Upon finally noticing her daughter’s absence, Cleo shrugged her apologies to Charles. „I’m sure she’ll come back.“
„It might be better if she didn’t,“ said Lionel. „She’s had way too much to drink.“ He turned to Charles, saying, „My niece isn’t accustomed to alcohol. The religious life, I suppose. Her current church – “
„Religious?“ Sheldon Smyth pronounced this word as if he had never heard it before. „Bitty? She’s never even been to Sunday school.“
„It’s a phase she’s been going through,“ said his ex-wife, „for the past three years.“ There was a clear comment here on Sheldon Smyth’s apparent lack of interest in his own child.
Lionel turned to his erstwhile brother-in-law. „So Bitty never told you when she joined the Catholics.“ There was nothing in his voice to say that Sheldon’s ignorance surprised him. „Well, that’s old news.“
In an aside to Charles, Cleo said, „Bitty’s a Protestant now – Bloody Heart of the Redeemer, I think. Something like that. It’s a sect – no, actually, more like a cult. Lots of traveling on holy missions to recruit heathens.“
„I’m sure,“ said Lionel, „Bitty finds it a damn shame that the Protestants have no nunneries.“
„It’s a shame they have no confessionals,“ said Bitty, reappearing from behind her uncle’s chair, weaving slightly and producing an awkward silence all around the table. „Imagine a little room where you can take your soul to get it cleaned.“
This comment was met with dead quiet. Charles affected the distance of outsider status. Eyes cast down, his spoon served only to move the dessert about on his plate.
„You’ve had quite enough to drink.“ Cleo was firm and apparently still had the power to forbid her forty-year-old child, for now she moved the brandy snifter far from her daughter’s place setting.
Ignoring her mother, Bitty passed by her own chair and moved toward Nedda in a slow, somewhat unsteady march. She held a boxed deck of cards in her hands. The cardboard was worn with ages of handling and bore a tarot illustration of the hanged man. She set it down on the table before her aunt, as though bestowing a precious artifact. „Maybe you could read the tarot cards for Charles.“
Nedda Winter stared at the deck with a trace of alarm. This might as well be a dead animal that her niece had laid on the dinner table. She was slow to recover her composure, and then she slipped the deck into her lap beneath the cover of the tablecloth. „Not tonight, dear. I’m rather tired.“
„What you need is a good stiff drink.“ Sheldon Smyth rose to gallantly pull out her chair, then led her away from the table, and the rest of the party followed them to gather around the bar in the front room. While the lawyer poured out their drinks, Charles renewed his fascination with the staircase.
„You feel it, too,“ said Bitty, nodding. „It’s haunted.“
He noticed a sudden dismay about her and turned to see what she was staring at – another damned mirror. It was impossible not to encounter one’s self at every turn. Bitty had caught her reflection alongside his own. How he dwarfed her in size. They resembled a sideshow team of giant and midget. She turned her eyes this way and that, finding the same tableau in every direction.
They both looked up to escape the mirrors, and now they shared a view of the winding banister encircling a skylight dome at the top of the house. In another era of horse-drawn carriages and clearer skies, there might have been stars up there.
„Lots of history in this house,“ he said.
„You mean all the murders,“ said Bitty.
Cleo’s smile clicked on slightly out of sync and all for Charles. „I’m sure you know the story of Winter House. Everyone does.“ Glancing back at her daughter, she said. „It’s a tired old story, dear.“
Every pair of eyes was fixed on Charles, reading the stunned surprise on his face. He was recalling a bit of history that appeared in newspapers every ten years or so, the regurgitation of a mass murder for the reading pleasure of the public on a Sunday afternoon.
Oh, bloody hell.
Riker and Mallory should have told him, warned him.
Forgetting his manners, he looked over Bitty’s head to gape at the surviving Winter children all grown up.
„There was another murder that wasn’t famous.“ Bitty addressed Charles’s shoes. „You’re standing on the place where Edwina Winter died. She was Aunt Nedda’s mother.“
He backed up a few steps. „She fell?“ He looked straight up. The body could not have landed in that spot, not after falling down the stairs. The woman must have gone over the -
„Nedda is our half sister,“ said Cleo, as if this might be what puzzled her guest. „Different mothers. And her mother drank quite a bit. Well, there you have it, the oldest family scandal. Edwina Winter was drunk when she went over the banister.“
„My father and his brother, James, saw her fall,“ said Lionel, directing his gaze upward to a large picture hanging on the second-floor landing. „That’s their portrait.“
Charles looked up at the oil painting of two adolescents. Even at this distance, he would call it a very bad piece of work, almost a cartoon.
„Their account wasn’t quite accurate,“ said Bitty.
„Daddy and Uncle James gave the only account,“ said Cleo. „How can it – “
„Quentin and his first wife hated each other.“ Bitty sipped sherry, stocking up on a little bravery from a glass. „I found the divorce papers filed just before Edwina died. They were charging each other with infidelity.“
„That’s enough, Bitty,“ said her mother. „Have some consideration for your aunt.“
„No, don’t stop because of me,“ said Nedda. „I never knew my mother. I was a baby when she died.“ She gave her niece an encouraging smile, apparently approving of this uncharacteristic demeanor.
„All the money belonged to Edwina Winter.“ Bitty was running out of false courage. She went to the bar and poured herself some more. „The staircase is full of ghosts. It’s a nervous kind of haunting. Can’t you feel it?“
„I know what she means,“ said Sheldon Smyth. „There’s always been something queer about this house. Always felt it, just as she says. And that damned staircase. It’s just plain wrong.“
„It’s the pride of the house,“ said Cleo. „It was featured in Architectural Digest. The writer called it the absolute triumph of form over function. His very words.“
Sheldon Smyth wore a condescending smile. His ex-wife had missed the insult in that quotation, and she was doomed to repeat it to anyone who would listen to this joke told by herself at her own expense. Politeness prevented Charles from enlightening her, informing her that life was not lived on the stairs, but in the rooms where people might take creature comforts, procreate and dream. But not in this house. Here everything revolved around the tension of the staircase; the inertia of lines rushing upward appeared to be all that kept it from falling down.
Taking Charles by the arm, Bitty smiled with newfound boldness. „You decide.“
Helplessly bound by good manners, he climbed the stairs with her until they gained the second floor. The rest of the party was also being pulled along, straggling upward without wills of their own. The dynamic of the dinner party had changed. Oddly enough, Bitty was running the show. She paused and, with the air of a tour guide, pointed to the place along the stairs where Quentin Winter had died in the famous massacre. Charles glanced back to see Nedda, last in line, giving wide berth to this area, as if she must round the dead body of her father before she could continue upward.
The staircase was not haunted – Nedda was.
„Edwina Winter died almost twelve years before the massacre.“ Bitty stood beneath the painting of the Winter brothers and instructed Charles to remain by the railing. „That’s where she was standing when she – -fell. Now remember, all the Winters were tall, and they married tall people, like you. Think you could fall by accident?“