How Nancy Drew Saved My Life (17 page)

“Everything,” they said vehemently. “So bite your tongue if you can't show respect.”

God, they took this stuff seriously. So okay, maybe I did, too.

“Anyway,” I said, “there I was thinking the incident might have something to do with the madwoman, but it all turned out to have been caused by a stupid cigarette that he—”

“Wait a second,” said Gina. “Time out, hold those ponies and back up. What madwoman?”

I explained about the eerie sound I thought I'd heard coming from behind that other locked door.

“But I've concluded,” I said, “that is, I've come to realize, that I just have an overactive imagination. For a while there, I was having Jane Eyre thoughts, like I was trying to be Nancy Drew playing Jane Eyre, but then I realized that there isn't any explanation for that fire other than the obvious—Ambassador Rawlings left a cigarette in the ashtray that wasn't completely out, then he fell asleep like an idiot, and it smoldered until it became a fire. End of story.”

“Then how do you explain the eerie laugh?” demanded Gina.

“Well,” I said, “you guys do have a lot of wind around here.”

“A wind and an eerie laugh are not the same thing,” Britta scoffed. “If they were, we would be driven crazy living here.”

“Maybe it is Ambassador Rawlings's wife!” suggested Gina with glee.

“Does he even have a wife?” I asked.

“Nobody knows!” said Britta. “He never talks about it publicly.”

“You can't dismiss this, Charlotte,” Gina said.

“I can't? Wait a minute. What can't I dismiss?”

“The mystery of the eerie laugh,” said Britta.

“The mystery of Ambassador Rawlings's wife,” said Gina.

They raised their glasses in toast.

How many of these had we all had? I wondered.

“You have mysteries to solve!” they said.

I
awoke the next morning with a hangover worthy of Lucky Jim and two crumpled pieces of paper on my desk: Gina's and Britta's phone numbers. I vaguely remembered them insisting on the exchange of numbers at the end of the previous evening, extracting promises to “Keep in touch-tone!”

There was also a dim recollection of their appointing me head of the mission to solve the mysteries of the Rawlings household. But in the dim light of a new day—there was less light here now each day and more cold as we moved into Iceland's autumn, making Manhattan's own flirtation with that same season seem like Hawaii—this seemed like fanciful nonsense. After all, it wasn't as though that eerie laugh I'd heard was some kind of regular thing; it had been only an occasional thing and it had indeed been a while since I'd heard it at all. And, as for the absentee Mrs. Rawlings, any queries I'd made about her in the past had been met with either stony silence or weird verbal sidestepping. What was I supposed to do, grill Annette?

I certainly wasn't going to exploit my relationship with the child.

And so, the days piled up, with me enjoying my time with Annette, with no other mother anywhere on the scene for her. Although Mrs. Fairly could be said to be a motherly figure, she was more of an age to be the child's grandmother. Honestly, I sometimes fantasized that I
was
her mother. I knew, of course, that this wasn't true, would never be true, but I did feel so close to her, and she to me, even more so than had been the case with the Keating children. Perhaps because there was only one of her, we were able to form a single bond? Whatever the case, it made me wonder if I would ever get a second chance at pregnancy, if I would ever have my own child. Somehow, I believed I would not.

That thought made me sad. But what could I do? You get dealt certain hands in life, I believed, and I was playing mine.

As for the rest of the household, with the exception of the occasional coffee break with Lars Aquavit, who proved to be a funny man with dynamic stories to tell, I had few dealings with them. Mrs. Fairly was always cordial to me, of course, but so long as I was doing my job well with Annette we had little to discuss, save for her updates on when the master might be in residence, what might be required of me when he was.

Usually what was required was my presence.

This seemed a little…
excessive
to me, since hadn't Mrs. Fairly told me, at the very beginning, that once dinner was over he would usually want Annette to himself?

But it was his signature, or at least his signature copied by someone else, on the payments I received. So if he wanted me to sit idly by, on the few nights he was in residence every couple of weeks, as he teasingly invited Annette to bring him up to date on what she'd been learning in the meantime, what grounds did I have for complaint?

Still, it impressed me as…
odd.
Why couldn't the two of them perform this ritual by themselves? Sometimes, it seemed to me that he wanted me there as a witness.

“See?” he seemed to be saying. “Look at me. I am a good father. You can't fault me for this.”

I think the thing I minded most about those little sessions were always the last few minutes. Ambassador Rawlings would send Annette upstairs to brush her teeth and change into her nightgown—“See? I'm a good father! I tuck my child in!”—leaving me alone with him. Then, for the first time, he would speak to me directly, in that invasive way he had, and the questions were always personal.

“Are you happy here, Miss Bell?” he would ask.

“I enjoy Annette,” I would answer each time.

“Are you happy?” he would insist.

Why did he always ask that? As though happy, even if once attained, could ever be a permanent thing.

“I like my work,” I would say. “I have nothing to complain about.”

“And is that the best one can hope for in life?”

I thought about that one for a longer period. “At times,” I finally said.

“What are your dreams?” he asked. “Surely, you must have them.”

“Not at the moment,” I said. “May I be excused?”

“You say that as though I am keeping you here.”

“Well, aren't you?”

He ignored that.

“You may not be happy yet,” he said, “but I would certainly say that you are happier now than you were when I first met you.”

I realized he was right: since I'd been in his household, I had become steadily happier. I even enjoyed our sparring and the challenges with which he presented me, even as they made me uncomfortable. Well, I certainly wasn't going to tell him
that.

“Well, of course I'm happier now,” I said.

“See?” he crowed his triumph.

“But that's only because, when I first met you, I had my head on a rock and my foot in a stirrup.”

“You never give me anything, do you?”

“Am I supposed to?” I said. “Now, then, may I be excused?”

Not waiting for an answer, I'd disappear up to my bedroom, there to work on my novel.

And so it went.

But I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't flattered by his attentions, touched by his concern for my well-being. I was very flattered. Indeed, I would have been hurt if I felt them to be removed. But I also knew it was foolish of me to dwell too much on such things. After all, he was who he was. For my part, I knew my station: I was only the governess.

 

There was to be a house party.

“Ambassador Rawlings is having a few friends and associates come to stay for a while,” Mrs. Fairly informed me.

“Here?” I was shocked. Sometimes, it seemed as though there was barely enough room to contain all of us here, let alone however many additional people he now wanted to add to the mix.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said. “Of course they will not all stay here. Where would we put them?”

Where, indeed.

“Oh, no,” she answered herself. “Having them here wouldn't do at all. I'm sure they will be more comfortable in one of the finer hotels. It will only be for dinner and for entertainments that they will come here. And I'm sure they will want to go on lots of outings.”

“Can you tell me,” I asked, “who is to make up the party?”

“Oh, it's usually just embassy types,” she said, “plus some of the people the master meets in his travels. But it is fun for a change, having the house fill up like that. The house gets all topsy-turvy. Annette just loves that.”

 

A letter had come from my father.

At least once every few months, ever since I was little, these letters would come, but I had not received any since my arrival in Iceland. As I perched on my bed, Steinway beside me, I slid open the envelope, expecting the usual innocuous message: updates on how his work was going, vague and nonintrusive questions about my life.

I could picture the rueful grin as he wrote that, but I did not know, of course, never having been, never having been asked.

No, I wasn't always sure that it was wise, but I was an adult now and made my own decisions. If I wanted to be unwise in those decisions, it was hardly his place any longer, particularly since he had made himself absent for most of my life, to rudely point that out.

A guest?

I picked up Steinway, who purred, looked him in the eyes.

“Do you think at least my own father could be depended upon to remember I'm Jewish?” I asked.

“Meow!”

“Yes, I know all that. But don't you think it would have been more appropriate for him to suggest we spend Hanukkah together instead?”

“Meow!”

“You're right. I am being insensitive. Of course you'd give all the catnip in the world to see either of your parents again. But where will I put him? He can't stay here.”

“Meow!”

“A hotel. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?”

“Meow!”

“Hey! That's not nice!”

“Meow!”

“Right. I guess I'm just a little touchy these days. Now, what do you make of all this stuff about him wanting to bring a guest?”

“Meow!”

“You're right again, of course. I do expect too much from you at times. You are, after all, only the cat.”

“Meow!”

“Hey! Don't go away mad!”

But he was already out of my arms and out the door.

“Why does everyone always have to be so sensitive?” I muttered to myself.

Then I got out some stationery and wrote Dad back. Of course I'd love to see him—
at Hanukkah
—but of course he and his guest would need to stay at a hotel. My master—cross that out—
my boss
couldn't be expected to put up my family, but there were some lovely hotels in Reykjavik and I would include that information. I looked forward to seeing him again—it had been so long!

I was tempted to sign it
By Order of the Cat,
since Steinway had been the one to provide me with most of my wit and wisdom here, but I figured my father wouldn't get it and, anyway, the cat had been given far too much credit already.

Meow!

 

The house bustled with activity.

Oh, it wasn't as if there were any new faces around, except for extra staff put on for the express purpose of making sure that Ambassador Rawlings's guests, none of whom we saw, were not denied any comfort, but the place still bustled. Silverware was polished, formal china I'd never seen before suddenly appeared, the crystal globes on the chandelier over the dining-room table were washed repeatedly until their sparkle was almost scary.

And still the guests did not come.

“Why do they stay away?” Annette pouted, unable to concentrate on her lessons. She stared out the window at the view beyond, like a grizzled sea captain's wife impatiently awaiting his return.

“I'm sure they'll come here eventually,” I tried to placate her. “Mrs. Fairly says they're just busy doing…other things right now.”

That was indeed what Mrs. Fairly kept saying.

“The party is going to lunch!” she would say.

“The party is going to see a play tonight!”

“The party is going horseback riding!”

The first two sounded okay enough to me—I liked to eat, I liked theater—but as far as I was concerned, they could keep the last.

But still Annette moped.

“Oh,” she sighed wistfully, “once they come, life will be so grand.”

She sounded like someone much older, the kind of woman who says, “Oh, when I just lose these ten pounds, life will be perfect.”

The only time we saw the master in those first few days his guests were here was when he came home to change his clothes, which was fairly often. Well, a person did need to wear different things for lunch, for riding, for nights filled with art. But he had hardly a word for anyone as he bounded through the house, unless it was to shout orders to Mrs. Fairly about some forthcoming need of his guests.

“Where's the tie to my tux?” he would call out.

“My riding boots need shining!”

“Where's my favorite blue blazer? I
still
can't find it!”

Well, I knew where
that
was. But I certainly wasn't going to tell him.

God, it was amazing to me, how the entire household was expected to spin according to the whims of one very demanding male. It seemed to me that the only time a household should ever revolve around one person's whims would be if that one person were me.

Well, that wasn't going to ever happen.