Chapter 7

C HAPTER 7

One need not be a chamber to be haunted. One need not be a house.

—Emily Dickinson

Left alone with her misgivings—along with that eerie reminder of the woman she was sure she had seen drowned on the tide—Marigold took the sensible precaution of angling a chair under the doorknob to allay any misapprehensions about drownings and attics and wells and wolves, and especially sullen, match-wielding cousins, and retreated to the rickety bed.

She had made it all the way from Boston on nothing more than optimism and determination, but in the chill confines of her garret, she could not avoid the conclusion that it had all been a terrible mistake. That if she had been less stubborn or less proud, she might this very moment be tucked up in one of Isabella's fine feather beds with a generous stem of well-aged sherry.

But such sentiments were the normal product of exhaustion and overexcitement at having finally arrived at a place that looked nothing like the North Shore estate of her imaginings. She would feel more of her optimistically practical self in the morning.

Yet by the middle of the cold night, the courage of Marigold's convictions was quavering under the blankets. The ramshackle house creaked and groaned like an old woman, and its high, dark rafters seemed to hold specters that moaned and moved in the moon shade overhead.

Almost as if it were putting on a show.

Naturally—if she were frightened away, she would never find the wrong done her mother, nor receive her due. Marigold was determined to ignore the eerie sounds, even if it meant burying her head between the musty pillows to shut out the noise. She soothed her thoughts by creating practical lists of improvements she would make on the morrow—laundering and sun-bleaching musty pillows was first on that list.

Yet despite her best sensible intentions, only when the first thin, red rays of daylight peeked over the top of the windowsill, banishing the shadows, did her true sense of practical logic return. But just as she was finally drifting off into an exhausted sleep, a row erupted under her window.

"For the love o' galoshes, would you let me have a say?" a man's voice growled. "I bought them hogs with my own actual, saved up to make something better outa this wretched place."

"My money, you mean." Another man's voice, hoarser and somehow nastier than the first.

"My own dang money," the first countered. "Worked for fair and square, tho' wrestled from your miserly clutch."

"Why, you ungrateful, unholy succubus," the other rasped. "Watch yer foul mouth, or so help me I'll—"

Whatever other invective followed was lost to Marigold's ears as she clambered out of bed and crossed to the window, where a broken pane left the tattered curtains slapping against the jamb like a loose tent flap to let the full cry of the argument in.

Red sky at morning, sailor take warning the old adage might have been, but Marigold was too annoyed to take heed. She shoved up the rickety, sticking sash of the broken window and poked her head into the raw morning to find Cousin Wilbert facing a gaunt, grizzled older man in an old-fashioned fisherman's woolen smock.

"As ye sow, so shall ye reap!" the old devil quoted.

"Well, you ain't sowed nothing but discord in years," Wilbert returned.

"Shut your clamshell," the older one roared. "Or I'll shut it for you."

"If you don't mind," Marigold broke in. "Would you please take your argument elsewhere? Some of us are trying to sleep."

The older man turned a face as rough and raw as a prizefighter's fist toward her. "Some of uz are trying to work, you hu—"

"—houseguest," she finished for him before he could say anything unkind. "Then I suggest you argue wherever that work might be," Marigold advised reasonably, "instead of filling the dooryard with your unseemly row."

She shut the window to discourage them from any further argument or abuse, but as she was now fully awake, she turned her mind to her surroundings.

Last evening, she had been hesitant to believe the evidence before her own eyes. As impoverished and down-at-heel as her cousin's and her family's appearances might be, Marigold had learned never to make assumptions about a New Englander's solvency—there was a miserly, keeping-back tendency among them, a grim Puritan distaste for finery or showiness in any form, that might have kept them from profligate spending.

But in the clear light of day, her chamber was very nearly derelict—the corners were enmeshed in cobwebs, the curtains faded and filthy, the rugs thin and threadbare. And a peculiar New England sort of smell, of must and mildew mixed with salt, signified that the room had been left vacant and stale for too long.

There was much, much work to be done. And Marigold, with her penchant for orderliness, was just the one to do it. She could spend the day until she convinced Sophronia to trust her by being trustworthy and useful. And she would start on her scheme of hygienic improvement just as soon as she was bathed and dressed for the rigors of the work.

Yet a search of the cupboards revealed nothing that could be taken for a water closet, and the basin on the washstand was filled with dust. The only thing that passed for personal relief was a chipped old-fashioned china chamber pot Marigold's grandmother Manners would have called a bourdaloue .

But Marigold was a resourceful New Woman who would overcome such obstacles by availing herself of the pot before completing her ablutions with a practical application of astringent, scented toilette water from her bags. She dressed as warmly but as smartly as possible—given the fact that there was also no mirror—in a thick sportswomen's sweater, wool walking skirts, and boots. Her version of athletically rational dress was certainly more suited to a fashionable summer estate than a barren farmstead, but such attire was sturdy enough for whatever difficulties or travel the day might hold.

One might adapt one's standards but never let them down.

Cleon alone was present in the kitchen, sprawled facedown upon the long, slatted table with his mouth gaping wide, as if he had been frightened into an apoplexy midscream. So still was he that for a terrifying moment, Marigold feared the worst.

"Cleon?" she whispered, almost to herself. "Are you dead?"

"Dead and gone," he croaked as he bolted awake. "Gone to the fallow fields and unmended walls. Out."

"All of the family? Cousin Sophronia and her daughter Daisy have gone out as well?" How progressive that the women of the family might be accorded equal status on the farm. Not that she had seen any evidence of actual farming.

"Miz Sophronia?" Cleon looked at her as if she were daft. "Reading her cards and embers, she'll likely be. Talking to the departed spirits."

"Perhaps she can speak to my parents and find where all the money went." Marigold also wondered where all the food had gone. "Is there any breakfast left? Tea or coffee? A piece of toast?"

"It's each to their own here, but I can make mush for you, Esmie's girl."

The thought of "mush" was unappetizing in the extreme. "It's Marigold or Cousin Marigold, I suppose, since we are vaguely related. Or even Miss Marigold, if you're still quite determined to be feudal."

"Ayuh," he answered, though she had little idea if he had understood her. "Or I can fry you up a special egg, Miss Esmie's Girl." He held up just such an object from the depths of his copious—and copiously filthy—pockets. "Got just one left."

A glance at the dirty pans littering the top of the cast-iron range made up her mind. "That is very kind of you, but you needn't wait upon me—I'm perfectly capable of boiling an egg for myself." Once she had scrubbed the grime from every inch of the place. "But this morning I should just like some tea and toast, if possible. I've brought some—tea, that is." She produced the canister of gunpowder tea she had packed for just such a contingency. "And if you'll just show me where I might find a kettle to boil the water and a toaster?"

"The toaster?" The old man gaped at her. "What be a toaster?"

Surely he was joking. "An implement to make toast—a little metal rack to put in the range to toast the bread?"

Not a flicker of recognition.

"Do you know what toast is?"

"Ayuh." He nodded eagerly. "Bread all burnt round the edges."

"Naturally." The description was sufficient, if entirely unappealing. "How do you make toast, Cleon?"

"I got me a fork." He fished an ancient, iron prong from a hook beside the chimneypiece and held it out to her like a trophy.

"Naturally." The place was fulsome with quaint eeriness. Marigold began a mental list of Items Necessary for Civilized Living alongside Items to Be Cleaned. First on that list, a toasting rack. "How about hot boiling water for tea?"

"There were some Adam's ale heated for the oats, but it's gone cold as an old whore now."

Marigold's attention to that particularly revolting, if colorful, metaphor was diverted by a sound very much like the eerie moans she had heard in the night. In the light of day, it was easier to reason that the noise was only the wind, or the waves crashing rhythmically against the rocks cresting the shoreline, because Cleon took no notice of it.

And having no real idea what he was talking about—what on earth was Adam's ale?—Marigold tried another tack. "Perhaps if you could show me the larder, I could find the bread and butter and a kettle, perhaps, for the water?"

Cleon shook his head. "Only herself has keys to the foodstuffs."

The idea of a locked larder seemed like something straight from an antiquated Victorian Gothic. "How positively Dickensian. And where might Cousin Sophronia be found this time of day?"

"Her? Dunno. Could be anywheres, I s'pose. After I gets the eggs from the hens and she counts 'em, Miz Sophronia leaves me be to my fishing, and I leave her be to her own business."

"And what does her business entail—"

There it was again, only louder—an eerie moan that worked its way up Marigold's spine like a chill wind.

"I beg your pardon, Cleon, but did you hear that?" she asked without any real hope of an answer—it would only be fitting if the old man were as deaf as he was befuddled.

"Ayuh. That's the curse and no mistake. The watery souls calling back. The house herself moans and groans, holding herself onto this piece o' rock like a naked whore cleaves—"

"Cleon!" Marigold did not care that her voice had become sharp. "Don't be vulgar. I collect you are of a superstitious nature, but there really is no call for such language." She changed the subject. "If my cousin Sophronia is not to be disturbed, where can I find the hired girl? I didn't catch her name?"

"Lucy Dove, from across the sound, is the skivvy. Her mam used to cook here, time was, but she don't now. Got a boardinghouse up the shore, she does." He lowered his voice to an overly dramatic whisper. "Does a few things like for herself ."

Marigold did not understand him. "She does for her daughter? Or Sophronia?"

Cleon's answer was as enigmatic as it was confusing. "Couldn't say."

"And Mr. Dove? Does he work here as well?" There had been a great many plates and bowls on the table last night—in fact, most of them were still dirty—but Marigold was trying to understand just how many souls inhabited Hatchet Farm.

"Mr. Dove, as was, passed on some years ago. That's when his widow, Bessie Dove, started taking in work—washing and cooking and the like—long afore Lucy come to skivvy."

"And Lucy does the washing and the cooking now?"

"Oh, no. That's my job now, Miss Girl."

Which explained the state of the kitchen, which was as filthy and dilapidated as the old man. "And Lucy?" Marigold refused to use Cleon's rather offensive, old-fashioned term, skivvy . "What work is she hired to do?"

"Couldn't say, Miss Girl, excepting she does for herself. " Again the old man lowered his voice to a whisper, as if whatever the hired girl had been hired to do was meant to be a mystery.

How curious. "And where might I find her?"

"Couldn't say."

"Naturally." Marigold had to smile at the absurdity of it all. The Hatchets were in sore need of a good cleaning out, both practically and rationally.

A good cleanout had never hurt anybody. See if it wasn't so.