Stranger by the Lake Read online

  “I know,” I replied. “When I stayed here before I decided to go find a book to read. It was late at night, and I was twelve years old. I went down the wrong hall, certain I knew how to get down to the library, and I ended up in the pantry. Terrifying experience—I couldn’t find the light switch, and there were so many spooky noises——”

  “Still are,” he said. “These old houses are full of ’em. Incidentally, pet, there’s no electricity.”

  “What? But I distinctly remember——”

  “Storm last week blew down all the lines, and they haven’t got around to repairing them yet. No need to worry, though. There are dozens of old lamps and candelabra about. Gives the place a rather romantic atmosphere at night, though it’s damned inconvenient when you’re trying to work. They expect to have the lines back up in a few days.”

  “Lovely,” I said.

  We had made a turn and were moving down another hallway. Though not as wide as the main one, it had the same deep garnet carpeting, and the walls had the same dark golden oak wainscoting, the upper half covered with old ivory paper printed with tiny brown leaves. At various intervals there were tall green plants in heavy white pots, lending a homey touch to the formal hallway. Craig Stanton walked on ahead, carrying the heavy bags as though they had no weight at all. He moved with a graceful stride, arms swinging, shoulders rolling. An athlete’s walk, I thought, wondering if he played soccer in college. He certainly had the body for it.

  “That’s the east wing,” he said, nodding toward yet another hallway branching off the one we were in. “It’s completely closed up. You can smell the dust and cobwebs.”

  I peered down the hall. It was long and dark, no light whatsoever penetrating the gloom. Shadows seemed to dance along the walls, and the air was cold and clammy, thoroughly unpleasant. I shuddered, glad we did not have to pass through that section of the house. Craig Stanton led the way past various closed doors, and I realized we were now in the back part of Gordonwood. He stopped in front of a corner room. Directly across the hall was a small staircase, one flight of stairs leading up to the attics, one leading back downstairs.

  “Here’s your room,” he said, opening the door. “I’m afraid it’s a bit removed from the other rooms—off by itself, so to speak. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Why ever should I mind?”

  “Old house, dark halls, spooky noises——”

  “Nonsense,” I said.

  He smiled and set the bags down near the closet.

  “Guess I’ve performed my duties,” he said. “Today’s Mary’s day off, or else she would have answered the door. Mary’s the maid, a rather flighty creature, terribly lax when it comes to dusting.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stanton,” I said, my voice frigid.

  He lounged against the door frame, arms folded across his chest. There was an amused expression on his face, as though he found my stiff politeness devastating. I frowned, disturbed by my own reactions. I was a carefree person, ordinarily quite relaxed, but this man brought out my worst. It was hard to relax in his presence, hard not to be fretful and uneasy. At the moment I was wishing I had worn a prettier dress, and this bit of frivolity on my part made me all the more irritable. Once again I had the impression that Craig Stanton was reading my thoughts and finding, them terribly funny.

  “Now that you’re here,” he said, “perhaps you can help us look for the Gordon manuscripts.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Your aunt didn’t write to you about them? You didn’t read the article in the newspaper?”

  “My aunt never mentioned any manuscripts,” I said, “and I never read the newspapers. I work the crossword puzzles and look at the ads. The rest is much too distressing——”

  “Then you know nothing about it. Remarkable!”

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Stranton?”

  “The Gordon manuscripts,” he said. “We have reason to believe some of them are still in existence, hidden away somewhere in the house. Sir Robert published over forty volumes during his lifetime—travel accounts, translations, anthropological studies, even a novel or two—but he left his most important works to be published after his death.”

  “Everyone knows that,” I said dryly. “His widow was a prim Victorian matron, horrified by the highly improper contents of the manuscripts. She built a great bonfire in the backyard and hurled them all into the flames. It was one of the most notorious burnings in the history of literature.”

  “Right,” he said. “Historians and literary scholars have never forgiven her for it. I’m writing a biography of Sir Robert, as I told you earlier, and your aunt has allowed me full access to all the family papers. I found Lady Arabella Gordon’s diary. She was a fascinating creature, almost as colorful as her husband, but the diary was deadly dull, full of the most inane trivia. However, there was a most intriguing entry about that famous bonfire——”

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  “She did indeed burn most of the papers, but it seems she had reservations about a couple of the manuscripts. She couldn’t bring herself to consign his autobiography to the flames, and there was a study of tribal customs among the African natives that, she felt, the world might someday be ready for. If she did save these two manuscripts, and we were to locate them, it would be the greatest literary discovery since the Boswell papers were found in Malahide Castle.”

  “You think they might be here?” I asked, intrigued in spite of myself.

  He nodded slowly. “There was the diary entry, of course, and then I discovered a few loose pages in the bottom of an old trunk. Sir Hubert Ashcrofton came down from London to examine them. He’s a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an expert on old manuscripts. He claims the pages are in Sir Robert’s own handwriting, part of an introduction to one of his supposedly burned manuscripts. He was quite excited——”

  “And?”

  “And that’s all. Your aunt let Sir Hubert take the pages back to London to show to his colleagues, and we haven’t turned up anything else. The newspapers carried the story. It caused quite a lot of excitement in scholarly circles, needless to say, and your aunt’s been besieged with requests from people wanting to come to Gordonwood and search for the papers. Some were from men quite prominent in the field of historical research, and some from mere curiosity seekers.”

  “Incredible,” I said.

  “She turned down all requests, although one or two of the more adventuresome fellows tried to slip into the house on their own. I caught them, luckily, and there’ve been no more such attempts since Lady Agatha got the watchdogs.”

  “Watchdogs?”

  “Prince and Earl. They’re Great Danes. Belong to Dr. Paul Matthews, actually, but he brought them to Gordonwood soon after the last attempt was made.”

  Dr. Matthews, I knew from my aunt’s letters, was her personal physician and a great friend. He was in his early forties and, according to my aunt, an absolute dream.

  “To think I knew nothing about any of this,” I said.

  “You should read the newspapers,” Craig Stanton replied, curling his lips in a slightly mocking smile.

  “These manuscripts,” I said, “if they do exist, they must be utterly priceless——”

  “Any number of private collectors would pay a king’s ransom for them,” he said. “A publisher would pay even more. However, their greatest value wouldn’t be monetary. Think what it would mean if we could read Sir Robert Gordon’s autobiography. He was one of the greatest explorers the world has ever known, one of the most daring and courageous men——” He paused, giving his head a shake. “I get carried away,” he apologized.

  “I can easily see why.”

  “Your aunt has been wonderful to me,” he continued. “Since I discovered the diary, she said I should have first crack at the papers, which is why she would allow no one else to come to Gordonwood. She’s quite excited about all this herself, like a child on a treasure hunt. We�
�ve gone through every room in the house, searching from top to bottom. It’s been a futile search,” he added with an elegant shrug of his shoulders. “I’m beginning to believe the manuscripts were destroyed after all, but even if they were it’s been great fun just the same. Your aunt’s had a ball——”

  “I can see how it would capture her imagination.”

  “She’s a remarkable woman. I’ve never known anyone with such incredible vitality——”

  I could tell from the tone of his voice that Craig Stanton had a genuine affection for my aunt. I liked him for that, some of my earlier reservations about him vanishing. He smiled a little as he spoke of her. His lips curled lightly at the corners, and his dark blue eyes were filled with admiration. Perhaps I’d misjudged him earlier, I thought. He heaved a deep sigh and brushed a lock of dark brown hair from his forehead, hunching his shoulders and cramming his hands back into the pockets of his jeans.

  “She’ll be delighted to know you’re here,” he said. “I’ll run over to Dower House and tell her the good news. Do you want to meet her downstairs in the drawing room in, say, about twenty minutes? It’s right off the main entrance hall, to your left as you come down.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I’m glad you’re here, too,” he added. “For purely selfish reasons.”

  “Indeed?”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” he replied.

  He gave me a boyish grin and then sauntered away, leaving me alone. I stood by the door a moment, thinking about what he’d said. I wished I were one of those svelte, sophisticated women who could take such things with casual disdain. I wasn’t, and I could still feel the man’s charm after he had gone, even though I had done my best to ignore it. Watch it, ducky, I told myself. You may not be a femme fatale, but neither are you a gushing schoolgirl. Craig Stanton was decidedly disturbing, and I was far too happy with my hard-won independence and well-ordered life to want to be disturbed by any man, no matter how charming he might be. I forced these thoughts out of my mind and turned to examine the room.

  It was lovely, a room designed for a Victorian maiden, with green and beige striped Chinese silk wallpaper and dark beige carpet, both faded with age. The antique furniture was dark ivory, heavily carved, and there was a chaise longue upholstered in emerald green velvet, the nap silvery and worn. The bedspread was heavy tan satin embroidered with tiny green leaves, and a huge green, gold, and black Chinese vase in one corner held old dried peacock feathers. Plush jade green draperies hung at a pair of French windows that opened out onto a small balcony. The windows were open, a slight breeze making the draperies rustle stiffly.

  Stepping out onto the balcony, I rested my hands on the sun-warmed railing and looked out over the shrub-cluttered back lawns that led down to the lake, barely visible through the oak trees. Lady Arabella Gordon had built her bonfire down there near the privet hedge, I knew, and she and Sir Robert were both buried in the sinister mausoleum down by the lake. It was of black marble, in the shape of an Arab tent, and I remembered seeing it one morning when the mists were heavy and a chill wind blew across the lake with the sound of whispers. It was said that one could still hear the tinkling of a camel’s bell when the wind was right, but I believed that no more than I believed any of the ghost stories associated with old English houses like Gordonwood.

  What fabulous originals they had been, I mused, thinking about Sir Robert and his wife. He had been tall and brawny with sun-bronzed skin and piercing black eyes, so much like an Arab that he had been able to journey to Mecca in disguise, the first white man to penetrate that most sacred of cities. He had traveled all over Arabia, living with Bedouin tribes, speaking their dialects like a native, and Lady Arabella had been right beside him, her job to pay, pack, and follow. Throughout it all she had remained a prim, proper Victorian in high-buttoned boots and half a dozen stiff petticoats under her dress, her wide-brimmed hats swathed in veils to protect her porcelain-white English complexion.

  I thought about the Gordon manuscripts, wondering if they really did exist. Sir Robert had been a gamy character, an expert in erotica, and even today a few of his books were in the restricted stacks of libraries. He had been fascinated by the sexual customs of the East and had written of them with clinical precision. Many of his books had been privately printed, and although I had read none of them, I had read about all of them in a biography of Gordon Aunt Agatha had sent me years ago. The book had been written at the turn of the century, without the family’s authorization, and was delightfully florid in style. I remembered the account of the burning: Lady Arabella in white muslin dress and lavender shawl, face pale with horror as she threw page after page into the crackling orange flames. Judging from the books that had actually been published during his lifetime, those that had remained unpublished must really have been shockers, I thought. How exciting it would be if the manuscripts were still here in the house, turning to dust in some hidden nook or cranny. Very unlikely, I reasoned. Despite the evidence Craig Stanton had found, the manuscripts would surely have been discovered long before now, had they actually escaped the flames. Cold reason told one that.

  The merry warble of a robin broke my chain of thought, and I hurried back into my room. Opening my bags on the bed, I began to put my clothes in the chest drawers, taking the dresses over to the closet on wooden hangers. I had been wise to bring my own hangers, I saw, for there were none in the closet. As I intended to go directly on to Majorca, I had brought a variety of things, formal and informal, and I was glad now. I would have someone to wear the dresses for. I stroked the folds of the violet-blue silk cocktail dress, wondering what Craig Stanton’s reactions would be when he saw me in it. It was frightfully sexy, with no back at all, the swirling skirt several inches above my knees. I could visualize his expression, one dark brow arching in thoroughly male approval.…

  Stop it! I admonished myself. I had no intentions of wearing the dress for him. It didn’t matter what I wore around him. I had come to visit my aunt, not to try and captivate an arrogant young biographer who was far too sure of himself and far too cheeky for my taste.

  I was putting the empty suitcases on the closet shelf when I heard the footsteps on the back stairs across the hall. I couldn’t tell if they were coming up or going down, and I wondered who in the world it could be. Craig hadn’t had time to come back from Dower House yet, and he had told me this was the maid’s day off. Stepping out of the closet, I glanced toward the hall through the opened bedroom door. There was no one there, and the footsteps had been silenced, yet I had the peculiar sensation that someone had passed down the hall, pausing to glance into my room. I couldn’t have said why, yet the sensation was very strong. It was almost as though the air still bore the invisible impression of a presence there at the door. I went to the door and peered out. The hall was empty.

  Perhaps I had imagined the footsteps, I told myself. I had been making so much racket trying to heave the suitcases in place that I might easily have heard my own echoes. These old walls did strange things to noises, picking them up, magnifying them, throwing them back with unusual reverberations. I remembered how, on my earlier visit, I had lain awake for hours, listening to the night noises in the house and imagining all sorts of gruesome things. I had been a child then, with a child’s delight in ghost stories and tales of bloody horror, but I was a big girl now. I managed to laugh at my moment of uneasiness, stepping over to the great gilt mirror to brush my hair and apply a touch of pale pink lipstick.

  I left the room, closing the door behind me, and hoped I would be able to find my way down to the drawing room. The hall seemed inordinately long, and not nearly so well lighted as I would have preferred now that I had to walk down it by myself. Even though the sunshine was dazzling outside, the hall was undeniably gloomy, misty gray shadows thronging along the walls. I proceeded down it at a brisk pace, curbing a foolish impulse to whistle. I loathed that type of nervous female always eager to grow faint or go into hysterics at the first opportunity.
Though perhaps not made of steel, my own nerves were reasonably healthy. I smiled wryly, amused at my earlier apprehension, and turned the corner.

  I had gone several paces before the cold, clammy air engulfed me. The walls on either side were dark, and I was moving down a long black passage swathed in dense shadows. I stopped, startled, and the fetid air swirled around me, stroking my bare arms like ghostly fingers. There was a horrible sour odor, an odor of mildew and dust and decay, and I realized that I had turned into the east wing. My heart began to beat rapidly, and my throat went dry, just after I had been complimenting myself on my strong set of nerves. My first impulse was to turn and run, but something held me there. Perhaps it was my own chilling fear.

  I had the undeniable impression that I was not alone in this dark corridor. I could feel someone watching me, and the feeling was as strong and unnerving as it would have been had someone reached out to touch me. A pair of eyes stared at me from somewhere down the hall. The sensation was too strong, too real to be my imagination. I peered into the gloom, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness, but there was nothing but shadow, rippling black shadow that seemed to stir in the air, caressing the walls with sable darkness. At the very end of the hall, far away, heavy draperies were drawn over windows, and they billowed, making a raspy, rustling sound like the sound of hoarse whispers. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see the recessed doorways on either side, and then I saw the dark form in one of the doorways halfway down the corridor, an immobile black shape outlined by the lighter darkness around it.

  “Who’s there?” I called.

  There was no reply, just the heavy silence emphasized by the rustle of the drapes. Minutes passed, each second punctuated by the beating of my heart, and I was paralyzed, unable to move away from the evil that I felt like a living substance around me. I stared at the dark form hovering there in the doorway, my eyes straining to see distinct details, and then everything blurred together and I heard a loud click followed by a soft creaking sound that echoed along the walls. The dark form had vanished. It was no longer in the doorway. Shadows blurred and blended and there was only the fetid air, the sharp, sour odor. I was alone in the deserted corridor, left with only my own fear.