The witching hour

Thirty-two

It had come into her mind sometime during the night: a half dream of hospitals and clinics, and magnificent laboratories, peopled by brilliant researchers …

And all of this you can do.

They wouldn’t understand. Aaron would and Michael would. But the rest of them wouldn’t because they didn’t know the secrets of the file. They didn’t know what had been in the jars.

They knew things but they didn’t know all the way back over the centuries to Suzanne of the Mayfair, midwife and healer in her filthy Scottish village, or Jan van Abel at his desk in Leiden, drawing his clean ink illustration of a flayed torso to reveal the layers of muscle and vein. They didn’t know about Marguerite and the dead body flopping on the bed, and roaring with the voice of a spirit, or Julien watching, Julien who had put the jars in the attic instead of destroying them almost a century ago.

Aaron knew and Michael knew. They would understand the dream of hospitals and clinics and laboratories, of healing hands laid upon sore and aching bodies by the thousands.

What a joke on you, Lasher!

Money was no mystery to her; she was not frightened by the legacy. She could already imagine to the limits that it might allow. She’d never been charmed by money as she had been by anatomy and microsurgery, by biophysics or neurochemistry. But it was no mystery. She’d studied it before, and she’d study it now. And the legacy was something that could be mastered like any other subject … and converted into hospitals, clinics, laboratories … lives saved.

If only she could get the memory of the dead woman out of the house. For that was the real ghost to her, not the ghosts whom Michael had seen, and when she thought of his suffering she could scarcely bear it. It was like seeing everything she loved in him dying inside. She would have driven all the demons in the world back away from him if only she’d known how to do it.

But the old woman. The old woman lay in the rocker still as if she would never leave it. And her stench was worse than the stench of the jars, because it was Rowan’s murder. And the perfect crime.

The stench corrupted the house; it corrupted the history. It corrupted the dream of the hospitals. And Rowan waited at the door.

We want in, old woman. I want my house and my family. The jars have been smashed and the contents are gone now. I have the history in my hand, brilliant as a jewel. I shall atone for it all. Let me in so that I can fight the battle.

Why were they not friends, she and the old woman? Rowan had only contempt for the evil, spiteful voice which had taunted Michael from the contents of the broken jars.

And the spirit knew she loathed it. That when she remembered its secretive touch, she loathed it.

Alone yesterday, hours before Michael had come, she had sat there, waiting for Lasher, listening to every creak and whisper in the old walls.

If you think you can frighten me, you are tragically mistaken. I have no fear of you, and no love either. You are mysterious. Yes. And I am curious. But that is a very cold thing for a scientific mind such as mine. Very cold. You stand between me and the things I could love warmly.

She should have destroyed the jars then. She should have never urged Michael to take off the gloves, and she never would again, of that she was certain. Michael couldn’t endure this power in his hands. He couldn’t really endure his memory of the visions. It made him suffer, and it filled her with dread to see him afraid.

It was the fact of the drowning that had brought them together, not these mysterious dark forces that lurked in the house. Voices speaking from rotted heads in jars. Ghosts in taffeta. His strength and her strength, that had been the origin of their love, and the future was the house, the family, the legacy which could bring the miracles of medicine to thousands, even millions.

What were all the dark ghosts and legends on earth compared to those hard and glittering realities? In her sleep, she saw the buildings rise. She saw the immensity. And the words of the history ran through her dreams. No, never meant to kill the old woman, the one awful flaw. To have killed. To have done something so wrong.…

At six o’clock, when her breakfast arrived, the newspaper came with it.

SKELETON FOUND IN FAMOUS GARDEN DISTRICT HOUSE

Well, that was inevitable, wasn’t it? Seems Ryan had warned her that they couldn’t quash it. Numbly, she scanned the several paragraphs, amused in spite of herself, at the gothic tale unfolding in a quaint old-fashioned journalistic style.

Who could argue with the statement that the Mayfair mansion had always been associated with tragedy? Or that the one person who might have shed light upon the demise of Texan Stuart Townsend was Carlotta Mayfair, who had died the very night that the remains were discovered, after a long and distinguished legal career?

The rest was an elegy to Carlotta, which filled Rowan with coldness and guilt.

Surely someone from the Talamasca was clipping this story. Perhaps Aaron was reading it in his rooms above. What would he write in the file about it? It comforted her to think of the file.

In fact, she was a lot more comfortable now than a sane person ought to be. For no matter what was happening, she was a Mayfair, among all the other Mayfairs; and her secret sorrows were tangled with older, more intricate sorrows.

Even yesterday when Michael had been smashing the jars and wrestling with the power, it had not been the worst for her, not by any means. She had him, she had Aaron, she had all the cousins. She wasn’t alone. Even with the murder of the old woman, she wasn’t alone.

She sat still for a long time after reading the story, her hands clasped on top of the folded newspaper, as rain came down hard outside, and the food on the breakfast table grew cold.

No matter what else she felt, she ought to grieve in silence for the old woman. She ought to let the misery coagulate in her soul. And the woman was going to be dead forever now. Wasn’t she?

The truth was, so much was happening to her, and so rapidly, that she could no longer catalog her responses; or even manifest any response at all. She passed in and out of emotion. Yesterday when Michael was lying on the bed, his pulse racing and his face flushed, she had been frantic. She had thought, If I lose this man, I’ll die with him. I swear it. And an hour after, she had broken one jar after another, spilling the contents into the white dishpan, and poking at it with an ice pick as she examined it, before handing it over to Aaron to be packed in the ice. Clinical as any doctor. No difference at all.

In between these moments of crisis, she was drifting, watching, remembering, because it was all too different, too purely unusual, and finally too much.

This morning, waking at four A.M., she had not known where she was. Then it all came back to her, the mingled flood of curses and blessings, her dream of the hospitals, and Michael beside her, and the desire for him like a drug.

Not his fault really that his every gesture, word, movement, or facial expression was electrically erotic to her, no matter what else might be going on. He was a sex object and delightfully oblivious to it, because in his innocence he didn’t really understand the greed of her desire.

Sitting up in bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, she had wondered if this wasn’t somehow worse for a woman than a man, because a woman could find the smallest things about a man violently erotic, such as the way his curly hair was mashed down now on his forehead, or the way it curled on the back of his neck.

Weren’t men a little more direct about things? Did they go mad over a woman’s ankle? Seems Dostoyevski said they did. But she had doubted it. It was excruciating for her to look at the dark fleece on the back of Michael’s wrist, to see his gold watch-band cutting into it, to imagine his arm later, with the white cuff rolled up, which for some reason made it even more sexy than when the arm was naked, and the flash of his fingers as he lighted his cigarettes. All directly genitally erotic. Everything done with a sharp edge, a punch. Or his low growly voice, full of tenderness, when he talked on the phone to his Aunt Viv.

When he’d been on his knees in that foul, ugly room, he’d been battling, striking out. And on the dusty bed after, he had been irresistible to her in his exhaustion, his large, strong hands curled and lying empty on the counterpane. Loosening his thick leather belt and the zipper of his jeans, all erotic, that tins powerful thing was suddenly dependent upon her. But then the terror had gripped her when she felt his pulse.

She’d sat with him for a long tense time, until the pulse returned to normal; until his skin had cooled. Until he was breathing in regular sleep. So coarsely and perfectly beautiful he’d been, the white undershirt stretched tight over his chest, just a real man and so exquisitely mysterious to her, with that dark hair on his chest and on the backs of his arms, and the hands so much bigger than hers.

Only his fear cooled her passion, and his fear never lasted very long.

This morning, she had wanted to wake him up by clamping her mouth on his cock. But he needed his sleep now after all that had happened. He needed it badly. She only prayed he had peace in his dreams. And besides she was going to marry him as soon as it seemed polite to ask him. And they had all their lives in the First Street house, didn’t they, to do things like that?

And it seemed wrong to do what she’d done several mornings with Chase, her old palomino cop from Marin County, which was roll over next to him, press her hips against his flank and her face against his suntanned upper arm, and squeeze her legs tightly together, until the orgasm ran through her like a wash of blinding light.

It wasn’t much fun to do that, either-nothing, in fact, compared to being tacked to the mattress by an adorable brute, with a little gold crucifix dangling from a chain around his neck.

He hadn’t even stirred when the thunder rolled overhead, when the crack came so loud and sudden that it was like guns tearing loose the roof.

And now, two hours later, as the rain fell, and the breakfast grew cold, she sat dreaming, her mind running over all the past and all the possibilities, and this crucial meeting, soon to begin.

The phone startled her. Ryan and Pierce were in the lobby, ready to take her downtown.

Quickly she wrote a note for Michael, saying she was off on Mayfair legal business, and would be back for dinner, no later than six. “Please keep Aaron with you and don’t go over to the house alone.” She signed it with love.

“I want to marry you,” she said aloud as she placed the note on the bedside table. Softly he snored into the pillow. “The archangel and the witch,” she said, even more loudly. He slept on. She chanced one kiss on his naked shoulder, felt gently of the muscle in his upper arm, enough to drag her right into the bed if she lingered on it, and went out and shut the door.

Skipping the fancy paneled elevator, she walked down the carpeted stairs, staring for a moment at smooth-faced Ryan and his handsome son as if they were aliens from another universe in their tropical wool suits, with their mellow southern voices, there to guide her to a spaceship disguised as a limousine.

The small quaint brick buildings of Carondelet Street glided past in a curious silence, the sky like polished stone beyond the delicate downpour, the lightning opening a vein in the stone, the thunder crackling menacingly and then dying away.

At last they came into a region of burnished skyscrapers, a shining America for two blocks, followed by an underground garage that might have been anywhere in the world.

No surprises in the spacious thirtieth-floor offices of Mayfair and Mayfair, with its traditional furnishings and thick carpet, not even that two of the assembled Mayfair lawyers were women, and one was a very old man, or that the view through the high glass windows was of the river, gray as the sky, dotted with interesting tugs and barges, beneath the rain’s silver veil.

Then coffee and conversation of the most vague and frustrating sort with the white-haired Ryan, his light blue eyes as opaque as marbles, speaking interminably it seemed of “considerable investments,” and “long term holdings,” and “tracts of land which have been held for over a century,” and hard-core conservative investments “larger than you might expect.”

She waited; they had to give her more than this; they had to. And then like a computer she analyzed the precious names and details when he at last began to let them slip.

Here it was, finally, and she could see the hospitals and the clinics shimmering against the dream horizon, though she sat there motionless, expressionless, letting Ryan talk on.

Blocks of real estate in downtown Manhattan and Los Angeles? The major financing for the Markham Harris Resorts worldwide hotel chain? Shopping malls in Beverly Hills, Coconut Grove, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach? Condominiums in Miami and Honolulu? And then once more references to the “very large” hard-core investments in treasury bills, Swiss francs, and gold.

Her mind drifted but never very far. So Aaron’s descriptions in the file had been completely accurate. He had given her the backdrop and the proscenium arch for this little drama to be fully appreciated. Indeed he had given her knowledge of which these clean-faced lawyers in their shining pastel office garments could not possibly dream.

And once again, it struck her as positively strange that Aaron and Michael had ever feared her displeasure for placing a tool of that power in her hands. They didn’t understand power, that was their problem. They’d never sliced into a cerebellum.

And this legacy was a cerebellum, wasn’t it?

She drank her coffee in silence. Her eyes ran over the other Mayfairs, who also sat there in silence, as Ryan continued drawing his vague pictures of municipal bonds, oil leases, some cautious financing in the entertainment industry and of late in computer technology. Now and then she nodded, and made a small note with her silver pen.

Yes, of course, she understood that the firm had managed things for over a century. That deserved a nod and a heartfelt murmur. Julien had founded the firm for such management. And of course she could well envision how the legacy was entangled with the finances of the family at large-“all to the benefit of the legacy, of course. For the legacy is first and foremost, but there has never been a conflict, in fact, to speak of a conflict is to misunderstand the scope … ”

“I understand.”

“Ours has always been a conservative approach, but to appreciate fully what I’m saying, one must understand what such an approach means when one is speaking of a fortune of this size. You might, realistically, think in terms of a small oil-producing nation and I do not exaggerate-and of policies aimed at conserving and protecting rather than expanding and developing, because when capital in this amount is properly conserved against inflation or any other erosion or encroachment, the expansion is virtually unstoppable, and the development in countless directions is inevitable, and you are faced with the day-to-day issue of investing revenues so large that … ”

“You’re talking billions,” she said in a quiet voice.

Silent ripples passed through the assemblage. A Yankee blunder? She caught no vibration of dishonesty, only confusion, and fear of her and what she might eventually do. After all, they were Mayfairs, weren’t they? They were scrutinizing her as she was scrutinizing them.

Pierce glanced at his father, Pierce who was of all of them the most purely idealistic and the least tarnished. Ryan glanced at the others, Ryan who understood the scope of what was at stake in a way perhaps that the others could not.

But no answer was forthcoming.

“Billions.” She spoke again. “In real estate alone.”

“Well, actually, yes, I have to say that is correct, yes, billions in real estate alone.”

How embarrassed and uncomfortable they all seemed, as if a strategic secret had been revealed.

She could smell the fear suddenly, the revulsion of Lauren Mayfair, the older blond-haired woman lawyer, in her seventies perhaps, with the soft powdery wrinkled skin, who eyed her from the end of the table and imagined her shallow, spoilt, and programmed to be totally ungrateful for what the firm had done. And then there was Anne Marie Mayfair to the right, dark-haired, pretty, forty years or more, skillfully rouged, and smoothly dressed in her gray suit and blouse of saffron silk, and more frankly curious, peering at Rowan steadily through horn-rimmed glasses, but convinced that disaster of one sort or another must lie ahead.

And Randall Mayfair, grandson of Garland, slender, with a hoary thatch of gray hair, and a soft wattle of a neck spilling over his collar, who merely sat there, eyes sleepy under his heavy brows and faintly purpled lids, not fearful, but watchful and by nature, resigned.

And when their eyes met, Randall answered her silently. Of course you don’t understand. How could you? How many people can understand? And so you’ll want control, and for that you are a fool.

She cleared her throat, ignoring the revealing manner in which Ryan made his hands into a church steeple just beneath his chin and stared at her hard with his marble blue eyes.

“You’re underestimating me,” she said in a monotone, her eyes sweeping the group. “I’m not underestimating you. I only want to know what’s involved here. I cannot remain passive. It would be irresponsible to remain passive.”

Moments of silence. Pierce lifted his coffee cup and drank without a sound.

“But what we’re really talking about,” said Ryan calmly and courteously, the steeple having fallen, “to be completely practical here, you understand, is that one can live in queenly luxury on a fraction of the interest earned by the reinvestment of a fraction of the interest earned by the reinvestment of … et cetera, if you follow me, without the capital ever being touched in any incidence or for any reason … ”

“Again, I cannot be passive, nor complacent, nor negligently ignorant. I do not believe that I should be any of those things.”

Silence, and once again Ryan to break it. Conciliatory and gentlemanly. “What specifically would you like to know?”

“Everything, the nuts and bolts of it. Or perhaps I should say the anatomy. I want to see the entire body as if it were stretched on a table. I want to study the organism as a whole.”

A quick exchange of glances between Randall and Ryan. And then Ryan again. “Well, that’s perfectly reasonable but it may not be as simple as you imagine … ”

“Yet there must be a beginning to it somewhere, and at some point, an end.”

“Well, undoubtedly, but I think you’re envisioning this, if I may say so, in the wrong way.”

“One thing specifically,” she said. “How much of this money goes into medicine? Are there any medical institutions involved?”

How startled they were. A declaration of war, it seemed, or so said the face of Anne Marie Mayfair, glancing at Lauren and then at Randall, in the first undisguised bit of hostility which Rowan had witnessed since she’d come to this town. The older Lauren, a finger hooked beneath her lower lip, eyes narrow, was too polished for such a display and merely looked fixedly at Rowan, her gaze now and then shifting very slowly to Ryan, who again began to speak.

“Our philanthropic endeavors have not in the past involved medicine, per se. Rather the Mayfair Foundation is more heavily involved with the arts and with education, with educational television in particular, and with scholarship funds at several universities, and of course we donate enormous sums through several established charities, quite independent of the Foundation, but all of this, you see, is carefully structured, and does not involve the release of the control of the money involved, so much as the release of the earnings … ”

“I know how that works,” Rowan said quietly. “But we are talking about billions, and hospitals, clinics, and laboratories are profit-making institutions. I wasn’t thinking of the philanthropic question, really. I was thinking of an entire area of involvement; which could have considerable beneficial impact upon human lives.”

How curiously cold and exciting this moment was. How private too. Rather like the first time she had ever approached the operating table and held the microinstruments in her own hands.

“We have not tended to go in the direction of medicine,” said Ryan with an air of finality. “The field would require intense study, it would require an entire restructuring … and Rowan, you do realize that this network of investments, if I may call it that, has evolved over a century’s time. This isn’t a fortune which can be lost if the silver market crashes, or if Saudi Arabia floods the world with free oil. We are talking about a diversification here which is very nearly unique in financial annals, and carefully planned maneuvers which have proven profitable through two world wars and numberless smaller upheavals.”

“I understand,” she said. “I really do. But I want information. I want to know everything. I can start with the paper you filed with the IRS, and move on from there. Perhaps what I want is an apprenticeship, a series of meetings in which we discuss various areas of involvement. Above all I want statistics, because statistics are the reality finally … ”

Again, the silence, the inner confusion, the glances ricocheting off each other. How small and crowded the room had become.

“You want my advice?” asked Randall, his voice deeper and rougher than that of Ryan, but equally patient in its mellow southern cadences. “You’re paying for it, actually, so you might as well have it.”

She opened her hands. “Please.”

“Go back to being a neurosurgeon; draw an income for anything and everything you will ever need; and forget about understanding where the money comes from. Unless you want to cease being a doctor and become what we are-people who spend their lives at board meetings, and talking to investment counselors and stockbrokers and other lawyers and accountants with little ten-key adding machines, which is what you pay us to do.”

She studied him, his dark unkempt gray hair, his droopy eyes, the large wrinkled hands now clasped on the table. Nice man. Yes, nice man. Man who isn’t a liar. None of them are liars. None of them are thieves either. Intelligently managing this money requires all their skill and earns them profits beyond the dreams of those with a taste for thievery.

But they are all lawyers, even pretty young Pierce with the porcelain skin is a lawyer, and lawyers have a definition of truth which can be remarkably flexible and at odds with anyone else’s definition.

Yet they have ethics. This man has his ethics; but he is profoundly conservative, and those who are profoundly conservative are not interventionists; they are not surgeons.

They do not even think in terms of great goodness, or saving thousands, even millions of lives. They cannot guess what it would mean if this legacy, this egregious and monumental fortune, could be returned to the hands of the Scottish midwife and the Dutch doctor as they approached the sickbed, hands out to heal.

She looked away, out towards the river. For a moment her excitement had blinded her. She wanted the warmth to die away from her face. Salvation, she whispered inside her soul. And it was not important that they understand it. What was important was that she understood it, and that they withheld nothing, and that as things were removed from their control, they were not hurt or diminished, but that they too should be saved.

“What does it all amount to?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the river, on the long dark barge being pushed upstream by the shabby snub-nosed tug.

Silence.

“You’re thinking of it in the wrong way,” said Randall. “It’s all of a piece, a great web … ”

“I can imagine. But I want to know, and you mustn’t blame me for it. How much am I worm?”

No answer.

“Surely you can make a guess.”

“Well, I wouldn’t like to, because it might be entirely unrealistic if viewed from a … ”

“Seven and one half billion,” she said. “That’s my guess.”

Protracted silence. Vague shock. She had hit very close to it, hadn’t she? Close perhaps to an IRS figure, which had surfaced in one of these hostile and partially closed minds.

It was Lauren who answered, Lauren whose expression had changed ever so slightly, as she drew herself up to the table and held her pencil in both hands.

“You’re entitled to this information,” she said in a delicate, almost stereotypically feminine voice, a voice that suited her carefully groomed blond hair and pearl earrings. “You have every legal right to know what is yours. And I do not speak only for myself when I say that we will cooperate with you completely, for that we are ethically bound to do. But I must say, personally, that I find your attitude rather morally interesting. I welcome the chance to talk with you about every aspect of the legacy, down to the smallest detail. My only fear is that you’re going to tire of this game, long before all the cards are on the table. But I am more than willing to take the initiative and begin.”

Did she realize how very patronizing this was? Rowan doubted it. But after all, the legacy had belonged to these people for over fifty years, hadn’t it? They deserved patience. Yet she could not quite give them what they deserved.

“There really isn’t any other way for either of us to go about it,” Rowan said. “It isn’t merely morally interesting that I want to know what’s involved, it’s morally imperative that I find out.”

The woman chose not to respond. Her delicate features remained tranquil, her small pale eyes widening slightly, her thin hands trembling only a little as they held the pencil at both ends. The others at the table were watching her, though each in his or her own fashion tried to disguise it.

And Rowan realized; this is the brains behind the firm, this woman, Lauren. And all the time, Rowan had thought it was Ryan. Silently she acknowledged her mistake, wondering if the woman could possibly perceive what she was thinking. We have been wrong about each other …

But one could read anything into such an impassive face and such a graceful slow manner.

“May I ask you a question,” the woman asked, still looking directly at Rowan. “It’s a purely business question, you understand.”

“Of course.”

“Can you take being rich? I mean really, really rich? Can you handle it?”

Rowan was tempted to smile. It was such a refreshing question, and again, so patronizing and so insulting. Any number of replies came to her lips. But she settled for the simplest.

“Yes,” she said. “And I want to build hospitals.”

Silence.

Lauren nodded. She folded her arms on the table, her eyes taking in the entire assembly. “Well, I don’t see any problem with that,” she said calmly. “Seems like an interesting idea. And we’re here to do what you want, of course.”

Yes, she was the brains behind the firm. And she had allowed Ryan and Randall to do the talking. But she was the one who would be the teacher and eventually the obstacle.

No matter.

Rowan had what she wanted. The legacy was as real as the house was real, as real as the family was real. And the dream was going to be realized. In fact, she knew: it could be done.

“I think we can talk about the immediate problems now, don’t you?” Rowan asked. “You’ll need to make an inventory of the possessions at the house? I believe someone mentioned this. Also, Carlotta’s things. Is there anyone who wants to remove them?”

“Yes, and regarding the house,” said Ryan. “Have you come to any decision?”

“I want to restore it. I want to live in it. I’ll be marrying Michael Curry soon. Probably before the end of the year. We’ll make our home there.”

It was as if a bright light had snapped on, bathing each one of them in its warmth and illumination.

“Oh, that’s splendid,” said Ryan.

“So glad to hear it,” said Anne Marie.

“You don’t know what the house means to us,” said Pierce.

“I wonder if you know,” said Lauren, “how very happy everyone will be to hear of this.”

Only Randall was quiet, Randall with his droopy lids, and his fleshy hands, and then even he said almost sadly, “Yes, that would be very simply wonderful.”

“But can someone come and take the old woman’s things away?” Rowan asked. “I don’t want to go in until that’s done.”

“Absolutely,” said Ryan. “We’ll begin the inventory tomorrow. And Gerald Mayfair will call at once for Carlotta’s things.”

“And a cleaning team, I need a professional team to scrub down a room on the third floor and to remove all the mattresses.”

“Those jars,” said Ryan, with a look of distaste. “Those disgusting jars.”

“I emptied all of them.”

“Whatever was in them?” asked Pierce.

Randall was studying her with his heavy sagging eyes half mast.

“It was all rotted. If they can get the stench out, and take away the mattresses, we can begin the restoration. All the mattresses, I think … ”

“Start fresh, yes. I’ll take care of it. Pierce can go up there now.”

“No, I’ll go myself,” she said.

“Nonsense, Rowan, let me handle it,” said Pierce. He was already on his feet. “Do you want replacements for the mattresses? They’re doubles, aren’t they, those antique beds? Let me see, there are four. I can have them delivered and installed this afternoon.”

“That’s splendid,” said Rowan. “The maid’s room needn’t be touched, and Julien’s old bed can be dismantled and stored.”

“Got it. What else can I do for you?”

“That’s more than enough. Michael will take care of the rest. Michael will handle the renovation himself.”

“Yes, he is quite successful at that, isn’t he?” said Lauren quietly. Instantly she realized the slip she had made. She lowered her eyes, then looked up at Rowan, attempting to mask her slight confusion.

They had already investigated him, hadn’t they? Had they found out about his hands?

“We’d love to keep you awhile longer,” said Ryan quickly. “Just a few papers we have to show you, in connection with the estate, and perhaps some basic documents pertaining to the legacy … ”

“Yes, of course, let’s get to work. I’d like nothing better.”

“Then it’s settled. And we’ll take you to lunch afterwards. We wanted to take you to Galatoire’s, if you have no other plans.”

“Sounds wonderful.”

And so it was begun.

It was three o’clock when she reached the house. In the full heat of the day, though the sky was still overcast. The warmth seemed collected and stagnant beneath the oaks. As she stepped out of the cab, she could see the tiny insects swarming in the pockets of shadow. But the house caught her up instantly. Here alone again. And the jars are gone, thank God, and the dolls, and very soon all that belonged to Carlotta. Gone.

She had the keys in her hand. They had shown her the papers pertaining to the house, which had been entailed with the legacy in the year 1888 by Katherine. It was hers and hers alone. And so were all the other billions which they wouldn’t speak of aloud. All mine.

Gerald Mayfair, a personable young man with a bland face and nondescript features, came out the front door. Quickly he explained that he was just leaving, he had only just placed the last carton of Carlotta’s personal possessions in the trunk of his car.

The cleaning team had finished about a half hour before.

He eyed Rowan a little nervously as she offered her hand. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and did not resemble Ryan’s family. His features were smaller and he lacked the poise she’d observed in the others. But he seemed nice-what one would call a nice young guy.

His speaking voice was certainly agreeable.

Carlotta had wanted his grandmother to have her things, he explained. Of course the furniture would remain. It belonged to Rowan. It was all quite old, dating from the time that Carlotta’s grandmother, Katherine, had furnished the house.

Rowan thanked him for taking care of things so quickly. She assured him she would be at the Requiem Mass for Carlotta.

“Do you know if she’s been … buried?” Was that the proper word for being slipped into one of those stone drawers?

Yes, he said, she had been interred this morning. He’d been there with his mother. They’d gotten her message to come for the things when they returned home.

She told him how much she appreciated it, how much she wanted to meet all the family. He nodded.

“It was nice of your two friends to come,” he said.

“My friends? Come to what?”

“This morning at the cemetery, Mr. Lightner and Mr. Curry.”

“Oh, of course. I … I should have been there myself.”

“Doesn’t matter. She didn’t want any fuss, and frankly … ”

He stood quiet for a moment on the flagstone walk, looking up at the house, and wanting to say something, but seemingly unable to speak.

“What is it?” Rowan asked.

Perhaps he’d wandered up there and seen all that broken glass before the cleaning team had arrived. Surely he would have wanted to see where the “skeleton” had lain, that is, if he’d read the papers, or if the other Mayfairs had told him, which maybe they had.

“You plan to live in it?” he asked suddenly.

“To restore it, to bring it back to the old splendor. My husband … the man I’m going to marry. He’s an expert on old houses; he says it’s absolutely solid. He’s eager to begin.”

Still he stood quiet in the simmering air, his face glistening slightly, and his expression full of expectation and hesitancy. Finally he said:

“You know it has seen so many tragedies. That’s what Aunt Carlotta always said.”

“And so did the morning paper,” she said, smiling. “But it’s seen much happiness, hasn’t it? In the old days, for decades at a stretch. I want it to see happiness again.”

She waited patiently, and then finally, she asked:

“What is it you really want to say to me?”

His eyes moved over her face, and then with a little shift to his shoulders, and a sigh, he looked back up at the house.

“I think I should tell you that Carlotta … Carlotta wanted me to burn the house after her death.”

“You’re serious?”

“I never had any intention of doing it. I told Ryan and Lauren. I told my parents. But I thought I should tell you. She was adamant. She told me how to do it. That I was to start the fire in the attic with an oil lamp that was up there, and then move down to the second floor and start the drapes burning and finally come down to the first. She made me promise. She gave me a key.”

He handed this key to Rowan.

“You don’t really need it,” he said. “The front door hasn’t been locked in fifty years, but she was afraid someone might lock it. She knew she wouldn’t die till Deirdre died, and those were her instructions.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“Many times. The last time was a week ago, maybe less. Right before Deirdre died … when they first knew she was dying. She called me late at night and reminded me. ‘Burn it all,’ she said.”

“She would have hurt everyone if she had done that!” Rowan whispered.

“I know. My parents were horrified. They were afraid she’d burn it herself. But what could they do? Ryan said she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have asked me to do it if she’d been able to do it. He told me to humor her. Tell her I’d do it so that she’d be sure of that, and not go to some other extreme.”

“That was wise.”

He gave a little nod, then his eyes drifted away from hers and back to the house.

“I just wanted you to know,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

“And what else can you tell me?”

“What else?” He gave a little shrug. Then he looked at her, and though he meant to turn away, he didn’t. He locked in. “Be careful,” he said. “Be very careful. It’s old and it’s gloomy and it’s … it’s not perhaps what it seems.”

“How so?”

“It’s not a grand house at all. It’s some sort of domicile for something. It’s a trap, you might say. It’s made up of all sorts of patterns. And the patterns form a sort of trap.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m speaking off the top of my head. It’s just … well, all of us have a little talent for feeling things … ”

“I know.”

“And well, I guess I wanted to warn you. You don’t know anything about us.”

“Did Carlotta say that about the patterns, about its being a trap?”

“No, it’s only my opinion. I came here more than the others. I was the only one Carlotta would see in the last few years. She liked me. I’m not sure why. Sometimes I was only there out of curiosity, though I wanted to be loyal to her, I really did. It’s been like a cloud over my life.”

“You’re glad it’s finished.”

“Yes. I am. It’s dreadful to say it, but then she didn’t want to live on any longer. She said so. She was tired. She wanted to die. But one afternoon, when I was alone here, waiting for her, it came to me that it was a trap. A great big trap. I don’t really know what I mean. I’m only saying perhaps that if you feel something, don’t discount it.… ”

“Did you ever see anything when you were here?”

He thought for a moment, obviously picking up her meaning with no difficulty.

“Maybe once,” he said. “In the hallway. But then again, I could have imagined it.”

He fell silent. So did she. That was the end of it, and he wanted to be going.

“It was very nice to talk to you, Rowan,” he said with a feeble smile. “Call me if you need me.”

She went inside the gate, and watched almost furtively as his silver Mercedes, a large sedan, drove slowly away.

Empty now. Quiet.

She could smell pine oil. She climbed the stairs, and moved quickly from room to room. New mattresses, still wrapped in shining plastic, on all the beds. Sheets and counterpanes neatly folded and stacked to one side. Floors dusted.

Smell of disinfectant from the third floor.

She went upstairs, moving into the breeze from the landing window. The floor of the little chamber of the jars was scrubbed immaculate except for a dark deep staining which probably would never scrub away. Not a shard of glass to be seen in the light from the window.

And Julien’s room, dusted, straightened, boxes stacked, the brass bed dismantled and laid against the wall beneath the windows, which had also been cleaned. Books nice and straight. The old dark sticky substance scraped away from the spot where Townsend had died.

All else was undisturbed.

Going back down to Carlotta’s room, she found the drawers empty, the dresser bare, the armoire with nothing left but a few wooden hangers. Camphor.

All very still. She saw herself in the mirrored door of the armoire, and was startled. Her heart beat loudly for a moment. No one else here.

She walked downstairs to the first floor, and back down the hallway to the kitchen. They had mopped these floors and cleaned the glass doors of the cabinets. Good smell of wax again, and pine oil, and the smell of wood. That lovely smell.

An old black phone stood on the wooden counter in the pantry.

She dialed the hotel.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Lying here in bed feeling lonely and sorry for myself. I went over to the cemetery this morning with Aaron. I’m exhausted. I still ache all over, like I’ve been in a fight. Where are you? You aren’t over there, are you?”

“Yes, and it’s warm and empty and all the old woman’s things are gone, and the mattresses are gone, and the attic room is scrubbed clean.”

“Are you the only one there?”

“Yes,” she said. “And it’s beautiful. The sun’s coming out.” She stood looking about herself, at the light pouring through the French windows into the kitchen, at the light in the dining room, falling on the hardwood floor. “I’m definitely the only one here.”

“I want to come over there,” he said.

“No, I’m leaving now to walk back to the hotel. I want you to rest. I want you to go for a checkup.”

“Be serious.”

“Have you ever had an electrocardiogram?”

“You’re going to scare me into a heart attack. I had all that after I drowned. My heart’s perfect. What I need is erotic exercise in large doses sustained over an endless period of time.”

“Depends on your pulse when I get there.”

“Come on, Rowan. I’m not going for any checkup. If you’re not here in ten minutes, I’m coming to get you.”

“I’ll be there sooner than that.”

She hung up.

For a moment she thought about something she’d read in the file, something Arthur Langtry had written about his experience of seeing Lasher, something about his heart skipping dangerously, and about being dizzy. But then Arthur had been a very old man.

Peace here. Only the cries of the birds from the garden.

She walked slowly through the dining room and through the high keyhole doorway into the hall, glancing back at it to enjoy its soaring height and her own seeming smallness. The light poured in through the sun room, shining on the polished floor.

A great lovely sense of well-being came over her. All mine.

She stood still for a few seconds, listening, feeling. Trying to take full possession of the moment, trying to remember the anguish of yesterday and the day before, and to feel this in comparison, this wonderful lighthearted feeling. And once again the whole lurid tragic history comforted her, because she with all her own dark secrets had a place in it. And she would redeem it. That was the most important thing of all.

She turned to walk to the front of the house, and for the first time noticed a tall vase of roses on the hall table. Had Gerald put them there? Perhaps he had forgotten to mention it.

She stopped, studying the beautiful drowsy blooms, all of them bloodred, and rather like the florist-perfect flowers for the dead, she thought, as if they’d been picked from those fancy sprays left in the cemetery.

Then with a chill, she thought of Lasher. Flowers tossed at Deirdre’s feet. Flowers put on the grave. In fact, she was so violently startled that for a moment she could hear her heart again, beating in the stillness. But what an absurd idea. Probably Gerald had put the flowers here, or Pierce when he had seen to the mattresses. After all, this was a commonplace vase, half filled with fresh water, and these were simply florist roses.

Nevertheless the thing looked ghastly to her. In fact, as her heartbeat grew steady again, she realized there was something distinctly odd about the bouquet. She was not an expert on roses, but weren’t they generally smaller than this? How large and floppy these flowers looked. And such a dark blood color. And look at the stems, and the leaves; the leaves of roses were invariably almond-shaped, were they not, and these leaves had many points on them. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t any leaf in this entire bouquet which had the same pattern or number of points as another. Strange. Like something grown wild, genetically wild, full of random and overwhelming mutation.

They were moving, weren’t they? Swelling. No, just unfolding, as roses often do, opening little by little until they fall apart in a cascade of bruised petals. She shook her head. She felt a little dizzy.

Probably left there by Pierce. And what did it matter? She’d call him from the hotel just to make sure, and tell him she appreciated it.

She moved on to the front of the house, trying to capture the feeling of well-being again, breathing in the luxurious warmth around her. Very like a temple, this house. She looked back at the stairs. All the way up there, Arthur had seen Stuart Townsend.

Well, there was no one there now.

No one. No one in the long parlor. No one out there on the porch where the vines crawled on the screens.

No one.

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked out loud. It gave her a curious tingling excitement to speak the words. “Or is it that you expected me to be afraid of you and you’re angry that I’m not? That’s it, isn’t it?”

Only the stillness answered her. And the soft rustling sound of the rose petals falling on the marble table.

With a faint smile, she went back to the roses, picked one from the vase, and gently holding it to her lips to feel its silky petals, she went out the front door.

It really was just an enormous rose, and look how many petals, and how strangely confused they seemed. And the thing was already withering.

In fact, the petals were already brown at the edges and curling. She savored the sweet perfume for another slow second, and then dropped the rose into the garden as she went out the gate.