The witching hour

“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.