In the Shadow of Lakecrest(19)
“She’s soused,” I said. “Like the rest of them.”
“It’s more than that,” Blanche said. “I’ve been here long enough. I know the signs. She’s on some kind of dope.”
Dope? I thought that was for the lowest of the low, the failures who’d do anything to escape their miserable lives. Marjorie Lemont had everything: money, good looks, and a crowd of adoring friends. Why would she want to escape into a drugged fog?
I didn’t want to believe it, not at first. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there’d been something jittery about Marjorie, just beneath the surface. As I took a taxi back to the apartment that night, I decided not to tell Matthew. Marjorie’s secret would be tucked away like a secret treasure, held in reserve for a time I might need it.
Twenty-four hours later, Matthew was giving me a full tour of Lakecrest, my home for the foreseeable future.
He explained that a series of architects had been given the impossible task of unifying all the odds and ends Obadiah had shipped from Europe, and eventually they’d given up any attempts at balance or harmony. Rooms and staircases and hallways were added on as needed, with no grand plan or consistent design. Thus, the Arabian Room, with its painted blue tiles and colorful peacock mosaics, led directly into the Gallery, a somber medieval-style showcase for Obadiah’s collection of marble statues and oversized landscapes. The ballroom was done up in a gaudy approximation of Versailles, complete with mirrored walls, while the library was a masterpiece of Victorian gloom, with dark wood paneling and heavy crimson drapes.
“Grandfather wasn’t very discriminating, as you can see,” Matthew said. It was the thrill of the hunt that excited Obadiah, the act of claiming something beautiful and rare as his own.
The grand front staircase led directly to the main wing of bedrooms on the second floor, but there were other staircases that snaked through the rest of the house like mouse tunnels, some going directly up to the servants’ quarters on the top floor, others stopping unexpectedly after only a few steps and ending in a storage cupboard or washroom. And everywhere, from the main reception rooms to the lowliest back cupboard, there were things: objects and artworks that seemed to cover every flat surface. Paintings of Italian noblemen in elaborate gold frames and marble busts of grumpy-looking Roman emperors. Chinese fans and jade vases. Rainbows of South American butterflies pinned onto black velvet backdrops. It was a celebration of excess, and were Lakecrest a museum, I would have admired its brash extravagance. But I didn’t see how it would ever feel like home.
To my great relief, Matthew’s bedroom was Spartan compared to the rest of the house. Here, at last, was a place I felt at ease. Larger than the apartment I’d grown up in, it was bright and uncluttered, with a four-poster bed, a wide bay window overlooking the lake, and a scattering of worn armchairs and settees. The walls were for the most part bare, which made the one painting tucked in a nook near the bathroom all the more striking.
It showed a young woman walking through the grass, barefoot, a crown of flowers on her head. The artist had given the composition an appealing sense of motion: the woman’s legs were caught midstride, and her hands were tangled in the billows of her white dress. Her hair, a shade between blonde and brown, cascaded over her shoulders, tendrils of it lifted by the wind. Her face was in profile, captured as she turned to look over her shoulder. There was an impression of beauty, but I couldn’t tell exactly what she looked like, as if paint were too solid a medium to capture her essence.
Matthew came over and stood beside me, looking pleased by my interest. “Do you like it?” he asked.
“Very much. Who is she?”
“My aunt Cecily.”
So this was the mysterious woman who’d disappeared into the Labyrinth. I had a dozen questions, but I didn’t want to upset Matthew by looking too eager for family gossip. Safer to hold back what I’d heard from Mabel and get his side of the story first.
“She painted this herself,” Matthew said. “It’s the way I like to remember her.”
I thought it was odd that Cecily would obscure her own face in a self-portrait. Mabel had said she was beautiful, so what did she have to hide?
“You loved her,” I said quietly. I could see it in his eyes, the way he looked wistfully at this woman who would always be turning away, out of his reach. For a moment, Matthew looked as if he were sorting through memories. Deciding which to share.
“Aunt Cecily was the most inspiring person I’ve ever known,” he said. “She lived her life like it was a grand adventure—painting and writing and studying great art. Grandfather loved to boast about her being the first American woman to sit for the ancient languages exam at Oxford, but she wasn’t stuck up. She was always so kind to me and Marjorie.”
It didn’t seem possible that one human being could encompass all those virtues, and I wondered what flaws she might have kept hidden from her adoring young nephew. It’s easy to idealize those who die young.
Gently, I asked, “What happened to her?”
Matthew didn’t answer. He took a few steps back and sat in an armchair, motioning for me to join him. I curled up at his feet and put my head in his lap.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “It’s eaten at me for years, not knowing. It’s been . . . my God, more than fifteen years since I last saw her. The summer of 1912.”