“There’s no need, Vaughan,” her mother says, but he lifts a hand to silence her.
“Yes,” Frances declares. “They ought to be buried.”
Vaughan looks from Frances to her mother. “Then they shall be,” he says.
Frances feels her tears dry on her cheeks. Her face was wreathed in smiles-she read that line somewhere, and it comes back to her as she beams at Vaughan.
“Any objection to the dead butterflies, Frances?” her mother asks sarcastically.
“No,” Frances says. What has come over her mother? This woman in the lacy white dress-Thank heavens for this dress, her mother confided during the courtship. One nice dress and my good complexion. Is this the same woman who struggled to keep their house clean, who sewed clothing for the rich relatives, who made Frances say her prayers every night?
“They can go to a museum, Vaughan,” her mother says. “Aren’t they valuable examples for science?”
“Yes, and I’ll miss them.” Vaughan strolls over to the soap woman to stand beside Frances. “This one, of course, we could just use her up,” he says and laughs.
“Keep her, at least,” Frances’s mother urges him.
Vaughan says, “No, I’ve had their acquaintance long enough. I’ll see that each one is decently interred.”
“Thank you,” Frances says. Generosity has always embarrassed her. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed.”
“Of course,” replies her mother coldly, and Vaughan nods.
Then Frances realizes something else that is amiss, aside from a basement full of bodies. With a wedding tomorrow, shouldn’t there be neighbors and friends calling to wish them well? She and her mother don’t know anyone here, but Vaughan has lived in Philadelphia all his life. Where is his own family? He is not old; he is possibly younger than her mother. Is he alone in the world? She is overcome by the sudden conviction that the wedding will not take place, that this is all some ruse.
“Goodnight,” she says and turns. She hurries up the stairs, to the first floor. She flings open the door that connects the basement with the rest of the house, runs across the deep carpet of the central hallway, and dashes up another staircase and another, to reach the guest room with the high feather bed and the cheval mirror.
There she opens the mullioned windows and breathes in the fresh air that smells of pine and spruce. The window overlooks a dark terraced garden. She hears little peepers that must be tree frogs, insects buzzing, and some low, croaking call from an animal or a bird of prey. Their songs and cries are old familiar ones of summer ending, of autumn beginning. The nighttime emits a glow, as if starlight is catching on blades of grass.
She is alone, like the soap woman. She has no friend to tell her fears to, no one to write a letter to. Since leaving school two years ago, she has kept close company only with her mother, assisting with the sewing, anticipating and dreading the invitations from relatives, when she and her mother would go forth bravely, in hopes that someone like Vaughan would rescue them. Her mother, donning the lace dress, once asked in anguish, How many times must we do this?
“And here I am,” says a voice behind her, and Frances whirls from the window.
There stands Vaughan. In the light of the wall sconce, he looks taller than ever, his face ruddy, hair golden, brow smooth. He asks, “May I sit down?”
She nods, and he takes a seat on a slipper chair. She remains standing, awkwardly. She wonders whose room this was, who chose the rose-colored damask for the chair, whose face has been reflected in the mirror.
Vaughan says, “You’re scared, Frances. How can I set your mind at ease?”
“Do you love my mother?” she asks.
“I love you,” he says. “You knew tonight. Didn’t you?”
She has longed to hear these words, yet now she feels only alarm. He rises from the chair and reaches for her hand. His fingers are warm and strong.
“It’s not too late,” he says. “You and I can be married.”
“What of Mother? Would she live here, with us?” Frances’s head spins. She can’t believe she’s saying these things.
Vaughan says, “I’ve been trying to figure it out. Things have moved rather fast. And just now, I’m sorry to say…” His voice trails off.
“What happened?” Frances asks. She pulls her hand out of his grasp. “Where’s Mother?”
He looks at her with an expression of great gravity. After a pause, he speaks softly and urgently about her mother, saying she felt ill, then began clutching at her heart, then collapsed. “She seemed to recover a little, and staggered. She got as far as the Young Master, and then she, well, died. She’s dead.”
Terror ripples along Frances’s spine. She tries to scream, but only a sigh comes out. Vaughan pulls her to him and settles onto the slipper chair with Frances on his lap. He says, “A young woman and her mother travel north. The mother is to marry a scientist. On the eve of her wedding, she suddenly dies. The man marries the lovely, innocent daughter instead. It was just as well, since he’d begun to find the mother tiresome, with a ghoulish streak.”
“She was angry with me,” Frances murmurs, stunned. “This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t made her mad.”
“You wanted to do the decent thing,” he says. “Bury those bodies. A man wants a woman who’ll make him do the proper thing.”
“Is this a horrible joke?” Frances asks.
“This house knows no jokes,” says Vaughan.
She leaps from his lap and runs for the door. He says, “Think it over, Frances.”
She hurtles down the stairs, into the basement, and spies the still form of her mother.
“Mother,” she cries, and touches her mother’s cheek, which is already cool. She pulls at her shoulders, but the body sags in her arms.
She takes the steps again, two at a time. If she can reach the door, she can get outside, to some safe place. She can almost feel the dew on the grass, the distance she’ll have to cover.
II.
“So that concludes the Ghost Walk,” Annie says, as her tour group applauds. “The Beverly mansion used to be right here. It was torn down a long time ago, but that’s a true story.” She adds the capper: “And Frances was my great-great-grandmother.”
The group gasps, and Annie savors the effect of her tale. Where the Beverly mansion used to stand, there’s only a depression in the ground. Across the street, there’s a massive Victorian-style apartment house, where Annie herself lives, with towering sycamores out front. Annie has heard the tree frogs, just like she said. Besides, this is the perfect place to wind up the Ghost Walk, because the Irish-themed bar where Annie works is a five-minute walk away. She went on too long about Frances and Vaughan, though. She doesn’t have time to return her oil lantern to the Chestnut Hill Welcome Center.
“I think he murdered Frances’s mother. He was a serial killer,” a woman in a trench coat says. “Is that what we’re supposed to believe?”
Annie’s legs hurt. It was a mistake to wear platform sandals to traipse around these sidewalks in the dark. She says, “Frances died before I was born, but the story was handed down. She did escape, and she married somebody else.”
“Did she tell the police?” asks the trench-coated woman. “If she didn’t, then she let him get away with killing her own mother.”
Annie feels her authority fading. It would be so much better if the house were still here. “I don’t know all the details. The Beverly mansion stood empty for years, and people claimed to hear screams coming from the basement.”
“It’s a legend,” a bearded man tells the woman. “Ghost stories are supposed to leave you hanging. They’re not about closure.”