Doppelgänger (13 page)

But he hadn't totally forgotten. And whatever malevolence was in the house and had needled its way into his mind to find that memory—that
specific
one—seemed to know precisely what it was doing. It was this realization alone that changed Julian Atherton from a skeptic sneering at his wife's silly superstitions to a terrified believer, sleeping with the gas on and a revolver by his bed, in the course of one terrible night.

In the morning Julian rose wearily, having slept only in brief catnaps during the night, and he looked disheveled even after he put on his clothes and went downstairs for breakfast. He resolved that he must say something to Anine. He wouldn't validate her fears or superstitions—even though Julian now knew there was a spirit of some kind in the house, he was loath to lose his leverage over his wife where this matter was concerned—but he thought it prudent to know definitively what she'd seen, for he had a sneaking feeling she hadn't told him everything. This was on his mind as he walked downstairs, his hand feeling the slick cold hardness of the mahogany balustrade to which Bradbury had tied his suicide rope farther up.

Surprisingly the dining room was empty. Mrs. Hennessey was just bringing in a tray of coffee and the copy of the
Times
. “Good morning, sir,” she said brightly. “Breakfast for you?”

“Yes.” Julian sat in his customary chair at the head of the table. “Where's Mrs. Atherton?”

“She and her maid left the house very early this morning for the railway station, sir.”

He was shocked. “The
railway
station? Where is she going?”

“Long Branch, I think she said. She assured me she'd be back by the end of the day.” Mrs. Hennessey began to pour his coffee.

Long Branch? That's absurd
. Long Branch was a beach resort, and it was awfully late in the season for that; outside the weather was overcast and moody, not the kind of day for a jaunt at the shore.
So there must be some other reason she went there. I'm surprised she had the guts
. As he sipped his coffee, his mind still mulling uncomfortably over the vision of the Indian from last night, Julian felt quite apprehensive. The apparition had shown him he was losing control over his own house. Now perhaps he was also losing control over his wife, and that scared him more.

Chapter Eleven

The Secret Meeting

It was a cloudy, windy day in New York and it was even more so in Long Branch. Anine felt the chill of autumn in the air as she and Clea Wicks walked out of the railway terminal and boarded a carriage for the Shrewsbury Hotel. The leaden sky reminded her of Sweden in the winter. Long Branch's famed boardwalk was almost bereft of travelers today. The beaches were empty and the place had a strange forlorn look that made Anine even more uneasy.

“You look very nice today, Miss Anine,” said Clea. “You'll make a good impression.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Anine was wearing a new outfit, a two-piece day dress of deep burgundy velvet, with long sleeves and white gloves, its lace-trimmed collar high to the neck. Clea had laced her corset especially tight and she could feel the whalebone stays digging into her flesh. The gown was a nightmare to travel in but she was determined to show Mrs. Lucius Minthorn that she was every bit as much of a lady as any of the other women of New York.
This meeting is more than just gathering information
, she thought.
It's a diplomatic mission. My future in society may ride on it
.

The prospect of the clandestine meeting with Gertrude Minthorn, née de Coster, had come, as Anine expected, through Rachael Norton. There was a tense little negotiation conducted entirely through cards passed up and down Fifth Avenue by messengers, and Anine never directly addressed Mrs. Minthorn, but somehow the rendezvous was arranged. It was risky not merely from the social standpoint but Anine feared how Julian might react to her unannounced absence. Nevertheless it was vitally important.

They reached the Shrewsbury Hotel, which fronted the beach. There seemed to be very few guests in residence. At the front desk Anine presented the clerk a pre-written note bearing a fake name. She did not want to speak to him and be remembered for her Swedish accent.
Mrs. Thurston Smith has been invited to visit Mrs. Lucius Minthorn here to-day.
The clerk told her where to find Mrs. Minthorn, and then, glancing at Miss Wicks, said softly, “We do not permit Negroes in our hotel, ma'am. Your maid will have to wait outside.”

Somewhat awkwardly Anine turned to Clea and nodded. The maid left the lobby, and Anine saw her getting back into the carriage they'd taken from the station.

Mrs. Minthorn was in room 23. Anine paused, having taken off one of her gloves, before knocking on the door.
God be with me
, she thought, and rapped softly. An equally soft female voice answered: “Come in.”

Gertrude Minthorn was in her early sixties and quite portly. She sat on a sofa in the sitting room of the gloomy hotel suite, wearing a colossal green muslin dress and an engraved coral brooch tied on a ribbon around her neck. Her graying hair was set in ringlet curls of the kind that hadn't been fashionable since the 1840s. Her face was chalky with makeup. She smiled faintly but her eyes were filled with doubt. “Mrs. Atherton,” she said. “It's good to finally meet you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Minthorn. I've looked forward to meeting you.”

“Please, sit down. I had my maid bring us some tea and cakes. Please have one.” The pastries, little balloons of dough festooned with candied sugar, sat on a gleaming silver tray.

“Thank you.” Anine sat opposite her and reached for a teacup.
Well, so far so good
, she thought.
There will probably be small-talk first
.

There was. She and Mrs. Minthorn bantered for nearly a quarter of an hour over the weather, the uncommon vacancy of hotels in Long Branch and various items of New York gossip, none too sensitive. Then at last the old woman's expression changed. As she set her teacup down into its saucer Anine felt a rush of nerves as she realized the time had come to get down to business.

“Your husband, Mrs. Atherton, has treated my sister with
extreme
disrespect. All of our family believes she's in the state she's in because of what happened. I dare say—and I hope you don't find this too shocking, madam—but had your husband murdered my sister he could not be thought of in lesser regard by my family and others.”

“I apologize.” Anine expected to have to ooze contrition on Julian's behalf and she'd rehearsed a speech for it. “I hope you understand that I knew nothing of what happened when Mr. Atherton bought the house. Had I known I absolutely would have forbidden him from doing such a monstrous thing. He never told me anything. I was horrified when I found out what he'd done.”

“Men such as your husband seldom tell their wives anything,” Mrs. Minthorn replied coldly. “In any event, what's done is done. My sister remains in her bedroom at our Newport cottage, unable to set foot outside in the daylight. She weeps at night and moans insensibly during the day. She has not spoken one intelligible word to me or anyone else since the day she came to us. Everything Evelyn was—all her brightness, her laughter, her gaiety, her charity—all that is gone now. There's not a shred of her personality left. When I look into her eyes I see nothing behind them.
Nothing
. That's what your husband did to her.”

Anine knew she had to choose her next words very carefully. She wanted to avoid being locked into a cycle of apologizing repeatedly for Julian.
How do I bring up the subject of ghosts?
Several times since the meeting had been arranged Anine had changed her mind about whether or not to tell Mrs. Minthorn about the manifestations in the house. Now she was leaning toward not telling her, but she had to say something.

“I don't wish to live in the house any longer, Mrs. Minthorn. It's a very unhappy place for me, even more so now that I know what Julian did to get it. If it were up to me I would return the house to your family right away and request our funds back from the bank, but I fear the time for that has passed.”

Gertrude nodded. “It has. Nevertheless, my husband is prepared to make your husband a generous offer to purchase the house from him.” She paused to take a sip of tea and then said bluntly, “One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Anine's eyes widened. She didn't expect the meeting to become a business negotiation. She also did not appreciate how desperately the Minthorn family still wanted the house back. In this offer she saw a glimmer of hope.
Yes, that's the answer! We sell the house back to them—live somewhere else—and ease the way between our families. Reverse the damage, to the extent it can be reversed.

As a practical matter, however, Anine had no idea how much the house was worth or even how much Julian had paid the bank for it. The $125,000 figure sounded utterly staggering, but she knew little about real estate transactions.

“Again, if it were up to me,” she said, “I would accept that offer immediately. I
want
Mrs. Quain to have the house back. But as to whether my husband will agree—well, that's another matter.”

“I understand. But I trust you will make my husband's offer known to him?”

“Of course I will.”

Mrs. Minthorn's mood changed perceptibly. She smiled. “So, is this your first visit to Long Branch?” she said, in the airy small-talk tone that signaled the business portion of the meeting was concluded.

No, it isn't. I have to get information.
Anine knew she was probably being impolite, but she dodged Gertrude's question. “Mrs. Minthorn, could you…”
How do I even start? How do I ask without sounding crazy?
“Could you tell me a little bit about your sister's history in the house? I'd like to know more about it, and about her. It might help me convince Julian.”

“I don't know what history you're referring to,” Gertrude shrugged. “My sister and her husband lived there happily for twenty years. She so badly wanted to stay there after Phinneas's death and all the troubles with Niles and the bank. The house was built for her, you know.”

“Yes, I know. When was it built?”

Gertrude paused to think. “Well, let's see…they were married in the spring of 'fifty-seven, I believe, and the house was already under construction. I think they moved in that fall. Percy was four then.”

“Percy?”

“Yes, my brother-in-law's son by his former wife. She died giving birth to him before Mr. Quain met Evelyn. After they were married my sister raised him as her own son. He has a lot of memories of the house, too.”

At last. Something substantial.
“I see. Where is Percy now?”

“Oh, he lives in New York still. He's quite an accomplished pianist, actually. I would suggest that you might come to one of his recitals to hear him play, but—well, given what happened with my sister…”

Anine nodded. “Yes, I understand.”
So now how to ask the next question—who died there?
She decided to ease onto it. “Did anyone else ever live in the house besides Mr. and Mrs. Quain and Percy?”

“Servants, I suppose.”

“Did anyone die there? In the house, I mean?”

Mrs. Minthorn's face turned quietly stony. “Mrs. Atherton, what a question,” she said, in almost a sigh. “Why do you want to know that?”

Again Anine considered telling her the whole story, but for some reason she thought that was not tactically wise. She finally said, “I sense a feeling of great sadness in the house. I've felt this feeling before, in connection with—” She was thinking of Ola's death “—with sad events. I was just curious.”

This was as close as she came to admitting that the house was haunted. She didn't know how Gertrude took it or if she understood what she was truly asking—
whose spirit haunts the house?
The older woman sipped from her teacup and set it down. The clink of it against the saucer seemed abnormally loud.

“I don't know the answer,” she replied. “I do know that Phinneas—Mr. Quain—didn't die there. He died in Boston. He had a stroke at the Parker House Hotel while they were in the city to attend one of Percy's performances. My sister was inconsolable. It was some time before she could return to the house. And after that it was difficult for her. So many happy memories that now made her sad.”

The mystery had now only deepened, but Anine knew that Mrs. Minthorn would be no further help in solving it. She signaled the end of her inquiries by responding to the question Gertrude had asked earlier. “Yes, this
is
my first trip to Long Branch. I should like to see it at the height of the season when the weather is better.”

Mrs. Minthorn looked relieved. Her face brightened. “Oh, yes. You should come at the end of May. It's so refreshing, with the breezes coming in off the ocean—”

So who
is
the ghost in the house, then?
As she small-talked with Gertrude Minthorn Anine was consumed by this question.
Bradbury saw a child. I saw a woman and so did Clea. I've seen a cat. An entire spectral family, minus the man—could they all have died there?
The conundrum spun about in her head, over and over, all the way back to New York City. She ached to know the secret story of the house but in the final analysis perhaps she would not need to find out. Selling the house back to the Minthorns was the ultimate solution. Her task now was to convince Julian of this.

The train coming back from New Jersey was late and she and Clea didn't return to the house until nearly eight o'clock. Mrs. Hennessey told her that Julian had already eaten dinner. “He says he would like to see you in his parlor, ma'am,” she said. “He's been waiting for you.”

A sudden settling feeling rippled through Anine's stomach.
All right. This is it, then—the crucial conversation we can't avoid
. She was nervous but did not shirk from the duty before her. “All right. While I'm meeting with Mr. Atherton, would you bring some soup or something to eat to my own parlor for when I'm finished?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She paused before the pocket doors of the Red Parlor. A flash of movement from above attracted her view. For a split-second she saw the Abyssinian cat walking along the railing at the second level, its tail swishing silently. She didn't see it vanish but a moment later the cat was no longer there.

Anine opened the doors of the Red Parlor and stepped inside.

Julian was sitting behind his big imposing desk. He was stripped to his shirtsleeves, no tie, and his sleeves were rolled up. There was a tumbler of whiskey on the desk blotter in front of him and a crystal decanter of the stuff next to it but it didn't look like he'd drunk much of it. Under Jefferson's picture the fireplace roared with unusual robustness. Julian was paging through a book filled with medieval woodcut illustrations of some kind, but didn't look like he was paying much attention to it.

“So you're back,” he said softly, turning a page of the book. “Just thought you'd jaunt off to the Jersey shore without me, did you?”

“I have no time for your nonsense. I was meeting with Mrs. Lucius Minthorn. She refuses to see me in society, so she arranged a meeting at a hotel in Long Branch where no one would see the shame of being in my presence.”

Julian looked up, caressing the tumbler of whiskey but not drinking it. “Oh, you were with Mrs. Lucius Minthorn? And what scandalous lies did she tell you about your husband? What have I been up to now? Tearing the wings off flies? Ravishing nuns? Torturing young children? Do tell.”

“You know perfectly well what she told me. I found out about the whole thing—about how you got this house and how you had Mrs. Quain beaten and thrown out.
That's
the reason the women of New York shun me. It has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with you.”

“Of course, blame it on
me
,” he shrugged, and finally did take a drink. “Mrs. Quain is a tired old woman. She'll be dead in six months anyway. This house is a treasure. A block off Fifth Avenue, and for the price I paid for it—well, you don't pass up a deal like that. Of course, I can't expect you to understand. Women cannot grasp the concept of money.”