Ashes to Ashes (7 page)

In the bowels of the castle the telephone rang. Dorothy bustled out, muttering about whiskey being the last resort of the alcoholic. Michael’s eyes fixed upon the bottle with a thirsty gleam and then, catching Rebecca’s jaundiced look, bent hurriedly over a set of silver spoons. She set the bottle down well out of his reach.

“Becky,” called Dorothy up the staircase. “You’re wanted on the phone. Jan Sorenson.”

Rebecca’s brothers were larger than she was; they could call her “Becky” and live. Through gritted teeth she said, “Excuse me, please, Eric,” and when she passed Dorothy on the stairs, “I prefer Rebecca, Mrs. Garst.”

Dorothy shrugged. “It’s just a nickname. People call me Dottie, and it never hurt me none.”

Rebecca grabbed a dry piece of toast from the kitchen counter and picked up the receiver. “Jan? Hi!”

Her friend’s voice sounded a continent away. “Sorry to interrupt, I know you must be busy, but Peter and I were wondering if you’d like to come for dinner and some human companionship tomorrow. Bring the Scottish prof, if you think he’d be comfortable with the kids.”

“Love to,” replied Rebecca, snapping off a bite of toast. “I haven’t decided yet if Dr. Campbell fills the bill as human.”

“Oh? One of those shriveled up little characters like the old major on
Fawlty Towers
?”

“Oh no. Not at all.” Rebecca sighed. “If he’s as grateful for the invitation as he ought to be, you can see for yourself. Thanks.”

“I’d go nuts slaving away in the dust all alone out there.”

“I’m not slaving, it’s not very dusty, and it’s like Grand Central Station. The lawyer, the gardener, the handyman, the housekeeper.”

“I know Dorothy,” said Jan. “Peter works with her son Chuck down at the plant.”

Rebecca flicked crumbs from her sweater and decided she’d kill for a cup of real coffee. “Really?” she asked, encouraging the friendly voice.

“Chuck had a great story last winter about the night his mother spent out at Dun Iain.”

“She told me she didn’t spend the night here.”

“Not anymore she doesn’t. She came home carrying on so about how the place was haunted, Chuck and Margie had to give her one of her Valiums.”

“Haunted?” asked Rebecca. She turned so that her back was to the kitchen counter, the doors innocently open in front of her.

“She claimed there were footsteps going up and down the stairs all night long, and things disarranged, and shapes in the shadows. I’m surprised she didn’t pull the one about a bloodstain that can’t be washed away.”

No, Rebecca thought, the bloodstain’s under the gravel outside the front door, beneath the fatal window. A chill like a snake slithered down her spine and the crumbs in her mouth turned suddenly into sand.

Jan’s voice caroled on. “She probably had a nip of Mr. Forbes’s Scotch. Or didn’t take her prescriptions properly, or something.”

“Or something,” croaked Rebecca. She coughed, and managed to say, “There were probably branches banging against the windows, or the cat knocking things over. Unless it was James himself.” She remembered the aluminum walker lying abandoned upstairs. She remembered the green lawn stretching between the walls of Dun Iain and the closest trees. She remembered Darnley gliding noiselessly up the stairs.

A yelp sounded from the receiver. “Mandy, put that down!” And, “Sorry, gotta go! See you both tomorrow at six.”

“Jan?” The line was dead, as dead as James, and John, and Elspeth, and the Good Lord knew how many others whose belongings now lay caged within the thick walls of the castle.

No. It couldn’t be. Ghosts and haunted houses belonged in movies, not in real life. There was a reasonable explanation, birds in the chimneys, or bats in Dorothy’s belfry, or just the spooky atmosphere of the old house. Yes, that was it. Anyplace that had rumors of buried treasure had to have a few ghost stories as well. Maybe James had planted them himself, just to keep the locals away from his hermitage.

Rebecca slapped the receiver into its cradle so emphatically the telephone’s bell dinged a protest. “Thanks Jan,” she said aloud. “That’s just what I needed.” She left the kitchen, cast a glance at the invitingly open front door, and stamped back up the stairs. A breath of fresh air would steady her nerves. She’d go get her typewriter.

As she passed the door of the Hall she heard Michael pontificating on Rizzio’s guitar. Who, where, when, what— his dry manner made the dramatic scene sound like a police report. “Interesting,” said Eric, politely but without conviction.

A hammer tapped away upstairs as Phil mended something. Rebecca went into her bedroom and retrieved her car keys. A narrow glance around showed her that everything was where she’d left it, right down to Ray’s impassive smile. Of course— Dorothy was downstairs.

Below her window, Steve, his lock of hair concealing his downturned face, was sitting behind the wheel of Eric’s Volvo inventorying the dashboard. The lights flashed off and on. Well! Rebecca exclaimed to herself. She understood how the boy would be intrigued by the car, but to actually climb inside took a lot of gall.

She went back down again. In the Hall Dorothy was saying, “— just put it in the oven at 350 for about an hour.”

“Very kind of you,” replied Michael tentatively.

“You bachelors think you can survive on a few cold cuts and a can of fruit cocktail. You have to learn to take care of yourself, you know.”

Michael didn’t reply. By this time he’d no doubt learned resistance was useless.

Rebecca broke free into the outside world. The wind, if cold, was wonderfully fresh. It found and yanked free several locks of her hair, which began waving around her face like sea anemones in a current. She pulled the strands aside and saw Steve standing beside the Volvo, his hand on the door as if he’d just closed it. “Hi!” she said.

He shot a furtive look at her and scurried away, in his black garments and Walkman appearing unappetizingly like a cockroach.

Mustn’t judge him on how he dresses, she chided herself. Phil’s right— a kid’s clothing is his admission into a circle of friends. Rebecca herself had suffered agonies wearing a cousin’s hand-me-down bell-bottoms when all the other girls were wearing smart narrow-legged jeans. That was when she’d learned how to sew, even though she had to take a part-time job after school to buy the sewing machine.

She opened the trunk of her car and extricated the typewriter. The gale made her wool sweater feel like chiffon, but it was preferable to the sneaky little drafts in the upper room. She turned to see Eric striding across the gravel. “Let me help you!” He slammed the trunk, gave her her keys, took the typewriter, and escorted her into the lee of the building.

Very smooth, she thought; in taking the typewriter he brushed her fingertips so lightly with his own a pleasant tremor rippled up her arm.

Eric set the typewriter inside the door and pointed toward the stone fretwork structure across the lawn. “Did you know that that’s the mausoleum where the Forbeses are buried?”

“Here? On the grounds?” Again she crossed her arms and hugged.

“John thought he was too good to mingle with the peasantry in the Putnam cemetery, I suppose. At any rate, he had a vault dug to accomodate his wife. Do you know about her? Very unfortunate.” Eric’s jaw twitched, as if he’d clenched his teeth.

“Yes,” Rebecca murmured. She scuffed the gravel with her toe. These particular pebbles wouldn’t have been here then.

“Later on John built the dovecote behind the vault, to camouflage it, perhaps. If he’d been at all a romantic soul, I’d say he was equating doves with the goddess of love— the usual Victorian sentimentality. But he probably just wanted an inexpensive source of fresh drumsticks.”

Rebecca grinned. How gracefully he’d smoothed over his macabre revelation. “If John could stand having Queen Mary in his front hall, I guess he could stand burying his wife in his front yard. He became a recluse after she died, didn’t he?”

Eric nodded, his eyes fixed on the structure that was Elspeth’s only memorial. As if to dramatize the scene a ray of sun peeked out and the stone sparkled. It must be Connecticut granite, Rebecca thought, like the house.

“He lingered on another thirty years,” said Eric, “without speaking to anyone but James and the servants. I’d feel sorry for him, except… ”

“He brought it on himself?”

“Yes.” Eric made a precise about-face and offered Rebecca a grin of his own. Glancing at his watch, he said, “I have some business in Putnam this afternoon, but I should be finished by five. Would you like to have dinner with me before I go back to Columbus?”

His unfortunately crowded teeth made his grin look like a cartoon wolf’s. Rebecca had to laugh. “I’d love to.”

“Great. In Putnam most of the places are franchises or hole-in-the-wall diners suitable only for a truck driver’s stomach. Unless you’re a Big Mac freak I suggest Gaetano’s, a new Italian restaurant.”

“Sounds much better than a Big Mac. I ate altogether too many of them when I was putting myself through school.”

“So did I,” Eric confided. He pulled out his sunglasses, considered the sky, replaced them in his pocket. She half expected him to kiss her hand, but he only nudged her shoulder toward the door. “Go back inside before you get a chill. I’ll be here at five-thirty.”

But the inside is as cold as the outside, she thought ruefully. I’ll have to get some long johns. “See you then,” she called.

He responded with a jaunty wave. She watched the gray car until it had disappeared among the trees, following it in her mind as if it were a camel caravan traversing trackless wastes. Dun Iain seemed as isolated as a desert oasis, thousands of miles from civilization. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she assured herself, she was just used to the bustle of the campus.

The wind and the trees danced a Highland fling, the rush of air around the turrets providing the skreel of the pipes. Rebecca strolled toward the dovecote thinking, when the state turns Dun Iain into a museum, or a youth hostel, or a scout camp, or whatever they’re going to do with it, they need to move the parking area away from the house. Rather ruins the facade to have all these old heaps parked below it. Not counting Eric’s Volvo, of course.

Steve’s pruning shears lay half in, half out of the marigolds, draped by the tangled cords of the Walkman. A faint thumping and whining emanated from the tiny machine. He was nowhere in sight.

The dovecote loomed under the dark red eaves of the forest, larger than it had appeared from the door. Now Rebecca could see that only the side facing the castle was perforated with openings for the birds. In several places the narrow, undressed stones had pulled loose, leaving gaps the size of her typewriter case into the black and featureless interior. She followed a path around the circumference of the building, the grass brittle beneath her feet. The back looked much more like the mausoleum it was.

Beside a door glistening with the mottled green patina of copper was a brass nameplate that read, not surprisingly, “Forbes”. Above it the rough granite blocks climbed in uncompromising tiers, contracting at the top to make a domed roof like an Irish monk’s beehive cell. Or, in keeping with John Forbes’s ambitions, an ancient tomb of a king of Mycenae. Close under its archaic bulk Rebecca could no longer see Dun Iain’s Scottish baronial splendor.

She stepped onto the top of a short flight of steps that cleft the turf before the entrance. The lock that secured the door required a key even larger than the one for the castle. Its hinges were streaked with copper grooves; it had been opened two months ago for James, the last of the line. John had probably intended many generations of his descendants to be interred here. He must be looking down— or up, as the case may be— with a very bitter eye at his dynasty’s premature demise.

Here beneath the trees the air was still, heavy with the fetid odor of mold. Rebecca drew back, her limbs prickling. She had thought it was quiet in the upper room of the castle, but here it was oppressively silent. The rush of the wind among the leaves seemed to be filtered through the stone of the mausoleum, as if she stood not outside but inside, enveloped by the dark tranquillity of the grave.

No, not tranquillity. Not Mary Stuart’s serene smile. A brooding silence, as though something or someone waited on the other side of the massive door. The hair on the back of her neck lifted, drawn by a subliminal static charge. Rebecca whirled back up the step onto the path and hurried around the side of the building. There was the castle, raising its whimsical turrets toward the sky. Whimsical, not sinister, never sinister… .

A huge black shape leaped from the trees. Rebecca gasped. The dog barked, shattering the silence so abruptly that Rebecca felt the noise slice through her head. Don’t run, she ordered herself. He’ll chase you. She planted her feet in the grass and stood her ground as the huge animal came to a halt just in front of her, barring her way back to the castle.

“Hi there,” she tried. “Nice dog. Good boy.”

The dog’s head seemed as large as a lion’s, its ears reaching to her waist. It stank that peculiar doggy smell of wet dirt and raw meat. Slowly she raised her hand and offered it to the gargantuan muzzle. “Nice dog.” It regarded her with liquid brown eyes scummed by suspicion, and sniffed.

“Hey, Slash!” yelped a voice. Steve emerged from the forest. For a moment Rebecca thought she glimpsed another human shape among the tree trunks. “Get away, Slash,” Steve ordered. “Can’t you see she’s scared of you?”

“I think he can,” Rebecca said. “Good boy, Slash.”

Slash licked her hand with a hot, wet tongue the size of a dish towel. She jerked away and suppressed an automatic “Yech”. When Steve reached around her to grab the dog’s collar, she saw he was wearing a gold stud in his ear. His black T-shirt reeked of sweat and something else, an elusive scent of sweet smoke that reminded her of a certain passage in the student center at Dover. Marijuana. That was why he’d been weeding the marigolds with pruning shears.

He dragged the dog into the trees. It whimpered— gee, boss, I was minding my own business and this crazy woman jumped out at me!