Castle of Horror Read online

  “Not exactly,” said Norah. “But evidently Sallie Collins – Miss Jolivet’s stand-in, you know – heard whispering and saw something that looked like bits of fire moving in the air in the Queen’s Parlor… Which could explain,” she added, glancing at the cast disembarking from Marty Peacock’s sleek blue DeSoto, “why I don’t see her this evening—”

  Christine rolled her eyes. “I’d say it has a lot more to do with her being preggers than with the castle being haunted. Darling,” she added, to Norah’s startled expression, “where have you been? Zena tells me—“ She nodded toward her hairdresser, trading gossip with Miss Jolivet’s maid, “—the poor girl fainted dead away the other night during filming…”

  “That could have been the lights,” pointed out Norah. “It seems like the stand-ins are stuck under them for hours while they set up the shots. Or seeing whatever it was she saw in the parlor—”

  “Dearest, even if she’d run into Count Dracula in that parlor it wouldn’t make her spew her guts out behind the corrals. There, there,” she added, bending to pick up Buttercreme in her arms, “we’re going home, now, sweetheart, and Aunt Norah will get you dinner… Tor’s taking me to the Goldstrike this evening, dearest. They have the most adorable singing cowboys in the dining-room… Oh!” Her expression changed as a very long, very stylish gray-and-white Hispano-Suiza maneuvered its way up the rutted drive.

  Norah recognized the car, and turning her head, saw her sister-in-law’s eyes flood with tears.

  “Mr. Conklin!” Norah threaded her way through the confusion as the chauffeur opened the vehicle’s rear door and handed out Ambrose Conklin (of Conklin Oil, three New York hotels, Elmira Chemicals, the Consolidated Land and Cattle Company of Texas, the North Star copper mine in Arizona, a hundred thousand acres of Florida real estate and substantial holdings in Standard Oil and the Union Pacific Railroad), a slender, silver-haired gentleman dressed with the neat formality of a British Lord about to meet the Prime Minister for tea.

  “Mrs. Blackstone.” He took her hand and bowed over it, his smile shy and slightly self-deprecating. “They told me I might find Christine here… I promise I haven’t come to make a scene.”

  Norah pressed his fingers in response. “Mr. Conklin, I am ready to slap her! Honestly, I…”

  He lifted one hand, and shook his head. “In truth, Mrs. Blackstone, who could blame her, for being drawn to a younger man than I? And I expect seven-eighths of the world consists of younger men than I. Truly,” he added, when Norah would have protested. “Her passion is a part of her nature. One can’t blame fire for burning one’s fingers.” He bent, to pat the Pekes who had dashed, leashes trailing, to greet him. Even shy Buttercreme, who liked practically nobody, was flirting with him: advancing almost to his hand and then retreating, with coy glances over her shoulder, as if she were doing a fan-dance with her tail. “I only want to make sure that she’s—”

  He looked up and turned as all three dogs darted back toward Christine, who had started in their direction. Tor, returning from his conference with Margaret Mackenzie, caught her by the elbow, but she slipped free of him and walked with surprising dignity to take her former lover’s hand.

  Conklin raised her fingers to his lips. “I was telling Mrs. Blackstone,” he said quietly, “that I haven’t come to make a scene, my dear, and I won’t. I’d have sent word to your hotel if I’d known where you were staying.”

  Christine ducked her head, looking confused. Norah caught up the trailing leashes and stepped away, as the old man spoke quietly to Christine, and Christine’s face flooded with emotion. She made a quick move, as if she would have embraced him, then caught herself. Seeing Tor still bearing down on them Norah headed him off.

  “Please,” she said. “He isn’t here to make trouble…”

  “Then what is he here for?” His boyish face creased in a scowl, and Norah bit back the comment that everybody wasn’t like Tor himself. “And what’s Chris doing practically hanging on his arm?”

  She wasn’t, but she must have heard the scrunch of Tor’s strides as he shoved past Norah, for she turned as Conklin stepped back with another bow. Adeptly dodging another attempt to seize her by the arm, Christine followed Mr. Conklin, shook his hand and said – in a clear voice obviously intended to carry to her fuming lover – “Thank you, Mr. Conklin; you’re always so considerate. Maybe you’d like to join us tomorrow night for a séance up here at the castle? It’s frightfully haunted, so we’re sure to make contact with the Other World…”

  Conklin glanced from Christine’s brightly-smiling face to Tor’s scowling one, bowed deeply, and said with great gravity, “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Miss Flamande.” His glance touched Norah, who nodded.

  As the chauffeur handed him into his car again, Christine whispered to Norah, “Darling, I feel just terrible! Ambrose was so sweet! He said he understands my leaving him for Tor, and he wanted to tell me that he’s made an appointment with me with his own attorney, to settle some stock on me as a wedding-present, so I’d never have to worry… Isn’t that precious of him? So thoughtful…”

  “And what’d he want?” Tor came up and wrapped his arms around Christine from behind. “Does he think he can get you to come back to him?”

  “He just wanted to talk to me about giving me a wedding-present,” protested Christine, as they walked away to Tor’s car. “Honestly, darling, the least I could do was invite him to the séance. He’s being so good about this…about you and me…”

  “A good loser is still a loser,” retorted the actor, and pulled her into a vigorous kiss. “And you’re such a prize I can’t bear to see you even look at another man.”

  “Oh, darling!” She melted into his grip.

  “Stan’s like that,” murmured a soft contralto at Norah’s elbow. It was Bebe Jolivet, a sable coat wrapped over the old-fashioned corset and “frillies” of the previous century that were demanded for her next scene. Her hair hung in a mahogany-dark ocean among the fur, and her turquoise-gray eyes had a look in them of hungry longing as they followed the entwined forms to Tor’s car. “I see them like that and I remember what that was like, that warmth… even though I knew he was sleepin’ with every woman at Centurion. I just…”

  She shook her head.

  You just don’t want to know that it isn’t real. Norah recalled the son of the woman who’d hired her as a companion back in Manchester, after her parents had died. Remembered the constant hectic atmosphere among his obnoxious “set,” the shouted arguments and gin-laced bouts of his lady-friends’ hysterical tears. At least Christine – the minx! – despite her infatuation, was giving him as good as she got.

  “Is he still sending you tear-stained telegrams?”

  The actress’ beautiful mouth quirked at Norah’s tone, and she put aside her dreaming. “Every day. I got to practically stab myself with a hat-pin, to remind myself it’s just ‘cause he needs money. If black folks could come to Miss Flamande’s séance – although Stan’s lighter than I am! – he’d be there, askin’ the ‘Spirit World’ about horses just like Mr. Westlake’s doin’. I paid his debts before this, an’ it wasn’t til he’d got himself in trouble again that he suddenly realized he couldn’t live without me. I feel like such an idiot.”

  “Be brave,” said Norah, her tone humorous but her slight grip on the other woman’s hand a clasp of encouragement. Miss Jolivet sighed.

  “A whole lot braver than it takes, just to film in a creepy old castle full of spooks.”

  Watching Tor Westlake’s red roadster zoom down the trail toward the tawdry glitter that was Reno, Norah thought, I’ll have to ask Alec if he knows anything about Ouija boards. Or Mrs. Latimer. Because when Christine asks the Spirits Beyond who she was loved by in a former life, if I have anything to do with touching the planchette, it’s going to point straight to Mr. Conklin.

  Yet the chill remained on her heart. We have no business, she thought, calling on spirits in that parlor, no matter how much Christine needs to
be convinced that Mr. Conklin is a better match for her…

  And yet it wasn’t that.

  It was something else. Something that caught at the back of her mind.

  Something that didn’t fit.

  Something amiss, and dangerous…

  But before she could trace her uneasy sense of peril to its source, Alec and the other Colossians called to her from the now-loaded truck, with promises of the best (and only) chow mein in the state of Nevada to be had in Carson City, and the dogs were circling her ankles and tangling in their leashes in their eagerness to be gone.

  *

  Danny Cross whispered, “Damn it!”

  Far off in the lightless mazes of the castle, Norah could hear the knocking, like a reverberant echo on a sealed door.

  We shouldn’t be doing this…

  Seated in front of a makeup mirror in the hall of the Great Stairway, Bebe Jolivet, in corset and frilled under-drawers, flinched at the sound, then whispered an apology to the girl who was applying the now-smudged lip-rouge. Sallie Collins, wrapped in a quilted bath-robe over an identical corset and under-drawers, shuddered and cried hysterically, “We can’t go in that room! Something terrible’s going to happen! That blood…”

  “We’re not going to,” responded Danny, with a calm that Norah was pretty certain he didn’t feel. “We’re shooting in the ballroom again. Nothing’s ever happened and nobody’s ever heard anything in there…”

  “What blood?” Norah whispered to Deacon.

  “Last night when we came in to shoot in the yellow bedroom there was… there was blood splattered on the walls, on the bed and on Bebe’s costumes. That room opens off the upstairs hall, and we’d been up there all evening, nobody could have got in…”

  “Of course they could, there’s secret passages all over this house.” Norah frowned. “Still…”

  “All set up in here.” Alec – who had come with Norah, but was always willing to help – and Ti-Jo Girod emerged from the ballroom, where, Norah saw, one of the beds had been lugged down from upstairs and set up in another corner, which was roughly dressed to resemble a bedroom. Another corner had been transformed into a Victorian parlor again – per her alterations to the script earlier that day – and a third corner contained what could have been a dining-table and chairs, though Norah suspected it would be painfully obvious to viewers that most of Lost Lamb had been shot on the same set.

  “We’re down to shooting in the ballroom and this stair hall.” Danny scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Whether you believe in ghosts or not – and I’ve never made up my mind about some of the things I’ve seen here – we just can’t afford any more accidents. And if I was you, I’d – What’s that?” He swung around as a sound came from somewhere out of the darkness, something that could have been a human voice, or an animal, or a bird… something. Alec moved toward the door that led into the library corridor, and both Danny and Norah caught his arms.

  For a long moment they stood listening. The glare of the Klieg lights in the ballroom transformed the hall of the Grand Staircase into an eerie chiaroscuro of reflection and shadow. Beyond, the blackness was like the abyss at the heart of the world. Silence only walked in that darkness, brooding. Watching.

  Waiting.

  A moment later it was broken by the scrunch of wheels on the driveway outside, and Christine’s voice wailed: “Well, I don’t care what Alec says, a castle should have a moat, even if it is on a hillside! Besides, if it had a moat you could have a scene where you sprang off the wall and swam to safety…”

  “Tor’s never in the slightest danger, lamb,” Margaret Mackenzie reminded her, as they crossed the threshold, the Pekes flurrying around Christine’s feet. “We’re not making Robin Hood here.”

  Tor followed them in, carrying a Ouija board – a flat, varnished rectangle of wood on which the alphabet was inscribed (in two curving rows) along with numbers from one to ten, and the words Yes, No, and Good-Bye. Margaret, just behind him, bore a lantern, and a sack containing a roughly heart-shaped, wheeled planchette, three silver candlesticks, and three white candles. Christine greeted Alec’s uneasy warning about noises with an exclamation of joy (“Now I know the spirits are active! I wonder if you died for me in our previous life, Tor?”), and fairly skipped down the hall to Queen Victoria’s Parlor, where Tor and Margaret began to set up chairs around the marble-topped table.

  When Ambrose Conklin made his appearance Tor glowered, Christine beamed – clearly reveling in the chance to discomfit her lover – and Margaret Mackenzie preached them all a grave little sermon on how if there was any unbelief in any of their hearts they should get out right now. “For skepticism and disbelief set up barriers against those who’ve passed Beyond, and those of us who sincerely seek their advice can only ask the scoffers to take their scorn away, and leave us to our faith. And,” she added, snatching Christine’s amber cigarette holder from her hands, “the spirits are no’ very fond of tobacco either.”

  “I’m sorry.” With surprising meekness Christine applied her cigarette-lighter to the wicks of the candles instead. “Down,” she added, to Black Jasmine, who was attempting to supervise the setting of the chairs. “Sit.”

  Margaret blew out the lantern. Darkness crept closer around them, and far off, a distant footfall creaked on the gallery floor.

  Tor made sure that Christine was between himself and Alec, with Norah on Alec’s right and Margaret between Tor and Mr. Conklin. This, however, put Christine opposite her former fiancé, so that their fingers touched when it came time for two people to guide the planchette. “Are the spirits present tonight?” whispered Margaret, and the planchette slithered and rolled over the board before it touched the word, Yes. Christine’s eyes widened, presumably as she felt the planchette pull and weave of its own (or Mr. Conklin’s) accord, but a cold touch, like the breath of chill wind, seemed to breathe on Norah’s nape. The thump of Chang Ming scratching himself nearly startled her out of her chair. “Have they a message for someone here?”

  Yes.

  “Mrs. Blackstone?” Tor pronounced Norah’s name warily, as if he guessed her intention to hijack the planchette. But she was opposite him, so he had little choice. “I have a question for the spirits,” he said, the moment her fingers touched the smooth wood. “Are there those among you who can see into the future?”

  Norah let her fingers relax on the planchette, since her interest (and Christine’s) were in the past rather than the future. But before she and Tor had guided the little vehicle more than one or two looping circles around the board voices called in the staircase hall, and both Alec and Norah looked sharply around. Tor muttered, “Oh, for Chrissake, we should have cleared them out…”

  But Norah stood up, Alec not far behind her, and the dogs sat up alertly at the sound.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “Don’t touch the—“ began Tor, but Norah had already caught up one of the candles and hurried to the door.

  The corridor outside was a hundred times as dark and frightening as the upstairs hall of the boarding-house, but Chang Ming and Black Jasmine trotted out beside her, and at the end of the hall, silhouetted against the glare of the Klieg-lights in the ballroom beyond, Danny Cross called out, “Is Sallie down there?”

  “Are you kidding?” Alec was already striding up the black hallway, Norah (and the dogs) at his heels. “You couldn’t pay her to wander around this place by herself.”

  “What happened?” asked Norah.

  After the dimness of the parlor, even the reflected brilliance of the ballroom lights in the stair hall was shocking. Walking into the ballroom itself was like looking into the sun. “She went into the music room to change,” provided Danny. “It’s right off the ballroom, we’ve been using it—”

  “She could have felt sick.” Christine trotted up in a glitter of diamonds out of the darkness. “I mean, she is pregnant—”

  “By whom?” asked Norah suddenly. All eyes went to Bebe Jolivet, rising from the curliq
ueued sofa in the “parlor” set-up…

  And all eyes dodged discreetly away as Miss Jolivet’s mouth tightened against humiliated tears.

  “Where is your husband, Miss Jolivet?” Norah asked. “Where are all those telegrams coming from?”

  Caught by surprise at the question, the actress stammered, “Chicago…”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s in Chicago, darling,” piped up Christine, fishing in her handbag for a cigarette. “Christ knows I’d send my first husband telegrams from everyplace under the sun, when I was actually in New York with Roger… or was it Bill?” She counted quickly on her fingers, but Norah dodged past them and into the music room.

  “There is no other door out of here,” she said. “But when I was sitting at that desk there was a draft on me, so there has to have been a panel—”

  “Here it is.” Danny knocked on the wall beside a decorative niche, and just as he reached behind a marble bust and pressed the lever that released an opening in the lacquered boiserie, Alec said, “Here,” and opened another panel beside the fireplace.

  Norah breathed, “Damn it,” and Christine said, “What’s Stan Littlejohn got to do with this?” She inhaled a grateful lung-full of smoke. “We all know he’s a weasel, but—”

  “He has to kill her,” said Norah, suddenly understanding what was going on in Blatt’s Castle. What had been going on for a week. “She’s the only one who could prevent him from convincing Bebe to take him back.”

  Both men had disappeared into their respective secret panels, followed by Deacon, Lou Arnaud (who played Deacon’s father, still in his evening-dress and make-up) and most of the camera and lights crew. Bebe – and everyone else in the house – crowded now around the music-room door, stared at her in shock.

  “Stan—”

  “That’s what was wrong,” said Norah simply. “I knew the Castle couldn’t really be haunted. The dogs would have reacted to real manifestations, as they reacted to the ghosts in the boarding-house. Someone had to have a good reason to set up this elaborate a hoax, to push the filming into one small, specific section of the castle… and I’m guessing,” she added, turning grimly to face the two open passageways, “that Sallie was Mr. Littlejohn’s accomplice, under the impression that Miss Jolivet was the target, and not herself.”