Shorecliff (29 page)

The wolves, in this case, were our aunts. Had Lorelei not tactfully disappeared from Shorecliff, they would have put their collective foot down about her entering the house. The result was that we almost never saw her. One time when Pamela and I had wandered into the woods bordering the Stephenson property, I looked up and caught sight of her in the sunlight, silhouetted against the green field and the bright blue of the sky. My first impulse was to run to her, but then I thought about what I would say, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be rude or awkward. When we got home, I felt I had been equally rude by not approaching her, and I worried that she had seen me.

Fisher had chosen to deal with the family crises by vanishing from the house. He traveled in wide circles around the countryside, hunting for birds. His absence was painful to me, since I valued more than I had realized the calm sweetness of his company. He lent to Shorecliff a reassuring feeling that after all there were good, wise people in the world. Of all of us, he possessed the most bountiful supply of kindness. Occasionally I saw him speaking with Charlie, Pamela, or Aunt Margery, but for the most part he would crouch in a bush or stroll on the moor, armed with my telescope. He had long ago commandeered it, or rather accepted my offer of it—I was proud to have something he wanted.

The weather remained idyllic—warm but not hot, breezy rather than muggy, bright and brisk and inviting. Of course there was the occasional gray morning and one or two violent thundershowers. A few times, when the sky lowered and presented its dark underside, I thought it might change to match our mood, but the clouds always evaporated, and the sun always returned.

Oddly enough, it was Charlie who seemed most at a loss in the few days before the uncles’ last hunting trip. Charlie was, on the whole, an uncomplicated young man. He liked fun and excitement, and he loved his family. He had none of Aunt Margery’s tendency to fuss, but he had inherited her gift for watchfulness and Uncle Frank’s stolidity of mind and body. He was intelligent enough and good-hearted, but he did not hold the depths of passion that the other cousins were capable of plumbing. Therefore, when they retired to their corners to mull over the news of Uncle Kurt and the tragedy of Aunt Loretta, Charlie was left empty-handed. He had been dismayed by the unveiling of family secrets, but more because it meant the breaking up of our circle than because he was troubled by what he heard. After all, if given the chance, he would have been thrilled to visit a gambling house filled with beautiful women. That is what I speculated about him, and I suspect Francesca speculated in a similar manner.

Francesca was not a girl to lie around doing nothing. Her idleness, which she had imposed on herself as a sort of mourning in honor of her mother, did not suit her personality at all, which is perhaps why it seemed to distort her so dramatically. The story I told her about Uncle Kurt’s gambling in Portland galvanized her. I have no doubt her crazy, impossible idea was near fully formed by the end of her interview with me that morning by the cliff. The only person in whom she confided her scheme was Charlie, thereby rescuing him from boredom. When she heard that the uncles were going on a sixth hunting trip, she finalized her plans.

It turned out that Condor would be absent at the same time, making his annual trip to Brunswick to visit his niece and buy supplies for the long, lonesome winter at Shorecliff. When the Delias learned he would be gone, they developed their own plan, and thus the central bricks were laid for the night after the uncles’ departure. Of course it was only later that I was able to piece together everything that happened. I played a part in the night’s adventures too, but it was not an important one until the end.

The beginning we all saw. Less than a week before we were scheduled to depart from Shorecliff, the three uncles set off on their last hunting trip, loaded down with packs, guns, and tent poles. The aunts kissed them good-bye or patted their shoulders. The cousins, ranged in sullen rows on the stairs, looked on in silence.

“Look at you up there, all those sourpusses,” said Uncle Cedric. “The sun is still shining, kids! The weather’s warm, the shore awaits. Go outside, all of you! Try to find some fun here while you still can.”

He scanned our faces one by one, seeing Francesca’s gloom, Fisher’s wide-eyed concern, Yvette’s wrath, Isabella’s distress… Yes, we had certainly become an odd crew. I for one could not keep my eyes off Uncle Kurt. He was strapping on his bags without paying attention to us, except that he flashed us an occasional smile. I searched for remorse and saw none. He looked chipper and excited, as if he were being allowed to do something he had always wanted to do, the way I probably looked when I went on adventures with my cousins. A wave of curiosity rolled over me. What was it like, that gambling house with its pretty women and poker tables and all-night dancing?

Uncle Kurt looked up and said, “Hold down the fort while I’m gone, Richard.”

I was so in awe of his duplicity that I replied, “Yes, sir.”

He thought I was joking and laughed, turning to Uncle Frank. “Move out, sergeant!” he cried. “We leave at 0900 hours.”

When they left, the family scattered again. Somehow I whiled away the rest of that day—reading, possibly, or playing with Pamela, or drifting from bedroom to bedroom, seeking company and reassurance.

Delia and Delia went to their room. There was nothing unusual in that, and none of us knew then that they were planning Barnavelt’s Great Escape. That night, however, at about half past two, they emerged. After hours of planning, all they had really decided was that Barnavelt deserved to be free and that they were the ones to free him. They knew Great-Uncle Eberhardt and Condor would try to get him back, so they planned to put him on his leash, walk with him to the secret field where Uncle Cedric had taken us for our picnic, and release him there. It was strange that they could have been so oblivious to the cruelty of their plan, not realizing that taking Barnavelt so far away and abandoning him would probably condemn him to a speedy death. Barnavelt was most assuredly a domestic fox—not as tame as a dog, for his ancestry did not hold countless years of servility, but still lacking the skills necessary for survival in the wild.

Delia Ybarra, however, had grown up in Manhattan and Delia Robierre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Neither had ever learned about the ways of wild animals, and their notions concerning the morality of capturing foxes were taken exclusively from their own fantastic notions of what it meant to be free. They had long ago personified Barnavelt as a captive, something like an American Indian from a storybook, yearning to run through the forest and commune with nature. They thought, pityingly, that Condor loved the fox as much as they did but had less understanding of Barnavelt’s true nature as a wild creature. I heard Delia Ybarra say once, “Condor just can’t stand to give him up.” So they ignored his warnings and set out for the cottage on the night of his departure.

The top of the staircase leading down from the third floor of Shorecliff was situated between the Wight boys’ room and Philip and Tom’s room. To reach it the Delias had to pass three rooms and come close to a fourth, and in doing so they woke up four cousins—Pamela, Isabella, Philip, and Tom. Pamela woke up when Delia Robierre crashed into the wall of her bedroom, eliciting a gale of giggles from Delia Ybarra. Really it was amazing that the two Delias left the house without waking up any adults, for they were the worst in our family at sneaking around. Isabella was roused by more giggles as they passed her bedroom, and Philip and Tom said that they were awakened when Delia Ybarra tripped going down the stairs. As often happened, the two boys woke at the same time, and each opened his eyes to the other’s watchful face.

“What’s happening?” Philip asked.

“I don’t know. Someone’s going downstairs.”

They got up, listened at the door, and then went to the window. Their bedroom was at the back of the house, looking over the cliff, and when they peered out they were rewarded by a glimpse of two figures dashing toward the woods. The Delias had had an extended argument about whether or not to bring a flashlight—Delia Robierre voted for one, Delia Ybarra claimed it diminished the thrill of the adventure—but in the end, when Delia Robierre flat-out refused to go unless they brought some form of light, Delia Ybarra agreed to take one. Philip and Tom thus saw a bobbing light accompanying the two figures, and the silhouettes it revealed betrayed their identities.

“The Delias,” said Tom. “What are they doing running around out there?”

“They’re probably going to see what Barnavelt does at night,” Philip said. “You know how they are about him, and Condor’s gone. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were going to set him free. It would be the perfect opportunity.”

“Those crazy kids, they’ll kill that fox.” Tom didn’t care much about Barnavelt, but the idea of freedom was dear to his heart. He leaned against the windowsill and compared himself with Barnavelt. After a moment he turned to Philip and said, “Do you want to head out?”

“Head out where?” answered Philip, grinning.

“I don’t know. Let’s go over to Lorelei’s and see if she’s awake.”

“I don’t think you need me on that particular expedition.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Phil! I know it gives you a kick to think of me as some kind of rutting savage, but I’m not always running over there to sleep with her, all right? I just want to get out of this godforsaken place and do something exciting. Can we go? I know Lorelei would be glad to see us. And I want to see her.”

He muttered this last phrase in a lower tone, but I heard the speech preceding it because it was his exasperated exclamation that woke me up. His voice drifted out of their open window and in through mine, and with my fine-tuned ability to sense cousinly intrigue, I sat up in bed and listened for clues about their plan. That was how I entered the night’s activities.

Isabella, as it turned out, had also gone to her window and seen the Delias running for the woods, and when Philip and Tom shrugged on sweaters and came out into the hallway, she heard them and opened her door.

“Where are you going?” she whispered, smiling in anticipation.

Philip was leading the way. He looked at her as if deciding something and then said, “Oh, nowhere special.”

“Can I come?” she asked.

“Not this time.”

Tom added as they went down the stairs, “It would be too dangerous with more than two. Sorry, Bella.”

“Dangerous?” she repeated scornfully, but they were already gone.

When I came into the hallway, clad in my red-striped pajamas and green bathrobe, I found her standing stiff as a board, with her arms crossed and her face distorted in a grimace. That was how she looked when she got angry.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Nothing unusual. Tom and Philip are being bastards,” she replied. Isabella rarely swore, so I knew she was upset.

“Are you going to follow them?” I asked.

“Why should I?” she said, shrugging. Then she added, “I do want to make sure the Delias are all right, though.”

“Why? Where are they?”

“Didn’t you hear them leaving? They’ve run off to the woods.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Should we go after them?” She smiled at me, and inwardly I leapt with delight. Isabella and me, going on a private midnight adventure into the depths of the woods! My heart began to pound.

“Is anyone else awake?” I asked, anxious that no one should interfere.

“I don’t think so,” she said as she disappeared into her bedroom to don outdoor clothes. “Put on a sweater, Richard. It might be chilly outside.”

Isabella and I left the house thinking everyone else was asleep. Pamela, however, had been keeping careful track of the exodus from the third floor, and soon after we had gone out the front door, she followed, leaving Yvette in bed—the only cousin, as it turned out, who slept through all the commotion that followed. Pamela told me the next day that she had gone to keep an eye on me, but I think she liked the idea of being all by herself in the woods at night, following two people who didn’t know she was there. It was a night game more suspenseful than any of the games we had played before.

The air outside was warm and full of thrumming from hidden insects. The sweater Isabella had told me to wear was unnecessary, and I discarded both it and my bathrobe outside the door. I had put on shoes, knowing we would be going into the woods, but aside from them I was wearing only my striped pajamas. Even my hair stuck up the way it always did after I had been in bed. Isabella was nearly invisible in a dark skirt and long-sleeved jersey—she looked like a cat burglar on the prowl. There was almost no moonlight that night, only a few weak rays from a crescent high in the sky. Isabella turned to me as we trotted across the lawn, and I saw her eyes gleaming. I wondered if she had been crying in her room before we left. She didn’t say anything as we headed for the woods.

Disaster struck, as far as I was concerned, almost as soon as we passed through the first line of trees. The moonlight was lost under the foliage, and we plunged into a darkness filled with sharp twigs, clinging underbrush, and slimy bugs under our hands on the tree bark.

“We have to go to Condor’s cottage,” Isabella said. “I’m sure the Delias went to visit Barnavelt.”

I jumped at the sound of her voice and tried to follow it. She strode ahead, and I ran forward, trying to keep the patch of moving blackness in sight, but I tripped over a branch and fell on my face in a clump of moss. For a few moments all I could do was spit dirt out of my mouth. When I looked up I was alone.

“Isabella?” I said. “Isabella? Where are you?” I didn’t want to shout. It would have been too terrifying to yell into the darkness and not receive an answer. I stood up, put out both my hands, felt a tree, and held onto it for a while.

In her defense, Isabella was upset. Under less emotional circumstances, she would never have left me like that, alone in the middle of the woods at night. But she was intent on finding Tom and Philip (in spite of what she had said to me, the two Delias were a mere aside to her), and her sense of urgency propelled her forward. She told me later that when she realized I was no longer by her side, she was struck by a jolt of worry. She looked all around, called my name, and then out of desperation kept going in the same direction as before. There seemed to be nothing else to do.