Houses of Stone (17 page)

Karen gave her a brief run-down. Lisa didn't appear to find the story interesting in itself, but the possibility of making money definitely aroused her interest. "I don't see why an old book is so valuable, but I'll take
your word for it. So you want to find out who this woman was? Are you sure she was a Cartright?"

"Pretty sure. I may never know for certain." It was the first time Karen had admitted this to herself. The idea of failure was so appalling she had to swallow before she could go on. "At least I hope to come up with a strong possibility."

"Like, a woman who lived at the right period and who fits the other clues?"

"That's the general idea."

"Then some kind of genealogy might help."

"It certainly would." Karen's eyes opened wide. "Don't tell me you have—"

"I sure do. Bill practically fainted when he saw it, so I figured it must be important. He thought I didn't notice. Men never think women have right good sense, do they?"

Her smile invited Karen to share her amusement. Sisterhood was a word Lisa would probably reject, just as she would deny being a feminist. What she had invoked was the age-old secret understanding among women who manipulate men without letting the poor fools know they are being manipulated.

"You've got that right too," Karen said. "You—you didn't let him have it, I hope."

"Course not. You want to see those papers?"

"As soon as possible."

"They're in my car." Lisa finished her coffee and rose. "What about right now?"

America is now wholly given over to a d------d mob
of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash—and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed.

Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Letters, 1854

KAREN
had never been
particularly interested in tracing her, or anyone else's, ancestors. What was the point? Discovering that a remote predecessor had carried a musket or a pike in an old, pointless battle, or tracing a connection to a set of illiterate, bloodthirsty noblemen? Even if you could claim a distant relationship with Erasmus or Shakespeare, it didn't mean you had inherited their talents or were entitled to increased respect.

She had pictured the genealogy as a chart, a family tree with names and dates. Some of the ones she had seen had been designed to look like trees, with the names inscribed on leaves—more decorative than useful. When Lisa handed her a thick sheaf of papers her hopes soared. There might be more information here than she had expected.

She and Lisa had wrestled the heavy carton up the steps and into the living room. Lisa was stronger than she looked, and she didn't shirk her half of the weight. She sat watching in silence as Karen examined the papers.

The pages consisted of printed forms which had been filled in by hand. At the top right corner was the word "Generation." After puzzling over this for a moment Karen realized it referred to the number of generations since the original ancestor—in this case, the first settler in America. The form was fairly easy to decipher once she got the hang of it. A
separate page for each individual listed the name, the names of father, mother, spouse and children, and the appropriate dates—birth, death, marriage—as well as the names of the spouse's parents. The spouse was always female, since (of course, Karen thought sourly) descent was traced through the male.

The Cartrights had been a prolific lot. The farther back in time she went, the greater the number of offspring. Six, eight, nine, twelve . . . Dates of death were not always given, but it was safe to assume that a good many of those children had died young. The infant mortality rate had been high.

She stopped at a page labeled "third generation." The name was that of Andrew Cartright, born February 26, 1771. One, two, three . . . eleven children. She felt a pang of pity for Elizabeth, Andrew's wife.

The birth dates of the children ranged from 1791 to 1810. Seven of them were girls: Catharine, Elizabeth, Maria, Sarah, Ann, Alexandra, Fanny. No dates of death were given, but there was an additional column, "Married to." The names of the husbands of Ann and Alexandra were listed. The others were described as "Never Married." Because they had remained spinsters or because they had died young? A vital question, that one, but the form did not answer it.

Karen turned back to the preceding generation, to Andrew's father Josiah. Andrew had had sisters, six of them. Some had married, some had not. The youngest of the girls would have been twenty years old in 1800, if she had lived that long.

The names fluttered around in her head, anonymous and without meaning. She hadn't expected to find a Cartright daughter named Ismene. Still, it was disappointing to discover they all had traditional, conventional names. Elizabeth, Sarah, Mary . . . Andrew's sisters and daughters were all possibles—those of them, at least, who had lived to adulthood. How did one go about finding the dates of their deaths? Was that information missing from the genealogy because it had not been available to the researcher, or because nobody gave a damn about females outside the direct line of descent?

For reasons she would have been hard-pressed to justify logically, Karen believed Ismene had been fairly young when she penned the novel.
Jane Eyre
had been written when Charlotte Bronte was thirty years old. She
was dead before she was forty. Emily had been only thirty when she died, Anne twenty-nine. If genius didn't bloom early in those days, it didn't have a chance to bloom at all.

There was too much in those papers to absorb all at once. When Karen looked up she saw that Lisa was watching her with a faint cynical smile.

"Is that what you wanted?" Lisa asked.

"It's one of the things I wanted." Karen knew she had already given herself away; her passionate interest must have been plain to an intent observer.

"I can't sell it without Cam's okay."

Karen sat back on her heels and tried to marshal her arguments. "He told me he'd rather deal with me. I've already offered to buy the material, sight unseen. Now that I've seen it, I'll settle for a copy, if you don't want to part with the original."

"That's more than William was willing to do."

So Bill had seen the papers. Damn him, and damn Lisa for being such a sly, stupid, greedy little schemer. Karen said with great restraint, "Bill isn't the most scrupulous individual I've ever met. What did he offer you?"

"He wasn't willing to pay for a copy. The original or nothing, he said."

"What he was willing to pay for was sole possession of the information," Karen snapped. She fought to control her fraying temper. "He wanted to prevent me from seeing it. I don't suppose he mentioned that he has a fantastic memory? Not total recall, but damned close. He's already got what he needs to go on with. He won't give you a penny now."

"I don't understand."

"I'll try to explain. You see, all this gives me is a list of possible candidates—women who lived during the right time period. From the literary style of the manuscript and my familiarity with the genre I can make an educated guess as to approximately when it was written. Bill probably can too; he had a chance to look through the manuscript. But I haven't found a terminus ad quern or a quo yet ..." Seeing Lisa's smooth brow furrow, she explained. "I'll give you an example. Suppose there was a reference to the American flag and its ... oh, let's say, fifteen stars. I'm no historian; I haven't the faintest idea when the fifteenth state was admitted to the Union. But I'd find out. And then I would know the book was written after that date."

"Why would she mention how many stars there were in the flag?"

"She didn't. She probably won't." Karen tried to control her exasperation. She had a feeling Lisa wasn't as dim as she pretended. "That was just an example. Suppose she mentions the name of a particular book she's been reading. I would know her manuscript was written after the date the book was published."

"Oh. I see what you mean."

"Good. So far I haven't found anything of that sort. At this point I'm looking at a time span of fifty, maybe seventy-five years. At least two generations. The genealogy gives the names of the Cartright women belonging to those generations, but that's all I know about them—their names. And now Bill Meyer knows those names too."

"So what do you do next?"

What Karen yearned to do was hand the whole thing over to Peggy. This wasn't her field. She tried to sound more authoritative than she felt. "The person who traced the genealogy was primarily interested in the people—the men—in the direct line of descent. There must be more information about the women in courthouse records and—and obituaries in newspapers ..."

To her critical ears the speech displayed the abysmal extent of her ignorance, but Lisa nodded. "I get it. You'll have to go find out more about them."

"That's right. Actually, I—and Bill—could get the same information without the genealogy. It's only a short cut. By themselves the names are useless."

"That low-down hound dog," Lisa muttered. "He didn't tell me that. I suppose now that you've seen it you aren't—"

"I'd still like to buy it. Not only because I want to play fair with you but because . . . well, you never know what might turn out to be useful. Besides, I don't have that computer-style memory."

Lisa sat in silence for a while. Her face had smoothed out (Karen could almost hear a dear old mammy saying, "Frownin' leaves ugly wrinkles, honey chile.") but she was obviously thinking furiously. Finally she said, "You've been a lot more honest than he was. I'll check with Cam about the legal procedures, but so far as I'm concerned, the genealogy is yours. In fact, if you want to copy down those names right now ..."

Karen definitely did want to.

An inspection of the remaining contents of the carton revealed nothing of interest. There were several photo albums and a box of snapshots, which Karen passed over; she might not be much of a historian, but she knew photography hadn't been in common use until the second half of the nineteenth century.

However, she indicated she was willing to stick to her original offer of buying the whole lot. Then she helped Lisa carry the carton back to the car. Lisa was favorably inclined toward her now, but she wasn't naive enough to hand over the material without payment.

In fact, Lisa wasn't at all naive. Meyer had succeeded in tricking her, not because she was stupid but because she was ignorant of the subject. Now that she had been warned she'd be on her guard. Against me, too, Karen thought. But she didn't regret her candor. In this case at least, honesty was probably the best policy. She must remember not to underestimate Lisa, or assume that the other woman was necessarily an adversary.

Leaning on the table, she studied the list of names. Elizabeth, Sarah, Maria; Georgiana, Louisa, Rebecca . . . None of them struck a chord. She straightened, with a derisive little smile at her own folly. Had she expected some inner voice would shout, "That's the one!"?

She had promised to report progress and give Peggy her new address, so that evening she called the number Peggy had given her. It turned out to be a hotel. Karen was surprised; she had assumed Peggy would be staying with her friend.

Peggy answered the phone on the second ring. At first Karen didn't recognize her voice. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Are you sick?"

"Just tired." Peggy cleared her throat. "It's been a long day. How are things going?"

By the time Karen finished her report Peggy was sounding more like herself—that is, critical. "You're still not certain Ismene was a Cartright. Have you done anything about tracing the manuscript itself?"

"I've been a little busy," Karen said sarcastically. "But I think that's a hopeless cause. From what I've heard about Josiah, he was not only a pack rat but a scavenger; he'd cruise the streets picking up newspapers and other junk people left out for the trashmen. There's a better way of
proving the manuscript originated at Amberley. The more I read, the more convinced I am that it's semi-autobiographical. Oh, not the plot, of course; it seems to be your standard Gothic melodrama. However, the setting—the house and the grounds—closely resembles what I've seen of Amberley. I'm going out tomorrow to look for—for a particular landmark Ismene mentions."

"For God's sake, be careful. If the place is as wild and isolated as you said—"

"I won't be alone. Cameron is out there every day, working on the house."

"Oh, so it's Cameron now, is it?"

"Don't start that," Karen said in exasperation. "Just give me the benefit of your expert advice. The genealogy wasn't as useful as I hoped. I haven't the faintest idea what to do with it."

"Don't do anything. I can be there Saturday. If you still want me to take over that part of the job ..."

"I thought we'd settled that. Don't get huffy and self-conscious on me; I can't do this without you."

"Oh. All right, then. You might find me a hotel. I presume there is one?"

"One," Karen agreed. "I'll make a reservation for you. Unless you'd rather stay here; there are twin beds."

"You wouldn't care for me as a long-term roommate, dearie. I have too many filthy habits, none of which I intend to give up."

She sounded more like her old self. Sitting with a sick friend had to be depressing, Karen supposed; Peggy had probably had more than enough of it. And she was looking forward to Peggy's company—not only to her help, which was going to be more useful than she had anticipated, but to her sense of humor and bluff common sense.

She hadn't told Peggy the best part. Eagerly she returned to the manuscript and reread the section that would undoubtedly intrigue her friend as much as it had excited her.