The Dark Closet (13 page)

Twynne stared pensively at the Chippendale
dental molding of his ceiling. The smoke from his pipe was swathing his study in a fine white haze in the center of which sat a brooding Crossett, his elbows on his knees and a cigarette dangling languidly from his hand, sending a ribbon of a smoke signal to the billowing pipe on the other side of the room.

“Well,” Twynne said in a
great sigh of a breath. The word hung in the air with the tobacco. Crossett returned the sigh along with another exhalation of smoke from his dwindling cigarette.

“Well,” Twynne
began again more definitively. “It seems to me you have brought into your house fragments of other people’s lives.”

“What?”
A look of disgust gripped the features of Crossett’s face. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Your mantel …
and your wallpaper … and your chair railing and—“ Twynne directed his attention to Crossett. The long contemplation of the ceiling molding seemed to have yielded fruit.

“Tell me
about the wallpaper in your bedroom.”

“You know about the wall
paper.”

“Refresh
my memory,” Twynne returned reflectively studying Crossett now.

“It came
from France,” Crossett began slowly. “Edward Teilbright brought it with him to the New World in 1765 and put it in his drawing room. He was cleaning his gun one day when it backfired and killed him.”

“He lived for several weeks
afterward, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“In agony?”

“
Yes.”

“And
his wife three times attempted suicide and was three times saved by her slaves?”

“Yes.” Crossett was beginning
to lift his head.

“She
changed the name of the plantation from Teilbright Levels to … to…”

“Widow Grove.”

“Sad story.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“Handsome wallpaper, Crossett. Mythological characters, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Pyramus and Thisbe, Apollo a
nd Daphne, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Alpheus and Arethusa.”

“Tell me, why on earth did y
ou put that in your bedroom?”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re all star-crossed lovers, Crossett. The love affairs of every one of them ended in disaster.” Twynne leaned back again in his chair and muttered, “I always wondered why the devil you put it in your bedroom. Anyway,” he said, rousing himself, “tell me about the chair rail in the dining room. Farrington Hall?”

“Yes.”

“And, uh, how did you come by it?”

“You know
exactly how I came by it! You were there!” Crossett said angrily. “What are you getting at?”

“You got
it when the Herefords lost everything, including the chair railing,” Twynne said leaning forward again. “When they were wiped out by the Depression and World War II. They were forced to sell the whole 902 acres for a song and you cashed in, too, Crossett, didn’t you?”

“It was a good
opportunity! The house went to rack and ruin as it was. If I hadn’t taken that railing, it would have just rotted and been lost forever. I saved a piece of history!”

“Very noble,” Twynne
said softly. “And the molding in the hallway came from the Wetherton house when that family  had finally succeeded in drinking itself into ruin. You took advantage of that opportunity, too.”

Crossett rose to his
feet, anger stiffening his form misted by the smoky room. Twynne rose, too.

“But I’m not here
to judge you, Crossett, and it’s true that it’s something of a practice to bring parts of houses to another house. Yes, yes,” he continued, waving Crossett to sit down. “Among antique buffs and experts in the decorative arts, it’s quite accepted. But think a moment, Crossett, of the particular parts you have brought to Winterhurst. Each one has a baleful of history behind it—pain, suffering, death, ruin. Those are powerful concepts.”

“What are
you saying?”

“Wel
l, that you may have brought the pain and suffering along with the molding and wallpaper and—“He paused, leaving the thought hanging in the air with the pungent tobacco. “And the mantel.”

“The Wighte
mantel,” Crossett whispered.

“The Wighte
mantel, the harbinger of another tale of woe in Barrow. Another great family lost to ruin.”

“But not entir
ely,” Crossett said looking into his friend’s eyes. “All the other families—the Teilbrights, Wethertons, Herefords—are all gone, scattered, lost. But there is a Wighte left …”

“Perhaps that is the
key.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the story of the Wighte family is not finished. The emerald necklace was not passed on to the next daughter.”

“You don’t know that, Twynne,” he said. “No one knows that. That’s the crux of the whole legend: Where is the emerald necklace of King Henry VIII to Mary Lamerie Wighte? Jake Hawkins thinks it’s buried somewhere on the grounds, he and a million other fortune hunters. Others think Mrs. Robert Wighte gave it to her daughter just before the Union soldiers arrived, and it was lost when the young girl left the house after the soldiers attacked it.”

“Conjecture all,
Crossett. But
what if
the necklace was not passed down as it had been for centuries?
What if
the spirit of Mrs. Robert Wighte has been trying to pass it down for the last one hundred years?”

The color
left Crossett’s face.

“How did I
get involved?” he said in a strained voice, remembering the apparition hovering over Maude, laying her hands upon the child’s neck. Had she been trying to strangle her or was she trying to put something on her?

“You brought the mantel before which
she appears to Winterhurst, and she came with it.”

“Like The Rambler’s
article?”

“He may have
something.”

“Then the mantel
must go back.”

“It’s
not the mantel she wants, Crossett. It’s whatever is
behind
the mantel, and you know that or you would not have taken it off and looked.”

“Then I must look
now at Wightefield.”

“It’s wor
th a try, especially if it all bothers you as much as you’ve been telling me,” Twynne said as he tapped his pipe in an ash tray.

“I’ll get Lamerie’s permission.”

Twynne laughed. “Better get Jake Hawkins’s!”

Crossett looked disgu
sted. “The house belongs to Lamerie Wighte. She is the only one whose permission I need.”

“How
are the stairs coming?”

“What?”

“Your stairs. You said you were having Jake do some work on them so no one breaks their neck on them.”

“Oh, yes. He’s coming late
r today to work on them. I’ll give you a call in a few hours as soon as I see Lamerie Wighte. You’re coming with me, aren’t you?

“Y
ou’re going to see her?” Twynne sounded interested.

“Yes. Y
ou coming with me?” Crossett was hoisting his overcoat about his shoulders.

“You
know where she lives?” Twynne called after him as  he threw open the paneled front door and a cold rush of icy, damp air swept through the hallway like a glacier. Twynne soberly watched Crossett lunging down the snowy flagstones to his car, the hem of his coat flapping behind him with the alacrity of his stride like a great tweed hand waving its good-byes.

Crossett
climbed the cold, gray stones into the Walsall granite apartment building. Ice lay like a fine veneer over the corrugated surface of the hewn steps, lending to the rock a polish it did not ordinarily have. He laid his soles carefully in the ascent, grasping the frozen oyster wall that loomed beside. The acier sky threatened snow, sending on brief reconnaissance missions icy emissaries that pelted the brim of his wool hat with little popping noises.

The vestibule
was no warmer. The comings and goings of the residents had left a cold vacuum behind when the doors had snapped shut after them. Snow lay in slushy pools here and there, not frozen, not melted in the hovering temperature of the hall, immobilized by indecision. His boot indiscreetly caught one, lost its grasp on the ground beneath, and sent him for a brief, giddy skid to the inner door whose brass knob threw itself into his hand like a life preserver. His breath whitened the air as he clung to the knob.

At first he thought she was
not home and was upbraiding himself for not calling instead, realizing now in the first quiet after Twynne’s revelation that it had been foolish of him to come to her apartment with no forewarning. He knew Jake was not home, but it was still a foolish risk. Besides, it would be easier to get her permission over the phone: It would not matter if Jake were home or not; all she would have to say was yes or no and hang up the receiver. He was turning from the gray door when he heard the safety chain rattle and fall from within. The door opened very slowly not revealing any human hand for some time. Then he saw Lamerie, half her face hidden by the door’s edge. Her brown eye hung sadly in its socket, and she looked pale and drawn.

“May I
come in?” Crossett attributed her reticence to dismay at seeing him unannounced in her doorway. She slid back from the door frame like a wraith.

“I’m sorry I didn’t
call but I had something very important to ask you, and I, well, I really didn’t stop to think what would be the best way to go about it.” He threw his hat on the table as the door clicked closed behind him. “I need to go up to Wightefield, if you don’t mind, just to look at something—“ He turned to face Lamerie and halted his discourse. The bruise on her face was just beginning to show traces of yellow, indicating that it had been there for a few days already and had not yet completed its tenancy. She made no motion to cover it or hide it and her small frame drooped beneath her simple dress.

“I must leave him,” she said simply. ”I’ve waited too long.
”

How she
had been chastising herself for that! The opportunities to leave the house on an errand and not return had been manifold, but she had lethargically remained within the prison walls of the little Walsall apartment, dreaming of Wightefield in its heyday and how a pauper might regain its beauty and grace. And fighting Jake all the while for dominion over it. What sense had it made? How lazy could she have been and how stupid for not seeing the inevitable, that Jake would take what he wanted one way or another, subdue her in order to acquire Wightefield and pose as its master. All those useless conversations with Crossett over how to maintain control of the manor house—there was, of course, only one way. Divorce Jake. But what had she done instead? Taken a lover, a decision that accomplished absolutely nothing, did not even relieve the loneliness she had sought to conquer. How could it? Crossett was not hers and Jake did not want her. She would think that with two men she would come out with something: Surely what one lacked the other might give. But keeping the flesh company did little for the soul, and it was, ironically enough, the soul that would have to pay the price. She knew she could not extricate herself fully from either man, neither in this life or the next.

Crossett stood speechless. Unaccustomed to
such naked, basal violence, he could not quite grasp the significance of it. In his world people perpetrated against one another a violence of the mind, not the body, using words as weapons, not hands and fists. They orchestrated changes in lives and set little traps; they imprisoned one another in contrived circumstance and then walked away. They never raised a hand or pointed a gun or bared the ugliness of human nature with their teeth. The prettiness of the façade was always maintained at whatever and often great cost, but preserved it was. He was not familiar with this primeval lack of control and was at a loss as to how to react to it. Perhaps that was why he was 4F when he went to enlist for the second world war. Perhaps that was why they told him he was not emotionally fit for battle.

“I’ve married by
cousin.” Her hand involuntarily covered her mouth as she gasped. Tears welled in her eyes. “His great grandfather, Shadrack Hawkins, raped my grandmother during the Union occupation of Wightefield. She had a son … my grandfather.” She hesitated.

“
He wanted the necklace and silver but couldn’t find them.” Her mouth quivered. “Just like Jake,” she whispered.

“Why are
you still here?” Crossett asked in his usual blunt manner with her.

“He watches me.”

“Well, he’s not watching you now. He’s at my house repairing a staircase.”

Her face
lightened a little. Crossett’s hand dipped deep within his pants pocket and brought out a bundle of bills. He counted out several.

“
Here. This should take you far enough away from here.” She wondered if it mattered to him if she were far away or if it had all simply been a matter of convenience. He would never say, of course. Not to her, not to anyone, not even, she was sure, when God Himself asked.

“I don’t
want to be far away from here. I must stay near Wightefield.”

“Then use it for what you want.”

She looked into Crossett’s large, brown eyes. Such a soft brown they were. It was his eyes that had seduced her five years ago, and she would miss them, but they were not windows to his soul. No, she could vouch for the inaccuracy of that old saying. Crossett Mainwaring’s eyes were far softer than anything that lay beyond them.

“Thank you.”

“I need to go to Wightefield, Lamerie.”

“You have my
permission to go to Wightefield, but Jake goes up there nearly every night waiting for trespassers. He carries a gun.”

“I know.”

Outside, Jake measured Crossett’s steps as he watched him go down the icy apartment building steps and pick his way along the gelid patches of the cobbled sidewalk.