Then Maudie was gone, with the thunder of an express train, down the stairs and out the front door. At the very moment that great door banged shut behind her, every other door in the entire house also slammed resoundingly and I heard the distinct sound of my lovely Early Georgian pier glass smashing on the parquet of the entry hall. A small price to pay, I told myself, to be rid of the Harrowgate Hag and it was then, I guess, that I passed out.
“Ken, I know you won’t tell Daddy what all that babbling you were doing in hospital before you came round meant, but you will tell me, won’t you?” Connie handed me a glass of brandy, then poked at the embers of the fire dying in my livingroom fireplace. Done, she came and sat down next to me on my sooty wall-to-wall and I slid an aching arm around her.
“That was a splendid meal you fixed,” I said to her. “By this time next week, though, Cook should be installed and we’ll be dining off a Hepplewhite table my dear Mrs. Mapes has assured me she can put her hands on immediately, if not sooner. And by tomorrow lunch, the junkman will have carted off that trash,” I indicated the splintered remains of Shelagh’s furniture heaped in a far comer, “and the carpenter and the glazier will have fixed up the balcony doors and windows in the dining room” — Maud had tossed the puce Formica straight through the closed French doors and over the balcony — “and then, just about then, I think I shall start being a happy man, now that you’ve promised to marry me, of course.” I nuzzled her glowing cheek. “Mrs. Mapes has carte blanche and, since her idea of Radically Modern is the Royal Pavillion at Brighton...”
Connie turned my face toward hers and looked me straight in the eyes. “What were you talking about in hospital? I know you know, and I know it has something to do with Maud, the poor mad creature.”
Some things I had discovered about Connie early on: she is not only a smashing beauty and a smashing cook, she is also bright and independent. She prefers reading by the fireside to going to smart parties with the same boring, beetle-brained people. Even though I have explained it to her, she hasn’t a clue as to who Rob MacKenzie is and couldn’t care less. She thinks I’m terribly bright. She would get on extremely well working away in a study of her own made over from one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. Last, merely incidentally, I could fill this house with the most horrific junk from the nearest hire-purchase place and she wouldn’t give a damn so long as I was included in the setup.
“It sounded as if you were saying ‘Bow-wow,’ ” she prompted.
She deserved to be let in on my secret. In my delirium I had apparently felt pangs of guilt, but not now. “Bauhaus. What I was saying was ‘Bauhaus.’ You know, that geometric German bunker style of architecture and decoration.”
“All angles, no curves. Primary colors.”
“Maud was haunting the wrong house. She wanted the big white one down at the corner but the house numbering had been changed so she thought this house was the scene of her most spectacular crime. And since this house had been empty for years, there had been no one to disabuse her of her notion.”
“And?” Constance is a terribly patient girl.
“The big white house down the way is owned by one Raymond Hatherleigh, London’s trendiest hairdresser. Shelagh and I went there once for drinks. An abominable twit. He’s left the outside of the house alone, someone before him slapped on the white paint and the old-gold shutters, but he’s the one who’s gutted the inside, the fool, and he’s...”
“Turned it into a Bauhaus extravaganza.”
“Yes.”
“You are going to tell him, aren’t you? I’ve grown almost fond of Maud, she did bring us together, but she is frightfully destructive with that wicked temper of hers. I know you think what Dad said is silly but, on her home ground, she may be vulnerable to exorcism.”
“I know, I know. But I thought I’d let her have a go at old Ray-moan for another couple of weeks before I allow Angus to call in the parson with the bell, book and candle. Hatherleigh deserves Maud. He’s really spoiled that house; he’s almost as offensive as Maudie must have found Wexcombe, the slaver.”
“Maudie herself is very offensive.”
“I’m counting on that.” I put both aching arms around Connie to show what else I might be counting on.
“Dearest Ken, I regret it but I must go. I’ve promised Daddy I’d sit up with him tonight in a house in Swiss Cottage that’s been having groans in its pantry and flying objects in its library.”
“To keep you, must I woo back Maud? I had thought of reminding her that, as a ghost, she was perfectly capable of passing through walls. I had also thought of yelling at her to take a solid shape, except she’s so dim she’d probably come back as a wolverine or something even more dangerous.”
“Good thinking, Wenks, but suppose you leave the psychology, abnormal and otherwise, to me, and stick to Westminster and whatever else it is you write for all that money. If you start taunting Maud once again, she’s liable to come back and frighten our children.”
“We’re sure to have children,” I said, kissing her, then letting her go off to her night’s work.
As I went off to bed, I could hear a wind raging down at the corner of the street.
“Cheer-o, Maudie,” I said, very silently. “If the first one’s a girl, we’ll name it after you.”
The Face of Death
by Gary Brandner
Unhappily, not all unsolicited gifts are returnable.
The man talking to Zhivar was clearly too rich to be walking in this neighborhood. Melina watched them through a gap in the draperies that hung across the front window. She studied the man’s tailored suit, his razor-cut gray hair, his healthy, tanned complexion, and she was sure Zhivar could not bring him here.
She was wrong. They were coming this way. Zhivar, in his contrived Gypsy costume, complete to the single gold earring, was talking rapidly, waving his arms and showing the dazzling white teeth under his moustache. The gray-haired man listened with a half-smile and let himself be steered along the street to the small building that had once been a store. A hand-lettered sign propped out in front read: Madame Melina — Palmistry. The sign made no promises so, technically, no laws were broken. The police were tolerant of Gypsies in this section of the city, as long as there were no complaints. Even so, this was the last week Melina and Zhivar could stay in the abandoned store. The entire block was condemned to make way for a high-rise parking structure. Already workmen were pulling down the row of buildings behind them.
As the two men drew near, Melina let the draperies fall back across the window and walked over to a card table that was set up at the rear of the room. The table was covered with a cloth of crimson silk printed with golden symbols for the sun, the moon, and the planets.
Melina touched a hand to the blue-black hair that hung thick and loose to her shoulders. With proper grooming and makeup she could have been a strikingly beautiful woman. It mattered not to Melina. Zhivar approved of the way she looked, and she had no one else. She seated herself at the table to wait.