“The parure was the one thing she could hope to get back,” Wendy pointed out. “Her father and her fiancé were lost to her forever.”
“Even so . . .” I rolled the fountain pen between my fingers, then looked at the oil portrait. “If the theft drove Lucasta crazy, it was because she didn’t have far to go in the first place.”
“Thanks for trying, Lori,” Wendy said, folding her arms, “but you’ll never convince me that my father was blameless.”
“Not blameless,” I agreed. “He stole. He lied. He hurt Lucasta. But he wasn’t . . . evil. He put his life on the line, and nearly lost it, fighting evil.” I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe something he did on Omaha Beach saved my dad’s life. And when your father came back from the war, he worked hard, he paid the mortgage, and he raised a depressingly impressive daughter.”
Wendy gave a short, mirthless laugh and ducked her head.
“I’m serious,” I retorted. “Look at you. You’re smart, confident, capable, strong. You’re tenacious and you have courage. Maybe your father had nothing to do with how you turned out, but if he did, I’d say he was a pretty remarkable man.”
Wendy stood motionless, her head bowed. Her silence told me that her father had had a great deal to do with how she’d turned out.
Finally, she spoke. “My father was a hypocrite. He always insisted that I be honest with him, but he was never honest with me.”
“Maybe he wanted you to be better than he was,” I said. “And if he didn’t tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth about himself, maybe it was because he didn’t want to disappoint you.” I recalled the way my sons looked at me, as if I had all the answers to all the questions in the world, and trembled inwardly. “All parents keep secrets, Wendy. I suppose, deep down, we want them to. Everyone talks about the burden of expectations parents place on their children, but nobody seems to notice that it works the other way ’round as well. We don’t want to know that our parents have ever been scared or helpless or bad. It’s too . . . unsettling. We don’t make it easy for them to tell the truth.”
“And your father?” Wendy asked, her voice edged with resentment. “What were his secrets?”
“I don’t know.” I put the pen down on the writing table. “I never had the chance to find out.”
Wendy’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.
I held her gaze. “My dad died when I was three months old. I never had a chance to get really mad at him. Or to forgive him.” I breathed a soft sigh. “Yet another reason to envy you.”
Wendy’s mouth tightened and she looked away. I thought for a moment that I’d gone too far, that she’d either tell me to mind my own blasted business or leave the room and never speak to me again. Instead, she hunched her shoulders and said gruffly, “Why hasn’t Tessa Gibbs redecorated in here? It’s ghoulish to leave it as it is.”
I was grateful for the change of subject, relieved that I’d gotten off so lightly.
“Maybe she hasn’t had time to work on it,” I said. “Or maybe it’s a conversation piece, a way of showing how far downhill the abbey had gone before she restored it. It’s unquestionably part of Ladythorne’s history.” I traced a circle in the writing table’s dust and thought, The madwoman in the attic. Poor Lucasta. What a legacy.
“Do you want to search it together?” Wendy asked, still avoiding my gaze.
“Sure.” I concentrated on brushing the dust from my finger, hoping Wendy wouldn’t notice how stunned I was by her offer. Camaraderie was the last thing I’d expected in return for my intrusion into an emotional arena that was clearly off limits. “I’ll take the dressing room.”
“I’ll start in here.” Wendy strode to the dresser, adding, “I’ll keep an ear out for Catchpole’s plow. If the engine stops, we make a run for it.”
“Agreed,” I said, and headed for the connecting door.
I entered the dressing room with no little trepidation, half afraid of finding a Miss Havisham-style tableau, complete with cobwebbed wedding gown and desiccated bouquet. Much to my surprise, the room was sparely furnished, neat as a pin, and reeking of mothballs. The twin sets and tweed skirts in the wardrobe were old but not ragged, and the sensible shoes lining the bottom shelf, though worn at the heels, had been meticulously and repeatedly resoled. Good clothes, I’d been told, were made to last, and these had lasted.
The only garments that showed signs of fatigue were two flannel nightgowns and a bulky, fisherman-knit cardigan that had no doubt come in handy when the coal supplies had dwindled. I fingered the cardigan’s frayed cuffs and felt a stab of pity for the sparkling girl who’d dressed so prettily for her wounded officers.
An ivory-backed brush and hand mirror lay on the dressing table beside a small porcelain box filled with hairpins. The tangle of gray hairs in the brush conjured the image of an old woman, her hair pinned in a bun, warming her hands on a teacup while contemplating what family treasure to sell next in order to cover the rising costs of overseas postage.
In the dressing table’s left-hand drawer, I found a delicately embroidered handkerchief sachet. As I unfolded the smooth satin envelope, I felt the hard edges of something hidden among the lace-edged squares of silk. I slid my hand into the sachet and drew from it a book. It was bound in maroon morocco, and the pages were edged in gold. There was no title on the cover or the spine.
Scarcely daring to breathe, I turned to the first page. There, written in a neat round hand, were the words LUCASTA DECLERKE, HER DIARY. The first entry was dated January 1, 1945.
“Dear Lord,” I whispered, and sank onto the chair at the dressing table. “Wendy!” I shouted. “Wendy, come in here!”
Wendy entered the dressing room at a run.
“When did your father arrive at Ladythorne?” I demanded.
“Late February, nineteen forty-five,” she replied. “Why? What have you found?”
“Lucasta’s diary,” I told her, “for nineteen forty-five.”
“Oh.” Wendy scuffed a slipper sock on the floor and regarded me pensively. “I don’t think we should read it, do you?”
“Not every word.” I flipped through the pages until I came to the last few days of February. “Just the parts where she mentions the theft. She must have written about it in her diary. Maybe she’ll tell us where to put the parure.”
Wendy hung back and watched while I skimmed the pages. The entries varied in length, some containing only a few lines, some stretching to several paragraphs, but the neat round script never varied until I reached the entry dated April 25—when the handwriting twisted and grew spikes.
“I’ve found it,” I said, and read the passage aloud: “ ‘Mother visited me last night and told me that her jewels had been stolen. I checked today and it’s true. I don’t know how they managed it with the sentries watching, but the parure is gone. They must have waited for the dark of the moon, the devils. I will never forgive them. NEVER!’ ” Shaken, I closed the diary and looked at Wendy. “That’s it,” I said. “That’s where the entries end.”
“But . . . but Lucasta’s mother died before the war began,” Wendy protested. “She couldn’t have . . .”
“I know.”
The ensuing silence seemed to last forever.
“You were right.” Wendy’s murmur seemed to ring out in the stillness. “Her mind was gone long before the parure was stolen. Her mother’s visit must have been an hallucination.”
“A pretty accurate one, though,” I commented, “if it tipped Lucasta off about the theft.”
“Something else must have tipped her off,” Wendy stated firmly. “Something real. Her mother’s so-called message was nothing more than a figment of her deranged imagination. The dead can’t speak.”
I toyed with the idea of introducing Wendy to Aunt Dimity, but quickly pushed the thought aside. Wendy’s faith in her father had already been fractured. I didn’t think she could cope with an expanded definition of what was real.
“What do you suppose she meant when she wro
te about the sentries and the dark of the moon?” I wondered aloud.
“Nothing,” Wendy said bluntly. “More hallucinations. She was nuts, Lori. We can’t trust anything she wrote in her diary. Let’s get back to the job at hand.” Wendy shook her head and returned to the bedroom.
“Right,” I said after she’d gone, but I remained seated at the dressing table, staring at the diary. I couldn’t help feeling that Lucasta was speaking to us from beyond the grave, in a language too obscure for us to decipher. Fortunately, I knew the whereabouts of a highly qualified translator.
I stood, slid the diary under my sweater, and made a bee-line for the corridor, calling over my shoulder, “Bathroom break. Back in a minute.”
Twenty
And then Lucasta’s diary turned up, tucked away in a handkerchief sachet,” I concluded. “Listen to the final entry.”
Aunt Dimity’s journal lay open on the tea table in my bedroom. I stood over it while I read the final passage from the diary to her, then set the diary aside, took up the journal, and plopped onto the plump armchair.
“What do you think?” I asked.
Well. Dimity paused briefly, then carried on. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what to think. You’re almost certainly correct in assuming that Lucasta buried herself alive in that dreadful suite, and I can assure you that ravens formed a conspicuous part of her fiancé’s coat-of-arms, but whether she made the beaded raven in his honor or he presented it to her as a love token, I can’t say.
“Dimity,” I said patiently, “I’m not overly interested in Lucasta’s beaded raven at the moment. I want to know what you think about her diary.”
In those days it was common for a young girl to hide her diary in her handkerchief sachet.
“Fascinating,” I said, with a touch of exasperation. “But I want to know what you think about the diary’s contents. Was Lucasta making it up? Or did her dead mother communicate with her . . . long distance?”
I have no idea. I’m not an expert on the subject of “long-distance” communication, to use your term. I can only tell you that, while my own experience is not unique, it’s not an everyday occurrence, either. Lucasta’s mother may have lingered in the abbey for a time, to keep watch over her daughter, or Lucasta may have been delusional. Sadly, the preponderance of the evidence points to the latter.
“Lots of people would call me crazy if they caught me talking to a book,” I countered.
But you’re not crazy, my dear, or at least you’re no crazier than the average human being. Lucasta, I’m afraid, was quite insane.
“Which means that we can’t trust her words.” I sighed dejectedly. “I was hoping the bit about sentries and the dark of the moon might lead somewhere, but I guess it’s another dead end.” I stood. “I’d better get back to that dreadful suite before Wendy pries open the bathroom door.”
One moment, my dear, if you please. About this search of yours . . . I’ve given it a good deal of consideration, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re going about it the wrong way.
“What do you mean?” I asked, resuming my seat.
First of all, might I suggest that if you insist on tapping walls, you do so with the handle of a hairbrush or some other insensate object? If you continue battering your poor knuckles, you won’t be able to feed yourself by the end of the day.
“Check,” I said, smiling. “Hairbrush, not knuckles. Anything else?”
It strikes me that you and your friends may be looking for the wrong sort of box. We mustn’t forget Lucasta’s inexplicable behavior, Lori. She adamantly refused to tell anyone where the parure was hidden. Why? Might it not be because she kept the jewels in a place that had a deeply personal meaning for her, a place she couldn’t bear to expose to public scrutiny? Her trousseau, perhaps? She wouldn’t want strangers rummaging through her wedding clothes, now, would she?
“Her trousseau . . .” I nodded slowly. “The wedding clothes she never wore because of her fiancé’s death. They’d be sacred to her. She’d never let a ham-fisted military policeman touch them, much less take them away as evidence.”
Quite. And since Lucasta was supposed to receive the parure on her wedding day, it would be natural for her to keep the jewels and the clothes together in one place.
“Where?” I asked. “A wardrobe? A steamer trunk?”
A trunk would be more likely—one of the elegant, old-fashioned kind, with engraved initials and a compartment for toiletries. She would have brought it with her on her honeymoon.
“I didn’t see anything like that in her dressing room,” I said. “But I haven’t finished searching it yet. I’ll pass your idea on to Wendy and Jamie. We should be looking for a big trunk instead of a smallish box.”
Just so, my dear.
“Thanks for the tip, Dimity.” I set the journal aside and knelt to replenish the fire, then turned toward the bedside table to ask Reginald his opinion.
But Reginald wasn’t there. Startled, I jumped to my feet and scanned the room until I noticed that someone had parted the drapes slightly. I strode to the window and saw to my relief that Reginald was sitting on the sill, gazing out over the half-plowed courtyard and the maze of snow-covered outbuildings encircling it.
“Jamie,” I said, as comprehension dawned. “He stopped by, right, Reg? And he remembered what I told him about your love of the great outdoors. Remind me not to tell him that you spend most of your time on a shelf in the study at home. He’d accuse me of bunny abuse.”
I gave Reginald’s ears a fond twiddle and headed downstairs to find Jamie.
“A steamer trunk?” Jamie pushed his long hair back from his face and sat on his heels. I’d found him kneeling in a dark corner of the smoking room, probing the wall panels with a bread knife. “You may be on to something, Lori. It never crossed my mind to associate Lucasta’s trousseau with the parure.”
“It’s a girl thing,” I told him. I silently apologized to Dimity for stealing her thunder and went on to describe Lucasta’s dreary suite and the diary I’d found hidden in the dressing table. When I finished, Jamie shook his head.
“It’s a pity about the diary,” he said. “It could have been useful, but I have to agree with Wendy. Lucasta was living in a dream world—or an ongoing nightmare, judging by your description of her room. Poor soul.” His eyes dimmed with sadness as he bowed his head, but brightened again when he glanced up at me. “I can’t believe that you and Wendy are working together.”
“Astonishing, isn’t it?” I rubbed the tip of my nose. “I’m glad you told me to go easy on her. She’s really hurting.”
“Disillusion’s a difficult pill to swallow,” Jamie said. “But it’ll go down more easily when she remembers how much she loved her father.” A low-pitched note of yearning ran through his brave words, as if he were trying to convince himself of something he found difficult to believe.
“How long did it take you to forgive your father?” I asked.
“Me? I’m still working on it.” Jamie pushed himself to his feet and slid the bread knife into his back pocket, saying briskly, “I doubt that I’ll find any steamer trunks in here, but there should be a box room in the service corridor. I’ll check it out.”
“I’ll get back to Wendy,” I said. “She must think I’ve drowned by now. Oh, and before I forget—I gave Catchpole the night off. I told him you’d bring dinner up to us.”
“Good idea,” said Jamie. “I’d rather have him dozing in his cottage than dashing around the abbey. He should sleep like a log after spending the day in the fresh air.”
“Speaking of the great outdoors . . .” I smiled shyly. “You’re quite a guy, Jamie. Not everyone would be so understanding about Reginald.”
“Your rabbit?” He grinned. “He’s charming—almost as charming as you are—and I’m sure he’s a wonderful listener. What’s not to understand?”
I gave his arm a grateful squeeze, and made my way to the staircase.
After turning Lucasta’s suite i
nside out, Wendy and I came to the firm conclusion that it contained nothing remotely resembling a wealthy young bride’s wedding wardrobe. We hadn’t found a single steamer trunk, nor had we spotted anything that might be interpreted as a jewel box fit for the parure. We indulged in a real bathroom break, to scrub away the grime we’d accumulated inspecting the grubby room, then Wendy returned to the bell tower and I continued to work my way methodically through the remaining bedrooms, substituting the hairbrush from my bedroom for my knuckles. Jamie rounded us up for dinner at seven o’clock. By then I was ready to chuck the parure into a flour sack and leave it on a pantry shelf.
“Do you mind if we eat in the kitchen?” Jamie asked. “My arms are so tired that I don’t think I can lift a tray.”
“What if Catchpole sees us?” Wendy asked.
“We’ll tell him the broth worked,” I barked. “Take me to the kitchen, now. If I spend one more minute in a bedroom, I’ll begin frothing at the mouth.”
I wasn’t alone in feeling discouraged. Jamie had located the box room, but the trunks stored there had been either empty or filled with crumpled newspaper. Wendy had put her pry bar to good use, opening an assortment of wooden crates she’d found stacked in the bell tower, but the crates had yielded nothing more than endless sets of china, tarnished silver, and a few dozen second-rate watercolors.
“A bath, a bath, my kingdom for a bath,” I chanted as we entered the kitchen, oil lamps in hand.
“A bubble bath,” Wendy chimed in, “followed by a nice, relaxing massage.”
“I hesitate to offer a massage,” said Jamie, “but there should be enough hot water to provide baths all round.”
“What’s the point?” I gazed mournfully at the streaks of dust marring my beautiful, butter-soft sweater. “We’ll just get filthy again. I assume the plan is to work through the night.”
Aunt Dimity: Snowbound Page 18
