The Tapestry in the Attic (9 page)

Stella cut off the professor, “Now, gentlemen, I think this is a discussion for another time.”

“Of course, Mrs. Brickson,” said the professor. He took a deep breath and shot a look at Cyril that, while not angry, wasn’t exactly friendly either. Annie had the impression there was some history between them. She wondered if they had known each other before—perhaps back in the days when the professor was an actor too. Dolores reached up and patted her husband on the shoulder, in a way Annie had seen her mother do when she thought Annie’s father was getting a little too intense during a conversation.

Dolores tactfully changed the subject. “Annie, do you know what these letters represent?” She was pointing to the bottom corner under the scene of the reading woman.

“Besides the Roman numerals in the center, which represent the number 1966, not really,” said Annie. She began walking over toward the “Home Song” tapestry on the wall. “The letter panel on the large tapestry is almost like the letter panel on this small one, except this number is 1946.” As Annie explained that the small tapestry had been displayed in the same place since she was a child, she took it down from its place in the niche and laid it beside the reading-woman panel.

After studying it for a moment, Dolores asked, “So the ‘Home Song’ tapestry has been displayed in this house as long as you can remember, but you had never set eyes on the large tapestry before a couple of weeks ago?” She didn’t really expect an answer, so she continued. “It seems very odd that your grandmother kept it in the attic. Of course, there’s really no place here to hang something this large in a home, but why not donate it to a museum so it could be appreciated?”

“That’s one reason that makes me wonder about it,” said Annie. “She may have been asked to store it, so she might not have felt like it was hers to do with as she pleased.”

“Do you have any ideas about the ‘L.C.’ on each end?” asked Cyril.

“No,” Annie admitted. “I really don’t, and I’m not even sure where to start looking.”

“If you like, I can make some inquiries,” said Cyril. “Would you mind if I took a few photographs?”

“Not at all,” said Annie. “I’d appreciate any help I can get to discover the history behind this tapestry, and the smaller one as well.”

Cyril took his cellphone out of his pocket and began taking several pictures, having to take several consecutive shots to get it all in, and then he took close-ups of each scene as well.

“Now that we’ve got this all settled,” said the professor, “what else have you got to show us, Mrs. Dawson?”

9

When they had finished looking over all of the other props, Annie invited them all to stay for a cup of tea and a slice of pound cake, which Alice had baked and brought over that morning. They thanked her, but had to refuse since the Fortescues had an engagement that evening and had to get home. Annie was glad to have met Dolores and Cyril. She liked them, even if she had rankled Cyril a bit by saying that she wouldn’t consider selling the tapestry. Now she was really getting excited for rehearsals to begin so that she could see them in action on the stage.

The discussions about the play were only peripheral while they looked at the props, and no one had mentioned Jacob’s name. She had liked Jacob too. She couldn’t imagine what could have caused a falling out between the Fortescues and their son-in-law. For their sakes, and for Jacob’s daughter’s sake, she hoped it could be worked out.

Alice had to leave with the others so that she could return Felix and Stacy to Main Street where Felix had parked his car. Alice promised to return as soon as she could get away to help Annie put her house back together.

Only about half of the things the professor had seen for the set had gotten his approval, but he had liked the carpet and the trunk, so Annie was going to arrange for Wally to come by with his pickup truck on Monday to transport them to the Cultural Center. The smaller things, Alice and Annie decided to deliver themselves the following week. The tapestry would stay where it was in Annie’s house for the time being, at least until they figured out how to display it properly. Then, when that was settled, Professor Howell suggested they bring the tapestry over the Cultural Center to store it in one of the empty offices on the fourth floor where he said it surely would be safe.

Annie decided to go ahead and return the tapestry to the upstairs bedroom so that she could release Boots from her confinement in the mudroom. The conversation with the Fortescues about the tapestry set her mind to working on the problem of learning who had made it and who it might belong to if it didn’t belong to her grandmother. The clues were slim—two years, 1946 and 1966, and “L.C.,” which were either someone’s initials, or some sort of abbreviation, or maybe both. She wondered how on earth she could ever figure it out.

As she leaned across the bed to arrange the muslin covering over the tapestry on the bed, she lifted one leg behind her to help maintain her balance and her foot bumped the edge of the closet door, causing it to slowly open with a creaky sound. She’d often had trouble with that particular doorknob staying latched, and she was a bit annoyed when she turned around to close it. Then something caught her eye. The upper shelve of the closet was filled with different-size boxes of letters that her grandmother had saved. Betsy Holden was a prolific letter writer, and she saved every letter she had ever received. Annie knew the boxes of letters were there, but as often happens—out of sight, out of mind. Now she thought to herself,
I wonder
…

It was a long shot, but what if there was something in one of the letters about the tapestry? There were a lot of letters, and it might take a long time to go through them, but where else did she have to start? Betsy had marked the boxes with the years in which the letters had been received in five-year increments. Annie got a chair to stand on and began looking for a box marked 1946–1950; she found it and set it down on the floor. Then she climbed back up on the chair and rummaged some more until she found another box marked 1966–1970. She took the two boxes and sat them on the floor in the hallway. Then she went back in the bedroom to close the closet door very gingerly, willing it to stay latched. When she thought she had it, she closed the door to the bedroom and carried one box down to the living room and set it in one corner.

Her next step was to release Boots from the mudroom. She tried to make up with Boots, but Boots gave her the cold shoulder and bounded up the main staircase to go and pout. When Annie went up to get the second box of letters, she saw that Boots had already made herself comfortable in the center of Annie’s bed and appeared to be napping. Annie knew that when the persnickety cat got hungry, she would once again be Annie’s best friend.

Annie deposited the box of letters in the living room next to the other one and then decided she would do what she could until Alice returned to help her. She began by carrying the props that hadn’t been approved up the staircase and placing them by the attic door so she could put them back in the attic later.

After several trips up and down the stairs, she heard the doorbell ring. Alice had gone home first to change into more comfortable clothes since she had dressed up a bit to meet with the professor. Once again she shed her boots in the hallway and slipped on the house shoes she had carried along.

“You know,” said Annie. “Instead of carrying those back and forth, why don’t you just leave them here?”

“That would be a good idea,” said Alice, “if you don’t mind—at least in the winter. What shall we do first?”

They decided to return the kitchen to its proper condition first, so they rolled up the carpet again and took it into the library, and then they moved the table and chairs back into position. Next they moved the living-room furniture back to its proper placement. Then they went into the dining room to pack up the smaller props in boxes for transport over to the Cultural Center.

“So, tell me about your luncheon,” said Annie as they worked. “When did you realize that it wasn’t going to be just you and the professor?”

“I didn’t have any warning at all—I had all my notes and sketches laid out on the table so we could discuss them while we waited for our food after we ordered, but when the professor and Stella and the Fortescues showed up all together, I just put them away. Then, about fifteen minutes later, Felix and Stacy walked in the door. Apparently, the Fortescues had come to see Stella at her house, and the professor had stopped by unexpectedly to drop off some invoices for stuff for the play. When he told them about coming over here to see the tapestry, they were all interested, so he invited them to lunch. Felix told me in the car on the way over here that he got a text from the professor telling him to round up Stacy and bring him to Maplehurst Inn as soon as possible. Felix didn’t even know why; he just did what he was told to do. I’d guess that Professor Howell wanted Stacy to come over to Stony Point with Felix so he could meet the Fortescues, since they are the three principal actors in the play. Actually, we really didn’t talk much about
King Lemuel’s Treasure
. The whole point of the meeting was supposed to have been an opportunity for me to learn more about the professor’s vision of the play, but with everyone else there, it just didn’t happen. It was fun to meet the Fortescues though. They’re a really interesting couple, and they’re so cute together. You’d think they were still in their twenties sometimes.”

Annie smiled. “I liked them too.” She paused and said, “That poor fellow—Felix, I mean. He seems to be at the professor’s beck and call. Thing is, he really doesn’t seem to mind. At least not that I’ve seen.”

“He’s a good guy, I think,” said Alice. “Stacy did most of the talking in the car, but every now and then Felix would say a word or two, and I don’t think he said anything at the restaurant. He’s naturally quiet, but I think he likes being the organizer.”

“And what was Stacy like?” asked Annie. “I didn’t really have a chance to talk to him.”

“Very nice—like Kate said at the Hook and Needle Club meeting—friendly, not at all snobbish. He was easy and open over lunch with the Fortescues. They seemed to get along very well. Of course, you saw how handsome he is. If he can act even a little bit, I predict he’ll have a really great career,” said Alice.

“Remember the crush we had on Dr. Gannon on
Medical Center
?” asked Annie.

“Oh my gosh! How could I forget?” said Alice, laughing. “We took over your grandparents’ TV set every Wednesday night at nine o’clock!”

“Except for the blond hair, I thought Stacy was a dead ringer for Chad Everett,” said Annie.

“I didn’t think of that,” said Alice, squinting her eyes as she tried to conjure up his face in her memory, “but I think you’re right. How could I have missed that? Well, if we can get the teenage girl demographic to show up to the play as faithfully as we watched that show, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape to make a lot of money for breast cancer research!”

When Annie and Alice had finished putting everything away, they sat down in the kitchen to relax with a cup of tea and some of the pound cake Alice had made.

“Shame that the others couldn’t stay for tea,” said Annie. “This cake is so good. It tastes like lemon and almond—is that right?”

“You hit the nail on the head,” said Alice. After another bite, Alice asked, “So what did you think about the Fortescues?”

“Like you said, they seemed very nice, and interesting—both of them,” said Annie. “I thought what Cyril had to say about the tapestry was fascinating. It really makes me want to find out as much as I can about it. After the play is over, I can’t just put it back in the attic. That would just be wrong. I did have a bit of a brainstorm earlier.”

Alice raised her eyebrows. “Knowing you, that could be a good thing, or it could be a bad thing.”

“Well, harrumph!” said Annie. “You really can’t say that I’ve ever come up with a bad idea, can you?”

“Remember that time when we just took off and walked all the way down past Butler’s Lighthouse to Edge Cove when we were supposed to be weeding the garden, and then we got in trouble with Betsy?” said Alice. “That was your idea.”

“OK. Maybe that one time,” said Annie. “That was pretty stupid really. I think she must have been worried to death when she couldn’t find us. But I think you have to admit that it was usually your brainstorms that got us into trouble.”

“I think we’re getting off track here,” said Alice. “Tell me your idea.”

“Nice way to change the subject, Alice,” said Annie, “but I’ll let you get away with it this time. My thought was that I could go through Gram’s old letters and see if I can find any mention of a tapestry.”

“I think that’s worth a try,” said Alice. “I wish I could help you out, but between work and the play, I just don’t have a lot of free time these days. This is the first time in days that I’ve eaten something without having my nose in a book at the same time—well, this time and at the restaurant.”

“That’s OK,” said Annie. “I’ll probably just go through a few packs at a time in the evenings. Fortunately, Gram did have some organization; she kept letters from the same year all together, tied up with string or ribbon, so if I find a letter that mentions the tapestry, it should be pretty easy to follow the trail through the years—at least I hope it will. The trick will be to find it in the first place. There are over a dozen boxes of letters in the closet upstairs—or at least there were before I brought two of them down here. Granted, they aren’t all the same size. After the 1980s, the boxes got smaller and smaller.”

“Yeah, letter writing is a lost art, I think. I was never any good at it, but it’s such a lovely idea—you know to have monogrammed stationery, and beautiful cursive handwriting. My grandmother had beautiful writing, and my mother’s isn’t bad, but frankly, mine is terrible. I think it must be that the expectations changed. When our grandmothers were learning, you had to write a certain way, and you practiced until you were good at it. By the time I went to school, it was all about ‘self-expression.’ I usually think that’s a good thing, but I have to admit, there are some things that require a certain degree of conformity, for communication’s sake if nothing else. Even individual expression needs a foundation. What’s the point of expressing yourself if no one else can tell what you’re writing or saying?” Alice sighed. “Of course, it’s not like I couldn’t buckle down and learn to do it if I really wanted to. I just don’t take the time, and now with computers and email, I don’t really have to. I don’t really have any right to rant about it.” Alice smiled and raised her right hand with her index finger pointing up and said, “But one of these days—mark my words—I’m going to do it. Maybe when I’m retired. I mean, I’m going to work on my cursive writing and start writing letters.”

Annie laughed. “I’ll believe it when I see it. Not that I don’t think you can do it. But you know what Gram would say—‘there’s no time like the present,’ and ‘don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.’”

“I hate it when you’re right,” said Alice. “How ’bout this: As soon as the play is finished, I’m going to start practicing my handwriting skills until I have beautiful calligraphy.”

“Can I have that in writing?” said Annie.

They both laughed as Alice took her plate and tea cup and saucer over to the kitchen sink. “Well, I hate to eat and run, but I’d better head back to the carriage house. I have a pile of paperwork for Divine Décor and Princessa.”

When Alice left to go home, it was already starting to get dark. Annie locked the door and fastened the safety latch. She liked the quiet sometimes, but now she felt like listening to music. Because of the play and its connection to the Middle Ages, she had recently ordered two new CDs of medieval-style music off the Internet, and they had only arrived the day before, so she hadn’t had a chance to listen yet. One was by a group called the Tallis Scholars singing Palestrina. Annie hadn’t read the liner notes yet, so she wasn’t sure who or what that was, but the samples she listened to on the Internet sounded beautiful. The other CD was by a group called Anonymous 4 performing a collection of songs written by a 12th-century nun named Hildegard von Bingen for the Feast of St. Ursula. It wasn’t her usual fare, but she thought it might be nice to try something different. She put in the CD with the songs by the nun and pressed “play,” and then she moved the 1946–1950 letter box to the coffee table and sat down on the sofa.

The voices on the CD were beautiful and haunting, and put her in an unusual frame of mind as she picked up the first bundle of letters and checked the postmark on the top letter to see which year this bundle contained. It wasn’t the one she wanted, but after checking a couple more bundles, she found the one with 1946 postmarks. There was nothing to do but start reading, so she opened the first letter and began.