Embers (58 page)

"Oh, my
—
kerosene, is that it?" he ventured.

The smell. She'd forgotten completely about it. So much for her illusion of a fully booked inn. "It's just a little problem we had with our oil tank," she said quickly. "It's all fixed. Everyone's been
very
understanding. Well, shall we take a look at the dollhouse? It's out back," she said, stepping around him and closing the door behind her. She had an intense aversion to letting him enter her family's house; she'd sooner let in a mangy pit bull.

"Lead the way," he said.

As they walked around the house from front to back, Camplin made small talk about the difference between historically correct miniatures and dollhouses, which he explained were merely children's toys. His manner seemed tense and on guard.

No more than hers. Meg said curtly, "I
like
calling it a dollhouse."

She hated being in front of him, but the fog was thick and parts of the yard were unlit; she had no choice but to go first. She had little reason to assume he meant to harm her; what she was feeling, she decided, was an inherited dread.

Finally they reached the shed. Jittery from the nearness of him, all her senses on hyper-alert, Meg reached into her left pocket for her keys and opened the lock, then stepped inside the shed and turned on, first the dim overhead bulb, and then the dollhouse lights.

"This is it," she said unnecessarily.

She was not prepared for the intensity of Camplin's reaction. He let out a gasp, a kind of "oh-h" sound that had an undercurrent of emotions she couldn't begin to understand. He took a step back, as if he truly had seen a ghost. Suddenly the burden of fear seemed to shift from Meg to him. She watched with increasing fascination as he stood there slightly open- mouthed, staring at the dollhouse. The lattice pattern of light from its windows played on
his
body like the web of a spider, pinning him to the spot.
"Uh-h-h,"
he murmured, stricken.

The light from the dollhouse seemed to pulsate, like the rhythm of a heartbeat: stronger, fainter, stronger, fainter. At the same time, each rhythmic beat became brighter and more penetrating, until the air crackled with energy.

Camplin's face became contorted with fear. "Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God," he kept repeating. He wiped the sweat on his brow backward into his carefully groomed gray hair, then dragged his hands down across his cheeks, pulling his lower lip out in a grotesquely distorted expression of horror. His eyes were wide open, yet unseeing.

The pulsating light became more intense, dazzling Meg completely, preventing her from seeing any more of his reaction.

Fearful suddenly that the dollhouse was about to burst into flame in some ghastly ritual reenactment, Meg reached for its cord and yanked it out of the shed outlet. The dollhouse became dark once more; the crackling air around it became quiescent.

Stunned by the intensity of the event and yet feeling strangely, deeply triumphant, Meg said in a low voice, "I don't think it's lost any of its potency over the years
—
do you?"

Camplin was breathing heavily, still trying to recover. He looked to Meg like a man who's had one leg caught in hell and somehow managed to escape, leaving his shoe behind. "What?" he said, slack-jawed. "Potency? It'
s a ... a doll
house," he said, almost slurring the words. "That's all."

"Oh, no," she argued gently. "You were quite right. It's a very accurate miniature. Of Eagle's Nest. I'm sure it brings back memories for you? Of the good times
... and
the bad?"

He looked at her with a haggard, sideways glance. Then he seemed to pull himself together and straighten his spine. It was as if he was re-forming himself after being torn apart. She was in awe of that ability in him; of the phenomenal power of his will.

"It brings back nothing at all," he said in an ugly croak.

"How odd," Meg answered, her own spine stiffening in response. "It evokes so many memories for me
—
and I wasn't even there. But I can see my grandmother rushing around in her la
vender dress on the day of the f
ire: reassuring your children, gathering their things, packing their favorite toys for the evacuation.

"I can see her hurrying through the nursery," Meg went on, "grabbing your daughter's little blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders to keep her snug and warm. It's all so crystal clear to me."

Camplin stood in hostile amazement on the other side of the dollhouse from her, refusing to rise to her bait. But she wasn't finished with him.

Bolder now and more contemptuous of him than ever, she said, "Everyone assumed that my grandmother was overcome by smoke when she supposedly returned to the nursery for something or other, because everyone knew how much she loved your children. What was it you told the press
—
that she must have been looking for your daughter's teddy bear? How plausible that must've sounded."

"Because it
was
plausible," he said, stepping deliberately away from the dollhouse.

Meg watched him warily. "Plausible, but not true. My grandmother wasn't in the nursery when she died," Meg said. "The nursery wouldn't have had a lock on the door. But
I
know the room she died in was
locked;
she couldn't escape from it. She was trapped in your bedroom."

Meg watched Camplin's jaw clench and a minimal smile form on his lips. "My bedroom? You're suggesting she was a thief as well as a poor nursemaid?"

"I'm suggesting you used her and left her there to die,"
Meg said, hurling the words at him like sharpened knives.

"Excuse me
—
why would I do that?" he asked, unflinching.

"That, I can't answer," Meg admitted. "I don't understand that kind of obsession, that kind of evil."

"A dramatic view of a dramatic day," he said, moving closer to her.

"I have your letter," she blurted, stepping back.

He said astutely, "It mustn't be much good to you."

"It's told me everything I need to know about you." She reached inside her pocket and gripped the knife that lay there. "It's told me you're the lowest form of life."

Even in the dull light of the overhead bulb, she could see that she'd gone too far: his eyes glazed over with hard-edged fury.

He's old,
she told herself.
He's old. I can take him.
But she stepped back and around to the other side of the dollhouse, so that their positions were reversed: he was at the open side now, and she was in front. She looked down at the nursemaid doll with a quick, silent plea for help.

Camplin leaned on the edge of the table and glared over the rooftop at her. "Listen to me, you little
—
young lady. I've been extremely patient up until now. What you've said to me here is reprehensible
—
but it's not actionable. I warn you, though, if you keep running around town asking leading questions and impugning my name, then I'm going to make sure you and your family are stripped of everything you own and left naked and whimpering in the streets. Do you understand me?"

God, she despised him! "I'm not afraid of you," she snapped, clutching her knife.

"I don't think I'm getting through to you," he said, almost bemused by the fact. He reached into the dollhouse and brought out the hostess doll in her green-velvet dress. "There's more than one way," he said with a smile that was dreadfully unemotional, "to break someone."

He took the doll by the shoulders and with his right hand yanked the legs from the torso, then tossed the savaged pieces back into the dining room.

Shaking with fear and outrage, Meg said, "You'll pay for that! You
bastard,
you'll pay!"

His eyes narrowed with a look of withering confidence. "It looks like I won't be buying your little toy after all," he remarked, flicking his middle finger against the tiny windvane and sending it into a wild spin. "Some of it is in pieces."

Breathless with fury, she said, "I'd sooner sell to the devil!"

He smiled again, and then he turned and walked out. She watched him until he was swallowed up by the Down East fog — a murkier, darker fog than anywhere else in the world.

Meg's pursuit of justice for her grandmother had run hot and cold ever since her second visit with Orel Tremblay. But now it was running at a white-hot clip. Camplin
would
pay. One way or another, Meg was going to make sure of it. Her mind was in a turmoil as she weighed and balanced strategy and fallout.

One thing she knew: with his deep pockets and sterling reputation, Gordon Camplin would be tough to bring down. Going after his good name would be expensive and futile; her family
would
end up naked in the street.

No; there was another, simpler way to get revenge.

But it was too late to begin tonight. She went around to the open side of the dollhouse, to gather up the broken doll pieces and take them back to the Inn Between. The tiny dining room was a mess. She thought of the earlier ransacking that someone had given the place and realized, suddenly, that it couldn't have been Gordon Camplin; clearly he hadn't seen the dollhouse since 1947.

So it must have been Joyce Fells, after all
—
crazy Joyce. Well, that was one mystery solved. Meg was grateful for it. In any case, neither Joyce's antics nor her threats to sue bothered Meg a whit. To her, Joyce was nothing more than a colorful footnote in the ongoing saga of the dollhouse.

Meg began righting all the tiny dishes and goblets and then, weary of it, decided to leave it for the next day. She straightened out and stretched, and her eye fell on the tiny knotted floral rug in the sitting room between the master bedroom and the mistress's. It was badly scorched: the fringe was gone, and the pattern of pale and dark pink cabbage roses was almost unrecognizable. Probably the damage had been done when the wiring surged or shorted or did whatever it did when Gordon Camplin was there.

Probably.

****

Twelve hours later, Meg was sitting with Dorothea Camplin in the bright and sunny country kitchen of Tea Kettle Cottage, presenting her case for blackmailing the woman's ex-husband.

Meg hadn't called to warn Mrs. Camplin that she was coming, which she knew showed dreadful manners, but she didn't want to risk not being admitted. So she'd taken a chance, and the Cuban gardener had brought her directly to Mrs. Camplin, who was in her rose garden "doing battle," as she said, "with millions of aphids."

"This is where live-and-let-live gardening gets you, Manuel," the elderly woman said to her gardener in disgust. "We're going to have to make up a brew to control these nasties, or there'll be no roses for Meg to photograph!"

Meg explained that she was there for another reason, and Mrs. Camplin, sensing the gravity in her manner, asked Meg in for coffee.

As she stirred heavy cream into the coffee Mrs. Camplin had served in charming
Quimper
pottery, Meg said, "You were very understanding on the phone the other night. Yes, I
am
curious about Eagle's Nest and my grandmother's stay there. But it's not ordinary curiosity. Let me tell you why."

Dressed in baggy pants and a man's dark green T-shirt, Dorothea Camplin looked more like a bag lady than a wealthy socialite as she leaned forward with gossipy eagerness to hear what Meg had to say.

Surely she knew her husband was a beast,
Meg thought as she looked into the elderly woman's keen blue eyes. She might have been taken in by his looks, money, and smooth manner, but she did dump him eventually. That gave Meg the confidence to go on.

"It's terrible to bring up the past," she began. "But the past is too terrible
not
to bring up. Mrs. Camplin, I
...
I don't know why you left your husband so many years ago— no, wait. Please. I
have
to go on. People say he was a compulsive gambler; maybe he still is. But he was also desperately obsessed with my grandmother, and I have proof of it, in a letter from him."

Mrs. Camplin looked absolutely dumbfounded by Meg's speech. "For God's sake, child. Why are you telling me this now?" She didn't seem angry so much as amazed, a hopeful sign.

"I know. You think it's water under the bridge. Only it's not, Mrs. Camplin. If no harm had come from Gordon Camplin's obsession, then that would be one thing. But he threatened my grandmother, and he went at least part of the way to fulfilling that threat in front of a witness, and it seems obvious, at least to me, that"
—
Meg lowered her voice
—
"t
hat my grandmother died because of him," she concluded, staring at the cheerful
French
cup that she was cradling between her hands.

"My God," the elderly woman whispered, utterly shocked. "Do you have any idea what you're saying?"

Meg nodded silently. No doubt she was about to be booted out the door and down the garden path; but she hung tight, trusting that Mrs. Camplin's sense of fairness would prevail. Meg was entitled to a hearing. And cash for her family, because they were victims, too.