Walking the Labyrinth (6 page)

But she had never been to England. And if she went with John she might learn about her family’s past, discover things Fentrice had never told her. What would Peter say then? Now she would be the one with exotic places to visit, intriguing questions to answer.

“Sure,” Molly said. “Sure, I’ll go with you.”

She got a passport, bought a ticket to England with money John gave her. Her temp job came to an end. A few days before her plane left Peter called, and she drove to San Francisco to meet him for dinner.

The heavy spring rains had returned, slowing the traffic on the Bay Bridge. Someone honked and someone else cut in front of her, spraying her windshield with water. She cursed loudly. It was too bad she couldn’t live in the peaceful world of Harrison and Lydia Sanderson, whoever they were, instead of with this dreadful modern traffic.

The snarls on the bridge made her late to the restaurant, but Peter wasn’t there yet. Five minutes later he came toward her table, smiling his disarming smile. She had forgotten how handsome he was. He shaved once every three days, so that whenever she saw him he looked different from her last memory of him. He was on the third day today, with the stubble of a man who had more exciting things to do than shave.

“Hey,” he said, sitting opposite her and shaking off his wet trench coat. Light glinted on his round tortoiseshell glasses.

“Hi,” she said. “How was Las Vegas?”

“Las Vegas was the last trip,” he said. “I’ve been to New York since then. Had a talk with my editor. They’ve moved up the deadline on my book—looks like the subject is hotter than I thought.”

“Are you going to make it?”

“Oh, sure. What about you? How have you been?”

“I’m fine. Went to visit my aunt.”

“Really? In Chicago?”

“Near Chicago. And then in a few days I’m going to England.”

His eyes narrowed. Molly had learned to recognize his expressions; he was displeased. “England?” he said. “Why?”

“My aunt’s family comes from there.” He said nothing. “There’s this guy, a private investigator. We’ve learned all kinds of things about my family. They were involved in the occult in the 1800s, with something called the Order of the Labyrinth. And with this woman named Lady Westingate, who lived in some kind of castle.”

“And you think you’ll find out more about your family?”

Suddenly Molly understood what was bothering him. She was poaching on his territory, traveling, asking questions. Her life had become as interesting as his own. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

“Well, no offense, but you don’t know anything about investigative journalism. A lot of people don’t like to answer questions. Especially if they’ve been involved in something as shady as the occult.”

“No offense yourself, but I am traveling with a private investigator. I think he knows a little about asking questions.”

Peter raised a hand. “Sure, sure,” he said. “When are you leaving?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Well, then, we’ll have to celebrate. We’ll have some champagne, what do you say? You’ll like England.”

“Great,” Molly said, relaxing. She had been wrong about him; of course he wouldn’t be threatened by her. They spent the rest of the dinner talking about New York, about the places she should visit in England.

After dinner they went to his hotel room and made love. She was eager, insistent, trying to annihilate the weeks that had passed since they had seen each other, to spark the gap between them. He was slow, careful, taking his time. Afterward she ran her fingers through his hair, trying to memorize his face. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

“Miss you too,” he said.

Two days later she took a shuttle to the San Francisco Airport. John was not at the gate where they had agreed to meet.
Great
, she thought.
Should I go on without him?
A man wearing glasses nodded to her.

She nodded back automatically.
Do I know him? And where is John?
Their plane would be boarding in fifteen minutes.

“You made it,” the man said, coming over to her. “I was getting worried.”

“John?” she said.

“Who else? Oh, the glasses. I usually wear contact lenses, but the air on the plane gets too dry.”

“Flight fifteen sixty-three to London—” a voice over the intercom said.

“That’s us,” John said. “Let’s go.”

“—has been delayed,” the intercom continued. “We will begin boarding at six thirty-five.”

A chorus of voices in the boarding area rose in protest. “Half an hour late,” John said, looking at his watch. “Do you want to get some dinner or something?”

“Sure.”

They found a restaurant farther down the terminal. Molly sat and studied the man opposite her. “You look better with glasses,” she said. “More trustworthy. Forget the lenses.”

“You say what you think, don’t you?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Because people like me, people who ask questions, might take advantage.”

“I don’t have any secrets.”

“I don’t believe that. Everyone’s got something to hide.”

“You certainly seem to. You’ve never told me a thing about yourself.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve got one of the world’s most romantic-sounding jobs.”

“It only sounds romantic. It’s tedious, really—staying in one spot for hours and hours waiting for your suspect to do something, anything. Taking pictures when someone suing for whiplash goes out for a night on the town. That kind of thing.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

John picked up his spoon, turned it over. “Look at this,” he said. “Oneida silverware. Oneida was some kind of commune in the nineteenth century, practiced free love, had all their wealth in common, had children only when their leader said they could. Made silverware. Look at all the people in this restaurant calmly eating off Oneida spoons and forks—if only they knew.”

“You’re avoiding the question. I’m not applying for the position or anything, I’m just curious.”

“You’re right, I am. Okay. The truth is, I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I thought I had a girlfriend. She’s mad at me. I think.”

“What did you do?”

“I don’t know. Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Well, something. Obviously. I just don’t know what it was.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I can’t. She’s mad at me.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, your turn. Do you have a boyfriend?”

“I don’t know.”

John laughed.

“I’m in love with someone,” Molly said. “I don’t want to be, I just am. It’s like malaria—it doesn’t go away.”

“Oh, shit,” John said.

“What?”

“That man over there,” John said quietly. “Don’t turn around. Pretend you’re looking for something, for the waitress. The guy sitting by the palm tree, wearing the flat racing cap. See him?”

“What about him?”

“He’s the one who’s been following me. The man in the Fiat, who’s so interested in the Order of the Labyrinth. I got a closer look at him a few days ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Don’t turn around.”

“Do you think he’s on our flight?”

“I don’t know. Probably. Shit. Well, maybe we can learn something from him.”

The waitress came with their menus. They ordered, ate their dinner. When their flight was called the man in the racing cap stood, shouldered his carry-on bag and walked to the terminal. They watched him board the plane before getting in line themselves.

The plane stopped over in Chicago and landed at Heathrow Airport the next evening. They took the underground to the train station, the train to Canterbury, and a taxi to Applebury. At every stage of their journey John looked carefully at the people around them.

“Do you see him?” Molly asked once.

“He got a cab at the airport. It doesn’t matter—if he knows about the Order he can probably guess where we’re going.”

They checked into a bed and breakfast in Applebury. “One room?” the proprietor asked. He had a surprising German accent, saying “vun” for “one” and nearly swallowing the “r” in “room.”

“Two, please,” Molly said.

John said nothing. At least that had been made clear between them.

John yawned as he signed the register, yawned again when they went up the stairs to their rooms. “God, I’m tired,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep at all on the plane.”

“I slept great,” Molly said. Peter had once said that an experienced traveler could sleep anywhere.
See,
she thought.
We are compatible
.

“I know,” John said sourly. “Every so often I’d look over and see you fast asleep. I’ll go back downstairs and call Tantilly after I unpack. And then I’m going to sleep for a long time.”

“Tantilly?”

“The Westingate house.”

“Who lives there now?” Molly asked.

“Someone named Westingate, oddly enough. Charles Westingate. Maybe they didn’t lose the family fortune after all, though that’s not what the books said. Well, we’ll find out soon enough.”

The next morning they had a full English breakfast, toast and jam and cereal and eggs and sausages and stewed tomatoes. Molly noticed, pleased, that John was still wearing his glasses.

The proprietor came around to pour them coffee. “I thought the English drank tea,” Molly said.

“They do, most of them,” the proprietor said. (“Say do,” it sounded like.) “But I very much prefer coffee.”

He went to serve another couple. John said, “Charles Westingate said to come over around ten. I told him I was researching the history of the house.”

After breakfast they took a taxi to Tantilly, passing through winding lanes shaded by oaks. Soon they began to glimpse, between the boles of the trees, a huge lawn, vast and green as the sea.

A house materialized at the far end of the lawn. Another turn in the road and the house had vanished. As they drove closer the house seemed to be playing hide-and-seek, appearing and disappearing, always emerging in unexpected places and showing them different facets, chimneys, windows, gables.

The taxi left the trees and turned into the semicircular driveway. Now that Molly could see the house whole it looked both bigger and smaller than she had expected: bigger because she had not seen it complete through the trees, smaller because the drive had prepared her imagination for something far more grandiose. It had three stories, with an overhanging roof large enough for a fourth. Two wings of two stories each ran back from the front.

John paid the taxi driver and they walked to the door. John pushed the bell, which was made of brass and surrounded by brass leaves and flowers. A woman in her thirties wearing a tweed skirt and a worn cashmere pullover answered the door.

“I’m John Stow,” John said. “We’re here to see Lord Westingate.”

“That’s right, he’s expecting you,” the woman said. “Come on in.”

There was something odd about the woman’s speech, and after a moment Molly realized what it was: she was American. Except for overheard conversations at the airport and the bed and breakfast Molly had yet to hear a British accent.

The woman ushered them into the entryway, then through an arched doorway to a vast and drafty room. The ceilings were at least twenty feet high, with wooden beams separating panels of carvings. There was a carved marble fireplace nearly as tall as the room in one wall, and paintings in large gold frames on two of the others; the fourth was taken up by the doorway they had come through. Plush couches, heavy wooden tables, and huge porcelain figures and vases stood around the room. Several oriental rugs covered the patterned wood floor.

“Why don’t you wait in the drawing room?” the woman said. “I’ll go get him.”

“Drawing room?” Molly said to John after she had left. “This is bigger than my entire apartment.”

John sat carefully on a couch. Molly went to look at one of the paintings, a woman in green with long, thick black hair. An ormolu clock on one of the tables ticked loudly. “God, it’s cold,” she said, balling her fists in her jacket pockets. “Do you think that American woman was one of the maids? How on earth did she end up here?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “She’s the one who answered the phone when I called, made all the arrangements.”

“Hullo,” someone said.

A tall young man, balding but not yet bald, came in through the arched doorway. He was wearing, Molly saw with surprise, a pair of tight leather pants. He had bright blue eyes, and small patches of stubble dotted his fair face, as if he had tried to grow a beard and been unsuccessful. He smiled, a hesitant smile that was at the same time somehow charming, and held out his hand toward John.

“I’m Lord Charles,” he said, as John stood and shook his hand. He grinned. “You were expecting a tweed jacket or jodhpurs or some such thing.”

Molly held out her hand and Charles shook it as well. “Sorry about not answering the telephone when you rang. I’ve a horror of the thing. You say you’re writing a book?”

“That’s right,” John said. “We’d appreciate hearing whatever you can tell us about the house.”

“Well, to begin with, Tantilly was built by an ancestor of mine,” Lord Charles said. “Lady Dorothy Westingate.”

John took his notebook out and started to write. “Dorothy was a bit of an eccentric,” Lord Charles said, warming to his subject. “Mind you, she wasn’t the only one. Money and eccentricity have produced startling houses all over England. Still, I daresay we’re the only ones with a labyrinth in our basement.”

“Labyrinth?” Molly asked. “Is that because of the Order of the Labyrinth?”

John gave her a look that said as clearly as words, I’ll ask the questions here. Charles seemed startled, then laughed. “Where on earth did you hear about that?” he asked.

“We read the pamphlet,” Molly said. “Lady Westingate’s speech.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll show you the labyrinth later, or my wife will.” The woman who had answered the door came into the room. “Ah, here she is now. My wife, Kathy.”

“You’re his wife?” Molly asked the woman. “But you’re American.”

John scowled. Lord Charles laughed. “Yes, of course she is,” he said. “I met her on holiday in the States.”

“We met at a magic show, believe it or not,” Kathy said. “They called us both up to the stage.”