Household (42 page)

“Thank you, sir.” Miss Fiske thoughtfully replaced the receiver and gazed on the grey file cabinets across the room. She hoped that the producer would not pursue the matter of the Grenfalls’ reaction to the “beautiful city.”

As an emigrant from Germany via the Lower Eastside of New York City, he was at once extremely proud and billigerently defensive of the region known as Southern California. In common with many recent settlers, he eagerly solicited what he firmly expected must be similar opinions, collaring incoming actors, directors and scenic designers, inviting them to tell him how they liked the area.

He beamed when they praised its climate, its floral and arboreal beauties, its wonderful ocean and long white beaches, its towering snow-topped mountains and its vast stretches of desert. He glowered if they also decried its indifferent transportation and large assortment of peculiar inhabitants. A slur against Los Angeles or Hollywood was akin to mud being tracked on a temple floor. Miss Fiske, who was very fond of her employer, frowned. Being a native Californian, she was used to the epithets hurled by disgruntled Easterners. Less defensive than Mr. Goldbaum, she took them in her stride, attributing them to jealousy. However, she
had
felt her hackles rise when Mr. Grenfall, after various amused jibes at the so-called pleasures of the Egyptian Palace Hotel, had asked mildly if the prevailing architectural influences all ran to spotted dogs, derby hats and Dutch windmills.

Evidently Mr. Grcnfall had seen very little and assumed a great deal. It had been partially with the intention of finding his family their requested house and partially by way of figuratively rapping him on the knuckles that Miss Fiske had suggested The Castle. While the mansion would definitely provide the quiet, seclusion and space he had mentioned, its design, or rather the lack of it, must put the proverbial mote in his artistic eye. Hopefully its ghostly phenomena would also afflict him.

Her green eyes agleam with gentle malice, Miss Fiske separated her receiver from its hook, and dialing the number or the Egyptian Palace, she asked for the Grenfall suite.

❖

By the time Mr. Goldbaum’s long black Mercedes limousine had negotiated the high hill crowned by The Castle, Ruth Fiske, seated beside Bob, her employer’s chauffeur, was having second and third thoughts. Taking her eyes from the tree-shadowed edifice looming over the steep, winding driveway, she cast a furtive glance at the rear-view mirror and looked down quickly. Her conscience assailed her anew as she saw the bright anticipatory smiles on the faces of the five people occupying the rear of the car.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. If, rather than talking to Mr. Richard Grenfall on the telephone, she had met him in person, she would have never mentioned the house. She could only hope that once he and his family came inside and felt the dank chill that no amount of central heating could counteract, their enthusiasm would be similarly chilled. There was also the outside chance that the late Miss Lawrence would help matters by causing the chandelier to Swing slowly back and forth. That action, without benefit of breeze, had driven at least four prospective tenants away. For her own piece of mind, Miss Fiske forebore to dwell on what had happened to the nervous systems of those who had briefly taken up residence in the place. And, of course, the building was overpoweringly ugly.

On this particular afternoon, its overdecorated porch, its circular weather vane topped tower, its third floor balcony set under a gable and fronted by a free-form wooden cutout, its second floor balcony half-hidden by the misplaced pediment that ornamented the arched opening on the porch, and all of its other Victorian excesses, not excluding stained-glass windows, caused it to look as intimidating outside as it was to be inside. The interior view was something she had not yet seen, having entered Mr. Goldbaum’s employ only eight months previously. However, she was reasonably sure that no one with any pretensions to good taste would want to live there—certainly, no young man as elegantly turned out, as handsome of feature and person as Mr. Richard Grenfall, who had just this minute leaped out of the car to open the door for her.

Reading admiration in his dark eyes, Miss Fiske said in a small deprecating voice, “I’d forgotten that this house was so far off the beaten track. With the appalling lack of proper public transportation in the city, I fear the location would be too inconvenient for you—all of you. Culver City is way on the other side of town.”

“Oh, you need not worry about that, my dear,” Mrs. Grenfall said, strolling over to them. She had much the look of Richard around the eyes and in the shape of the face, Miss Fiske decided.

The secretary’s glance fell on Kathie Grenfall, dark like her brother and her parents, but with her mother’s golden eyes. She was so beautiful that Miss Fiske had been delighted to discover that her relationship to Richard was one of sister rather than cousin. Mark Driscoll was a cousin. He, too, was very attractive with his red-gold hair and his slanted eyes which were similar in color to those of Kathie and her mother, but he was more hirsute than Richard. His chin was faintly green, and she guessed he must have to shave twice a day. Hair grew thickly on his wrists and the backs of his hands. There were even hairs on his palms; she had felt them when they shook hands. Thinking about them now, some faint disquieting memory stirred in her mind and was forgotten as the elderly Mr. Grenfall joined them. He was certainly a handsome man. With his dark hair only slightly sprinkled with silver, his narrow moustache and his short dark beard, he looked every inch the stage magician. His eyes were practically mesmerizing, and his body was slender, graceful and almost sinuous. He had a rather foreign air, but his accent was definitely Eastern seaboard as he said briskly, “Well, let’s go inside. Do you have the keys, Miss Fiske?”

She would have given much to explain that she had forgotten them, but given Mr. Goldbaum’s all-abiding faith in her efficiency, she dared not confess to so fearful a lapse. She reached into her small purse and reluctantly brought them out. “Come with me,” she said resignedly and walked up the path leading to the front steps, praying that when they entered the hall, they would be met by that all-pervading chill and the swinging chandelier. As she fitted the key into the ornate lock beneath the heavy brass doorknob, she mentally challenged the phantom actress. “Do your worst, Miss Lawrence!”

The key turned with regrettable ease, and Miss Fiske, who had never encountered Miss Lawrence or the other psychic phenomena, hoped devoutly that she could maintain her equilibrium. Pushing open the door, she stepped inside, pausing just beyond the threshold. A small cry escaped her as she encountered a blast of air so icy that it seemed to have risen from the very bowels of a glacier.

There was a creaking rusty sound in her ears, and raising her eyes, Miss Fiske saw the chandelier moving back and forth quite as if someone were standing back of it, pushing it as they might a schoolyard swing!

A scream formed in her throat and was resolutely forced back and down. Half-fearfully, half-triumphantly, Miss Fiske turned to her five companions. With only the slightest tremor in her low, rather husky voice, she said, “You see, it’s quite unacceptable, isn’t it? There’s such a draft, and I don’t know what’s making that chandelier swing back and forth. The chains are rusty. It could fall at any moment. We’ll have to find something else for you. You must agree.”

She received no response. They weren’t looking at her. Their eyes were fixed on a point far above her, and gazing in that same direction, Miss Fiske could not stifle the scream that tore from her throat. From a noose at the end of a rope that encircled the base of the chandelier just above an ornamental glass drop dangled a shadowy figure, repulsively blue and bloated with its tongue lolling from the side of its distorted mouth.

Confronted with Miss Lawrence’s enthusiastic response to her prayers, the secretary felt herself growing dizzy and faint. “P-Please,” she begged. “D-Do let’s go. I... I... I’m sorry to have brought you here.”

“Please don’t be sorry, Miss Fiske,” Richard Grenfall said with a charming smile. “You couldn’t have done better. This is quite perfect.”

“Darling,” his mother warned, “don’t make any snap judgments.” As the trembling, shuddering secretary gazed gratefully at this infinitely sensible woman, the lady continued. “We can’t be sure of anything until we’ve seen the cellar.”

At that moment, there was a terrible gurgling scream from overhead. The doorknob flew out of Miss Fiske’s hand and the door slammed loudly, evidently driven in that direction by a numbing blast of wind that seemed to be coming from the inside of the house. As the secretary, well over the edge of terror, fell fainting to the floor, she heard or thought she heard Mrs. Grenfall say concernedly, “Grandfather, dearest, what on earth is the matter?”

As Richard lifted Miss Fiske to a nearby hall settee, Kathie, who communicated with her ancestor better than the rest of the Household, heard his views on the cheap, theatrical upstart who was currently endeavoring to establish territorial rights in a house that didn’t even belong to her!

“
In my day, she’d have been a bloody orange seller. They’d never have allowed her to set foot on the stage
!”

“Grandfather!” Kathie reproved.

“Please don’t stop to palaver with him,” Livia said tartly. “We have to see to this poor girl.” Turning to Richard who was kneeling beside the fallen secretary, she added, “How is she?”

“She’s still unconscious,” he said worriedly. “I’d best take her out to the car.”

“Can’t someone stop her doing that with the chandelier?” Septimus demanded.

Looking upwards again, they saw that the chandelier was swinging back and forth and around and around, imitating the action of a pendulum. The chain was creaking fearfully. Evidently, the actress wanted to intimidate the intruders headed by the Old Lord and was choosing this way to make her displeasure felt.

“Look out!” Mark exclaimed. “I think it’s about to fall!” Thanks to his warning, they were all able to jump back as the chains of the heavy fixture, already overstrained by her suicide and further weakened by her habit of activating it so often, crashed to the floor, leaving only the smaller end of the chain dangling from the high ceiling.

“Oh, dear, what a mess,” Livia commented. “We’ll clean it up later on, but that will certainly cut her claws. Now, may we please go down and see the cellar?”

❖

“They have the house taken?” the producer yelled into the phone the next morning. “What, what? Speak up, Miss Fiske. I can hardly hear you.”

Miss Fiske, still recuperating from her first brush with the spiritualistic world, managed to raise her shaking voice. “They like the cellar,” she stated, hoping he would not ask for a further explanation.

“The cellar yet?” he questioned, defeating her hopes.

“It seems that it’s large enough for their purposes.”

“What purposes? Wild parties, no doubt?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to contradict him. None of the family, especially not Mr. Richard Grenfall, looked as if they favored that popular recreation, but since she could not comprehend their enthusiasm for the cellar, she found it easier to let the matter stand. “Possibly,” she replied cravenly. “They said they’d be obliged if you’d replace the chandelier with a fixture that did not swing.”

“The chandelier?”

Miss Fiske hastily removed the phone from her right ear and rubbed that assaulted appendage. “Didn’t I tell you that the chandelier fell?”

“Gott in Himmel!” screamed Morris Goldbaum. “Have you any idea of the cost? Imported it was from Venice, blown especially for me, and they are not two minutes in the house and broken it is?”

“
They
didn’t break it, Mr. Goldbaum. It fell of its own accord, I expect.” She paused, not wishing to rub salt in his many wounds by mentioning Miss Lawrence’s contribution to the breakage.

“It has never fallen before,” growled Mr. Goldbaum. “Ach, what I must put up with actors. Very well, do as they ask. Only spare the expenses, please.”

Extracting the kernel from the nut of that conversation, Miss Fiske leaned her chin on her hands and her elbows on her desk. She heaved a long sigh. “Actors,” he had said. That was the trouble. In her eight months with Mr. Goldbaum, she had seen them come and go. Some remained longer than others. Generally they came for one picture and went back to stages located either in New York or London. Mr. Richard Grenfall was here for one picture. Undoubtedly he would leave immediately he was finished filming it—and that should not matter to her. No sensible secretary or young woman from California ever made the mistake of falling in love with an actor. Everyone remotely connected with the burgeoning film industry knew that actors were heartless, faithless, often mindless and always supremely egocentric. They lapped up praise and adored anyone who adored them—but briefly. This applied to all of them, but if they were as handsome as say John Gilbert or Ramon Navarro or Richard Grenfall, who to her mind was better looking than both of the aforementioned and definitely in a class with John Barrymore, they were impossible! Their only love could be found in their makeup mirror. Their other love would be their leading lady, in this case the exquisite Katherine Grenfall—but she was his sister! Miss Fiske hated the feeling of hope that flickered in her mind despite her large portion of common sense.

“Desist, my girl,” she muttered. She called the studio electrician and explained about the chandelier.

She hated herself still more when she dialed the number of the mansion, hoping against hope that
he
would answer the telephone. Her loathing for herself increased several notches when, as she heard his voice on the other end, her heart leaped and her breath grew short. It was very difficult for her to say calmly, “About that chandelier, Mr. Grenfall...” She was close to swooning when, at the end of their conversation, he said wistfully, “I hope that you are not doing anything tonight, Miss Fiske.”

Her answer, the stock one she gave all actors, should have been, “Unfortunately I am. I’m very busy.” Despite her well-developed instincts for self-preservation, she said, “No, I’m not busy. Why?”