the white plaster and curved ceilings had a vaguely Spanish flavor.
“And here we’re back in the newer part of the house,” Audra said.
The hall was four very large rooms on one side and two bathrooms on the other. Laurel couldn’t imagine what the house must look like from an aerial view.
She stepped to the window and looked out over the gardens. Through the brambles and tangle of vines, she saw a white gazebo at the head of the garden, gleaming like bone, and to the far left a small garden house of river rock at the end of a long reflecting pool.
Laurel caught a rustle of movement, a flash of black—too big to be an animal but not recognizably human—there and then gone … or never there at all. She shivered and hurried to catch up with Brendan and Audra.
The room at the end of the hall was the master bedroom: a spacious rectangle with large sunny windows, a fireplace, and window seats on both ends of the room.
They continued down the hall, which was lined with built-in bookshelves, to the next room, which Laurel immediately thought of as the fox room. It had French doors that opened out onto the round balcony over the front porch. The built-in shelves were crowded with silver hunting and riding cups. The walls held paintings of the hunt and old photos, of riders and horses and dogs.
“So you’ve taken us up through the forties,” Brendan said to Audra, and she looked at him blankly. “With the Folger family, I mean. James brought his bride Julia to the rebuilt house. The estate became a thriving literary community through the twenties and thirties. The children grew up as avid hunters and horsemen. Then what?”
“Well, then there was the war, of course,” the agent replied. “James Folger was killed overseas. His son Paul returned from the war and he and his sister lived with their mother until she died, sometime in the fifties.”
“And the brother and sister?”
“Remained in the house until they died.”
Brendan raised an eyebrow. “Neither married?”
“I don’t believe so,” Audra said. Her voice was distant. “They both died in the sixties, and it was never used as a family residence again.”
“Hmm,” Brendan said thoughtfully, and glanced at Laurel. “Would that have been the early sixties?”
“I think so, yes,” Audra answered.
Laurel felt a distinct uneasiness about the story. Lots of dropped threads there.
They moved on to the last door, facing them at the end of the hall.
As they stepped in, Laurel gasped.
It was large and dark—almost completely black, due to the solid wood shutters covering every window.
But her gasp was at the touch of the room. There was a sense of it like breath, a cool, live presence. Brendan stepped close to her and she could feel his warmth, although from far away.
They stood suspended in the breathing dark … and slowly their eyes became accustomed to the room, illuminated only by the thinnest shafts of light from the shutters.
“Library,” Audra’s voice came from somewhere.
There was a sudden blinding intrusion of light. Laurel blinked against the assault, dazzled, and saw Brendan silhouetted by the window, opening the shutters.
As her eyes adjusted she saw the room was dark-paneled and lined against one long wall with built-in bookshelves of some fine hardwood. There were tables, cushioned window seats under every window, two fireplaces, a standing globe, and an elegant carved bar, above which was a large framed painting of a dashing man in his forties, wearing a crimson smoking jacket. The painting was powerful but crude, the same primitivism of the family portrait in the entry downstairs. On the walls without bookcases were hundreds of black-and-white photographic portraits of men and women, mostly studio shots.
It was a magnificent, resonant room.
Laurel moved slowly along the wall of bookshelves.
Audra spoke behind, her voice distant, abstracted. “You’ll recognize many of the names under those photos: the authors who came here to work and play in the twenties and thirties—even a few movie stars. This room has seen a lot.”
Laurel had reached the end of the wall and turned to the next wall of bookshelves. A familiar navy blue volume caught her eye—a Duke yearbook, and she jolted at the date—1965.
Brendan spoke suddenly. “Audra, what is it you’re not telling us?”
The agent turned vacuously inquiring eyes on him.
“You’ve skipped a good deal of the history of the house. In the interest of full disclosure, I think it’s time you were straight with us. What exactly happened here, that no one has