The House of Memory (Pluto's Snitch Book 2) Page 14

“How?”

  “Find the source of this entity. If you can discover what has drawn the darkness to Roswell House and this young woman you wish to help, you may be able to rid the premises of it. Just be careful.”

  “Do you know how I can do this?”

  “I wish I had an answer. The spirit world is a complex place. There is something in that house. I reach for it, and it eludes me. It is powerful, filled with anger and betrayal and venom. The woman you saw in the window is dangerous.”

  “Could Camilla be possessed?” I had to know. “By a demon?”

  “That is a distinct possibility, but the answer to that question is in Roswell House and Camilla’s past. Be careful, Raissa. The longer this ‘possession’ continues—whether it is a demon or something else—the stronger the entity becomes. You aren’t experienced. If you open the door to direct communication with this entity, you take a risk.”

  “What kind of risk?”

  “The corruption of your soul. If you communicate directly with an agent of Satan, you have allowed a connection. That connection is a chain that binds you to the darkness. You may walk away and think you have won, and in this instance you might free Camilla. But you risk a recurrence when you least expect it. The devil will know your name. Evil will pull that chain, and you will feel the yank. When you battle true evil, you risk everything.”

  Madam began to cough, and I concluded the phone call so that she could catch her breath. Even the coughing attack seemed to hold sinister significance in my state of mind. I replaced the receiver and tried not to show how upset I was.

  “What are we going to do?” Zelda asked.

  “We have to unravel the past of Roswell House,” I said. “And we have to do it now.”

  Minnie Sayre was most helpful in finding a source for a history of Roswell House. She’d moved to Montgomery after her marriage, but she’d become friendly with many of the old families in town.

  Minnie served us strawberry shortcake and coffee as she made a list of possible sources for us to talk to about Roswell House. “It’s been empty for at least a decade,” she said. “Maybe longer.” Her face lit up. “Bernard West’s the man to talk to. He knew the Roswells. He was a business associate of the Roswell who abandoned the estate and left. Maybe he can shed some light on this.”

  “Mother, people say Mr. West is not right. He’s heavy on the sauce.” Zelda frowned. “I remember him before he started drinking, but now . . .”

  “I’m sure he’d welcome a visit from you,” Minnie said. “He was that rare adult who didn’t find you to be bold and abrasive.”

  Zelda laughed. “True enough. He enjoyed my ‘attacks against the foolishness of peahens and gossiping cats,’ as he said.”

  “Speak with him. Give him a chance,” Minnie said. “Perhaps he’s not right because he knows something. Did you ever think of that?”

  This sounded hopeful, at least. “Where does Mr. West live?”

  “On the outskirts of town. His circumstances have fallen considerably. He was once a lawyer, like his father and grandfather. I believe the West law practice handled Roswell House for the family for several generations.”

  “Could we call and make an appointment?” I asked Minnie.

  “You can’t call. He doesn’t have a telephone. Take him a basket of food and a bottle of wine. You’ll brighten his day.”

  I looked to Reginald.

  “Ab-so-lute-ly,” he said with a nod. “Now, if not sooner.”

  “I’ll drive you over,” Zelda said.

  “Wonderful.” Thank goodness we had Zelda to help us navigate.

  We stood from the table, prepared to leave, when the front door opened and Judge Sayre returned home for lunch. His grave face stopped us in our tracks.

  “What is it, Father?” Zelda asked. Her normally flip tone and languid behavior had vanished.

  “They found the young girl who’d gone missing from Autaugaville.”

  Pamela DuMond. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” I hadn’t meant to speak, but I remembered the apparition I’d seen in the bedroom.

  “She is. She’s been dead since the day she disappeared.”

  “What happened?” Minnie asked, preparing a glass of sweet tea for her husband.

  “She was found in a ditch on the road to Tuscaloosa. She was wearing her best dress and shoes, and someone had made her up like a . . .” He faded. “To look older than she was. She was strangled and dumped in the ditch.”

  “How tragic,” Minnie said. “What a terrible thing. Her family must be distraught.”

  I thought of the young girl in the restaurant eating with the older, portly man. And the spirits who haunted the halls of the hotels. All were young women made up and dressed to look older, provocative.

  “Another girl’s missing, too.” The judge drained his glass and looked longingly at the whiskey decanter on a sideboard. He was a serious man and didn’t partake during the workday. “Virginia Ames. She goes by her mother’s family name, Ritter. Ritter Ames.”

  “How long has she been missing?” Reginald asked.

  “Since early this morning. She was walking to her cousin’s house but never made it.” Judge Sayre walked to the dining table and sat down. “It’s been a long morning.”

  I hated to add to Judge Sayre’s burdens, but I needed his long reach over to Tuscaloosa to discover if the sheriff there had found the men who’d run Reginald and me off the road. “Could you check on an accident—”

  “Father, does the sheriff know who killed the young woman?” Zelda cut over me.

  Beneath the table, Reginald tapped my toe with his: a signal not to discuss our accident. I understood. If Judge Sayre perceived that we were truly in danger, he would pull the plug on our investigation. Zelda would be sent packing to New York, and we would be dispatched back to Mobile.

  The judge seemed not to hear his daughter’s question. Or chose not to answer it.

  “Let me get your lunch,” Minnie said. “Althea made chicken salad, just the way you like it. Girls, Reginald, stay for some lunch?”

  “That would be appreciated,” Reginald said.

  I hadn’t realized it was time for another meal, but I found I was hungry. As soon as we finished eating, we’d head out for Bernard West’s place. During lunch Judge Sayre revealed no more details on the missing girl, and Zelda was quieter than normal. We finished eating and piled into Zelda’s car. Minnie stopped us in the driveway with a basket of homemade goodies, including chicken salad, bread, jam, and cooked bacon. “Tell Bernard I said hello,” she said.

  “Will do.” Zelda took off, driving with more zest than caution as we tore through the neighborhood and took the road to downtown Montgomery. “I’m glad you didn’t spill the beans about the wreck to Father,” Zelda said.

  “We’ll have to follow through on that on our own,” Reginald said. “Somehow it has to be connected to Camilla. I can’t see how, but there’s no other explanation.”

  “Unless it’s about Bryce Hospital,” I said. “Girls are disappearing from there. If someone thinks we’re probing into what’s happening to those young women . . .”

  My thoughts remained unfinished. If we’d stumbled into a mystery at the mental institution, it hadn’t been our intention. Our concern was Camilla, first and foremost. But I was also determined to find out what had happened to Connie Shelton.

  We passed through a simmering downtown and beyond to a small country road, unpaved but thankfully dry, and into pastureland and hardwoods forests. The beauty of the area lulled me into complacency. It was hard to imagine something dark and dangerous as we drove through canopied stretches of road where the oaks met overhead and the shade offset the broiling sun.

  It was another fifteen minutes before we turned into a drive in front of a clapboard house that had seen better days. The ruin of the house and the yard touched me like a veil of sadness. A rope swing hung from a tree, and I knew that it hadn’t been used in years. The rope was frayed and rotted to the point that an
y weight would bring it crashing down. The gray paint of the porch floor scaled into crisps that crunched as we walked to the door. Flower beds were filled with weeds and briars. This house had once been lovingly tended but now showed the decay of neglect.

  Zelda knocked on the door, and we waited long moments until we heard some rustling and the door opened, releasing a cloud of stale air and cigarette smoke. Bernard West was a man who’d simply forgotten that he was already dead. Almost emaciated, he smiled at Zelda. “Little Miss Sayre,” he said in a voice that still contained an educated inflection, “you’ve come to pay a visit.”

  He looked at Reginald and me and stepped back. “Come in. Who are your friends?”

  Zelda made the introductions and told him only a partial lie—that I was interested in Roswell House for a potential story.

  He led us into a front room with a shabby sofa and chairs while Zelda took the basket of food to the kitchen and put things away.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” he asked.

  “No, thank you, we just had lunch.”

  “So it’s Roswell House you came to talk about.”

  “Yes,” Reginald said. “Can you help us?”

  “Mayhaps I can.”

  “We’d certainly appreciate it.” Zelda had reentered the room. “Back when you were handling the Roswells’ business, did they ever talk about how they came to own the property where the big house was built?”

  Bernard lifted a hand to smooth back his hair, and I saw the tremors in his hand. “It’s been a while since I put my mind to anything like this.” He cleared his throat. “Roswell is just one part of a large tract of land that was sold shortly before Alabama became a state in 1819. The buyers were land speculators who saw an opportunity and hoped that they could influence the development of a city on a bend in the river that abutted their property. If that occurred, they would be sitting on valuable land.”

  “But Montgomery ended up being upriver instead.” Zelda pretended to have no use for history, but she’d paid more attention to her studies than she let on.

  “Yes, there was a natural inlet for the docks, and the consortium of developers who bought it hoped to locate the capital here. The moneyed interests who invested upriver won out, and Montgomery was situated in the bend of the river to the north. The tract where Roswell sits proved to be a bad investment, and the land was parceled out and sold off to various people. Ramsey Roswell bought some of the lower land, but it wasn’t until years later that his grandson, Wick, bought the high ground where Roswell House is situated today.”

  “I heard stories that Wick didn’t always walk on the right side of the law,” Zelda said.

  “True stories. He traded in illegal goods and dealt brutally with his adversaries, but always maintained a public persona of community goodwill. Donated to charities, attended church, hosted fund-raisers for good causes. Most folks knew what he was hiding behind the mask of pleasant propriety, but no one dared confront him.”

  “And Roswell House?”

  “He built it for a wedding present for his bride-to-be. The story was that Wick had found a young woman he wanted to marry. Though he had a reputation for cuckolding half the men in the area, he decided it was time to settle down and have a family. So he built Roswell House for her, with plans to marry in the house.”

  The parallels with Camilla and David made me lean forward, eager to hear every word.

  “Was that uncommon? To build a house for a bride-to-be?” I’d come of age in a period of pending war. I didn’t travel in circles where men built mansions for their loves.

  “Such a gesture was proof to the community that a man would—and could—take care of his wife and family. Wick liked to do things in a grand manner.”

  “Without a doubt.” While the gesture was impressive, I’d been happy in my cottage with Alex. I wouldn’t trade our brief time together for all the fine houses in the world.

  Bernard continued, his body relaxing into the telling. “The house is a masterpiece of craftsmanship. The cupid crown molding was designed by a Scottish craftsman Wick had brought from Scotland just for that job. There are other details I’ve forgotten. It was said that if you stood between the two foyer mirrors, you could see your past in one and your future in the other.” He laughed. “I tried it, but I saw only my sad, sorry present.”

  “I remember that tale,” Zelda said. “Tallulah and I broke into the house one night with lanterns just so we could look.”

  “What happened?” Reginald asked.

  “We saw two daring but very frightened girls with a sordid past and a dicey future.” Her laughter made us all smile. “Like Mr. Bernard, we didn’t see anything unusual. It’s just one of the tall tales that grew up around Roswell, probably because it was empty.”

  “Wick did marry and move into the house. It was a showcase for Montgomery parties. So what exactly is it you want to know?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The history of the house was part of what I needed to know, but I had specific questions in mind, and I was glad Bernard seemed open to them.

  “Did any tragedies occur on the premises?” I asked, thinking of the little girls.

  “There was a duel in 1876, just after the construction was complete. Wick and Johnson Little. Mr. Little claimed that Wick had seduced his wife. He issued the challenge; Wick accepted. It was rumored that Wick’s mistress, Nina Campbell, was responsible for the duel, that she’d manipulated Johnson Little to challenge Wick’s honor. Wick shot Johnson dead on the front lawn of Roswell House during a Fourth of July celebration.”

  Bernard reached for a glass on the side table that wasn’t there. Zelda took pity and went to the kitchen to make him a drink.

  “Was he prosecuted?” I asked.

  Bernard shook his head slowly. “Wick had most of the authorities on his payroll. It was ruled justifiable homicide because Mr. Little accosted Wick on his own property.”

  “What happened to Little’s wife?” Zelda asked as she handed Wick a healthy portion of wine.

  “She was driven from town as an unfaithful woman who’d caused a good man’s death. I heard she went to Saint Stephens and started over, but I didn’t keep up with her. It was a kindness to let her go. She’d been ruined for polite society here, as a lot of people put the blame for her husband’s death on her.”

  “Isn’t that always the case?” I asked somewhat sharply. “The woman always gets the blame.”

  “Your suffragette sympathies are showing,” Reginald whispered in my ear.

  “I concur, Mrs. James,” Bernard said. “Loretta Little was a victim, and she paid the price for her foolish behavior and her husband’s temper. Only Wick escaped punishment. It was said that when he passed Loretta on the streets of Montgomery, he merely laughed at her.”

  What a devil he was. He’d participated in this woman’s ruin, and then he was done with her. I kept my comments to myself. Nothing I said could change the past.

  “Was the duel the only tragic death you know about at Roswell House?”

  “There were illnesses, of course. Fevers claimed some lives. And accidents. One of Wick’s girls died of a broken neck from a horse fall.”

  “You don’t recall anything about twin girls who died . . . in a brutal way?”

  “No, and I would have heard, I’m sure.”

  “How did David come to own it?” Reginald asked.

  “He’d heard about the house when he first moved to Montgomery. It was rapidly going to ruin, abandoned and uncared for. Teenagers went there to make mischief.” He cast a quick, amused look at Zelda. “David inquired and discovered that I had once been involved in handling affairs for the Roswell family. When he came to me, I told him about the latest owner, Oscar Roswell, a rancher out in California. He’d never been to see the Alabama property, and, as it turned out, he was eager to sell it and be done. I helped arrange the sale. It was the last official bit of business for me.” His voice dropped. “Right before I gave up the la
w and took up the bottle.”

  He wasn’t apologetic, only sad. He’d made a choice. Now I wondered if he would be able to change his mind even if he wanted to.

  “What happened to the Roswells?” I asked.

  “Wick was eventually shot. Gunned down on a backstreet in Montgomery. Likely up to no good. His wife was a local girl, but after Wick’s death she moved to Chicago. It seems they were plagued by tragedy. Neither of the children, both girls, lived to be adults. A cousin named Herman Roswell came to live at Roswell House and maintained the property until he died.”

  “And he was the last to live there?” Reginald asked.

  Bernard nodded. “After Herman died, the house was empty. I guess it’s been close to fifteen years now. As I said, when David made an offer, the last remaining cousin, Oscar, was delighted to take it. No haggling over the price. Oscar had no interest in Alabama. In fact, I’d say he had only negative feelings for the state and the people here.”

  “Wick’s wife . . . is her family still around?”

  “No, she died young. Maybe some cousins remain. She was a Harlow. Priscilla Harlow. Minnie should know if the family’s still in the area.”

  “Mother is like the telephone switchboard,” Zelda said. “She keeps up with everyone in town. Partly because she works good deeds, and partly”—she arched her eyebrows and made Bernard laugh—“because she can’t stand to be behind in the gossip.”

  “You always were a firecracker, Miss Zelda. I’m glad you found a man with a bigger life than Alabama. If you had to stay here, you’d blow this town apart.”

  “I’d make a bloody mess—you’re right about that. I’m surprised Father hasn’t sold me to the Gypsies just to be rid of my bad conduct.”

  “The Gypsies would bring you back and pay your mama to take you in.” Bernard was having a good time. The shared affection between the two was enjoyable, but I still hadn’t discovered why the spirits of twin girls remained at Roswell.

  “Wick Roswell’s daughters . . . they weren’t twins, by chance, were they?”

  Bernard shook his head.

  “And they died more or less naturally?”