Vintage Love (234 page)

“I doubt that.”

“Think of it as a possible risk,” was his warning.

She stared at him through the shadows broken only by the candles on the table. “You’re saying that history may repeat itself?”

“I wonder.”

“That Fred and I might drift apart just as that doctor and his wife of another day are supposed to have done?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “I doubt it.” But even as she denied the possibility it worried her a little.

“My ancestor, Frank Clay, swore that Jennifer had been throttled before she was drowned. And he was the first to find her body and carry it to the mainland.”

“I’ve heard the story,” she said.

“Surely he wouldn’t have lied about a thing like that,” Jim said. “He loved Jennifer.”

“Unless he was evil and made up his mind to spread that ugly rumor,” she said.

Jim Stevens smiled wryly. “Now you’re casting my ancestor as the villain.”

“Why not? And perhaps the evil spirit in Moorgate today is his, and not Jennifer’s at all.”

“You said you saw her ghost.”

“Oh, her ghost may be here,” Lucy replied quickly, “but only to fight the evil of Frank Clay.”

Jim laughed quietly. “Interesting.”

She rose from the table. “We should go into the living room. You may as well wait for Fred now. He should be here soon.”

They left the dining room for the larger and better lit living room on the other side of the house. She sat with him on a divan by the big stone fireplace that filled one end of the room.

They talked about the house some more, and he asked her, “If you’re so positive there are ghosts here aren’t you afraid to live here?”

“I am,” she admitted. “But because it’s what Fred wants and because I’d like to clear the reputation of the house and its people, I’m going to remain in it.”

“I wish you good luck,” Jim said. “I think Shiela Farley might have offered Fred some other property. She knew all about the evil name Moorgate had.”

Lucy smiled thinly. “Maybe she thought the house would scare me away.”

Jim Stevens’ eyes twinkled. “And leave the way open for her? I can tell you’ve been talking to my mother. She’s not one of Shiela’s admirers. She had a fit the few times I dated Shiela.”

“You aren’t dating her now?”

“Not regularly,” Jim said. “We may attend a party together now and then for convenience. When Fred came to town he became the big attraction for her. As his new bride, you’ve clipped her wings.”

“I wonder.”

“I’m sure of it,” Jim said. “Fred is devoted to you. Anyone can see that.”

“I wouldn’t expect Shiela to be one to give up easily,” she said.

“Whether she gives up or not, it won’t do her any good,” was the young lawyer’s assurance.

Wanting to change the subject, she said, “I’ve been told Frank Clay was buried on Minister’s Island at his request. What about Graham Woods and Jennifer? Where were they buried?”

“The old town cemetery,” Jim told her. “It’s a block or two down from the Algonquin Hotel on the corner. You’ll find their gravestones together in a corner of the cemetery away from the church. I have an idea the members of the church may have resented the idea of a murderer and his victim being buried in hallowed ground.”

“Thanks to the story your ancestor, Frank Clay, circulated,” she said. “I found a letter which must have been written by him and sent to Jennifer. It was in a volume of Shakespeare. When I opened the book it sort of wafted out onto the carpet. As if an invisible hand had left it there for me.”

“May I see it?” he asked, showing interest.

She felt it could do no harm. So she went to the desk in the library where she’d placed it in one of the pigeonholes after showing it to Dr. Boyce. She’d expected to find it right away, but after a few minutes of searching she was unable to locate it at all. She turned in chagrin to Jim Stevens, who was standing beside her, waiting to take the letter from her.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s vanished!”

“Are you sure you had it?” he asked in a slightly mocking tone.

“Of course I am,” she declared indignantly. “I showed it to Dr. Boyce. He’ll verify it.”

“You must have misplaced it,” he suggested.

She studied the desk again with troubled eyes. “Yes, I must have,” she said, but she didn’t really believe it. She was coming to the point of thinking that the same spirit hand which had revealed the letter to her had also played a part in causing it to vanish from the desk.

The young lawyer now turned to look at the books on the library shelves, and gave his special attention to a framed map on the wall. “That’s a map of St. Croix Island and the river as Champlain knew it nearly four centuries ago. It was the first white settlement in this part of Canada.”

“I had no idea St. Andrews had such a history,” she said.

“That was the beginning, if you don’t count when the Micmac Indians lived here,” he said. “A Frenchman placed the cross of St. Andrew at the mouth of the St. Croix River and gave this area its name. The English traders came in 1770, and then the Loyalists emigrated from the New England States in 1783 after the Revolutionary War, to found the town. The majority of them embarked from New York, and there were Clays among them.”

She said, “The Clays are on your mother’s side of the family.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “The Stevenses didn’t come here until the early 1900’s, so by local standards they are practically newcomers.”

Lucy smiled. “And now you’re suffering another Yankee invasion in me.”

“We’re happy to have you here. At least I am,” he said with gallantry. He glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s almost nine and Fred isn’t here yet. I won’t be able to wait any longer. But you can tell him I was here and ask him to phone me at my office.”

“You’re sure you can’t stay a little while?” she asked. “He’s bound to get here soon.”

“I’m afraid not,” Jim Stevens said. “Thank you for the delicious meal and the interesting company. I’m going to watch your progress here closely. It’s possible that you’re right about Jennifer. She may be a much maligned lady.”

“I still cling to that theory,” she told him.

She saw him to the front door and noted that it was still foggy. He got in his car and drove off down the road. She waited until the red tail lights vanished, then she reluctantly went inside. She’d been grateful for his company, and it had saved her dinner from being wasted. But now she was alone in the silent old house of shadows again.

She went to the dining room to straighten up the table and she’d just begun the task when she heard the sound of a car in the driveway. She recognized it as Fred’s car, and rushed to the door in time to meet him.

Throwing her arms around him, she kissed him warmly on the lips. “I’ve missed you so! I’m glad you’re finally here.”

“I’m sorry to be so late,” he said, with just a hint of restraint in his voice. And then he added, “Didn’t a car come out of the driveway a few minutes ago?”

In her delight at her husband’s return she’d forgotten about Jim Stevens having been there. She said, “That must have been Jim Stevens’s car.”

“Oh?” Fred didn’t look too pleased. “What was he doing here at this hour?”

“He came by to see you around seven and you weren’t home.”

“And he stayed until after nine?”

“Yes,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t be home and I’d prepared a special dinner, so I invited him to stay and share it with me.”

“Lucky for Jim,” her husband said with a note of tension in his voice.

She stared at him in surprise. “You sound as if you don’t approve?”

His reaction startled her. “I’m not sure that I do.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Jim has the reputation of being a ladies’ man. The fact that he came here when I was out and stayed a couple of hours could cause gossip. And that’s something we don’t want.”

She eyed him incredulously. “Gossip? Why? I asked him to stay for dinner because I was lonely. Because you disappointed me, and I was here in this grim old house alone.”

“I have my professional duties to take care of,” Fred said self-righteously. “I couldn’t neglect them.”

“I’m willing to agree with that,” she told him. “But you ought to have some consideration for me.”

“I have. That’s why I worry about any scandal concerning you and Jim.”

“It’s too silly,” she protested.

“Very well,” he said. “Let’s drop any talk about it.”

“Just as long as you understand I did nothing I am ashamed of,” she told him.

Fred nodded wearily. “Of course I know that. I’m only thinking what others might say. It was indiscreet of Jim to accept your invitation. He knows how small-minded this town can be.”

“They’d have to be extremely small-minded to make anything of an innocent dinner invitation,” Lucy said.

“I’m going to the library,” her husband said in the same weary tone. “I have some prescriptions to phone to the local pharmacy and some calls to put through to patients. It will take a little while.” And medical bag in hand, he marched out of the room.

She went back to the dining room to clean up, feeling hurt by the things he’d said to her. It wasn’t until later as she prepared for bed that she realized they’d had their first slight quarrel. It hadn’t been important, but it had been a difference. And it had been over another man. All at once she realized the similarity of this three-cornered situation with the one that had existed a century before, with Jennifer in Lucy’s role. It was a worrisome thought.

She was in bed with all the lights turned off except the lamp on the table between their twin beds, when Fred finally joined her. She thought he looked even more tired than when he had first come home. Now he crossed over to her bed and sat on it for a moment.

“Forgive me, Lucy,” he said contritely, taking her hands in his. “I didn’t mean to be so unpleasant.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“But it does,” he said firmly. “I came home dragging all my troubles with me. And it annoyed me to think that Stevens had been enjoying both my dinner and your company.”

She looked up at him with a wistful smile. “You were jealous?”

“I’m afraid that’s what it amounts to.”

“I’ll look on it as a compliment.”

“Please do,” he begged her. “Forget what I said.” And he bent down and touched his lips gently to hers.

Yet the reconciliation they had at bedtime did not ward off the bad dreams which had troubled her before. Almost as soon as she fell asleep she was lost in a fantasy of long ago in which Frank Clay, Jennifer, and Graham Woods all played parts. In her dream she saw Frank Clay as looking exactly like Jim Stevens in the clothing of that earlier era.

In her nightmare she saw Jennifer in the garden of Moorgate in Frank Clay’s arms. It was a stormy night as the two lovers stood there in close embrace. And in the lighted window of the first floor the face and figure of Dr. Graham Woods showed. High winds howled, and it all became a fantastic blur to her. In the shrieking confusion she thought she heard the name Jennifer called again and again.

The nightmare cleared, and Jennifer was in the house, a shawl drawn around her head and shoulders. And somehow in the confusion of the dream Lucy felt herself become one with Jennifer. She entered the dark hallway with the winds still wailing outside. It was all shadows again for a moment, and then out of the blur she saw the motionless figure of her husband. He stood there in the shadows, a menacing figure.

She knew she shouldn’t be afraid, yet she was. Somehow she knew that when she reached the spot where her husband waited there would be a reckoning. But was it her husband? In the blur she couldn’t really be sure. If the confusion and shrieking of the storm would only end!

She approached the figure and put out a plaintive hand. “What is wrong?”

His reply was a snarl of anger. She tried to plead with him, tried to look into his face, but the shadows closed in on her again. And then she felt his slim powerful hands as they gripped her throat.

There was only the wailing of the wind. And now the scene had changed again, and she was stretched out in the bottom of a heaving small boat in the angry water. Above her someone bent over the oars. She stirred and moaned and he turned slightly towards her. At the same instant there was a mountainous wave and the tiny boat tilted wildly.

She screamed in terror. The boat capsized and she was lost in the cold water. She was still screaming as she sank beneath the waves. Suddenly she came awake and sat up in bed.

The nightmare remained vivid in her mind. Then realizing she was in her bedroom with Fred in the twin bed beside her, she held the back of her hand against her mouth to smother another scream.

But Fred had already been awakened, and now he was standing by her bedside. “What’s wrong?”

She gave him a frightened look. “I’m sorry. I had a dreadful dream.”

“You must have had,” he said. “You sounded as if you were terrified!”

“I screamed in my sleep,” she said.

Her husband sat on the side of her bed with a puzzled expression on his young face. “What sort of dream did you have to leave you like this?”

She was suddenly embarrassed, not wanting to tell him. “I can’t remember clearly. It was too confused.”

Fred eyed her sternly. “It must have had some basis. Tell me about it.”

She felt trapped, knowing that whatever she said it was bound to displease him. Faltering, she said, “I had a dream about this house.”

“This house again!” There was scorn in his tone.

“I told you it was confused. It’s not worth discussing.”

“I think it is,” he persisted.

She touched a hand to her temple. “I think it was looking at those old portraits of Dr. Graham Woods and his wife that caused me to have the nightmare. I dreamed about them.”

He frowned. “What about them?”

She made a vague motion with her hand. “I thought I was back in those days. And in some strange way I had become Jennifer.”

Fred smiled coldly. “The unfaithful wife.”

“No one can be sure about that,” she protested.

“That’s how the story goes.”

“The story could be wrong.”

“Tell me more about the dream,” her husband said.