Christmas Carol (2 page)

“If you believe that, then you have been
spending the holiday with the wrong people,” the Reverend Mr.
Kincaid informed her. “I know of places where the true spirit of
Christmas dwells all year long.”

“Really?” Carol gave him a scathing look.
“Well, then, you just have a happy little Christmas in one of those
places. But don’t ask me to celebrate with you, and don’t expect me
to donate to your favorite charity.” With that, she turned her back
on the pair, not caring if her words or the action had shocked or
distressed them yet again. She had her own reasons for hating the
Christmas holiday, but she wasn’t about to discuss them with the
Reverend Mr. Kincaid and his wife.

Carol wished that people would not make
assumptions about her financial state as the rector had done.
People had been doing it all her life. Young men, seeing her
parents’ lavish lifestyle at the pinnacle of New York City’s newly
rich society during the nineteen-eighties, assumed she would
inherit great wealth. Carol had believed it herself. But when,
through the machinations of his business associates who had
involved themselves in illegal stock transactions, her father had
gone bankrupt, the protestations of eternal devotion had ended
abruptly and those same young men—including the one special man
with whom she had foolishly imagined herself in love—had lost all
interest in her. Her girlfriends had also begun to shun her. And
not one of those so-called friends who had assumed that her
father’s wealth was endless had lifted a hand to help him in his
struggles to repay his partners’ debts. Her mother’s response to
financial ruin had been divorce and remarriage to a man who was
more wealthy than Henry Simmons had ever been. The former Mrs.
Simmons had then departed on a long honeymoon cruise. Carol did not
know her mother’s present whereabouts, and after their last bitter
quarrel, she really did not care.

His fortune gone, deserted by his wife, Henry
Alwyn Simmons had taken an antique gun from his collection and
blown out his brains. The deed had been done on Christmas Eve,
which also happened to be Carol’s 21st birthday.

Left alone and virtually penniless, Carol had
begun searching for a job, only to discover that in the
recession-bound economy of the late nineteen-eighties, her
previously sheltered life had left her unsuited to do any kind of
practical work. Computers were a mystery to her. She might have
taught French, which she spoke well, or English literature or
history, but none of the schools to which she applied displayed
interest in hiring a young woman with no teaching experience.

She worked for a few months as a waitress,
but hated the job except for the food she was able to hide away in
her purse each day to eat later in her rented room. She quit the
job when the restaurant manager made it all too clear to her what
she would have to do to earn a raise in her meager paycheck. She
hadn’t been hungry enough to sell herself for food or for a promise
of money.

Being of a thrifty disposition, she had
managed to save a little cash, but she knew it wouldn’t last long.
It was then, when she was wondering if she would end as her father
had done, that she saw the ad for a paid companion. The job was in
London and offered room, board, and a small salary. The chance to
get out of New York had been an added incentive. After a lengthy
phone interview, Carol had been offered the job. She’d possessed
just enough money to buy a one-way economy-class ticket from New
York to London.

Fresh from an overnight flight, with her
single suitcase in one hand and the address of her new employer in
the other, Carol had arrived early one morning on Lady Augusta
Marlowe’s doorstep. At first she’d been greatly relieved to have
found a position with such a prestigious British family. She’d
needed only a week of employment at Marlowe House before she
understood why Lady Augusta had been forced to advertise in the
United States. Her stinginess and ill temper were legendary. But
Lady Augusta’s character had suited Carol’s mood at the time, and
gradually she’d adapted to the difficult old lady’s
eccentricities.

In fact, the two of them had been remarkably
similar. Like Lady Augusta, Carol knew—she believed it in her
deepest heart—that the only thing that mattered on this earth was
money. She had seen in her own life what money could buy—for proof,
she needed to look no further than her many suitors and her
extravagant mother—and she knew from the defections of her would-be
lovers from her side, and from her mother’s easy desertion of her
father, exactly what happened when the money disappeared.

Which was why she so respected Lady Augusta,
who harbored no illusions about human affections. Or the value of
charity. Or the need to celebrate holidays with an extravaganza of
feasting and gifts and parties. Especially Christmas, which was
nothing more than commercial nonsense designed to trick ordinary,
hardworking fools out of their money. Carol heartily agreed with
Lady Augusta on all of these points, if not on the matter of
leaving bequests to one’s employees.

“That was the last of them, Miss Simmons.
I’ll send Nell to clear the tea things away.” Crampton entered the
drawing room, and suddenly Carol realized that she had been so deep
in thought that, without noticing what she was doing, she must have
bid farewell to the Reverend Mr. Kincaid and his wife, to the
solicitor, and to the five or six other people who had attended the
funeral. “Will you be taking dinner in your room again
tonight?”

“No, I’m going out on the town.” Her tone was
so sarcastic that Crampton’s eyebrows flew upward at the sound.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Simmons?”
Disapproval was implicit in the butler’s voice.

“Of course I’ll eat in my room. Don’t I
always?” When she first arrived at Marlowe House, Carol had been
expected to dine each evening in the formal dining room with her
employer, but after Lady Augusta had taken to her bed during her
final illness, Carol had asked for a tray to be brought to her own
room so she could eat there. It was the easiest way she could think
of to give herself an hour or so of privacy at the end of her busy
and frequently upsetting days with her irascible patient.

Leaving the drawing room, Carol started up
the wide, curving staircase. As her hand skimmed along the
banister, it seemed to her that the polished wood vibrated beneath
her fingertips. Of course, it was just foolish imagining on her
part. She was overtired and suffering from the inevitable letdown
that came after a funeral. Not to mention the letdown of knowing
that Lady Augusta had not chosen to remember her companion’s five
and a half years of honest service with a bequest.

“It didn’t have to be a lot of money,” Carol
muttered, reaching the top of the main stairs and walking along the
hall toward the smaller flight of steps that led to the uppermost
levels of Marlowe House. “A hundred pounds, two hundred at the
most. Ye gods, that would only have been five hundred dollars or
so, and everybody knows she was fabulously wealthy. She could have
let me know that she appreciated all I did for her.”

A low, cynical laugh came from the direction
of Lady Augusta’s suite of rooms. Carol paused for a moment or two,
standing at the closed door. All was silence.

“Now I’m hearing ghosts,” Carol said aloud.
“There is no one in that room. I know it.” Nonetheless, she opened
the door. Within, the curtains were drawn, so the room was dim and
shadowy. Carol fumbled for the light switch and found it, and
electric bulbs glowed in the crystal chandelier that hung in the
center of the ceiling. “Just as I thought. No one is here. Nor in
the bathroom, either. Nor in the dressing room.” Carol moved from
bath to mirrored dressing room and back to the bedroom, still
talking to herself.

“Lady Augusta was the kind of personality
that impresses itself on everything around it and hangs on after
death. That’s what I’m reacting to. Tomorrow I’ll tell Nell to open
the windows in here and do a thorough cleaning to get rid of the
last traces of the old girl, including that awful lavender perfume
of hers.”

Carol started for the hall, then paused.
Though she knew it was impossible because she had just searched the
suite, a prickling sensation between her shoulder blades warned
that there was someone else in the bedroom with her. She spun
around, but the room was still empty. From somewhere a cold draft
blew across her ankles and she caught a whiff of lavender
fragrance. Quickly she turned off the light, stepped into the hall,
and shut the door firmly behind her. Then she hurried to the end of
the hall, where the stairs to the upper floors were. She refused to
look back as she went upward toward her own room.

It had once been a governess’s room, and thus
fell into an indeterminate status between outright servants’
quarters and a chamber that might have been given to an
insignificant guest when Marlowe House was overcrowded. The room
was at the front of the house, and a pair of windows allowed Carol
a view of the square, which in summer was pleasant enough with
trees, grass, and a flower garden, all confined within a
wrought-iron fence. At the moment a small fir tree in the center of
the square was decorated for Christmas. Its colored lights shone
merrily through the early evening fog and drizzle. The weather was
more like Halloween than Christmastime. It was a fine night for
ghosts, if Carol had believed in them. She did not. There was
little Carol did believe in anymore. She closed the curtains
against the cheerful holiday display.

Nell, the chambermaid, had already been in to
start a fire in the old fireplace to take the chill off the room.
The flames threw dancing shadows across the ceiling and the walls.
It was a simple room, with an old-fashioned four-poster bed that
had once boasted frayed velvet hangings. The dust and the musty
odor of the antique fabric had periodically sent her into fits of
sneezing, so Carol had personally removed the hangings shortly
after her arrival at Marlowe House. Besides the bed, the room also
contained a chest of drawers, a desk and chair, and an upholstered
wing chair next to the fireplace. A floor lamp, a footstool, and a
small table, all of them set next to the wing chair, completed the
furnishings. The bathroom was three doors down the hall.

Carol did not care that the room was bare of
pretty objects, that the bed looked naked without its hangings, or
that the old Turkish carpet and the green bedspread were both
threadbare. She could think of no good reason to spend her
hard-earned money on frivolous decorations. The Spartan bareness of
her room suited her repressed spirit—though she would not have said
she was repressed. Carol thought of herself as sensible in the face
of adversity.

Having no further obligations for that
evening, she changed from her plain, dark dress and low-heeled
pumps into a flannel nightgown and a warm bathrobe.

“Here’s your dinner, Miss Simmons.” Nell
appeared with a tray. “Oh, are you ready for bed so soon? I wish
you would come down to eat with the rest of us. It’s ever so much
more pleasant in the kitchen, and warmer, too. You’ll freeze way up
here all alone.”

“No, I won’t.” Carol motioned to her to put
the tray on the table next to the wing chair. “That will be all,
Nell.”

“You oughten to be alone so much.” Nell took
no offense at the similarity of Carol’s tone to the way in which
Lady Augusta had always spoken to the chambermaid. Nell’s youthful
warmth could not be diminished by anyone else’s coldness, and her
broad, rosy face showed her concern for Carol. “Especially not
tonight, you shouldn’t be up here by yourself. Not after the
funeral and all.”

“I’m tired. I want to be left alone.”

“All right, then, if you’re sure. But
tomorrow, you ought to come to the kitchen and join our plans.
We’re hopin’ to make a nice little Christmas feast while we’re all
still together, and you’re invited, of course. Well, good night,
miss. Sleep tight now.”

“Good night, Nell.” As Lady Augusta had often
remarked, Nell did not know her place in the household hierarchy.
According to Lady Augusta, Nell’s most improper friendliness was a
sign of the degenerating times. In Lady Augusta’s day, servants had
known their places and stayed in them. If she could have heard
Nell’s invitation, Lady Augusta probably would have declared that
no lady’s companion should have been invited into the kitchen to
share a Christmas feast concocted by servants. While not entirely
agreeing with Lady Augusta’s undemocratic attitudes, Carol had no
interest in holiday celebrations of any kind, whether above or
below stairs.

Carol sat down before the fire, put her feet
upon the low stool, and took from her dinner tray a bowl of
steaming soup. Mrs. Marks was an excellent cook, seeming to find
challenge rather than discouragement in the tight budget which Lady
Augusta allowed her. Carol spooned up rich chicken broth with thin
slices of mushroom in it and wondered if the staff was eating as
well as she. Lifting the domed metal cover over her dinner plate,
she discovered a healthy portion of the chicken itself, with peas,
diced beets, and a small pile of rice. A wedge of apple tart
completed the meal, along with a large pot of tea.

“Foolish extravagance.”

Had she spoken aloud? Surely not. But there
was no one in the room except herself to make such a remark. Save
for the crackling of the fire, all was silent. The kitchen was too
far away for any noise from that area to disturb her.

Or for anyone to hear her if she called.

Telling herself that she was indeed overtired
as well as overstressed, Carol disregarded the odd little shiver
that ran down her spine. She re-covered the plate of chicken to
keep it warm, and resumed eating her soup. She certainly had good
reason to be nervous, but not about being upstairs alone in a big
old house. Her future prospects were enough to scare anyone. Should
she look for a new job in London, or should she spend precious
money to fly back to New York and try to find employment there? As
Lady Augusta’s companion she had taught herself to type, and she
had devised a rudimentary version of shorthand so that she could
tend to her employer’s scanty correspondence, but she did not think
either skill would be much help to her in the world outside Marlowe
House.