"How do you mean that?" Stryker asked, opening his notepad. Mrs Corrington blushed. "They were lesbians."
This was heavy going for a Southern Belle, and she glanced at their composed expressions, then continued. "So they built this place under peculiar conditions- sort of man and wife, if you follow. No legal agreement as to what belonged to whom. That became important afterward.
"Listen, this is, well, personal information. Will it be OK for me to use just first names?"
"I promise you this will be completely confidential," Stryker told her gravely.
"I was worried about your using this in your new book on haunted houses of the South."
"If I can"t preserve your confidence, then I promise you I won"t use it at all."
"All right then. The two women were Libby and Ca.s.s."
Mandarin made a mental note.
"They lived together here for about three years. Then Libby died. She was only about thirty."
"Do you know what she died of?" Russ asked.
"I found out after I got interested in this. How"s the song go-"too much pills and liquor.""
"Seems awfully young."
"She hadn"t been taking care of herself. One night she pa.s.sed out after tying one on, and she died in the hospital emergency room."
"Did the hauntings start then?"
"Well, there"s no way to be sure. The house stood empty for a couple of years afterward. Legal problems. Libby"s father hadn"t cared for her lifestyle, and when she died he saw to it that Ca.s.s couldn"t buy Libby"s share of the house and property. That made Ca.s.s angry, so she wouldn"t sell out her share. Finally they agreed on selling the house and land, lock, stock and barrel, and dividing the payment. That"s when I bought it."
"No one else has ever lived here, then?"
Gayle hesitated a moment. "No-except for a third girl they had here once-a nurse. They rented a third bedroom to her. But that didn"t work out, and she left after a few months. Otherwise, I"m the only other person to live here."
"It seems a little large for one person," Stryker observed.
"Not really I have a son in college now who stays here over breaks. And now and then a niece comes to visit. So the spare rooms are handy."
"Well, what happened after you moved in?"
She wrinkled her forehead. "Just... well, a series of things. Just strange things...
"Lights wouldn"t stay on or off. I used to think I was just getting absent-minded, but then I began to pay careful attention. Like I"d go off to a movie, then come back and find the carport light off-when the switch was inside. It really scared me. There"s other houses closer now, but this is a rural area pretty much. Prissy"s company, but I don"t know if she could fight off a prowler. I keep a gun."
"Has an electrician ever checked your wiring?"
"No. It was OK"ed originally, of course."
"Can anyone break in without your having realized it?"
"No. You see, I"m worried about break-ins, as I say I"ve got double locks on all the doors, and the windows have special locks. Someone would have to break the gla.s.s, or pry open the woodwork around the doors-leave marks. That"s never happened.
"And other things seem to turn on and off. My electric toothbrush, for instance. I told my son and he laughed-then one night the light beside his bed flashed off."
"Presumably you could trace all this to electrical disturbances," Russ pointed out.
Gayle gestured toward the corner of the living room. "All right. See that wind-up Victrola? No electricity. Yet the d.a.m.n thing turns itself on. Several times at night I"ve heard it playing-that old song, you know..."
She sang a line or two: "Come back, blue lady come back. Don"t be blue anymore..."
Stryker quickly moved to the machine. It was an old Victrola walnut veneer console model, with speaker and record storage in the lower cabinet. He lifted the hinged lid. It was heavy. Inside, the huge tonearm was swomg back on its pivot.
"Do you keep a record on the turntable normally?"
"Yes. I like to show the thing off. But I"m certain I haven"t left "Blue Skirt Waltz" on every time."
"It"s on now."
"Yes, I leave it there now."
"Why not get rid of the record as an experiment?"
"What could I think if I found it back again?"
Stryker grinned. He moved the starting lever with his finger. The turntable began to spin.
"You keep this thing wound?" Russ asked.
"Yes," Gayle answered uneasily Curtiss swung the hinged tonearm down, rested the thick steel needle on the sh.e.l.lac disc.
I dream of that flight with you Darling,, when first we met...
"Turn it off again-please!"
*II*
Stryker hastily complied. "Just wanted to see what was involved in turning it on."
"Sorry," Gayle apologized. "The thing has gotten on my nerves, I guess. How about refills all around?"
"Fine," Stryker agreed, taking a final chew on his lime twist.
When their hostess had disappeared into the kitchen with their gla.s.ses, he murmured aside to Mandarin: "What do you think?"
Russ shrugged. "What can I say from a few minutes talking, listening to her? There"s no blatant elevation of her porcelain t.i.ter, if that"s what you mean."
"What"s that mean?" the writer asked, annoyed.
"She doesn"t come on as an outright crock."
Stryker"s mustache twitched. "Think I"ll write that down."
He did.
"Useful for rounds," Russ explained in apology.
"What about the occult angle? So far I"m betting on screwy electrical wiring and vibrations from pa.s.sing trucks or something."
Stryker started to reply, but then Gayle Corrington rustled back, three gla.s.ses and a wedge of cheese on a tray.
"I"ve been told most of this can be explained by wiring problems or vibrations," she was saying. "Like when the house settles on its foundation."
Russ accepted his drink with aplomb-wondering if she had overheard.
"But I asked the real estate man about that," she went on, "and he told me the house rests on bedrock. You"ve seen the limestone outcroppings in the yard. They even had to use dynamite putting down the foundation footings."
"Is there a cellar?"
"No. Not even a crawl s.p.a.ce. But I have storage in the carport and in the spare rooms. There"s a gardening shed out back, you"ll notice-by the crepe myrtle. Libby liked to garden. All these roses were her doing. I pay a man from the nursery to keep them up for me. Seems like Libby would be sad if I just let them go to pot."
"Do you feel like Libby is still here?" Russ asked casually.
She hadn"t missed the implication, and Russ wished again Curtiss hadn"t introduced him as a psychiatrist. "Well, yes," she answered cautiously. "I hope that doesn"t sound neurotic."
"Has anything happened that you feel can"t be explained-well, by the usual explanations?" Curtiss asked, steering the interview toward safer waters.
"Poltergeist phenomena, you mean? Well, I"ve only touched on that. One night the phone cord started swinging back and forth. All by itself- nothing near it. I was sitting out here reading when I saw that happen. Then my maid was here one afternoon when all the paper cups dropped out of the dispenser and started rolling up and down the kitchen counter. Another night that bra.s.s table lamp there started rocking back and forth on its base-just like someone had struck it. Of course, I was the only one here. Christ, I felt like yelling, "Libby! Cut it out!""
"Is there much truck traffic on the highway out front?" Stryker asked. "Stone transmits vibrations a long way, and if the house rests on bedrock..."
"No truck traffic to speak of-not since the Interstates were completed through Knoxville. Maybe a pickup or that sort of thing drives by. I"ve thought of that angle, too.
"But, darn it-there"s too many other things." Her face seemed defiant. She"s thought a lot about this, Russ surmised-and now that she"s decided to tell someone else about it, she doesn"t want to be taken for a credulous fool.
"Like my television." She pointed to the color portable resting on one end of the long raised hearth. "If you"ve ever tried to lug one of these things around, you know how portable they really are. I keep it here because I can watch it either from that chair or when I"m out sunning on the patio. Twice though I"ve come back and found it"s somehow slid down the hearth a foot or so. I noticed because the picture was blocked by the edge of that end table when I tried to watch from my lounge chair on the patio. And I know the other furniture wasn"t out of place, because I line the set up with that cracked brick there-so I know I can see it from the patio, in case I"ve moved it around someplace else. Both times it was several inches past that brick."
Russ examined the set, a recent portable model. One edge of its simulated walnut cha.s.sis was lined up one row of bricks down from where a crack caused by heat expansion crossed the hearth. He pushed at the set experimentally. It wouldn"t slide.
"Tell me truck vibrations were responsible for this" Gayle challenged.
"Your cleaning maid..."
"Had not been in either time. Nor had anyone else in the time between when I noticed it and when I"d last watched it from outside."
"No one else that you knew of."
"No one at all. I could have told if there"d been a break-in. Besides, a burglar would have stolen the darn thing."
Russ smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. Stryker was scribbling energetically on his notepad.
Gayle pressed home her advantage. "I asked Ca.s.s about it once. She looked at me funny and said they used to keep their TV on the hearth, too-only over a foot or so, because the furniture was arranged differently."
Stryker"s grey eyes seemed to glow beneath his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows. Russ knew the signs- Curtiss was on the scent.
Trying to control his own interest, Russ asked: "Ca.s.s is still in Knoxville, then?"
Gayle appeared annoyed with herself. "Yes, that"s why I wanted to keep this confidential. She and another girl have set up together in an old farmhouse they"ve redone-out toward Norris."
"There"s no need for me to mention names or details of personal life," Curtiss rea.s.sured her. "But I take it you"ve said something to Ca.s.s about these happenings?"
"Well, yes. She had a few things stored out in the garden shed that she finally came over to pick up. Most of the furnishings were jointly owned-I bought them with the house-but there was some personal property, items I didn"t want." She said the last with a nervous grimace.
"So I came flat out and said to her: "Ca.s.s, did you ever think this house was haunted?" and she looked at me and said quite seriously: "Libby?""
"She didn"t seem incredulous?"
"No. Just like that, She said: "Libby?" Didn"t sound surprised-a little shaken maybe. I told her about some of the things here, and she just shrugged. I didn"t need her to think I was out of my mind, so I left off. But that"s when I started to think about Libby"s spirit lingering on here."
"She seemed to take it rather matter-of-factly." Russ suggested. "I think she and Libby liked to dabble in the occult. There were a few books of that sort that Ca.s.s picked up-a Ouija board, tarot deck, black candles, a few other things like that. And I believe there was something said about Libby"s dying on April the 30th-that"s Walpurgis Night, I learned from my reading."
Witches" Sabbat, Russ reflected. So he was going to find his gothic trappings after all.
It must have showed on his face. "Nothing sinister about her death," Gayle told him quickly. "Sordid maybe, but thoroughly prosaic. She was dead by the time they got her to the emergency room, and a check of her bloodstream showed toxic levels of alcohol and barbs. Took a little prying to get the facts on that. Family likes the version where she died of a heart attack or something while the doctors worked over her.
"But let me freshen those ice cubes for you. This show-and-tell session is murder on the throat."
Stryker hopped out of his chair. "Here, we"ll carry our own gla.s.ses."
Smiling, she led them into the kitchen. Russ lagged behind to work at the cheese. He hadn"t taken time for lunch, and he"d better put something in his stomach besides bourbon.
"There"s another thing," Gayle was saying when he joined them. "The antique clocks."
Russ followed her gesture. The ornate dial of a pendulum wall clock stared back at him from the dining room wall. He remembered the huge walnut grandfather"s clock striking solemnly in the corner of the living room.
"Came back one night and found both cabinets wide open. And you have to turn a key to open the cabinets."
"Like this?" Stryker demonstrated on the wall clock.
"Yes. I keep the keys in the locks because I need to reset the pendulum weights. But as you see, it takes a sharp twist to turn the lock. Explain that one for me."
Russ sipped his drink. She must have poured him a good double. "Have you ever thought that someone might have a duplicate key to one of the doors?" he asked.
"Yes," Gayle answered, following his train of thought. "That occurred to me some time ago-though G.o.d knows what reason there might be to pull stunts like these. But I had every lock in the house changed-that was after I had come back and found lights on or off that had been left off or on one time too many to call it absent-mindedness. It made no difference, and both the TV and the clock incidents took place since then."
"You know, this is really intriguing!" Curtiss exclaimed, beaming over his notepad.
Gayle smiled back, seemed to be fully at ease for the first time. "Well, I"ll tell you it had me baffled. Here, let me show you the rest of the house."
A hallway led off from the open s.p.a.ce between living room and dining area. There was a study off one side, another room beyond, and two bedrooms opposite. A rather large tile bath with sunken tub opened at the far end.