And when Charles mentioned the jazz tunes of the previous evening, his host fell silent and only stared at him.
Sheldon Smyth filled this uncomfortable void, saying, „The ladies should be joining us any minute now. Ah, women – never on time. Well, what’s the use of a grand staircase if you can’t make a stunning entrance?“
And now the ladies were coming, gliding down the stairs in long gowns. The tall woman could only be Cleo Winter-Smyth. Resplendent in a dark-blue gown the color of her eyes, she towered over her daughter.
Poor little Bitty. Her strapless dress of iridescent colors was reminiscent of a disco ball on prom night, and her gamin charm had been destroyed by a gash of lipstick, a rouge pot on each cheek, and hair lacquered into appalling spit curls. Aghast, Sheldon Smyth turned from his daughter to his ex-wife, and Charles wondered if Bitty had been transformed into a circus pony under duress. The tiny woman flinched, needing no more than her father’s expression to tell her how foolish she looked.
Cleo Winter-Smyth resembled her brother, Lionel. Both were tall and fair and absent any human aspect in their eyes. The woman tilted her head to one side, and this was the only indication that she was surprised by her ex-husband’s attitude. Turning away from him, she managed a floodlight white smile for their guest.
During the ensuing small talk of weather and dead burglars, Charles felt more and more ill at ease. Again, he tried to blame this on the staircase that was always in the act of running off to the top of the house. And all those tall mirrors – they picked up each gesture of a head half turned, repeating it in a herd of heads all giving alarm as animals will do when they turn to the sound or the scent of danger. Even the small painting over the bar had a manic quality of stroke and line and color. Between one drink and the next, he learned that Bitty Smyth had grown up in this unsettling house. And so, if there was an easily startled air about her, in her eyes and in her manner, this was to be excused.
Cleo Winter-Smyth lifted her face ever so slightly as she peered into one of the mirrors lining the walls. She spoke to the reflection of another woman on the staircase behind her. „Nedda, I didn’t know you’d be joining us tonight.“
Was there something in her tone that implied the older woman was unwelcome?
Nedda Winter drifted down the stairs in a long black satin dress that called to mind a black-and-white movie from a more elegant era. A loose-woven shawl of silver threads was draped over her shoulders, and her braided white hair served as a coiled crown. She was another paradox of the house. The lines of her gown were sylvan and classical, the lady statuesque, her posture unbowed, and, despite the wrinkles and the hair gone white, the total effect was beautiful. And what quiet authority this woman had, sufficient to reduce Sheldon Smyth to a fidgeting child on best behavior. Her pale blue eyes took in the drastic alterations to her niece. If the sight was unpleasing, she never let on, but, while Bitty was looking elsewhere, Miss Winter glanced at Cleo with mild disapproval. The younger sister would not look at her.
Upon reaching the bottom step, the elder lady inclined her head and extended one veined hand to Charles. „How nice to see you again. I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk last night.“
„Well,“ said Sheldon Smyth, „we’ll make up for that this evening.“ And with those words, the occasion of a man’s violent death had been reduced to a previous social event.
Nedda placed a protective arm about Bitty’s shoulders, then guided her niece into the dining room, and the rest of the party followed them to the table.
A waiter pulled out a chair to seat Cleo Winter-Smyth beside Charles. „I met your parents years and years ago,“ she said. „Sheldon and I were enrolling Bitty at the Marshal Frampton Institute.“ Left off this long name were the words for gifted children. „They seemed to dote on you.“
The woman had more grace than to mention that Marion Butler had been a bit old for motherhood. Charles’s birth had been a shock to his parents, a pregnancy so late in life. His parents had died of old age before he was out of his teens. And, yes, they had doted upon him and sent him to schools that would cater to his freak’s IQ. He looked down at his place setting, wondering how he could have forgotten Bitty Smyth among the limited enrollment of the Frampton Institute.
„Stop racking your brain, my boy,“ said Sheldon Smyth. „The moment my back was turned, Bitty’s mother pulled her out of school. I don’t think she attended for more than two days.“
The subject came up again as the first course was being served.
„It wasn’t the right school for Bitty.“ Cleo’s tone was somewhat defensive. „I sent her to a better one where she could make all the right connections.“
„Connections?“ Smyth laughed. „She was a five-year-old, not a socialite.“
Bitty seemed to be growing smaller, sinking down in her chair as she was talked about, but never acknowledged as a person in this room. She was so small, so easily overlooked in a family of giants. Charles imagined her life as a mouse in this house, scurrying from one bolt – hole to another. He waited for her to look his way, then smiled and said, „It’s a pity you didn’t stay at Frampton. We might’ve gotten to know one another much earlier.“
Bitty smiled and spilled her water glass. While a waiter mopped up the table, Nedda Winter nodded her approval of Charles. The subject was closed and peace was restored – for a time.
Before the last entree had been served, the house and all its company, all save Nedda, had begun to wear on Charles. He hardly tasted his food while eating his way toward the final course. Cleo and Lionel’s smiles were flashing on and off like lightbulbs, and, by this odd behavior, he determined that the history of the house was a subject to be avoided. Every foray into this area was sharply cut off and the conversation directed elsewhere.
Odder still was the bond between brother and sister. In some respects, Lionel and Cleo brought to mind an old married couple who could finish one another’s sentences or altogether do away with the spoken word. However, there was no apparent affection between them. They simply came as a set. If you got one, you got the other.
Charles picked up the challenge of cleaving the pair. „Lionel, what sort of work do you do?“
„Work?“
Cleo translated for her brother. „Investments, dear, the stocks and bonds.“
„So you work on Wall Street,“ said Charles in an attempt to be helpful. Oh, wait. There was that pesky word again. Work? Us?
„No, we manage our own investments,“ said Lionel. „But it is time consuming.“
Somewhere between the chocolate mousse and postprandial brandy, the conversation had turned to the subject of fortunetellers. Where this topic had come from, Charles could not say, but he suspected that Bitty had raised it in a small voice and wafted it across the table to her mother, a willing receptacle.
„I’ve had a few tarot card readings,“ said Cleo, „and it was worth years of therapy. But there’s nothing mystical about it. The fortuneteller reads the person, not the cards. Some readers are remarkably intuitive.“
And Charles took this to mean that a fortuneteller had once flattered her. No, that was unkind and in conflict with his heightened sense of empathy. He suspected a wound at the core of this woman, some serious misadventure of the psyche. It was a certainty that she shared this affliction with her brother, hence the odd bond between them. Something had happened to them, some great trauma.
Bitty gulped down her brandy and reached for the decanter, saying, „Aunt Nedda can read tarot cards.“ Out of the entire company, Nedda Winter was the most surprised by this news. Bitty quietly slipped away from the table and left the dining room door ajar as she made her way across the front room, wobbly but stumbling only once.