Some time ago, I went to a certain old house, a mansion, the abode of a captain of industry now long deceased and half-forgotten by the populace.  One prefers, I find, to visit grand houses when the clouds are few, so that interiors are well-lit, and one may observe their exquisite details without the necessity of peering through thick glooms to discover them, as though they were rare birds in a shadowy forest, but—such is life!—one must, on occasion, settle for second-best and go about sight-seeing on cloudy days, or else not go about it at all.  Let it never be said that I was put off from any purpose by so trifling a thing as the weather!

I had, however, a reason other than mere principle for going even when the sky was fairly suffocated in clouds; I did so want to call at Gravemoore—the mansion—on that very day, for I did not expect to be in town again for another year, and a year is such a dreadfully long time for a bored soul to wait.  Hence, to Gravemoore I went, and made my way up the winding drive, past the broad lawns, to the great front door.

I was met upon a sea of black and white marble by a young girl—whom, I suppose, the modern world would have termed a young woman—who stared at me, her mouth quite agape.

I couldn’t help staring.  You would, too, if you looked up from your phone and saw a woman in an Edwardian dress and a pompadour standing in the doorway!  She stood there, ignoring the wind blowing in around her, and looked me over, probably scandalized at my capris and loose hair—and okay, I looked her over too, hoping I didn’t seem totally rude and wondering if I was going to have to give a tour to a mentally unstable person.  That would be fun.  There’s nothing like wondering if your life is in danger, after all!

Yes, I really did wonder.  I mean, she wasn’t “nice harmless little old lady”-weird, like she was trying to relive her girlhood.  She couldn’t have been more than forty.  And her clothes looked like she stepped out of Mrs. Gaylord’s dressing room—really fancy, not just like she had bought a pattern and made a simple period dress.  See why this kind of freaked me out?  Who goes around visiting mansions in lace and pearls?  Had I suddenly gone back in time?  Impossible.

She stood like she had a metal T running down her back and across her shoulders, and when she finally turned to close the door, every motion was smooth, flowing into the next as if she were in a ballet.  Then she turned back to me, with a glance like she was asking, “Well, commoner, aren’t you going to greet me?”

I took a deep breath and forced my face into my greet-the-visitors look.

“Welcome to Grave-more!” said the girl tour-guide, smiling her customary welcome.  “I’m Allison, and I’ll be showing you around the house today.”

“Good day,” I said, with dignity; then reading her name off the placard pinned to her blouse, “My dear Miss—Westing—it is pronounced with an a as in the word cat.  Graahvemoore—I have made a study of these things, as you might say.”

The poor thing looked a trifle shaken—I fear I was rather too vigorous in my correction of her pronunciation—but quickly recovered herself, smiled, thanked me, and inquired whether we would proceed.

“To be certain,” said I, “and you will be sure to show me the entire house?”

Miss Westing shuffled about for a time with apologetic “Really sorry, ma’am”s and “I didn’t make the policy, but—”s before mustering the courage to say, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but the west wing isn’t open to the public.”

“I am not present as the public.  I have come on a matter concerning the history of the Gaylord family, and it is of paramount importance that I should see the west wing.”

I stared at the bizarre woman, and she stared right back at me, the expression of her aristocratic eyes as imperious as those of any queen.  Such strange eyes!  Gray, as cold as a winter morning, but a hollow sort of cold, like there was warmth behind it, but that warmth couldn’t cross the void to melt the ice… I shivered a bit, and, desperate to make her stop giving me that weird, commanding stare, said, “Well, if you’re here to do research, I guess I can let you see the west wing.  You’ll have to sign this paper, though.  You’re saying that if you get hurt, we’re not responsible, and if you damage the house, you’ll pay for repairs.”

She frowned at the pen I offered—I suppose she wanted a gold-plated one—took it, studied it for a few seconds, and signed the paper in the prettiest script you ever saw—also, the most un-legible.

“Okay,” said Miss Westing, “We’ll go over the regular tour first, and finish up with the west wing.  This way, please.”

She led me out of the hall and into the drawing room, where shades of the Gaylords’ day yet dwelt—a party of old ladies, faded beauties of Victoria’s day, lamenting the course along which the modern world tended, their conversation echoing still from the well-steeped paneling and rosy-dawn draperies—whilst over and around them twined the laughing chatter of girls, and underneath wove the solid strain of the gentlemen’s words—a social symphony.

“This is the drawing room,” announced Miss Westing.

The players scattered like so many pigeons from a city square.

“This is where Mrs. Gaylord would have entertained guests.  That painting above the fireplace is of her grandmother, who was the daughter of a prominent judge.”

“Are there any paintings or photographs of Mrs. Gaylord herself?” I asked.

“No.  Her husband had them destroyed after her death—all but the one by the front hall stairs, of her as a girl.  Isn’t it kind of romantic?  Either that, or really weird.  I can’t quite decide.  Now, the Renaissance-era statue in the garden—you’ll see it if you look out the window to your left—was a gift to Mrs. Gaylord from her grandmother in 1905.”

Little did I desire to see the statue, but Miss Westing appeared to expect that I would be in awe over such a treasure, so I stepped to the window and duly gazed out.

“Surely, the statue has not stood there since 1905?  I seem to have had it impressed upon me that Mrs. Gaylord detested it, and had it tucked away into a garden where it was hidden from her sight.”

Which my guide met with the explanation that, “It was such a great piece that the curators thought it should occupy a prominent place, so that the public could see it easily.  Although we’ve preserved most of the arrangement of the house, we have had to alter a few things here and there, for convenience.  But you still get a feel for what the place was like a hundred years ago.  Now, shall we go on to the dining room?”

On we went to the dining room—the billiard room—the music room—the breakfast room—et cetera.  I am positive that Miss Westing attempted to take up the entire afternoon with the ordinary part of the tour so that we would be required to forgo the west wing.  Pity my sufferings, Reader, as I followed her through the house, enduring bombardment by her inane descriptions of the rooms, their purposes, their contents—I thought I should quite evaporate of boredom and vexation at her numerous errors.  These are the hazards of touring a residence with the history of which one is intimately familiar, yet they must be tolerated if I wished to reach the west wing, so tolerate them I did, and after the statue incident managed to keep my tongue in check.

And at long last, as afternoon commenced its descent, Miss Westing led me to a set of doors opening into the west wing.  Fiddling with a key, she glanced at me.

“They say it’s haunted.”

“I am hardly frightened of ghosts.”

She shrugged, gave a quivery smile, and slowly unlocked the door.

We proceeded into the corridor, which boasted only such meager light, entering from the window at its end, as a stormy October four o’clock could afford to ration out.  I wandered forward, over the floor which had been swept several years ago at the most recent, and wiped one hand over the likewise-dusty paneling.  Above us, the sculptured plaster was in an advanced state of deterioration, stained by water, mosaiced with fissures broad and narrow, crumbling away to land on the floor and render it an ocean filled with craggy icebergs, under a sky whose clouds parted to reveal the adumbral cavity between the mansion’s skeletal beams.  Near the end of this melancholy hall, I gestured to a cracked wooden door.

“The solarium.”

“Yes, ma’am.  How—how did you know?” inquired the wary Miss Westing.

“I know a good deal of this house, as the result of prolonged—research.  Now, do assist me with this door, for it seems to have stuck.”

With a good deal of effort, we at last managed to thrust the door open.

As the door flew open, a cold wind burst out of the room as if it were a force in its own right, a phantom thing that had been imprisoned there for decades and was desperate for release.  I shivered and stepped back a pace, but the woman seemed to enjoy it—glory in it, even!  She raised her chin, her laces and furbelows fluttering eagerly in the gust, and drifted into the decaying solarium.  I followed her reluctantly.

It was a creepy room.  A tree branch protruded through the stained glass skylight, and vines crept in by way of the broken windows overlooking the garden, while rain also whipped in past the jagged edges of glass fragments that remained in the window frame.  The water puddled in a cracked fountain, like a memory trying to recall its original brilliance.  The woman sat on the edge of the fountain and trailed her fingertips through the water, barely rippling the surface—and as she did, I heard the sound of fingers being run across the strings of a harp out of tune.  I gave a yelping sort of shriek, starting for the door.  The woman only smiled at me, apparently amused by my melodramatics.

“Calm your nerves, Miss Westing.  It was only the drapery-cord in the wind.”

The drapery-cord, which boasted a large tassel at the end, must have been tossed by a gust so that its tassel would strike the harp strings—but still I thought the sound had been more as if created by a spectral hand.  The solarium, after all, was supposed to be the most haunted room in the entire west wing, the room where Mrs. Gaylord had died of a heart attack after reading of the death of her son in the war.  It was said that a maid found her early that evening with her fingers trailing in the fountain.  I wanted to tell the woman to take her hand out of the water—but giving in to silly paranoia, especially pertaining to the supernatural, is ridiculous, so I just watched as she stroked the water back and forth, seeming not to mind that the gauzy edge of her sleeve dipped into the puddle on every stroke.

Maybe the sensible thing would have been to call the police.  Her behavior definitely was not normal.  But I couldn’t convince myself to move; it was like when you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re perfectly aware that there are no monsters in the corners of your room—but still you breathe faster, and still you hardly dare to move a finger.  So I just stood there, unsure whether I was more scared of this woman or of the ghosts of a hundred years past, and I watched her elegant fingers as they glided through the water again and again.  It was as if she was mesmerized—as if Mrs. Gaylord’s spirit was calling her, siren-like, from within the fountain.

We stayed in the solarium for at least thirty minutes.  Eventually, the woman looked up, met my eyes with her echo of a gaze, and said,

“You might as well go back, Miss Westing.  You mustn’t be kept waiting, when the children will be showing up for the haunted mansion tour at any moment.  Don’t fret over me—I am going home quite soon; I shall find my own way.”

Rather perplexed, and feeling that mental fogginess that comes on dark afternoons after a long day, I turned and left the solarium.  The woman seemed like she knew how to handle herself around antiques; she wouldn’t hurt anything.

I went back to my place at the desk in the hall, and I welcomed the swarms of children and parents who had come to the “haunted mansion.”  Although I was there for the rest of the evening, I never saw the woman leave the mansion.  I suppose she must have taken it into her head to exit by way of a shattered solarium window.

Or maybe I was at some point a little more absorbed in my phone than I thought, because when I went to leave, I glanced at the guest book under the painting by the stairs in the hall—and there was a note, followed by a new signature:

My thanks to Miss Westing for a lovely tour.  – C. Gaylord.