“Why do you keep calling the tower room a child’s room?” Ran asked. “I remember the old nurseries very well; I used to go up there and thank God I didn’t have to live in them.”

  “The tower room was also a nursery,” I insisted. “The windows are barred, like those of the main nursery; and there’s a rocking horse up there.”

  “A rocking horse?” Ran stared. “There was no such object in the house when I was a kid, that I know. Jo, I’d better have a look at that room when we get back.”

  “There is a pattern developing,” Will said. “A rather interesting pattern. It’s still vague, but—”

  “It’s too darned vague,” I said. “Nothing we find ever answers any questions; it just raises more questions. I keep thinking we’ll find something clear-cut, like a diary.”

  “Wouldn’t that be handy,” Ran said. “There certainly wasn’t anything of that nature at the museum; most of the material was what you might call public records. The aunts wouldn’t hand over personal papers, especially if they showed the sacred Frasers in a bad light. Hey—you said you were going to look through that trunk, Jo. I gather you didn’t find anything.”

  “No. Just forty of Mrs. Hezekiah’s account books. Talk about dull.”

  “Dull?” Will swung around to face me; I was sitting in the back seat while he and Ran occupied the front. “It’s obvious you’ve never done any historical research. How detailed were the accounts?”

  “Detailed is not the word. The old bag wrote down every cent she spent.”

  “I gather you took a dislike to the lady.”

  “I hate people who keep account books,” I said. “No, really, she was an iceberg. I didn’t examine the books in detail, I just skimmed through one to see what it was; but I’ll never forget one of the entries. She had nine kids, and lost four—”

  “Not a bad average,” Will said.

  “Yes, I remember thinking that myself. But, Will, that woman listed the expenses of their funerals, right down to the cost of the black crepe armbands for the servants. I tell you, it made me shiver to see that neat precise handwriting record items like, ‘Coffin for Baby Jonathan, four dollars.’”

  “My God,” Ran said. “I’m on your side, Jo.”

  “You aren’t being fair,” Will objected. “New Englanders pride themselves on their fortitude. And believe me, you appreciate that quality after you’ve had a series of hypochondriacal patients who howl about a scratch on the knee. Mrs. Hezekiah may have been torn to pieces inside, but she wouldn’t show it, not even to an account book.”

  “I still pity her poor children.”

  “What were their names?”

  “Oh, names like Jeremiah and Jonathan and Patience…No Kevin. I’m sure of that; I found a genealogy.”

  Will swore.

  “A genealogy and those account books, and you say you didn’t find anything? Jo, you are the most…If I didn’t have a sick kid and a hysterical mother on my hands, I’d come back now and go through those books item by item. Don’t you realize that books like that are an absolute mine of information—impartial, unbiased information, because there is no attempt to mislead a reader? Look up the year Hezekiah died. Look for the names of servants and their wages. I don’t know about this portrait, but all the other evidence we’ve got suggests that the woman was a governess or housekeeper. She’d have to be paid, wouldn’t she? Good God, when I think of all the time you wasted—”

  “Time,” I said coldly, “is what I have not wasted. We don’t have enough of it, that’s all. Do you know how long it’s going to take to go through even one of those blasted books?”

  “I don’t care how long it takes.” Will opened the car door and a long white tendril of fog moved in like a groping arm. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Certainly in time for dinner—”

  “That,” I said. “I expected.”

  Ran was excited and animated as we drove back to the house. I made suitable responses, not wanting to ruin his mood; one of us might just as well be happy. But what I had said earlier was true; it seemed to me that instead of solving problems we were just getting more problems to solve. All we had were theories. They might make sense, but they didn’t lead to anything.

  I remember the rest of that day as chaotic. A number of incidents stand out in my mind, separated by periods of aimless wandering around. The fog didn’t help.

  One thing I remember vividly is the conversation I had with Anne after lunch. I have excellent reasons, now, for remembering it.

  When Ran and I got back to the house we found Anne and Mary in the library with an enormous jigsaw puzzle spread out on the table. Jigsaws were one of Mary’s favorite dull-day activities; I don’t know how Anne had wormed this fact out of her, but she had; and there they were, the two of them, matching pieces and looking as cozy as a basketful of kittens. Ran’s face lit up at the sight of them, in the pathetic way it did whenever he saw Mary seemingly better; and after lunch he invited her to a tête-à-tête with the puzzle. They went off arm in arm and as they left the room Ran turned his head and gave me a meaningful glance. I nodded reassuringly. Then I asked Anne to come upstairs with me, saying I had something to show her.

  We had agreed on the way home, Ran and I, that Anne ought to be told about our latest discoveries. He said we owed it to her. Maybe we did. I didn’t think it would make any difference one way or the other, so I agreed to take on the job of showing her the miniature.

  She was impressed. I didn’t have to tell her who the subject of the portrait was, she recognized it immediately; and she listened in silence as I narrated the circumstances of its discovery.

  “Of course it isn’t as conclusive as Will thinks,” I said flatly. “I could have seen another portrait somewhere in the house—although none of the people who have lived here for years remember any such picture. I might be in collusion with Sue; though I don’t think anyone could suggest why I would go to such an incredible amount of trouble, or how I could convince Sue to join me in a plot. But I suppose it’s easier for you to think that than to accept the only other conclusion.”

  “No,” she said. “I know you don’t like me, Jo, but give me credit for some intelligence. I’m—hit rather hard by this.”

  She was wearing another gorgeous outfit—a full hostess skirt, slit up the sides, over tight black slacks and jersey. But her face looked old—older and yet somehow softer. Old sucker Jo; I felt rather sorry for her.

  “I don’t dislike you,” I protested. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

  “It’s natural that you should feel hostility. You must think I’ve attempted to supplant you in Mary’s affections. Of course I’m anxious to win her confidence, but her rejection of you is her own idea. You must have noticed that she’s been avoiding you.”

  “Yes. I can’t think why.”

  I could think of a reason, and it made me feel terrible. With my big mouth and my guilty conscience I might have spoken up if Anne hadn’t spoken first.

  “You can’t? But it’s obvious, surely. Mary is antagonistic toward all of you because you are thwarting her in the one thing she wants.”

  “What is it she wants?” I demanded, with sudden anger. “She can’t really believe that—that thing that cries out there in the night is a human soul. If a child had been born, and died, I could see why she might cling to that idea, dreadful as it is. But even then—what does she want from it? She can’t expect to—to call it back!”

  “Now you’re being illogical,” Anne said. There were bright spots of color on her cheeks. “You don’t expect a woman in Mary’s condition to be consistent, do you? Yet there is a consistency to her position, though she probably couldn’t verbalize it. Whatever it is that cries in the night, it is unhappy. She wants it to stop crying; to be happy and at peace. It’s as simple as that.”

  Her voice was unsteady. I looked at her in pleased surprise; it was reassuring to know that she could empathize so closely with a patient’s feelings. Maybe she wasn’t as hard as I had believed.

  “But that’s what we all want,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  Anne sat back. There was a pocket in the big skirt; she found her cigarettes and a slim silver lighter.

  “So,” she said, very much preoccupied with her cigarette, “you still won’t consider the idea of a séance?”

  “No, oh no. You wouldn’t suggest it if you really believed in this.”

  “I don’t dare believe,” she said, in an odd muted voice. “You don’t know what it would mean to me to admit it…”

  I remember that sentence, and the tone in which she said it, so clearly. If I had only had the compassion, or the intelligence, to inquire a little further. But I was too damned preoccupied with my own feelings.

  “I know,” I said. “It hasn’t been easy for me either. I used to think of myself as rational. Are you staying over tonight? I certainly wouldn’t want to drive in fog like this”

  “The whole coast is fogbound, according to the radio,” she said, in her normal voice. “I think I won’t risk it tonight. I ought to be back by late tomorrow, I have a rather important appointment. But—well, we’ll see what it’s like in the morning.”

  “I’m afraid it’s going to be rather dull around here this afternoon.”

  “I’ve got letters to write. Might as well do it now, while my host and hostess are with one another. Jo…Thank you for showing me that.”

  “Sure,” I said carelessly. I wasn’t even thinking about her, I was so anxious to get back to my account books.

  After a couple of hours my enthusiasm had waned. I started with the very first book, so as not to miss anything; and it was a terrible job, deciphering that finicky handwriting and stopping to wonder what some items might mean. If I had been looking for any one specific piece of information it might not have been so hard. I was looking for Miss Smith, but that wasn’t all I wanted to find out about, and after what Will had said I was afraid to skip a single entry.

  I got up to 1834 without finding a thing, and my eyeballs were beginning to roll around in my head; I knew I ought to stop for a while. The house had that Sunday afternoon hush which drives a lot of people into taking naps. Anne was presumably still writing letters; her door was closed and no sound came from behind it. I glanced into the library, and saw Ran and Mary both asleep in front of the television set. So I went to the kitchen. Mrs. Willard was cracking nuts for a cake and she pressed me into service. I had no sooner sat down than Jed came in. His hair was beaded with moisture.

  “Good day for ducks,” he said. “That fog is practically solid water. What’s up, Jo?”

  “I came to report,” I said. “Look what we found.”

  I had already shown the box and the portrait to Mrs. Willard and she thought she had seen both before—that the portrait was probably the source of her memory of the face. Jed agreed.

  “In fact, I’m sure this is what I saw. Haven’t seen it for years, though. I remember the frame now, and the general look of the thing. But it must have been ten, fifteen years ago, wouldn’t you say, Bertha? Haven’t seen it since. And I don’t remember ever seeing that child’s face before. The picture must have been lying around the house, in a drawer, maybe, till the old ladies sold it.”

  “No,” Mrs. Willard said positively. “It was always in the box, just like it is. I remember the box well enough now that I see it again. Ugly thing, I always thought; it was on a shelf in one of the spare bedrooms for years.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know, but it doesn’t really get us any farther,” I said despondently. “We still don’t know who these people were. All these separate facts, and no way to fit them together. Like that jigsaw puzzle of Mary’s.”

  “But they do fit together,” Jed said. “You just haven’t found the key piece yet. What did Ran find out?”

  I told him about Hezekiah’s death. That piece of news and its concurrent facts startled him out of his usual composure.

  “That is odd,” he said. “I must have been in that room a half dozen times, and I never thought about those stairs, or wondered about ’em; and yet that is a very peculiar arrangement there. Those two upper rooms are self-contained, you realize that? You could shut ’em off from the rest of the house and nobody could get in or out. And the bars on the window—”

  “If it was a child’s room the bars make sense,” I said. “It’s the other angle I don’t like. If Hezekiah died in that room, and Miss Smith called me to it—”

  “Called you? It’s interesting you should describe it that way. I’ve wondered about that before. You’re the one that sees her, Jo. Why you? What does she want from you?”

  “My God!” I dropped the walnut I was working on. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Willard, I didn’t mean to swear; it just popped out…. Jed, that’s a horrible idea. Why should she want anything from me?”

  “Well,” Jed said apologetically, “she does keep getting closer, doesn’t she?”

  “Ugh,” I said. “The last time was too close for comfort. What if she came into my room…or touched me…Jed, I think I’d lose my mind if she ever—”

  “Calm down,” Jed said sharply. “Don’t you see, Jo, that is the only kind of damage a thing like that can do? It isn’t solid; its only weapon is fear. If you’re prepared for it you won’t panic and you won’t get hurt. You’re young and healthy. But I’m worried about Mary. I wish I knew what she has been seeing and hearing.”

  “She’s heard the crying. As we all have.”

  “Sure. But she must have heard more than that.”

  “Why?”

  “How does she know its name is Kevin?”

  It was one of those self-evident facts that none of us had put into words before. I was sorry Jed had done so now. I didn’t like the picture those words brought to my mind.

  “You mean,” I said, “You mean it—it talks to her?”

  “Seems as if it must.”

  “Oh, God.” I put my head in my hands, and didn’t apologize this time; nor did Mrs. Willard reproach me for taking the name of the Lord in vain.

  “You see the problem,” Jed went on. “With all these manifestations—sounds and sights and feelings, including that abnormal cold—we can’t even define what we’ve got here. Is it one apparition or two? Is the hostile entity we call Miss Smith responsible for the pitiful weeping that fetches Mary out of her bed at night, into considerable danger? Or are there two ghosts?”

  “There are two pictures,” I said.

  “Doesn’t mean a thing…. I think maybe I’ll have another look at that room in the tower.”

  “Ran said he intended to do that too. I must admit I’m not anxious to see it again. I guess I’ll go back to my dear account books.”

  On my ways upstairs I went to the front door and looked out. San Franciscans boast of their fogs, but I had never seen one like this. Maybe it just seemed thicker because we were out in the country, where there were no lights or nearby objects. I couldn’t see anything beyond the porch; the world might have ended ten feet away from the house. I was straining my eyes to see through the white opacity, and yet I was afraid of what I might see if I succeeded. In his own quiet way Jed was a master of the macabre. His suggestions were enough to make me abandon indefinitely the idea of sleeping. What if I woke up and found—her—standing by the bed—close enough to touch me?

  That afternoon seemed to last for forty-eight hours. When Jed knocked at my door I was half asleep, nodding over the next account book. The look on his face woke me up fast enough, though.

  “I’ve been up there,” he said, without preamble. “That’s a funny place, Jo, I never realized how funny. You know most of the furniture upstairs was sold or else stored away? There is still furniture in those rooms. The topmost one is a kind of bedroom. There’s a brass bedstead up there, and some wardrobes and chests of drawers. How the Hades they got them up those stairs I hate to think, but there they are.”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “Sure I did. I just never wondered about it. Why would I? None of these things we’ve found would mean anything unless we had a reason to notice them.” He sounded exasperated. I knew he was annoyed with himself.

  “That’s a good point,” I said soothingly. “What have you got there?”

  One hand was behind his back. At my question his frown faded and a slight smile took its place.

  “Something I think may surprise you. There were books in one of those cupboards. Look at this one.”

  It was an old-fashioned reader, or primer. I didn’t pay much attention to the book itself, I was too fascinated by the inside front cover, which Jed displayed to me. There was a name on it, scrawled in big tipsy letters, like the printing of a small child who is just learning his alphabet. It said: “Kevin.”

  “Good gosh,” I said. It was an inadequate expression of my feelings.

  “Yep. We’re getting there, Jo. I know it seems slow, but we are making progress.”

  “A child named Kevin did live in that room. Why not in the other nursery? And who was he? Not one of Hezekiah’s children, we know their names…. Wait a minute.”

  I picked up the genealogy from where I had tossed it on the floor, and we studied it together. Jed made mumbling sounds of satisfaction.

  “Kevin was a family name before 1840. Must have come in with some Irish ancestress, before the Frasers ever emigrated. Yep; one, two, three—five times. The old man’s own granddad was named Kevin. And he was the last. Never again.”

  “The one we want can’t be any of the early ones,” I said. “The house wasn’t lived in by Frasers until Hezekiah’s time. The book—yes, it was copyrighted in 1830.”

  “No, we haven’t found the right Kevin yet,” Jed said. “But we will. Back to your books, Jo. How far along are you?”

  “Eighteen thirty-nine,” I said, with a groan.

  It was in the 1840 ledger that I found it. The name seemed to jump out at me from the yellowing page.

  “Wages, Miss Smith.”

  I sat back and rubbed my eyes. Yes, there it was; I had begun to think I would never find it.

  I cheated then. Instead of continuing my entry-by-entry search, I jumped ahead. Miss Smith had first been paid in September of 1840. I checked that same month in succeeding years and it was there, regular as clockwork: “Miss Smith, wages.” In 1842 she got a raise, from fifty dollars a year to fifty-five. In 1846 her name wasn’t listed. I remembered the date on the tombstone, and I started looking back through that year. The search went much faster when I had a single specific question in mind; it took only minutes to find the entries.

 

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