Dance with the Devil

CHAPTER 8

Lydia was in an exceptionally cheerful mood at lunch, quite as if she had never heard a single word about the devil worshipers who had defiled her father's church, and as if the confrontation the evening before between her and her son had never taken place. She and Katherine ate lunch alone in the smallest of the three dining rooms: cottage cheese and cinnamon, fruit salad and English muffins, all light but filling.

Katherine did not mention the bonfire or the things she had found during her morning inspection, but she was coincidentally afforded the opportunity to learn how many people had keys to the mansion. At the very beginning of the meal, Lydia handed her a set of keys to all the main locks in the house and said, “Now you can come and go as you please.”

“I'll guard them well,” Katherine said, tucking them immediately into her purse.

Lydia laughed. “Actually, if Yuri didn't insist, we'd probably have the doors standing open all the time. Locks are a bother in a town the size of Roxburgh where your criminals are numbered on one hand — and are usually nothing more serious than chronic drunkards. As it is, we're always having to order new sets of keys to hand out to friends.”

“People outside the household have keys to the doors?” Katharine asked, trying to keep her voice light so that the question would seem more like conversational banter than anything more serious.

“My, yes!” Lydia said. “I have a couple of friends that knew my husband when he was alive, and I see they have keys so they can use the books in the library even when the household is closed up for our spring and fall holidays. Then, half a dozen or so of Alex's friends have keys so they can use the projection room or the library or the pool while we're gone. We take three weeks off in May and three in September, to travel.”

“I see,” Katherine said. Eight keys outside the household. Even if those eight people did not share their keys with others, there were now thirteen suspects who had easy access to the mansion, thirteen including the family and servants who could have been at that bonfire the night before. “Do you think that's wise?” Katherine asked.

“To give out keys?”

“Yes.”

“My dear, don't start talking at me like Constable Cartier. I've had enough of him this morning!”

“How did it go in town?”

“Tooth and nail,” Lydia said, chuckling. “He would have preferred to have a free reign on who would be earning the overtime money I've put up for increased patrols. Interestingly enough, he already had every man on both sides of his family listed for duty. I had to straighten him out on that, but now I think well actually get some good men working. If you can imagine, he even had his ninety-eight-year-old grandfather listed for six hours overtime duty a night!”

“Sounds like you need a more reliable constable,” Katherine said, grinning.

“Cartier is fine,” Lydia said. “He is not particularly clever. But he can handle the drunks and the fist-fights, and he can organize a strawberry festival in the square with more aplomb than anyone I can imagine. In this case, he saw a chance to benefit by the community's need, but he was properly embarrassed and penitent when I helped him to see the light.” She chuckled again, having obviously enjoyed the morning.

They finished lunch and retired to the library where Lydia looked over the day's mail she had picked up while in town. She dictated two personal notes and signed three blank checks which Katherine was to fill out and mail in payment of bills received. While Katherine was working, Lydia read from a novel she had bought a week ago and was just now getting around to. Afterwards, they talked, mostly about books, until Lydia went upstairs for a pre-dinner nap.

“Dinner will be earlier tonight, at six-thirty,” she said before she left. “Some of Alex's friends are due for cocktails and conversation in the recreation room at eight. Alex asked me to invite you in his behalf.”

“I'm afraid I'd be out of place—”

“Nonsense,” Lydia said. “I am not going, because I would certainly be out of place in a roomful of energetic young people. But I know Alex would be hurt if you did not attend.”

“All right,” she said.

“Don't be glum about it,” Lydia said. “They're a likeable bunch and easy to get to know. It won't take you long to break the ice.”

Katherine said, “Are these the friends who have keys to Owlsden?”

“Why do you ask?” Lydia inquired, a puzzled frown on her face.

Katherine realized that her approach had not been nearly so subtle as she would have liked — had not been subtle at all, in fact. She said, in an effort to qualify her curiosity, “I just wondered if these were Alex's very best friends…”

Lydia accepted that as sufficient explanation. “Oh, I'd say most of these kids have keys,” she said. “But I never thought that they might regard them as status symbols, signs of favor or what-have-you. Perhaps Alex will have to hand out a larger number of keys in order to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. It's silly that such a thing could be considered a sign of special favor instead of a convenience, but I can see that some people might be upset at remaining — unkeyed.”

After Lydia had gone upstairs to take her nap, and after Katherine had finished her secretarial chores— addressing envelopes for the letters she had written, filling out checks and balancing the figures in the household accounts ledger — she went looking for Yuri and discovered that he was in town on business. She was irritated at not being able to tell him about the footprints and about her suspicions that unwanted persons had entered the house during the night, then decided that suppertime would be soon enough.

The information was not that urgent, after all.

“—has no less than five and no more than twenty years to do something about the population problem.”

“Nothing will be done.”

“I agree. Nothing will be done until it's too late for—”

“You're expecting too much of the world leaders when you suppose they're even going to let us all survive long enough to face a desperate population problem. I tell you that—”

Katherine sat in a large, brown crushed velvet easy chair near the fireplace in the recreation room, listening to Alex's friends as they argued about a handful of the world's problems as if they actually had some special sort of answers for them. But that was the bad part of it: they had no answers. All they had was a deep-seated pessimism, always expecting the worst, making gloomy predictions of doom. She did not like them, chiefly for this reason.

Besides Alex and herself, there were four other men and two women in the cozy room, some holding glasses of wine, some eating the hors d'oeuvres that Patricia had placed out for them, some just sunken into the heavily-padded furniture, as if they would never rise up again. Nearest Katherine, on a two-seat divan, were Nancy and Alton Harle, a young married couple who were both dark and quiet except for occasional comments about as pessimistic as anything one could imagine. They had whispered conversations together, smiled a lot, but still managed to come off like ravens bearing news of death. On the divan right after them were Leo Franks and his girl friend, Lena Mathews. He was tall and slim, she short and blonde and quite pretty. They were the most talkative of the lot and held the strongest political opinions, some of which Katherine did not even understand — and didn't think she wanted to. The last two guests were Bill Prosser and John Kline, both of whom had been in Alex's high school graduating class. The group was volatile, quick to react to one another, almost rowdy. She supposed that they had made a sincere effort to include her in everything they talked about, but she did not feel a part of them at all. She felt like a stranger. Whenever she spoke up, it was to make an optimistic observation to counter their unrelieved scorn for the condition and future of the world. Though they listened politely and sometimes even picked up on one of her suggestions and elaborated on it, she had the distinct impression they were only humoring her — that their own bleak outlook on life had not been touched at all by her arguments.

During a lull in the conversation when wine glasses were being re-filled, Lena Mathews asked, “You graduated from Lydia's old school?”

For some reason, it seemed to Katherine that the Mathews girl made her alma mater sound antiquated and out of date. Still, being polite, she smiled and said, “Yes, but not the same graduating class.”

Everyone laughed appreciatively.

“What was your major?” Bill Prosser asked.

“Literature.”

“Liberal arts?”

“Yes.”

Patricia brought in a fresh tray of hors d'oeuvres, bringing with her another conversational lull.

As she left, Nancy asked, “What sort of things do you like to read?”

“Mysteries, love stories, anything,” Katherine said.

“I'm partial to ghost stories, novels about the supernatural,” Nancy said.

“I like those too.”

Katherine sipped her wine. Except for Nancy and her, everyone was silent and still, as if waiting for something. She had the distinct impression that the conversation was building to a pre-planned point.

Nancy said, “Devils and demons, witches and hideous things that crawl around in the night. All of that junk gets to me, for some reason — especially since these crazy Satanists have been operating around Roxburgh.”

Lena Mathews came in now, as if picking up her lines in a carefully rehearsed play. Or was that just Katherine's imagination. “I guess you've heard all about that ugly stuff.”

“A good bit of it, yes,” Katherine said.

“What do you think of it?”

“Excuse me?”

Lena said, “Do you think they really do summon up the devil?” She had come forward in her seat a little, holding her glass of wine in both hands, her eyes curiously alight.

“Impossible,” Katherine said.

“Still,” Lena said, settling back again, “if you believe in the Christian God, like we do, don't you also have to admit the existence of a Devil?”

“Perhaps,” Katherine said. “But though I'm Christian, I can't summon God when I want to. I doubt that the Satanists would have any more luck in summoning their master.”

A few of them laughed and applauded.

“Good point!” Alton Harle said.

Lena sighed and said, “But maybe the Satanists know the proper chants and all of that ritual stuff.”

“That doesn't make sense, though. Why should they know the proper magic words to summon up the Devil when no one knows the proper magic to call up God?” Katherine asked. “If one set of data exists, then the other should be as easily accumulated, don't you think?”

The room seemed to have gotten stuffy, the air still and thick and too warm.

Katherine put down her glass of wine and decided not to drink any more of it tonight.

“I guess so,” Lena admitted. “But you have probably just ruined any more supernatural novels I might pick up. They always seemed so real and spooky before. I guess, to continue enjoying them, I'll just suspend my critical judgment and let my emotions carry me away.”

“As usual,” John Kline said.

Everyone laughed, and that started them off on a new topic. The tension that had lain just below the surface while they had discussed Satanism dissipated in an instant.

Katherine found herself sipping the wine that she had said, only a short time ago, she did not want any more of. She frowned and put it down again.

The room was still stuffy, perhaps stuffier.

She remembered, suddenly, that she had not yet seen Yuri, had not had an opportunity to tell him about the footprints leading to Owlsden from the site of the devil's dance. She felt uneasy about being the only one with that information.

Paranoia…

She looked around at Alex's friends, but she found her judgment had not changed. Gloomy pessimists, a bunch of fault-finders. She did not care for them at all.

And she could not escape the nagging certainty that the whole conversation about Satanists had been carefully planned, that they had been…

Been what? Testing her?

Yes. It seemed almost as if they had posed a number of carefully worded test questions to ascertain where her sympathies lay, if she put any credence at all in superstitions.

But why?

It was as if they were feeling her out to see if she would like to—

“Don't you agree, Katherine?” Alton Harle asked.

She looked up, surprised that she had completely lost the thread of the conversation.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I seem to be wool gathering. I've had a very long day, and I suppose I should be getting to bed.”

“It's only eleven,” Harle said.

“Yes,” Bill said. “We don't really get moving around here until after midnight.”

And what did that mean? Katherine wondered. Did it imply that these people were somehow connected to the cultists whose ceremonies began after the witching hour? Or did it mean nothing whatsoever, merely an unfortunate coincidence?

“Stay, Katherine,” John Kline said. “It's so pleasant to have a fresh point of view for a change.”

“Just the same,” she said, standing, “I really should turn in now.”

“Next week, we'll get together again,” Alex said.

“How could we survive in this backwoods place if we didn't?” Alton Harle asked.

Goodbyes were said quickly. In a moment, Katherine was standing in the main corridor with the door closed behind her. The air was still heavy and unpleasant. She had a sudden urge to lean with her ear against the door and hear if they were talking about her. Realizing how crude this compulsion was, she walked swiftly towards the main stairs before she could give in to it.

We don't really get moving around here until after midnight …

Do you think they really do summon up the devil, Katherine…?

Maybe the Satanists know the proper chants…

In her room, with the door locked after her, she remembered that she had yet to speak to Yuri. She reached for the bolt latch, then thought about prowling the many dark rooms of the mansion in search of him. It could wait. She could talk to him in the morning.

We don't really get moving around here until after midnight…

She undressed, put on her pajamas and got into bed. At first, she was going to let the bedside lamp burn. Then, when she realized that she must have soaked up some of the gloomy thinking that permeated the conversation in the recreation room, she reached out angrily and snapped the light off.

The darkness was not so bad at all. In fact, having overcome the momentary fear, she felt a great deal better. Aside from finding the prints in the snow, and aside from Alex's party, the day had been wonderful. More credits than debits. Tomorrow would be even better. She was sure of that…