Shadows in Scarlet Read online

  “… drainage here,” Hewitt was saying. “Dry soil. Preserved the bones. And hopefully clothing or personal effects to date them by.”

  “Would you like me to call the police?” Amanda asked. “Or are the bones old enough to be out of their jurisdiction?”

  “We’ll notify them, of course. But these bones are very old. It’s an archaeological matter, not a judicial one. Other than the usual legalities of digging up human remains.”

  “There were gangsters running rum on Chesapeake Bay back in the thirties,” someone said. “Maybe this is a revenuer who got rubbed out.”

  “We’ll check the records.”

  “The Chancellors moved here in the twenties,” said Amanda. “The summerhouse was already a ruin by then.”

  “Ditto.”

  “The bones might belong to a slave,” suggested someone else.

  “The slave cemetery was over there.” Hewitt waved toward the row of outbuildings beyond the kitchen garden. “The Africans made sure their friends and relatives had proper burials. They almost always added broken pots and such as grave decorations.”

  “Could it be an Indian from before the European settlements?” asked one of the students. “Or some early settler who died in the Indian attack of—whenever… .”

  “1622,” said Hewitt.

  “And the Armstrongs just happened to plunk their summerhouse down right beside him?” replied one of Hewitt’s assistants. “No, I bet this body dates from after 1751, when Melrose was built.”

  “This type of landscape gardening,” Amanda offered, “the formal terraces and little recreational buildings, was really trendy in the 1770’s.”

  Hewitt stood up, rubbing particles of dirt from his hands. “We’ll cover this up with a sheet of plastic tonight. Get back out here bright and early tomorrow. Get the entire body uncovered. It’ll have to be moved, with the reconstruction of the summerhouse and everything. Identification, that’s the tricky part, legally and otherwise. Might have to call in the Smithsonian.”

  “What if,” one of the students asked, “the rest of the body isn’t in there? What if it was dismembered or something?”

  “We’re scientists. Leave the sensationalism for the tabloids.” Hewitt’s black eyes shot the girl a withering glance. She withered. “Let’s get the plastic spread out and staked down. Move.”

  Amanda wondered how she should enter this on her daily summary—under “associated features?” But it was Hewitt’s responsibility to make a formal report. She only had to note the body’s existence. As an artifact, not a person. With a grimace of sympathy for the unknown deceased she worked her way back through the group of students and headed toward the house.

  The sun set, leaving a thin, greenish twilight. Clouds rose halfway up the western sky. A glowing quarter moon, half a disc, hung high overhead. Each of Melrose’s windows gleamed faintly, as though interested in the scene in the garden.

  The poor guy, if it was a guy, had probably been stuffed into his makeshift grave late at night. Amanda thought of Scarlett O’Hara shooting the Yankee soldier and burying him in her back yard. No telling how many real-life bodies were lying in odd corners of the Virginia countryside. There’d been enough battles over the years to produce an army of skeletons.

  Amanda locked the outer door behind her and turned on the exterior floodlights. She thought of Robert Frost’s poem, where the skeleton of the murdered man stands outside the door, chalky fingers scratching chalky skull… . “That’s what I get for cramming English,” she said to Lafayette, who was waiting by the cat flap in the apartment door. He tilted his head to the side. If he’d had eyebrows, he would’ve arched them.

  She turned to the next page on her clipboard and made her tour of the interior, Lafayette by her side like a general at inspection. Parlor, dining room, drawing room, library, bedrooms—the period furnishings were all accounted for, the attic and cellar doors were locked, the dehumidifiers were working. She really was hearing thunder now, a mutter rising and falling beneath the thump of her own feet.

  She shut the door to her apartment and set the alarm system. As she turned toward the kitchen the phone rang. “Melrose Hall, Amanda Witham.”

  “Amanda!” exclaimed Wayne’s deep voice. “I just heard about the body!”

  “That was fast.”

  “Bill Hewitt’s having dinner with Mother and me tonight—you know, about the grant for the landscaping—but he called to say they’d found a body behind the summerhouse and he’d be late. Did you see it? Is it really gross, like on X-Files?”

  “No way,” Amanda replied, and added to herself, thanks, the literary references were enough. “It’s nothing but bones.”

  “Are you scared? You want me to come out there and keep you company?”

  Like she didn’t know what he meant by that? “You’re living a couple of blocks from Bruton Parish Church and its cemetery,” she told him. “Are you scared?”

  “Those are legitimate bodies. Buried will full rites and all that.”

  “So?”

  “So the ones that aren’t buried properly get kind of restless… .”

  “Thanks for thinking of me, Wayne. But everything’s cool.”

  “Well, if you’re sure … Coming, Mother! I’ll see my little girl tomorrow, then, okay, Sally?”

  “Good night, Wayne.” Making a face, Amanda hung up the phone.

  The body in the back yard would be a great excuse to ask a guy over, if she knew any guys more appealing than Wayne. Not that Wayne was repulsive. He was a big, lovable, clumsy puppy who could use a semester at obedience school. His family’s wealth made him one of Virginia’s most eligible bachelors, but it wasn’t his immaturity that was going to keep him one. It was his mother.

  A shame the summerhouse was gone long before Cynthia parked her broom at Melrose. The thought of her sipping tea, pinkie extended, a few paces from a positively indecent dead body would’ve made Amanda grin with glee if she wasn’t also thinking of that body as a living, feeling human being who’d probably met a gruesome end.

  She opened the windows in her kitchen, living room, and bedroom, and switched on the ceiling fans. She wasn’t allowed an air conditioner—its bulge would ruin the look of the house. But the approaching storm sent a cool if damp and musty breeze before it, stirring the turgid air. Lafayette arranged himself on the sill of the living room window, his tail draped artistically over the computer on the desk below.

  Amanda popped a frozen lasagna dinner into the microwave and threw together a salad. Tonight she’d definitely get some work done. That was the reason for this job, after all, over and beyond its basic appeal. She was getting an apartment, spending money, and good experience for her resume while she wrote her thesis on the socionomic aspect of historical artifacts. She liked these long, quiet, solitary evenings. She enjoyed being on her own. Really.

  Thunder grumbled closer. A few raindrops plopped onto the roof. The breeze fluttered Lafayette’s fur. Amanda watched the local news while she ate, and was cleaning up when Lafayette woke suddenly from his doze and looked out the window, nose twitching, ears pricked.

  A rabbit? Amanda asked herself. A deer? The kitchen garden attracted all sorts of wildlife… .

  Every hair on Lafayette’s body shot upright. He leaped from the windowsill, scattered the papers on the desk, and dived beneath the couch leaving only his bottle brush of a tail exposed.

  The nape of Amanda’s neck prickled. She turned off the TV and the lights and looked out each window in turn. Beyond the floodlit halo surrounding the house the night was pitch black. She might as well have been standing on a stage trying to check out the audience. From the bedroom she could see only a smooth sweep of lawn, silent and empty. From the kitchen window she caught an impression of tree limbs tossing in the wind. The living room window overlooked the gravel drive, the kitchen garden, and the first terrace. Raindrops made blotches on the brick. The breeze was growing cooler by the moment.

  Maybe someone was out
there. One of Hewitt’s students, playing a prank on her. Or someone with more sinister motives. The furnishings of the house included some choice artifacts. If anyone tried to get inside, though, the alarms would raise the dead… .

  The alarms would call the police, Amanda corrected. She closed the thick wooden slats of the venetian blinds and turned the lights back on. Then she punched the number of the other two caretakers, an elderly couple who lived in a small house where the driveway met the main road, a good quarter of a mile from the Hall itself.

  “No,” Mrs. Benedetto answered Amanda’s question. “We haven’t opened the gates for a living soul. Someone could have climbed the fence, though.”

  “You think?” Amanda could hear every word of the sitcom on the Benedetto’s television. A brass band could have marched up the drive and they wouldn’t have noticed.

  “Would you like us to call the security service, dear?”

  “No—no problem. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  Rain pattered down outside, sounding like gravel slipping and sliding beneath stumbling feet. Lightning flashed. Amanda peered around the edge of the window blind, waiting for the next bolt. There! In the sudden brilliance she could see every tree, every brick, starkly defined all the way to the eaves of the forest. Nothing and no one was outside.

  Amanda blinked away the after-image of garden terraces and boxwood allee. Wearing stays, the eighteenth-century corset, all day had cut off the blood flow to her brain. Was she ever out of it. With an aggravated snort, she put on a classical CD and sat down at the desk. No computer tonight, not with the approaching storm. She’d work on her outline.

  Okay. Candles, for example, had both technomic and socionomic uses—for light, yes, but also for status, like at a dinner party, or for marking an occasion, like on a birthday cake. Then there were clothes, which both covered the body and indicated class. Like the aristocratic Sally with her corsets and her pokey little hooks and buttons, sending a very clear signal that if she had to work at all, she worked with her mind, not her hands. And that was the continental divide of Virginia society.

  The problem was that it was the silk-stocking crowd who inventoried their belongings, and bought pattern books, and wrote letters gossiping about fashion, leading the unwary researcher into assumptions about the culture as a whole… .

  The door that led into the rest of the house rattled in its frame and the cat flap shivered. Amanda stared at it. Air pressure from the storm. No one could have opened an outside door into the Hall. Even someone with a key would have set off the alarms. And she could see the alarm panel from where she sat, green lights steady, all systems go.

  She turned back to her notebook, wondering if Abigail Adams in her stays could even remotely be considered the Gloria Steinem of her time period—or Mary Shelley, writing Frankenstein buttoned up to the chin… .

  The room disappeared in a blast of white light that was gone as quickly as it had appeared. The music stopped in mid-phrase. Amanda sat goggling blindly into total darkness as thunder exploded in her head. Shit! Lightning had taken out a nearby transformer. A good thing she hadn’t turned on the computer. A good thing she had a flashlight. Swallowing her heart, she rose from her chair and groped across the room.

  The flashlight was in the kitchen cabinet. She flicked it on and waved the circle of light around the room. Lafayette had subtracted his tail and was completely hidden. Raindrops poured over the roof, slowed, and stopped. A cold wind sent the blinds knocking against the window frames.

  The phone still worked. She called in the power outage, then considered her options. If someone was snooping around the house, they now had an engraved invitation to come inside. The doors were locked, yes, but it would be easy enough to break a window. Her presence wouldn’t stop a thief from taking the silver tea service in the dining room, or a vandal from trashing the crystal wineglasses in the library, but she was supposed to be keeping an eye on the place even so.

  Amanda opened the door of her apartment and listened. A few stray plunks were raindrops outside. The wind was a sigh in the distance. The house was so utterly silent her ears rang, like she was listening to a seashell, compartment after compartment filled with dank air… .

  No. Wait. From somewhere in the house came a faint clatter. Something had fallen over. Something had been knocked over. Great.

  She glanced back at the sofa. A pair of disgruntled golden eyes caught the light. “Thank you for your support,” she whispered. The cat’s eyes vanished.

  No way she was going to call for backup until she’d scoped out the situation. Tucking the telephone into the pocket of her shorts, she tiptoed into the hallway. She took a step, stopped, and listened. Nothing. No silver clashing, no glass breaking. She took a few more steps and arrived at the door leading from the service wing into the rest of the house. Several of the doors in the Hall squeaked. She couldn’t remember if this was one of them.

  Turning off the flashlight and holding her breath, she eased the door open. It went quietly. On the other side was the passage that led between the library and the parlor. The darkness was so thick Amanda felt as though she could have scooped it up in handfuls. Feeling her way, she inched toward the entrance hall. Was that a scraping sound? She couldn’t tell whether it came from above her head or in front of her.

  The doors into the parlor and library were shut, just as she’d left them. She listened at each one. Nothing.

  With a tiny bump that sounded loud as an explosion she walked into the door leading into the entrance hall. She laid her ear against the wood. Silence. No wind, no rain, no falling objects, just the all-encompassing silence of the grave.

  Get a grip! Amanda ordered herself, and set her hand on the doorknob.

  Then she heard the breathing. Slow, slightly uneven breaths, like those of somebody old or sick. Or somebody trying to be very, very quiet.

  Amanda waited a moment, willing herself to breathe. Most of her friends had jobs in nice bright office buildings. But no, she had to shut herself up in a dark old house with someone—something… .

  So look already, and then go for 911. Slowly, carefully, she turned the knob and opened the door a fraction of an inch. Cold air flooded through the opening, raising gooseflesh on her body. From her vantage point she could see almost the entire entrance hall. If anyone was there he was standing in the dark.

  But no, it wasn’t dark. The windows on either side of the front door were rectangles of very pale, very faint luminescence. The clouds must be lifting outside. And yet that wasn’t the light that gleamed on the paneling and picked out the reds and golds of the Turkey carpet. A fragile glow radiated from the foot of the staircase, the one spot Amanda couldn’t see. What the… ?

  She lifted the flashlight—it was the size of a policeman’s nightstick, and almost as heavy—but didn’t turn it on. Pushing the door open, she stepped into the cold. She picked up one foot and put it down. She picked up the other and put it down. The balusters made vertical lines against the cloud of silvery light. Not a flashlight, not a candle… .

  Amanda balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to run, ready to swing her makeshift weapon. She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again.

  The glow darkened and solidified. It was the size of a human being. It was shaped like a human being, head, body, legs. And yet Amanda could still see the edges of the steps indistinctly through its—through his—form. A warm sigh dissipated the chill in the room, and she smelled whiskey.

  Good God. She stepped back, flat-footed, and lowered the flashlight.

  He sat on the fourth step from the bottom, his legs with their checkered stockings splayed, his green and blue kilt draped over his knees. His coat shone scarlet and his waistcoat white, as though lit from within. Across his lap he held an empty scabbard.

  It had to be a trick. A projection, special effects—Stephen Spielberg had dropped by to test out some equipment… . The electricity’s off, Amanda reminded herself.

  The soldier looked up
from the scabbard, and his eyes met hers.

  This guy has had a bad day.

  His eyes were a smoky blue-gray, his knotted brows dark, his expression that of a kid facing an algebra test. Reddish-brown hair fell over his forehead. His face was translucent, carved by light against darkness. Amanda recognized that face. She’d seen it over and over again, in paint and print. Captain James Grant, late—very late—of His Majesty’s 71st Highlanders.

  This guy has had a bad couple of centuries.

  Maybe if she turned the flashlight on him he’d vanish. But she could see him just fine, more than fine… . Again she closed her eyes. She counted to five, watching the pixels of static behind her lids. When she opened them he was still there. And he was still looking at her.

  His lips moved. He croaked. Frowning, he grimaced and tried again. His voice was a wisp of velvet. “Have you seen my sword, then, lass?”

  Her voice sounded like a crow’s. “Ah—no, I haven’t. Sorry.”

  “Taken by the enemy, I’ll be bound. Scoundrels. Not fit to deal with a gentleman.”

  Like she was going to argue with him?

  Slowly his brows smoothed. His eyes started at the top of Amanda’s head, worked their way down to her toes, and moved up again. One corner of his mouth turned upward. “I do beg your pardon, Madame. I seem to have interrupted you at your toilet. If you would care to complete your dress… .”

  “No problem. Er… .” Her interpreter’s training kicked in. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

  He tried to stand and sank back again. “I find myself begging your indulgence again, Madame. I am James Grant of Dundreggan, at your service.”

  “Amanda Witham of Chicago. At yours, I guess.” This isn’t happening. I am not standing here making conversation with a ghost.

  “And this is Melrose Hall, is it not, in His Majesty’s colony of Virginia?”

  “It’s Melrose, yeah. Yes.”

  “In faith, the battle must have been particularly fierce, I am—fatigued.”

  No kidding.

  His lashes fell over his eyes. With a groan he slumped back over the empty scabbard. The pale glow around him faded, draining the colors in his uniform.