The Blackstone Chronicles (14 page)

Edna Burnham had never spoken to Rebecca again.

Oliver, who’d had the good fortune to be only ten feet away when the incident occurred, still hadn’t stopped laughing about it.

And Rebecca, as utterly innocent as the sixteen-year-old she’d been on the day of the accident that killed her parents, had no idea why Edna Burnham was upset, or what amused Oliver so.

“But it
is
a wig, and it
does
look nice,” she’d insisted.

Now, in reply to his question about her aunt, Rebecca told him exactly what she thought. “Aunt Martha means well,” she said. “She can’t help it if she’s just a little bit odd.”

“A little bit?” Oliver echoed.

Rebecca reddened slightly. “I’m the one everyone says is odd, Oliver.”

“No you’re not. You’re just honest.” He pulled the Volvo over to the curb in front of Martha Ward’s house, next door to the Hartwicks’. “How about if you come to the dinner with me?” he suggested. “Madeline told me I could bring a date.”

Rebecca’s flush deepened and she shook her head. “I’m sure she didn’t mean me, Oliver.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean
not
you,” Oliver replied. As
he got out and went around to open the door for her, he tried once more. “I didn’t tell her I was coming alone. Why don’t you just put on your prettiest dress and come with me?”

Rebecca shook her head again. “Oh, Oliver, I couldn’t! Not in a million years. Besides, Aunt Martha says I make people uncomfortable, and she’s right.”

“You don’t make me uncomfortable,” Oliver retorted.

“You’re sweet, Oliver,” Rebecca said. Then, giving him a quick peck on the cheek, she added, “Have a good time, and tell Celeste and Andrew that I’m very happy for them.”

Just then Martha Ward opened the front door of her house and stepped out onto the porch. “It’s time for you to come in, Rebecca,” she called. “I’m about to begin evening prayers.”

“Yes, Aunt Martha.” Rebecca turned away from Oliver and started up the walk toward her aunt’s house.

Taking his gift out of the backseat of the Volvo, Oliver strode past the Ward house and turned up the Hartwicks’ driveway. But as he neared the porte cochere he suddenly had the sense that he was being watched. Looking over his shoulder toward the Ward house, he saw that Rebecca still stood on the porch.

She was gazing at him, and even at this distance he could see the wistfulness in her face. But then he heard Martha Ward’s voice call her once again. A moment later Rebecca disappeared into the house.

Suddenly wishing very much that he were not going to the party alone, Oliver mounted the Hartwicks’ front steps and pressed the bell. Madeline Hartwick opened the door to greet him with a hug.

“Oliver,” she said. “How wonderful.” As she stepped back to let him in, her eyes flicked toward the house next door. “For a moment I thought you might be bringing poor Rebecca with you.”

Oliver hesitated, then decided to be as truthful as
Rebecca would have been. “I asked her,” he said. “But she turned me down.” Though he tried to tell himself he was mistaken, Oliver was certain he saw a look of relief pass over Madeline Hartwick’s perfectly made-up face.

J
ules Hartwick leaned back in his chair and gave Madeline an almost imperceptible nod, the signal that it was time for Madeline to let her toe touch the button on the floor beneath her end of the dining room table. It would summon the maid who had been hired for the evening to clear the dessert plates while the butler—also hired only for the evening—served the port. The dining room had always been one of Jules’s favorite rooms in the house he’d grown up in, and into which he and Madeline had moved a decade ago, after his father, widowed for fifteen years, retired to a condo complex in Scottsdale. “It’s perfect for me,” the elder Hartwick had declared. “Full of Republicans and divorcées with enough money that they don’t need mine.”

Like all the rooms in the house, the dining room was immense, but so perfectly proportioned that it didn’t seem overly large even when the party, like tonight’s, was small. A pair of chandeliers glittered from its high-beamed ceiling, and the plaster walls above the mahogany wainscoting were hung with tapestries so luxuriously heavy that even the largest parties never seemed overly noisy. One wall was dominated by an immense fireplace, in which three large logs blazed merrily, and there was a sideboard built into the opposite wall, which served perfectly for the informal buffets that were this generation’s preferred way to serve. “So much less ostentatious than the staff Jules’s grandfather used to
have,” Madeline was fond of explaining, never mentioning that economics might have something to do with the scaled-back festivities that were now the rule in the house. Still, every now and then—on occasions such as tonight’s—Jules liked to hire a full staff and do his best to roll the calendar back a generation or two. Tonight, he decided, had been a total success.

All the men save Oliver Metcalf had worn black tie, and, since no one had expected Oliver to appear in anything except his old tweed jacket, he didn’t seem the least bit out of place. The women were resplendent in their evening dresses, and while Madeline looked even more elegant than usual in a long black sheath set off by a single strand of perfect pearls, Celeste had stolen the limelight in a flow of emerald green velvet that was a perfect complement to her auburn hair. She wore a single stunning piece of jewelry: a small spray of emeralds set in gold that had belonged to Jules’s mother glittered near the heart-shaped neckline of her dress. Seated opposite her at the center of the long table, Andrew Sterling, Jules observed, had been unable to keep his eyes off his fiancée for more than a few seconds at a time. Which, Jules reflected, was exactly as it should be.

The rest of the party—all except one—seemed to be nearly as happy as Celeste and Andrew. Aside from Oliver Metcalf and Ed and Bonnie Becker, Madeline had invited Harvey Connally—“to represent the older generation, which I think gives a nice continuity to things”— and included Edna Burnham as the old man’s dinner partner. She’d also managed to persuade Bill McGuire to come out for the first time since Elizabeth’s death, and included Lois Martin as part of her ongoing plan to match Oliver with his assistant outside the office as well as in. When Jules suggested that perhaps Oliver and Lois spent enough time together at the
Chronicle
, Madeline had given him the kind of wifely look that informed him
very clearly that while his banking skills might be excellent, he knew nothing about matchmaking.

“Lois and Oliver are perfect for each other,” she’d said. “They just don’t know it.”

Though Jules suspected Oliver’s interest in Lois ended at the office door, he’d kept his own counsel, just as he had when his wife decided to invite Janice Anderson to fill the seat across from Bill McGuire. Not that Jules didn’t like Janice. With a perfect combination of business acumen and a winning personality that made her immediately seem like everyone’s best friend, Janice had built her antique shop into a business strong enough to bring people to Blackstone from hundreds of miles around. It had been Bill McGuire who convinced her to move her shop into Blackstone Center as soon as the new complex was completed.

Tonight, though, even Janice’s sunny disposition didn’t seem to be working on Bill. The poor man appeared to Jules to have taken on an unhealthy gauntness since Elizabeth’s death two months ago. Still, he seemed glad he’d come, and on balance, Jules decided that Madeline had been right: if anyone would be able to take Bill’s mind off his troubles for a little while, it would be Janice.

“Shall we take the port into the library?” Madeline asked as the butler finished filling the glasses. “We found something in the attic last week that we’ve been dying to show off.”

“So that accounts for the library door being closed when we came in,” Oliver Metcalf said. He’d risen to his feet to help Lois Martin move her heavy chair back from the huge marble-topped table. The guests all followed their hostess out of the dining room and through the reception room where they’d gathered for drinks—then across the great entry hall that was dominated by a sweeping staircase that led to the second floor mezzanine.

While the dining room had always been Jules’s favorite, the library was Madeline’s. Its ceiling vaulted up two full floors, and the walls, save for the areas where family portraits hung, were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, their upper shelves so high that to reach them required the use of a wheeled ladder hung from a polished brass guide rail at the top. For Madeline, though, the bookcases were not the room’s most distinguishing feature.

Directly above the double doors through which she had just led her guests was a minstrel’s gallery large enough to hold a string quartet, and paneled in mahogany linenfold. Tonight, in honor of her daughter’s engagement, she had hired a quartet, which was already playing softly when the company entered the room.

“Fabulous,” Janice Anderson told Madeline. “It’s like going back in time. I truly feel as if I’ve stepped into another century.”

“Just wait till you see what we found in the attic—something amazing from yesteryear,” Madeline promised her. “When the Center is done, of course we’re going to donate it, but for now we just couldn’t resist hanging it in here.”

She led them to the far end of the room, where a picture, covered by a black cloth, had been hung. When everyone had gathered around, she signaled to Jules to lower the lights until the only illumination in the room was provided by a spotlight on the picture. As an expectant hush fell, Madeline pulled a cord and the picture’s covering fell away.

From an ornately gilded frame, an aristocratic woman of perhaps forty gazed down on the room. She was wearing a dark blue dress of shimmering silk. Despite her elegant bearing and expensive clothing, her eyes gazed out from the canvas accusingly, as if she had resented having her portrait painted. Her hair was pulled severely back from her high forehead, apparently done in
an elaborate twist at the back, and she stood beside a chair. The fingers of one hand clutched tightly to the back of the chair, while the other hand, though hanging at her side, appeared to be clenched in a fist.

“It’s your mother, isn’t it, Jules?” Janice Anderson asked. “But what a strange costume to have a portrait painted in. What is that she’s wearing?” Indeed, though the woman in the portrait wore an elegant blue dress, over it was a pale gray apronlike affair that looked to be made of a heavy cotton material.

“We think it’s her uniform from the Asylum,” Jules replied. His eyes were fixed on the portrait, and he was frowning deeply, as if trying to figure out why his mother appeared so angry. “Apparently she volunteered her services as a Gray Lady at some point. Oddly enough, though, I don’t ever remember seeing her wear that uniform. Until last week, I had no idea the portrait even existed.” He turned to Oliver. “Do you remember ever seeing my mother like that?”

But Oliver Metcalf wasn’t listening. The instant he’d seen the picture, a sharp pain flashed through his head, and a vision appeared in his mind.

The boy, naked and terrified, is shivering in the huge room
.

His thin arms are wrapped around his body in a vain effort to keep himself warm
.

The man appears, and the boy shrinks away from him, but there is no escape. The man holds a sheet in his hands—a wet sheet—and though the boy tries to slip past the man and dash from the room, the man catches him in the sheet as easily as a butterfly is caught in a net. In an instant the icy cold sheet engulfs the boy, who opens his mouth to scream—

*  *  *

“Oliver?” Jules Hartwick said again. “Oliver, is something wrong?”

Abruptly, the strange vision vanished. His headache eased and Oliver managed a small smile. “I’m fine,” he assured Jules. He looked up at the portrait once more, half expecting the pounding pain behind his eyes to return, but this time there was nothing. Just the painting of Jules’s mother in the uniform the volunteers at the Asylum had worn decades ago. Vaguely, he remembered reading somewhere how it had once been the fashion for people of means to have portraits done that reflected their professions or avocations. The costume, he ventured a guess to Jules, was Mrs. Hartwick’s way of proclaiming her service to the town.

“I suppose so,” Jules agreed. “But the weird thing is, I don’t even remember Mother volunteering. But she must have, mustn’t she?” He glanced up at the portrait again, then shook his head. “Easy to see why she put it up in the attic the minute it was done. But I think it could be kind of fun up at the Center, don’t you? Maybe we can find pictures of some of the other women, and make it the centerpiece of an exhibit. Call it ‘The Do-Gooders of Blackstone’ or something.”

“Jules!” Madeline exclaimed. “Those women took their work very seriously, and did a lot of good.”

“I’m sure they did,” Jules said. “But you still have to admit that Mother looks pretty unhappy about the whole thing.”

“I’m sure her expression had nothing to do with her work at the Asylum,” Madeline insisted. But then she relented, and a smile played around her lips. “Actually, she looks almost as disapproving as she did the day you married me.”