Only for an old and dear friend, Ben thought, would he have offered to remain more than the one night he’d initially planned on. He had pressing obligations at home, not the least of which was his own wedding. He was to be married in just eighteen days.
He made one detour on his way back to the former nursery that had been converted into a temporary hospital. He stopped off in his own room to pen a brief letter to his intended bride. The last thing he wanted was to have Diana worry about him ... or become curious as to why he’d left town so suddenly and mysteriously. He reckoned the letter would go out on the afternoon delivery boat and Diana would have it in hand by the following day.
Three Days Later
“Mother, please!” Exasperation laced Diana Spaulding’s voice. She willed her hands to remain folded and motionless in her lap. If she reached for her cup while she was in such an agitated state, she’d spill every drop of tea and likely put a crack the delicate china as well.
Elmira Leeves ignored her daughter. Calmly taking another sip of the beverage in her own cup, to which she’d just added a dollop of whiskey, she aimed her piercing blue-eyed stare at the third individual in the crowded parlor of Ben Northcote’s house in Bangor, Maine.
Diana’s future mother-in-law, Maggie Northcote, was a study in outrage as she sat enthroned on the rococo sofa. Swathed in purple fabric, from the loose gown flowing around her sturdy form to the turban that covered her graying hair, Maggie’s countenance had taken on a shade almost as vivid as her garments. It appeared to Diana that an explosion was imminent ... or a fit of apoplexy. Although she looked younger—her complexion was smooth as that of a woman half her age—Maggie Northcote was in her fifties, just as Elmira was. Diana feared for her health.
“How dare you suggest such a thing?” Maggie demanded in a strangled voice. “Ben is no coward. Why he—”
“Where is he, then?” Elmira’s knowing smirk was almost enough to drive Diana to violence. “That’s all I asked.” She took another sip of her adulterated tea. “The wedding is only a fortnight from now and the bridegroom seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Has he changed his mind and fled? Or is he just off indulging in one last debauch?”
“He was called away on a medical emergency,” Maggie said through gritted teeth.
“He’s been gone for days and you haven’t heard a word from him. You don’t even know where he is,” Elmira persisted. “Do you?”
Diana’s hands ached from clasping them so tightly together. The delicious evening meal she’d consumed not a half hour earlier, before the ladies withdrew for tea and left Elmira’s new husband to his post-prandial cigar in the library, churned in her stomach. She drew in a slow, calming breath and tried to dismiss the disloyal thought that Ben might have left town solely to avoid being witness to the inevitable clash between Maggie and Elmira. Their faint hope that two such strong-minded, independent, eccentric women would find common ground and become friends had died a quick death. Barely twenty-four hours after their first meeting, they were at each other’s throats.
Worse, Elmira’s none-too-subtle hints had fallen on fertile ground. Diana could not help but feel abandoned. Ben hadn’t even told her in person that he was leaving town. He’d gone in to his surgery early on Tuesday morning. Diana had barely begun her own day when a note had arrived, delivered by a boy Ben had paid to carry it. The brief and unsatisfying message had contained no explanation and nary a hint of when Ben would return. Neither had it said where he’d gone. He’d left a similarly uninformative note on his surgery door, telling patients to go to Dr. Randolph in an emergency.
Maggie rose from the sofa, compelling Diana’s attention. In spite of her stature—she was only of medium height—she had a regal air about her as she looked down her nose at Elmira. “Foolish mortal. You do not realize how great your suffering will be. The gods punish those who offend them. You’ll be squashed flat as a bug under a schoolboy’s foot.”
Elmira’s braying laugh made the teacups clatter. “If you’re a deity, I’m the Empress of India!”
“I am descended from Gypsies. And from the nobility of Europe. The blood of a countess runs in my veins.”
Elmira lifted an eyebrow at this, then downed the last of the liquid in her cup. She stood slowly, brushing crumbs off her dark green skirt and squaring her shoulders. She was a stout woman, two inches taller than her daughter, and should have been able to cow Maggie Northcote by her greater size alone.
“Mother, you are a guest in this house,” Diana hissed.
Both women turned on her. Elmira’s gaze was acrimonious but the bemused look in Maggie’s odd, copper-colored eyes suggested she’d forgotten Diana was there.
With a sniffing sound Diana supposed was meant to indicate that her feelings were hurt by Diana’s criticism, Elmira stepped away from the grouping of sofa and loveseat and headed for the grand piano in one corner of the room. In no hurry, she paused in front of a mirror to check her appearance en route.
At fifty-three, Elmira’s mahogany colored hair, which Diana had inherited, was liberally streaked with white. In contrast to Maggie, Elmira’s face was scored with deep furrows and her cheeks got their high color not from raw good health or from the application of cosmetics but from tiny broken capillaries under the skin. She’d had a hard life, Diana reminded herself, but that was no excuse for rude behavior. It wasn’t as if Elmira didn’t know any better. For years she’d hobnobbed with the cream of Denver society.
Elmira plunked herself down on the piano stool and ran idle fingers over the keys. She winced at the sound this produced. “Don’t you ever tune this thing?”
“Why bother?” Maggie answered. “No one in this household plays.”
The enormous, long-haired black cat who had been asleep on top of the piano uncurled himself and stretched. With a hiss in passing at Elmira, he hopped down and crossed the room to Maggie, stropping himself enthusiastically against her skirts until she stooped to pick him up.
“Cedric always has had good taste,” his mistress murmured, cuddling him close and shooting Elmira a superior smile.
“Cats! Can’t abide them. They aren’t even good eating.”
“Cedric isn’t just a cat. He’s my familiar.”
Another bray of laughter greeted Maggie’s claim to be a witch. “Better get busy with your spells, then. Maybe you can locate your lost lamb. Diana tells me the minister insists on talking to them together before their nuptials. A nuisance, I’m sure, but there it is.” She hit a series of discordant notes before abandoning the piano to roam the parlor.
Maggie muttered something unintelligible.
“What’s that?” Elmira demanded.
“I said I tried that already!” Maggie all but snarled the admission.
“Well, then, it’s a good thing I took matters into my own hands.”
Diana sprang to her feet in alarm, setting the china rattling. “Mother, what did you do?”
“I searched his room, of course, and when that yielded nothing useful I sent my darling new husband to Ben’s office to search there. Ed is better than I am at getting into locked buildings.” When the cries of outrage died down, Elmira added, in a tone that set Diana’s already strained nerves on edge, “Men are always leaving their possessions lying about.”
“Well,” Maggie demanded in the lull that followed this statement, “what did you find?”
“A telegram, one sent very early on Tuesday, the same day Dr. Northcote so abruptly left Bangor.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Diana said with considerable asperity, “and enjoying drawing it out.”
Elmira shrugged. “Why not? I have so few pleasures in life.”
Maggie’s snort of disbelief threatened to start another round of snide comments and outright insults. Diana held up a hand to silence them both. “Enough! Where is the telegram now?”
“You never let me have any fun,” Elmira complained, producing it from a pocket in her skirt.
Diana had to shake off the eerie conviction that, had she not been staring at her mother, she’d have had difficulty telling which woman had spoken. She’d more than once heard Maggie accuse Ben of the same thing.
Taking the telegram, Diana unfolded the paper and read its contents aloud: “Need medical assistance. Meet noon Belfast. Tell no one. Somener.”
“Somener,” she repeated, recognizing the name from the list of wedding guests. “Graham Somener. He’s one of Ben’s closest friends.”
He was also a very wealthy man, one she intended to ask for an interview when they met. Was that why Ben hadn’t told her who had asked for his help? Diana bridled at the notion that
tell no one
had applied to her. Just because she refused to resign her position as a reporter for the
Independent Intelligencer
was no reason to shut her out. All Ben had to do was ask her not to write about his friend. She had no desire to pursue reluctant subjects.
As she puzzled over the implications of the telegram, Maggie and Elmira resumed their seats. Maggie poured more tea.
“That perfume doesn’t suit you,” Elmira remarked to her hostess. “Lily-of-the-valley is all wrong. Almost as bad a match as the gardenia scent my daughter seems to have bathed in.”
Since the ornate crystal bottle of
Eau de Gardenia
had been a birthday gift from Ben, given to her only a few days before he’d left. Diana had to bite back a waspish response. Ben said her skin reminded him of gardenia petals. She’d always considered it a very pretty compliment.
Maggie didn’t bother with restraint. “Something with nettles would suit you, I think. Or adder’s tongue.”
Elmira chuckled. “Good one.”
Belatedly, it occurred to Diana that the two women were enjoying the exchange of insults. That was the final straw. Out of patience with them both, she left them to their verbal sparring and went out into the garden.
Twilight still lingered, although it would be gone in a matter of minutes. Diana relished the longer days and milder temperatures of June after the violent storms of March and the long, cold weeks of April and May. She needed no shawl as she wandered the paths that surrounded Ben’s house and the illumination spilling out through various windows was sufficient to light her way as the last of sunset’s rosy glow was swallowed up by the night sky.
Peaceful quiet engulfed her as she moved away from the house. For a time her thoughts roamed as freely as she did, but she was not altogether surprised when her ramble brought her to the carriage house. Aaron Northcote’s studio was on the upper level and Aaron, for all his peculiarities, was exactly the person she needed to talk to. However strange it might be to seek out Ben’s brother as the voice of reason, at this moment that course seemed to make perfect sense.
Diana smelled the distinctive scents of linseed oil and turpentine even before Aaron opened the door to her tentative knock. “If you’re working, I can come back another time.”
“My muse! Don’t you know you’re always welcome?”
The studio was a single large room, sparsely furnished. Aaron offered her the one comfortable chair, an overstuffed behemoth that was sinfully soft and yielding. He seized the bentwood chair off the small pedestal, where it usually served to seat artist’s models, turned it around, and straddled it, leaning his elbows on the curved back and fixing his intent gaze on her face.
She wondered what he saw in the half light. In contrast to the level below, here only one lamp had been lit and the room was deep in shadow. The finished canvases piled against the walls, many of them face out, created an eerie atmosphere, for the majority portrayed fantastic scenes of mermaids and monsters. A number of the former had Diana’s face.
“Be quiet!” Aaron spoke sharply, but not to Diana. His focus had shifted to a point beyond her right shoulder.
She ignored the interruption. She knew no one was there. Ben had warned her it was best to let Aaron deal with his voices as he saw fit, rather than try to convince him that they were imaginary. They were real to him.
After a strained moment or two, Aaron smiled at her as if nothing odd had transpired. “What brings you to my lair? No, let me guess. They’ve murdered each other and you want my help to dispose of the bodies? Or perhaps you’ve murdered them both. Yes, that’s more likely.”
Shocked and amused at the same time, she found herself returning his engaging grin. Like his mother, Aaron enjoyed saying outrageous things. “They were both alive and well when I retreated from the field of battle,” she assured him.
“I like your mother,” Aaron said. “She speaks her mind. When I met her earlier in the garden, she asked me straight out if I was the madman in the family.”
“Oh, Aaron, I—”
He cut short her apology with a dismissive wave of one hand. “Better she knows all, don’t you think? Besides, I had a comeback ready that put her in her place. I said I was
one
of them.”
“How can you
joke
about it?”
He shrugged. “How can I not? But that’s not why you’re here. What is it, Diana? You haven’t ventured into my studio alone since Mother locked you in the crypt and I had to rescue you.”
She couldn’t control a shiver at the memory, but if he was able to speak so calmly of events that had almost led to his death, then she could do no less than answer him honestly. “What do you know about Graham Somener?” she asked.
“Is that where big brother’s gone? To Keep Island?”
“So it seems. Not that he bothered to tell me that was his destination. Or let me know he’d reached there safely.” She’d believed she and Ben had the best of relationships. That they were friends as well as lovers. But friends didn’t keep secrets from one another or fail to send a reassuring note or telegram.
“You could go after him,” Aaron suggested. “It’s no great distance. Eighteen miles to Bucksport, then another twenty or so across the waters of Penobscot Bay.”
“Is there a ferry?” Her eyes narrowed as the expression on his face deteriorated into a smirk. “What?”
“Some might say this is divine retribution,” Aaron murmured. “Not me, of course. But it wasn’t so long ago that I had to listen to Ben rant and rave because you’d failed to communicate your whereabouts to him. Since he followed you to find out what was going on, I suppose it is only right that you imitate his action.”