Snow Shadow Page 2

  Another vague memory—steel—yes, one of those American success stories once so extolled, before it became a slightly shameful thing to work one’s way up in the world by hard application to a job. Anton Polchek must have been one of the very last of the Alger heroes.

  “—so Miss Elizabeth takes paying guests now.” I must have missed a word or two. “This property belongs to her sister, Mrs. Emma Horvath. There is a garden walk uniting it to the Abbey.”

  The quaint term—again an echo of Aunt Otilda’s world—”paying guest” riveted my attention. I had been in an inn room for a week, and I disliked inns, even when they were within walking distance of the library in which I had come to bury myself. I would be here for at least six weeks. What if—?

  Taking courage, I mentioned my need. To my surprise, Preston Donner pounced upon my question eagerly. In fact, he was so interested I was flattered.

  “How lucky! The large corner room is at present vacant. Perhaps I should explain that I am one of Miss Elizabeth’s guests whenever I am in town. Having been a friend of the family for years, I was her first guest. It was my good fortune to be associated with Dr. Austin in the assembling of his collection. And that corner room is most suitable for a writer. It partly overlooks the garden and the quiet is most conducive to work, as I can testify.” He might have been a rental agent, so did he extoll Northanger Abbey. There was a bus line offering only a ten-minute ride to the university and the library. Miss Elizabeth also provided breakfasts, and other meals if arrangements were made.

  “Miss Elizabeth is home tonight,” he ended. “If you wish I can escort you across the garden, save you the trouble of a second trip out.”

  He was moving too fast. I always react to pressure with the only defense I had learned during my Aunt Otilda years, digging in my heels and becoming evasive. Not that this had ever worked, and perhaps it would not now.

  I wanted to discuss it with Theodosia, the only one here I could claim as more than a casual acquaintance. But she was now the center of a group deep in conversation. I did not have the courage to break into that.

  Though I admit that the delights of the Abbey, as Preston Donner recited them, attracted me (and I know there are some people who have a compulsion to settle matters neatly for their fellows), yet I did not want to be so summarily pushed. But he was already on his feet, and I did not again have the strength to say no.

  Our leaving was not marked as we stepped out into moonlight. The sleet storm was over. Slush hardened on the ground, and our booted feet left misshapen tracks. In this light, the carriage house we had just left had some of the eerie, yet perilous, charm of a Rackham drawing.

  “It is attractive,” I commented.

  My escort paused. “Yes. A pity things turned out the way they did. But Miss Emma will come to her senses. She must! She had the coach house converted for her nephew, the son of her sister Anne. Poor boy, he’s in the Naval Hospital now—a returned prisoner of war from Vietnam. He was quite badly treated.”

  “But if it was a gift—” I was more intent in picking a cautious way over treacherous footing than I was in the information Preston Donner seemed so eager to supply.

  “Unfortunately not a complete gift, though that was the understanding. Miss Emma had been unwell. She fell some months back and fractured her hip, which perhaps makes her so difficult to please. The Frimbees have a small child, and she thought that a child so close to her own dwelling bad for her nerves. She wanted only adults, so she offered a short lease to Mr. Cantrell. Then she had a sudden bad turn and now she is convalescing at Idleacres. Until she returns, nothing more can be decided. Irene and the child are living at the Abbey for the present.”

  This hint of family quarrels—nothing can be more vindictive or deadly—slowed my pace. I began to wish even more that I had never left Theodosia’s hearthside. And I began to concoct, mentally, excuses to use once I reached the Abbey.

  Our walk wound around the end of an untrimmed hedge into a frost-killed garden. There were clumps of trees and tall shrubs, and I caught a glimpse of a statue miserably cold in the moonlight. Beyond loomed the Abbey. Judging by a sky-outlined turret or two, it was certainly mock-gothic, perhaps of the worst General Grant period. In the dusk it repelled rather than charmed.

  “It’s big.” To me it looked monstrous. There was only a faint glimmer of light in one or two widely separated windows.

  “Ugly, too,” he admitted promptly. “About the ugliest house in the county, which does give it distinction. Old Polchek had it built for his wife, then gave it to his daughter for a wedding present. Too bad for his granddaughters that he didn’t have the foresight to tie up the funds in trust. Now it’s just a white elephant poor Miss Elizabeth can’t sell because of the will.”

  “The will?”

  “All that is left of the capital is to provide additions to the library. That was Edward’s dream. It doesn’t matter to Miss Emma; she has life interest in Alexis Horvath’s estate and her own money besides. And another daughter, Elinor, is dead. But Anne’s a widow. Her husband went down with his ship during the war with Japan. She has only her pension. While Miss Elizabeth—” He slid his hand deftly under my arm in support as I slipped. “This is treacherous in this weather. I was not aware how much—”

  I did not pull away from his touch, though I wanted to. Not because it was Preston Donner’s hand, which was a firm support, but because—was I ever going to be allowed to forget? I called on the armor I had so harshly learned to wear.

  Luckily the path now narrowed, so we had to go single file. With a murmur of excuse he went ahead. And he was not looking back when there was movement among the bushes to my left. Later, when it was to be very necessary for me to recall details of what—or what I thought—I had seen. I was not sure. How much was true, how much imagination?

  I stopped so short I nearly slipped again as I sighted a figure between two overhanging shrubs. I gasped and it was gone, just as Preston Donner swung around. Luckily I had sense enough to edit my explanation, one of the few times in my life I thought fast.

  “I thought I saw something moving—over there.”

  He peered along the line of my pointing finger.

  “The bushes do assume odd shapes at night. I have noticed that myself.”

  But did any bush, no matter how large, I wondered, as I followed him on, ever assume the guise of a naval officer in full-dress, details of gold braid glinting in the moonlight? And particularly a naval officer in the type of uniform which had not been worn since the very early 1800s?

  Either the Austins had some very lifelike and movable garden embellishments or—I suppressed my imagination with a heavy hand. On one small drink? No, I could not have seen that I thought I had.

  2

  Preston Donner turned into another walk, which brought us to an impressive portico. Inside the house, warmth enfolded us with that stuffy comfort promised by the late and very ugly Victorian solidity of such furnishing as could be seen.

  The thick carpet did show some signs of wear, but what might have once been strident coloring now blended with oak paneling, which framed a wide marble staircase rising into shadows. If heat was abundant, the same was not true of light. The fixtures (including a marble goddess with a torch at the foot of the stair rail) were provided with bulbs of low wattage, which made little resistance to the general gloom.

  “Who is there?” The call sounded from the cavern of a room to our right.

  “Miss Elizabeth.” Preston Donner came to attention. “It is I.”

  Though he motioned to me, I took time to shed boots, pull loose my headscarf. But, as I followed him, even the manners drilled into me by Aunt Otilda could not make me repress a startled gasp. If the hallway had been of the 1880s, this room underlined that promise with all of the period’s unique hideousness.

  There was an interference course of small tables, all crowded to the very edge with silver picture frames, china and glass. These elbowed velvet upholstered chairs, to form
a near-impenetrable barrier between us and the woman seated beside a quite unnecessary blaze on the tiled hearth. All the clutter would have taken hours to catalog. I tried not to stare at such notable exhibits as a bunch of peacock feathers in a quite unbelievable vase—instead, I centered my attention on Miss Elizabeth Austin.

  As the room, she was a period piece. Perhaps she was very near eighty. I would not have ventured to guess. But the age she chose to represent was the mature years of someone of a much earlier day. Her dress, the gored skirt of which brushed the toes of her velvet slippers, was black silk of a quality one no longer sees, meant to wear forever. Its vee-corsage was filled with a vestee of yellowed lace, supporting a high-boned collar to completely hide her throat. A garnet sunburst brooch weighted the lace, and more clusters of those dullish stones were set at her ears. Her silver hair puffed high under a visible net, leaving a soft fringe across her forehead. Recognition tugged at my memory: Queen Mary, just as she appeared in a recent biography’s photographic illustration!

  Mrs. Austin occupied her high-back chair with the erect and regal posture of royalty on display, graciously waiting for a lord chamberlain to present a visitor. Donner obliged her.

  “Miss Elizabeth, this is Miss Erica Jansen. She is the author of—”

  “Mistress of Melodrama.” Miss Elizabeth gave a royal inclination of the head. “A most interesting book, Miss Jansen, if somewhat superficial. My dear mother was a friend of Mrs. Southworth’s. At least you had the delicacy not to invent when you had no facts concerning some aspects of her personal life—a forebearance only too rare in so-called literary efforts these days.”

  She put out her hand. For an instant or two, the royal illusion held so strongly I felt inclined to make one of those quick up-and-down bobs one views upon such occasions in TV news. But when her fingers closed firmly about mine, the fantasy cracked and I was back in my own world.

  “Miss Jansen is in Ladensville to do research at the university library,” Preston Donner continued, as if etiquette denied me the right of stating anything for myself. “She mentioned a desire to move out of the inn.”

  Miss Elizabeth’s lips firmed. I wondered if she disliked the suggestion which my escort had made, very much on his own authority.

  “I spoke to her about the garden room,” he continued, unabashed.

  Miss Elizabeth regarded me measuringly. Oddly enough, I, who had come here with the firm intention of not falling in with Donner’s suggestion, now felt that to be accepted by Miss Elizabeth Austin as a paying guest was something of an accolade.

  “Do you object to small children?” Her abrupt question was not what I had expected.

  “I have not had much experience of them,” I replied truthfully. I felt like a governess in one of those paperback gothics, being put searching questions concerning my fitness by a prospective employer. The setting was certainly correct. Even Miss Elizabeth fitted the proper pattern for such flights of fiction.

  “You are forthright, Miss Jansen.” Her small nod appeared to approve. “I ask because my niece and her son, a boy of three, are domiciled here for the present. When one is at work, sometimes extraneous noises are disturbing. My dear father always found them to be so. But this house is large, and you may not discover the situation troublesome. If you will follow me—”

  She arose and glided—actually glided (an expression I had heretofore believed to be a cliché of second-rate novelists) to the door. Uncertainly, I followed.

  Ascending the marble stairs with majestic unhaste, she brought me into a long hall better lighted than the one below. A door opened abruptly and a dumpy female, muffled in a threadbare flannel robe, head bristling with hair curlers, confronted us. If Miss Elizabeth fitted her surroundings to perfection, this apparition did not.

  “Oh, it’s you, Aunt.” Her voice was flat, and her hand went up uncertainly to her curlers. This girl was very much an unsightly “before” in those “improve yourself” articles so beloved by magazines. Only she looked as if, in addition, she had no desire to proceed to the “after.” Her eyes slid over me with no interest as she added:

  “Stuart has a cold.”

  “Then call Dr. Bains, Irene. That is what physicians are for.” Miss Elizabeth’s reply was tinged with impatience. “Miss Jansen, my niece, Mrs. Frimsbee.”

  That untidy head nodded, but Mrs. Frimsbee’s thoughts were plainly elsewhere. She stepped back and closed the door with some force as her aunt moved on to a farther chamber, switching on the light within.

  The room was a large one, with flower-patterned drapes pulled across two sets of high windows. While the furniture was massive and of my grandmother’s generation’s taste, its ornate carving did not distract from a promise of comfort. And there was a hearth with wood ready laid for a fire. Indeed, the stolid look of it all held a promise of security. Suddenly I wanted just that.

  “Would there be any objection to my typewriter, if I work at night?”

  Her answer was a little out of character, for she rapped knuckles against the wall. “These are very thick. Sound does not carry unless one leaves the door open.”

  I was at a loss for what must follow. How does one discuss rates with a queen? Was this one of those refined guest houses I had read of (rather unbelievingly), where one puts one’s rent in a neat envelope slipped under a doily on some hall table, to be collected unwitnessed later?

  Once more Miss Elizabeth discarded her chosen role. She stated her rates with brisk firmness. So much for the room—two weeks in advance—with an extra fee for meals.

  I found myself agreeing to move in the next day. The belief that I was being honored by admittance to the Abbey was not only rooted in my landlady’s air, but by Preston Donner’s congratulations when I rejoined him in the hall below.

  As I was putting on my boots, Mrs. Frimsbee came clumping down. Her flannel robe had been replaced by an all-duty coat of unbecoming black and white plaid, and she adjusted its shoulder hood as she descended.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can, Aunt Dr. Bains says to use the vaporizer and I’m all out of fluid—”

  “It’s a bad night out, Miss Irene,” Preston Donner said quickly. “Let me do your errand.”

  Her sullenly tired expression did not lighten. There was no change in the droop of her mouth. “It’s Vita-Flow. And you’d better get the large size. Have Mr. Ferely put it on my account.” Without a word of thanks, she turned to the stairs and went back with the same heavy-footed tread.

  Preston Donner was plainly torn between two acts of courtesy, and I made the decision for him.

  “You go to the drugstore, Mr. Donner. The walk to the carriage house is plain. I couldn’t possibly lose my way.”

  But when outside we separated, and that shadow-filled garden lay once more before me, I rather regretted my helpfulness. There was what I had seen—I could swear I had not imagined it. Now I struck out at as brisk a pace as the footing would allow. Cold nipped, and snow had begun to fall. Why had I taken a room at the Abbey? The first thing I must do upon my return to the inn was to cancel the whole thing.

  I had been watching the fast-filling tracks we had left, and was suddenly aware there was a third set of prints. The small heel, the narrow toe, could only have been left by a woman.

  They had appeared from around a bush, neither from the house or the carriage house, as far as I could tell. Had it not been so dark I might have backtracked a little, for my curiosity was aroused. But the dense shrubbery fed unpleasant suggestions to my imagination and I hurried on.

  Under the bench in the carriage-house foyer was a collection of boots and overshoes. Ruling out the strictly masculine, and the broader soled footgear such as my own, there were three pair which might have left those prints. I ran an exploring finger over the toe of each and the last was wet. I was almost sure that Theodosia had worn a similar pair when I had met her at the library. But short of playing Cinderella’s prince and trying them on the company, I would never know. After all, what did i
t matter?

  “Erica!” Theodosia stood looking at me in surprise. “Where have you been?”

  I started. “Mr Donner suggested I see about a room at the Abbey. I do want to get out of that inn.”

  She laughed. “I might have known Preston would be drumming up trade for his precious Miss Elizabeth. Where is he now—lurking outside, afraid to face me for trying to plant you in that Victorian horror house? To him, Miss Elizabeth is a period piece to be carefully preserved. But he needn’t have recruited you, though I’ll admit your room would be comfortable, and she does have an excellent cook. Don’t take me seriously if you are really interested. Just to rent a room there would not mean that you would be pulled into anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Austin family affairs. Unfortunately, we were dragged in through Mrs. Horvath. But their troubles are none of yours. I’ve nothing against Miss Elizabeth. In a way she’s a grand relic, a monument if you like. She’s taken enough blows to floor an elephant, but no one has heard her complain.”

  “Maybe this is too far uptown.” I mustered one of the arguments which had occurred to me during my return across the garden.

  Only Theodosia now made an about-face. She dropped her banter and spoke soberly:

  “My girl, if you can stand living in that house with the Austins—and a very muddled lot they are, as I will tell you when we have more time—I shall welcome your being here. I have an idea, which I trust is only the fruit of my imagination, that something unpleasant is building. Now, if that frightens you away, I shan’t be surprised.

  “As for transportation, don’t give it a thought. We can keep working hours together. Which, goodness knows, I must do now. Plunge into serious reading. It keeps one from thinking all the time. I sometimes believe that more than just Emma Horvath’s spite haunts this place. Which gives me another idea—”