In the Night Wood. Dale Bailey

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      Charles didn’t know what he’d expected from the historical society: brochures advertising local attractions, maybe? Recessed lighting illuminating framed photos and polished glass display cases?

      But no. The society was very much a work in progress. The foyer was gloomy and close. It smelled musty. The rooms beyond — the two Charles could see, branching off a broad hallway with a stairway to the right — were largely barren of any such displays. Framed photographs listed on their hangers. A handful of dusty exhibit cases stood half obscured by stacks of cardboard boxes.

      “Hello?” someone called from the interior.

      “Hello.”

      A door opened and closed. In the shadows at the end of the hall, a figure appeared — angular and tall, female, beyond that he couldn’t say. The woman wiped her forehead with a cloth.

      “Just here for a look about, are you?”

      “I thought it might be interesting.”

      “Ah. So you’re the American who’s moved into Hollow House.”

      “That’s right.”

      “You’re the talk of the town.”

      He peered closer. “We are, are we?”

      “Down to the King, you are,” she said. Then: “Feel free to have a look. We don’t have much, I’m afraid.”

      “It looks to me like you have quite a lot,” he couldn’t help saying.

      “A lot of rubbish. That’s what I’m here for, to excavate it all and figure out what’s worth keeping.”

      “I thought you were the docent.”

      “That, too. Listen, give me a minute to finish up. I’m sorting papers in the back here. Papers, papers everywhere and nary a drop to drink.”

      Suddenly he liked her, this shadowy stranger at the far end of the hall.

      “Then I’ll show you around a bit,” she said. “I’ll want to wash my face first, if you don’t mind.”

      “And if I do?”

      Was he flirting? An image of Ann Merrow’s taut rear end, muscles flexing as she climbed the stile, flitted through his mind. And then, worse yet, an image of Syrah Nagle —

      He shunted the thought away.

      “I’ll wash it anyway,” the woman said dryly, and with that she was gone.

      Charles wandered into the adjoining room. He glanced at a set of photos — the high street from some distant era — picked up a stiff, yellowing copy of the Ripon Gazette, put it down again without bothering to read the headline, and ran a finger across the dusty surface of a glass display cabinet, leaving a long, clean snail’s track in its wake. He paused before a case of medals and fading ribbons. A yellowing index card pinned to the wall above it read, in faded typescript, Yarrow has contributed its share of young men to the conflicts of —

      Charles turned away.

      What on earth was he doing here, in a museum dedicated to a place where almost nothing had ever happened? Even Caedmon Hollow was an obscure figure in the annals of Victorian lit — a footnote, nothing more.

      He’d hung his future on a footnote.

      A wave of doubt swept over him. The scholar-adventurer indeed, he thought, turning to the next display, another constellation of fading black-and-white photographs: lean, grim-looking men posed beside farm animals and antiquated tractors, a young boy holding a prize ribbon against his chest. Black and white. Nobody smiling. The Yarrow Agricultural Fair began in the early 1800s and remains an institution —

      Sighing, Charles drifted to the far end of the room. More photographs, he thought — but no, that wasn’t quite right. The images predated modern photography: daguerreotypes, and more than that, daguerreotypes of Hollow House. The first showed the place in ruins, roofless, the great rectangular stones of the exterior blackened by fire. The ones that followed — there were six of them, marching in a straight line across the wall — showed the house in various stages of reconstruction, culminating in an image of it in pristine condition.

      Charles leaned forward to study the central image more closely: the roof framed with great beams, stacks of lumber and stones in the front yard below.

      “Probably our best thing, that,” the woman said at his shoulder. “So far, anyway.”

      Charles turned to face her, high-cheekboned and pale-complexioned, with a cap of close-shorn blonde hair, hazel eyes, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her narrow nose. There was a smudge of dust over her right eyebrow. Apparently she hadn’t washed up after all. Or not very well, anyway.

      “I’m Silva North,” she said.

      “Charles Hayden.” He took her outstretched hand.

      “Well, Mr. Hayden —”

      “Charles.”

      “Charles, then.” She nodded at the framed images. “The construction occurred between 1844 and 1848, following a fire that consumed most of the original manor house. The library and part of the salon survived, though badly damaged. Hollow’s wife, Emma, was not so fortunate. Tradition holds that Hollow set the fire himself, though why he might have done so is unclear. The book came out —”

      “In 1850, to little fanfare,” Charles said. “Hollow committed suicide the next year.”

      Silva North smiled. “I see that you’ve developed an interest in Hollow House since you’ve taken up residence.”

      “Before СКАЧАТЬ