Lasher

Nine

HE HAD ASKED them to gather in the library. The little brown portable gramophone was in the corner and that splendid necklace of long pearls, and the little packet of pictures of Stella and Ancient Evelyn when they had been young together. But he didn’t want to talk about that now. He had to talk about Rowan.

It made Mona happy that these things had been found, very happy, in the middle of her grief for the death of Gifford, but Mona was not his concern. He was suffering agonies over his indiscretion with Mona; well, one minute he was, and the next he had other things to think about. Like that two months had passed, and he had lived in this house like one of its ghosts, and that was over, and he had to search for his wife.

They had just come back from Ryan’s house, from the two hours of drinking and talking after Gifford’s funeral. They had come back to the house-come for this conference, and come merely to be with each other a little longer, crying for Gifford as it was the family custom to do.

All during last night’s wake and the funeral today he had seen the looks of amazement on their faces as they shook his hand, as they told him he looked “so much better,” as they whispered about him to one another. “Look at Michael! Michael’s come back from the dead.”

There was the awful raucous shock of Gifford’s untimely death on the one hand-a perfect wife and mother removed from life, leaving behind a brilliant and beloved lawyer husband and three exquisite children. And then there was the shock that Michael was OK, that the legendary abandoned husband, the latest male victim of the Mayfair legacy, was not actually wasting away. Michael was fine. He was up and dressed and driving his own car in the funeral procession. And he wasn’t short of breath, or dizzy or sick to his stomach.

And he and Dr. Rhodes had fought it out about the drugs in the foyer of the funeral home, and Michael had won. He wasn’t experiencing any bad withdrawal. He had emptied the bottles, and then put them away. Later he would check the labels. He would discover what he had been taking, but not now. The sickness was over. He had work to do.

And there was Mona always in the corner of his eyes, staring at him, and now and then whispering, “I told you so.” Mona with her slightly chubby cheeks and pale pale freckles, and her long rich red hair. No one ever called that kind of redhead a carrot top. People always turned to stare.

And then there was the house. How explain about the house? That the house felt alive again. That the moment he’d wakened in Mona’s arms, he’d known the old awareness-of something unseen, and present, and watching. The house creaked as it had before. It looked as it had before. Then of course there was the entire mystery of the music in the parlor and what he had done with Mona. Had his powers to see the invisible actually returned?

He and Mona had never talked for one moment about what had happened. Nor had Eugenia ever said a word. Poor old soul. Undoubtedly she thought him a rapist and a monster. And technically he was both, and he had apparently gotten away with it. But he would never forget the sight of her, so real, so familiar, standing before a small portable gramophone that had not been there, a gramophone that looked exactly like the one later found in the library wall.

No, they had talked about none of it yet. The death of Gifford had swept everything in its path.

Ancient Evelyn had held Mona in her arms all yesterday morning as Mona cried over Gifford, struggling to remember a dream in which she felt she had struck down her aunt, deliberately and hatefully. Of course it was all irrational. She knew that. They all knew that. Finally he had taken Mona’s hand, and said, “Whatever happened here, it was my fault, and you didn’t kill your aunt. It wasn’t you. It was a coincidence. How could what you were doing here kill her?”

And Mona, indeed, had seemed to snap back with the fierce exuberance of the very young-and something else too, a steadiness he had sensed in her from the beginning, the cold self-sufficiency of a drunkard’s child, of which he knew a great deal on his own account. She was no ordinary little girl, Mona. But it still had been wrong, a man of his age with a girl of thirteen. How could he have done it? But the strange thing was this-the house did not despise him for it, and it seemed that the house knew.

For the moment, however, the sin had been lost in the shuffle. Just lost. Last night, before the wake, Mona and Ancient Evelyn had taken out the books from the shelf and discovered the pearls and the gramophone and Violetta’s waltz on a shiny old RCA Victor record. The same gramophone. He had wanted to ask-but they had talked in rushed, excited voices. And Gifford had been waiting for them.

“We cannot play it now,” said Ancient Evelyn, “not with Gifford dead. Close the piano. Drape the mirrors. Gifford would have wanted it that way.”

Henri had driven Mona and Ancient Evelyn home to change for the wake, and then out to the funeral parlor. Michael had gone with Bea, Aaron, his Aunt Vivian and several others. The world had baffled him and confronted him and shamed him in its vivid beauty, the night alive with new flowers, trees laden with new leaves. The gentle nighttime of spring.

Gifford looked all wrong in the coffin. Short hair too black, face too thin, lips too red, too sharply pointed all over, even to the tips of her folded fingers, and her small breasts beneath the austere wool of her suit. One of those mannequins upon which they have skimped that does not wear clothes well in its stiffness, but makes even fashion look like junk. Frozen. You would have thought it was a deep-freeze, the coffin. And the Metairie funeral home was just like any one anywhere in the nation, carpeted in gray, with grand plaster ornament beneath a low ceiling, and packed with flowers and middling Queen Anne chairs.

But it had been a Mayfair wake for sure, with lots of wine and talk and crying, and several Catholic dignitaries come to pay their respects, and flocks of nuns like birds in their blue and white, and dozens of business friends and lawyer friends, and Metairie neighbors, who might as well have been blue-birds in their blue suits, also.

Shock, misery, nightmare. With faces of wax the immediate family had received each grieving relative or friend. And the world outside shone in spring splendor, whenever in the course of things he had stepped out the doors.

Even the simplest things blazed in Michael’s eyes, after his long illness, his long housebound depression, as if they’d just been invented-the foolish gold curlicues on the plaster, the moist and perfect flowers beneath the outside fluorescent light. Never had Michael seen so many children cry at a funeral, so many children brought to witness, to pray by the coffin, and to kiss the departed, laid out in Betty Crocker perfection, her peculiarities lost to clichés in this final public gesture, as she slept on her white satin bed.

He’d come home alone at eleven o’clock and gone through his clothes, packed up his suitcase and made his plans. He’d walked through the whole house. It was then that he fully sensed the difference, that it was inhabited again by something he could almost feel and see. No, that was not it. The house itself talked to him; the house itself responded.

Madness, perhaps, to think the house was alive, but he had known it before in mingled happiness and misery, and he knew it again, and it was better than the two wretched months of aloneness, of sickness, and drug fog, of being “half in love with easeful death” and the house in silence and without personality, witnessing nothing, having no use for him at all.

He’d stared a long time at the gramophone and the pearls that lay as carelessly as Mardi Gras beads on the carpet. Priceless pearls. He could still hear Ancient Evelyn’s strange voice, both deep and soft, and pretty all at once, talking on and on to Mona.

Nobody else seemed to know or care about these treasures from the compartment beneath the bookcase wall; they lay in the shadowy corner near the heap of books, like so much junk. Nobody touched them or noticed them.

Now was the conference after the funeral. Had to be done.

He would have had it at Ryan’s house if that had been easier for him. But Ryan and Pierce said they had to go to the office, they had no choice. They confessed they were tired of visiting now, and they’d come up to First Street on the way, they didn’t mind. They were very concerned about Rowan. He must not think they had forgotten about Rowan for one single moment. Poor wretched father and son.

In the sharp glare of attention, they looked no less perfect-Ryan with his tanned skin and smooth white hair and eyes that were so opaque and blue. Pierce, the son whom anyone in the world would want, brilliant, well-mannered, and so obviously shattered by the fact of his mother’s death. Didn’t seem it ought to happen this way; they should have had insurance against it. What was death to the country club Mayfairs, as Bea had put it? It had been more than kind of them to agree to come.

But Michael could not put this meeting off. He really couldn’t. He’d wasted so much time. He’d lived in this house like a spook since he’d come home from the hospital. Was it the death of Gifford, random and terrible and irrelevant, which had wakened him from his stupor? He knew it was not. It was Mona.

Well, they would gather now, and he would explain that he must take action regarding Rowan, he was packed and ready to go.

That is what they had to understand. He had been lying here under a curse, a man in a dream, hurt in his heart that Rowan had left. He had failed.

And then there had been the medal. The Archangel medal. It had been in Gifford’s purse in Destin. And when Ryan had put that in his hand, at graveside, no less, as they embraced, he had known. I must find Rowan. I must do what I was sent here to do. I must do what I want to do. I have to move. I have to be strong again.

The medal. Gifford had found it out by the pool some time ago, maybe even Christmas Day, Ryan wasn’t sure; she kept meaning to give it to Michael. But she was afraid to upset him with the medal. She’d been sure the medal was his. There had been blood on the medal. And here it was, all cleaned up and shiny. It had fallen out of her purse while Ryan was going through it. Little graveside chat, no more than a few seconds in the cool marble mausoleum with the noonday sun streaming in, and hundreds waiting to shake Ryan’s hand. “Gifford would want me to give you this without further delay.”

So what time was there to feel appropriately guilty about the little redhead who’d slept in his arms, who’d said, “Throw out those drugs. You don’t need them.”

He held the door open for them as they entered the library.

“Come in,” he said, feeling a little strange as he always did, being the master of this, their house, and gestured for Ryan and Pierce and Aaron Lightner to sit before the desk. He took his customary place behind it. He saw Pierce look at the little phonograph, and those long pearls, but they would get to that later on.

“Now, I know how bad this is,” he said to Ryan. Someone had to start things. “You buried your wife today. And my heart goes out to you. I wish I could let this wait. Everything should be made to wait. But I have to talk about Rowan.”

“Of course you do,” said Ryan immediately. “And we’re here to tell you what we know. We don’t know much, however.”

“I see. I can’t get a word out of Randall or Lauren. They say, Talk to Ryan, Ryan knows everything, and so I’ve asked you to come and tell me what has been going on. I’ve been like a man in a coma. I have to find Rowan. I’m packed and ready to go.”

Ryan looked amazingly composed, as if he’d thrown an inner switch to Business Mode; there was nothing bitter or resentful in his attitude. Pierce on the other hand was still crushed; he wore a look of inconsolable grief. It was doubtful he was hearing Michael’s words, or should even be here.

Aaron too had been devastated by Gifford’s death. He had taken Bea under his wing, and comforted her throughout the ordeal of the Metairie funeral parlor, and cemetery and mausoleum. He was worn and tired, and fairly miserable, and no amount of British decorum could hide it any longer. Then there had been Alicia, hysterical and hospitalized at last; Aaron had helped with that too, side by side with Ryan as he broke the news to Patrick that Alicia was malnourished and sick and must be cared for. Patrick had tried to hit Ryan. And Bea had made no secret anymore of her developing affection for Aaron; she had found a man she could depend upon, she said quietly to Michael as they drove home.

But now it all fell on this man, Ryan Mayfair, this lawyer who managed every little detail for everyone-and he didn’t have Gifford at his side anymore, to argue with him, to believe in him, to help him. And he was already back at work. It was too soon to know how bad it was going to be, Michael reasoned. It was too soon for this man to be really afraid.

“I gotta go,” Michael said. “It’s that simple. What should I know? Where am I headed? What’s the latest info we have on Rowan? What are our best leads?”

A silence fell. Mona came into the room, a white bow drooping appropriately over her locks, and dressed in a simple white cotton frock, the proper thing for children at a time of death. She shut the door to the hall behind her. She did not speak to anyone, and no one looked at her, and no one seemed to notice or care that she took the leather chair against the far wall, and that she looked across the dusty span of the room at Michael. Michael could not stop for this, and really, it didn’t matter. There was nothing going on that Mona didn’t know, or couldn’t hear. And for that matter, there was this secret between them that was a bond. The child fascinated him as much as she made him feel guilty; she was part and parcel of the excitement of his recovery and what he had to do now.

He had not woken up the morning after with the feeling “Who is the strange child in my bed?” Quite to the contrary. He sort of knew who she was, and knew that she knew him.

“You can’t go,” said Aaron.

The firmness of his voice caught Michael off guard. He realized he’d been drifting, back to Mona, and Mona’s caresses and the dreamy appearance of Ancient Evelyn in the street.

“You don’t know the full picture,” said Aaron.

“What full picture?”

“We didn’t feel we should tell you everything,” said Ryan, “but before we proceed, let me explain. We don’t really know where Rowan is, and we don’t know what’s happened to her. I’m not saying that anything bad has happened to her. That’s what I want you to understand.”

“Have you spoken to your doctor?” asked Pierce, suddenly coming alert and joining in, as if he meant to do business. “Does he say your convalescence is over?”

“Gentlemen, it’s over. I’m going to find my wife. Now tell me who’s heading the investigation to find Rowan. Who has the File on Rowan Mayfair?”

Aaron cleared his throat in eloquent British style, a soft traditional preamble to a speech, and then began.

“The Talamasca and the Mayfair family have been unable to find her,” said Aaron. “That is to say, a considerable amount of investigation and expense has resulted in frustration.”

“I see.”

“This is what we know. Rowan left here with a tall dark-haired man. As we told you, she was seen with him on the plane to New York. She was definitely in Zurich at the end of the year, and from there she went to Paris, and from Paris to Scotland. Later on she was in Geneva. From Geneva, she might have gone back to New York. We are not certain.”

“You mean she could be in this country again.”

“She could,” said Ryan. “We don’t know.” Ryan paused as though this was all he had to say, or simply to gather his thoughts.

“She and this man,” said Aaron, “were seen in Donnelaith, Scotland. There seems no doubt of that. In Geneva, eyewitness testimony isn’t as conclusive. We know she was in Zurich only because of the banking transactions she performed; in Paris, because she ran certain medical tests there which she later sent to Dr. Samuel Larkin in California. Geneva, because that is the city from which she called the doctor on the phone and from which she sent him the medical information. She ran tests at a clinic there, and those too were forwarded to Dr. Larkin.”

“She called this doctor? He actually spoke to her?”

This should have given him hope; this should have been something other than the sting it was. But he knew that his face was reddening. She called, but she did not call me. She called her old doctor friend in San Francisco. He tried to look tranquil, appreciative, open-minded.

“Yes,” said Aaron, “she called Dr. Larkin on February twelfth. She was brief. She told him she was sending a shipment of medical tests, specimens, samples, et cetera, that he was to take them to the Keplinger Institute for analysis. She told him she would contact him. That this was confidential. She indicated she might be interrupted at any time. She sounded as if she was in danger.”

Michael sat quiet, trying simply to process this, to realize what it meant. One moment his beloved wife had been making phone calls to another man. Now the picture was entirely different.

“This is what you didn’t want to tell me,” he said.

“Yes,” said Aaron. “And that the people we interviewed in Geneva and in Donnelaith indicated she might have been under coercion. Ryan’s detectives drew the same inference from these witnesses, though none of the people themselves actually used the word coercion.”

“I see. But she was alive and well when she spoke to Samuel Larkin. And that was February twelfth!” said Michael.

“Yes…”

“OK, what did these people see? What did the people at these medical clinics see?”

“No one at any of the clinics noticed anything. But we are talking about enormous institutions, you must realize. There seems little doubt that Rowan and Lasher slipped in, with Rowan impersonating a staff doctor or a technician as the situation required. She completed various tests and left before anyone in any of these places was the wiser.”

“And this you know from the material she sent this Dr. Larkin?”

“Yes.”

“Amazing, but a doctor could do that, couldn’t she?” Michael said. He tried to keep his voice steady. He didn’t want anyone taking his pulse. “Last proof that she was alive was February twelfth,” he said again. He was trying to calculate the date, the number of days. His mind went blank.

“There has been one other small bit of intelligence,” said Ryan. “And one which we do not like.”

“So tell me.”

“Rowan made huge bank transfers while she was in Europe. Huge transfers through banks in France and in Switzerland. But the transfers stopped at the end of January, and thereafter, only two simple checks were cashed in New York, on February fourteenth. We know now the signatures on these checks were forgeries.”

“Ah.” Michael sat back. “He’s keeping her prisoner. He forged the checks.”

Aaron sighed. “We don’t know…for certain. She was described by those in Donnelaith-and those in Geneva-as being pale, sickly. Her companion was said to have been very attentive; indeed, she was never seen when not in his company.”

“I see,” Michael whispered. “What else did they say? Tell me everything.”

“Donnelaith is an archaeological site now,” said Aaron.

“Yes, I knew that, I believe,” said Michael. He looked at Ryan. “You’ve read the Mayfair History?”

“If you mean the file from the Talamasca, yes, I did examine it but I think our concern here is simply this: where is Rowan and how can we reach her?”

“Go on about Donnelaith,” said Michael to Aaron.

“Apparently Rowan and Lasher had a suite in the inn there for four days. They spent considerable time exploring the ruins of the castle, the Cathedral and the village. Lasher talked to many, many people.”

“Must you call him by that name?” asked Ryan. “The legal name he used was different.”

“The legal name has nothing to do with it,” said Pierce. “Dad, please, let’s just get this information out. This Donnelaith, it’s an archaeological project apparently funded entirely by our family. I’d never heard of it till I read the Talamasca file. Neither had Dad. It was all administered by…”

“Lauren,” said Ryan, with a faint tone of distaste. “But that’s all beside the point. They haven’t been seen there since January.”

“Get on with it,” said Michael as gently as he could. “What did people see when they looked at them?”

“They are described as a woman five foot seven in height, very pale and in ill health, and an extremely tall man, possibly six and a half feet in height with luxuriant long black hair-both American.”

Michael wanted to say something, but his heart was rushing on him, no doubt of it. He felt the increased rate, and a little pain in his chest. He didn’t want anyone to know this. He took out his handkerchief, folded it and patted his upper lip. “She’s alive, she’s in danger, the thing is holding her prisoner,” he whispered.

“This is anecdotal material,” said Ryan. “It would not stand up in a court of law. We are conjecturing. The forged checks are another matter altogether. They make it incumbent upon the legacy to do something immediately.”

“The forensic statements are quite a puzzle,” Aaron said.

“Yes, that is a maddening kettle of soup,” said Pierce. “We sent forensic samples of the blood we found here to two different genetic institutes and neither will give us a straight answer.”

“They are giving us an answer,” said Aaron. “They are saying that the specimens must have been contaminated or tampered with because they pertain to a nonhuman species of primate which they cannot identify.”

Michael smiled bitterly.

“But what does this Dr. Larkin say? Rowan sent him the stuff direct. What does he know? What did she say to him on the phone? I have to know everything.”

“Rowan was agitated,” said Pierce. “She was afraid she might be cut off. She was desperate that Larkin receive the medical material and take it to Keplinger. The whole thing alarmed Larkin. That’s why he is cooperating with us. He is devoted to Rowan, doesn’t want to break her confidence, but he shares our concern for her.”

“This Dr. Larkin is here,” said Michael. “I saw him at the wake.”

“Yes, he’s here,” said Ryan. “But he’s reluctant to discuss the medical materials taken to the Keplinger Institute.”

“One can infer,” said Aaron quietly, “from what the doctor is willing to say that he has extensive test material on this creature.”

“Creature,” said Ryan. “And there we go off into fantasy land again.” He was angry. “We don’t know that this man is a creature or a…subhuman type, or anything else. And we don’t know what the man’s name is. We do know he is genial, educated, intelligent, and speaks rapidly with an American voice, and that the people who spoke to him at Donnelaith found him interesting.”

“What in the world has that got to do with it all?” demanded Pierce. “Dad, for the love of…”

Michael interrupted. “What did Rowan send to Dr. Larkin? What has the Keplinger Institute found out?”

“Well, that’s it,” said Aaron. “He won’t give us a complete report. But he might give it to you. He wants to talk to you. He wants to do genetic testing on you.”

Michael smiled. “Does he, now?”

“You’re right to be very suspicious of this,” said Ryan. He seemed to be vacillating between angry impatience and exhaustion. “People have approached us with genetic proposals in the past. We are perceived as a closed group. Consent to nothing.”

“Like the Mormons, or the Amish,” said Michael.

“Exactly,” said Ryan, “and there are many excellent legal reasons not to allow this sort of testing. And what does it have to do with the Curry family anyway?”

“I think we are straying from the point,” said Aaron. He looked meaningfully at Michael. “Whatever we call this companion of Rowan’s, he’s flesh and blood, and obviously passes for human.”

“Are you listening to your own words!” Ryan demanded, plainly furious.

“Of course I am,” said Aaron.

“I want to see the medical evidence myself,” said Ryan.

“How will you know how to interpret it?” Pierce asked.

“Just hold on,” said Ryan.

“Dad, we have to talk this out.”

Michael raised his hand for calm. “Listen, the medical tests aren’t going to determine anything. I saw him. I spoke to him.”

The room was silent.

He realized this was the first time he had uttered such a thing to the family since the entire incident had happened. He had never, never admitted to Ryan or to Pierce, and certainly never to any other Mayfair, what had happened on Christmas Day. He found himself glancing now at Mona. And then his eyes fixed on the man to whom he had told the whole tale-Aaron.

The others stared at him in clear and unembarrassed anticipation.

“I didn’t think he was six and a half feet tall,” said Michael, trying again to steady his voice. He ran his hand back through his hair, and stopped himself in the act of reaching for a pen he didn’t need. He closed his right hand into a fist, then opened it, splaying the fingers. “But then I was having a pitched battle with him when he was here. I’d say he was my height, six foot two at most. His hair was short. It was black, like mine. He had blue eyes.”

“Are you telling me,” Ryan asked with deceptive calm, “that you saw the man who went off with Rowan!”

“You said you actually did speak to him?” Pierce asked.

Ryan was clearly pale with anger. “You can describe or identify this person?” he asked.

“Let’s get on with what we have to do,” said Aaron. “We almost lost Michael on Christmas Day. Michael was unable to tell us anything for weeks. Michael was…”

“It’s OK, Aaron,” said Michael. “It’s OK. Ryan, what do you want to know? She left with a man. He was six feet two, he was thin, he was wearing my clothes. He had black hair. I don’t think he looks the same now. His hair wasn’t long. He wasn’t so tall. Do you believe me? Do you believe anything anybody’s told you? Ryan, I know who he is. So does the Talamasca.”

Ryan seemed incapable of responding. Pierce was also obviously stunned.

“Uncle Ryan, it was ‘the man,’ ” said Mona flatly. “For Chrissakes, get off Michael’s case. He didn’t let ‘the man’ through. It was Rowan.”

“Stay out of this, Mona!” Ryan flashed. It seemed he would lose control completely. Pierce laid his hand on his father’s hand. “What are you doing in here!” Ryan demanded. “Go on, out.”

Mona didn’t move.

Pierce gestured for her to be quiet.

“This thing,” said Michael, “our ‘man,’ our Lasher. Does he appear normal to other people?”

“An unusual man,” said Ryan. “That is the testimony we have. An unusual man, well-mannered, rather gregarious.” He paused as if he had to force himself to go on. “I have all the statements for you. And by the way, we combed Paris, Geneva, Zurich, New York. Tall as he is, he does not attract that much attention. The archaeologists at Donnelaith had the most contact. They said he was fascinating, a little peculiar, that he spoke very fast. That he had strange notions about the town and the ruins.”

“OK, I see what’s happened. She didn’t run away with him; he took her. He forced her to take him there. He forced her to get the money. She persuaded him to have these medical tests, then she got the stuff out when she could to this Dr. Larkin.”

“Not certain,” said Ryan. “Not certain at all. But the forgery gives us something legal to go on. Also the money deposited for Rowan in banks abroad has now disappeared. We have to act. We have no choice. We have to protect the legacy.”

Aaron interrupted with a little gesture. “Dr. Larkin said that Rowan said she knew the creature wasn’t human. She wanted him to study the genetic blueprint. She wanted to know specifically whether or not the creature could breed with humans, and with her in particular. She sent some of her own blood for analysis.”

There was an uneasy silence.

For the space of a second, Ryan looked almost panic-stricken. Then he drew himself up, crossed his legs, and laid his left hand on the edge of Michael’s desk.

“I, don’t know what I believe about this strange man,” Ryan said. “I honestly don’t. All this Talamasca history, this chain of thirteen witches, all this. I don’t believe it. That’s the frank truth. I don’t. And I don’t think most of the family believes in all this either.” He looked directly at Michael. “But this is clear. There is no place for you to go now to search for Rowan. Going to Geneva is a waste of time. We have covered Geneva. The Talamasca has covered Geneva. In Donnelaith we have a private detective on twenty-four-hour duty. So does the Talamasca, who are, by the way, very good at this sort of thing. New York? We’ve turned up no real leads, other than the forged checks. They weren’t large. They aroused no suspicion.”

“I see,” Michael said. “Where would I go? What would I do? Those are really valid questions here.”

“Absolutely,” said Ryan. “We didn’t want to tell you all we’d found out for obvious reasons. But you know now, and you know that the best thing is for you to stay here, to follow Dr. Rhodes’s advice, and to wait. It makes sense from absolutely every standpoint.”

“There’s one other thing,” Pierce said.

His father looked plainly annoyed, and then again too fatigued to protest. He raised his hand to cover his eyes, elbow resting on the edge of the desk.

But Pierce went on.

“You have to tell us exactly what did happen here on Christmas Day,” said Pierce. “I want to know. I’ve been helping with this all along. Mayfair Medical has been left in my hands. I want to continue with Mayfair Medical. Lots of the others want to continue. But everybody has to talk to everybody else. What happened, Michael? Who is this man? What is he?”

Michael knew he ought to say something, but for the moment it seemed impossible. He sat back, staring past them at the rows and rows of books, unable to see at this moment the stack heaped on the floor or the mysterious gramophone. His eyes moved almost furtively to Mona.

Mona had slumped back in the chair and slung one knee over the arm of it. She looked too old for the white funeral dress, which she had demurely crumpled between her legs. She was watching him with that level and somewhat ironic gaze-her old self, before the news of the death of Gifford.

“She left with the man,” Mona said very quietly and distinctly. “The man came through.”

It was her teenaged flat voice, bored with the stupidity of others and making no concession to the marvelous. She went on:

“She left with him. This long-haired guy, this is the man. This thin mutant guy, that’s who he is. The ghost, the Devil, Lasher. Michael had a fight with him out by the pool, and he knocked Michael into the water. There’s a smell out there that comes from him. And the smell is in the living room where he was born.”

“You’re imagining things,” said Ryan, so wrathfully that it was almost a whisper. “I told you to stay out of this.”

“When he and Rowan left,” said Mona, “she turned the alarm on so help would come for Michael. Or he did it himself, the man. Any moron can see now from all this-that that is what happened.”

“Mona, I am telling you to leave this room now,” said Ryan.

“No,” she answered.

Michael said nothing. He had heard all these words, but he could think of no way to respond to them. He wanted to say that Rowan had tried to stop the man from throwing him in the pool. But what was the purpose? Rowan had left him drowning in the pool, or had she? Rowan was being coerced!

Ryan made a small sound of exasperation.

“Allow me to say,” said Aaron with patience, “that Dr. Larkin has a great deal of information which we do not have. He has X rays of hands, feet, spinal cord, pelvis, as well as PET scans of the brain, and other such tests. The creature’s not human. It has a confusing genetic makeup. It is a mammal. It is a primate. It is warm-blooded. It looks like us. But it isn’t human.”

Pierce was staring at his father, as if afraid his father would come unglued at any moment. Ryan merely shook his head. “I’ll believe this when I see it, when that Dr. Larkin tells me himself.”

“Dad,” said Pierce, “if you look at the forensic reports, it’s the same picture. They said, contaminated, or tampered with, or spoiled, because otherwise it’s the blood and tissue of something with a nonhuman genetic makeup.”

“It’s what Mona said,” said Michael. His voice had dropped very low. He roused himself a little and looked at Ryan and then at Mona.

Something in Aaron’s manner was disturbing him, had been all along, but he didn’t know what it was, and he hadn’t known he was disturbed until he failed to look at Aaron.

“I came home,” said Michael, “and he was here. He looked like her. He looked like me. He might have come from…our child. Our baby. Rowan had been pregnant.”

He stopped. He let, out a long slow breath, shaking his head a little and then realizing he ought to go on.

“This man-thing was newborn,” he said. “He was very strong. He taunted me. He…he was moving like the straw man in The Wizard of Oz…clumsily, falling down, laughing, climbing back up. I should have been able to wring his neck. I wasn’t. He was much much stronger than he looked. I connected more than once. Should have pulverized a few facial bones. No damage except a cut. Rowan did try to stop the fight, but it wasn’t clear to me then…and it isn’t now…whom Rowan was trying to protect. Me? Or him.”

He hated hearing these words from his own mouth. But it was time to get it all out, for everything to be shared, the pain and the defeat included.

“Did she help him knock you in the pool?” Mona asked.

“Mona, shut up,” said Ryan. Mona ignored him utterly. She was looking at Michael.

“No, she didn’t,” said Michael. “And he shouldn’t have been able to do it alone. I’ve been decked once or twice in my life. It took big men and lucky punches to do it. He was thin, delicate, he was sliding on the ice out there; but he shoved me and into the pool I went. I remember him looking at me as I went down. He has blue eyes. He has very black hair. I told you that already. His skin is very pale, and kind of beautiful. At least it was then.”

“Like the skin of an infant,” said Aaron softly.

“And all of you are trying to tell me,” said Ryan nervously, anxiously, “that this is not a human being?”

“We’re talking science, man,” said Aaron, “not voodoo. This is a creature, so to speak, of flesh and blood. But its genetic blueprint is not human.”

“Larkin told you that.”

“Well, more or less,” said Aaron. “Let’s say I picked up the message from him.”

“Ghosts, spirits and creatures,” Ryan said. It was as though the wax he was made of was beginning to melt altogether.

“Come on, Dad, take it easy,” said Pierce, and for the moment sounded like the elder.

“Gifford told me that she thought the man had come through,” Ryan said. “It was the last conversation I ever had with my wife and she said…” He stopped.

Silence.

“I think we are resolved on one point, Michael,” said Aaron, with a touch of impatience. “That you remain here.”

“Yeah, I got that,” said Michael. “I’m staying. But I want to see all the reports. I want to become involved on every level. I want to talk to this Dr. Larkin.”

“There is one other very important matter,” said Aaron. “Ryan, for obvious reasons, did not consent to an autopsy being performed on Gifford.”

Ryan glared at him. Michael had never seen Ryan so full of blatant hostility. Aaron caught it as well, and he hesitated, very obviously at a loss for a moment, before he continued:

“But there is bloodstained clothing which can be tested.”

“For what?” demanded Ryan. “What has my wife to do with you? With any of this?”

Aaron couldn’t answer. He looked distraught suddenly. He fell quiet.

“Are you trying to tell me my wife had some doings with this thing? That he killed her?” Aaron didn’t answer.

“Dad, she had a miscarriage up there,” said Pierce, “and you and I both know-” The young man stopped himself but the blow was struck. “My mother was high-strung,” he said. “She and my father…”

Ryan didn’t reply. His rage had hardened into something worse. Michael shook his head before he could stop himself. Mona’s face was impassive as ever.

“There was evidence of a miscarriage?” Aaron asked.

“Well, she suffered a uterine hemorrhage,” said Pierce. “That’s what the local doctor said, some kind of miscarriage.”

“He doesn’t know,” said Ryan. “The local doctors said she died from loss of blood. That’s all they knew. Loss of blood. She started to hemorrhage and she didn’t or couldn’t call for help. She died on the sand. My wife was an affectionate and normal woman. But she was forty-six years old. It is highly unlikely she had a miscarriage. Indeed, it is almost a preposterous idea. She suffered from fibroid tumors.”

“Dad, let them test what they have, please. I want to know why Mother died. If it was the tumors, I want to know. Please. All of us want to know. Why did she have the hemorrhage?”

“All right,” said Ryan, in a seething rage. “You want these tests run on your mother’s clothes?” He threw up his hands.

“Yes,” said Pierce calmly.

“All right. For you then this will be done, for you and your sisters. We’ll run the tests. We’ll find out what triggered the hemorrhage.”

Pierce was satisfied, but clearly worried about his father.

Ryan had more to say. But he gestured for them to wait. He held his right hand in the air, and gestured again, tentatively, and then he began to speak.

“I will do what I can do under these circumstances. I will continue the search for Rowan. I will have the bloodstained clothes tested. I will do the sane and proper thing. I will do the honorable thing. The legal thing. The necessary thing. But I do not believe in this man! I do not believe in this ghost. I never have! And I have no reason to believe in it now. And whatever the truth of it ail, it has nothing to do with the death of my wife!

“But let us take up the matter of Rowan again. Gifford is in God’s hands. Rowan may still be in ours. Now, Aaron, how can we get this scientific data, or whatever it is, from the Keplinger Institute? That will be my first order of business. To find out how we can subpoena the material Rowan sent to Larkin. I’m going to the office now. I’m going to lay hands on that material. The designee of the legacy has disappeared, there may have been foul play, legal actions have already been taken regarding funds, accounts, signatures et al.-” He stopped as though he had gone as far as he could, staring forward, like a machine that had run out of electricity.

“I understand your feelings, Ryan,” said Aaron softly. “Even the most conservative witness can say that there is a mystery here revolving around this male creature.”

“You and the Talamasca,” Ryan whispered. “You infer. You observe, you witness. You look at all these puzzling things and you throw out an interpretation which fits with your beliefs, your superstitions, your dogmatic insistence that the world of ghosts and spirits is real. I don’t buy it. I think your history of our family is some sort of…some sort of dazzling hoax, if you want the truth. I don’t…I’m having an investigation of my own done, of you, if you want to know.”

Aaron’s eyes narrowed. There was a touch of bitterness, sourness, in his voice when he spoke.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

There was something very cross and bitter in his face suddenly. Repression of temper. Repression of confusion or ambivalence. Michael sensed it more strongly now than before. Aaron wasn’t himself, as they say.

“Do you have the clothing, Ryan?” Aaron asked, pushing on with this unpleasant request, as if he resented very deeply having to do it. He was taking out that resentment on Ryan. “Gifford’s clothes. What she was wearing when she died?”

“Goddamnit,” Ryan whispered. He picked up the phone. He reached his secretary downtown within seconds. “Carla,” he said, “Ryan here. Call the coroner in Walton County, Florida. Call the funeral parlor. What happened to Gifford’s clothes? I have to have them.”

He put down the phone. “Is there anything else?” he asked. “I’d like to go to the office. I have work to do. I have to go home early. My children need me. Alicia has been hospitalized. She needs me. I need to be alone for a while. I need to…I need to grieve for my wife. Pierce, I’d like it if we left now. If you came with me.” All this was too hurried.

“Yes, Dad, but I want to know about Mother’s clothes.”

“What in God’s name has this to do with Gifford!” Ryan demanded. “God, have you all lost your minds.”

“Just want to know,” said Pierce. “You know…you know Mom was scared to come here on Mardi Gras, she was…”

“No, don’t go on. Don’t do it,” said Ryan. “Let’s stick to what we have here. What we know. We’ll do whatever anybody wants us to do for any reason! And Michael, tomorrow I’ll make available to you everything we have on Rowan. Hell, I’ll make it available now. I’ll send you the records of the entire investigation.”

Once again, he picked up the phone and punched in the office numbers at the speed of light. He did not bother to say his name. He told the person on the other end, “Messenger over a copy of all the papers pertaining to Rowan. Yes, all that. The detectives, the Xeroxes of the checks, every scrap of paper we have on her. Her husband wants it. He has a right to see it. He’s her husband. He has…a right.”

Silence. He was listening.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

His face went blank and then it began to color, to redden, and as he hung up the phone, he turned his gaze on Aaron. “Your investigators picked up my wife’s clothes? They took them from the Walton County coroner’s office and from the funeral parlor? Who told you you could do such a thing?”

Aaron didn’t answer. But Michael could read the surprise and the confusion in his face. Aaron hadn’t known. He was shocked as well as humiliated. He seemed to be thinking it all over, and then he gave a little careful shrug.

“I’m sorry,” Aaron said at last. “I did not authorize anyone to do this. I apologize to you. I’ll see that everything is returned, immediately.”

Now Michael understood why Aaron was not himself. Something was happening within the ranks, something between Aaron and the Order. He had sensed it earlier but he hadn’t known how to interpret it.

“You damn well better!” said Ryan. “I’ve had enough of scholars and secrets and people spying on one another.” He stood up. Pierce stood also.

“Come on, Dad,” Pierce said, once again taking charge. “Let’s go home. I’ll go back to the office this afternoon. Let’s go.”

Aaron did not rise to his feet. He did not look up at Ryan. He was gazing off, and then he seemed to drift away from them, into his own thoughts. He was disgruntled, but it was worse than that.

Michael rose and took Ryan’s hand. He shook hands also, as he always did, with Pierce. “Thank you both.”

“It’s the least you could expect,” said Ryan disgustedly. “We’ll meet tomorrow, you and I, and Lauren and Randall. We’ll find Rowan if Rowan…”

“…can be found,” said Mona.

“I told you to shut up,” said Ryan. “I want you to go home,” Ryan said. “Ancient Evelyn is there alone.”

“Oh, yeah, somebody’s always there alone and they need me, don’t they?” Mona said. She brought her leg round and stood up, straightening the girlish cotton dress. The two loops of her white ribbon poked up behind her head. “I’ll go on home. Don’t worry.”

Ryan stood staring at her as if he could not endure any of this a moment longer. And then he moved towards her and took her in his arms and crushed her to his chest. There was an awful silence and then the more awful sound of his crying-the deep, choked, repressed sob of a man, full of shame as well as misery, a sound a woman seldom made, almost unnatural.

Pierce put his arm around his father’s shoulder. Ryan pulled Mona back, gave her a fierce kiss on the cheek, and then, squeezing her shoulder, let her go. She had gone all soft towards him, and squeezed him, and kissed his cheek, too.

He followed Pierce out of the library.

As the door opened and closed, Michael heard a chorus of voices from the hall-the hushed voice of Beatrice, and the deeper voice of Randall, and others he could not distinguish in the hubbub that followed.

He realized he was alone with Aaron and with Mona. And Aaron had not moved. Aaron had about him that listless look. Aaron seemed gravely disabled as Michael himself had been only days ago.

Mona had slunk into the corner, glowing like a little candle with her flaming hair, arms folded, not about to leave, obviously.

“Tell me your thoughts,” said Michael to Aaron. “This is the first time I’ve really asked you since…it happened. What do you think? Talk to me.”

“You mean you want my scholarly opinion,” said Aaron, with that same touch of sourness, his eyes veering off.

“I want your unbiased opinion,” said Michael. “Ryan’s refusal to believe in this whole thing is almost a religious stance. What is there you’ve been keeping from me?”

He should ask Mona to go, he should escort her out, turn her over to Bea, take care of her. But he didn’t do these things. He simply looked at Aaron.

Aaron’s face had tightened, then relaxed again. “I haven’t been deliberately keeping back anything,” he said, but the voice was not typical of him. “I’m embarrassed,” he said, looking Michael in the eye. “I was heading this investigation until Rowan left. I thought I was heading it even afterwards. But there are strong indications now that the Elders themselves are in charge, that the investigation has broadened without my knowledge. I don’t know who took Gifford’s clothing. That’s not the Talamasca style. You know it’s not. After Rowan’s disappearance, we asked Ryan’s permission to come to this house, to take specimens from the bloodstained rug, the wallpaper. We would have asked you, but you were not…”

“I know, I know…”

“That’s our manner. To go in the wake of disaster, to proceed with care, to observe, not to conclude.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations. We’re friends, you and me. You know that. But I think I can tell what’s happened. This must be a momentous investigation to your Elders. We don’t have a ghost now; we have a mutant being.” Michael laughed bitterly. “And the being is holding my wife prisoner.”

“I could have told you that,” said Mona.

Aaron’s utter lack of response was startling. Aaron was staring off, and deeply distressed and unable to confide about it because it was the business of the Order. Finally he looked again at Michael.

“You’re all right, you’re very well indeed. Dr. Rhodes calls you his miracle. You’re going to be all right. We’ll meet tomorrow. You and I, even if I am not admitted to the meeting with Ryan.”

“This file they’re sending over,” Michael said.

“I’ve seen it,” Aaron said. “We were cooperating with each other. My reports are in the file. You’ll see. I don’t know what’s happened now. But Beatrice and Vivian are waiting for me. Beatrice is greatly concerned about you, Mona. And then there is Dr. Larkin. He wants to talk to you, Michael. I’ve asked him to wait until tomorrow. He’s waiting for me now.”

“Yes, OK. I want to read the report. Don’t let Larkin get away, however.”

“Oh, he’s happy. He’s hitting every good restaurant in town and has been partying all night with some young female surgeon from Tulane. He’s not going to slip through our fingers.”

Mona volunteered nothing. She merely watched as Michael followed Aaron into the hallway. She remained in the door, and he was painfully conscious of her presence suddenly, of her perfume, of her red hair glowing in the shadows, of the rumpled white satin ribbon, of all of her and everything that had happened, and that people were leaving the house, and he might soon again be alone with her.

Ryan and Pierce were just getting out the front door. Mayfair farewells took so long. Beatrice was crying again, and assuring Ryan that everything would be all right. Randall sat in the living room, beside the first fireplace, looking like a great dark gray toad in the chair, his face baffled and pondering.

“Darlings, how are you both?” Bea asked, rushing to take Michael’s hand and Mona’s hand as well. She kissed Mona’s cheek.

Aaron slipped past her.

“I’m OK now,” said Mona. “What about Mom?”

“She’s sedated. They’re feeding her intravenously. She’ll sleep the night. Don’t you worry about her another moment. Your father is all right. He’s keeping company with Ancient Evelyn. I believe Cecilia is there now. Anne Marie is with your mother.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Mona disgustedly.

“What do you want to do, my darling? Shall I take you home? Will you come and stay with me for a while? What can I do? You can bunk in with me for the night, or sleep in the room with the rose wallpaper.”

Mona shook her head. “I’m fine.” She gave a careless disrespectful shrug. “I’m really just fine. I’ll walk up home in a little while.”

“And you!” Bea said to Michael. “Just look at you. There’s color in your cheeks! You’re a new man.”

“Yeah, seems so. Listen. I gotta think about things. They’re sending over the file on Rowan.”

“Oh, don’t read all those reports. It’s too depressing.” She turned to search out Aaron, who stood far away against the wall. “Aaron, don’t let him.”

“He should read them, my dear,” Aaron said. “And now I must go back to the hotel. Dr. Larkin is waiting for me.”

“Oh, you and that doctor.” She took Aaron’s arm and kissed him on the cheek as they proceeded to the door. “I’ll wait for you.”

Randall had risen to go. Two young Mayfairs in the dining room drifted into the hall. The good-byes were protracted, full of heartfelt words, and sudden sobs of grief, and confessions of love for Gifford, poor beautiful Gifford, kind and generous Gifford. Bea turned back, and rushed to embrace Michael and Mona with both arms, kissed them both, and then went down the hall, tearing herself away obviously. There was an intimacy in the way she took Aaron’s arm, in the way he guided her down the steps. Randall went out the gate before them.

Then they were all gone. Mona stood waving in the keyhole door, looking thoroughly incongruous now in the childish dress with its sash, though the white ribbon in her hair seemed an essential part of her.

She turned around, and looked at Michael. She banged the door shut behind her.

“Where’s my Aunt Viv?” Michael asked.

“She can’t save you, big boy,” Mona said. “She’s out in Metairie comforting Gifford’s other kids, with Aunt Bernadette.”

“Where’s Eugenia?”

“Would you believe I poisoned her?” Mona walked past him back down the hall, and into the library.

He followed her, adamant and full of righteous speeches and declarations. “This is not going to happen again,” he began, but she shut the library door as soon as he was inside, and she threw her arms around him.

He began to kiss her, his hands sliding over her breasts, and down suddenly to lift the cotton skirt. “This cannot happen!” he said. “I’m not going to let you. You’re not even giving me a fifty-fifty-”

Her soft sweet young limbs overwhelmed him-the ripe, firm feel of her arms, of her back, of her hips beneath the cotton. She was fiercely aroused, aroused as any grown woman he’d ever made love to. He heard a small sound. She had reached over and snapped the lock of the library door.

“Comfort me, big man,” she said. “My beloved aunt just died. I’m really a wreck. No kidding.” She stepped back. There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes. She sniffled, and looked as if she might break down.

She undid the buttons of the cotton dress, and then let it slip down around her. She stepped out of the circle of glowing fabric. And he saw her snow-white brassiere with its full cups of expensive lace, and the soft pale skin of midriff above the waistband of her half-slip. The tears spilt down again as they had before, her soundless crying. Then she rushed at him, and locked her arms around his neck, kissing him, and slipping her hand down between his legs.

It was a fait accompli, as they say. And then there was her faint whisper as they snuggled together on the carpet.

“Don’t worry about it.”

He was sleepy; he listed; he didn’t fall deep; he couldn’t; there was too much right there before his mind’s eye. He started humming. How could he not worry about everything? He could not close his eyes. He hummed and softly sang.

“Violetta’s waltz,” she said. “Just hold on to me for a little while, will you?”

It seems he slept, or sank into some sort of approximate peaceful state, his fingers on her sweaty adorable little neck, and his lips pressed to her forehead. But then the doorbell sounded, and he heard Eugenia in the hall, taking her time to answer, talking aloud as she always did, “On my way, I’m comin’.”

The report had been delivered. He had to see it. How to get it without revealing the sleeping child on the rug, he didn’t know. But he had to see it. It hadn’t taken a half hour for that file to get here. He thought of Rowan and he felt such dread that he couldn’t form words about it, or make decisions, or even reflect.

He sat up, trying to regain his strength, to shake off the languor of sex, and not see this naked girl on the carpet asleep, head cradled on a nest of her own red hair, her belly as smooth and perfect as her breasts, all of her luscious and inviting to him. Michael, you pig, that you could do this!

There was the dull vibration of the big front door slamming shut. Eugenia passed again, steady tread, silence.

He put on his clothes, and then combed his hair. He was staring at the phonograph. Yes, that was exactly the one he had seen in the living room, the one which had played for him the ghost waltz. And there sat the black disk on which the ghost waltz had been recorded many decades ago!

He was confounded for a moment. Trying to keep his eyes off the gleaming child, pondering and wondering that for a moment he had gone calm in the midst of all of it. But you did this. You could not stay at top pitch every moment. And so he thought, My wife may be alive; she may be dead; but I have to believe she’s alive! And she’s with that thing. That thing must need her!

Mona turned over. Her back was flawless and white, her hips for all their smallness proportioned like those of a little woman. Nothing boyish about her in her youth; resolutely female.

Tear your eyes off her, man. Eugenia and Henri are both around somewhere. You are pushing your luck. You are asking to be bricked up in the cellar.

There is no cellar.

I know that. Well, then the attic.

He opened the door slowly. Silence in the big hall. Silence in the double parlor. But there was the envelope on the hall table-where all mail and deliveries were placed. He could see the familiar embossed name of Mayfair and Mayfair. He tiptoed out, took the envelope, fearful that any moment Eugenia or Henri would appear, and then he went into the dining room. He could sit at the head of the table and read the thing, and that way, if anybody went near that library door, he could stop them.

Sooner or later, she would wake up and get dressed. And then? He didn’t know. He just hoped she didn’t go home, that she didn’t leave him here.

Rotten coward, he thought. Rowan, would you understand all this? Funny thing was, Rowan might. Rowan understood men, better than any woman he’d ever known, even Mona.

He switched on the floor lamp by the fireplace, then sat down at the head of the table and removed the packet of Xeroxes from the envelope.

It was pretty much what they’d told him.

The geneticists in New York and Europe had gotten a bit sarcastic about the specimens. “This seems to be a calculated combination of genetic material from more than one primate species.”

It was the eyewitness material from Donnelaith that killed him. “The woman was sick. She stayed in her room most of the time. But when he went out, she went with him. It was as if he insisted she go. She looked sick, very sick. I almost suggested that she see a physician.”

At one point, in Geneva, Rowan was described by a hotel clerk as being an emaciated woman of perhaps 120 pounds. He found that horrifying.

He stared at the Xeroxes of the forged checks. Forgery! It wasn’t even good. It was a great old-fashioned Elizabethan hand, by God, like something out of a parchment document.

Payee: Oscar Aldrich Tamen.

Why had he chosen that name? When Michael looked on the back of the check he realized. Fake passport. The bank clerk had written down all the information.

Surely they were following up that lead. Then he saw the law firm memorandum. Oscar Aldrich Tamen had last been seen in New York on February 13th. Wife reported him missing on February 16th. Whereabouts unknown. Conclusion? Stolen passport.

He slapped shut the manila folder. He put his hands up and leaned on them, and tried not to feel that little twinge in his heart, or to remind himself that it was very small, the pain, no more than a little nag, and he’d had it before, for years, hadn’t he?

“Rowan,” he said aloud as if it were a prayer. His thoughts went back to Christmas Day, to that last glimpse of her when she had torn the chain off his neck, and the medal had fallen.

Why did you leave me? How could you!

And then a terrible shame came over him, a shame and a fear. He’d been glad in his selfish little heart when they told him that demon thing had forced her, glad the investigators thought she was coerced! Glad that this had been declared in front of proud Ryan Mayfair. Ah, this meant his wily bride had not cuckolded him with the devil! She loved him!

And what in God’s name did this mean for her! For her safety, her fate, her fortune! Lord God, you selfish and despicable man, he thought. But the pain was so great, the pain of her going that day, the pain of the icy water of the pool, and the Mayfair Witches in his dream, and the hospital room, and the pain in his heart when he’d first climbed the stairs-

He folded his arms on the table in front of him, and, weeping silently, laid his head down against it.

He did not know how much time had passed. He knew everything, however. That the library door had not opened, and that Mona must still be asleep, and that his servants knew what he’d done, or else they would have been hovering around him. That twilight had come. That the house was waiting for something, or witnessing something.

Finally he sat back and saw that the light outside was that shining white of spring evenings, making all the leaves distinct, and that the golden light of the lamp gave a little cheer to the vast room with its old paintings.

A tiny voice reached his ears, singing, thin, distant. And gradually as he sat very still, he realized it was Violetta’s song, on the gramophone. This meant his nymph had waked; she was about, winding the old toy. He must rouse himself. He must talk to her about these mortal sins.

He stood up and made his way slowly through the shadowy room, and to the library. The music came strongly through the door, the happy song of Violetta from La Traviata. The waltz they’d played when Violetta was strong and gay, before she began to die so wondrously in operatic fashion. Light came from beneath the door, golden and soft.

She sat on the floor, half risen more or less, resting back on her hands, naked as before, her breasts loose but high placed and the color of baby skin. The nipples the pink of baby’s nipples.

There was no music. Had it been some trick of noise? She was staring at the window to the cast-iron porch outside. And Michael saw that it was open. It was what they called a pocket window, and the sash had been thrown up all the way to make a doorway out of it. The shutters, which he had kept closed all the time himself, rather liking to see slats of afternoon sun, were open, too. A loud noise sounded in the street, but it was only a passing car, jetting too fast through the narrow shadowy intersection.

She was startled; her hair was mussed, her face still smooth with lingering sleep.

“What is this?” he said. “Someone came in that window?”

“Tried to come,” she said. Her voice was foggy with sleep.

“Do you smell that smell?” She turned and looked at him, and before he could make an answer, she started to dress.

Michael went to the window and cranked shut the green blinds immediately. The corner beyond stood deserted or so dark beneath the oaks that it might as well have been. The mercury street lamp was like a moon face snared in the branches above. Michael brought down the sash, and turned the lock. Should have been locked all the time! He was furious.

“Do you smell it?” she said. She was dressed when he turned around. The room was all shadows now that he had shut out the corner light. She came to him and turned her back for him to tie her cotton sash.

“Goddamnit, who was it?” The stiff starched cotton felt good to his fingers. He tied the sash as best he could, having never done this for a little girl before, trying to make the bow pretty when he was finished with it. She turned around, staring past him at the window.

“You don’t catch that scent, do you?” She went past him and peered through the glass, through the slats. Then she shook her head.

“You didn’t see who it was, did you?” He had half a mind to go out there, charging through the garden, and around the block, to accost whatever strangers he might find, to search up Chestnut Street and down First until he found some suspicious person. “My hammer, I need it,” he said.

“Your hammer?”

“I don’t use a gun, honey. My hammer’s always been good enough.” He went to the hall closet.

“Michael, the person’s long gone. He was gone when I woke up. I heard him running away. I don’t think…I don’t know that he knew there was anyone in here.”

He came back. Something white was shining on the dark carpet. Her ribbon. He picked it up and absently she took it from him and fixed it in her hair with no need of a mirror.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I gotta go see my mother, CeeCee, I should have gone before now. She’s probably scared to death that she’s in a hospital.”

“You didn’t see anything at all?” he said.

He followed her out and down the hall.

“I caught that scent,” she said. “I think it was the scent that woke me up, and then I heard the noise of the window.”

How calm she was. He was in a blaze of protective fury.

He opened the front door, and went out first, to the edge of the porch. Anyone could have hidden anywhere out there, behind the oaks, across the street behind a wall, even low down among the big elephant ears and palms that crowded his own garden. My own garden.

“I’m going, Michael, I’ll call you later,” she said.

“You must be nuts, you think I’m going to let you walk off home like this in the dark? Are you crazy?”

She stopped on the steps. She had been about to protest, but then she too cast a wary eye on the shadows that surrounded them. She looked thoughtfully up into the branches and at the dark shadows of Chestnut Street. “I’ve got an idea. You follow me. Then when he springs out, whoever he is, you kill him with your hammer. You have your hammer?”

“That’s ridiculous. I’ll drive you home,” he said. He pulled her in and shut the door.

Henri was in the kitchen, just as he ought to have been, in white shirt and suspenders and drinking his whiskey from a white china cup so no one would know it. He put down the newspaper, and stood up. He would take the child home, of course. Or to the hospital? Certainly. Whatever Miss Mona wanted. He reached for his coat, which was ever ready on the chair behind him.

Michael walked out with them to the drive, distrustful of the darkness, and saw them safely to the car. Mona waved, a smear of red hair at the window. He felt an ache for her as they drove away, that he had let her go without a parting embrace, and then he was ashamed of it.

He went back inside, locking the kitchen door behind him.

He went back to the hall closet. His old tool chest was here, on the first floor under the stairs. This house was so big you had to have a tool chest for every floor of it. But these were his old tools, his favorites, and this was the claw hammer with the chewed-up old wooden handle, the one he had owned all his years in San Francisco.

A strange awareness came over him and he clutched it tight, and went to peer through the library window again. This had been his dad’s hammer. He’d taken it out to San Francisco when he was a boy, with all his dad’s tools. Nice to have something of his dad’s amid all the great carefully inventoried Mayfair wealth, just one simple tool or two. He lifted the hammer. Love to bash it through the burglar’s skull, he thought. As if we don’t have enough trouble in this house, and some bastard tries to break in the library window!

Unless…

He switched on the light nearest the corner and examined the little gramophone. Covered with dust. No one had touched it. He didn’t know whether or not he could touch it. He knelt down, put his fingers on the soft felt turntable. The records of La Traviata were in their thick old faded album. The crank lay beside the thing. It looked impossibly old. Who had made the waltz play twice now in this house, when this thing itself lay inert and dust-covered?

There was a sound in the house, a creaking as if someone was walking. Perhaps Eugenia. Or perhaps not.

“Goddamnit,” he said. “Son of a bitch is in this place?”

He set out at once to make a search. He covered the whole first floor room by room, listening, watching, studying the tiny lights in the control boxes of the alarm which told him if anything was moving in rooms beyond him. Then he went upstairs, and covered the second floor as well, poking into closets and bathrooms that he had not entered in all this time, and even into the front bedroom, where the bed was all made and a vase of yellow roses stood on the mantel.

Everything seemed all right. Eugenia was not here. But from the servants’ porch he could see the distant guest house in back, ail aglow as if there were a party going on. That was Eugenia. She always turned on all the lights. She and Henri swapped shifts now, and so this was her turn to be alone back there, with the radio playing in the kitchen and the television tuned to “Murder, She Wrote.”

The dark trees shifted in the wind. He could see the still lawn, the swimming pool, the flags. Nothing stirred but the trees themselves, making the lights of the distant guest house twinkle deceptively.

On to the third floor. He had to check every crevice and crack.

He found it still and dark. The little landing at the top of the stairs was empty. The street lamp shone through the window. The storage room lay with its door open, all empty shelves clean and white and waiting for something. He turned and opened the door of Julien’s old room, his own workroom.

The first thing he saw was the two windows opposite, the window on the right, beneath which Julien had died in his narrow bed, and the window on the left, through which Antha had fled only to fall to her death from the edge of the porch roof. Like two eyes, these windows.

The shades were up; the soft light of early evening flooded in on the bare boards and on his drafting table.

Only those were not bare boards. On the contrary, a threadbare rug lay there, and where his drafting table should have been was the narrow brass bed, which had long ago been moved out of here.

He groped for the light.

“Please don’t turn it on.” The voice was frayed and soft, French.

“Who the hell are you?”

“It’s Julien,” came the whispered response. “For the love of heaven. I am not the one who came to the library door! Come in now while there is still time, and let me talk to you.”

He shut the door behind him. His face was teeming with heat. He was sweating and his grip had tightened on the hammer. But he knew it was Julien’s voice, because he had heard it before, high high above the sea, in another realm, the very same voice, speaking to him softly and rapidly, putting the case to him, so to speak, and telling him he could refuse.

It seemed the veil would lift; he would see the shining Pacific again, his own drowned body on the heaving waves, and he would remember everything. But no such thing occurred. What occurred was infinitely more frightening and exciting! He saw a dark figure by the fireplace, arm on the mantel, long thin legs. He saw the soft hair, white in the light from the windows.

“Eh bien, Michael, I am so tired. It is so hard for me.”

“Julien! Did they burn the book? Your life story.”

“Oui, mon fils,” he said. “My beloved Mary Beth burnt every page of those books. All my writing…” His voice was soft with sad wonder, eyebrows rising slightly. “Come in, come closer. Take the chair there. Please. You must listen to me.

Michael obeyed, taking the leather chair, the one which he knew to be real, lost now among so many alien dusty objects. He touched the bed. Solid. He heard the creak of the springs! He touched the silken quilt. Real. He was dazed, and marveling.

On the mantelpiece stood a pair of silver candlesticks, and the figure had turned and, with the sharp sudden scratch of a match, was putting a light to the wicks. His shoulders were narrow but very straight; he seemed ageless, tall, graceful.

When he faced Michael again, the warm yellow light spread out behind him. Perfectly realized, he stood, his blue eyes rather cheerful and open, his face almost rapt.

“Yes, my boy,” he said. “Look at me! Hear me. You must act now. But let me speak my piece. Ah, do you hear it? My voice is getting stronger.”

It was a beautiful voice, and not a syllable was lost on Michael, who all his life had loved beautiful voices. It was an old-fashioned voice, like the cultured voices of those long-ago film stars he so cherished, the actors who made an art of simple speech, and it occurred to him in his strange daze that perhaps this was all more of his own fancy.

“I don’t know how long I have,” the ghost said. “I don’t know where I’ve been as I’ve waited for this moment. I am the earthbound dead.”

“I’m here, I’m listening to you. Don’t go. Whatever you do, don’t go!”

“If only you knew how hard it has been to come through, how I have tried, and your own soul has shut me out.”

“I’m afraid of ghosts,” Michael said. “It’s an Irish trait. But you know that now.”

Julien smiled and stood back against the mantel, folding his arms, and the tiny candle flames danced, as if he really were solid flesh and he had stirred the air. And solid enough he seemed in his black wool coat and silk shirt. He wore long trousers and old-fashioned button shoes, polished to a perfect luster. As he smiled, his gently lined face with its curling white hair and blue eyes seemed to grow ever more vivid.

“I’m going to tell my tale,” he said, as a gentle teacher might. “Condemn me not. Take what I have to give.”

Michael was flooded by an inexplicable combination of trust and excitement. The thing he had feared all this time, the thing which had haunted him, was now here, and it was his friend, and he was with it. Only Julien had never really been the thing to fear.

“You are the angel, Michael,” said Julien. “You are the one who still has a chance.”

“Then the battle isn’t over.”

“No, mon fils, not at all.”

He seemed distracted suddenly, woefully sad, and searching, and for one second Michael was terrified the vision would fail. But it only grew stronger, more richly colored, as Julien gestured to the far corner, and smiled.

There the small wooden box of the gramophone stood on a table at the very foot of the brass bed!

“What is real in this room?” Michael demanded softly. “And what is a phantom?”

“Mon Dieu, if I only knew. I never knew.” Julien’s smile broadened, and once again he relaxed against the mantel shelf, eyes catching the light of the candles, as he looked from left to right, almost dreamily over the walls. “Oh for a cigarette, for a glass of red wine!” he whispered. “Michael, when you can’t see me anymore, when we leave each other-Michael, play the waltz for me. I played it for you.” His eyes moved imploringly across the ceiling. “Play it every day for fear that I am still here.”

“I’ll do it, Julien.”

“Now listen well…”