Come to Castlemoor (6 page)

I frowned. Oh, well, I thought, maybe he gave up his regular working habits while he was out here all alone. They were eccentric, some of them. It doesn't mean anything.…

I attacked the filing cabinet next. Before I started working with him, Donald's files had been hopelessly jumbled. Whenever he had wanted to locate something, he had had to go through piles and piles of material before he could find it, and it had been a source of maddening frustration to him. I had devised a simple and effective filing system, purchasing hundreds of manila folders and labeling each one. Thereafter the files were admirably neat and completely serviceable. They weren't now. They were incredibly messy, papers and articles stuffed in the wrong folders, stacks piled loose in the back of each drawer, clippings scattered. I gasped. No, no, Donald wouldn't have done this … something is wrong.

I spent two hours putting the files in order. I sat down on the floor and separated all the materials and put them in their proper folders, putting each folder in order, placing everything back in the filing cabinet. I found manuscripts of articles Donald had written, rough drafts of articles he had planned but never completed, the original manuscript of the book published a year ago—but there was no sign of the manuscript he had been working on when he died.

I went through the boxes of magazines and journals. The manuscript was not among them.

I stood in the middle of the room, alarmed and yet afraid to give way to the alarm. There was bound to be a logical explanation for everything. The manuscript was not here. It was somewhere else, then, perhaps in one of the drawers in the bedroom, perhaps in a box on the floor of one of the closets, perhaps … perhaps he had lent it to someone. It would turn up. There was no reason to be alarmed, no reason. The desk, the filing cabinet, the mess and confusion—there were explanations for that, too. There must be. I couldn't give way to alarm, not on my first day. It was utterly foolish to feel this way.…

Bella came into the room, her blue-and-white-striped dress dusty and soiled with perspiration. There was a smudge of dirt on her forehead, and she smelled of camphor and mothballs.

“What a job!” she exclaimed. “I got all the trunks unpacked, though. All the clothes are put away, and everything else sorted out. There's those books you wanted, a couple of dozen of 'em, and the little painting of Mr. Donald that wild artist friend of his painted. They're the only things I didn't know what to do with.”

“We'll find room for the books on the shelves,” I replied, “and I'll put the painting here on the desk.”

We toted the books into the study and managed to squeeze them onto the shelves with the others. Although most of the books pertained to the work my brother had been doing, there were also many novels, Volumes of poetry, history, biography. Some were so old that their bindings were worn, some new with flashy jackets, some bound in fine leather, and a few from France that had stiff yellow-paper covers. They gave the room a certain character and flavor strongly reminiscent of the man who had owned them.

Bella handed me the painting, and I started to put it on the desk. Donald's friend Damon Stuart had painted it two years ago, a small canvas not quite eight by ten, framed in polished brown wood. I had packed it away, not wanting to look at it, but now I studied that face, so lifelike, so vital. The dark-brown eyes blazed with intelligence, the wide pink mouth curled with humor, the tawny gold hair tumbled boyishly over the high forehead. The strong, ruggedly handsome features had been perfectly duplicated on canvas, and I caught my lower lip between my teeth and looked down at the portrait with misty eyes. I wanted to tell Bella to put it away, hide it. I couldn't look at that face every day, not now, not yet. I started to hand the painting back to Bella, but the blazing brown eyes stared up at me from the canvas and seemed to admonish me. I stepped over to the desk and placed the picture beside the ivory elephant. No tears. No maudlin sentiment. A living memory. That's what he would have wanted, and that's what I intended to preserve.

“He'd be proud of you, Miss Kathy,” Bella said quietly.

“I—I certainly hope so.”

“He's here. Don't you feel it? It's strange.”

“I know. It seems he just stepped into the next room—”

“I like that feeling,” Bella said. “It's—comforting.”

“Not sad,” I said. “Not like the apartment.”

“Come, Miss Kathy. I want to show you the pantry.”

It was after two o'clock when we heard the wagon pulling up in front. Bella's hands flew to her hair, and she darted to the nearest mirror. I went to the front door to see an outrageously dressed old woman climbing down from the wagon Alan had brought us here in yesterday. She wore a shapeless blue dress that hung like a sack on her plump, stocky body, and a mothy old gray sweater with bulging pockets. Her feet were shod in a pair of boots, and a sad black felt hat drooped about her face. She gave the horse a smart pat on the rump and plodded up the flagstone path toward me.

“Mornin'!” she cried. “Or is it? Ain't never been able to keep track of time! Busy from mornin' to night, an' not a minute to spare. Thought I'd plop by for a minute and welcome you to Castlemoor, Miss Hunt. Yes, and I'd know you were your brother's sister in the middle of the desert. Same eyes and same nose, though your hair's a bit brighter, not so tarnished-lookin'! I'm Maud—you probably guessed that—and I worked for Mr. D. Smashin' gent 'e was! Bleedin' shame—”

Her face was marvelous to behold, fleshy and lumpy, as though patted in shape by a generous though amateur sculptor, as plump as the rest of her. The blue eyes were lively and shrewd, and the mouth was mobile. It was a face that registered emotion: first delight, then sadness, then distress as she referred to my brother's death. I could see she was afraid she had upset me by the reference. I smiled, warming to her immediately.

“My brother wrote me about you,” I said. “I'm so glad he had someone like you to take care of him—”

“A rascal 'e was, always playin' tricks an' teasin'. I'll tell you this, an' I'm not jokin': if 'e'd a been twenty years older or I'd a suddenly lost thirty years, that young man wouldn't a stood a chance. I'd a nabbed 'im for sure. A charmer, 'e was, a regular charmer—”

“Won't you come in, Maud?”

“Cain't stay long. Gotta go see Fanny Potter, who's got 'erself pregnant again, an 'er a woman of forty! Mornin' sickness you wouldn't believe! I'm takin' 'er some herbs—”

“Why don't we go into the kitchen,” I suggested. “Bella's just made some tea, and there's bread and jam—”

“Ta-ta to your tea, luv! I brought me own nourishment.” She dug into one of the lumpy pockets and dug out a flask. “Old cuss like me needs somethin' a mite stronger than tea to keep the blood a-boilin'. No offense, you understand.”

“None taken,” I replied, smiling. I led her into the kitchen.

During the short time that Maud and I had been talking, Bella had miraculously changed into a jade-green dress with puffed sleeves and a swirling skirt, bits of ruffled white petticoat showing beneath the hem. Glossy brown curls had been hastily piled on top of her head, tied with a ribbon. The change had been accomplished with phenomenal speed, and she had doused herself with cologne water, smelling of mint. When she saw Maud, her face underwent a drastic change. The blue eyes filled with disappointment, and the saucy mouth drooped at the corners.

“Ah-ha, luv!” Maud cried. “Guess I know who
you
was expectin'! Consider yourself lucky it was me instead of '
im
! 'E's bad news from the word go, an' that's a fact. Should see the way 'e treats 'is poor old aunt. Last night 'e was as surly as a bear, near 'bout snapped me head off when all I did was ask 'im if 'e was feelin' all right. I knew then an' there 'e'd met a new filly.”

“Oh?” Bella said. “Well, I don't know what you're talking about, I'm sure. If you won't be needing me, Miss Kathy, I'm going to see about those curtains in my room.”

“Don't grieve, luv,” Maud said with a lusty cackle. “'E'll be comin' 'isself later on this afternoon. Wild 'orses couldn't stop 'im.”

“In that case, I wish you'd give him this list,” Bella said, picking up a slip of paper off the drainboard. “It's things we need, and I'd appreciate it if he'd bring them. Miss Kathy will reimburse him when he delivers the items.”

She was a parody of primness and decorum. She left the room with her chin at a haughty angle. Maud cackled again, thoroughly amused. “She's a ripe 'un!” she exclaimed. “Don't know who's gonna get 'urt worse—'er or 'im, but I'll be willin' to bet she'll hold 'er own with my nephew. Time 'e met someone who can put 'im down good and proper like.”

“Bella didn't mean to be rude,” I apologized.

“'Course not! 'E's a dazzlin' fellow, 'e is, a regular devil with the women. That little filly's already been marked for disaster.”

“I'd he more inclined to say Alan has.”

“It'd be tit for tat,” Maud agreed.

I poured a cup of tea for myself and handed Maud a glass for her whiskey. She tipped the flask over the glass and filled it full, then jammed the empty flask back in her pocket and drank the whiskey as though she had gone for three days without water in the middle of the desert. She sighed, plopped the empty glass on the table, and looked at me with crackling blue eyes. Her cheeks were flushed ruddy. I sipped my tea while Maud told me all about her herb garden, the medicine she made, her farm, her nursing, the four husbands who had preceded her to the grave, and the blacksmith who hoped to be her fifth. She related some salty gossip about the people of Darkmead and then began on the Rodds.

I learned that Dorothea Rodd had been the beauty of the county before she married and shut herself up in Castle-moor, that she and her husband had lived in Rome for two years while their son, Burton, was at Oxford, and had adopted a little girl whose mother, their cook, had died of tuberculosis. Nicola was seventeen now, and a bloomin' beauty from all reports, although being shut up in a castle was no life for a girl, and that was a fact. Dorothea's husband had died years ago, and her son had taken over the family affairs. Maud said that Burton Rodd had saved Darkmead from industrial disaster when he took over the pottery factory, and was roundly despised because of it. No pretty girl was safe when he was in town, she said, and many a maid had slipped into the castle under the cloak of darkness and come out with a bagful of coins but a maid no more. Maud talked with a lusty relish for each anecdote, but I imagined much of her talk needed to be liberally sprinkled with grains of salt.

“Wait till 'e sees
you
,” she said, nodding briskly. “That's goin' to be somethin'. 'E'll go out of his mind.”

“I see no reason why I should meet Burton Rodd,” I told her. “We may be neighbors, but it's not likely—”

“You'll meet 'im, all right!” Maud cried. “When 'e 'ears about that golden hair and them eyes—you'll meet 'im. Then look out!”

“I'm sure I—”

“He's a fascinatin' devil. Cold, 'eartless—irresistible. The girls in Darkmead are all a-pantin' for 'im, and them that're proper—the gentry lasses—they all want to reform 'im and save 'im from 'imself. You'll see what I mean.”

“Not likely,” I said, my voice cool.

Maud grinned. Her eyes sparkled. “Aye, it's a situation that promises fireworks,” she said. “I can see that right now. A lad like 'im, a lass like you—”

“I want to thank you for straightening up before we arrived,” I said, changing the subject abruptly. “It meant a great deal—”

Maud saw that she had carried the other as far as she could without offense. She sighed and leaned her elbows on the table. “No offense, luv,” she said.

“Of course not,” I replied. “I am grateful for what you did here. We would have been up half the night if—”

“Don't mention it, luv. Glad to do it. Wudn't no trouble at all. I wanted things to be nice when you got 'ere. Good thing I came, too. That study was a shambles.”

“Oh?” I said carefully.

“Place looked like a gale swept through it—which is probably exactly what 'appened. A window was open, you see, and we had a big storm a couple of days ago—wind like you never seen! That big cabinetlike thing where Mr. D. kept all 'is papers had been tumped over, and the papers were all over the floor. Desk drawers were open, too, but I imagine they'd been left open before—took me quite a while to pick everything up and put it back.”

“A—a window was open, and the
wind
blew the cabinet over?”

“Sure, luv. You ain't seen nothin' till you've seen the wind cuttin' across these moors. It's a wonder the whole 'ouse wudn't blown away.”

I felt a wave of relief, but at the same time I couldn't quite accept this explanation for the disorder in the study. There was doubt in the back of my mind, but I wanted so much to accept Maud's explanation that I shoved the doubt even farther back and managed to forget it for the moment.

“Did you ever see the manuscript my brother was working on?” I asked.

“Not close up, I'll tell you that! He'd a 'ad my 'ide if I so much as touched that precious pile of yellow paper. He kept it in a neat pile in one of the drawers and threatened to blister my rump if 'e ever saw me near that drawer. It was the only thing 'e was fanatical about, them papers.” She grinned. “He could be pretty rough at times, 'e could, snarlin' and snappin' when 'e'd been up all night workin', but most of the time 'e was a lamb, a regular lamb. I usta bake 'im a cake now an' then—”

Her eyes were moist, and her lumpy face looked as though it might crumple up. She sniffed once and folded her arms about her and smiled, fond memory overcoming grief.