Household (41 page)

Li via Grenfall was even angrier than she looked. Curse or no curse, she had been hoping that after New York she and her family could purchase the little Connecticut farm that their fabulously successful run at the Palace had enabled them to afford. She had the very place marked out in her mind. It would be in the vicinity of New Haven. It would be large enough to accommodate Septimus, herself, their children Richard and Kathie, and their adopted son Mark III, as well as Juliet and Colin, whenever they showed a disposition to alight in one place. And of course her great-great-greatgrandfather could settle in, too, even though he would probably cavil at anything smaller than his ancestral castle. She was sure of that just as she was equally sure that it was Erlina’s Bell’s curse that had doomed him as well as themselves to the series of fleabag hotels they had occupied in practically every city from here to Nome, Alaska.

Looking at the train wheels, she could hear them chugging in her head, and just by way of diversion she mentally examined the cities they had covered, starting when Septimus laid down one magician’s cap and took up another. He had really surprised her when he informed her that he was a master of illusion and legerdemain, practices that supported him when he wasn’t heading covens. This secondary activity was far more lucrative than the elocution lessons he had given during his brief stay in Marblehead. It had been necessary because after her father died, there had been barely enough money to bury him. Mismanagement, speculation and irresponsible spending had devoured his fortune. The house had been mortgaged, and the furniture had brought a mere pittance.

“Well, my dearest love,” he had said after the depressing revelations of the will, “we shall call ourselves The Great Grenfalls.” A mild suggestion that the
Marblehead Mercury
could be put on a paying basis had been gently but firmly ridiculed, and the advantages of herself in spangles and tights left no room for argument. A smile curled at the corners of her lips. She had not been of a mind to argue. If Septimus had insisted she be fired from a cannon, she would have agreed. Even now, she was still apprenticed to his sorcery.

Boston to New York was her first experience in a train, also her first efforts at finding explanations for the pair of coffins that were an integral part of the theatrical props they transported from town to town. That first journey had brought her into such towns as Oshkosh, Kansas City, Toledo, Youngstown, Macon and Mobile. It had been grueling. The well-bred and once well-to-do young lady from Marblehead found that her training as a newspaperwoman was of scant assistance when it came to coping with the exigencies of the road.

It had taken her months to accustom herself to upper berths and unheated cars, to sitting or even standing up all night when trains were crowded. She had loathed the cheap hotels or boarding houses where, like as not, they would be turned away by signs advising that the hostelry in question did not accept dogs or actors. Nor had she been very helpful when assisting Septimus with his illusions. He had been wonderfully patient with her and with her newly acquired relations, even though among the living there had been Mark Driscoll and his bride, Vivienne Mantell.

Septimus had never liked Vivienne, and he liked her less when she joined them on the road. She hated traveling, but notwithstanding the vast difference in their ages, she appeared to adore Mark. She had once shocked livia by confiding that his lycanthropy added a special ingredient to their lovemaking. However her passion for him had not kept her from being flagrantly unfaithful to her lover. She left him for months at a time, coming back when she chose. He finally married her when she became pregnant with what she insisted was his baby.

Livia grimaced at the memory of Vivienne; screaming her lungs out giving birth to Mark III in an East Saginaw boarding house in the year 1895. Compared to the agonies she had endured giving birth to Richard, the following year, and Kathie, two years after that, Vivienne’s travail had been remarkably easy. Unfortunately, it had taken place during a full moon when Mark was locked in the specially designed steel trunk Septimus had made for him. It had also been during a full moon that Vivienne had decamped, leaving them with her seven month old infant and the responsibility of informing her husband she had gone with a team of acrobats headed for Peoria. Probably it would not have added to Vivienne’s vaunted self-esteem had she witnessed Mark’s heartfelt relief. According to Juliet, Mark had only one love in his life, and that had been her mother, Lucy.

Livia shuddered. It was unworthy of her, she knew, but she was still pleased that she had not been introduced to her vampiric mother. It had taken a great deal of mental adjustment to accept Juliet, Colin and Mark, not to mention the Old Lord, whom she could actually see if she put her mind to it, just as she could hear Molly, the banshee, and her ill-natured cat. Of course if was touching to think of her mother’s true death in the rose garden at sunrise. It had been a terrible shock to Juliet and Colin. When they were able to talk about it, they had told Livia that Lucy had always loathed her condition. They speculated that finding Swithin dead on the terrible night of the witches had been the final blow. Lucy had looked forward to meeting her daughter, they assured Livia, but she had never ceased to long for her husband in the years they were separated.

Livia understood that. Though she adored her own children, her passion for Septimus exceeded anything she felt for either of them. It was the ruling factor in her life. In common with the foolish and lustful Mary of Scotland, she would have followed him around the world in her nightie. In a sense, that was what she would be doing once they boarded the train that would take them on their longest journey ever—across the country to a place called Hollywood. It was a town which, according to Mrs. Soames, the wife of a juggler who had shared their stint at the Palace, had nothing to do with either holly or woods.

“It’s hot as hell, dearie. Don’t never snow out there ’cept up in the mountains. And it’s half bean fields and beaches. Most folk go out there to die. An’ you can’t tell me that movin’ pitchers is here to stay. Mark my words, you’n yourn’ll be back on the road quick as this.” She had snapped her fingers.

Livia secretly agreed with her, however the children were excited. Richard had been signed to play Cagliostro and Kathie would play the magician’s wife in a monumental epic called
The Queen’s Necklace
. Septimus had been hired as advisor for the magic part of the production. Only she and Mark III had no connection with the movie, and for her part she was absolutely delighted.

“Livia, love.”

She glanced up quickly at the shout that echoed across the station. Septimus, accompanied by Kathie, Richard and Mark III, was hurrying toward her. As they approached, she was conscious of a slight pang. Mark looked so very much like his father, who had died two years ago. For once Vivienne hadn’t lied. Livia remembered how the older Mark had prayed that his son would not inherit his tendencies and had wept when he found the baby had the telltale hair on his palms. Septimus, too, had been close to weeping but for another reason. Full moon days would be doubly difficult. However, he had set about constructing a small steel trunk with the requisite shackles and airholes. Fortunately, for the first six years of the child’s life, they had not needed to use it except when traveling. On moon days, he resembled an adorable little wolf cub. He had been very good with the children, and they had been able to sneak him in and out of the hotels with a minimum of trouble. It was only in his seventh year that he began to exhibit tendencies that required more stringent measures. All the rest of the month he had been of inestimable help in transporting luggage and caring for the two younger children. He still was. For his sake, as much as for their own, she was glad they had been able to schedule their trip so that Mark would not have to join Juliet and Colin in the baggage car.

Her family joined her, and the men, annoying several willing redcaps by possessing themselves of the luggage, started toward the train. Walking with Livia, Septimus gave her a fond smile as he said for perhaps the five thousandth time, “Well, my dearest love, the Great Grenfalls are on their way.” He added with an impudence she could not quite appreciate, “When we get to the club car, we must all drink a toast to Erlina Bell.”

❖

Seated in the sunken living room of his immense Spanish mansion perched on a cliff overlooking Hollywood Boulevard, Morris Goldbaum, head of Goldbaum-Magnum International Films, Inc., pressed his lips against his ivory and gold telephone saying loudly and indignantly to his secretary Ruth Fiske, “You do not mean to tell me they are complaining about the best accomodations this side of the Los Angeles river? Of all the unmitigated gall! If I ever saw a boarding house breed, they are it. What happens, I ask you, to performers once they get off the train in this city? The hot air gets to their head. It is hot air you are giving me, also. What, I would like to know, is the matter with the Egyptian Palace hotel? No expense has been spared. They have the Nefertiti suite. Have they seen the Babylonian Pleasure Gardens? And the Javanese Pavilion?”

Repressing a small shudder as she mentally envisioned the sights in question, Miss Fiske wondered if the producer had concluded his diatribe. Receiving an angry demand for an answer, she said, “They have told me they must have a house.”

“Ah, a house is what they want, eh? That is all? Gold-plated, perhaps, mit a swimming pool, ja?”

“Actually not, Mr. Goldbaum,” she said soothingly. “You surprise me. Maybe they are wanting me to build them something?”

“Actually, they specified an old house.”

“An old house?” he howled. “In California is nothing old. Did you tell them that?”

The secretary ran a nervous hand through her dark auburn hair, wondering if she dared mention a very sore subject to her employer. Usually, Mr. Goldbaum, kindest of men despite his choleric outbursts, was agreeable to her suggestions. However, he hated being reminded of the mansion he had purchased in Boyle Heights, near the Hollywood Bowl and not far from Rudolph Valentino’s famed Falcon’s Lair. Similarly huge but of an earlier vintage, having been built at the turn of the century, it rose on a high hill with such Victorian excesses as gables, hanging balconies, turrets and Venetian arched dormer windows.

Ruth knew it bore a definite resemblance to some of the elderly mansions that a poverty-stricken young tailor named Goldbaum had admired in his native Weisbaden, Germany. He had purchased it on the proceeds of
Scented Kisses
, his first major success. His second,
Passion’s Pawn
, provided a paint job and repairs, while
Heart’s Aflame
enabled him to purchase the furnishings. He had been planning to move into his prize, unoriginally christened “The Castle,” when Letitia Lawrence, sophisticated femme fatale of the London and New York stage, agreed to star in
Pearl of the Prairie
, a saga of the cow country. Since the actress was known to be flightly and temperamental, Mr. Goldbaum slipped on his kid gloves. Included in the preferential treatment accorded his star was an agreement to honor her request for the sort of privacy enjoyed by that “Swede barber’s assistant” by which she meant Greta Garbo. Accordingly the producer moved her into The Castle for the: duration of her stay.

Unfortunately, Miss Lawrence developed a passionate crush on Hank Wilmot, her leading man, whose embraces under the stars painted on the canvas backdrop of a tumbleweed-and-sand-strewn set had been extremely realistic. Upon learning that his private life was complicated by a wife he loved devotedly, Miss Lawrence pettishly hanged herself on the $5000 blown-glass Venetian chandelier in the main hallway of The Castle. Her anguished suicide note addressed “To Hank” was found on her pillow. She had also sent carbon copies of this missive to the editors of the
Hollywood Citizen-News
, the
Los Angeles Times
, the
Herald-Express
and
Movie-Star Parade Magazine
in the fond hope of ruining Mr. Wilmot’s career.

Unfortunately the fact that so famous a beauty had died for love of him increased Mr. Wilmot’s box-office appeal to the point that from playing rugged cowboy heroes, he was currently being cast as sensuous matinee idols. At present Henry (no longer Hank) Wilmot was finishing a picture entitled
Burning Love
, in which he was portraying just the sort of dashing seducer Miss Lawrence hoped he was. Ironically enough, he was in the throes of a divorce that would leave him free to wed Paula Sinclaire, his leading lady.

Possibly out of frustration and anger or because she had had enough time to regret her impulsive action, the defunct star remained in residence at The Castle, producing a series of uncomfortable psychic manifestations. These had routed its owner and several other tenants. The mansion had remained unoccupied for the past two years while Mr. Goldbaum deliberated as to whether or not he would put it on the market. As he had remarked sadly to Miss Fiske, “It’s like selling my heart’s desire.”

Consequently, the secretary’s suggestion was tentative. Holding the receiver a protective three inches from her ear, she asked, “What about The Castle?”

The anticipated explosion failed to take place. “Ach, why not?” Mr. Goldbaum demanded in a definitely mollified tone of voice. “They stay a short time only and with coffins they travel. They should feel at home, ja?” He added cravenly. “You show them through the house, Miss Fiske. I send my limousine? Have you met them yet?”

“No, sir, we’ve only spoken by telephone.”

“Put yourself at their service, please. And you will bring them to Culver City tomorrow, ja? And Miss Fiske, how are they liking it here?”

It was a loaded question and required a tactful answer. “I haven’t had an opportunity to inquire,” was the one she chose.

“Inquire, please,” he ordered. “You know always I am interested in what strangers to our beautiful city will say.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goodbye, Miss Fiske. When through with them, you may take the rest of the afternoon off.”