Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed: An Augusta Goodnight Mystery (with Heavenly Recipes) Page 5

  “Fine,” I said. “He’ll be coming here for the caroling party, and Augusta, I don’t know of anyone who can be more inconspicuous than you!

  “We’ll have to do a rush job of decorating the tree before the party,” I said as I swept clippings from under the kitchen table. “Ben and I are going out to Willowbrook tomorrow to cut one so I guess I’d better get the decorations down from the attic.”

  “What did your policeman friend think about the possibility of a hidden staircase?” she asked.

  “Not much. He said they looked around inside to see if they could find where one might be but didn’t have any luck.” I shrugged. “There’s probably nothing to it. Mimmer always did have a good imagination. She said all the Vances do.”

  “Oh, my goodness, that reminds me!” Augusta let the dustpan clatter to the floor. “I forgot all about the phone call. I don’t suppose you’ve checked your messages.”

  I shook my head. “Hadn’t had a chance. What phone call?”

  “Your cousin Grayson called while you were out. It seems his grandson Vance and his young lady would like to see the old home place and asked if you might meet them there tomorrow. I believe he’s expecting you to return his call.”

  I looked at the clock. It was a few minutes after nine. I hoped my cousin hadn’t already gone to bed.

  But he sounded wide awake when I reached him.

  “My friend Ben Maxwell and I plan to go out to Willowbrook to get my tree in the morning—probably sometime after ten,” I told him. “Would that be too early for Vance and Jamie to meet us there?”

  “Should be fine,” he said. “I gave them a key to the house, but they don’t know Dave Tansey and he doesn’t know them. Didn’t want him to think they had a prowler about—especially after what happened last week.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “I’ll phone Preacher Dave in the morning so they’ll know what we plan to do.”

  “They never did find out what that fellow was about, did they?” Grayson asked. “Was there no kind of identification or any kind of transportation?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “The police seem to think he was probably a vagrant taking shelter there for the night—of course, there are things they don’t tell me.”

  Ben showed up the next morning in time for coffee and some of Augusta’s pumpkin bread before leaving for Willowbrook. Augusta won’t admit it, but I think she has kind of a crush on Ben Maxwell. I noticed the bread was fresh-from-the-oven warm and the coffee strong and steaming hot just as he likes it. They’ve never met, of course.

  “It’s going to be weird going back to Willowbrook,” I said as we got ready to leave. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same way about it again.”

  Ben kissed the top of my head as he helped me with my jacket. “You don’t sound like you have much confidence in my ability to protect you. I’m crushed.”

  I gave him a quick kiss, then shoved him out the door before he got a notion to linger. Clementine, of course, wanted to go along, too, and jumped into the front seat between us. “I know exactly where the tree is so it shouldn’t take too long to find it, but my cousin Vance and his girlfriend are supposed to meet us out there to see the house,” I told him. “Nellie Virginia—that’s Vance’s mother—thinks he might have an idea of living at Willowbrook someday.” I reached over the dog to touch his hand. “I hope you’re not in a hurry.”

  “My time is yours,” he said, giving my fingers a squeeze. “I’m not working on anything that can’t wait.”

  Ben is a talented furniture craftsman who does a lot of work restoring antiques at Bellawood, which is where we became friends. His reddish brown hair and beard, now streaked with gray, are an indication of his Scottish heritage, and his blue eyes have the intensity to warm you through and through or pierce you with an icy glance, depending on the situation. I don’t even like to think about how dull my life had become before Ben Maxwell ordered me out of his workshop at Bellawood along with the children in my grandson Teddy’s kindergarten class. That was over a year ago and to tell the truth it could have been a disaster as a number of yelling children pursued several yelping puppies through his sacred domain, tracking sawdust, scattering nails, and upsetting tools along the way. Ben, I thought at the time, had been unnecessarily gruff. Now he and Teddy have become great friends—and he has a special place in my life as well.

  Once at Willowbrook it didn’t take long to locate the tree and Ben quickly sawed it down and carried it back to the van. The weather, although brisk, wasn’t as cold as it had been the week before and while Ben trimmed the base of the tree and lifted it into the back of his vehicle I shed my heavy jacket to race with Clementine in and out among the evergreens while we waited for the others to arrive. It was almost eleven when I saw the approaching car.

  “We were about to give up on you,” I called as Vance and Jamie pulled up in front of the house.

  My young cousin gave me a hug as we made introductions. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said, “but I decided to drop by the Green Cottage first just to let the Tanseys know who we are.” He smiled at Jamie. “Didn’t want to get shot!”

  “Did you see Preacher Dave?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Only his wife—Louella, isn’t it? She was just leaving for work.”

  “Said her husband had already left for the church and their son works somewhere in Rock Hill,” Jamie added.

  “Right. When I phoned out there earlier this morning, Louella said they would probably all be gone. Works at that fabric shop on the other side of town.”

  Vance felt in his pocket for the key to the house. “Anybody ready for a tour? I haven’t been inside since I was little but I remember thinking how beautiful it was. I’m curious to see it again.”

  “I hope you won’t be disappointed,” I said, knowing that time and neglect hadn’t been kind to the old family home.

  “I can hardly wait!” Jamie started walking a little ahead of the rest of us but she stopped suddenly and stood looking at the house. “Is somebody supposed to be in there?” she asked.

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “Why?”

  Jamie pointed to an upstairs window. “I thought I saw someone up there. Looked like a woman. Didn’t any of you see her?”

  Vance frowned. “There shouldn’t be anyone in there. Are you sure you saw somebody?”

  Jamie hesitated before speaking. “I thought I did … I could swear it moved, but I guess it could have been a curtain or something.”

  I didn’t want to tell her there weren’t any curtains in the house. “Must’ve been poor Celia,” I said and told her about the family ghost.

  “Ghost or not, I think we should check this out,” Vance said, turning to Ben. “What do you say we take a look inside? If there’s anyone in there I’d like to know who they are and what they’re doing here.”

  “Oh no, you don’t!” I told him. “You’re not leaving me out here. If you two go inside, I’m going, too.”

  Jamie nodded. “Count me in, too,” she said.

  I slipped back into my jacket as we huddled on the portico waiting for Vance to unlock the heavy front door. And that was when we heard it. Someone was playing a violin and the music was coming from inside the house.

  Suddenly it seemed to have turned much colder.

  his is ridiculous!” Ben said, wiping his feet before entering—as if a few extra clumps of dirt would matter to years’ accumulation of dust. “There has to be a rational explanation for this.”

  Vance, who walked ahead of us, stopped so short I almost collided with him. “Can you hear anything now? It seems to be over,” he said, putting out a hand to quiet us.

  Standing there in a silent knot, we waited until my feet grew numb and I just had to shuffle a bit. “I think the concert’s finished,” I told them.

  “Well, I’m going in search of the soloist,” Ben said, striding into what had once been my grandmother’s dining room. Vance chose to go in the other dir
ection and began poking behind doors and into crannies in the drawing room leaving Jamie and me alone in the vast entrance hall, where even our whispers echoed around us. Clementine, who had chosen to chase a rabbit rather than accompany us inside the house, was of little or no use to us here.

  “Kids!” Jamie said finally. “Has to be some kind of prank.”

  “Most likely,” I said, hoping it was true. I didn’t tell her that Ellis had heard similar music the morning we discovered the body beneath the balcony, and even Augusta had admitted to hearing a scuttling noise. Doors opened and closed and drawers slammed shut as the two men explored the rooms beyond, which included a large kitchen, small parlor, and two adjoining bedrooms in the back. Willowbrook was a solid square house built to last through the years, which it obviously had. The four rooms in the front shared two chimneys while the larger of the bedrooms in the back, the one that had been my grandmother’s, had its own fireplace. The smaller room adjoining it had none.

  Jamie and I wandered into the drawing room, which seemed to be the sunnier, and therefore the warmer of the rooms to wait while Ben and Vance stormed about like a dedicated SWAT team thumping and bumping about. “Don’t worry,” I told her, “I’m sure they’ll be all right.” She couldn’t see that I had a death grip on the cell phone in my jacket pocket.

  She managed a smile. “Vance has told me so much about this old place, I just had to see it—didn’t expect such an adventure! It is beautiful, though—or it could be. I can see why he cares so much about it.”

  And I hope you care about him if you’re planning to live here, I thought, sidestepping a pile of debris. The house smelled of mice and mildew.

  “Come look at this.” Vance appeared in the doorway and led us into the larger of the bedrooms. “Somebody has been using this fireplace.” He kicked aside a couple of empty food cans and a crumpled bread wrapper. “It’s a wonder this whole place hasn’t burned to the ground.”

  We found the charred remains of a fire in the grate and a few pieces of firewood were stacked on the hearth along with an empty half pint of some kind of liquor I’d never heard of.

  “Trespassers are getting in somehow,” Ben offered. “Looks like you’re going to have to start boarding the place up.”

  “I’ll ask Granddad to speak to Mr. Tansey. I’m sure he makes an effort, but just locking the doors doesn’t seem to be working.” Hands on his hips, Vance stared at the clutter around the fireplace. “We can’t have this kind of thing!”

  “Preacher Dave says he’s run off squatters from time to time, and I know he tries to keep an eye on the place, but with his other duties, I guess he can’t check on things like he should.” I found that I had trouble speaking through the knot in my throat. I was glad my grandmother couldn’t see her precious Willowbrook now.

  We went upstairs in single file to find a similar jumble of litter. The fireplaces had been sealed off in two of the four bedrooms but a pigeon, which had apparently flown in through a broken window, lay dead in a corner of one, and a dirty, tattered sleeping bag had been tossed in another. I wondered if it had belonged to the man who plunged from the balcony. Mouse droppings were evident everywhere and I glanced at Jamie to see how she was reacting to her tour of her boyfriend’s ancestral home. Noticing the attention, she merely shrugged. “I think you might want to invent a better mousetrap,” she told him.

  Ben seemed to be taking careful note of the walls, paying particular attention to areas around the fireplaces. In one of the front-bedrooms, cabinets had been built on either side of the fireplace and he meticulously investigated both of them, tapping from every angle.

  “Maybe there’s a lever somewhere that makes it revolve,” I teased. “That’s the way it works in the movies.”

  “I did think we might find a tape recorder or something like that,” Ben said, running his fingers along the sides of the cabinets. “That music had to come from somewhere.”

  Vance stood at one of the two long windows that faced the front. A shutter hung crazily to one side and pale winter sunlight cut a crooked pathway across the grimy floor. “There’s a drainpipe loose out here,” he said, “and the wind was blowing earlier. Do you think that might have been what we heard?”

  “If it was, it was playing a tune!” Jamie told him. “And I think I’ve heard that song before.”

  It had sounded familiar to me, too, I said. “Did you recognize what it was?”

  Jamie shook her head. “No, but I’m sure it didn’t come from any drainpipe!”

  I repeated the snatch of music in my head. The notes were from a few bars of a longer composition, and I knew they would haunt me until I learned what it was. During the drive home I hummed them aloud so I wouldn’t forget, and Ben agreed that what we had heard at Willowbrook had been deliberately played for our benefit.

  We had found nothing in any of the bedrooms upstairs or in the large room behind them that ran across the back of the house. Mimmer had told me that at various times that room had been a ballroom, a schoolroom, even quarters for a bachelor uncle, and later a storeroom for the family’s discards. When we emptied the house after Mimmer died I rescued a perfectly beautiful Windsor chair that now sits in the corner of my living room from what my grandmother referred to as “the junk room.”

  “I hope Vance and his family won’t waste any time closing up that house,” Ben said as we waited at a traffic light. “The kids around here have obviously heard rumors of your family ghost, and some have even claimed they saw a woman in a hoopskirt on the balcony. That poor fellow’s death out there just added fuel to the fire.” He reached over to nuzzle Clementine’s ears as she once again snuggled between us. “If anyone is injured in a fire out there—God forbid—your cousin Grayson would be held responsible.”

  “And I doubt if he even has insurance,” I admitted. “It’s almost impossible to get a policy on an empty house.” Although I knew from my grandson that local students were out of school for a teachers’ workday, I really didn’t believe our mysterious violinist was part of a harmless prank. After all, Augusta herself had said we hadn’t seen the end of the trouble at Willowbrook. And Augusta was usually right.

  Ben had a meeting about an order for a cherry writing desk with somebody in Columbia that afternoon, but he took time to help me get the tree in a stand and put it in my living-room window before leaving. Later that evening my son, Roger, and his wife, Jessica, would drop by with Teddy to help me decorate. Meanwhile, Augusta got us started by stringing the lights and the delicate garlands that looked like miniature red apples. Charlie had brought them to me from a business trip several years before, and for a while after his death I couldn’t bring myself to put them on the tree.

  “I believe it’s almost as pretty as the one we got for the church,” I said as Augusta swirled strings of tiny white lights in a perfect pattern. I told her about the music we had heard that morning but didn’t try to repeat the tune. Augusta loves to sing but her notes don’t always ring true, and I knew it would be a waste of time to ask her if she knew it. Why, she told me herself she had never even been allowed to audition for the heavenly choir.

  Now she stepped back to appraise what she had done, and apparently satisfied, sank onto the rose brocade rocking chair by the fireplace. I seldom keep a fire in there as we usually spent our time in the small sitting room, but since the family was coming tonight, Augusta had agreed to build one, and now a happy little blaze crackled in the grate.

  “Did you ever find the source of that music?” she asked, trying to avoid rocking on Clementine’s tail.

  “No such luck, and believe me, we looked that whole place over, room by room. Ben took a lot of time checking those cabinets on either side of the fireplace, too, but he couldn’t find anywhere that might be a hiding place.”

  “I don’t suppose you heard anything else?” Augusta fingered her dazzling necklace, flashing gold and amber in the fire’s light.

  “You mean like the scuttling sound you heard?” I said. “
No, but there must’ve been an army of mice in there! The whole place is a mess! Mimmer would just be sick if she knew.”

  “Well, she doesn’t know, so don’t worry on her account, but it is a shame to see a fine old home go to ruin.” Augusta rose to check the macaroni and cheese she had made for supper and I followed to pop some corn for the tree. I’m hard put to come up with something to serve my daughter-in-law, Jessica, since she’s a vegetarian and won’t even indulge in an innocent hamburger now and then. Thank goodness she isn’t one of those people who won’t eat any animal products or I’d really be in a bind.

  Corn popped in the microwave while Augusta sprinkled nutmeg over a bowl of homemade applesauce and I put together ingredients for a green salad. Supper was ready to serve and the two of us already had a good start on stringing the popcorn when Teddy burst in the back door and threw himself down to wallow with Clementine on the kitchen rug. Augusta, as usual, disappeared from view.

  “Give Clementine a hug and then hurry and wash your hands. Supper’s ready,” I told him, knowing his mother would probably haul out the antiseptic wipes if she saw the dog licking Teddy in the face. Jessica has become adjusted to having Clementine around, but she’s still having a problem with doggy hair, doggy slobber, and what she imagines to be doggy germs.

  Roger waited until Teddy and his mother were stringing popcorn for the tree after supper before bringing up the subject of the unfortunate incident at Willowbrook. Augusta and I had been baking that week and now he snatched a Santa-shaped cookie and bit off its head as I arranged them on a platter. Jessica doesn’t serve sweets in their home but I think she’s finally given up on mine.

  “So, Mom,” he began, reaching for another, “you seem to be starting off the holly-jolly season with a bang—or should I say, a thud? Have you developed some kind of sinister detector that leads you to dead bodies? I’m beginning to wonder if it’s safe for you to be about! Should we hire a bodyguard?”