The Silver Ghost (3 page)

“It must have some redeeming feature. Enjoy your dinner, dear. I’m going to mingle some more.”

Sarah took her plate over to one of the long tables and sat down. There was no printed menu; she supposed not all the lords or ladies of the period would have been able to read one. At least everybody got his own knife and fork, although it appeared the forks were anachronistic. The gentry hadn’t started introducing them to their tables until sometime in the seventeenth century, and even then many considered them a silly affectation.

She knew all this because Professor Ufford told her so. She’d picked a seat next to old Tom Tolbathy, whom she liked very much, assuming she’d be able to have a comfortable chat with him about who was who and why. Tom would have been only too glad to oblige, but Ufford had zeroed in on the empty seat at her right. Since then, neither of them had been able to get a word in edgewise. Her neighbors across the table, Buck Tolbathy and Young Dork, were no help. They were deep in a low-voiced conversation about the finer points of morris dancing, and eating frumenty almost as if they liked it.

Well, it probably didn’t matter that she wasn’t accomplishing anything here. Marcia Whet and Hester Tolbathy had Max cozily tucked between them at the next table; no doubt he was gleaning plenty from them. Sarah tried to tune out the professor’s drone and concentrate on her dinner and the charming Renaissance music being piped in from Station XBIL. Pretty soon she’d find an excuse to change her seat.

That wouldn’t be hard to do, plenty of people were table-hopping. Though any number of potboys and serving wenches were rushing about with trays and plates, and Melisande Purbody’s five Afghan hounds were foraging among the rushes that covered the floor of the pavilion, service was mostly do-it-yourself. Somebody would get up, wearing his napkin around his neck and carrying his cutlery as well as his plate, collect another helping of peacock pie and frumenty from the buffet, then plop himself down beside some other reveler he hadn’t yet got to revel with.

Even after the surfeit stage ought to have been reached, Sarah couldn’t notice much thinning around the boards. The pavilion was more inviting now than the lawn. As so often happens on a May day in Massachusetts, a stiffish east wind had sprung up. The sky that had been so azure or perhaps cerulean an hour before had become overcast with the darkish gray clouds that foretold a shower.

Sarah herself was comfortable enough in her silken gown and heavy brocade houppelande, but Abigail was sending a couple of the serving wenches who also happened to be her granddaughters into the house for extra wraps to protect the more thinly garbed. Apollonia Kelling, sitting over beyond Young Dork, was accepting a shawl with loud cries of gratitude.

“Just what the old bones needed. Bodie ought to have one, too. Her rheumatics always kick up if she gets a chill.”

“I’ll take it to her,” Sarah heard one of the young Purbodys offer. “Where is she?”

“Let’s see. There—no, that’s Henry the Eighth. Or is it the seventh? Anyway, not Bodie.”

Appie started prowling up and down between tables, turning the Kelling nose this way and that like a particularly undecided weathercock. “I can’t seem to see her. How odd. Sarah, have you seen Bodie?”

There’d be no rest for her until she responded. Sarah murmured “excuse me” to Tom Tolbathy, who was working his way through an extra helping of frumenty with a somewhat bemused expression on his face. “I’m coming, Aunt Appie.”

Sarah scanned the tables in her turn, but Boadicea Kelling’s well-ordered countenance appeared nowhere. “Sorry, Aunt Appie. Aunt Bodie did mention that she wasn’t going to eat much at the banquet, as you may remember. I expect she’s doing her four miles around the clover fields, or something of that sort. Here, give me the shawl and finish your dinner. I’ll go find her.”

She was passing the buffet table, noticing to her surprise that the frumenty bowl had been scraped clean as a whistle, when she spied Professor Ufford. He was heading her way, and the smile on his face was not professorial. Sarah flipped her train into reverse and made a beeline for Max.

“Darling, I’m sorry to break up so attractive a threesome, but could you come and help me find Aunt Bodie? She’s somewhere out in the grounds and Aunt Appie’s afraid she’ll get cold without a wrap.”

“Sure. See you later, ladies.”

Max climbed over the bench and took his wife’s arm, leaving Hester and Marcia to exchange comments, no doubt, about what a charmer he was; and Professor Ufford to seek what consolation he could find among the Afghan hounds.

*
Cleveland Amory in
The Proper Bostonians
described a similar adjectival effort’s having been expended over a period of years on the white gown of a Boston lady. If either wearer ever noticed, she was probably mildly amused.

**
The Convivial Codfish

“W
HAT’S SO URGENT ABOUT
finding your aunt?” Max wanted to know when they’d got clear of the pavilion.

“Nothing, really, I don’t suppose,” Sarah answered. “It’s just that Aunt Bodie was talking before we went in to dinner about going to sit in the Rolls Royces. She’s a bit of an antique car buff herself. As far as I know, she’s still driving a beige and gray Daimler her mother bought in 1946.”

“So?”

“So I’m hoping she hasn’t got into trouble with whoever’s guarding the Billingsgates’ cars, that’s all. Aunt Bodie can be pretty sniffy when somebody tries to keep her from doing whatever she’s set her mind on. Where’s the car shed?”

“This way, if I’m not mistaken.”

They picked their steps down a picturesque but rather damp path through a bosky dell that lay to the right of the terrace, and over a quaint stone bridge that spanned what had probably been laid out to represent the castle fishpond.

“It’s too Horace Walpole for words, don’t you think?” Sarah observed. “Where’s the fern’d grot, I wonder?”

“I wot not of the grot,” Max replied, “but the car shed’s just over the hill.”

“It would be.”

Sarah’s pink slippers hadn’t been designed for climbing hills. She was glad of Max’s helping hand as they navigated another rise of closely mown greensward on the other side of the bridge. “How do they get the cars out to the road, for goodness’ sake?”

“You’ll see. Remember how we drove into that big graveled circle down behind the house?”

“Where you parked the car, yes. Then we walked through that long hallway and out over the drawbridge.”

“That’s right. Abigail told me Bill’s grandfather didn’t want carriages and automobiles driving up to the front of the house because he thought they’d spoil the effect of the portcullis. It’s a stupid arrangement, but anyway there’s another drive that leads from the circle up to the car shed, which is behind that stone wall up ahead of us.”

The wall was of undressed granite chunks, about seven feet high surmounted by a spiked iron fence. As they got closer, Sarah could see a beautifully raked gravel drive. It snaked up from among some tall hemlocks that masked the house from view, and ran at last between iron gates that were set into the wall, these were heavily padlocked; beside them stood a dapper little wooden sentry box with a peaked red roof. Inside, Sarah could see only a wide gravel turnaround and a large, utilitarian, one-story building of unromantic concrete blocks roughed up to look like stone but not succeeding. Like the gates, the building appeared to be locked up tight.

“I don’t see any sign of Aunt Bodie,” she said.

“I don’t see the watchman, either.” Max was not happy. “He ought to have challenged us by now.”

“Might he have gone to get something to eat?”

“He’s not supposed to. He got a lunch break at noon and a coffee break at three o’clock. He’s not due for another till six. One of the potboys is supposed to come by every hour on the hour to see if he needs a quick relief, and stay till he gets back. Bill left strict orders that the gate’s not to be left unguarded for a single minute. Besides, Rufus—that’s his name—is part of the entertainment. He’s in mediaeval peasant costume and carries a
Totschläger.
”

“What’s that, some kind of war club?”

“A flail, actually; a hollow handle with a ball of iron attached to the tip by a short chain. They were designed for bashing holes in an opponent’s armor and came in a great many variations, jocosely referred to en masse as holy water sprinklers. Those mediaeval knights were a barrel of laughs. They had one that had a big ball studded with long iron spikes. It was called a
Morgenstern,
which of course means morning star.
Totschläger
just means dead-whacker or something of the sort, so Bill’s great-grandfather probably got the name wrong. Not that it matters. This whole revel’s about as authentically Renaissance as a Cranach painted on Masonite, as you must have realized by now.”

“Rufus isn’t supposed to flail anybody, then.”

“Oh, no, the Weapon’s just there to provide positive reinforcement in case guests insist too much on being admitted to the car shed. Bill doesn’t want anybody in there because they all know his collection and would notice the New Phantom was missing.”

“Couldn’t he say the Phantom was off at a rally or something?”

“Bill tell a lie? You’ve got to be kidding.” Max took hold of the padlock and rattled it against the gate. Nothing happened.

“Sarah, I don’t like this a bit. Would you mind going back to the pavilion by yourself and finding Bill? You’d better stick to the drive, it’s shorter. Don’t push the panic button, just get Bill aside. Tell him we found the gate unguarded and thought he’d better know.”

“Yes, of course.”

Sarah gathered up her train and started toward the house, sticking to the grassy verge and studying the gravel as she went along. Inside the fence, the gravel had been raked smooth as an ironing board. If Rufus had gone inside to the car shed, he must have walked on the narrow strip of grass that edged the turnaround. Outside the gate, there had been some scuffing of the gravel where the sentry might have paced or guests ambled over to chuckle at Rufus with his
Totschläger.

Aunt Bodie must have been among the most recent visitors, assuming she had in fact come here with the expectation of sitting in one of the cars. Sarah would be surprised if it turned out she hadn’t. Boadicea Kelling wasn’t one to indulge in idle chat. Had she bulldozed Rufus into letting her enter the car shed in defiance of Mr. Billingsgate’s orders, then dragged him off to confess his dereliction? Sarah wouldn’t put it past her.

Or had she irritated Rufus into chasing after her with his
Totschläger?
Sarah found something oddly agreeable in the thought of Aunt Bodie’s being put to rout by a mediaeval peasant, even a make-believe one.

But it wouldn’t do. Aunt Bodie wouldn’t flee to the bee fields, she’d do a brisk about-face and march back to the pavilion. She’d deliver a concise report of the regrettable incident to whichever Billingsgate she happened to meet first; then she’d append a polite but firm request that this nonsense be stopped and she be admitted forthwith to the car shed.

She must have gone for her four-mile walk, after all. It was to be hoped she’d continue walking until whatever was wrong at the car shed could be ironed out. Sarah walked faster, found the door to the long hallway, and had the luck to encounter Mrs. Billingsgate coming back into the house for more shawls.

“Oh Abigail, I’m so glad it’s you. Could you possibly do Max and me a big favor?”

“Of course, Sarah, what is it? Not the baby, I hope?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just that we need Bill up at the car shed. You can drop the message more easily than I without making people wonder, so would you?”

“Certainly, but what’s the rush? Is something wrong there?”

“We don’t know. We just went to check. The gate’s still padlocked and the car shed shut up, but your guard’s nowhere to be seen.”

“That’s odd. Bill gave Rufus strict orders to stay put till he’s relieved.”

“Yes, he told Max. That’s why we’re concerned. Max is standing sentry duty for the moment.”

“You slip back and tell Max I’ll scoot Bill along as soon as I can wiggle him loose. Oh dear, and I promised Ethelyn Frome I’d bring her something to put on. What a nuisance.”

“Here, take this.” Sarah realized somewhat to her surprise that she was still carrying the shawl Apollonia Kelling had given her to deliver. “I was supposed to take it to Aunt Bodie, but I didn’t find her. I’d expected she’d be up by the car shed, berating the guard for not letting her in.”

“I’m surprised she wasn’t,” said Abigail. “Bodie was always like that. We were in boarding school together, you know, along with Drusilla. But this is hardly the time for schoolgirl reminiscences. I’ll get Bill.”

She took the shawl and sped off, a buxom little figure looking much like the Wife of Bath. Her bright blue, full-skirted gown was short enough to show close-gartered scarlet hose and handmade shoes of soft brown leather. Her kerchief was of heavy white linen, probably one of those vast old-fashioned dinner napkins sized to encompass nine-course Edwardian paunches, Sarah thought. Abigail had drawn a wimple of white lawn around her face and topped it with a black felt hat hardly as wide as a buckler or targe but big enough to keep the sun off her nose. That was most likely why she wore it; she was already rosy-hued enough.

Sarah felt a moment’s anxiety about her hostess’s blood pressure but didn’t stop to worry. It was hardly three minutes since she’d left Max, but she didn’t like the thought of his being all by himself in that strangely silent place. It was not easy to hurry uphill with those many yards of brocade swirling around her, but she was almost running by the time she got back to the gate.

Above the sentry box stood an enormous horse chestnut tree, just now a solid mass of bright green leaves and tall candles of white bloom. Max was under it, staring into the greenery. On his face was an expression of total disbelief.

“Max, what’s the matter?” Sarah panted. “What’s up there?”

“Don’t look.”

“Why not?” Sarah was already looking, of course. “I can’t see anything, the foliage is so dense. Wait, what’s—darling, are those feet?”