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Charles stared at his plate, his mouth set in a thin line, while the girl complied. She moved slowly, cradling a pitcher in her small hands. She studied Erin from under her bangs as she refilled the glass.
The landlady smiled. “I’m very sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” Charles said. “Accidents happen.”
“Ever since her mother passed …” The landlady shook her head. “Can I get you anything else?”
“No,” Charles said. “Thank you.”
“You’ll let me know if you need anything, then.” The landlady turned back to the kitchen, herding the girl before her. Just before the child disappeared, she glared back at the table, and for an instant — the space of a heartbeat — she reminded Erin of Lissa once again. It was like the blink of a camera shutter: Sarah, pudgy and resentful; then Lissa. Lissa glaring back at her, her eyes reproachful and unafraid.
You let me die, those eyes said.
Then the shutter blinked again and Lissa was gone.
“Charles —”
His hands busied themselves with his silverware.
There was something wounded in his silence, something fraught and sorrowful. He looked like a little boy, scowling at his shoes lest a flash of further intimacy send pent-up tears spilling down his cheeks. Erin had wanted to touch him then, too, and in that moment of weakness, a confessional impulse seized her. A fresh start, he’d said. And why not? You didn’t start fresh with lies.
“Charles —”
His knife chattered against the rim of his plate. A dull reflection alighted trembling on the flat of the blade. He stared at the table.
“I saw her, Charles. It was her. I mean … I know …”
Then he did look up, his face pale and cold, his expression set.
“She’s gone, Erin. She’s —” He drew a breath, shook his head, sighed. “She’s … gone.” He stared at her a moment longer. “I’m sorry,” he said. He hesitated as if he wanted to say more, and then, biting his lower lip, he pushed back his chair and left the dining room.
“Madam?” The landlady stood in the kitchen door, wiping her hands on a towel. “Is there something wrong with the meal?”
“No,” Erin said. “The food was fine. Everything’s fine.”
But everything wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. Nothing would ever be fine again. Erin leaned her head against the cool window and focused on the thrum of the tires, the hum of the engine. It would be all right, she told herself. Everything would be all right.
Yet the wood, vast and green and vigilant, still oppressed her.
Gone, Charles had said.
He was right, of course. That was the hell of it. Last night at dinner, she had seen not Lissa but another child, a dark, heavyset child with griefs and burdens of her own. If Erin’s heart had chosen to see something else, it was an illusion, nothing more.
Perhaps she’d gone mad. Sane women did not see dead children cruising the canned fruit aisle when they did their weekly shopping. Sane women did not see ghostly shapes in the shadows underneath the trees.
Charles downshifted, and the engine’s tone deepened. Tidal pressure swelled through her as the car leaned into a curve. A bulwark of ancient, moss-damp stone — ten feet at least, and maybe taller — shot up from the forest floor before them like the fossilized spine of a buried dragon. As the car hurtled toward it, Erin’s heart quickened.
Then the road dipped and a narrow aperture, hardly wider than the car, appeared in the stone. The car shot under an archway. The suffocating omnipresence of the wood, that sense of contained energies churning just beyond the range of perception, retreated. An instant of speeding darkness followed — how thick the wall must be! — and then they surfaced on the other side, into a treeless meadow, sunlight breaking across the windshield.
Charles slowed as the road dropped down into a deep, round bowl carved into the heartwood. He nosed the car up to a second wall — hand-stacked stone, perhaps waist high or a little higher. He killed the engine.
Erin reached for her satchel. “I guess we’re here,” she said.
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They got out of the car and stood there in silence, transfixed.
About a hundred yards away, Hollow House — three stories of gray, castellated stone — stood at a slight elevation, moated by sculpted grounds, meadow, and walls. Like a stone cast into a pool, Charles thought. Axis mundi, still center of the wheeling world.
“Something else, isn’t it?” Merrow said.
Something else indeed. The photographs had not done justice to the house’s implacable aspect — its grim solidity, its tower and turrets, its dormers and crow-stepped gables.
Merrow said, “The original structure burned in —”
“Eighteen forty-three,” Charles said. “Everything but the library.”
Merrow gave him a perfunctory smile. “You’ve done your research.”
“Charles is all about research,” Erin said, adjusting her bag. “It must be hell to heat.”
Merrow laughed. “It’s been decades since the entire house was in active use. Mr. Hollow — Edward, that is, your immediate predecessor — lived in a thoroughly updated suite of rooms, though ‘suite’ hardly does it justice. It has good proximity to the library — handy for your research, Mr. Hayden. In any case, you’ll find Hollow House quite livable, I should think.” Merrow led them along the perimeter of the wall. “Shall we?”
“Where’s the gate?” Charles asked.
Merrow uttered something that might have been a laugh. “There’s a gate for deliveries at the back. Otherwise the wall is unbroken, one of the house’s eccentricities. I thought you’d prefer the front view — a formal introduction, if you will. Here we go.” She waved at a set of stone risers built into the wall — a stile, Charles thought, summoning the word out of dusty memories of some obscure Victorian novelist — Surtees maybe.
“Let me give you a hand,” Charles said, but Merrow ignored him, flitting up the stairs on her own, so that he found himself gazing at the curve of her rear end, sleek beneath her clinging skirt.
She looked down at him from the crest of the wall. Charles averted his gaze, heat rising in his cheeks. “You’ll want to be careful,” she said. “It’s a bit steep.” Before he could reply, she started down the other side.
Charles followed, the steps slick beneath his feet. He paused atop the wall to reach for Erin’s hand.
“I’ve got it, Charles,” Erin said.
The steps on the other side were broader and overgrown with moss. He’d just reached the bottom and turned back to look at her when Erin’s foot slipped. Charles lunged for her too late. She slid helter-skelter down the stairs, spilling her satchel, and smashed to the earth on one shoulder, breath bursting from her lungs with a plosive grunt.
“Are you all right?” he asked, but she waved him away.
“I’m fine.” She pushed herself to her feet, wincing, and reached for her ankle. “Just get my stuff.”
But Merrow was already collecting it: makeup and lipstick, her passport, an assortment of pens and pill bottles. A sketchbook. A framed photo. Merrow stood, looking at it. “Your daughter?” she asked, scraping mud off the edge of the frame. “She is very beautiful. The glass has cracked, but that can be mended easily enough, can’t it? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I just twisted my ankle. I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t look fine. Mud streaked her jeans. She was flushed. When she took a step, she favored the bad ankle.
“Here, let me help you,” Charles said.
“Really, Charles, I’m fine.” And then, relenting, with a small smile, “Walk it off, right?”
“I guess so,” he said.
“Well, let me get your bag, at least,” Merrow said. “Come on.”
Together — with Charles and Merrow hovering to either side of Erin — they made their halting way toward the house. By the time they’d reached the stairs, six of them, climbing to a square portico, the door had been opened from within. A stout, fifty-something woman in full Mrs. Danvers livery — black skirts, white apron, even a black cap with her gray hair pinned up underneath — descended to meet them. It was like seeing a nurse in whites, complete with cap, in your local emergency room.
“Ah, Mrs. Ramsden,” Merrow said.
Mrs. Ramsden smiled. “Here, let me help you, now,” she said, reaching for Erin’s arm, and together they hobbled up the stairs into Hollow House.
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They stood in a vaulted entrance hall, like children in a tale, long lost and returned at last to break the spell that had been cast over their ancestral home. A great chandelier illuminated the tapestries and framed portraits that adorned the walls. Doors to the left and right stood closed. The high archway before them framed a long, luxuriously furnished salon.
“I saw you fall,” Mrs. Ramsden said. “That stile is a menace. I don’t know how many times I’ve told Mr. Harris we need to do something about it.” She sighed in exasperation with Mr. Harris as she led them through the salon, past twin oaken staircases that curved like the necks of swans to the gallery above. The balusters had been carved with an intricate motif of leaf and vine. Cunning foxlike faces peered out at them as they passed. “Anyway,” she added, “welcome home. The house isn’t always lit up this way, but we wanted to put her best face forward for you. I’d hoped to give you the grand tour, but I don’t think you’re in any shape to enjoy it, Mrs. Hayden. Let’s get you upstairs and see if we can’t find some ice for that ankle.”
They went up a back staircase to what had been Mr. Hollow’s living quarters: a house inside the house, Charles thought, and a luxuriously appointed one: polished floors and plush oriental rugs, Victorian-era furniture, built-in bookcases stocked with neat rows of leather-bound books. Capacious, high-ceilinged rooms — study, sitting room, dining room — radiated off the large central foyer, where a grand staircase curved up to an open gallery. “There are four suites and a maid’s room upstairs,” Mrs. Ramsden said, leading them down a wide hall into a breakfast room lined with windows, providing a panoramic view of the lawn. There was a second stone house down there. A cottage, really: a single floor, with narrow windows.
“That’s Mr. Harris’s house,” Merrow said, putting Erin’s satchel on the table. “He’s the estate’s steward.”
“We do hope you’ll be comfortable here,” Mrs. Ramsden said as she got Erin settled. “I’ll get you some ice.”
Merrow took out her phone. “Let me see if I can find you a doctor.”
“Please don’t bother. I just twisted it.”
“It’s no bother,” Merrow said and turned away, holding the phone to her ear. By the time Mrs. Ramsden returned with a dish towel and a large plastic bag of ice, Merrow was saying, “Yes, I expect you to come out here, John. We’re speaking of the new mistress of Hollow House. Yes, three should be fine. Yes, I’m sure she’ll survive until then. Good. Thank you, then.”
She ended the call and smiled — a little tightly, Charles thought. “Dr. Colbeck will be here at three,” she said. “Can you endure it for a couple of hours?” When Erin nodded, Merrow turned to Mrs. Ramsden. “Does Mr. Harris intend to join us?”
Mrs. Ramsden hesitated. “See, we thought you’d be arriving a little bit later. Mr. Harris ran into Yarrow. I expect him back directly.”
“Not the day I should have chosen for a trip into the village,” Merrow said. “Well.” She looked at Erin. “You seem to be in good hands. If there’s nothing else I can do for you …”
“You’ve done more than enough.”
“Then I’ll be off.” At the doorway, she turned. “Keys. Mustn’t forget the keys.” She reached into her purse and withdrew a heavy key ring. “I’ve marked the important ones. Mr. Harris will have to help with the others.”
A doorbell rang in the foyer.
“I suppose that’s him,” Mrs. Ramsden said.
“No doubt,” Merrow said. “I’ll let him in on my way out. In the meantime, if you need anything, please do ring me up. You have my card.” And then, smiling at Erin, “I’m sure you’ll be up and about in no time.”
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“The house operates on a skeletal staff, sir,” said Cillian Harris as he led Charles through the salon. “Mr. Hollow kept just enough people on to maintain the property — groundskeepers and housemaids. It’ll be a bit of a lifestyle change, sir.”
Charles glanced at Harris. He looked more like a linebacker than a steward: mid-thirties, with a thatch of unruly dark hair and a crooked nose — not unhandsome in a rough-hewn kind of way. His eyes were bloodshot, and though the man seemed sober enough, Charles was almost certain that he’d caught the scent of whisky on his breath.
It was just past two o’clock.
“Mrs. Ramsden sees to the living quarters and supervises the housemaids,” Harris was saying. “She’ll arrive most mornings around seven. I’m always available. I live in the cottage. You may have noticed it from the breakfast room. I manage the estate.” And then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “Under your direction, of course.”
“Well, let’s work on a more informal basis, then. Why don’t you call me Charles?”
“I couldn’t do that, Mr. Hayden. All my life I served Mr. Hollow, and my father before me, and never once did I call him by his given name. Mr. and Mrs. Hayden you must be to me, by force of habit if nothing else.”
Charles reminded himself that he was an interloper in a foreign land. The custom of the country and all that. “If you insist.”
Harris nodded. “I understand that you intend to do research.”
“Yes, Caedmon Hollow, his book —”
“I know his book all right.” Then, hesitant, as though he felt he was overstepping his bounds, “Never should have written it, if you want my opinion.”
Not really, Charles thought, but he said nothing.
“Well, you’ll want to be back before the doctor arrives,” Harris said. “Let’s just have a glance into the library.”
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“Tea?” Mrs. Ramsden said.
“Why not?” Erin said.
Mrs. Ramsden busied herself setting out the service: cookies on a platter, sugar cubes and milk, floral teacups and saucers. Everything had the pearly, translucent glow of bone china. “It’s been a long trip from America, I warrant. You must be tired.”
“Exhausted.”
“As soon as I set out your tea, I’ll leave you to rest.”
“Why don’t you join me instead? I’d enjoy the company.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I fear our different stations in life preclude such intimacies.”
“Oh, dear, Mrs. Ramsden, I am thoroughly middle class, I assure you.”
“Mr. Harris wouldn’t approve.”
“Well, Mr. Harris works for me now.”
Mrs. Ramsden offered her an uncertain smile.
“I insist,” Erin said. “We’ll finish up before he comes back. Charles will spend half an hour in the library alone.”
“I’ll have to get another cup.”
