Ariel

Seventeen

Etta Jellin had been in the real estate business for half a century. She’d gone to work fresh out of high school as a secretary to an up-and-coming young realtor. Within three years she’d become his wife, and a couple of years after that she had her broker’s license and worked as his partner. For the dozen years of her widowhood she’d gone on operating the King Street office herself, managing the rental properties Sam had left her and specializing as always in downtown residential property.

“Why, David Jardell!” she said. “How nice. You’re looking well.”

He thanked her and returned the compliment, thinking that she was indeed looking well. But then she always did. In all the years he’d known her, Etta Jellin had remained the same, fat and saucy and always possessed of a good humor and a shrewd glint in her eye.

“Have a seat,” she said. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you lost your son. I was awfully sorry to hear about that.”

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t go to the funeral. Last one I went to was my husband’s. The day I buried Roy I said, by God, I’m not going to another of these affairs till I go to my own. Which some folk doubtless feel is long overdue. Well, I’m sure we can find a fitter subject for conversation. How’s that house I sold you? Bricks still staying one on top of the other?”

“Oh, it’s in good shape.”

“Would I sell you a bad one? Those old homes will outlive us all, my friend. They were built in saner times than our own. I swear I’d hate to hold mortgage paper on some of what’s being built nowadays. The banks’ll write thirty-year paper on some of these cardboard boxes, and you just know the houses won’t last the thirty years. House’ll be long gone before the mortgage is anywhere near paid off.”

“It’s true.”

“But don’t shed tears for the bankers,” she went on. “Inflation the way it is, land prices rising the way they are, they’ll be able to foreclose on the empty lots and come out ahead of the game.” She leaned back in her swivel chair. “Lazy old afternoon,” she said. “What brings you here, David?”

“I wanted to get the benefit of your professional expertise.”

“Oh?”

“Let’s suppose I wanted to sell the house,” he said. “What could I figure on netting for it?”

She looked him over carefully, her dark eyes narrowing. “You didn’t move in but less than a year ago.”

“I know.”

“They go and transfer you? Or did you find something else out of town?”

“Nothing like that, Etta.”

“Then why in tarnation would you want to sell the house?”

He forced a smile. “I’m not saying I want to,” he said. “I just wanted to know what it would amount to in dollars.”

“If you’re looking for cash, I know some awfully good sources of second-mortgage money, David. It’s none of my business to pry and I’m not prying, but if that’s what it is don’t be ashamed to say so, for the Lord’s sake. You shouldn’t ever sell real estate because you need cash, not unless you’re in the business and that’s what you do for a living. Always borrow on it if you can. Every year the dollars get cheaper and the man who’s in debt is that much ahead of the game.”

“Cash isn’t a problem, Etta.”

“Then what on earth—?”

“Let’s say it’s personal.”

She looked at him thoughtfully, then swung her chair around and rolled it over to a gray filing cabinet. “Just to refresh my memory,” she said, leafing through a drawer of file folders. “Let me see now. Uh-huh. All right. I thought I remembered the house well enough. Peddle enough properties and they tend to merge when you get along in years but I still have a good memory for houses and a tolerable one for figures. You paid sixty-seven thousand five hundred according to what I’ve got written down here.”

“That’s right.”

“House was listed at seventy-five, you offered sixty-five, and you and the seller settled at sixty-seven five. I think that’s how it went.”

“That’s exactly how it went.”

“And you want to know what you’d get selling it... depends, depends how anxious you are to sell. And how anxious somebody is to buy it. You might list it today at seventy-five and sell it tomorrow, if just the right person happened to come along and he wanted it badly enough. Or if you were willing to put it on the market today and sit tight for up to a year, then you could be fairly certain of getting the seventy-five or close to it sooner or later. But if you want a fast sale and you don’t want to count on getting lucky, then you’re going to take a loss.”

“How large a loss?”

“Somewhere between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars. Plus my six-percent commission.”

He winced. There was no way he could sell the house and sustain that sort of loss. His total equity in the house was only a little over fifteen thousand in the first place. If he sold that cheaply they wouldn’t be able to move into another house.

“I guess I paid too much,” he said.

She shook her head. “You paid a fair price, is all. You found just the house you wanted and paid no more than fair market value for it. If you’re willing to wait for a buyer like yourself to come along I’d say you’ll get your money out of it, except for commission and closing costs. But if you want to sell in a hurry, well, it’s going to cost you. And that’s especially true when you’re dealing with older homes in town. They’re unique. Each of them is one of a kind. The charm of the house, the prestige value of the particular block, the special feeling a given prospective buyer gets from the house, all of these intangibles determine how fast the house sells and what price it brings, and you can’t get them down in dollars and cents and put them on the card in black and white.”

“I see.”

“You didn’t overpay and you didn’t wind up with a house you’re going to lose money on. Unless you want to unload it in a hurry. Real estate’s not the stock market, you know. You can’t call your broker and be sure of having money in your hand in four days’ time. It doesn’t work that way.”

“I know.”

“Why do you want to unload the place, David?”

“I don’t.”

She stroked her chin. “Your wife’s notion? You’ll have to forgive me but her name slips my mind. My memory’s better for prices and addresses than it is for people’s names.”

“Roberta.”

“Of course. She wants to move?”

“Yes.”

“Because of what happened to the boy? Pshaw. I’m a fat old woman, David, and that’s a fine thing to be because you can say whatever comes to mind and not give a damn how it goes over. Now it’s a tragedy when a baby dies and only a fool would say otherwise, but it’s a far cry from being the end of the world. She was not the first woman on earth to have a baby and God knows she was not the first woman on earth to lose one. If she’s going to run around the block every time something in her life takes a nasty turn, she’d be well advised to sleep in a track suit. It’s a hard life and it doesn’t get easier the more you see of it. All you get is used to it.”

“It’s not that. Or maybe it is, when all is said and done, but that’s not how Roberta sees it.”

“How do you mean?”

He hesitated, groping for words. It was hard to explain her feelings, especially in view of the fact that they didn’t make any sense to him.

“The house disturbs her,” he said finally.

“It disturbs her?”

He nodded. “It makes her uncomfortable. She acts as if it were a person instead of a thing. I don’t know how to describe it. She’s going through a difficult time emotionally, it’s obviously a result of losing the baby, and she’s reacted by putting all the blame on the house.” And on Ariel, he thought. But the house could be disposed of.

“She think maybe it’s haunted?”

“It’s as if she thought that,” he said. “Of course she’s intelligent, she’s an educated woman. She doesn’t literally believe in haunted houses—”

“Oh?” The dark eyes sparkled. “I do. Of course I’m not educated and I daresay I’m not terribly intelligent either but—”

“You believe in ghosts?”

“I don’t know if I believe in ghosts exactly. I believe houses get to be haunted, and I suppose it’s ghosts that haunt ’em. An old house like yours, a house on that street, it’s more likely to be haunted than not.”

“You’re not serious?”

“’Course I am.”

“You actually believe—?”

“Oh, I don’t believe in anything. I especially don’t believe in astrology. Know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a Sagittarius, and every Sagittarius knows astrology is a lot of hooey.” She lay back her head and cackled at her own joke. “I believe and I don’t believe, both at once,” she explained. “In just about everything, from ouija boards clear through to the Virgin Mary. There’s such a thing as haunted houses. You go into your neighborhood, into any of the good old blocks south of Broad Street, and I’d say three houses out of five are likely to be haunted.”

“Then you think that Roberta’s right?”

“You really want to know what I think?” She sat forward, planted an elbow on her desk top, rested her chin in her hand. “I think houses pick up some of the vibrations of people, who’ve lived in them, and especially people who died violently in them. That’s the theory behind ghosts. Somebody dies suddenly or violently and the ghost doesn’t know it’s time to go on to the happy hunting grounds. Anyway, ghosts or vibrations or whatever you want to call it... certain people are just more sensitive to the feeling of a haunted house than others. And certain states of mind make a person more or less sensitive. Your house has been standing over a century. The odds are pretty strong that more than a few people died in it, and it’s a safe bet that one of them somewhere along the way died in some sort of abrupt fashion. As a matter of fact—” She straightened up. “What’s the number of your house again? Forty-two?”

“That’s right.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Grace Molineaux lived there.”

“Who on earth was she?”

“Before your time,” she said. “Before my time, if you can believe it. It must have been in the eighties or early nineties. I remember people still talked about it when I was a girl.”

“What happened?”

“I’m trying to remember. Now I’m not sure I’ll get this entirely accurate. It seems to me she was a widow with small children. Was it three young children? I think so. It’s usually three in stories, whether it’s three little pigs or three bears or three wishes.” She rocked back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “I seem to recall she was married to a ship’s captain who was lost at sea and left her a young widow. With however many children, but let’s say there were three of them. And one night they were all murdered in their beds. The children, that is... and it wasn’t three, it was four. I’m remembering it now. They were smothered in their sleep, the four of them.”

“By their mother? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch her name.”

“Grace Molineaux. What it was like is Lizzie Borden. Did she do it or was it a prowler? Now I myself wasn’t around at the time, David. I’m not quite that ancient. I’m going back to a childhood recollection of conversations about an event that took place before I was born. I believe everybody thought she did it but had no proof. And she came from good family, good old French Huguenot stock, and people sympathized with her over losing her husband. So she was never charged with the murders.”

“And she went on living alone like Lizzie Borden? While children taunted her with rhymes?”

“If she did, it wasn’t for long. She killed herself. They found her hanging from a rope. Or did she take the gas pipe? It’s one or the other, it seems to me. Either way she killed herself.”

“Which amounted to an admission of guilt for the murder of her children, I gather.”

“Do you suppose it did? You could also take it that she was despondent. Had nothing to live for what with her husband and kids all gone. They argued it both ways but it seems to me I grew up more or less taking it for granted that she killed those babies.”

“And it happened in our house?”

“Might have.” She shrugged majestically. “I knew which house it was when I was a child,” she said. “It was pointed out to me. I recall that it was a big old red-brick house and it seems to me it was on that block and it might have been the same house you’re living in today. But they might have pointed out the wrong house to me or my memory might be at fault or any of a hundred other things. You could find out if you wanted.”

“How?”

“Check the deed registry in the county clerk’s office. Nate Howard’ll help you out if you mention my name. He’s an old friend. Wait a moment, that might not help. I think Molineaux might have been her maiden name and the house would have been registered to the sea captain. Or maybe not. Now if you were to go over to the Post-Courier they’ll have back issues into the last century, and they could probably help you.”

“I don’t think it’s worth the trouble, do you?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I frankly don’t. But if Grace Molineaux lived and died in your house, well, it kind of adds up, don’t it? A woman grieving for a child is going to be sensitive to the vibrations of a woman who lost four children under the same roof. Unless you don’t believe any of that crap in the first place.”

“All of a sudden I’m having trouble figuring out what I believe and what I don’t believe.”

“Well, congratulations! I think somebody said that’s the beginning of wisdom.”

“You mean there’s hope for me, Etta?”

“Hope for us all, or so I’m told. Want some advice from a fat old lady? Your Roberta’s having a bad time. That’s perfectly natural. Be surprising if she weren’t, all in all. You go home and tell her the house is listed for sale. That way she’ll think you’re taking some steps to solve the problem. It’ll be that much of a load off her mind. Meantime I won’t list the house at all. Or I’ve a better idea. I’ll list it, but I’ll put it on the card at ninety-five. Nothing against your house, it’s a fine property, but the fool hasn’t been born yet who’s going to pay ninety-five thousand for it or even ask to go through it at that figure. And if he turns up, well, maybe you wouldn’t mind making that kind of a profit on the transaction, or would you?”

“Not at all.”

“Fine. So the house’ll be listed, and if Roberta ever happens to check you won’t turn out a liar. But it won’t sell and you won’t have to move and as soon as she works things out in her mind and comes to terms with her life, then you can take the house back off the market. How does that sound?”

“It sounds good, Etta.”

“Just because a house is haunted is no reason to move out of it,” she said. “The hell, it’s less lonely that way.”

Later that day he felt vaguely dissatisfied and wondered why. It seemed illogical that he should be bothered at deceiving Roberta; the deception was harmless enough, and was designed to help put her mind at ease.

Perhaps it was the story Etta Jellin had told. It was preposterous that such a solid earthy woman could actually believe in haunted houses, and her belief became all the more convincing for her general air of no-nonsense earthiness.

Not terribly good, he thought. Willow was all too obviously there just to rhyme with pillow. The bit about Lizzie Borden might also be doggerel, but at least it was good doggerel.

That was better. A shame he couldn’t share it with Roberta, but if one thing was certain it was that he could not say Word One to Roberta about Grace Molineaux and her claim to infamy.

Not that he felt there was more than a chance in a hundred that the woman had actually lived in their house. Of course it was possible, just as it was possible that Grace herself was the subject of the portrait Ariel seemed to be so fond of. Under normal circumstances that was the sort of thing Roberta would have enjoyed believing.

But circumstances had not been normal for quite some time now.

No, this was something he couldn’t possibly risk mentioning to Roberta.