a perplexing thing for him to do that Peter Cowles was abruptly dumbfounded and bewildered, and didn’t know how he should behave next. Mirth is contagious, usually, and now was no exception. In spite of himself, in spite of everything, Peter Cowles laughed too—loudly and clearly, with a braying yet high-pitched merriment which only served to make Guy Warmsby erupt with added amusement.
The Craghold Legacy Page 6
