Greenglass House (25 page)

“Whoops. Sorry to interrupt.” She blew on her cold hands and headed into the kitchen.

“Those who didn't know about his secret business came to him for his glasswork,” Dr. Gowervine continued. “Churches, architects, builders of libraries—even the mayor of the city came once, when it was time to rebuild after the city's archives had burned down. He asked the famous glazier for a window that would destroy itself with exceptional beauty the next time the archives were burned, and so interesting was the challenge, the glassmaker accepted. He was a strange man, with secrets of his own. His name was Lowell Skellansen.”

Negret followed Dr. Gowervine's gaze back to the occasional flickers in the glass over the front door, wondering if perhaps the professor was building up to revealing that this famous artist had made the windows of Greenglass House, and that was what had brought him to the inn.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one who suspected as much. “Let me guess,” Mrs. Hereward scoffed, waving a hand around so that her bracelets rattled. “Skellansen windows, every one of them? The house is too old for that.”

Dr. Gowervine looked up coldly. “I know that,” he retorted, and for a minute it seemed like whatever truce they'd called in the name of making Georgie feel better was about to be shattered. But the doctor just gave her an extra-vicious frown. “Yes, the house is old. And some of these windows are very old too. But unless I'm very much mistaken, and I'm something of an expert on the subject, so I doubt I am—many of them are quite a bit younger. Except for the ones in the stairwell, I suspect most were added after the house was built, much like the fire escapes and the side porch.”

He adjusted his glasses and looked at the window next to the door to the screened porch. “These are beautiful windows, no question. But the difference between an exceptionally beautiful window and Skellansen's work is . . . well, it's a gulf. It's apples and oranges. Withered little crabapples and big ripe California oranges. Also, with one exception, none of the windows here looks to be more recent than, say, the very beginning of the twentieth century. Skellansen was making windows during my own lifetime.”

“Except for one, you said,” Negret reminded him. “Which one is that? Could that one have been from this Skellansen guy?”

“Ah, well. It's the enameled glass window. I imagine it's from sometime in the thirties. Still far too early for Skellansen.”

“What's enameled glass?”

“Glass with color applied to it,” Dr. Gowervine explained. “As opposed to when the glass itself is colored.” He looked uncomfortable now, and abruptly Negret realized why. The professor was talking about the window in 5W. Clem's room. That was why he'd gone in there and touched nothing: he'd wanted a closer look at that glass. Fortunately for him, Clem wasn't around, and Mrs. Pine didn't catch the admission either.

He cleared his throat. “The point is, no, Mrs. Hereward, I'm certain these aren't Skellansen windows. But coming back to him: the story I want to tell began, as I suppose most things in Nagspeake do, with a smuggler. This particular smuggler was part of the crew of the famous Doc Holystone, and what he needed to move was a piece of information. So he went to the glassmaker who dealt in secrets.”

Negret met Sirin's eyes. The famous Doc Holystone, who had once owned this house. That couldn't be a coincidence.

“For those who don't know,” he continued, “Doc Holystone died thirty-four years ago after what seems to have been a somewhat reckless run, the details of which are still muddy.”

Sirin frowned. Negret wondered what had caught her attention. Everybody knew that much of the Doc Holystone story.

“It does seem that agents of the Deacon and Morvengarde catalog merchants were involved, but then Nagspeake's customs agency is practically a wing of Deacon and Morvengarde, so that's hardly a surprise. It would certainly explain why the smuggler who came to Skellansen's workshop was in a state of panic, and afraid for his life. He knew the whole story, he said, and it needed to be told. But he couldn't be the one to do it. He didn't want Deacon and Morvengarde's enforcers after him. Could Skellansen help him find someone, perhaps at a newspaper, who would be willing to write about what had happened to Holystone?

“Well, Skellansen listened to the story and had a different idea. He would tell the tale himself. He would create a window that showed what had happened to Doc Holystone at the hands of Deacon and Morvengarde's agents, and he would put it where it would be sure to be seen. Skellansen had just accepted the mayor's commission for the window for the new city archives building, and he determined to make the smuggler's story his subject. There would be a big to-do over the unveiling, so even if Deacon and Morvengarde sent someone to smash the window the next day, thousands of people were guaranteed to see it at least once. It would be photographed and written about by journalists all over the city. It was perfect. Skellansen began sketching the minute the smuggler left his workshop.

“Now, this was not the only window the glazier was busy with at the moment, and it also wasn't the first time he'd combined his two livelihoods. He was crafty about it, but if you knew how to read his windows, there were whole worlds hidden in them, mysteries and secrets held together by glass and metal. And as it happened, somewhere out there in the city, someone else who'd had his secrets pass through Skellansen's hands had decided to put an end to the artist.

“You don't traffic in confidences and mysteries without knowing how to protect yourself, or without having some way to be forewarned when it's time to hide yourself away for a while. By the time the marauder with the knife between his teeth found his way into Skellansen's workshop, the glazier was long gone, and so was everything he'd been working on, including at least four windows it was known he'd been commissioned to make. The shop was not only abandoned, it was empty. Not a single piece of glasswork remained, and Skellansen has not been seen or heard from since.”

“And?” Mrs. Hereward asked impatiently.

Dr. Gowervine looked at her, then back at the window beside the porch door, then back at the old lady again. “And he's still missing. Along with four windows, at least one but probably all of which hid secrets, at least one but probably all of which were enough for someone to want him dead. One of those windows had the secret truth about Doc Holystone's death encoded in it somewhere.”

“And he supposedly made it to safety with four stained-glass windows while being stalked by a killer?” Mrs. Hereward asked skeptically. “That's a pretty incredible escape.”

“Well, the workshop had been cleaned out. That's just a fact. But he wouldn't have needed to take the windows away intact,” Dr. Gowervine said reasonably. “Most of us—people who study Skellansen—figure he escaped with either the cartoons, which are scale drawings used for measuring and cutting and laying out the glass, or possibly something called a
vidimus,
which is a sort of model made to show the customer. If he had the vidimus or the cartoon for any given window, Skellansen could reproduce it again.”

He took another sip of coffee. The room waited. “And?” Mrs. Hereward said again.

“And what?” Dr. Gowervine demanded. “I don't know where Skellansen went. I volunteered to tell a story because you said we needed to cheer the girl up, and all the glass in this place made me think of that one. Nobody said it had to be a story with an ending all neatly tied up like some ridiculous fairy tale. This story's true, and true stories don't have endings, because things just keep going.”

Mrs. Hereward bristled at
some ridiculous fairy tale,
and Georgie snorted. “I didn't ask to be cheered up,” she muttered. Despite her words, though, she was smiling.

Negret glanced at Sirin. She was still sitting stiffly, staring at Dr. Gowervine through narrowed eyes. Then she relaxed and ducked down behind the high back of the seat. “Well, that was interesting,” she whispered. “What do you think?”

He hunched down to join her. “I think he's told that story before,” Negret whispered in reply. “And I for sure don't think it just occurred to him to tell it because he's here and there happens to be a bunch of stained glass. It may be true that none of these windows are by that Skellansen guy, but that story and our windows must both have something to do with why he's here. And why he was in Clem's room.” He explained the slip Dr. Gowervine had made about the enameled glass. “That doesn't mean he isn't also the thief, though. He's definitely looking for something.”

“Agreed. So how do we find out what that something is? Are you thinking of all those glass pieces upstairs in the Emporium?”

“Yeah. But then I'm also thinking about what he said—how Skellansen wouldn't have had to escape with the real windows if he had the cartoons or the vi—vi—what was that word?”

“Vidimus.”

“Plus, if I was going to hide things that had to do with stained glass, hiding them somewhere that's already known for stained glass would be like hiding them in plain sight, right? Maybe Skellansen couldn't have hidden his actual windows here because they're so awesome they'd stick out. But his tools . . . his models . . . those might not be so obviously out of place.”

Sirin was definitely impressed. “Wow, Negret. That's some good, sneaky thinking.”

“Of course, it could just be that Dr. Gowervine's into stained glass and came here because we have a ton of it. He
could
be telling the truth about the Skellansen story just occurring to him. But there's also the Doc Holystone connection.”

“Yes. That's interesting, isn't it?” She got that odd look on her face once more. “He didn't mention knowing this used to be the Holystone house, but do you think he did? Before he came here and heard your mom's story, I mean.”

“There's an easy way to find out,” Negret said. He turned to lean over the back of the seat again and raised his voice. “Dr. Gowervine?”

The professor looked up from his cup. “Yes, Milo?”

“About Doc Holystone?”

“Yes?” he answered guardedly.

Negret put on his most innocent expression. “Did you know this house used to belong to him? I mean before yesterday, when my mom told her story?”

Dr. Gowervine made a face that was probably supposed to look blank, surprised, guileless. It didn't manage to be any of those things. It looked like the expression of someone about to lie. “Goodness, no, I was completely surprised. Could've knocked me over with a feather.”

“What a coincidence,” Negret replied.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” the professor agreed. “Quite a coincidence.”

Negret turned back around and hunkered down again. “I don't recall him looking all that surprised at the time,” he said quietly.

“So, not only did he already know,” Sirin whispered, “but he
lied
about it. Why would he lie? It's not a secret, is it?”

“Nope,” Negret whispered back, “but I bet if you were looking for something that someone went into hiding over, something that put someone's life in danger, maybe you'd feel a little nervous about it. Even if it all happened so long ago.”

“So you think he thinks there's a . . . a vidimus hidden here at the inn?”

“That, my dear Sirin, is exactly what I think he thinks. I think he thinks the secret of Doc Holystone's death is hidden somewhere right here.” He let his character slip away for a moment and laughed, gazing out one of the two big windows that flanked the foyer. “This is so weird.”

“Why?” Sirin asked, grinning back.

“Well, because. I mean . . . this is my
house
we're talking about. Don't you think that's weird?” He shrugged. “I mean, yes, it used to be Doc Holystone's house too, but the day before yesterday I was just sitting here doing
math homework.
”

Outside, the snow had frozen in little drifts in the angles of the windowpanes. This window was plain Nagspeake glass: thick and air-pocked and about the color of the inside of a cucumber, so that everything beyond it was tinted pale green too. With so little light inside, the moonlit snow outside seemed even more luminous than usual. Glowing pale green snow, sloping away across the grounds to the tree line.

As he looked out toward the pavilion, Negret remembered the figure in the heavy coat who had appeared on the railcar landing two nights before. He'd assumed it had been the guest who'd dropped the map, but if he was right about Georgie dropping the map on purpose, maybe he'd been wrong.

Now it seemed possible that everyone had a reason to go snooping around Greenglass House.

 

As the candles burned lower, those who were still awake began to drift upstairs. Georgie was first, mumbling goodnight; then Mrs. Hereward and Lizzie and Meddy. Dr. Gowervine made one last trip out to the screened porch to smoke in the cold before he turned in. That left Mrs. Pine, Mr. Vinge, and Milo, who had moved to the hearth to read another chapter or two of
The Raconteur's Commonplace Book
by the light of the fire. His mother had stacked a few folded blankets on the brick, and with a minor adjustment or two Milo had turned the stack into a cozy sort of seat. The rucksack he'd found in the Emporium made a perfect footrest.

Mrs. Pine moved the fireplace grate and fed a pair of logs to the low flames. “You're a pretty quiet fellow.”

Milo looked up, thinking she was talking to him, but his mother was smiling at Mr. Vinge. The old man shifted in his seat and crossed his ankles (green and blue argyle with what looked like a row of frogs hopping around them). “I suspect,” he said with a chuckle, “anyone might seem a quiet fellow compared to some of the folks here.”

“That's very true.” Mrs. Pine replaced the screen and brushed her palms on her knees. “Mind if I ask what you're reading?”