Authors: Lillian Stewart Carl
His slightly blurred eyes clicked into focus. He swept Rebecca and covers aside and leaped to his feet. In the feeble, hazy light she saw that he was wearing a pair of soccer shorts. She didn’t have time to be relieved.
Michael hurriedly wet towels in his bathroom. He slapped Rebecca’s face with clammy terry cloth, ordering, “Put this ower your mouth.” He wrapped his own face. They ran through the big bedroom, down the back staircase, out into the Hall. The high ceiling was matted with smoke. The light of the flames flickered on the walls.
The metal trash can from the kitchen stood on the landing. Already the flames shooting above its rim were subsiding and the thick black smoke dissipating. Michael slipped past the can, down the steps and to the kitchen. A few soup pots of water later the fire was out.
The front door was standing wide open. Rebecca slammed it shut, hoping the eyes she felt watching her were only Queen Mary’s marble ones.
Once again she and Michael trekked through the house, turning on lights, checking the artifacts, and opening windows on all floors but the sixth. There Elspeth’s window was already open, not the inch or two it usually was, but flung wide. The door and the window had drawn the smoke through the height of the house as if it had been a chimney.
Michael adjusted the window to its usual crack. “Was Elspeth ticked off at your bletherin’ aboot her the day?”
“Maybe she decided to help the fire along, but she didn’t set it. Someone very real was in the house.” Rebecca’s voice arched suddenly and she steadied it. “Was he— she— were they trying to kill us?”
He glanced at her, raised his hand, and wiped his hair off his forehead, leaving a streak of charcoal across his skin. “It was another warnin’. Like lockin’ me in the storeroom. Like murderin’ my tape.”
“A threat. An order to leave.” Rebecca hugged herself, the cold draft slicing through her gown and drawing gooseflesh from the skin that had only moments before been hot and sweaty.
“Whoever it is,” Michael said, “must’ve taken a proper scunner tae us, tae try and set the place on fire.”
Back down they went, and considered the blackened trash can. The intricate white plaster ceilings of Hall and study were bruised with soot, but there was no other damage.
“Bluidy stupid way tae give an order,” said Michael. “These places may be built o’ stone, but there’s enough wood inside tae make one— this one— go up like a torch. Especially when we’re miles from the fire brigade. A good thing you woke up. See, the drapes on the window were singed by sparks.”
Now that the excitement of both dream and fire were over, Rebecca felt hollow and slightly sick. She was much too embarrassed to tell Michael why she’d waked up. She uttered a four letter word that surprised herself and made his brows shoot upward.
“Excuse me.” Inhaling deeply of the cold but clear air, she peered down into the entry. Small chunks of mud like chocolate bits lay scattered on the floor and the steps up to the landing. “Look. The mud that squishes up beside the sole of your shoe and then falls off when you walk.”
“Aye, Sherlock?”
They followed the faint mud track into the kitchen. The stone floor of the pantry was marked by one faint, smeared footprint. “Here’s where they found their fuel,” Michael said. “The old newspapers for packin’. Pasteboard boxes. Dorothy’s dustrags.”
Rebecca rubbed her arms briskly, wondering if her flesh was going to break off her bones, it was so cold. With a smothered groan she picked up the towels that were still lying on the floor, rose, and found she didn’t need her glasses to appreciate Michael.
Smudges of soot looked like bruises on the fair skin of his arms and shoulders. The hair on his chest was indeed auburn, his legs below the shorts were lean and strong. If his waist wasn’t as slender as it had probably once been, he still had a way to go before flab dulled his wiry lines. Nice, she thought, if grubby. With a corner of the towel she went after the charcoal smear on his forehead.
“I can bath mysel’, thank you,” he said, fending her off with a forearm and a grin. “You’re none too clean either.”
“A flannel gown isn’t the most efficient of fire-fighting garments.”
“Nor the most attractive.”
“I wasn’t dressing for an audience.” She stooped to wipe the mud from the floor.
“Dinna do that! We’ll have tae have Lansdale oot the morn!”
“Oh, of course. Sorry.” She folded the towels and laid them on the counter. The breeze nibbled at her with tiny cold teeth. She shivered, her own teeth starting to chatter. Shock, she told herself dispassionately.
“Cold?” This time when Michael raised his hand he locked his arm around her shoulders. “Or scared?”
The stubble on his jaw was at the moment his only concession to prickliness; she ran her arm gratefully around his waist. His skin was cool beneath her hand. “Both,” she replied. “You would be too if your skin wasn’t so thick.”
“It’s no sae thick as a’ that,” he told her.
No, it wasn’t, she thought, but she wasn’t particularly surprised.
They turned off the lights, left two windows slitted open, went back upstairs. With bemused smiles they parted in Rebecca’s doorway just as Darnley crept out from beneath the bed. His baleful look seemed to say, life was much simpler before you got here.
Rebecca’s thoughts hung suspended in the hollowness inside her, as if they were displays tucked away behind safety glass. A clean nightgown. A bath. Hot water to wash away soot and sweat both… . Michael still stood in the door. She said, “It’s been a long time since you’ve asked me if I’m going to turn tail and run. Now’s your chance.”
“A fine thrawn lass like yoursel’, runnin’ away? If the bogles canna get rid o’ you I widna expect a human bein’ tae do it.”
“Stubborn, moi?” She laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one. Good night, lass.”
“Good night, lad. Thank you. And, oh, be sure to wash that scratch!”
“I will, I will.” His bare feet padded up the staircase.
Half an hour later, when Rebecca was curled drowsily in her nest of blankets, it occurred to her Michael might have hesitated in the door because his not so thick skin had wanted to sleep next to hers. Platonically, of course. In the spirit of comradeship.
But you never could tell with men. Even the comradely ones were likely to have sex-saturated brains. Must be difficult for them, dealing with a handicap like that.
Dealing with dreams like the one that had wakened her to the fire. Rebecca looked at the shadowed canopy as though her look could penetrate it and ceiling both and see Michael alone in his bed. Dr. Campbell had no business turning attractive on her. None at all.
She drifted at last into a light but dreamless sleep. Monday morning dawned, as most Mondays seemed to do, cold, damp, and dismal.
Warren Lansdale and a forensics team from Putnam arrived within an hour of Rebecca’s call, while she and Michael were still exchanging wry and wary glances over their breakfasts. The men crashed like a tidal wave over the house, collected various lumps and scrapings of mud and charcoal, boxed up the trash can, and with noncommittal shrugs ebbed away.
Michael leaned against Mary’s marble effigy, his hands in his pockets. He was wearing his blue sweatshirt with the white Saint Andrew’s cross, the emblem on the flag of Scotland, as though he had nailed his colors to the mast. Warren stood in the door with his hat in his hands. Behind him the rain drifted down onto lawn, dovecote, and the assorted cars in the parking area. Rebecca inspected the sheriff’s face, trying to penetrate the shrubbery.
His concern seemed perfectly genuine. “I was sure you’d seen the last of the vandalism. But a fire— that’s ugly. Would you consider leaving?”
“No way,” stated Rebecca, despite the slightly sick feeling still lurking in the pit of her stomach. “I’m not letting some nut push me around.”
“Mr Adler is out of town?” the sheriff went on.
“I left a message with his secretary, and she said she’d pass it on to him if he calls in. He couldn’t do anything if he were here.”
Warren shook his head. “Just the vandalism. Nothing else has been stolen. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense to whoever’s doin’ it,” Michael said.
Rebecca crossed her arms. “Warren, do you have the mausoleum key?”
“No ma’am, I sure don’t.” His moustache wilted, hurt.
But Michael’s jaundiced gaze sustained her into another question. “Did you know we found the will you signed for James on August 24?”
“Yes, Mr Adler said it’d turned up.”
“Do you know why James never got anyone else to sign it?”
“No. When I left him that afternoon he was putting away the chess pieces, chuckling over how he was going to surprise Mr. Adler… ”
“What?” interrupted Michael, standing up straight. “James didn’t want Adler to know about that will?” Rebecca shot a keen glance at him. Interesting point, but do you have to raise it with such relish?
“James hadn’t told him about it when I left,” Warren repied. “But he knows about it now, so James must’ve told him later.”
“Weren’t you curious,” Michael persisted, “why the will you signed, the one that didn’t provide for relatives, wasn’t the one in effect?”
Warren glanced from Michael to Rebecca and back, obviously wondering why a higher education had left them so obtuse. “James’s wills were his business. I signed where he asked me to sign. If he changed his mind again that was no concern of mine.”
Michael caught Rebecca’s warning eye and subsided against the sarcophagus. “Thank you. Much obliged for your help.”
Mollified, Warren glanced at his watch. “If you want that lock changed again, just say so. Someone must’ve copied one of the keys to the other one.”
“The dead bolt you brought ought to do it,” replied Rebecca. “And thank you for the smoke detectors. I’ll make sure Eric reimburses you.”
Lansdale settled his hat firmly on his head. “No rush. I feel bad enough about this— you come to do your jobs and all this happens to you.” He backed into the rain. “I’ll let you know if the lab finds anything.”
The squad car swished down the driveway. Michael exchanged a careful glance with Rebecca. “Is he hidin’ something, or is he just unimaginative?”
“I wish I knew.” She dived out the door and padded across the wet lawn to the toolshed.
The small clapboard building smelled of soured grass clippings, fertilizer, and gasoline. In the light of a single bare bulb Phil and Steve crouched amid rakes, flowerpots, boards, and cobwebs, absorbed like Roman soothsayers in the entrails of a lawn mower. “Excuse me,” Rebecca began. “Would you mind putting up some smoke alarms and installing a dead bolt on the door before you quit today? They’re on the kitchen table.”
“I’ll do it right now,” Phil said, unfolding himself from his crouch. To Steve he said, “Make sure you get those bolts on tight.”
Just inside the door two milk jugs encrusted with brown goo stood next to a fresh red gas can. No wonder the place stank of gasoline, Rebecca thought. Surely Eric didn’t know they’d been keeping it in plastic jugs.
Maybe the lab would find traces of gasoline in the trash can. She looked narrowly at Steve, but his lock of hair was as effective as a highwayman’s mask in concealing his expression. Innocent until proven guilty, she reminded herself, and started back for the house.
The clouds were so low they touched the top of the castle, the weather vane looking like it was packed in cotton batting. It wasn’t much warmer in the entry, and the breath of the house was damp and musty in Rebecca’s nostrils, but the lights shone with comforting halos. She was telling Phil where the smoke alarms needed to go, on second-, fourth-, and sixth-floor landings, when she heard Dorothy’s indignant voice.
The housekeeper had already given them chapter and verse for calling her on her day off. Rebecca had had to invoke Eric’s name, coupled with the words “overtime pay”, to do the trick. “You told me to clean it and I’m cleaning it!” Dorothy was saying.
“But you’re muckin’ it aboot!” protested Michael.
Rebecca found Dorothy and Michael confronting each other just inside the Hall. Oh my God— the woman had taken a scrub brush to the original gilt frame of a 200 year old Romney portrait.
Rebecca intervened, muttering whatever soothing phrases came to her mind— lack of communication, no harm done. Michael carried the painting away like a fireman rescuing a child from a burning building. Dorothy, frowning ferociously and muttering about people who couldn’t speak English right, turned to the soot scum on the window. Rebecca fled.
Michael was in the kitchen, tenderly wiping the frame and murmuring assurances to the portrait. He was oblivious to Rebecca standing in the doorway. They must’ve been suffering from smoke inhalation last night, she thought with an affectionately exasperated smile, falling on each other like that. Nice hug, though. Absolutely first rate.
She headed upstairs, replaced the glass bottles left in the fourth floor hall, and went into James’s bedroom.
She sealed the boxes of baby clothes. The poor little girl hadn’t even lived long enough to have a name. If James haunted the house because of unfinished business, then, perhaps, so did Elspeth, looking for the baby she’d never accepted was gone.
Elspeth’s clothes were fusty and limp, rather nasty, like plants growing in a stagnant pond. Cautiously Rebecca bundled them into black trash bags for the Historical Society, waiting to be gripped by some paroxysm of anger or grief. But whatever spirit of Elspeth lingered in the house had long since deserted its mortal clothing. Not the briefest whiff of lavender stirred the close, still air in the room. At last Rebecca got up, brushed off her sweater and jeans, and opened the window.
A shrill angry voice smacked her like Michael’s wet towel. There, on the drab winter-brown lawn behind the castle, Steve stood hunched truculently while Heather’s entire body gesticulated rage at him. Her words were lost in the rush and rustle of the rain.
Steve shrugged and turned away. Typical male. Heather stood there with her guts strung out beside her and he decided to sweep the shed or something. Heather grasped his arm and turned him back. He threw her away from him so forcefully she went sprawling. Rebecca gasped, clenching her fists on the windowsill. But Steve was already helping Heather up with every appearance of remorse.