"Ahhh, yes. Tell me, when you heard about Cragmoor . . . in the village, did they tell you . . . anything else?"
"Like what?"
He shrugged. “Anything at all. It is quite the local curiosity, and it does have a rather . . . colorful history, I'm afraid."
"No, not that I can recall."
"Hmmm . . .” he murmured, almost to himself. “Well, good luck to you, my dear. Do ring Jacob when you get in, and let me know if there's anything else I can do for you while you're stopping here in Cornwall."
I had to make a last appeal. “There's only one thing that you can do for me, Vicar Marshall."
"Then, my dear,” he said, “I'm afraid I've done all that I can."
* * * *
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Chapter Two
* * * *
I left St. Michael's without trying to persuade the vicar any further, but he definitely hadn't seen the last of me. He'd piqued my curiosity more than once that morning, and I was glad I hadn't played my trump card.
I wasn't convinced he believed my story about learning of Cragmoor in the village, especially since I didn't know something I evidently would have known had I gleaned my information from the local gossips. I wondered what that something was, and if it was related to my mystery?
I was uncomfortable with the way I'd handled the last part of our conversation, but I couldn't have told him that I'd scoured the Cornish coast until I finally located Cragmoor through the Truto Hall of Records. Neither could I have told him I had in my possession a photocopy of the deed bearing his name and address, and copies of the property maps as well. He certainly would have wanted to know why, and that, for the moment at least, was my secret.
Right or wrong, I had escaped without further interrogation. But I wouldn't accept the outcome. I was determined to have access to that house, and since he wouldn't lease it to me, I decided to have a little tour on my own. When I pulled out of the vicarage drive onto Cragmoor Cross, instead of turning left at the fork that led to the village, I made a right and drove west up the grade toward the narrow, rut-scarred road that sidled through the thick, dead brush and black heather, and wound its serpentine way straight to Cragmoor.
The light had faded, and dark, bilious clouds had taken its place. In the three short weeks I'd spent in Cornwall, I'd learned two things: that the weather was not to be trusted, and that the wind never ceased to blow. Fair weather or foul, it whistled and murmured and moaned, like a living, breathing, tortured being. It had risen since it played innocently among the foxglove blooms earlier, stirring the mists along the graveyard gate. Now it was angry, driving the black clouds inland from the sea. Waterfowl raced before it dotting the sky like a blizzard over the mighty house, and I'd scarcely pulled the car to a stop when the rain came.
It was just as I remembered it from my drive-by earlier, like a creature of myth silhouetted against the storm—a huge, rambling, turreted structure of stone and timbers defying its existence in such a setting. Yet, aside from a wounded turret, a few missing boards, and a good deal of broken glass, Cragmoor approached the dawn of another century remarkably intact.
I tried to imagine the house as it once must have been, ablaze with light and life, surrounded by manicured lawns and courtyards and lush, fragrant gardens. Now it rose from a tangled snarl of briar, thorn, and desolation. Row upon row of darkened windows, catching stray glints of the fading light, shuddered in the wind as the gale bore down upon it. The house was asleep, and I was about to wake it.
I didn't park by the double doors that marked the main entrance. I stopped at the conservatory on the northeast corner where I'd noticed a few broken panes near the ground on my earlier visit. It was an enormous room, almost seeming like an afterthought, flung like an arm into the wild heather and scrub that spread waist-deep on the northern rise. I had never seen anything like it.
The outer walls were constructed entirely of glass panes in lead casings, as was the ceiling—almost like a greenhouse. Breathtaking certainly, but far too vulnerable to the elements on that cliff to be practical, I decided. I was amazed that more glass wasn't broken, and felt certain there wasn't one original pane in the place if the storm assaulting it then was any example of what the house had weathered over the past century-and-a-half.
The holes in the glass wall seemed smaller than I remembered them, and I wondered if I could slip through as I'd planned. I was slender enough, but the most accessible opening didn't quite fit my contours, and I had to eliminate a few sharp edges and bend some of the lead in order to climb inside unscathed.
My gray linen slacks and blazer were soaked through, and I'd lost my paisley scarf altogether. The wind had claimed my colors, and it wasn't likely that I'd see that scarf again. It had held my hair in check. Dampness always turned my hair into a voluminous mass of curls and tendrils. Untethered now, and combed by the wild Cornish squall, it hung in a hopeless tangle of wayward ringlets falling over my shoulders, but I scarcely noticed. This was Cragmoor, and I was inside it at last.
I was standing on the slate floor of the conservatory in a puddle of water and broken glass. Beside me in the northeast corner, a rounded glass door gave access to what once had surely been the courtyard and the heather-studded moors beyond. It was barred from the inside now by the woodbine creepers that had invaded the place. The room smelled of mildew, dust, and dampness, and cobwebs clung to everything, but I couldn't have been happier if I were standing in Buckingham Palace.
The wind leaned heavily on the panes, and the rain drummed on the glass roof above where a chandelier dripping crystal prisms shuddered with the vibration. Dangling from a chain attached to the apex of the glass ceiling, the fixture seemed to be suspended from the sky itself. Even dulled by the storm, the room was a riot of glass, the chandelier almost a mockery.
Sheets thick with dust covered the furniture, and a spacious hearth with marble wood nymphs holding up the mantle dominated the south wall. A hand-carved French sideboard stood beneath a mirror and elaborate sconces on the west, beside a double arch with decorated spandrels that led to a shadowy, carpeted hall beyond.
I scarcely noticed anything else. My heart was pounding so violently that I could hardly distinguish it from the thunder rolls echoing through the empty old house. All sorts of strange feelings were racing through me, which I chalked up to excitement then. I felt safe in that room, and something more—something I couldn't quite identify. Whatever that something was, it filled me with an exhilaration I had never experienced before.
All at once the exotic scent of spice threaded through my nostrils. It was all around me, spread by the draft from the gaping hole in the glass wall at my back. I had no idea where it was coming from, but it took my breath away and turned my skin to gooseflesh. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone taking the panic it had spread over me with it. But it had left something behind—a hushed murmur of whispering sound, like disembodied voices far off in the distance...sharing secrets. The strange litany ran me through, and I shuddered in the wake of a fresh chill standing there in my wet clothes and quickly moved on through the arch.
I followed the corridor, lined with closed doors and cobweb-covered sconces, southward to the Great Hall, which was, in effect, a picture gallery. There, the carpet gave way to a breathtaking terrazzo floor laid in a sunburst pattern beneath the vaulted ceiling. An elegant chandelier hung here also, fitted with cobweb-frosted candles and layer, upon layer of amber colored crystals tinkling eerily in a fugitive draft ghosting through the place.
The cognac colored walls were lined with portraits in elaborate gilt frames, but I didn't stop to look at them then. The only thing that caught my eye was an empty space fitted with a hook where a painting had obviously been removed. I gave it only passing notice. My attention was fixed upon the faded red carpet that covered the staircase. It beckoned like an arrow pointing upward and I began to climb.
I felt it almost at once—a bone-chilling cold unrelated to nature on t
hose stairs. I sensed that something terrible had happened there, and I hurried to the landing above, where it mercifully dissipated, and turned almost instinctively toward the south wing.
The feelings I had excused earlier as excitement were running rampant now. The house seemed charged with a palpable energy. It had awakened extrasensory channels in me that I never knew existed, and I decided to let my instincts lead me.
Halfway down the carpeted hallway, I found myself standing beside a door on the west. The knob was cold to the touch as I gripped it, and somehow I knew what I'd find inside before I crossed the threshold. The room faced the sea, where towering breakers trailing spindrift lashed at the cliff and the rockbound shoreline below. Sheets covered the furniture here as well, but somehow I knew what was underneath them—the mahogany four-poster bed, with its headboard hand carved in an intricate rose pattern—the water closet, and on it the white pitcher and basin, the pitcher having a similar rose motif molded in the porcelain and a fine hairline crack at the base of the handle. I knew before I peeked under the sheets that I would find them there, but how I could know didn't even occur to me. It all seemed perfectly natural at the time.
The open wardrobe in the corner caught my eye. A frighteningly familiar smell of mildew and cedar wafted from it raising the hairs on the back of my neck, and I shuddered and gave it a wide berth on my way to the window. Below, the wave crests were boiling under a leaden sky. The sight left me cold. I'd never been particularly fond of the sea—especially not then, and definitely not from that window.
As I backed quickly out of the room, I noticed that a large patch of plaster was missing on the wall behind the door where the knob had broken through it just above the wainscoting that paneled the lower section. It didn't take extrasensory perception to imagine the force behind the hand that had flung it hard enough to do that kind of damage. I could almost feel the rage, and I turned away from there, deciding on a tour of the north wing instead.
One of the doors on the east side of the hall was slightly ajar. It seemed like an invitation to enter and I stepped cautiously inside. I was immediately choked with tears, and something I dared not probe. The room was filled with shadows that seemed alive. They hovered about a little terrace that looked out over the eastern rise and a narrow, overgrown footpath winding through the thorn hedge and bracken toward St. Michael's. It was a smaller room than the one I'd just fled. No dust covers spared the furniture here. The brass bed stood green with tarnish, shackled to the wall with cobwebs, all but obscured by a murky fog of dust motes that hung above it in the filtered light. Everything in the place was covered with dust. It rose in my throat and choked me, forcing me back. As I turned to leave, another wardrobe caught my eye, but I felt no uneasiness in the presence of this one. I don't know what possessed me to open it, but I did, and something caught my eye—there was a painting resting against the backboard.
It faced away from me and I had to remove it before I could turn it around for a look, since the wardrobe wasn't quite wide enough for me to manage that from the inside. By the dimensions, I presumed it to be the one missing from the gallery. It was heavy, and there was a large oblique tear in the center of the canvas, which I didn't want to make any worse than it was. Consequently, it took me a few minutes to free it. When I finally dragged it out and turned it around, my knees failed me and I sank down on the edge of the musty bed. The strange whispering sound grew louder around me. My skin seemed hot and clammy-cold all at once, and I felt the blood drain away from my face as I stared at what might well have been a portrait of me.
Though there were subtle differences, my own green eyes stared back at me. Though the lips attempted a forced smile, those eyes had the look of a frightened doe about them. The hairstyle was different, but it was my strawberry-blonde mane fringed with tendrils falling in a mass of ringlets over shoulders bared by the cut of a soft green gown.
I fingered the tear, which ran from the chin down over the breasts in one continuous line as though it had been deliberately slashed. Tears welled in my eyes and my head began to spin. The scent of spice rose in my nostrils again, sapping consciousness away like a drug. Someone was sobbing, “No, Colin . . . don't!” It was a heartbreaking sound, and I didn't even realize it was coming from my own trembling lips.
Off in the distance another voice was calling my name, but I was just too overcome to listen. And then there was nothing—nothing but darkness closing in like a womb all around me.
* * * *
I awoke with the Cornish wind drying my tears. The rain had slacked as the squall passed over the coast and moved inland making way for the next system to follow. The terrace doors were flung wide letting in the bold, rain-washed breeze and the glare of an eerie yellow sky. There was no trace of the spice scent then, only the smell of drenched bark and black heather wafting up from the rise below.
Something wet and cold lay across my brow. It was a neatly folded handkerchief, and I tore it away and tried to sit up, but the pressure of a hand planted firmly on my shoulder held me down on the bed, and my vision slowly focused on the piercing amber eyes of the vicar standing over me.
"Are you all right, my dear?” he said softly.
"I . . . I think so,” I replied. It was all beginning to come back to me, and my eyes flashed toward the portrait. It was just as I'd left it, propped against the wardrobe door.
"I believe you owe me something of an explanation,” he said, recapturing my attention.
"I . . . I didn't break the glass in the conservatory,” I told him. “It was already broken when I came out here the first time. I only snapped off a few of the sharp edges and reshaped the lead framing a little...so I wouldn't cut myself climbing in."
"Never mind about that. It's this, I'm concerned with . . ."—he gestured toward the painting—"and your . . . fixation upon this house."
Now it was all beginning to make sense. He was, of course, familiar with the face on that canvas. That was why he was so startled when he first saw me.
"Who was she?” I said, knowing exactly who she was.
"Her name was Jean Fowler Chapin,” he murmured. “She died here very tragically in 1886."
I did vault erect then. “Tell me!” I cried. “You have to tell me."
He stared at me slack-jawed for a painfully long moment. “So, the two of you are connected,” he murmured. “How?"
I slid my legs over the edge of the bed and brushed my damp hair back from my face. “She was my grandfather's sister from the coast of Maine,” I told him. “The family lost contact with her after she married and came here to Cornwall to live in 1885. There was some sort of scandal connected with the marriage. It must have been something terrible, because my great-grandfather killed himself before their ship left the harbor. They didn't delay their departure for the funeral and the family disowned her. That's all I have to go on. She was never heard of again."
His cold, blank expression ran me through and I avoided his eyes as I went on. “No one would ever discuss Aunt Jean; her name was forbidden to be mentioned. But whatever it was that happened between my great-grandfather and his daughter didn't stop my father from naming me after her. My maiden name was Jean Fowler, as well. I never questioned him about it, but I think it might have been his way of affecting some sort of release for her soul. My father had strong convictions that the dead can't rest in peace without the forgiveness of the living. Vicar Marshall...I have to know what happened here—all of it."
"That's why you wanted to lease the place,” he said.
"And still do,” I cried. “You must reconsider now. I can't explain it . . . I don't pretend to understand it, but I do know I need to be here, I—"
"You need to tell me the truth,” he interrupted me. “You come here and try to coerce me into leasing you a house that isn't even on the market, then break into it when I refuse you, and unabashedly commence to go through its contents without so much as a by your leave. Forgive me for being harsh with you, my dear, but this simply won
't do. Just what exactly is it that you want here?"
He was right, of course, and my posture collapsed. It was a moment before I'd collected enough of my thoughts to speak. “I needed some space after the divorce,” I began awkwardly. “I wanted to clear up the family mystery, and I also needed a place to paint. I thought if I came here to Cornwall, I might be able to manage it all. I was hoping to locate Cragmoor, if it still existed, and find out whatever became of Aunt Jean. Her mystery has haunted me waking and sleeping since I was a very little girl. I wanted to retrace her steps here in England. I wanted to walk where she'd walked—be where she'd been. I wanted to get to know her, possibly through old records or relatives that I don't even know exist—something—anything that would shed some light on that dark time in our family history. That's up to me now; my father passed away two years ago."
He didn't seem convinced, and I went on quickly, “Surely you've heard of Fowler Plastics? We produce components for the space program. We do have a London branch. It all passed to me when Father died. The board of directors is running things for me while I'm abroad. I'm an artist, Vicar Marshall. I don't know the first thing about parts for shuttles and space capsules, nor do I want to. The point is, I've enough money at my disposal to help you restore this house as it once was. It's part of my family history, too, evidently. Since Father's death, finding Cragmoor and solving the enigma surrounding my great-aunt has become my primary concern."
The vicar sighed. “More at obsession, from what I can see,” he said, “and you seem to have fared well enough in your quest. You have found Cragmoor, and as to records, the contents of my great-grandfather, Elliot Marshall's, journals should suffice you, though I could just as easily tell you what they contain, since I've reconstructed the diaries over the years. The originals, you see, are barely legible now. The ink has faded, and the paper hasn't held up well in the dampness on this coast.
"As to living relatives, I'm afraid you have none on this side of the Atlantic, my dear. Jean Chapin did not live long enough to give birth to the child she was carrying . . . I'm sorry."
Rape of the Soul Page 2
