Withering Heights (19 page)

“I prefer the idea of a new lock.”

“So does Dad, but Betty’s dead set against it. She’s hoping Lady Fiona will break in to retrieve some vital piece of evidence that would prove she murdered her husband. What did you think of the séance? Dad and Betty won’t talk about it.”

“I wonder why?”

“Didn’t Madam LaGrange do a super job?”

“Marvelous.”

“You’d think Betty would stay grateful instead of going on about my hair.”

“It could do with a wash.” I followed her around a corner and up a short flight of steps.

“Ellie, you’re supposed to be unraveling the mystery of who’s been pulling the spook stunts.”

“Someone who’s staked Betty out, either because she’s the most susceptible or on account of a grudge against her?”

“Maybe. I thought we were going to be a team.”

“Are you worried or just out to amuse yourself?”

“I told you: it’s like being in a book. Last night made a really good chapter. But I wrote that one, so it really doesn’t count in getting us to the revealing conclusion. Why won’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

“Because I haven’t had time to think.”

“We are now entering the west wing.” Ariel opened a door at the end of a short shadowy passage. “Careful, we go down a couple of steps. Hold on to me if you like; I’ll find the light switch. Oh, good! Here it is. Okay?”

“Fine,” I said, appreciative of her solicitude. We were in a wainscoted hall, vast enough to have been used in bygone days as a ballroom. In addition to the electric wall sconces, mullioned windows brought sunlight flooding in like golden waterfalls rippling across the time-polished floor. The furniture was limited to an armoire taking up one corner, which looked as though it had been designed for the gentleman whose wife insisted he hang up his suit of armor before getting into bed, and a couple of thronelike chairs with tapestry seats. Easy to picture Sir Walter Raleigh sitting in one of them, ruminating on whether or not to take his cloak to the dry cleaners—the one he no longer felt quite so sentimental about Queen Bess having walked on, now that she had decided to chop off his head. It was not a particularly grim thought. Indeed, there was nothing in the space to re-create the feeling of gloom I had experienced on entering Cragstone House yesterday before Betty turned on the hall lights. There was no rotting bride’s veil of cobwebs, no reek of despoiled antiquity, no stealthy scratching behind the paneling to suggest an infestation of rodents. Even so, had I in truth been a Victorian heroine intent upon meeting up with unkindly fate in the form of a skeleton wearing only the remnants of his ruff, I would have preferred
to do so somewhere else—the British museum being my first choice. They have curators eager for that sort of thing to happen, who would insist on having first dibs on Mr. Bones Jangles and palm me off with a nice cup of tea.

“Why are you looking nervous?” Ariel wanted to know.

“I didn’t like the way that door groaned shut behind us.”

“It’s a very heavy door.” Did she say that with unnecessary relish?

“Good for keeping drafts out.” I shivered nevertheless.

“I expect we could scream our heads off and no one would ever hear.”

“Probably. Did you hear that creaking sound?”

“No. When Betty’s being particularly hateful I think about her being stuck up here and wailing uselessly for someone to come and rescue her. Oh, don’t look so shocked!” She danced down the center of the hall and spun back to face me. “I wouldn’t lure her here and run away. There wouldn’t be any point. There’s no lock on the door. Besides, well . . . I just wouldn’t.”

“I should hope not.”

“You don’t think she’s vile, do you?”

“No one’s perfect.”

Ariel gave me one of her disgusted looks before flouncing down onto one of the throne chairs. “Do you want to know why she won’t let Mavis bring her little boy with her? It’s because she thinks anyone who can afford to drive to work should be able to pay for child care.”

“What about his being a difficult child?”

“That too.” Ariel sat, rhythmically kicking the legs of her chair. “But it’s more about Mavis having a car. Anyone would think it was a Rolls-Royce instead of an old rattletrap. Now we’re rich, Betty wants everyone else to be poor. And she’s wrong about Mavis’s husband sitting around all day being lazy. Mrs. Cake says the firm he worked for moved to Sheffield and
he decided to set up a home office on his own. He’s a locksmith. And the kid gets sick if he has to drive around too long in the van. Eddie.” Ariel turned the name around in her mouth. “Imagine being a little boy with a name like that these days!”

“Perhaps he’s named for his father,” I suggested, “or another family member.”

“Like Valeria-rhymes-with-malaria. After you and Mrs. Malloy escaped yesterday afternoon, I asked her how she got stuck with that name, and she said it was after her great-aunt, Nanny Pierce. Wouldn’t that be enough to make her want to bump the old lady off?”

“What a bloodthirsty child you are.” I moved to inspect a portion of wainscoting. “Old-fashioned names are popular again. My older daughter Abbey’s full name is Abigail, after a long-ago relative whose portrait hangs above our fireplace.”

“I remember. She looked quite nice.”

“So does Valeria.” I studied a section of the carved oak trim that divided the wainscoting into squares.

“Yes, but to get stuck with a name that sounds like a disease! No wonder she shortened it.”

“Anyone would say she’s beautiful.”

“Not Dad; I asked him and he said he hadn’t noticed. Maybe she only lets very special people call her Valeria, the way Ben did. Probably they were really good friends at one time.” Ariel stopped kicking the legs of her chair. “But you know, Ellie, I don’t think you should be upset about that or the way they were looking into each other’s eyes like they were drowning. It must have been the surprise. I think you’re every bit as lovely as she is, in a different way. But better safe than sorry.”

“Meaning?”

Ariel got up and came to stand beside me. “I’m not sure, really. I guess it’s that I don’t see why she has to be so friendly. Taking over the decorating like it’s her own house. Advising
Betty on what clothes to wear. Maybe she likes to borrow husbands like they’re cups of sugar.”

I laughed because it made a good solid sound. “Mrs. Malloy borrowed her sister’s boyfriend, and it led to a forty-year rift.”

“So that’s what did it.” Ariel surprised me by not following up on this. “At least with Betty you know where you stand.”

“And quite possibly you’re not being fair to Val.”

“I suppose.” She gave one of her shrugs. “The trouble is that when I’m bad I’m very, very bad and when I’m good I’m still horrid.”

“Rubbish! You just need to be a little less hard on yourself and other people.” I reached out to touch her but she edged away to point a grubby fingernail at the carving I had been examining.

“Are these Tudor roses, Ellie?”

“Probably.”

“There’s an
E
above that doorway.” Ariel stalked ahead of me down the length of the room, and I admired the carving before asking what lay beyond.

“Rooms. They’re all empty, except for the one Nanny Pierce used before moving to the Dower House.”

“I wonder why she slept in this wing rather than the main house?”

“To keep her out of the way as much as possible? That would be my guess. I expect Lady Fiona found her a real pain. Always fussing over Mr. Gallagher like he was still her sweetie-weetie baby boykins. You won’t believe how nutty she was about him till I show you.”

“What exactly?”

“This.” Ariel stopped in the middle of a sizable hallway to push open a door and beckon me into a room with a bed, a narrow wardrobe, and a great deal of shelving filled with the paraphernalia of a boy’s childhood. Books, butterfly nets, magnets
and magnifying glasses, microscopes and telescopes, several Noah’s arks, and a regiment of toy soldiers. It was impossible to take them all in at once. Each object lovingly, laboriously arranged: row upon row of what would now be desirable collectibles to the antique toy connoisseur. I sat down on the bed, the better to feast my eyes, and hastily jumped back up, having been poked by a sharp object that proved to be a guardsman with a bayonet. On the floor beside my foot I spotted another one, and next to it a miniature horse and rider.

Ariel watched me as I gathered them up. “Dad was up here last week fixing some of the doors because they stuck. I expect his banging about made things fall off the shelves. Don’t you think it’s creepy, Nanny Pierce keeping all this stuff in her room? And there’s more in what was her sitting room.”

“The question is, why didn’t she take them with her to the Dower House?”

“She didn’t move down there until after Mr. Gallagher went away. Mrs. Cake says Nanny wants him to find this room just as it’s always been when he comes back—apart from her photos of him, which she took with her. Can’t bear to go to sleep at night without kissing his little face a dozen times over.”

“Ariel.” I put the misplaced items back on a shelf. “Miss Pierce is a very old lady.”

“Okay, but whose fault is that? I’ll bet she was always weird, and Lady Fiona was thrilled to finally get away from her, even if it meant she has to be the one staying in a hotel. No moving in together, you notice. Now that you’ve met Nanny Pierce, don’t you think she could be one who’s been trying to frighten us away from Cragstone, either with Val’s help or on her own? That tottery business could be an act.”

“Ariel, a woman of over eighty is entitled to totter.”

“Come on, I’ll show you the other rooms up here.”

I looked at my watch. “Let’s do that another time. Your parents
could be back from church by now and looking for you.”

“I keep telling you, Betty’s not my mother.”

There being no answer to this that would have gone down well, I made my way back to what I thought of as the ballroom with Ariel trailing behind. Would I now be given the silent treatment? It was a relief when we exited the west wing and the heavy door groaned shut behind us, blocking off the sense of unease. Was I yet another Madam LaGrange, I thought testily, dredging up impressions from past lives? And what had become of my oft-vouched enthusiasm for the foreboding?

“We’ll go down the back way.” Ariel scampered ahead of me through an archway and down a flight of linoleum-covered steps. “These were for the servants. They’re the ones Mrs. Cake fell down. Her bedroom is along there.” She stopped on a small landing branching off to our right. “Poor old thing, I really like her and her homemade toffee. I’m very keen on toffee. I wonder if Mrs. Malloy still has some of the ones she had in the car?”

“In her bedroom. She put the bag out as a decoration.” I wasn’t sure if Ariel had heard me; she had whisked ahead, a straggly-haired wraith in spectacles. Moments later our descent brought us to a second landing, this one with a narrow rectangle of window to our left.

“It overlooks the passageway separating the two parts of the house.” Ariel swiveled around on one foot to point. “If you squint, you’ll get a view of Mavis’s car and see what I mean about it being a rattletrap.”

I did see it—I’ve always been a good squinter—and I also got a partial view of the Dower House and someone walking away from it.

“It’s Ben.” Ariel peered over my shoulder, adding, just a little too quickly, “I expect he had an uncontrollable urge to bond with Nanny Pierce. Val probably isn’t even there; she’s
been going for a lot of walks lately. Keeping in shape, I expect. Mrs. Cake says you don’t get a figure like that by sitting on it.”

“And right she is. Lead on, Macduff!” I followed her down the rest of the steps, determined that the one thing I would not exercise was my imagination. Ben could have gone to the Dower House for a variety of perfectly innocent reasons, including the wish to see Val. They were old friends. They had years to catch up on. Really, it was heartwarming to think of them chatting about the past. How they had danced the night away in each other’s arms, night after wretched night. I discovered I was grinding my teeth. This was not good. It might well lead to cavities, of which I had none and hoped Val had a great many. I wished Mrs. Malloy were with me so I could lay my head on her robust shoulder and weep copious tears down her taffeta bosom.

Blessed relief! There she was, in the passageway, when Ariel and I came to the door that had lost its key and welcomed burglars.

“A fine time I’ve had, Mrs. H, looking all over for you,” she announced, as Ariel faded away in the direction of the main house. “I want you to hear me recite the poem I’ve written for Melody.”

“That would be nice,” I said, hoping she would notice I sounded wan and would usher me indoors where I could sit on her knee and tell her I was being spiteful and petty again and ask if she knew of something I could take for it.

“Nice to hear you sound so encouraging, Mrs. H. Now hold on a minute, let me get posed just right.” She squared her shoulders, drew in her elbows, and clasped her hands over her middle. This not being quite what she was after, she made some adjustments. One hand went to her bosom and then down to her side. “Don’t rush me, Mrs. H!”

I thought of Mr. Gallagher’s parents, who had, according to Miss Pierce, doted on his teatime recitations. Perhaps my failure
to get into the poetry mood was because there were no little sandwiches and fancy iced cakes on a table in the passageway. Despair tends to make me hungry; it had to be time for elevenses, if not for lunch. Sausages would be nice and perhaps some bubble and squeak. Ben made wonderful hubble-bubble, as we called it. Quite possibly it would be the thing I would miss most about him when he was gone.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him walking toward us, dark head bent, seemingly intent on counting every piece of gravel on the path.

“Here goes, then! Tell me if the words’ gas meter, or whatever they call it, is all right.” Mrs. Malloy cleared her throat before beginning:

“ ’
Tis forty years since last we met,
And I am filled with deep regret,
That I didn H see your point of view,
Like an older sister’s meant to do.
But now it’s time to start again,
May lessons learned not be in vain.
”