The Spook Lights Affair

19

For a few more seconds Sabina stood still, her gaze lifted to the dormer windows above. There were three, all covered by dark shades. Nothing moved at any of them, but that didn’t mean one of the rooms behind the shades was unoccupied. The windows faced toward the main house; she might well have been observed from the moment of her arrival.

Quickly, the wind covering the sound of her steps, she mounted the staircase. The door at the top was not locked; she opened it and looked into the gloom of a hallway that bisected the upper story. Doors lined the hallway, three on each side, all of them closed. Six rooms, no doubt intended as servants’ housing — as if a three-person family on summer vacation needed six servants at their beck and call. And all of them living in close proximity to one another and the animal smells from the barn below, while the Kingstons enjoyed the overabundant luxury of the main house.

The same musty odor that had permeated the house enveloped Sabina as she stepped inside and shut the outer door. She stood for a moment, listening. No sounds here, just the thrashing of the wind outside.

The first door on her right opened into a large single room with a sleeping alcove on one side. The furnishings were few and dust-covered like those in the house. The musty smell was stronger in there: she was the first person to enter this room in a long while.

The room opposite, its blinded windows facing toward the woods and the stream Arabella Kingston had mentioned, was a mirror image of the first in size, furnishings, and dusty emptiness. So were the next two in line. But not the last of those facing the house, with perhaps the best vantage point from its window; that was the one that had been recently occupied.

The room was empty now, but it hadn’t been for long. The dust covers had been taken off the plain, functional furniture, and the bed in the alcove wore rumpled sheets and blankets, as if the sleeper had had a restless night. On the largest table was a lantern without its chimney, and the remains of several meals and the groceries that had supplied them — dried fruits, tins of potted meat, crackers. An end table next to a Morris chair held another lantern, this one complete, and half a dozen books that had probably been borrowed from the Kingstons’ library; another book — Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — lay open and facedown, its spine broken, on the chair’s arm.

If any further proof was needed that this was where Virginia St. Ives had been since the night she “died,” it was confirmed by what Sabina found when she opened the chiffonier. Two carpetbags lay on the bottom, one open and filled with lacy undergarments, and among the half-dozen dresses on hangers was the soiled white gown Virginia had worn to Mayor Sutro’s ball.

Why had the girl, as pampered and used to luxury as she was, chosen to hide in this small, cramped space rather than in the main house? Nerves, probably. Sabina could well understand the unease of a city dweller in such an isolated spot as this, especially for a girl of eighteen — and the gloomy, ghostlike confines of the house would have been a frightening place after dark. Virginia must have felt more secure here, where she could observe from a safe height in case anyone came onto the property. Hiding in servants’ quarters might also have appealed to her warped sense of adventure and excitement, in the same way the faked suicide and her plans for the future had.

Yes, but where was she now?

She had to have been watching from the window when Sabina arrived, and hurriedly departed while Sabina was inside the main house. Gone to hide somewhere else, of course, most likely somewhere close by. In the woods? Perhaps, but she had no idea how long Sabina intended to stay, and unfamiliar woods were a fearful place at night. If that was where she’d gone, it would be difficult if not impossible to find her.

The other possibility was the barn itself. Virginia had been here five days; assuming easy access to the interior, she must have explored it as well as the house and the rest of the property during that time, if only to relieve her boredom.

Sabina exchanged her reticule for the lantern with its chimney intact and several matches lying beside it, though not before transferring the derringer to her coat pocket. Then she hurried back to the outside staircase. In the waning afternoon light, deep shadows had begun to form among the surrounding trees and to march across the deserted driveway and grounds. The wind seemed even colder now, like the sting of nibbling teeth on her face as she descended the stairs.

There was no padlock on the double doors to the barn, nor did it look as if there had ever been one; the Kingstons were either trusting souls or whichever servant assigned the task of attending to the barn had been neglectful. A gap like a skinny mouth yawned between the two halves. Sabina widened the gap and stepped through into a heavy darkness broken only by the fading daylight behind her and thin fingerlings that slanted in here and there through chinks in the wall boards.

The prickling sensation started again as soon as she was inside, stronger than before.

This was where Virginia had come, where she was hiding now.

Sabina paused for a moment to listen. Silence, except for the wind gusts. The air inside was close, thick with odors that clogged her nostrils and forced her to breathe through her mouth — carriage and harness leather, moldy hay, animal and rodent droppings, the faint leftover effluvia of horses. Shapes loomed ahead of and around her, the largest of them a pair of carriages parked on the runway; the rest were unidentifiable in the thick gloom.

She set the lantern down, removed the chimney, then reached behind her to pull the door half closed so she could strike a match and apply it to the wick. When she straightened and held the lantern high, its light revealed some though not all of the cavernous interior. Along the right-hand wall stood a row of three horse stalls, behind which was a closed door that would lead to the corral outside, and above which was a hayloft; a sturdy ladder angled upward to the loft. The other wall had been partitioned off to form what appeared to be a workroom. The parked conveyances were a light spring wagon and a once-elegant Studebaker buggy with its caliche top buttoned up. As she started toward the buggy, the reach of the lantern’s light extended far enough beyond for her to make out an enclosure that she took to be a harness room.

The Studebaker bore the monogrammed gold letters RLK on its doors. Sabina opened one door and extended the lantern inside. The interior was empty, and judging from the film of dust on the seats and floor, it had been empty since the rig was stored here.

There was nothing in the bed of the spring wagon, nothing on or under its seat. Sabina moved from there to the open workroom. It contained nothing more than a hodgepodge of hand tools, gardening implements, and castoff items from both the main house and servants’ quarters.

The harness room next. Wary of a possible attack, she opened the door carefully and stood on the threshold instead of entering. Buckles and bit chains gleamed in the narrow space within, and she saw the shapes of bridles and similar gear. Dust was the only thing on the floor.

She went back toward the front, stopped again when something made a scurrying noise among the floor shadows. She lowered the lantern in time to see the tail end of a packrat disappear behind one of the stalls. Rodents didn’t frighten her as they did many women, but neither were they tolerable company, particularly in a place like this.

Sabina examined the stalls next, leaning into each with the lantern. If the girl were hiding in a hay pile, it would have to be close to the surface to avoid the risk of suffocation; she poked fingers into each pile in turn, stifling more than one sneeze from the stirred-up dust, and felt nothing but hay. Nor was there any sign of Virginia in the dirt-floored area behind the stalls, just thin scatterings of straw and long-dried droppings.

Dressed as she was, the prospect of climbing up into the hayloft held little appeal even though her traveling dress was already ruined. She ascended anyway, again with caution, holding her skirts up with one hand, the other lifting the lantern above her head. But the loft contained nothing more than a few tightly stacked bales of decaying hay and another scattering of loose straw that wouldn’t have concealed the packrat, much less a young woman.

Nor did there seem to be any conceivable hiding places in the barn that she might have overlooked. She searched from one end to the other to make absolutely sure. Virginia had been here, Sabina was certain of that. Could she have slipped out somehow?

No. She couldn’t have managed to escape without opening one of the door halves, and if she’d done that, the sudden voice of the wind would have been like the sounding of an alarm. Besides, the rippling between Sabina’s shoulder blades was as strong as ever, her trained instincts telling her forcefully that Virginia was still here somewhere.

But where?

How could the dratted girl have hidden herself so completely and cleverly that a skilled detective had been unable to find her?