The Other Side - J. D. Robb [67]
“This was my grandmother’s,” Miss Darlington said with a note of shy pride. “I’ve been trying to tend it since she passed away, but . . . ” She put her hands out and shrugged. “I’m not my grandmother.”
“Gorgeous,” Henry said, truthfully again. He couldn’t imagine how this could have been more beautiful, no matter who was tending it. Roses everywhere, in clumps, on trellises, climbing over low stone walls. Bees made a constant, industrious buzz, and the smell was intoxicating.
“We’ll have to go inside through the basement—that’s the only key I have.” She went down a mossy cement stairway to a padlocked metal door, which she unlocked with a key she took from her purse. “Watch your head. Be careful, wait until I . . . ” She moved away in the dimness, and presently a light came on. So the house was electrified. Henry saw that they were in a . . . he wasn’t sure what. A plant, a workshop, some sort of laboratory.
“My grandfather did his work here. He was an inventor. William Darlington—you may have heard of him?”
“I may have,” he temporized, eyeing a long center table laden with small machines and engines, jars, bottles, vises, tools, books, metal contraptions. She’d said her grandfather had been dead for months, but his workshop looked like he’d just gone upstairs for lunch. “What did he invent?”
“Well . . . here’s a pocket ashtray. A gentleman clips it to his vest or coat pocket. You can even monogram it.”
“A pocket ashtray. Say, that would be handy.”
“And this is a compass you attach to your hat brim.”
“Mm-hm.”
“A bottle opener that fits on the heel of your shoe.”
“Ingenious. And this?”
“Well . . . it was going to be a device to keep you awake. You wear this collar around your neck, and if you start to nod off, it activates an alarm.”
“A-ha.”
She looked at him levelly. “I know what you’re thinking. But don’t be fooled by the—the frivolity of these gadgets, Mr. Cleland. My grandfather’s imagination could be a bit whimsical at times, but he was also a genius. And he never got credit for his greatest invention: the gramophone disk.”
“Your grandfather invented the gramophone disk?”
“Everyone thinks it was Emile Berliner, but Grampa thought of it first. But then he forgot to send in his patent application, so he never got credit. And it was revolutionary—it made the old cylinder technology obsolete.” She gave a quick headshake, as if she hadn’t intended to go into all that. “Anyway. Let’s go upstairs; I’ll show you the house.”
The inside of Willow House was no spookier than the outside. What it was, was peculiar.
“This used to be the library,” said Miss Darlington, standing in the middle of the kitchen. “My grandfather thought the kitchen ought to be closer to the dining room, so he moved it.”
Henry was perfecting the art of the noncommittal hum. “Very sensible. That, uh, thing up there . . . ” He pointed to an overhead set of tracks or cables running along the ceiling.
“A moving tray. It goes to the dining room first, then down the hall to the front parlor. For transporting food and drink. Well, anything—books, the newspaper . . . ”
“Hm.”
She looked a little defensive. “My grandmother had terrible arthritis, so he was always thinking of ways to try to make life easier for her.”
One of the ways in which he’d made life easier for her was to ruin the symmetry of the entry hall by installing a wire cage in front of the center staircase. It rose and descended via a hand-cranked rope-and-pulley gizmo attached to the wall.
“He called it the Elizavator,” said Miss Darlington, “because—”
“Your grandmother was Elizabeth?”
“Precisely. Are you getting a sense of anything, Mr. Cleland? Any psychic vibrations or connections yet?”
He narrowed his eyes and allowed a dramatic pause. “There is something, yes. Definitely. Something. Too soon to speak of it, though.”
What he was getting, in spite of the oddness of the house, in spite of not having