Kristin Ashe: Disorderly Attachments Part 13

Once Hazel exited the car, she shut the door with the a.s.sistance of a hip thrust, and I had a better look at her. Her frame was thin, as if made from strong, flexible wire, and she walked without a cane or walker, in conscious high steps. The dramatic movements gave her the gait of a puddle-jumper, almost that of a hopscotcher when she took big steps. She had perfect balance, without a hint of a wobble, and no deep wrinkles or bowed posture. Most vividly, her eyes were as bright as a newborn's, wide open and alert.

She'd served me iced tea and kept me engaged with all sorts of topics, the most recent of which was ghosts.

"The house is not haunted," she said emphatically. "That sort of thinking merely allows Nell to be part of something mysterious."

"What about the opinion of historians that the building was designed architecturally in such a way that attracts evil spirits?"

"Phooey! I see a house patterned after chateaus in the Loire Valley, an elegant mansion for its simplicity. I take comfort in the st.u.r.diness of its walls. I appreciate that we provided lodging for many families over the years. I'm still in awe of the expanse of the reception hall with its grand oak pillars and marble."

Has Nell told you everything that happened to her in the house?" I asked, relieved Hazel had decided we'd be more comfortable meeting in her side yard than in the "stuffy confines" of the carriage house.

We sat on park benches, opposite each other, near two concrete lions, and I used one of the animals as a makes.h.i.+ft footstool. Before I'd seen the property, I'd felt sorry for Hazel Middleton, having imagined her step down from the splendor of the main house to the dredges of the garage, but the pity had dissolved with my first view of the carriage house, which resembled a charming two-story English cottage.

Hazel smiled patronizingly. "Nell has told and retold her stories to any audience she can find, embellis.h.i.+ng them with each retelling. She has elements of a fragile personality, my daughter."

"Nell couldn't have imagined everything," I said mildly. "She claims tenants moved out in the middle of the night, forfeiting deposits."

"My husband viewed those as cash windfalls."

"Did you?"

She hesitated momentarily. "I felt their occurrences were the unfortunate downside of property management."

I consulted my notes. "Do you recall the toilet on the first floor flus.h.i.+ng incessantly one night in December, when Nell was a senior in high school?"

"Oh, my, yes! I attributed that to my husband Herman's limited handyman skills."

"How about the cigar smoke in the library?"

"Smell isn't one of my keenest senses, thank goodness."

"What about the chair that started rocking itself, on the north wing porch?"

"Wind currents."

"The sounds of a woman wailing?"

"The heating system, with its old pipes and radiators."

"The Dobermans?"

Hazel shook her head reluctantly. "That happened before we moved in.

"The dogs belonged to the owners before you, who held on to the property for less than a year, before they sold the mansion at a loss."

"For a mere fifty thousand dollars," she said, delighted.

"Didn't they discount the price because they thought the house was haunted?"

She giggled and clasped her hands. "They did."

"The LaTourettes left the dogs overnight to guard the house and found them sprawled on the sidewalk, dead, the next morning," I said rigidly. "They had jumped from the second-story window in the turret. How do you explain that?"

"I never tried," Hazel said sweetly. "I viewed it as serendipity."

"What about the couple whose baby wouldn't stop screaming?"

She frowned, trying to reconnect with the past. "Our tenants, the Jenkins? With the two-year-old?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Jenkins had been offered a job out-of-state and wanted to be released from the lease."

"Nell says the wife called you and Herman in the middle of the night, and you witnessed the episode."

"Balderdas.h.!.+ We saw nothing except a fireplace grate near the baby's crib. We had no proof as to how it came to be there. We were witnesses to a room in disarray and a child crying, nothing more."

"As if he were possessed?"

"At the top of his lungs," she admitted. "But they could have upset him intentionally."

"You didn't believe the Jenkins' story that they were in the other room when the grate was ripped from the wall and flung at their son?"

"No," Hazel said stolidly. "There is nothing unnatural or otherworldly about wanting out of a lease agreement."

"Another baby the same age died in the house sixty years earlier of unexplained causes.' You didn't find that coincidental?"

Instead of squirming at the memory, Hazel burst into laughter. "Nell's a card, isn't she? She must have shown you the articles about that pioneer doctor. What was his name? I can't recollect."

"Dr. Benedict."

"Oh, yes. The physician who covered a large territory in the early nineteen hundreds."

"Two thousand miles," I said, without glancing at my notes. My, yes. I'd forgotten how extensive. It was his child who died, if I'm not mistaken?"

I nodded. "His eighteen-month-old son, in nineteen oh-five." His poor wife killed herself soon after. Some type of poisoning."

I scrunched up my face. "Cyanide."

She smiled faintly. "I haven't thought about these circ.u.mstances in years. Nell used to recount them every Halloween, expanding facts into action but she stopped some time ago. The dear child probably doesn't want to frighten me, now that I'm up in years."

I leaned forward. "She didn't make up the seance in 'sixty-eight, did she?"

Hazel snorted. "A seance did take place. Nell and her friends brought in a medium. The whole affair was quite a production."

"Didn't it lead to the discovery of the secret room in the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"Dr. Benedict's lab? Yes, and in some ways, I wish we'd never known about the hideaway. We had to remove unusual apparatuses and thousands of bottles and instruments. Afterward, I bolted the door and hid the key."

"Nell says her personality changed every time she went into the room."

"That's why I hid the key," Hazel said matter-of-factly.

"Have you been in the lab room since the sixties?"

"I don't believe I have. No, I take that back." She paused, concentrating. "At some juncture, fifteen years ago or thereabouts, I opened it for a furnace repairman who needed access. His personality didn't change, to my recollection."

I smiled. "Could I go in there?"

"At your own peril," she teased, a twinkle in her eye. "I'll see if I can lay my hands on the key."

"This may be off the subject, but what about your friend, Constance Ferro? Nell swears she disappeared in the middle of the night."

Hazel's face lost some of its color, but her voice carried with full strength. "Oh, honestly! This nonsense has gone too far. Constance did nothing of the sort. She'd been in ill health for some time, a weak heart. She moved to California to be near her niece. I know she left in broad daylight, because I accompanied her to the airport."

"Why didn't she clean out her stuff? Is she still alive?"

"She most certainly is not. She pa.s.sed away suddenly, peacefully. Her niece, who was her only relative, had no interest in her belongings. I haven't had the heart to dispose of them."

"When did Constance die?"

"On March sixteenth, nineteen eighty. At eight fifty p.m."

I looked at her closely. "Shortly after she moved to California?"

Hazel closed her eyes for a moment, and when she spoke, she struggled to compose herself. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Did Constance die in California?"

Hazel rose abruptly and began to pick at flowers in the full-size, old-fas.h.i.+oned wagon that had been converted into a garden. "She most certainly did."

"You must have cared for her deeply," I said softly, "to recollect the precise time of her death."

Hazel started, her back to me. "She was the love of my life."

"Hmm."

Hazel turned and added hastily, "A dear, dear friend. We were inseparable. I miss her, but we've remained close. She's with me always." I must have looked confused, because she continued, with an anxious smile. "In spirit, not in ghost form. We'll never be separated."

"Were you lovers?"

"Oh, no, dear. Not in the sense of what you see today. We didn't dare. We were two widows who wished we hadn't married the men we did. If circ.u.mstances had been different..." Her voice trailed off.

"Or the times were different?"

She shrugged, a slight movement. "Back then, we wouldn't have known how to go about it. One simply couldn't adopt a new lifestyle. Constance moved into one of the units shortly after Herman died. She'd retired from her job at the library but wanted to remain within walking distance of the downtown branch. She arrived at the perfect time in my life."

"It sounds like it."

Hazel had a faraway look as she spoke. "Constance understood my loss, not so much for a man I never loved, but for the erosion of self-esteem. She accepted me for the sh.e.l.l I was and used to say she enjoyed watching me fill out."

"You seem quite full now," I said, smiling warmly.

Hazel laughed shyly. "Thank you. I've tried to make the most of my remaining years. I had no idea I'd be given this many, or I might not have lived the last decades with such urgency."

"Urgency's good."

"I suppose it is."

"After Constance left for California, you stopped renting units in the main house?"

Hazel nodded. "I no longer felt comfortable living among strangers. Also, I'd grown weary of placing advertis.e.m.e.nts, showing the apartments, receiving calls at all hours of the day and night, struggling to hold on to a competent handyman, filling out paperwork and tax forms. It became too much."

"But you never considered selling the house?"

"There was no need, and I couldn't bear to look across the driveway and see a new owner."

"Now you can?"

"My daughter tells me I have no choice. I've accepted that I have to part with the main house."

We chatted for a few more minutes before I closed my notebook and rose.

After promising to search for the key to the locked cellar room, Hazel walked me to my car, and from the street, we stood side by side and eyed the Fielder mansion.

I looked at her intently. "You don't find the house foreboding?"

"Not in the least."

"After you die, you won't come back and haunt it, will you?" I kidded her.

She cracked a smile. "You have my word on that. When I'm finished, I'll be done and gone. But I refuse to be hurried on my journey. Roberta Franklin had best be clear on that, no matter what type of deal she and my daughter have cooked up. She will not touch the carriage house, not one inch of it, or enter it without my permission, until I've died."

"That's the agreement," I said as I shook her hand. "Thanks for your time, and for the good news about the house not being haunted."

"You're welcome. I enjoyed our visit. Give my best to Roberta."

"I will. You'll be seeing a lot of her, now that the deal can go through."

Hazel looked perplexed. "Was there any question about its completion?"

I winked and said, "Roberta won't buy the house if it's haunted.'

She looked at me sideways. "You're putting me on."

"I'm serious," I said, shaking my head in amazement.

Hazel sidled closer and whispered conspiratorially, "Roberta Franklin will refuse to buy my house if it's haunted?"