Crossing the Lion (a Reigning Cats and Dog) (2010) (3 page)

Whoa!
I thought. As someone who had recently planned a wedding of her own—with a great deal of help from her mother-in-law, I should add—it was hard not to compare. And even Winston’s brief overview of the event went a long way in helping me understand the extent of the Merrywoods’ wealth.

“What about their two sons?” I asked.

“I seem to remember Linus mentioning something about his oldest boy having been divorced once or twice,” Winston replied after a bit of thought. “I also recall that Taggart’s inability to settle into family life was something Linus was quite upset about. As for the youngest of the Merrywoods’ three children, Brockton, I don’t believe he’s ever been married.”

He sighed, then added, “Linus was desperately hoping for grandchildren who could one day take his place presiding over the business. Sadly, he died before he had a chance to see that dream come true.”

“What about those three children of his?” I asked, surprised. “Why couldn’t one of them take over?”

“Linus felt that none of them lived up to their potential,” Winston explained. “His contention that not
one of them ever accomplished what he’d hoped for was a constant source of unhappiness in his life.”

“Maybe he had unreasonably high expectations,” I suggested.

Winston cast me a wary glance. “You can make up your own mind once you get to know them. Loving your children is one thing. Passing on the responsibility of running a Fortune 500 company is something else entirely.

“In fact,” he continued, “that’s one of the reasons Linus brought someone else into the organization as his number two man. Harrison Foss—Harry. Linus expected that one day he’d take over the reins.”

By that point, the ferry was pulling up to a dock. Given the size of the mansion, I was surprised that the dock was little more than a stretch of uneven, roughhewn boards. Jutting up at the far end was a small, dilapidated boathouse.

But as I stepped off the boat, I wasn’t thinking about architecture. I’d had enough of the deep blue sea—and worrying that I was going to end up crammed in Davy Jones’s locker like a sweaty gym suit—but I braced myself for what lay ahead.

Now that I was close to the house that up until this point had merely loomed in the distance, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to entering. As far as I was concerned, the place looked downright scary.

I only hoped the family inside wouldn’t turn out to be just as frightening.

E
ven though I hadn’t spotted any signs of life from the boat, I’d assumed that was simply because we were so far away from the mansion looming upward in the center of Solitude Island.

But as we stood on the front doorstep, huddled together in the pouring rain, the place looked just as desolate.

“Do you think anyone’s home?” I asked Winston, my voice unusually thin. I peered through one of the two narrow stained-glass windows that framed the front door, trying to see inside without success.

I was hoping his answer would be no—and that he’d suggest we turn around and go back home.

Instead, he boomed, “Of course they’re home! They’re expecting us!”

With that, he reached for the tarnished brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. I squinted at the animal’s narrowed eyes and sculpted snout, noticing that its features made it look an awful lot like a man’s face—a man who had dead eyes and was in serious need of a haircut. In fact, it reminded me of the knocker on Ebenezer Scrooge’s front door in Charles Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
, which eerily transformed into the face of Scrooge’s dead business partner, Marley, right before the bad-tempered old miser was visited by three ghosts.

There’s no such thing as ghosts
, I reminded myself as Winston rapped the brass handle against the door. The jarring noise prompted the poor wet dachshund tucked under his free arm to let out a startled yelp.

I felt like yelping myself. But I remained quiet enough to hear the loud metallic knocking echo through the cavernous rooms I was picturing inside the house.

I was about to voice my own feelings about the wisdom of hightailing it out of there when the heavy wooden door opened slowly, creaking as if its hinges hadn’t moved since 1928. We found ourselves standing opposite a man who had to be the Merrywoods’ butler.

The tall, emaciated gentleman, probably in his early forties, was dressed in a black tuxedo, complete
with tails. With it he wore a blindingly white shirt, a dark bow tie, and immaculate white gloves.

Yet while his formal attire reminded me of someone on his way to a prom, he didn’t look like someone who was ready to party. His demeanor was pretty grim, but I had to attribute at least some of that to his unusually gaunt face and his unattractively pasty skin.

I was considering suggesting that he spend a few hours in the sun when he drawled, “Ye-e-e-s?” while looking us up and down as if we were beggars.

“Good evening,” Winston greeted him heartily, despite the fact that we were all up to our ankles in puddles and icy rivulets were running down the backs of our necks. “Is Charlotte in? She’s expecting us.”

“Ah. You must be the Farnsworths,” the butler said in an English accent that was even thicker than Winston’s. He made no move to let us in.

Jeepers, I thought miserably. Not only was he expecting us, but you’d think he would have noticed that we were getting soaked, standing in the pouring rain.

“May we come in?” Betty finally piped up, sounding uncharacteristically impatient.

“Ye-e-e-s.” Reluctantly, the butler stepped aside.

The three of us moved considerably faster. In fact, we burst through the door, leaving our suitcases outside and practically tripping over them in our effort to get someplace warm and dry.

Winston immediately set Frederick down. That made four of us dripping rainwater all over the highly polished marble floor.

“Mind giving us a hand with our luggage, old sport?” Winston asked as he peeled off his dripping-wet slicker. For some reason he’d resorted to expressions commonly associated with his homeland, at least back in the days when he still lived in Jolly Olde England.

“Sorry.” The butler gave a helpless shrug. “Bad back.”

What exactly
are
this guy’s buttling skills?
I wondered crossly as I dragged my suitcase across the threshold. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before I too would start complaining about a bad back.

Yet I forgot all about how hard it is to find good help these days as soon as I got my bearings. I was too busy looking around as I shrugged off my wet Polarfleece, wondering if the Merrywoods’ butler was able to handle coat hangers.

Not surprisingly, the interior of the Merrywoods’ mansion was totally consistent with the exterior—meaning big, dark, forbidding, and downright dismal. The front hallway stretched toward the back of the house, which, from where we were standing, appeared to be very far away. Its walls were covered in dark-wood paneling that greedily sucked up all the light.

The only illumination came from an elaborate chandelier over our heads, which looked as if it weighed a couple of tons. It was comprised of dozens of tarnished brass curlicues intertwined like a bunch of those nasty carnivorous vines that are frequently featured on the Discovery Channel. Yet despite its
monstrous size, it gave out hardly any light. That was probably because the dozen or so lightbulbs hidden among all that blackened brass appeared to be about ten watts each.

Even in the dim light, I could see that the hallway served the role of a museum. It was lined with various items that were meant to be looked at, rather than touched or used. On the walls hung big, dark oil paintings of octogenarians wearing black garments that had been out of style for at least a century. In most of them, the only accessory was a sour expression. I was sure I was simply imagining that the piercing eyes of the people in the portraits were focused directly on us.

Positioned on either side of the hallway were two suits of armor that looked as if they hadn’t been polished since King Arthur’s posse wore them. Dusted, either. Given the Merrywoods’ wealth, I wondered why they hadn’t found themselves a good cleaning service. Or maybe dusting was part of the butler’s duties, and his bad back and determination to keep those gloves nice and white kept him from doing a very effective job.

A few other large, decrepit-looking items took up space in the hall: an ornate Chinese chest of carved wood, painted in bright red; a nearly life-size snarling tiger made of marble; and a giant ceramic urn. I didn’t even
want
to know what that thing contained. Right above the urn was a sword with a jewel-studded handle, hanging by a tarnished silver chain. Centered above it was a dagger. The smaller weapon was
substantially shinier, but it still looked old enough to be a collector’s item.

As I surveyed the place that I’d be calling home for the next few days,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
’s theme song began playing in my head:
Let’s—do—the—time—warp—again!

I reminded myself that I wasn’t an extra in a cult movie. This was real.

I focused on the butler once again, since he appeared to be the only living thing around. More or less. I wondered if I dared comment on his outfit, since it looked as if it had been designed by the costume department. Before I could decide, Winston did it for me.

“My goodness,” he said with his lyrical, upper-crust British accent. “Are white gloves still worn in this day and age?”

“Skin condition, m’lord,” the butler replied, polite but aloof.

The better to keep from leaving behind fingerprints
, I thought cynically, suddenly remembering why I was here in the first place.

In fact, I was wondering if that overused phrase
the butler did it
might turn out to be true this time. It wouldn’t have surprised me if this guy’s name even turned out to be Jeeves.

I was about to ask, when Betty turned to him and said, “I’m Betty Vandervoort Farnsworth.” She extended her hand, then abruptly withdrew it—probably because of the glove business. “And you are …?”

“Jives,” the butler replied. “Mortimer Jives, actually,
but Jives will do. I’ll have Gwennie bring your bags up to your quarters.”

“Thank goodness,” Betty said, in a voice so soft only I could hear her. “Somewhere around here there’s a big hulking he-man who’s willing to lift something heavier than a tea cozy.”

Before I had a chance to reply, Jives added, “I believe she’s almost finished getting the rooms ready.”

Betty and I exchanged an amused glance.

“If you want something done,” I whispered, “give the job to a woman.”

Her nod told me she’d been thinking the exact same thing.

“In the meantime,” Jives continued, “Mrs. Merrywood has requested that you join her for refreshments. Won’t you step into the conservatory?”

“The
conservatory
?” I whispered to Betty with amusement. “That’s a word I haven’t heard anyone utter since the last time I played Clue.”

Betty covered her mouth to control her laughter. “Why not meet in the billiards room,” she whispered back, “or the lounge?”

But Betty, Winston, and I dutifully left our suitcases and followed Jives to the end of the hall. Frederick trotted alongside us, his toenails clicking against the marble.

After passing through a pair of double doors, we found ourselves in a large room with ornate antique furniture, a faded dark-red Oriental rug, and a stone fireplace with a huge fire crackling inside. An elaborately embroidered screen that looked Chinese and
was probably made of silk stood in one corner of the room. It must have been gorgeous once. Now, however, the colors were badly faded in spots, making it look splotchy.

One wall was made up entirely of windows—which, I realized, was what made it a conservatory. I remembered seeing a segment on the Home and Garden Channel about conservatories, which are basically greenhouses that have been added onto a house. They became popular in England in the 1800s, not only for growing rare plants but also as the setting for tea parties.

But there were no plants in this conservatory. In fact, the floor-to-ceiling windows were framed by heavy dark-blue velvet drapes that looked as if they had been designed to block out the sun, not let it in. At the moment they were partially closed, making the room feel claustrophobic.

Then I noticed another ominous touch: A beady-eyed raven was perched on a four-foot column, glowering at all of us. I couldn’t tell if he had once been alive or if he was simply a replica. Either way, he looked as if any minute now he was going to utter that single famous word:
Nevermore
.

But not all the animals in the room were inanimate. Two dogs lay on the hearth, basking in the warmth of the fire. A somewhat overweight basset hound, mostly black and brown, glanced over curiously, then pulled himself up on his short legs and lumbered toward me. Like most members of his breed, he had a mournful look in his big brown eyes. But while his body moved
as if in slow motion, his long tail wagged enthusiastically, letting me know that, appearances aside, he was happy to make my acquaintance.

His buddy was considerably more sprightly. The fluffy white dog jumped up from the hearth, his long, curled tail whipping around energetically. I noticed that while his tail was white on top, the underside was brown, the same shade as his ears and head. But he had touches of gray on his remarkably sweet face. I wasn’t positive, but I thought I saw both shih tzu and Lhasa apso in him. He charged over, as excited as if we were long-lost friends.

“Hey, pal!” I greeted the smaller dog, crouching down to give his neck a good scratching.

The basset reached me a few seconds later. I gave him just as warm a welcome.

Finally!
I thought with relief.
Somebody I can relate to
.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be able to limit my interactions to those with four feet while I was a guest here at the Merrywood estate.