"It's too facile," Josef complained.
"Go ahead, sneer." Mark took a bite of steak. He added, "Who would you expect to come to a girl's rescue? All the men in her family look like cold fish. They're probably too busy flapping their angelic wings in their nice Calvinist heaven."
"I can't stand this tottering tower of illogic," Josef shouted. The waitress turned to stare; Kathy giggled; Josef flushed slightly and went on in a more subdued voice, "You pile one unwarranted assumption on top of another, Mark. You are the only one who's convinced that Peter Turnbull is ghost number one-"
"It had blue eyes," Kathy said.
"No," Pat said vehemently.
"You saw it too, Mrs. Robbins."
"I know, but…" Pat was unable to continue. She was not denying the color, she was denying the suggestion of humanity. The worst part of the entire episode had been those moments at the end, when the alien shape had begun to assume the dimensions of a human body.
The reminder took away what remained of Pat's appetite. Mark was the only one of the group who ate with relish. Watching him demolish a piece of lemon-meringue pie, his mother entertained herself by trying to conceive of a situation in which Mark would be unable to eat. She failed.
Cramming the last bite into his mouth, he announced thickly, "Better get moving. We've got a lot to do."
Josef, who had been lost in some abstruse speculation of his own, gave Mark a suspicious look. "Where are we going now?"
"The historical association, of course. I've got to return that Bates material. It closes at three, so we'll have to hurry."
"It's barely two o'clock," Josef said.
Mark rose to his feet.
"We are going to go through that place with a fine tooth-comb," he announced. "Old newspapers, military records, anything we can find. Time is passing."
And that, Pat thought, was another of Mark's understatements. Less than twelve hours until the next manifestation… And God only knew what form that might take.
Although she had lived in the town for almost ten years, Pat had never visited the old red brick house that sheltered the historical association. She had never even seen it, since it was on a side street, away from the highway and the shops. Almost unconsciously she had absorbed some knowledge of architecture from Jerry, so she was able to date the building to a period at least fifty years older than that of her own house.
It was, in fact, one of the oldest houses in the county. So Jay informed them, after he had greeted them.
"The oldest part was built in 1757, a regular log cabin. The Peabodys made it into a kitchen when they built the central part in-"
"We'll take the tour some other time," Mark interrupted. "Today we-er-I have some work to do in the library. Okay if we go on up?"
"Sure." Jay glanced disparagingly at a family group- father, mother, and two small girls-who were waiting meekly by the door. "Wouldn't you know-I usually don't get more than five, six people a week. I'll join you as soon as I get rid of this lot."
They climbed the graceful curving stairs. Pat felt the handrail shift when she touched it. The house was neat and fairly clean, but it was clear that the association had no money to spare for anything more than basic repairs. The walls needed painting and the shallow stairs were bare of carpeting.
The library occupied the whole of the third floor. No doubt the room had once been a ballroom; it had long windows along one wall and a hardwood floor that was still beautiful despite its scuffed surface. Bookshelves covered the wall opposite the windows; there were rows of filing cabinets on the short walls, and a heaped desk in one corner. Three long library tables took up part of the floor space. One held a card index and a microfilm reader. Pat drew her finger along the nearest shelf and saw a miniature dust pile build before it.
"You don't know what this place looked like before Jay arrived," Mark said, as she made a fastidious face. "He's done a helluva lot."
"There is still a great deal to be done," Pat retorted.
"If people like you would donate some time, and people like our neighbors would donate some money, it might get done. Do you know how much Jay makes a year?"
"Stop arguing with your mother," Josef said. "Weren't you the lad who said we had a lot to do?"
Giving him a sour look, Mark jerked open one of the filing cabinets.
"The local newspaper," he said, taking out a roll of microfilm. "We'll start with 1858. Here, Kath, look for any mention of the Turnbulls or the Bateses, and let me know when you're ready for the next roll."
He turned to Josef.
"Tax records," he said curtly, indicating a nearby shelf. "Census reports, other legal garbage. That's your specialty, Mr. Friedrichs."
"How about me?" Pat asked, as Josef, without comment, began scanning the dusty volumes Mark had pointed out.
"You get the dirty job," Mark said, his frown relaxing. "The books have been catalogued, but only roughly, and they aren't well arranged. Read the shelves. Look for anything that might apply to our families. I don't think I could have missed a genealogy or a family history, but the Turnbulls might be mentioned in any of the contemporary memoirs. Don't waste time on modern histories," he added, as Pat approached the nearest shelf. "I've read most of them,"
He opened a file drawer. Pat saw that it was filled with folders all jammed with papers and apparently unlabeled.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Miscellaneous," Mark replied, with a wry smile. "I told you we'd leave no stone unturned. Get to it, lady."
For half an hour there was silence as all four worked steadily. Out of the corner of her eye Pat saw that both Kathy and Josef paused from time to time to take notes. So far she hadn't found anything worth noting down. As Mark had said, hers was the dirty job, and not only because of the vagueness of her assignment; her hands were dark gray by the time she had worked her way through the top shelves of the first section. Abandoning all hope of staying clean, she sat down on the floor and began on the lower shelves.
Almost immediately she came upon a group of books that promised more than the zero she had scored so far. They were memoirs and collected letters. In style and in appearance they reminded her of the book by Mary Jane Turnbull, and she marveled at the prolific literary habits of the ladies of the nineteenth century. However, it was not surprising that they should have written so much; the dramatic events that let to secession and its bloody aftermath must have prompted many a young girl to start a diary. And they had time, lots of it. Perhaps not the hard-working mistresses of large plantations, glamorized by writers like Margaret Mitchell, but well-to-do women of the urban upper classes had few demands on their leisure and plenty of slaves and servants.
The memoirs gave her less than she had hoped. Few were from the area that interested her. And, she realized, even if one of the authors had been acquainted with the Turnbulls, she would have to go through the books page by page to find such references.
Then she came upon a volume entitled My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule in Washington, and her interest revived. Obviously the author had been Southern in sympathy, and she had lived in the capital, not all that far from Poolesville.
After the first few pages Pat forgot that she was supposed to be looking for the Turnbulls, and became involved in the fantastic narrative. Mrs. Greenhow had not only been a Confederate sympathizer in a hostile city, she had been one of the most skilled and effective spies of the time. She had sent coded messages to General Beauregard, across the river in Virginia, telling him of Northern military plans, and she had finally been arrested by Allan Pinkerton, the famous detective, when her plots were uncovered. Sentenced at first to house arrest, she was able to elude her guards long enough to sneak into the library and destroy damaging papers. Later she was moved to the grim confines of the Old Capital Prison. No place for a lady, Pat thought, fascinated; but then spying was no game for a lady either, or so she would have thought.