Embers (32 page)

She shook her head.
"
Party? I can
'
t remember the last time I went out to anything really fancy,
"
she confessed.
"
Paul was never very happy on a dance floor. He felt a lot more comfortable at the helm of a boat.
"

Tom winced and said,
"
I don
'
t dance
or
sail. God knows where that puts me on the desirability scale.
"

Right up there,
Meg thought with a pained smile.

"
What kind of dancing do they
do,
nowadays?
"
Tom said, still without a trace of ego.
"
I
know the twist is out."

"The hustle, too.  I think."

"
And what
'
s contradancing, anyway?
"

They shrugged, and then they laughed: easy, comfortable, same-age laughter. After he left, Meg wrapped the memory of it around herself like a flannel robe. She knew that they didn
'
t share the same background or lifestyle. She wasn
'
t even sure they shared the same values. But one thing they had in common: a fascination and affection for Allegra Atwells. It was drawing them together
—
and it was just as surely keeping them apart.

****

On Thursday, a satisfied couple at the Inn Between pressed fifty extra dollars into Meg
'
s hands. The couple had come to Mount Desert Island expressly to see the grand perennial beds of Thuja Lodge, the wonderful old estate in nearby Northeast Harbor, and when they came back, Meg gave them tea and a tour of the far more humble but still delightful gardens of the Inn Between.

"
We had a daughter much like you,
"
the old man, eyes glistening, said before they left.
"
She
'
s gone now. We thank you very much.
"

Fifty dollars was fifty dollars. It could
'
ve bought curtains or linens or a dried arrangement for the cherry table in the hall. But Meg had no dancing shoes to wear with Allie
'
s lavender dress, and for the first time in a long time, she wanted to indulge herself. With the dress folded carefully in tissue, she drove to Ellsworth to find a pair of shoes to match. She didn
'
t actually plan to
use
the shoes
—
not for dancing, anyway
—
but she had a sudden, fierce desire not to look like a bag lady.

****

The search for shoes turned out to be a lot easier than the search for clues. By now Meg had read every account she could find of the fire of
'
47: books, newspapers, magazines, even an unpublished manuscript. She
'
d contacted the few people she knew
—
relatives of friends, friends of relatives
—
who had experienced the night of the Great Fire, on the pretext of doing a family history. But many of the people seemed reluctant to dwell on an event that had claimed her grandmother
'
s life.

The most damning clue she could find was in a local newspaper article that alluded to the cuts and scratches that the
"
courageous Mr. Camplin, bloody but unbowed,
"
had endured on his face while battling on the fire line.

Fire line, my foot,
Meg thought as she stared at the crumbling newspaper article in the quiet basement room
that housed
the local historical society.
How come no one else seems
to've
suffered facial cuts and scratches?
For one brief moment she allowed herself to feel good about the fact that her grandmother had probably managed to inflict some pain, however fleeting, on her tormentor.

But even those minor injuries had been turned to Camplin
'
s advantage: the man had been touted as a hero all around town, a reputation that he enjoyed to this day.

Meg managed to dredge up only one other clue in the hectic days before the picnic. She found it buried in the inside pages of a January 1948 issue of the local paper: a short paragraph, easily missed, stating that Gordon Camplin had donated to a New York public garden some marble statuary that had survived the fire at Eagle
'
s Nest because, according to their owner,
"
they were associated with memories too painful to be borne.
"

To the reporter the remark was straightforward enough, but not to Meg. Like everything else in the case
—
she had come to regard the death of her grandmother as a
"
case
"
—
Camplin
'
s comment seemed ambiguous. Which memories was he talking about?

Okay. So clue-wise, the findings didn
'
t amount to much. Meg tried not to let it get her down but simply added the information to the copious notes that she was keeping, along with the photo album, in an old bureau that had stood in one corner of the shed for as long as anyone could remember. On the night before the picnic, with everyone off watching the fireworks, Meg took her cup of bergamot tea to the shed and tried to make sense of it all.

The truth was, she
'
d been hoping for a little help from her grandmother, but Margaret Mary Atwells was clearly keeping her distance from her granddaughter. Since the night of her strange little fit, Meg had felt absolutely nothing that could qualify as a clairvoyant experience
,
unless she counted knowing where to find Timmy
'
s misplaced book report as a psychic event.

Still, Meg felt duty bound to do what she could to make herself available, as it were. So she hung around the dollhouse and fingered its dolls and furnishings now and then, imagining little scenarios that might have been played out by the inhabitants of the real Eagle
'
s Nest.

Nothing. Not even when she picked up the repulsive little carved-teak bed. No vibrations, no wobbly knees, and no trance
-
-
self-induced or otherwise. Someone like Zenobia would no doubt say that Meg was symptom-free.

It was very annoying.

One way or another, Meg had accepted the psychic burden that had been dropped in her lap. She
'
d hardly even objected, because Meg had a
lways believed that there was an existence
beyond the one she could see and touch and feel. It was nothing she agonized over very often; the belief was just there, like breathing, like the beat of her heart.

And now
—
nothing.

Meg sighed and returned the dreadful little bed to the little master bedroom. She took one last look through the rooms of the dollhouse, half hoping to find a miniature note written by the nursemaid doll laying out the facts of her murder. But there was nothing on the Sheraton-style desk in the library except a tiny green leather-bound blotter and an even tinier gold pen.

Meg had switched off the dollhouse
'
s lights and was about to pull the string on the overhead bulb in the shed, when her father came by.

"
Just where I thought you
'
d be, Meggie,
"
he said with an affectionate shake of his head.
"
Comfort
'
s looking for you.
"

"
Okay, Dad, I was just going in,
"
Meg said tiredly.

"
She wants to know should she make a sheet cake, maybe, for the picnic tomorrow. In case the kids don
'
t want cobbler.
"

"
Too
bad
if they don
'
t want cobbler,
"
Meg snapped.
"
Everybody can
'
t have everything he wants,
"
she added.
"
Comfort can
'
t stay up all night slaving over fifty different desserts. Enough is enough!
"

"
Meg!
"
her father said in mild admonition.
"
Comfort don
'
t mind. She
'
s enjoyin
'
this the way she always does. Your uncle Bill
'
s payin
'
for everything just like usual. Why be so hard on the kids?
"

"
Because this year things are different, Dad,
"
Meg said darkly.

"
No. This year
you're
different, girl. What
'
s ai
lin'
you, anyway? In the last few weeks your mood
'
s gone from bad to worse.
"

"
It has not!
"
she argued.
"
I
'
m just the same. Nothing
'
s changed. I
'
ve always been this bitchy.
"

Everett Atwells looked at his daughter in the bleary light of the uncovered bulb and shook his balding head.
"
Never like this. Believe me, girl, I
'
m trying not to notice. You think I want a summer ruint by female emotions? But look at you. You snap, you mope, you sneak out to this shed every chance you get
—
"

"
That
'
s because it
'
s quiet here, Dad,
"
she said petulantly.
"
I can think. I can
'
t concentrate in my room; it faces the street,
"
she said, whining about it for the first time. She
'
d rather have had a room that overlooked the garden, but she
'
d never had the heart to dislodge anyone to get it.

"
You weren
'
t at the fireworks tonight.
"

Meg, who knew that Allie and Tom had gone there with the twins, said,
"
You
'
ve seen one fireworks, you
'
ve seen
'
em all.
"

"
Terry says you sit here scribblin
'
. What
'
s that all about?
"

"
Just collecting my thoughts, that
'
s all. Terry should mind his own business,
"
she added, turning out the light, hoping her father would take her suggestion personally. They stepped outside into the flower-filled night and Meg started on a brisk pace back to the house.

But Everett Atwells, a man rarely stirred to action, was oddly determined tonight. He matched his daughter stride for stride.
"
And I
'
ll tell you what
else,
"
he said, saving his best shot for last.
"
You
'
re beginnin
'
to embarrass me around town. I was in
Jordan
'
s this mornin
'
, havin
'
a cuppa coffee. First your c
ousin Mandy, then Pete Ardell co
me up to me and
says
, what
'
s with all Meg
'
s questions about Gordon Camplin.
"

Meg stopped in her tracks.
"
They
didn
't
,
"
she said, appalled.

"
Did you think no one
'
d notice? For goodness
'
sake, girl, this is
Bar Harbor
! Rich folk live here, and us poor ones tend to work for
'
em. So naturally there
'
s bound to be a good bit of gossip goin
'
on. Why, it
'
s practically a tradition! And the gossip now is that you
'
re carryin
'
on a vendetta against Gordon Camplin.
"