Joan Smith (5 page)

It was a great pity the first Lady Sinclair should have been such a ninnyhammer, but there is no arguing with facts. The next item to be seen was the secret passage. I am bound to say it was more satisfactory, though no more scary. I am not one of those who can scan the exterior of a building, compare it to the partitions within, and conclude that there are x feet of space unaccounted for. I had tried to figure out where the passage could be without any success. The walls were all about four times as thick as necessary; any of them might have been scooped out to make a passage.

In a playful mood, Aunt Loo had me “guess” where it was. I had only common sense to guide me. It was obviously not entered via a window or door, nor was its access through undamaged sheets of wallpaper. Wood paneling struck me as the proper medium to hide an entrance way. The main saloon was paneled. It was done in sections, with a gothic arch design repeated at regular intervals.

The thing was well concealed, stuck off in a corner where little light penetrated. There was no secret device to open it. What was there was a finger hold cut into the pattern of the design. Four notches, to fit your fingers into. I stuck my fingers in, pulled, and the panel, more or less the size of a small door, opened freely.

There was a narrow passageway painted an unpleasant bile green color. The most notable thing about the passage was that it was cold, unusually cold. The willows shaded the wall on that side from the sun. I followed the narrow passage to its end. It was not so narrow that I had to turn sideways to get through, and I am not a small person, remember. My arms nearly touched either side, not quite. At the end of the hallway was a staircase, nothing fancy, just the steps unpainted, of the sort that go into a cellar. There was no backing, what is called a “riser,” I believe, and no hand railing. It was a steep and high staircase.

At the top was a door without a handle. I pushed, rather hard, and it opened into a pitch-black little cubbyhole of a place, which one had to enter on hands and knees. I did so, holding my lamp aloft. Yet another door was before me, one about three feet high and two feet wide. I pushed, but it did not open. Someone was pushing against me on the other side.

I heard a sound of laughter. Within two seconds, the door was pulled wide to show me Aunt Loo, clapping her hands and laughing. She complimented me on having “gone the course,” as she described it.

“Where am I?” I asked, glancing around at an elegant room, done up in oak and blue brocade.

“This is the master bedchamber.
My
room now. I sleep here. That little closet you crawled out of is a storage area for trunks or boxes of winter bedding. In the olden days, the lord of the manor had a means of escape from his bedchamber or the main saloon, you see, if someone should be after him. There seemed to be a deal of that sort of carry-on, according to Edward. It had to do with religion, which seems so unreligious, chasing people and killing them, or fighting them at least. I expect it was more commonly used to smuggle someone
into
the master’s room,” she advised me, with a knowing lift of the brow and nod of the brindled head.

“A wench could come after mistress was tucked up in her own room, spend the night, and be gone in the morning, with no one any the wiser. They were rather wicked that way, the Sinclairs,” she admitted. “The strain was diluted by the time it got down to Edward; not vanished, but less pronounced. They may say what they will about the world going to the dogs, but when you get looking into the past, Valerie, you will find things to have been much worse. I wonder if I should not put Gloria back into the sixteen hundreds,” she mused.

“She is finding plenty of mischief in the present century. I am going back down the secret passage, Auntie. I adore it.”

“It’s rather sweet, ain’t it? I used to use it sometimes to surprise Edward or the servants, but it is not as easy for me as it once was, because of having to get down on all fours to get at it. You think twice about that at my age.”

I was already on all fours, crawling into the cubbyhole, and making a shambles of my muslin gown in the process. Thank God for the Pinnys of the world. She was thrilled to have the job of laundering it for me.

“What will you be wearing for the dinner party tonight, miss?” she asked as she threw the soiled muslin over her arm. “I’ll get it out and see it’s pressed up fresh.”

I sorted through my gowns, selecting a pale green lutestring with cream ribbons around the bottom. “I was hoping you’d say that one!” Pinny grinned. “It’s my very favorite of all your lovely gowns.”

The six robes hanging in the closet, most of them a few seasons old, were not accustomed to such lavish praise. It was too early to dress for dinner yet. I put on a simple cotton gown for a long, rambling walk around the park on foot, to familiarize myself with the place.

There was a terraced garden at the north face of Troy Fenners. It was elaborately and geometrically laid out, with clipped hedges in lines as straight as rulers, with assorted circles and parabolas of flower beds set at precise intervals. Though interesting, it was not my idea of true beauty. I prefer the more natural, even wild, side of nature, as is not surprising, I suppose, in one who fancies herself the queen of the jungle.

Green glasses are associated in my mind with blindness, age, and decrepitude. Old Mr. Pebbles from the Charity House at home, a cripple of eighty some years, is the only person I know who wears them. It was disconcerting to find an extremely robust young gentleman with these strange objects concealing his eyes when I went downstairs to dinner that evening. He sat in a dark corner with Dr. Hill, while Aunt Loo sat with a pained face listening to Pierre be polite to her.

“The grand Miss Ford!” Pierre exclaimed, jumping up when I entered. I am sure he reverted to his French upbringing in his understanding of the word grand. I cannot think he intended to denote much of distinction or greatness, only largeness.

As I nodded and said good evening to him my eyes wandered toward that far corner where the newcomer sat. About six feet of well-formed manhood arose slowly from the sofa, as though it were a terrible imposition to have to do so. Dr. Hill presumed on age’s privilege to retain his seat, which I do not relate with any tone of pique. I kept waiting for Mr. Sinclair to finish standing up, for while he was on his feet, his shoulders and head stooped forward. After half a minute, it was clear he had got as straight as he was going to. I went forward to say good evening to Dr. Hill and to be presented to Sinclair.

Aunt Loo made the introduction. I waited impatiently to hear what manner of voice came out of the scholar. Though he wore the trappings of the afflicted, the glasses and stooping posture, there was actually no real sign of the invalid about him. His face was ruddy enough, his body by no means emaciated. His jacket was well cut, and his cravat well tied. I had an annoying feeling that if he would pull off his green glasses and straighten up, he might provide me a suitable flirt for the duration of the visit.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said, in a weary, faint voice, the head drooping an inch lower to indicate a bow. He held his two hands together at his chest, like a demmed drapery clerk trying to con one into a purchase.

“Good evening, Mr. Sinclair,” I replied in my loudest, firmest voice. I stuck to my resolution of shaking hands. When Mr. Sinclair saw my fingers extended to him, he finally reached out and took them but was too spent with the effort of arising to exert the least pressure. I crushed his hand, as though it were a lemon to be squeezed, and still he did not respond but only drew his fingers away and shook them limply.

Pierre made a dart to his side. “Do I not telling you the truth, Cousin?” he demanded in exultant tones of Mr. Sinclair. “Is it not the grand Miss Ford?”

“Tres grande,”
Mr. Sinclair agreed, turning the green glasses to inspect me. There is nothing so disconcerting as being examined when you cannot even see the eyes of the examiner.

“The English please is best for us,” Pierre informed his cousin. “Now we English have the sherries, yes? Frenchmens prefer a fine claret or burgundy, but in England everyone must drink his sherries.”

When we sat to drink our sherry, Aunt Loo joined Dr. Hill in the dark corner. I fully expected the invalid would return with them to the shadows, but Pierre did not permit it. “We gentlemans enjoy conversation now with the grand Miss Ford,” he told Sinclair. “Here we shall be all sitting, on these sofa.”

Mr. Sinclair, the unnatural man, displayed not the least sign of interest or amusement at his cousin. He stood, still drooping like a wilted rose, till I was seated, then took up a chair as far from me as possible, while Pierre cuddled up to my side like a puppy.

“My good cousin has give me the horse now to ride,” he began. “Tomorrow I shall be riding with you. Where we shall want to go?”

“Perhaps your cousin has a suggestion. I am a newcomer. I don’t know what is to be seen hereabouts,” I replied.

“I don’t go out,” was the cousin’s very uncivil reply. “I am very busy. You must excuse me.”

“It is not necessary to go out to make a suggestion, is it, Mr. Sinclair?” I asked, my voice so sweet that even this obtuse person must realize it was hiding my anger.

“I know all the hereabouts,” Pierre assured me at once. “The good hard ridings, just as we English like.”

“Those of us who go out, that is,” I answered, never looking within a right angle of the recluse. “Some are too busy, Pierre.”

“Please to call me Peter. Remembering? I must like to call you also by the premier name.”

“Call me Val, if you like.”

“Val?” he asked, his eyes widening. “This is the English name?”

“Short for Valkyrie, Peter,” Mr. Sinclair mentioned, in a bored drawl.

“How did you guess, Mr. Sinclair? Most people think it short for Valerie,” I told him, refusing to recognize any slur on my size.

He adjusted his spectacles, declining to reply. After he had taken a little rest, he asked, “Are you making a long visit, Miss Ford?”

“A month. It will be more than long enough,” I replied, with a chilly smile.

“A month?” Pierre howled. “No, this is not long enough for nothing. Tell her, Cousin. The Valkyrie must stay more longer. Six months.”

Pierre, the perfect English host, soon hopped up to pour us more of the requisite sherries. I was determined to pierce Welland Sinclair’s disguise, for I had taken the notion he was shamming it with his feeble airs. Truth to tell, I was angry as a hornet that he showed not the slightest bit of interest in me. “Your—condition?—permitted a visit to Wight recently I understand?” I began.

“Condition?” he asked, his brows rising above his spectacle rims. “I am not an invalid. I am a scholar. It is my work that keeps me in. The sunlight also is hard on my eyes. Yes, I took Peter to Wight to meet his cousins.”

“You are writing a paper on ghosts, I hear. Do you have a ghost at the gatehouse?” I knew this was belittling his literary project but was in a mood to belittle anything to do with the man.

“No, what I am engaged in actually is a retrospective look at the role played by the ghost in English literature over the centuries. What use the writers have made of ghosts and ghostly phenomena is what I mean. It will be interesting to compare the data, when I have it all assembled, and determine whether ghosts have been seen as benign beings, or malign, destructive.” The whole speech was delivered in a tone of offended imposition.

“Do you approach a conclusion yet?”

“Much remains to be done. They have been used most commonly to presage coming events, to warn the living of imminent disasters, and occasionally to badger the guilty, as in the case of Macbeth.”

He rattled on for some time, while Pierre became impatient, and I bored. To stem the flow, I asked, “What is the point, exactly, of this work you are doing?”

“Why, it is a literary endeavor,” he answered, shocked at the question. “St. Regis feels it will add a little luster to the family. He does not want me to bury myself in the country as his secretary.”

“I understand it is a literary project, but if one’s endeavors result in a new poem or play or novel—something to be enjoyed by humanity—then the reason for doing it is clear. I don’t see just what you are trying to accomplish. Who will bother to read what writers of old thought about ghosts?”

The drooping shoulders began straightening, while the neck stiffened as though for battle. “This is not a matter of interest to the
common
man. It is research, for scholars. My don at Oxford thought it an
excellent,
original idea.”

“Did he indeed? Then you have
one
potential reader at least, Mr. Sinclair. Two, if St. Regis has time to glance at it.”

“I am not interested in writing trashy, silly romantic novels for bored ladies to fritter their time away on.”

Aunt Loo’s head whirled toward us. Mr. Sinclair’s voice had been raised rather loud. I knew at once she thought I had let her cat out of the bag, and spoke up to assure her it was not the case. “Mr. Sinclair is just telling me about his ghost research, Auntie,” I said. Mr. Sinclair’s head twitched in annoyance, but before he could remind me again of the true nature of his work, dinner was called.

At the table, there were other things to speak of. The approaching séance and the Franconis were the subjects. “The Franconis have been engaged in spiritualism for years,” Aunt Loo told me. “All across Europe—well, where they could go, with the war on. They traveled through Italy and Austria. They do not mean to stay long in England, only for a year or so. I was fortunate to discover them early on in their stay, about six months ago. It was Lady Morgan who put me on to them.”

“Is she a neighbor, Lady Morgan?” I asked.

“Yes, the Morgans have lived here forever. Madame Franconi was reading the tarot cards there for Lady Morgan and a few friends, including me. She sensed some emanations, some psychic vibrations from me. She is very sensitive to all such manifestations. She came along to Troy Fenners a week later to give me a private reading, and that is when I learned she and her husband also hold séances. I took the three-day reading of the tarot cards, for I was not interested in mere
amusement.”