Hemlock Read online

  I drove through town, then crossed a bridge over a fast-flowing river. From there, I followed the GPS’s chirpy directions west and south through a series of valleys and along a tumbling creek that was in a hurry to get to the nearest valley. A half hour later and much deeper in the mountains, I was working my way up a ridge on a series of steep switchbacks that had to be thrillingly suicidal during a winter snowstorm or when there was ice on the pavement.

  By this time, the road had narrowed to a two-lane blacktop with no shoulders. The forests crowded in on either side, tunnel-like and shadowy in the late afternoon gloom. The clouds had dropped out of the sky and were skimming the tops of the trees, trailing gauzy scarves of fog. The redbuds seemed to be finished blooming but Penny had mentioned the dogwoods and there they were, in abundance: wraithlike white shapes slipping through the dark forest like plaintive ghosts. The rhododendrons wouldn’t be along for several weeks, but the native azaleas were in bloom, brushing the gray-scape with an optimistically rosy blush. The forest trees were mostly hemlock, I supposed, with white pine and oak and an occasional patch of maple, and all very dense and dark.

  But occasionally the road crossed a clearing and I could see a ruffle of spring beauties and trilliums, a fringe of purple violets, and an emerald green clump of maidenhair fern bursting exuberantly out of a cliff. After twenty minutes of dizzying switchbacks, I crossed a narrow bridge over a frothy white-water creek and turned right onto a graveled road.

  I was there.

  • • •

  I had seen photographs and a history on the Hemlock House website, so I thought I knew what to expect. Maybe it was a trick of the evening twilight or the eerie tendrils of fog draped over the trees. But the house loomed much larger and more ominous in real life than it had on my computer monitor.

  Hemlock House was built soon after the First World War by an American arms manufacturer named Reginald Carswell. A fervent admirer of then-popular French Châteauesque architecture, Carswell commissioned Richard Howland Hunt, the son of the Biltmore architect, to build a Biltmore-style house that would impress the friends and business associates he expected to entertain. Not quite as large as Vanderbilt’s Gilded Age palace and lacking the expanse of Biltmore gardens, Hemlock House was still a quite sizable faux château, with thirty-some rooms, a stone gatehouse, and a scattering of outbuildings. It might have looked right at home in the Loire Valley in, say, the year 1400.

  But not so much on this tree-clad Appalachian mountain, where its exaggerated, pretentious French Renaissance personality fitted about as well as a bejeweled matron dressed for opening night at the opera would fit into your neighborhood block party. The gray stone walls were studded with leaded-glass casement windows of various sizes and decorated with trefoils, flowing tracery, rosettes, and gargoyles. The steeply pitched slate roof was ornamented by towers, spires, parapets, and wrought-iron balustrades and crowned by a hodgepodge of chimney pots. It wasn’t quite Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, all ill-fitting angles and out of kilter, “never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope.” But the effect was ominous and even threatening, especially shadowed as it was by the darkening light. It looked like a place where things might come out of dark corners or out of the walls. No wonder people thought it was haunted. It would be a surprise if they didn’t.

  I turned off the key and sat for a moment, looking at the house. If it hadn’t been well after six and I hadn’t been so tired, I might have turned around and driven back down to Bethany, where I could check into a cheerful B&B. But it was almost dark, I had spent most of the day on a cross-country flight, and I was too tired to negotiate those risky switchbacks. Anyway, what the heck. I was here for the adventure, wasn’t I?

  I got out of the Mirage, took a deep breath of the mountain air, and pulled my wheelie out of the trunk. As I lifted the heavy brass gargoyle doorknocker on the arched door at the foot of the main tower, I would not have been at all surprised if it were opened by the sinister Mrs. Danvers, straight out of du Maurier’s Rebecca.

  But there was nothing sinister about the willowy young woman who answered my knock. In her mid-twenties, she had an intelligent face, wideset gray-blue eyes behind owlish tortoiseshell frames, and dark, pixie-cut hair that gave her an impish look. She was wearing skinny jeans and a wooly gray cardigan over a dark purple T-shirt that displayed a tree-covered mountain peak and the words “Hemlock Rocks!” She was all smiles and easy welcome as she introduced herself.

  “Jenna Peterson.” She put out her hand. “I’m Dorothea’s assistant.”

  “Oh, you’re the author!” I had already emailed her my praise for the material she had sent me, but I repeated it. “I loved that first section, Jenna. Your Elizabeth is in a tight spot. I can’t wait to see how she gets out of it.”

  “Thank you,” Jenna said, beaming. “It’s an amazing story, and I still have lots of questions about it. We’ll have to make some time to talk.” She took a breath. “Dorothea is on a conference call right now with some of the board members. She’ll be super happy to know that you’ve made it safely. Hemlock House is a long way from Texas.”

  “And those last few miles up the mountain are a challenge,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had to navigate that many switchbacks. My arms are aching.”

  “It’s even more of a challenge in the snow,” Jenna said ruefully. “How long will you be staying?”

  “I’m supposed to fly back on Thursday,” I said. I could stay over for a day or so longer if there was a reason, but if I hadn’t found what we were looking for by then, chances were that it wouldn’t be found.

  She nodded. “I hope you’ve brought some warm clothes. This big old place is hard to heat. If you haven’t, no worries. We can fix you up.” She reached for my wheelie. “Let’s get you settled. Your room is up there.” She pointed. “No elevator service, I’m afraid.”

  I looked. We were standing inside the stone tower that served as a kind of foyer, rising several stories over our heads. Somewhat bemused, I followed Jenna up the staircase as it made a three-quarter circle to a narrow second-floor balcony.

  “Amazing,” I muttered, peering down. If this were an Alfred Hitchcock movie, I’d probably be looking at a dead body sprawled on the stone floor some ten or twelve feet below.

  “Isn’t it?” Jenna replied blithely. “Parts of the house have been closed off for years, ever since Miss Carswell’s father died. Dorothea thinks it’s depressing, not to mention spooky. But me, I always imagine it as a fairytale castle. I tell myself that Rapunzel must be hanging out in one of these rooms, braiding her golden hair at the window while she waits for her prince. I look for her sometimes, but I’ve never found her—so far, anyway. I keep looking. And of course there’s a secret room here somewhere. There always is, you know.”

  “A secret room? As in an old Nancy Drew mystery?”

  “Exactly,” she said, and laughed. “Said to be on the third floor. But it’s so secret that we haven’t found it yet.” She pointed to a corridor. “This way.”

  The hall ahead was long and dark and the doors were closed on either side. I tried picturing Rapunzel behind one of them, but it wasn’t working for me. It was much easier to imagine something more ill-omened. I shuddered. Those creepy twins in the film version of Stephen King’s The Shining, maybe.

  Jenna was walking briskly and I hurried to catch up. “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “I came with Dorothea,” Jenna said. “I’m studying library science at the University of Wisconsin. My job is to help her sort out Sunny Carswell’s library, which has never been catalogued. And as you know, I’m working on A Curious Herbal.”

  “Oh, dear,” I said lightly. “The Herbal.” Since I didn’t know whether Jenna was clued in on the reason for my visit, I wouldn’t have mentioned it if she hadn’t brought it up. “It’s gone missing, I understand. Has it turned up yet?”

>   “Not yet.” Jenna gave an elaborate sigh. “Which means that my project is sort of up in the air right now. But I’m still working on the novel, which is part of my thesis project. And there’s always the cataloging. It’s a massive collection. I don’t think we’ll get finished with it—not in this lifetime.” We had almost reached the end of the long hall. She stopped in front of the door on the left.

  “Here we are,” she said, putting her hand on the knob. “Dorothea wanted you to have a corner room. We hope you’ll like it.” With a dramatic gesture, she flung the door open.

  The room was high-ceilinged, spacious, and elegant. The polished wooden floor was covered here and there with antique rugs, and gilt-framed landscapes hung on the walls and over the fireplace mantle. A lacy white canopy hung above the old-fashioned four-poster bed, which featured a colorful quilt and a generous scattering of cushions. A chintz-covered loveseat sat in front of the fireplace, and a desk and chair were arranged in front of one of the large casement windows that looked out into the surrounding trees. Some of the dark green hemlocks and pines were so close I could open a window, reach out, and touch them.

  “Wow,” I said, almost at a loss for words. “It’s lovely. And those trees are spectacular.”

  “It’s the nicest room,” Jenna confided. “The rest are distinctly humdrum.” She pointed. “There’s a gas log in the fireplace, and you can adjust the radiator. It works most of the time. If you get chilly at night, there’s an electric blanket on the bed, under the quilt. And here’s the closet.” She opened a door. There was a white terry robe hanging from a hook.

  “The bathroom is the next door on your right—no entrance from here. The robe is yours to use if you didn’t bring one. I’ve made some rosemary bath oil that’s especially nice—there’s a bottle for you on the shelf above the tub. My room is on the other side of the bathroom, and Dorothea’s is several doors on the other side of mine. You won’t be all alone up here. It can get a little . . . spooky at night.” She slid me an inquiring, half-anxious look. “Have you heard about our ghost?”

  “In general, but no details,” I said. Was this the “unexpected” thing that the Universe mentioned to Ruby? “There really is a ghost, then? To go with the secret room, I suppose.”

  “Oh, you bet.” Jenna sounded relieved, as if she’d been expecting me to scoff and was glad I hadn’t. But her relief seemed mixed with a kind of bravado. “It’s the ghost of Miss Carswell, the former owner. She killed herself in her suite on the third floor, above this end of the hallway.” She jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “Sunny—that’s her name—isn’t evil or anything like that, but she can be a bit of a nuisance, thumping around up there. She annoys Dorothea that way sometimes, although Dorothea prefers to pretend that she doesn’t hear a thing. But Sunny will stop bothering you if she understands that you won’t put up with her nonsense. Just tell her to go away. Be firm.”

  And then, as if she hadn’t said anything at all extraordinary, she gave me a bright smile that did nothing to hide her obvious apprehension. Whether the Hemlock ghost was or wasn’t real, Jenna accepted it. And feared it.

  Full disclosure: I am by nature and education a skeptic where the supernatural is concerned. I do listen to Ruby, though, when she occasionally reminds me that there are things about the world that my “mega-logical mind” has to learn to accept. There is a certain skeleton in my closet, as well—or rather, in the closet at my shop: that is, the ghost of Annie, who lived there decades before I moved in. Still, although Ruby and Annie may have altered my skepticism, I’m not willing to extend belief to every ghost who happens along.

  To give myself credit, I did not roll my eyes when Jenna said I should just tell Sunny to go away. Instead, I only said, “Thanks. I will,” and smiled.

  Jenna turned toward the door. “Well, then, I’ll let you get settled. When you’re ready to come downstairs, go out in the hall, turn left, and take the back stairs—the servant stairs, in the old days when there were servants. It’s a circular staircase, right out of one of Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novels.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That novel.” The Circular Staircase was Rinehart’s first bestseller. It featured a ghost. And a secret room. I smiled again, remembering my favorite line: There’s only trouble comes of hunting ghosts; they lead you into bottomless pits and things like that. Things like that, yes.

  “Be careful of the stair,” Jenna added. “It’s narrow and a bit dark, and the handrail is loose in places. When you get to the bottom, take the hallway on your right. You’ll see our workroom, across from the library. The hallway on the left goes to the kitchen. You haven’t eaten yet, I hope.”

  Barely waiting for me to shake my head, she rattled on. “Which would be good, because Rose has made shepherd’s pie for supper, and there’s enough to feed a small army. You can help us eat it.” She hesitated, her hand on the knob, a serious expression on her face.

  “Look, China. I know why you’re here. I really hope you can find out what happened to Elizabeth’s Herbal. Dorothea is pretty panicked over it.” Her voice dropped. “Out of her mind with worry, actually. She’s afraid that she’s the prime suspect. Whether she is or not, I don’t know. But it’s a thing for her, a big thing. She won’t be easy in her mind until that book is found.”

  I nodded, equally serious—but not ready to talk to her until I’d talked to Dorothea. “I’m no Miss Marple. But I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all anybody can do.” On her way out the door, over her shoulder, she said, “You’d better bring a sweater when you come down. There’s a fire in the workroom, but it gets chilly when the sun goes down. And it goes down early, here in the mountains.”

  On the phone, Dorothea had told me that we wouldn’t be fancy, so I had what I was wearing—a caramel-colored corduroy blazer over a red turtleneck sweater and black slacks—plus what was in my wheelie: jeans, tops and a couple of turtlenecks of various colors, a cardigan, and a denim vest. I unpacked, traded my blazer for a gray fleece cardigan, then visited the bathroom, which featured a huge claw-foot bathtub with gold-colored faucets, an old-fashioned marble sink the size of a washtub, and an ornate gold-rimmed mirror that looked as if it had been hanging on the wall since the house was first built.

  I glanced into it quickly, wondering if I needed to comb my hair before I went downstairs. As I did, I saw the reflection of a furtive shadow hovering over my shoulder—not a shadow, exactly. An intense concentration of darkness, perhaps. I whirled, but nothing was there.

  “Go away, Sunny,” I said, remembering Jenna’s advice. “I’m being firm.”

  And then I laughed out loud, to remind myself that I was play-acting. But I had seen something, and it was creepy.

  • • •

  The back stair truly was a circular staircase, narrow and with irregular pie-shaped metal treads that could be hazardous if you weren’t paying attention. An iron handrail was anchored in the wall, but it felt flimsy and I hoped I wouldn’t need to use it. The stair went up into the dimness, obviously to the third floor, and down, to the intersection of two hallways.

  Following Jenna’s directions, I turned to my right at the bottom and found the workroom near the end of the first-floor main hallway. It might once have been called a “morning room” and used by the lady of the house to receive early callers. Now, it served as an office for two people. There were two desks, each with its own computer (reminding me to ask about Wi-Fi). On the wall over one of the desks—Jenna’s?—hung a framed five-by-six-foot map of eighteenth-century London, the Thames looping prominently through the middle. Against another wall, a worktable with a blue Selectric typewriter, a printer, a copy machine, a scanner, and a camera set up to photograph documents. Against a third wall, a ceiling-high bookcase jammed with books, and more books on a couple of rolling book trolleys like the ones you see in libraries. On the outer wall, French doors opened onto a stone-paved patio, bordered by bloomin
g yellow daffodils. Beyond, a palisade of tall, dark trees. Hemlocks, I thought. Even farther beyond, the mountain fell away steeply.

  There was no sign of Jenna, but Dorothea Harper was seated with a book in a wingback chair beside the fireplace, where a small fire was burning brightly—more for the cheer it offered, I guessed, than for the warmth. I hadn’t seen her for several years, and I was surprised. Now in her late forties or early fifties, she had grown thin and angular. Her dark hair was flecked with gray and there were worry lines between her eyes and across her forehead. She wore round granny glasses and a navy sweater, a pale gray silky shirt, and dark slacks.

  She dropped her book when I came in, stood up, and held out her hand. “Oh, China,” she said. “I am so glad you’re here!”

  And burst into tears.

  * * *

  * You can read this story in Widow’s Tears.

  Chapter Three

  Raven fell in love with a king’s daughter, but the king refused to consider his suit. (“You are only a bird and undeserving of a princess. Go away.”) Undaunted, Raven called on his supernatural skills to transform himself into a hemlock needle. The princess collected needles to brew a tea, swallowed Raven, and was changed into a lovely bird as black as night. Raven and his princess flew away and lived happily together for all time.

  —Aleut legend, retold

  “Well, gosh,” I said gruffly, giving Dorothea a quick hug. “I didn’t think my arrival would merit that kind of reception.”