Carol O’Connell - Winter House

Not there. Where then?

They had not gone upstairs. After searching the kitchen and the sewing room, he returned to the front of the house to find Cleo and Lionel standing by the entrance to the foyer. With only a nod to their guest, they turned around and left. Charles heard the front door close behind them. Well, this was a bit backward, the hosts leaving the house in advance of the guest. „A most unconventional dinner party,“ said Nedda Winter. He turned to see her standing behind the bar, uncorking a bottle of wine. „My family doesn’t entertain much anymore.“ She smiled, quite her old self again, such a charming smile. She tapped a button on a control panel next to the bar, and the sound system died off to blessed silence. „Ah, that’s better. I’d like to thank you for not asking me where I’ve been for all these years.“

„To be honest, I wasn’t sure that you were Red Winter. I don’t know the story as well as I thought.“

„Do you like jazz, Mr. Butler?“

Old-fashioned record albums had appeared on the bar, stacked up beside two wineglasses. Charles examined them one by one. Any audiophile could date them back to the middle of the last century. „This is a wonderful collection.“

„Unfortunately, they’re all warped and scratched. And all the records that my sister stacked up for the party are not my idea of music.“

„Mine either.“ He pulled a record from the album cover. It was made of hard plastic that predated vinyl, cassettes and magnetically encoded discs. And it was ruined. What a great pity.

Nedda turned away from him to study the control panel for the sound system. „I was hoping you could show me how to play the radio on this thing. It has a beautiful sound quality, and I know a station that only plays jazz from the thirties and forties. I tried to tune it in once, but that made Cleo cry. She said I changed the programming for all her favorite stations. She doesn’t know how to work it, either.“

„And neither do I.“ For a birthday present, Mallory had rewired his apartment with a similar sound system, and, yes, the sound quality was incredibly beautiful, but the control panel she had installed was equally daunting. „I have one at home, but it’s a different model and the buttons are color coded.“ Mallory had programmed his stations and painted the selection buttons with red nail polish.

He strolled over to the antique radio that she had played last night. „Well, we know this works.“

The front windows were open. The curtains blew inward, Duke Ellington and his band flowed out into the street.

Charles Buder was in Luddite heaven. He ended the evening painlessly, sitting outside on the stone steps. The warm wind of Indian summer ruffled his hair to the tune of rippling piano keys. They were finishing off the last bottle in a prolonged good-bye.

„I haven’t gotten soused on wine since I was twelve years old,“ said Nedda Winter.

„I gather your upbringing was rather liberal.“

„You have no idea.“ She looked up at the face of her house and smiled. „It was a party that went on for years. My parents were jazz babies, and they were never bothered by nice people from good families. Our guests were miles more interesting.“ She ticked off an impressive list of actors, writers, gangsters and gamblers who had passed out at the dining room table. „But I liked the chorus girls best. They gave me a taste for cold beer and taught me to curse.“ She produced a pack of cigarettes from the folds of her shawl. „And they taught me how to blow smoke rings.“ She blew one now and it hung in the still night air. „You don’t like my house much, do you?“

„I suppose it makes me nervous.“

„Yes, I noticed that. But it didn’t bother you the other night, did it? Not with all those policemen, all that activity – and this music on the radio.“

„Well, no.“

„Oh,“ said Nedda – big smile, „how the house loves a good party. I’m afraid we put on a rather poor show tonight. Not nearly enough people – and that dreary music.“ She caressed the wrought-iron railing. „Poor house. It was made for a wilder nightlife.“

Though he would not describe the crime scene as a wild party, he took her point. „So, tonight, I’m seeing the house out of context. The interior – that was actually designed tor large gatherings, wasn’t it?“

She nodded and refreshed his glass with more wine. „My father’s work. He gutted the front room years before I was born. The staircase was the main event. It works best with a hundred people lounging on the steps, slugging back whiskey and tapping their feet to very loud music. Late in the evening, the music was live. Musicians came by from every club in town. Jam sessions till sunup. Piano men and men with horns, women with voices that could belt out a song to bring the roof down. Everyone in motion, dancing, even when they were sitting down. Now the mirrors – Daddy hung them up to create a bigger crowd than the house could hold. He even slanted the walls to give the mirrors more scope.“

„That’s why you can never avoid the multiple reflections?“

She nodded. „You could never escape my father’s illusion. All that energy. The people and the music fed the house.“ Her hand rubbed the stone step she sat upon. „Poor house. Now it’s starving – dying for the next big party.“

As Charles lit the last of her cigarettes, he glanced at his watch, startled to realize that another hour had passed. He liked this woman tremendously. However, he knew she must be tired. With some regret, he rose to take his leave, to see her safely behind the door, and to lose the pleasure of her company.

Lionel Winter loved one thing in all the world, the 1939 Rolls-Royce – the Wraith. In the last two years of production before the war, only 491 had ever existed. The Wraith had been his father’s car, and it was in near-perfect running condition. The ride was smooth and utterly quiet. He paid lavish tips to the garage attendant for a little magic from an aerosol can that always made the leather smell like new – like 1939, the year when he had sat upon his father’s lap and steered the Wraith down city streets. Whenever he drove this car, he lived in that year.

Tonight, however, it was difficult to escape the twenty-first century, and all his thoughts were centered upon his niece. What was she playing at? Since Bitty had abandoned the practice of law at her father’s firm, she had become more and more peculiar, or so it seemed on those days when she appeared in his line of vision. Most of the time, he hardly noticed her. He could not entirely blame the wine for the night’s disaster. How long had she been harboring these suspicions, and how much could she really know?

Flying down the Henry Hudson Parkway, boats on the water, the town alight – electric – New York at night. How he loved to drive, always shuttling between the summer house and town. That was his whole life, going nowhere with great speed and always alone.

His solitary thoughts turned to Nedda. Why was she still alive? At the hospice, an ancient doctor had virtually promised him that his older sister would be dead before the month was out, that no tests were necessary to tell him that there was no hope of a cure. All the signs of end-stage cancer had been there, her skin a ghastly yellow, her belly bloated, and the rest of her body wasted. And yet, months later, Nedda had come home to Winter House, and there she resided – in splendid good health.

Doctors were so untrustworthy. Hardly science, was it?

Obviously, his older sister had been woefully misdiagnosed. So she lived – in his house – and every day Nedda summoned up the gall to look him in the eye. Every smile in his direction was a mockery. And now she was using Bitty, turning his niece against her own family. Lionel’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and the car accelerated down the parkway. He sped past the taillights of slower cars, the electric yellow windows of tall buildings and bright reflections on the river, going faster and faster.