by Richard Peck
I was drinking from a cup with a gray castle painted on it, trimmed in gold. Underneath was the label: BALMORAL, A ROYAL RESIDENCE IN SCOTLAND.
“And what castle are you drinking from, Alexander Armsworth?” Miss Dabney asked.
“WINDSOR CASTLE HIGH ABOVE THE RIVER THAMES,” Alexander read from his cup.
“Ah yes, Windsor,” said Miss Dabney. “That is one of the homes of our friends portrayed on the wall above my head. The man in the naval uniform is King George the Fifth, Monarch of Great Britain. He is Queen Victoria’s grandson. And the lady in the other portrait is his wife, Queen Mary, a handsome woman. Every afternoon I take my tea with the Royal Family.”
Alexander shot me another look, grim again. This was to remind me that Miss Dabney was crazy after all, having tea with two pictures, and that common knowledge had been right about her.
“I am very proud of my Rockingham china.” As she said this, there came the sound of breaking dishes from the kitchen. Miss Dabney looked pained.
She came to herself in a moment and passed around a Rockingham plate with small white sandwiches piled on Glamis Castle. These had been hidden behind the iced cakes and were scant temptation to me. “A proper English tea begins with bread and butter sandwiches and moves on to sweet pastries later,” Miss Dabney explained.
During the bread and butter course, we listened to coal being shaken out of a scuttle. A sound of somebody battering the range with a poker followed.
Glancing at the closed door all this unnecessary noise came from, Miss Dabney passed the plate with the iced cakes. “Take one at a time,” she instructed, “for I will keep passing them. An English tea is lavish but unhurried.” I smiled into my cup, recalling how Alexander vowed to spend only two minutes on this visit.
“Now then, young Armsworth,” Miss Dabney said, licking crumbs from the corner of her V-shaped mouth, “I wonder if they teach you any history at Horace Mann School.”
“Plenty of it,” Alexander replied. “Too much.”
“Then perhaps you would care to tell me the worst disaster ever to have occurred on the North American continent.”
I was glad she hadn’t asked me that, for I had no notion. Alexander thought deeply and then said, “The shooting of President McKinley?”
“Wrong,” said Miss Dabney. “Blossom, do you know?”
“The San Francisco earthquake?” I ventured. “My aunt foresaw it with her Second Sight.”
“Nevertheless incorrect,” said Miss Dabney, shaking her head. “The worst disaster by far was the Revolutionary War of 1776!” She looked around the room in triumph, pleased at herself for knowing the right answer.
“But how can that be?” asked Alexander in a breaking voice. “We won!”
“Precisely!” said Miss Dabney as Alexander fell into her trap. At the mention of war there came the gunfire sound of spoons in a battalion of mixing bowls from the kitchen. But it died away. Miss Dabney waited and then continued. “The worst of all possible disasters was that ragtag of American Revolutionaries, who were nothing but trash, daring to defy the King of England. Why, if we had not won the Revolutionary War, we could be British today! In winning, we lost everything!” Miss Dabney’s voice broke like Alexander’s, but with emotion. “Just think,” she said to him, “instead of being a young American boy, you might have been a young British gentleman.” She shook her head sadly at this lost opportunity.
“And just what did we fight that war for?” she asked. “Tell me that!”
Alexander sank lower in his chair and mumbled. “Something about the Boston Tea Party.” He blinked once and eyed his cup with sudden suspicion.
“A war over a tea party! That is rich indeed!” said Miss Dabney, and her voice dripped venom. “I wish I had lived in those times—in the reign of dear King George the Third. I would have taken up a musket and shot Paul Revere’s horse out from under him! One if by land and two if by sea, my Aunt Fanny!” Miss Dabney got quite carried away and brushed crumbs from her front with a trembling hand.
Alexander balanced his cup on the chair arm, caught my attention, and tapped his forehead with one finger. This was to show that the evidence of Miss Dabney’s craziness was piling up fast. I thought her ideas were interesting. We’d heard nothing like them at school. But I knew Alexander was getting restless, though there were plenty more tea cakes.
But in the next moment I suspected that all Miss Dabney’s Revolutionary War talk was only to distract us. For in an innocent voice she said to me, “Oh, Blossom dear, do you know what a tea cozy is? I will tell you. It is a small quilted cap that fits over a teapot to keep it warm. I have left the tea cozy on the kitchen table. Without it the tea will go cold. Nip out to the kitchen and fetch it for me, if you please.”
At that came the sound from the kitchen of two pie tins being clashed together like cymbals. Alexander’s mouth gaped open, in relief that she wasn’t sending him.
But there was nothing for me but to head off toward the noisy kitchen in search of a thing called a tea cozy. And from then on Miss Dabney’s tea party took on an entirely different complexion.
6
THE KITCHEN WAS at the end of a dark hall. I crept along with eyes peeled for a violent hired girl. Miss Dabney seemed afraid to ring for her own servant, and this made me somewhat shy.
Tan light filtered in through the breaks in drawn shades as I edged up to the kitchen. It looked to be empty. A door, half open, led to a shadowy pantry. But all was silent as a tomb except for water dripping into a pan under a modern icebox. The door to the back porch was bolted. The place was far too quiet after all we’d heard from the parlor. It was dusty and poorly kept, though there was no clutter, and the stove looked cold. The kitchen table stood out in the center of the room, and on it was a thing I took to be a tea cozy. It perched on top of a pile of linen napkins.
I kept one eye trained on the pantry door for fear a bad-tempered hired girl would swarm out, swinging a meat axe. She hadn’t sounded like anybody who welcomed interruptions. Then I crackled across the linoleum on tiptoe and snatched up the quilted tea cozy.
Turning to take flight, I went blind for a flash, as I sometimes do. Lightning struck, and I looked back at the table. There sat a woman on the far side in a chair that wasn’t there. She was realer than the room.
Her elbows were planted on the oilcloth. She was all angles and muscles, with thick wrists and red arms. Her hands cupped her cheeks, and she wept silently but copiously. The tears ran down her horse face and dripped from her lantern jaw. She was one plain woman, and wore an old-time over-all apron, never seen these days, and a starched cap. She was a pitiful looking thing, though powerful. I stood staring at her grief, not knowing which world I was in.
Neither did the hired girl, I knew in a moment. But I was rooted to the spot, though my feet itched to travel.
“Oh, whar am I to go? What am I to do?” moaned this big ghost in a countrified accent. “I’ll be sent packin’ and great will be my shame.” She addressed the oilcloth now puddling with her tears. This was fearful but not noisy. “And my heart is broke beyond mendin’.”
She let out a wail then, and the hair on my head prickled and rose up. But she was fading. I could see through her to the door beyond. And when she was all gauzy and then gone, I saw a coil of rope hanging from the doorknob. It had not been there before and worried me worse than the female form.
My mouth was dry from not swallowing. But my feet came alive. They hardly touched ground before I plunged back into the parlor. Luckily the tea cozy was in my hand, for I would not have gone back. From somewhere behind me came the sound of a kitchen chair dragging across linoleum.
“Ah,” said Miss Dabney, entirely too calm, “you have found it.” Our eyes met. “The tea cozy, I mean. Bring it here and many thanks.” She kept her eyes on me. Oh, she was up to something all right. And the tea cozy was a flimsy excuse. We seemed to share a secret, and both of us glanced at Alexander. He was the picture of suspicion. First me and next h
im, I thought to myself as I settled back and took another cake. My heart was pounding from this first meeting with an actual ghost, not counting my ghost boy.
Miss Dabney played out her hand in leisurely fashion. She talked of this and that, mostly English topics. Every now and then she would shoot me sudden glances, trying to surprise my thoughts. The kitchen was unearthly quiet.
At last there were only crumbs on the cake plate, and Alexander was fidgeting. I knew he was eat up with curiosity about my trip to the kitchen. Just as it was time to go, Miss Dabney settled his hash.
Like a magician she whipped out a fresh plate of tea cakes from a small shelf under the tea table. “Oh, lands,” said she, all astonishment, “an entire plate of cakes untouched! You two must divvy them up and take them along home with you.” Alexander was half out of his chair. “Alexander Armsworth,” Miss Dabney commanded, “nip out into the kitchen and fetch two linen napkins to wrap these cakes in. They are on the kitchen table.” Far off in the back of the house a chair seemed to be kicked over. The sound was distinct.
Alexander’s eyes bugged. But there was no denying Miss Dabney’s tone. He glared at me, and his look urged me to go in his place. But I was busy crumbing my coat. He slunk off through the door to the kitchen hall. Miss Dabney gave me a long perky look that said, Now we will see what we will see!
We sat quietly, listening to Alexander’s boots dragging slowly down the back hall. Then there was silence as he stood at the edge of the kitchen. Miss Dabney’s mouth was drawn again into a sharp V.
The scream rang through the house, echoing upstairs and rattling the tea china. Miss Dabney bounced on her pillows. It was Alexander’s screech, a blend of soprano and baritone. He exploded back into the parlor with the linen napkins fluttering in his grip like flags on a power boat. “BLOSSOM CULP,” he screeched at me, not daring to take on Miss Dabney, “I WILL JERK A KNOT IN YOUR TAIL FOR THIS! NOW YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR!” Then he fetched up a long dry sob.
“Oh, heavens,” Miss Dabney remarked mildly. “I see no justice in turning on Blossom. She returned composed from the kitchen and has sat with me ever since. Surely there was nothing for you to see in the kitchen, Alexander, as you have put all your powers behind you by your own admission. Besides, whatever you might have . . . encountered was no more than Blossom saw.”
But Miss Dabney was wrong there. Alexander saw a good deal more as it turned out, but he gibbered with fright and turned a nasty green before we got anything out of him. I wondered if he would throw up, for he was fuller of cakes than Maisie Markham.
Miss Dabney was eager to hear a clear account from both of us. I thought she might go over to Alexander and slap him sensible, but she waited till he pulled himself together. Dabbing at the corners of her mouth, she said at last, “Perhaps if I begin with my side of the story. In matters occult I have had small experience and no extraordinary powers. The alarming noises from the kitchen we have all three heard have been quite audible to me for as long as I can remember, but, alas, they have also been audible to all my neighbors as well. Strange noises and the banging of the oven door at all hours have only added to my reputation for eccentricity. As for being able to entertain very much, I am in awkward circumstances. This too has condemned me as an eccentric, and so I live a rather solitary life. You cannot picture me entertaining the Women’s Society of Christian Temperance to tea with that appalling racket coming from the kitchen. Some of the ladies might take fright and flee”—here she paused to glance at Alexander—“particularly as it is well known I don’t have a hired girl. I doubt that any help I employed would be in my employ long.
“But, you see, I am not personally acquainted with—whatever that thing is in my kitchen. I hear, but I see nothing. I am not frightened, of course. Fear is not part of my make-up”—here she glanced at me—“but I am quite consumed with curiosity. And so I invited you, Blossom, to tea, and with every expectation that you would bring young Mr. Armsworth as your escort”—Alexander’s grumbles interrupted her there, but she pressed on—“two such young persons as yourselves with extrasensory powers might get to the bottom of my little mystery. Tell me, Blossom, what you saw in my kitchen.”
I explained about the raw-boned serving woman crying her eyes out at the table. I described her as well as I could, adding what she’d said about being shamed and sent away. I remembered the coil of rope and added that too. It shook me when Alexander turned on me again.
“Dadburn you, Blossom Culp, you’re still lying. She wasn’t sitting at any table. She wasn’t crying her eyes out and talking. And you know it!”
“That’s what I seen, Alexander,” I replied.
“Alexander, calm yourself,” Miss Dabney said. “Your time is coming.” She made me tell my account all over again, taking in all the details and showing interest in the old-time apron.
Then it was Alexander’s turn. “Well, it wasn’t anything like Blossom says, of course,” he began. “There was nobody at the kitchen table. As for the rope—well, I suppose I have to tell what I saw. But then I’m going home directly. Alone,” he added, shooting me a poisonous glance.
“To be sure,” said Miss Dabney.
“It was the same hired girl as Blossom says. A real ugly woman with big arms and feet. And the same apron.”
“Yes, yes, quite,” said Miss Dabney impatiently.
“But she was—” Alexander’s face went gray. “She was strung up on a meat hook in the pantry with the chair kicked out from under her. There was a rope round her neck in a hangman’s knot. And her tongue was out of her mouth, and her eyes were bugged out but dead. She’d strung herself up, and thank you very much for the tea but I got to be going.”
“Not so fast,” said Miss Dabney, lost in thought. “What you have both told rings a distant bell. I must ponder a moment. I am sure we are on to something.”
Alexander gave her an injured look. It was true she didn’t seem to take much pity on him for having seen such a fearful vision. Alexander’s Second Sight was still stronger than mine, for he seemed to see the Unseen in moments of high drama. Then of course he got his wits scared out of him and showed fear. And there is nothing that a boy hates to show worse than fear.
I thought back about the sound of the chair dragging across the linoleum and then being kicked over. And I shuddered on Alexander’s behalf.
“A large, raw-boned servant,” Miss Dabney mused. “Oh, lands, that takes me way back. I wasn’t more than four years old. We had a hired girl then, of course, my papa and I. My mother had died at my birth, and so Papa and I were on our own. I had a nurse too, but no, that goes too far back. There was a hired girl—And her name was Minerva. Yes, that was it, though how I remember I don’t know, for Papa never mentioned her later.”
Miss Dabney came suddenly back to earth. “Blossom, step into the front parlor and bring me that picture album on the table.”
I fetched back an old leather volume heavy with tintypes. She paged through it past many portraits of a baby in long white clothes which I took to be herself. “Aha!” she said at one page, and her long finger jabbed out. “Draw closer, you two, and tell me if you have ever seen this face before.”
We clustered around her, though Alexander was unwilling. He glanced at the picture out of the corner of his eye. It was a picture of a small girl with a large sash to her dress and long curls, possibly yellow. “That is my own childhood self,” Miss Dabney announced.
Her childhood self was holding the hand of a tall, raw-boned, lantern-jawed woman who stared grimly into the camera. There were not two such faces on either side of the grave. “That’s her,” I said. Alexander made a strangled sound.
“Minerva,” Miss Dabney said again, faintly. “Yes, of course. I remember the grownups whispering and strangers in the house. I was too young to understand, and they kept the news from me. Minerva hanged herself in the kitchen.”
“She was afraid she’d be sent away,” I mentioned, “in shame.” I thought this deepened the mystery, but Mi
ss Dabney nodded knowingly.
“Yes, and so poor Minerva might have been. It is clear as crystal now I’m put on the right track. Minerva would have been in love with my papa—a hopeless love for any number of reasons. But understandable. Any woman would have been in love with Papa, even the rawest country girl. But Papa could not have allowed anything unseemly. He would have sent her away before she made a fool of herself. Or him. He was very upright. I never married, myself. No man could have measured up to Papa.”
Miss Dabney’s eyes were damp. Alexander took advantage of her distraction by creeping toward the door. “Well, many thanks for the tea and the . . . entertainment,” he croaked, fear in his eyes.
“Must you be going?” asked Miss Dabney.
“Yes, ma’am!” He hotfooted down the front hall. Miss Dabney and me followed along. By the time we were on the front porch, Alexander was passing swiftly through the gap in the hedge.
“Oh dear me,” Miss Dabney said, resting a hand on my shoulder, “your young friend has been unstrung by the afternoon’s events.”
“He’s a bundle of nerves when it comes to the spirit world,” I explained.
“You are fond of him,” she said in a thoughtful voice. Alexander was only a blur in the distance then, and we watched him out of sight.
“I am not sweet on him,” I said.
“Oh no, nothing so childish as that,” she murmured. “But you are both getting past childhood. And you both have something in common, quite a rare quality.”
I didn’t point out to her that what Alexander and me had in common was far outweighed by what we didn’t. But then her mind was tripping on ahead, following a trail of its own. Even this early in our association, I noticed that Miss Dabney lived mainly in recollections of the past and in future plans, tending to skimp the present. I, of course, live every minute as it comes. So the two of us were a good team.
