The previous owner, Mrs. Tarrant, had set up a temporary bedroom on the main floor in the left-hand drawing room; there was a bed and some armoires, and over in one corner, a tiny bathroom had been plugged in. The ceiling was eighteen or maybe even twenty feet high. The paint scheme was strangely reversed: There appeared to be wallpaper on the ceiling and paint on the walls. The wallpaper design was filled with mythical animals, scrollwork, and numbers. Some of it was missing, leaving bare spots on the ceiling. I couldn't really make out the details, but it all looked to me like an astrologer's bad dream.
Behind the two large drawing rooms on the main floor was a long kitchen and pantry setup, with back stairs leading down to the in-ground floor. In the nineteenth century, this in-ground floor was where the food preparation area had been, as well as the main dining room, all situated half underground to provide a cool place during the summer. The original kitchen had been out behind the house, and its foundations were still visible, next to what she told me had been the smokehouse. The original springhouse was also still there, nestled in a grove of ancient oaks from which a brook escaped down the broad hillside toward the river. There was no period furniture, but there was a clunky-looking central heating system and some air-conditioning machinery out behind the house, surrounded by unruly boxwood hedges. I peeked into the main electrical box and found round fuses instead of circuit breakers. I was probably lucky to find electricity.
"This is known as a Thomas Day house," she said as we went back upstairs to the main floor. "He was a notable woodworker who specialized in moldings, fireplace mantels, and staircases. He was also a black freedman who himself owned slaves."
"Mr. Oatley took me to see the site of the train robbery," I said, looking out the back windows at the outbuildings. "Did the family have a cemetery here as well?"
"No," she replied. "There were Lees here for most of the house's history, but they're all buried in town in the St. Stephen's cemetery. Our family actually built the church in the first place."
"The disclosure statement says there's another burial ground on the place but that it's been lost."
"That was probably a slave cemetery," she said dismissively, as if to say, Who cares?
"Is your family related to the Virginia Lees?"
"So it is claimed, but I'm not entirely sure. My mother says we are, but only distantly."
We stepped back out onto the front porch. The floorboards were a little springy, and I noticed now that some of the railings had begun to sag. There were some little piles of sandy-looking mortar dust at the base of the front wall.
"There's a lot of land here," I said, looking out over the surrounding fields. "Can it be farmed?"
"Most of our land across the way is leased to local farmers. I'm sure there'd be people interested in leasing this. It's been lying fallow all these years."
"I'm looking forward to exploring it all."
"Mind where you walk, sir," she said. "There are undoubtedly some abandoned wells out there, and they can be fatally treacherous."
I heard a noise down the driveway, and then a horse and buggy appeared out of the oak aisle. A smiling black man was driving it. He waved when he saw us on the front porch.
"Your chariot?" I said.
She smiled again. "Its proper name is a governess's cart, but, yes, this is how I will get home." She inclined her head formally and presented her right hand. "It's been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cameron Richter. I hope you can join us for tea sometime."
I took her hand, not quite sure if I was expected to kiss it or shake it. I gave it a slight squeeze and let go. "I'd like that very much," I said.
She went down the wide wooden steps, holding the hem of her skirt up with both hands as the little carriage pulled up.
They're taking this living in the past pretty seriously, I thought. Then I saw the cell phone in the old man's shirt pocket. He saw me looking at it as he got down to help Valeria Marion Lee into the carriage and gave me a wink. Okay, I thought, they're not all nuts.
I locked the front door, gathered up the shepherds, and drove into town for lunch. Afterward I stopped by the realty office, signed yet some more papers, and asked the ladies there if there was an established restoration company in town. Not exactly, they told me, but a Ms. Carol Lee Pollard ran a consulting business on restoring old houses. They said she volunteered over at the library, and gave me directions.
Carol Pollard was a shapely brunette, late thirties, maybe forty, five-seven with short flip-style hair, blue eyes, and a warm smile to go with a broad upland North Carolina accent. She recognized my name when I introduced myself.
"Oh, yes," she said. "Mr. Richter from Triboro. You bought Glory's End. That's wonderful. You're not a developer, are you? I mean, you will live there?"
"I hope to," I said, realizing not for the first time that there were no secrets in a small southern town. "Getting tired of city life. The folks at Oatley Realty told me you're the local restoration wizard. I think I'm going to need a lot of advice."
She asked one of the other librarians to take over the front desk, and we retired to the office, away from the library patrons. I noticed she walked with a slight limp.
"I basically offer a consulting service on restoration work," she told me. "I can recommend what should be done, what should be left as is, and who the local contractors are that I'd trust with a project like that. I can also act as the general contractor if my clients want me to."
"That's what I need," I said. "I'm not on some crusade to put it back to absolute authenticity. I'll want to address structural problems and then mostly make it livable."
"Great," she said. "Because if you try to take something like Glory's End all the way back to the 1830s, you'll never get there."
"So I've been told, repeatedly. I met one of my neighbors this morning. A Ms. Valeria Lee?"
"Oh, my," she said. "That's amazing. No one ever sees them except on important church days. You didn't just go knock on their door, did you?"
I told her the circumstances, and she shook her head. "Now that's really interesting," she said. "The Laurel Grove Lees and the Glory's End Lees haven't been on speaking terms apparently since the train robbery in 1865. Supposedly, if one mentions them in front of Ms. Hester-that's Valeria's mother-she will get up and leave the room in high dudgeon."
High dudgeon. I laughed. "I believe it. Ms. Valeria rode off in a horse and buggy after giving me a tour of the house. I thought she'd been putting me on with the antebellum getup."
"Not at all," Carol said. "They're both pretty eccentric. You should hear the stories. Candles instead of electric lights. The costumes, of course. Horse and carriage instead of a car. The obligatory crazy relative supposedly mewed up in the attic."
"Is there a Mr. Lee?" I asked. "Or would it be Colonel?"
"There is a Major Lee," she said, "but no one ever sees him. It's rumored that he's the one locked in the attic."
"Great local color, if nothing else," I said, "and my next-door neighbor. Are they going to be mad at me if I start messing with the house?"
"I don't know," Carol said. "They might, but they're such hermits I can't imagine they'd bother you, especially if you throw around the word 'preserve' liberally."
"Yet there she was this morning, wandering around in there like some kind of ghost."
"She probably heard about the place selling and wanted to see it one more time before the new owners knocked it down and put up a sacrilege."
"Not many secrets in this county, I take it."
"Not when it comes to big pieces of historical property, no," she said. "Especially one with the history of Glory's End. You know the story? Why there's a cemetery up there by the railroad bridge?"