Read Online She Walks in Shadows by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paula R. Stiles - Free Book Online Page B

arrived, but the street was empty, thick oaks nodding absently in the heat. Did I have the right address? All I had had to go on was Cheltenwick’s scribbled note and a vague memory he had of visiting, once, to deliver a package. A tall, reserved, gray house, he had said. A mass of ivy.
    I could see the white curtains twitch as I came up the steps. I wondered if the widow could stand to stay in the empty house, or if she had gone to stay with family, as ladies often did after a death. My own mother had left us for a fortnight after her brother died and gone to stay with my aunts out west. When she returned, I recalled, nothing more had been said about it; it had been as if no death had occurred.
    The widow answered the door herself, petite and slender in her weeds, face hidden behind a veil so thick I doubted she could see, black silk gloves covering small hands. I felt a wellspring of guilt for intruding on her grief, but Cheltenwick’s face hovered in my mind’s eye for a moment: Don’t botch this up!
    “Mrs. Penhallick,” I said, stymied for a moment simply by not having a face to address. “Please, allow me to ... let me say how very sorry I am for your loss. We all feel it keenly, I assure you. Er, my editor, Mr. Cheltenwick, corresponded occasionally with your husband and ... I ... I am so very sorry.”
    “Thank you,” she said, voice muffled by the veil. “Mr …?”
    “Oh!” I fumbled in my pockets for my card case. Finally, I found one, lone dog-eared card in my breast pocket and shamefacedly handed it to her. “Mr. Greene, madame. Of the Tribune.”
    She studied it, then put her hand back to her side. “Of the Tribune.”
    The question she hadn’t asked, or the invitation she did not wish to extend, hung in the air for a moment and I finally dipped my head and said, “I’ve ... been sent to interview you, Mrs. Penhallick, about your husband. May I please come in?”
    There was another pause so long and painful that I almost walked down the steps again, but she eventually stepped away from the door and let me in. I scraped my boots so vigorously on the hedgehog that I nearly fell, and then the door was closing behind me and there was a tremendous smell of incense, old wood, and flowers. The parlor was filled with arrangements, hiding the outlines of several bookcases and a grand piano. A few had spilled out into the hallway, red-and-yellow roses and white lilies and chrysanthemums. Ahead of us, the staircase was graced with a wooden statue on each step — an elephant, a jaguar, matched tigers, a woman carrying a jug of water. Paintings and sketches papered the exposed wall above the railing. At the landing, there was an enormous world map covered in little flagged brass pins. It took all my strength not to run up the stairs and note them down; how many dozens, hundreds of places he had been!
    The widow apologized as she went, in her curiously fuzzy voice, and explained that we must be inconvenienced to take tea in the kitchen, for the parlor was occupied with flowers, and she had given the house staff a week off, wishing to be alone in the house.
    “Oh, madame,” I said, reflexively, almost hearing my mother’s voice as I spoke. “You should not be alone in the house at a time like this. Do you have family nearby? A mother, sisters?”
    “No,” she said, after a moment. “No one nearby, Mr. Greene.”
    I watched her smoothly fill the kettle, bracing her hand with a well-worn pad, and secure pot, cups, saucers, sugar, lemon, and milk. I scribbled that in my notebook, bracing it on my thigh so she could not see what I was writing. The widow is well-versed in the little felicities of a kitchen — unusual, for a lady of good family who would have a lady’s maid making her tea. Perhaps she was a servant herself? No one nearby. Where was her family from, then?
    She did not speak again until after the tea had been made. I sniffed mine unobtrusively before I sipped — a very strange tea,