Lilian Jackson Braun - Cat 10 Who Talked to Ghosts

"I go up there to meditate. That's how I knew you'd left your car lights on."

"What's up in the tower?"

"Mostly flies. Flies love towers. Spraying doesn't do much good. They're always buzzing and sunning and multiplying. Would you like to see the house?"

"Very much so."

"I should warn you. It's a mess. My mother was an absolutely mad collector. She went to auctions and bought all kinds of junk, It's a disease, you know, bidding at auctions."

"I had an acute attack of auctionitis once," said Qwilleran, "and I can see how the germ could get into anyone's blood and cause a chronic condition for which there is no cure."

They entered the house through the side door, picking their way among shopping bags stuffed with clothing, shoes, hats, dolls and umbrellas; rusty tricycles and a manual lawnmower; open cartons loaded with dented pots and pans, chipped platters, bar trays and old milk bottles; wooden buckets and galvanized pails; an oak icebox and a wicker fern stand; stacks of magazines and bushels of books. Having been too long in attics and basements, these relics were giving their musty scent to the entire house.

Kristi said with a rueful smile, "I've been trying to thin out her accumulation - selling some and giving some away, but there's tons of it!"

The dining room alone harbored two large tables, twenty chairs, three china cabinets, and enough china to start a restaurant.

"See what I mean?" she said. "And this is only the beginning. The bedrooms are worse. Try not to look at the clutter. Look at the carved woodwork and the sculptured ceilings and the stained glass windows, and the staircase."

From the foyer a wide staircase angled up to the second floor. The newel post and handrail were massive, and the balusters were set extravagantly close together, harking back to the days when lumber was king. It was all. black walnut, Kristi said.

"But this is not the original staircase," she pointed out.

"The first one spiraled up into the tower and was very graceful. My great-grandfather replaced it and sealed off the tower."

"Too many flies?" Qwilleran asked. "Or too hard to heat?"

"That's a long story," she said, turning away. "Do you feel like climbing four flights?"

After they reached the third floor she unbolted a door leading to the tower. Here the stairs were plain and utilitarian, but they ended in a small enchanting room no bigger than a walk-in closet, with windows on four sides and windowseats cushioned in threadbare velvet. On a shabby wicker table there were binoculars, a guttered candle, and a book on yoga in a brown paper cover. Iridescent bluebottle flies were sunning on the south window.

Qwilleran picked up the glasses and looked to the north, where the big lake shimmered just below the horizon. To the west a church spire rose out of a forest of evergreens. To the east was the Goodwinter property with Boswell's van in the barnyard, a blue pickup in the museum drive, and half a dozen energetic young persons raking leaves, bagging them, and loading them in the truck.

Qwilleran asked, "What is the purpose of the diagonal line of trees cutting across the fields?"

"That's Black Creek," Kristi said; "You can't see the stream, but trees thrive on its banks, and there are some very old willows hanging over the water."

"This house," Qwilleran said as they went back down the four flights of stairs, "should be registered as a historic place."

"I know." Kristi's eyes filled with melancholy. "But there's too much red tape, and I wouldn't have time to do research and fill out the forms. And then the house and grounds would have to be fixed up, and that's more than I could afford to do."

Qwilleran patted his moustache smugly, thinking, This might be a project for the Klingenschoen Fund to underwrite. The Fugtrees were pioneers who helped develop the county, and their house is an architectural showplace worthy of preservation. Eventually it might be purchased by the Historical Society and opened to the public as a museum. He could visualize Fugtree Road becoming a "museum park" with the Goodwinter farmhouse demonstrating the life of the early settlers and the Fugtree mansion showing Moose County during its boom years. Even the antique presses in the barn had possibilities as a "Museum of the Printed Word." Qwilleran liked the name. One or two good restaurants might open in the vicinity, and the ghost town of North Middle Hummock would rise again, with the inevitable condominiums on the other side of Black Creek. The fact that Kristi was an attractive young woman had nothing to do with his enthusiastic speculations, he told himself.

"Would you like another glass of lemonade?" she asked to break the silence that fell after her last statement.

"No thank you," he said, snapping out of his reverie, "but how about two o'clock tomorrow afternoon for the interview?"