Someone in the House (31 page)

“Oh, swell. That’s the way to win her heart.”

“I don’t want any smart advice from you, kid. I’ve been around a lot longer than you have.”

“And you have an experience of women which extends over many nations and three separate continents.”

Roger grinned reluctantly. “I didn’t know you read anything as lowbrow as Sherlock Holmes.”

“I have been known, on occasion, to sink as low as Agatha Christie. Seriously, Roger, you’ve changed so much—”

“So have you.”

“Me?”

“Look at you.” With his thumb and forefinger, fastidiously, as if he touched something dirty, Roger lifted my forearm. “You’re getting fat.”

He had a knack of saying things in the most insulting way possible. But he wasn’t altogether wrong. Fat I would not be for a long time, but the arm we were both examining with such absurd interest was not the bony stick it once had been.

“It isn’t just your figure,” Roger said. “Your face, your mind, all of you—smug, stupidly sleek and well groomed, like one of those repulsive show cats that’s not expected to do anything but lie around and look handsome.”

“I take it there is some point to what you are saying—or is this the time for insult practice?” I inquired coldly.

“Most women wouldn’t consider that an insult,” said Roger, insultingly. “You didn’t used to be so damned sensitive. Oh, hell, let’s get on with it. Come in the other room.”

Bea would have fainted at the sight of the dining room. I took a dirty shirt and a book and a plate off one of the chairs and sat down. “Well?”

Roger sorted through a pile of papers and took out two photographs, which he tossed at me. “I took these last night.”

“You were in the house last night?”

“I have my methods, Watson. And I’ll kill you if you tell anybody. Have a look.”

He didn’t have to tell me where the photos had been taken. I recognized the terrain—the narrow, low-ceilinged corridor, the closed doors, the carved chest. Both photos also showed the luminous column of light with which I was only too familiar.

I threw the pictures onto the table. “You faked them. To give yourself an excuse to come back.”

“You’d like to believe that,” Roger said. “But you know better. It didn’t work, Annie—neither Bea’s sweet, stupid exercise nor Steve’s prayers. The thing is still there.”

“Who cares, so long as it doesn’t bother anybody?”

“That’s not all,” Roger said. “The best is yet to come. Cast your optics over this.”

The document he handed me was so charming that for a moment I forgot concern in sheer pleasure. Its age was evident from the tiny cracks that marred the stiff fabric, which was probably vellum or parchment rather than paper. The sheet was of considerable size, a foot wide by some eighteen inches long. Covering the surface were a series of miniature drawings of human figures, male and female, interspersed with blocks of writing in a neat hand. Pictures and writing were connected by curving lines.

“It’s a genealogy,” I said.

“They would have called it a pedigree. Can you read the names?”

“No. It must be in Latin; I can’t make any of it out. Aren’t they cute? This little man is wearing armor. And look at the headdress on the woman next to him, it—”

Roger made an emphatic sound of disgust. “Cute! Pay attention. The writing isn’t Latin, but I admit the script is difficult. Look here.” His finger jabbed the page. “‘The said Anne, daughter and heir to Lord Richard de Cotehaye, married Henry Lovell.’ The drawings are presumably portraits of Anne and Henry. Underneath are their two daughters and their son.”

“Lovell. Wasn’t that one of the names—”

“They owned the house from about thirteen hundred—when Richard Lovell married the daughter of the previous owner—to 1485, when their descendant was killed at Bosworth. Here he is, at the bottom.”

The small, delicately drawn face looked mournful, as if it had a premonition of its fate.

“Look at the names.” Again Roger’s forefinger stabbed the sheet. “Anne, Katherine, Elizabeth, Margaret. Typical of the times, named after popular saints and reigning monarchs. Now…” He jerked the parchment from my hand. I let out a cry of protest.

“Roger, that must be valuable. You’ll tear it. Does Kevin know you made off with this?”

“He doesn’t even know it exists. I found it in a box at the back of one of the cupboards. Here.”

This time the sheet of paper he shoved under my nose was more legible, though Roger’s handwriting was not at its best in this transcription.

“This is the genealogy of the Romers, who acquired the house in 1485. I had a devil of a time putting it together, from various documents and books, but it’s accurate. Again, note the names of the women. Elizabeth, Mary, Frances…”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re getting at? It will save time.”

“And you have so little of that to spare,” Roger said, a curious twist disfiguring his mouth. “All right. I am now an expert on a number of subjects I never expected to give a damn about, including ornamental brasses. That type of incised metal work on tombs started around the end of the thirteenth century and continued into the early sixteen hundreds. The name aroused my suspicion from the first; it’s a Saxon name, and has no business on a stone which, on stylistic grounds, probably dates from the fifteenth century.”

“Name? What name?”

“Ethelfleda. Damn it, Anne, concentrate on what I’m saying. You’ve seen the list of women who lived in that house between thirteen hundred and sixteen hundred. None of them had that name. There never was any such person.”

IV

Maybe Roger had been right about my brain being stupid and sleek. The gears had rusted; it took a while to get them started.

“Then Bea’s ghost—”

“You can’t have a ghost without first having had a body. I took another look at that brass the other night. There is no mistake about the name. Why would the Lovells put up a monument to someone who never existed?”

“A remote ancestress,” I hazarded wildly. “A saint or holy woman—”

“There may have been a Saint Ethelfleda,” Roger conceded. “The calendar of saints is excessively overloaded, and some of the English saints have weird names. But this is a funerary monument we’re talking about, not a memorial. It won’t wash, Anne. If—”

I pushed my chair back and stood up. “If, always if! You and your stupid theories! Drop it, Roger. And stop breaking into the house. One of these fine nights Kevin will catch you in the act and beat you to a pulp.”

“Are you going to tell him?” Roger asked. His voice was almost disinterested.

“Well…”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

If he had demanded or threatened, or even pleaded…. But that dead, flat voice got to me.

“Just don’t do it again.”

“Hmm,” said Roger.

Which was about as firm a nonpromise as anyone could make.

It’s no wonder I was on edge that night. I kept starting at imagined noises, and finally Kevin said in mingled amusement and exasperation, “What’s bugging you? You look like a bird, cocking its head and listening for cats.”

So I turned my attention to the matter at hand. I ought to have known Roger wouldn’t risk anything so soon after talking to me; he couldn’t be sure I would not squeal to Kevin. He waited until the next night before making his move—and it was almost the last one he ever made.

V

A couple of mildly ironic incidents marked the day—the ghosts of our pasts, Kevin’s and mine, coming back to haunt us.

The first was a call from Debbie. I happened to be in the hall when the telephone rang, and I almost dropped the instrument when I recognized her voice. I said I would fetch Kevin. She said no, that was all right; she would just as soon talk to me.

That had an ominous ring to it, and I braced myself for a little auditory scene—reproaches, tears, accusations. Instead the small, polite voice said, “I’m leaving tomorrow; I just wanted to thank Mrs. Jones for her hospitality and say good-bye to all of you.”

“Oh—well—that’s nice. I’ll tell Bea you called. I’m sure she would join me in saying good luck next year and all that sort of thing.”

“I suppose you’ll be going back to teaching soon.”

I didn’t answer at first. I was trying to calculate. How long had it been since I looked at a calendar or read a newspaper? Classes started around the end of August. Faculty was supposed to be there a few days early, especially the serfs like me.

“I suppose I will,” I said slowly.

“Have a good year.”

“Thanks. Are you sure you don’t want to talk to Kevin?”

“That won’t be necessary.” Her laugh had a tinny, mechanical quality; voices over the telephone often do. “Say good-bye for me, and thank him.”

After I had hung up I stood motionless, thinking about the conversation. There is something to be said for good breeding and good manners, I guess. The girl was in love with Kevin. I had seen the way her eyes followed him, with that blank stupid expression that is the surest sign of infatuation. But she had class enough to retreat without a fight when she knew she had lost.

But the worst shock had been her reminder of the passage of time. I had no idea of the date, but it had to be around the end of July—maybe even August. I ought to go home for a few days before classes started. I had arranged to have my apartment back on August 15, so I could finish cleaning and settling in before I took up the academic load. One more week—two, at the most.

The thought was like a heavy, dark blanket dropped over my mind. I was almost as perturbed at my perturbation as at the idea itself. I had known from the first that I would only be here a few months. It had been a heavenly summer—with one or two exceptions—much better than I had expected or deserved. Kevin would be going back too; our relationship would continue. So why did I feel as if my dog had died?

The answer wasn’t hard to find. I was afraid of losing Kevin. We had made no commitments. Once he was back among the adoring English majors, he might not be interested in Little Orphan Annie, even if she had put on a few pounds and gotten a haircut. So I went in search of him. I wasn’t going to try to pin him down, or anything like that. I just wanted to see him.

He had been looking for me—or so he said. We went for a walk. Usually we ended up in the glade, but not always; sometimes it was enough just being together, talking and touching.

I stopped now and then as we walked through the rose garden to knock Japanese beetles off the flowers. They were bad this year; Mr. Marsden was barely holding his own, for all his sprays and dusts and traps.

Kevin picked a rose for me, one of the dark crimson ones that deepen into black at the base of the petals, and started to make a pretty speech, but he stuck himself on a thorn and the compliment turned into a curse. I tucked the rose behind my ear—my dress had no buttonholes—and reflected that only love could present a crimson rose to a redheaded woman.

“What’s the date?” I asked.

Kevin removed his wounded thumb from his mouth and looked thoughtful. “August first?”

“That sounds like a wild guess.”

“August second, then. Why, do you have bills due?”

“Probably. I usually do. Do you realize that we have to be back in a few weeks? I am going to hate to leave.”

Kevin took my hand. We walked on in silence for a while.

“You don’t have to leave, Anne.”

“Maybe your mother would hire me as a scullery maid.”

“I’m not joking.”

He stopped in front of a carved stone bench. A Japanese maple shaded it, the delicate sharp leaves as precisely cut as carvings in jade and carnelian.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Kevin went on. “Let’s sit down.”

“Oh, is it going to be that kind of a talk?” The light tone I had intended didn’t come off. My breath was too fast, and my heart had picked up its beat.

“Why do you do that?” Kevin asked.

“What?”

“Oh, you know—always some flip remark, always a stinger after everything you say. What are you afraid or?”

“People. The world. I suppose that’s how I protect myself.”

Kevin’s eyes held the grave, sweet concentration I loved to see. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely clasped.