Page 150 of Road Trip
He produced a heavy iron skeleton key and unlocked the front door. As soon as they stepped inside the cottage they heard a high-pitched squeak. The kitten leaped out of Maeve’s arms and raced after it.
“Oh my,” Billy said after he’d found the light switch.
They were in the entry hall. It looked much gloomier than she’d remembered. A heavy brass chandelier hung from the high ceiling, which bore huge water stains and exposed lathe, and chunks ofplaster were scattered across the threadbare oriental carpet. Vivid red floral wallpaper hung in shreds from the walls.
The room smelled of cigarette smoke, mildew, and damp. It was dark and airless.
Maeve went to one of the tall double-hung windows and pulled aside heavy woolen draperies, which shredded at her touch. Weak light shone through the long-unwashed glass windowpanes.
She took out her cell phone and began taking photographs. “I promised my sister,” she told the solicitor.
“We’ll get a charwoman out here immediately,” Billy said. “At one point, Esme did have a house cleaner, but she let her go because the poor woman asked for a raise.”
The foyer was a large square room with scarred wooden floors. A staircase of dark-stained wood rose to the upper floors. Maeve drew the curtains at each window to let in more light. She tried raising one of the window sashes, but it had swollen shut after decades of damp.
Billy moved ahead of her down a wide hallway, snapping on lights as he went. When they passed the parlor where Reggie had tried to kill her, she shuddered from the memory. But she knew that the room, with elaborate plaster moldings, a brass and crystal chandelier, and a coal-burning fireplace with a marble surround could be beautiful again. All it would take was time and money.
She ran a hand over the back of the settee, where wool batting poked out from the place where Reggie’s knife had landed and stuck. Everything in the room was covered in dust and cobwebs and looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades.
“Esme lived a fairly solitary existence,” Billy explained. “She liked to have a pint and shoot darts with her mates at the Willow Tree but was very strict about visitors. I’ve only been in this house a handful of times over the past thirty years, and each time, we met in the kitchen.”
Maeve followed him across the hallway. “I can see why.”
The solicitor pulled aside an oak pocket door to reveal a room whose walls were covered in bookshelves. Maeve’s face brightened.“A library! Oh my God. I’ve wanted a house with a library my whole life.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Billy cautioned.
The bookshelves were of carved oak, and the shelves themselves were crammed with books. Leather-bound books with gilt-edged spines, dozens and dozens ofReader’s Digestcondensed volumes, more contemporary-looking books with faded paper jackets. There was another, smaller coal-burning fireplace here, and a weathered but intact leather Chesterfield sofa. Behind the sofa stood a large library table and a tall leather upholstered desk chair on casters. Stacked on top of the desk were racing forms, paperback spy novels, and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.
Maeve pulled one of the leather books from the shelves and it all but disintegrated in her hand. She wanted to cry. She removed another book from a nearby shelf, and to her relief, it seemed intact.
“It’s criminal what damp does to these old houses,” Billy noted. He walked over to a pair of French doors and pulled aside the woolen curtains. Through the filthy glass Maeve could tell there had once been a small terrace and garden outside these doors.
“This will be the first room we fix up,” she told the solicitor. “It’ll be a perfect office for me, with great morning light.”
He looked puzzled. “What sort of office work will you be doing?”
“I’m working on a novel.” There, she’d said it. Out loud. Therese called it manifesting.
“Lovely,” he murmured. She could tell he didn’t believe a word she said, but she didn’t care.
Farther down the hallway a large arched opening framed a dining room. Chunks of ceiling plaster decorated a long mahogany table, around which were pulled a variety of chairs. On one side of the room a built-in dresser displayed an assortment of blue-and-white transferware dishes. A moth-eaten carpet covered the floor. They heard another squeak. Maeve bent down to see the kitten, who was contentedly chewing on the unfortunate mouse’s leg, under a chair.
“See?” Billy said. “Good kitty!”
“I guess she can stay,” Maeve said. “And I think we’ll name her Mousie.”
He crossed the hallway and opened a door. Maeve peeked over his shoulder, remembering her glance into the same room a week earlier, when she’d gone looking for Esme. “This was Esme’s bedroom,” Billy said, his voice taking on a solemn tone. “But up until fairly recently, she slept upstairs. She had me send over some fellows to move her things down here after the first stroke.”
The cigarette smoke smell was strongest in here, almost overpowering, and the wallpaper, with a pattern of stripes and flowers, was stained yellow from nicotine. A wicker dog bed with a plush gray cushion sat at the foot of the bed, but from the week Maeve had spent with Sinead, she knew the cocker was used to sleeping with her mistress.
There was a nightstand beside the bed, with another overflowing ashtray, an old-fashioned brass gooseneck lamp, and a yellowed plastic clock radio that reminded Maeve of Mary Helen’s clock radio back in Savannah. A closet door stood ajar, and inside hung an assortment of utilitarian jackets, trousers, and sweaters. Muddy work boots and tennis shoes were lined up on the floor. Venetian blinds covered the pair of windows.
A gorgeous flame mahogany Empire dresser stood between the windows, and on its surface was a trio of photographs in silver frames. Maeve recognized the photo of an adolescent Esme astride her prized pony, from the Rossington book her brother Geoffrey had penned. Another more formal photo showed a teenaged Esme dressed in a ladylike cashmere sweater and pearls, holding an English cocker that resembled Sinead. The third was of an older couple, standing stiffly in front of the manor house.
“Her father and mother,” Billy murmured, picking up the photo. “This must have been taken before her mother left for Australia.” He turned to Maeve. “I’m surprised to see this one. Esme wasn’t sentimental about her family.”
“Dogs and ponies, yes, family, no,” Maeve commented.
