Joan Smith Read online

  “Sweetheart?” Madame asked, a coy smile sitting uneasily on her swarthy, foreign face.

  “You are a mind reader,” he answered, his white teeth flashing.

  “Very pretty,” she complimented. Before many moments, she asked for her husband to be called, for she was tired and wanted to leave.

  “I’ll offer you a lift, to save Lady Sinclair’s having her horses put to,” Dr. Hill offered. He reached into his pocket to look for his snuffbox and found it missing. “Must have dropped it in the feather room,” he mumbled, and went to look for it.

  I paid little heed to their leave-taking, for I was most curious to get a look at the picture in Welland’s locket. He still held it in his hand, shaking it back and forth. When the party was diminished to Loo, Pierre, Welland and me, I picked up the newspaper.

  “Read any interesting obituaries?” Mr. Sinclair asked.

  “No, but one engagement announcement that might be of interest to you.”

  “If it is another royal duke about to take the plunge, I am not at all interested.”

  “It is not a royal anything. It is a plain Mr. Sinclair and plain Miss Mary Milne I am speaking about.”

  “Is it in the paper?” he asked, startled out of his usual complacency. His hands reached for the paper. As I handed it to him, I relieved him of the locket, without his even noticing what I was about.

  I opened it to see a bland, pretty, but slightly bovine countenance smiling at me. The girl had black curls, blue eyes, and an insipid smile. Distinction was the last word that would occur to anyone looking at it. Strangely, it was the word that came to mind in connection with Mr. Sinclair, especially on those occasions when he forgot his pose, straightened up his drooping shoulders, and ceased behaving like an invalid. After he had read the notice, he handed the paper back to me, and I returned his locket to him, and still he did not appear to realize that I had opened it. “Surprised?” I asked him.

  “No, not particularly. Mary did not mention to me her parents were having it put in the papers, but it is the custom, of course.”

  “When is the wedding to be? I did not notice a date. Does it say?”

  I knew very well it did not but was careful not to display too vivid an interest in it. “July the tenth,” he answered, so automatically that it was obviously a familiar response, indicating the match was of long standing and long planning.

  “Your days are numbered, sir,” I said lightly.

  “I can hardly wait. I am looking forward to my marriage with the greatest eagerness.”

  “It is strange you should leave your home at such a time. I wager Mary—was not that the girl’s name?—is not well pleased with you.”

  “She proved so much distraction I could not get my work completed with her in the neighborhood. St. Regis suggested I finish it off before the wedding. I must confess I now spend all my spare moments writing her letters.”

  I doubt his chasing of Madame, and occasionally me, left him much free time. “Why do you not try if Madame can conjure up a vision of her?” I suggested.

  Pierre was not happy at being left out of the conversation. “What a sorceress the Madame is!” he said, inserting himself between Mr. Sinclair and me. “Making the ghost pop out from us.”

  “You pop out pretty well yourself,” Sinclair said, in his ironic mood, as he glanced down at his cousin.

  “Like the corks of the wine bottle, popping out,” Pierre laughed, sliding an arm about my waist.

  I lifted his fingers away and pushed him aside. “Little boys must watch their hands,” I told him.

  “Otherwise big girls might slap them,” Sinclair added in a didactic way to Pierre.

  Lady Sinclair arose with a weary sigh, gathering her chiffon skirts around her. She was still pale, distraught. “I am going to retire now, Valerie. This has been a most fatiguing experience. It is not at all late, however. Don’t let me break up your meeting. Please don’t feel you have to leave, Mr. Sinclair. My niece will be happy to entertain you and Pierre. Ask the servants for something to eat if you are hungry later on.”

  “Best offer I’ve had all day,” Mr. Sinclair said, sitting down after having arisen to bow my aunt out of the room, and throwing one leg over the other. “What entertainment have you in mind, Valerie. Dancing, singing, wrestling match?”

  “Strolling in the moonlight is fine entertainments,” Pierre suggested with a hopeful look.

  “Strolling in the moonlight with you two would be my second choice of entertainment, after sticking my head in a guillotine. I too shall go to bed.”

  “We’re not likely to get a better offer than that, Peter. I for one think we must take her up on it,” Welland said.

  As he was being so playful, I did not hesitate a moment to reach out and remove his green glasses from his nose. I wished I had not. He had a pair of dancing brown eyes that could have seduced a statue. Long and thick lashes too, that any lady might envy.

  After one bold, startled stare, the eyes fell to my feet. I took the misguided idea he was embarrassed. Ninnyhammer that I am! It was nothing of the sort. He was examining me in a leisurely fashion, not from head to toe, which I am accustomed to, but from toe to head, which is more insulting somehow. I felt remarkably like a prize milcher on display at the county fair.

  “What do you know? Peter was right,” was his bland comment, when he had had his fill of staring.

  “Would it be too much to ask what Pierre said?” I asked, turning to deliver a glare on Pierre, who had wandered off to pour more sherries, and was unaware that he was in bad odor with me.

  “Tres vive, as we English say,” Sinclair said. Then he set his head on one side and laughed, while those chocolate eyes continued to dart hither and thither all over my body.

  I took a deep breath preparatory to delivering a setdown. He smiled musingly, his eyes resting on my swollen bosom. “And tres grande,” he added with a lecherous twinkle.

  “Come now, Mr. Sinclair, we must speak English, for Peter’s benefit. You always insist upon it.”

  “I find myself thinking in French when I am with you. A strange phenomenon too, for I hardly speak the bong-jaw fluently at all. But I see by your maidenly blushes I am embarrassing you, poor helpless flower that you are. I promise to behave like a dull old clod of an Englishman.”

  “You are hard on Englishmen. I have not found them to behave with any particular dullness.”

  “The English are very much naughty,” Pierre told us from his stand at the sherry table.

  “Some of them are,” I agreed, “but one expects decent behavior from them when they are engaged at least.”

  “It is wiser to wait till one is safely married,” Sinclair decided, after a little consideration, “but for me, that will not be till July, you know, and you are here now. I have never made a fetish of resisting temptation.”

  “I would not have guessed it if you hadn’t told me!”

  “Sherries,” Pierre announced, balancing three glasses rather precariously in one hand. “What good talks am I missing here?”

  “You haven’t missed a thing, Peter,” I assured him, with studied ennui. “Mr. Sinclair was just telling me what a dull clod of an Englishman he is.”

  “I too am dull English, like Jean Taureau. This is the new idiom.”

  “That’s John Bull, Peter,” Sinclair explained aside.

  “Absolutely. When I am fatigued, sometimes I am speaking French. It comes very hard for me, the French. You are not wearing your spectacles, I see.”

  “No, he is making a spectacle of himself tonight without his glasses,” I pointed out.

  “This is a joke, yes?” Peter checked, before going off into peals of laughter.

  “Yes, an hilarious joke,” Sinclair agreed, without any slight trace of a smile, as he put his spectacles back on.

  “Is it really necessary to wear them at night? The sun, surely, does not blind you in a dark room,” I said.

  “No, but your radiance, Miss Ford, does,” he repl
ied, bowing deeply.

  It was a weasel answer. His naked eyes showed no sign of strain, no bloodshot quality, no squinting, nothing but a healthy luster. The only other reason for wearing dark glasses was concealment, but from whom? For anyone who knew him, the spectacles were hardly enough disguise, and there was no need for any concealment from those of us who did not know him before. Surely he was Welland Sinclair. He had gone to Wight to visit with cousins; St. Regis had written verifying his credentials.

  I was careful to get upstairs before Sinclair left, for I had no desire to be alone at night with Pierre. Aunt Loo’s lights still burned, so I stopped a moment to chat. During our brief coze, I asked her if she had ever met Welland Sinclair before his coming here.

  “Once, some years ago. The Sinclairs were not infatuated with Edward’s marriage to me, and never came to see us. We visited St. Regis one summer at Tanglewood—the old St. Regis, not the present one. We stayed a month, met them all. Welland was around, but only a boy. He was thirteen or fourteen, home from school with his cousin Hadrian, who is the present St. Regis. I could not positively say I recognize him, for he only wore clear spectacles then, you know, but there is a familiar took to the fellow. St. Regis mentioned in his letter that Welland would be wearing dark glasses. The boy is Welland, Valerie, whatever you may think. Pure Sinclair. There is no faking that Roman nose. They all have it, including my Edward. I’m sure St. Regis sent him to spy on me.”

  I let her exhort a while on this old familiar theme before taking my leave.

  Chapter Eleven

  It rained the next day. I spent the morning writing, like Aunt Loo. My writing did not take place in her scriptorium, but in my own room. Its purpose was to inform my parents and sisters how I was going on at Troy Fenners. As so often happens with our family letters, I went in detail into all the irrelevancies, and said nothing of the matters that really interested me. A stark announcement that Loo spent her time trying to communicate with the spirit of Edward would have Papa sending for a straitjacket, or a minister of the church, while any reference to her being poor would probably have brought Papa pelting down upon us in person. I told them about Nancy and the whisky and Dr. Hill, and to tease my sisters a little, told them all about Pierre except that he was a midget. I also mentioned St. Regis’s cousin being nearby, and that he was engaged.

  Pierre was prowling the halls, waiting for me to finish my letters that he might go for a walk in the rain. He assured me this would be very romantic. He was too impatient to wait the necessary hour and in the end went to visit some local businessman whom I assume had a pretty daughter.

  With free access to the rest of the house, I did a bit of exploring. One viewing of a secret passage was not enough; I went through it again, then to the feather room, next to the gallery to check Uncle Edward’s picture out against the ghost who had danced across the air the night before. My memories of Sir Edward were hazy, for I had not seen him in several years, at which time I was a mere child. The picture was very like the ghost. Even the pose was suspiciously similar. Uncle Edward was painted from the waist up, wearing a red hunting jacket, and looking rather stern. I remembered him as a happy, laughing man, much older than the gentleman in the picture. While I was there, I had a look at his first wife. She was a haughty-looking lady, with yellow hair and a sulky mouth. Petulant, I believe, is the proper word to describe her expression.

  By noon the rain had let up. Aunt Loo had company coming to call, some neighborhood ladies who had been invited to make my acquaintance. One of them thought she had been to school with my mother, and another claimed to be some kin through her husband. The former asked me if I spoke French, and if I thought I would be happy living in France. She was under the delusion that I had come to make a match with St. Clair, you see. I wondered that she made so many broad hints regarding our relative sizes, till I learned she had a small daughter to be disposed of herself. Once I let her know Pierre was nothing more than a distant connection to me, nothing romantic in the air, she became much friendlier. She invited me to call on Sharon, and bring my cousin with me if I liked. They would be happy to see us. I think all the same they would not have been nearly so happy to see me, unattended by Pierre, land at their door. No definite date was set for the visit, which I had no intention of making. Let Sharon do her own running.

  Night finally came, with the visit to the gatehouse to be made. As I was wearing my second-best bronze crepe gown, I declined to walk across the park with Pierre. We all went in Auntie’s carriage. Pierre, deprived of the walk, sat beside me and made do with a furious mauling of my fingers along the way.

  Our host awaited us in the parlor of the gatehouse. While he made us welcome and showed us to our seats, I was busy to locate in my head the room I meant to visit while the others séanced. I was happy to see there was no surfeit of servants about.

  “Who takes care of you here, Mr. Sinclair?” I asked, to see if I could count up menial heads, and try to discover where they might be. I was worried about his valet.

  “I have only the one woman who cooks and cleans, and of course my valet, who also acts as groom.” The cook was no problem. I trusted that even a bachelor would present us with some token tray of food after inviting us down for the evening. “I am sorry I did not bring a real groom with me. My Diablo has developed a touch of colic. Napier is with him now, but he is not so good with horses as St. Regis’s stablehands.”

  This was sweet music to my ears. Much as I admired Diablo, I hoped he would not make a speedy recovery.

  “I hope you will not be bored here alone during the sitting,” he went on politely.

  “I will sit with Valerie,” Pierre offered at once.

  “Nonsense. I enjoy to sit quietly and read. Mr. Sinclair will provide me some literature.”

  “What a wretched host I am!” Sinclair exclaimed. “I should have got you some ladies’ magazines in the village. I thought you might like to play the pianoforte while we are out, or perhaps you would bring your embroidery with you.”

  I never could decide which of those two pastimes was the more irksome. I rather think it is the embroidery. Once a wretched execution at the piano is finished, there is no embarrassing evidence save the memory, whereas needlework lingers for years, being trotted out for admiration by a proud mama, or a spiteful sister. “The newspapers will be fine,” I said.

  “I shall leave a decanter of wine and a plate of biscuits,” he offered.

  “I don’t spend every spare moment eating. It just looks that way.”

  “Ladies always like a sweet to nibble on. I know Mary does.”

  “My taste differs from Mary’s,” I answered.

  He was bright enough to read the intended disparagement of her taste in gentlemen into my words, and good-natured enough to smile over it. “Touché, Valerie. An excellent hit. I am cut to the quick.”

  “Would it disturb the séance if I did a little looking about the house while I am alone? Auntie tells me she believes there is a secret passage in it, as there is at her own place.”

  “What—a secret passage at Troy Fenners?” he asked, excitement lending a sharp tone to his words. “I didn’t know that. How interesting. You must show it to me.”

  “Oh, yes, a marvelous long one, but it is not very scary. It is painted green.”

  “Where is it? What room is it in—the feather room?”

  “No, it connects the main saloon with Auntie’s bedroom. The master bedroom it is that she uses.”

  “Just the one passage?”

  “I believe so. There is also an oubliette in the cellar. She is thinking of having it shored up. Imagine!”

  “She mustn’t! This is monstrous good news. St. Regis will be delighted. He dotes on secret passages and oubliettes. He is a bit of a romantic, you know.”

  “That was not my impression of him. Auntie does nothing but scold of his interfering.”

  “Does she indeed!” he exclaimed, indignant on his employer’s behalf. I recollected that the nephew
was a spy for his lordship, and changed the subject back to the one I wished to pursue.

  “Certainly, look around if you like, but there are no secret passages here. I’ll have Mrs. Harper show you about, if you like.”

  “I would not dream of disturbing her. I made sure she would be busy preparing something for us to eat after the séance.”

  “I am happy to see you do occasionally take a bite,” he reminded me. “It would be a pity for that fine figure to melt away.”

  Before I could think of a sharp retort, the door knocker banged, announcing the arrival of Madame Franconi and her husband. I really don’t know why the man bothered to come with her. She made the trip in her client’s carriage and was taken home in it. He did not participate in the sittings but just disappeared to the kitchen, where he would feel most at home.

  My charms did not rate a single glance from the host once Madame arrived. Before long, the group went to the room chosen for the show, while I dashed to the staircase, grabbing up a brace of candles from the hall table, for the upstairs was in complete darkness. I had not the least difficulty in locating either the room or the black metal box under the bed. Getting it open was something else. I had to make a rapid scramble through three chambers before finding a ring of keys sitting on top of a dresser in Sinclair’s room. I was curious enough about the man that I took a close look at the place while I was there.

  There was no manuscript of his treatise, nor any reference books on the subject of ghosts. There was no framed picture of Mary either, as I expected to see in an adoring fiancé’s chamber. No letters to or from her. The golden locket, mentioned as being always carried next his heart, was tossed into a leather jewelry case, on top of a welter of watch fobs and tiepins. There was a handsome set of brushes bearing a crest that was probably that of St. Regis. The cousin was kind, indeed generous. They looked like gold-backed brushes, but might have been vermeil or even brass.