Hmm…
The Witch-Water Looking-Glass lay in a different position from when he’d first seen it. He couldn’t imagine why he would take note of such a thing, yet he was certain. The instrument was inverted; the eyepiece end faced toward the front desk earlier, whereas now it faced toward the Squire’s Pub.
Mr. Baxter must’ve taken it out of the case to show someone, he reasoned, a perfectly sound explanation.
So why would he even stop to consider it?
A cove away, one of the professors could be heard talking heatedly on his cell phone—an argument no doubt with his wife. “Oh, so that’s why you want a divorce. Great. Work my ass off thirty-five years, now you decide you don’t want to be married anymore, decide you’d rather just take half of everything I worked for, for us!” Fanshawe slipped away, feeling for the man. Welcome to the Divorce Club, buddy… But the situation caused him to think of one of Dr. Tilton’s insinuations several months ago. “You’re lucky your wife didn’t take you for half of your net worth, Mr. Fanshawe—that’s what usually happens.” “She got twenty million and a house in the Hamptons,” he detailed, but then she asked a question he would never have expected: “Are you…still fond of her?” “I love her!” he blurted. “I miss my wife, but I don’t expect you to believe that, considering what I did.” Her cool eyes thinned on him from behind the shining desk. “Did you try to get back with her?”
“Yes. I begged her. I told her I was in therapy, told her that it was working. I-I told her I hadn’t…gone on…a peep, in over six months.”
“And what did she say in response?”
Fanshawe had felt dizzy with nausea. “She didn’t say anything, but…well, her response made it clear that she’d never give me another chance.”
Dr. Tilton touched her chin with the tip of her finger. “I don’t understand, Mr. Fanshawe. If she didn’t say anything, on what do you base her negative response?”
Fanshawe had gazed back at the sterile-voiced psychiatrist, his mouth open. “I…just hung up. Her response was the sound of vomiting. Just hearing my voice made her physically ill.”
It had been the only time he’d witnessed the following expression from Tilton: pity.
Fanshawe groaned at the recollection, then quickened his pace out of the hotel.
More than a sparse number of tourists strolled the town’s streets. A slim woman in a furniture shop leaned over to inspect the panel-work of an armoire. Fanshawe’s eyes locked on her body, imagining it nude, but when some inkling of being looked at caused her to glance up at him, the fantasy collided with his shame. Shit! What am I doing? He quickly pretended to be looking at an umbrella stand right next to her. I’m eyeballing women in broad daylight! He walked off, hands behind his back, as if he hadn’t noticed her returning stare. But no sooner had he crossed the block he caught himself staring up at rowhouse windows.
His self-disgust raged. What the hell’s wrong with me? I just got a date with a really nice girl but I’m out here…doing this.
“Top’a the day to ya, sir,” the easily recognized voice cut into him. Mrs. Anstruther smiled at him from her kiosk. “Out for a stroll, are you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Anstruther. It’s quite a day for it.” But was there something sly about her smile? It lifted wrinkles on her face to something mask-like, which made him feel as though a cunning assessment were being taken of him. He knew it was pure paranoia on his part, to think for even a moment that she’d guessed his intent when looking up at the windows.
“Quite a day, yes, sir, a lovely day, indeed. The acme of summer’s what we’d call a day like this back home.”
Fanshawe smiled at her pronunciation of the word “summer.” It had sounded more like soomer.
“Garnerin’ up your nerve, perhaps? To have a peek inside the waxworks, sir?”
“Not today, Mrs. Anstruther.”
“Nor the palmist’s, hmm?”
“Not likely. I think I’ll take another walk around the trails. They were really interesting. And Abbie mentioned an ancient graveyard.”
“Oh, there’s an ancient graveyard, there is—a marble orchard’s what we’d call ’em back home, but that phrase don’t seem to ’ave catched on in the States. Not that you’ll find much marble in the graveyard of what you’re speakin’. ’N’fact, the west end don’t got nothin’ in the way’a markers, sir, ’cept for some splotchy stuff what they wrote the name’s of the dead in with their fingers.”
This woman can RAMBLE, Fanshawe thought. “Yeah, Abbie mentioned something about that. Tabby, I think she called it. Low-grade concrete.”
“Right she and you is, sir. And as for the little boneyard as what you was mentionin’, least the unconsecrated one, it’s sure as His Majesty King Charles were buried in Windsor that Jacob Wraxall and his ’orrible daughter was buried there. But it’s the daughter’s grave, sir, Evanore Wraxall’s, that you’ll likely as not find the more queer.”
“Queer?”
“Yes, sir. It ain’t like what you’d expect.”
Fanshawe showed her a snide glance. “Queer in what way, Mrs. Anstruther?”
She tittered with a wave of a bony hand. “Oh, best I not spoil if for ya. Best you’d find out yourself, yes, sir.”
Up to her old tricks again. “I see,” he said, chuckling. “Well, I appreciate your consideration.”
“Oh, but, sir, please pardon my makin’ mention of it, though I did happen to spy a pair of birds, not more than a minute or two ago—no, it couldn’t’a been more than that—two rather smart looking birds which seemed to be ’eadin’ same way as you.”
Fanshawe’s brow creased. Birds? but then he figured her vernacular. She means two women.
“Quite smart, yes, sir, quite smart, indeed, all dressed in some downright scant exercisin’ apparel.” She winked at him. “Handsome man like yourself? You might want to have a look round for ’em.”
Fanshawe stood still. Oh, she means Harvard and Yale, but before he could reply, she prattled further, “And please don’t be put off by my sayin’ so, but seein’ as it’s obvious you’re not sporting no weddin’ ring, you just might be doin’ them a kind service to chat ’em up a bit.”