Vintage Love (238 page)

Her pleading seemed to touch him. He took her by the arms and looked deep into her eyes. “You know I love you and want to always care for you and protect you.”

“Then don’t let these misunderstandings go on,” she said. “Don’t let us drift apart as they did.”

“
They
did?” He frowned.

“Dr. Woods and Jennifer,” she said. “Let’s not repeat their tragedy.”

“They mean nothing to me,” he told her. “They died long ago and should be forgotten. I’m not superstitious.”

“Perhaps they don’t want to be forgotten,” she argued. “That may be why they remain here as spirits. To give some kind of message to those in the house.”

“I can see Farley upset you well,” her husband said. “I can’t think what he was up to, unless he wants this property back to sell it to someone at a higher price. He’s a fox when it comes to business.”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with that,” she said.

“Shiela didn’t approve of his talk.”

“She doesn’t understand.”

He looked angry. “How have you achieved such great understanding?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “You oughtn’t to be so harsh to me. I’m only trying to help us. Why are you so cruel?”

Fred looked ashamed. “I don’t mean to be.”

“Still you are.”

“I’m tired. Starting a new practice here hasn’t been as easy as it may look to you,” he said.

“I’m sure of that.”

He sighed. “I just don’t have time for all this talk of ghosts. If you are so desperately unhappy here I’ll accept Farley’s offer and I’ll find another place.”

“I don’t want that. I said so when he mentioned it.”

Fred frowned again. “What do you want?”

“To solve the mystery of Moorgate,” she said. “Rid this old house of its ghosts.”

“And how?”

“I’m not sure.”

He smiled bleakly. “How lucky that I love you so much! It makes it easier for me to put up with all this.” And he drew her gently to him for a long, tender kiss.

When they drew apart she said, “That’s more like the you I fell in love with in Boston.”

He shook his head. “It’s not easy to always be in a romantic mood. There are more serious things in life.”

She looked up into his handsome face earnestly. “Nothing is more important than the love between two people. I believe that above all else.”

“Very well,” he said quietly.

“Come up to the attic with me,” she said. “I want to show you something which may give you a new opinion about the ghosts here.”

“Then let’s not lose any time,” he said with a resigned smile.

She quickly led him up the stairs to the attic storage room, her heart beating rapidly from tension. It was an important moment. She had to prove to him that there was more to all this than her imaginings.

She opened the door to the storage room and shone the flashlight on the portraits piled against the wall. “Look!” she said.

He glanced at the portraits. “What about them?”

She didn’t reply. She was too stunned. For the roses which had been taken from the living room and strewn over the portraits had now disappeared altogether. The scent of the fragrant blossoms remained in the stuffy attic room, but the flowers had vanished.

Fred said, “Why did you bring me up here?”

She swallowed hard and gave him a forlorn look. “To see the roses. The roses which were taken from the living room.”

He looked incredulous. “You’re saying they were up here?”

“Yes. I found them scattered on the portraits. It must have been some kind of message. And now the same spirit hands have taken them away.”

Her husband stared at her. “You came up here looking for the missing roses while Shiela and I were downstairs waiting for you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Helplessly, she hesitated. “I don’t know. A strange feeling came over me. Something or someone directed my footsteps up here.”

“And you at once saw the roses,” he said sarcastically.

“Yes.”

“I’m worried about you,” he said. “It seems to me you’re bordering on hallucinations. This is more serious than I thought.”

She gave him a pleading look. “I’m telling you the truth.”

“As you believe it.”

“As it happened.”

He shook his head. “Just like this fool’s errand you’ve brought me on when I should be asleep,” he said. “It’s no good, Lucy.” And he turned abruptly and left the room to start downstairs.

She stood forlornly looking after him for a moment, and then followed him down to their bedroom. She said nothing for a little while, but as they finished preparing for bed, she said to him, “I’m sorry, Fred.”

He was in his pajamas now. “It’s all right,” he said. “You’re too high-strung to be so much alone in this old house.”

Suddenly she found herself saying earnestly, “No. I want to stay here.”

He stared at her with puzzled eyes. “That doesn’t make sense. One moment you say the house is filled with ghosts and you are plagued by strange happenings. The next you insist you want to remain here and be exposed to these phenomena. Why?”

Lucy looked at him miserably. “I don’t know.”

Her young husband sighed. “I’ll admit I’ve never realized the seriousness of this until tonight. When I get a free half-hour I’m going to see Dr. Boyce and ask his advice.”

“I wish you would,” she said.

“I will,” he promised her. And he took her in his arms again. “We have to avoid these misunderstandings! These quarrels!”

“I want to,” she said with a wistful smile.

He studied her with a new look. “You keep saying how much I’ve changed. But I somehow feel the same thing in you. Even when I look at you now you seem subtly different to me. You’ve taken on the shade of another personality since we’ve come to this house.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “It’s more likely you never saw me realistically before.”

“I wonder,” he said quietly. And he kissed her again.

After that they got into their respective beds and he turned out the light. She stared up into the shadows of the room, trying to sort out all the troublesome questions, and trying to decide what she should do. Soon she heard his even breathing, indicating he was deep in sleep. A wave of tenderness went through her. She knew how hard he worked, how dedicated a doctor he was. She had no wish to make things more burdensome for him. And yet she wanted him to face the mystery of the old stone house with her. She felt certain that they had not happened on it by chance. That they had a mission here.

And suddenly as these thoughts filled her mind she had a feeling there was someone else in the room with them. Someone standing silently in the shadows. And the strong odor of roses which she’d encountered in the attic storage room suddenly filled her nostrils again.

Raising herself on an elbow, Lucy stared into the dimness. And there, outlined against the window, was a vague figure. She could not make it out plainly but it seemed to be a woman with a shawl over her head and shoulders. And the strong fragrance of roses which accompanied the weird apparition made her almost certain she was seeing the ghost of Jennifer.

The scent of the roses and the spectral shape lasted for only a few seconds. Then everything was normal again. Lucy’s heart was beating rapidly as she lowered herself back on her pillow and stared up into the darkness with frightened eyes. Fred had slept quietly through the eerie materialization, and she knew he would never believe her if she told him about it.

That was what made her plight so impossible. She had no one to turn to, at least no one but the venerable Dr. Matthew Boyce. Fred was no help at all. He seemed to feel that he had to be skeptical. That to show a belief in phantoms would be unmanly. It was too frustrating. She lay there for a long while again before sleep finally came.

It was fine and sunny the next morning when she went down to the kitchen to prepare her husband’s breakfast. One of the things she most enjoyed were their breakfasts together. It gave them a chance to chat before he left for what was often all day and most of the evening. It was the one time she could count on his having the meal she’d prepared, and on not being alone.

Fred came into the kitchen a little later with the morning paper. He gave her a knowing smile as he sat down at the table. “I know what happened to your roses last night,” he said.

She turned from the stove where she was frying bacon, upset that he should bring the roses up again. Anxiously she said, “What do you mean?”

“I went into the living room just now out of curiosity and I found them,” Fred said.

“But you couldn’t have,” she protested. “I’ve already explained to you I discovered them upstairs strewn over those old portraits.”

Her husband showed a smug reaction to this. “You are sure they were spirited up there by ghostly hands?”

She took the frying pan from the stove and transferred the bacon to some paper napkins to sop up the fat. “If you want to put it that way, yes.”

Fred was sitting back in his chair with the folded newspaper in one hand. He pointed the newspaper at her. “Yet when you took me up there to show me the roses they were not in evidence.”

“I can’t help that,” she said despairingly. “I saw them there earlier.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t. That was more of your nerves.”

“No!”

“I say yes,” her husband said with stern emphasis. “I went into the living room just now and I found the roses in a vase just as you had described them. But they were on an end table at the opposite side of the room to where you looked for them.”

“They couldn’t be!”

“You can go see for yourself,” Fred said with bland assurance. “What has happened seems obvious enough to me. You were busy arranging the flowers in the vase to put on the table at the other side of the room when something must have interrupted you. You never did get back to moving the flowers, but you had a mental picture of their being on that other table.”

Lucy listened with a growing uneasiness. He made it seem so plausible that she was almost prepared to believe it. And yet she knew it couldn’t be true. It just wasn’t so.

She said, “I distinctly remember where I put the bouquet.”

“And I count on facts,” Fred said with a hint of annoyance. “The roses are where I said they were. And you allowed your imagination to make up all the rest. Go see for yourself.”

Reluctantly she did. She left the kitchen with a feeling of apprehension which did not ease as she entered the big, shadowed living room. It looked so cold and impersonal even on this fine day, for the sun did not reach it in the early morning. First she looked at the vase where she was certain she’d placed the roses and it was empty, as it had been the night before. Then she slowly moved down the length of the room until she came to the missing bouquet on another smaller table.

She gazed at the still fresh roses with disbelief. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t even recognize the vase they were in. And she was sure the explanation Fred had offered wasn’t true. This wasn’t another example of her bad nerves and memory. But how could she convince him? As he’d pointed out, he accepted only facts. And it was a fact the roses were there in that vase.

Feeling utterly confused, she turned and made her way back to the kitchen. Fred was having coffee and reading the paper. He looked up at her with a knowing expression.

“Well?”

“I saw them,” she said slowly as she seated herself at the table across from him.

“So you realize I was right?”

She hesitated. Then she said, “No. I don’t admit that.”

“Then you’re being stubborn and petty.”

“I’m sorry you think that of me,” Lucy said in an unhappy tone.

“You’re the one who’s being unreasonable,” he said. “I realize you’ve been under strong pressures. All the gossip around this town about Moorgate being haunted. And then Henry Farley behaving so childishly last night and leading you on in your wretched beliefs.”

“I know this house is haunted,” she said quietly.

“By the ghost of Jennifer, I suppose?”

“I think so,” she said. “And it may even go beyond that.”

“Beyond it?” he queried sharply, putting down his paper.

“Yes. There must be other unhappy spirits here as well. The house is burdened by them.”

Fred studied her unhappily. “Farley was probably right. I will have to move from Moorgate. I can’t have you going on in this fashion.”

“If you’d only pay some attention to me,” she begged him.

“And wind up with your crazy ideas? No, thanks.”

Her eyes were earnest as they met his. “Perhaps they aren’t all that crazy and impossible. Perhaps those people who lived here long ago are trying to reach us. Trying to send us some sort of message through their spirits.”

Her husband gave a sound of exasperation. “I might expect to hear sentimental talk like that from some of the local servant girls. But I hardly expect it from you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t intend to upset you.”

His mood changed, a smile flickered across his face. “And I won’t let you do it,” he said. Rising, he touched a hand gently on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. Too many people rushed in to warn you against Moorgate. There’s been too much idle gossip.”

“Perhaps,” she said in a resigned voice. No use to have him leave her in an angry mood. Better to keep her views to herself.

Fred bent down and kissed her. “I’m going to talk to Dr. Boyce about this. Maybe the old man can give us some good advice. You seem to have a lot of confidence in what he says.”

“I do.”

“Then we’ll wait until we have his views,” Fred told her. “I’ll keep in touch with you through the day. And I’ll make an effort to be home for dinner tonight.”

“Please try,” she said, rising with a smile and accompanying him to the front door. But no sooner had she seen his car drive off than that eerie sense of melancholy began to flood through her. She could feel it taking hold of her and causing her to seem like a different person.

In a kind of bewilderment she went back into the house and straight to the living room. She went to where the vase of roses was and stared at it. And again she had the feeling she was not alone, that someone else was in the old house with her. Someone standing unseen at her side and trying to communicate with her. She glanced around the shadowed room with fear on her face. But there was no evidence of even the vague shadow she’d seen in their bedroom in the night.