—for here, at just the right angle, he noticed apartments sitting atop the street-level stores, all older-style architecture but clearly being lived in. On a balcony, an elderly man sat reading in the sun. Fanshawe’s eyes widened. Damn. He hadn’t noticed these residential windows previously. Thank God they’re not facing my hotel room. In one such window, a curtain swayed—Fanshawe saw a woman look outside for a moment, then disappear.
He wrung his hands.
When he turned from the bowed panes, his eyes lowered to yet another display case. No instruments of cruelty were present, just old pocket watches, compasses, quill pens and standish-style ink-wells, and the like. However, on the bottom shelf…
Fanshawe gulped.
At first he thought the object was a “ship’s glass,” that is, a portable telescope designed for hand-held use, about a foot long, with a collapsible draw-tube. It shined, evidently made of brass and possibly silver fittings. Then Fanshawe read the labeclass="underline" WITCH-WATER LOOKING-GLASS, MADE BY JACOB WRAXALL, CIRCA 1672.
Witch-Water? he wondered. What the hell? He imagined Wraxall himself gazing at the heavens at midnight and contemplating astrological formulae. But the image, once formed, snapped to something else against his wilclass="underline" it was no longer the flamboyantly attired Wraxall he saw…but himself; and in his hand he held not an antique looking-glass but top-of-the-line binoculars.
Just another flashback to his jaded past, for Fanshawe had strolled the Upper Westside streets of his own neighborhood too many times to count, ducking into an alley whenever he spotted a “promising” window, and raised the binoculars to his eyes…
“Ah, Mr. Fanshawe. You’ve found our displays, I see,” Mr. Baxter said, slipping into the cove.
The flashback corroded just as Fanshawe had zoomed in on a naked woman in the window of a brownstone on W. 66th Street.
His heart had quickened as though he’d been caught red-handed in the fantasy. The portly Baxter smiled, thumbing the suspenders.
“It’s, uh, quite a collection…”
Baxter chuckled. “Some of ’em are a little on the morbid side, a’course.”
“Can’t argue with you there, but I guess those were morbid times.”
“Just different, times, Mr. Fanshawe—was only morbid to those who made it so. Probably a lot to be said for livin’ back in those days.” His eyes scanned some of the relics. “Speakin’ of all these geegaws, though… Well, it’s all kind’a dumb tourist stuff if you ask me. But you’d be surprised how folks take an interest in it nowadays, ’specially the witchin’ and warlockin’ items, and a’course the implements that were used to counter all of that silly drivel.”
Fanshawe nodded, still unconsciously eyeing the looking-glass. “Yeah, Abbie pointed out the pillory.”
“We got several about town. Pillories were for minor offenses: stealin’, adultery, lyin’ to the church council. It was pretty commonplace back then. For harder crimes, there were the whippin’ posts. Now we’ve got detention centers with cable TV, conjugal visitation rights for convicted murderers, and tax-dollar-funded rehab. Kind of makes you wonder. The shenanigans we’ve got going these days were seldom seen back in Colonial times. Deterrence meant something back then, and the law meant business.”
Not if you can afford the best lawyers, Fanshawe thought, though he didn’t know if he agreed or disagreed with Baxter’s insinuations. Fanshawe avoided ideological conversations at all costs. “So I take it this man Jacob Wraxall was some kind of magician or wizard? There are a number of books here about him.”
“He fancied himself a warlock, not a magician. Come round here, and I’ll show you.”
Fanshawe’s curiosity urged him out of the current cove to the next one that Baxter strolled to, this one being windowless. Immediately, Fanshawe looked up and said, “Wow.”
The elder man indicated an elaborately framed oil painting which occupied half the wall. A lenient light shined down from a bracket on the ceiling. “Sunlight can damage it, so we keep in here ’cos there’s no window; that special bulb up there won’t make the paint fade. The canvas and frame are over three hundred years old…”
Within the painting posed the same Van Dyked man from the engraving, in the extravagant attire of the day. Sage-like, he held a feather-pen, and about his neck, over the ruffled bib, hung a pendant of stars and a sickle moon. Thin pale lips turned up into the faintest smile that could be thought of as condescending. Well, hello there, Jacob Wraxall, Fanshawe thought. What is the big whupdeedo with you? A shorter woman stood stern-faced at Wraxall’s side, much younger than the painting’s central subject, with long flowing hair that too similarly matched the color of newly spilled arterial blood. Fanshawe’s stomach tossed.
The woman posed in a velvety blue dress with billowed shoulders; a plunging neckline made no secret of a robust bosom. Fanshawe at once felt jarred by her image: she looked tantalizing, voluptuous, densely erotic…and atrocious. Her narrow face and thin lips suggested a hereditary connection, and so did the high cheekbones. His daughter, not his wife, Fanshawe supposed; and, like Wraxall, she was not without some occult regalia: several rings on her raised right hand possessed geometric designs of an astrological bent. Standing well behind Wraxall, however, was a dark-haired, clean-shaven man whose dark sulk and heavy jaw suggested subservience. Large eyes and a rather wide face were the subject’s most salient features.
“They were quite a trio, I’ll tell ya,” Baxter remarked.
Fanshawe felt particularly taken by the painting’s indeterminate visual effect: dark, dark colors made darker by age seemed on the other hand queerly bright in certain details. The woman’s rings, for instance, seemed painted with such exactitude they could’ve been photographs; the same went for Wraxall’s pendant, and the same, too, for their eyes, a stunning sea-green. But the background existed in such sheer murk that nothing at all could be made of it, and the more Fanshawe peered, he thought that other faces might lurk there, as if in smoke or shadow.
“That’s Wraxall there, and his daughter Evanore,” Baxter explained. “And that unhappy looking fella standing behind is Callister Rood, the family man-servant.”
“But why name your hotel after Wraxall, of all people?” Fanshawe asked.
“Wraxall built this house in the 1650s, and lived here till his death. It’s all been refurbished, of course, but the outer structure has barely been touched—didn’t need to be. It’s all mortised oak, and sealed with insect sap, the best kind of weatherproofing. They built houses right back in them days. Wraxall was a well-respected member of the community…for a while.”
Fanshawe peered at the hesitation, which may have been deliberate. “For a while?”
“Until the town found out the truth about him.”
“His occultism, in other words?”
“Oh, yeah, all that and a good deal more.”
For whatever reason, Fanshawe felt intrigued. His gaze kept switching back and forth between Wraxall’s eyes and his daughter’s. He was about to ask for more details, but a bell from the front desk rang.
“That’s for me, Mr. Fanshawe. Hope you enjoy your stay!”
Baxter lumbered off to tend to more guests, leaving Fanshawe mystified amid a flurry of questions. He examined the painting for several minutes more before he finally left the cove.
They must be having a convention here or something, he guessed of the next crowd of patrons waiting to check in. They were mostly older men, dressed in suits, but many bearded and long-haired. Immediately Fanshawe thought of academicians. He glanced down another short hall, then felt instantly enthused. SQUIRE’S PUB read a transom sign, and within he could see a small but neatly appointed hotel bar bearing the same decorative motif as the hotel.