Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

“To hell with you,” she said in English under her breath, and slammed the nursery door behind her.

It was barely even an oath. She knew much filthier curses in a variety of languages. Her last lover had liked to hear her swear. But no more. That life had cast Helen off. All she had left in Paris were her debts.

The clock chimed noon. When it stopped, the house was silent. Not a squeak or creak. No sign of Bärchen or the servants, no sound from the attics above or the floors below. She padded over to the staircase and gazed down the dizzying stone spiral that formed the house’s hollow spine. Steps fanned out from the spiral, each one polished and worn down in the center from centuries of use.

“Peter,” she called. “Come back to the nursery, please.”

No reply.

“All right,” she sang out. “I’m coming to find you.”

Who could blame the child for wanting to play a game? Peter had no playmates. She could indulge him, just this once. And it gave her a good excuse to snoop through the house.

By the time Helen had worked her way through the top two floors, it was obvious that the servants were outmatched by the housekeeping. The heavy old furniture was scarred and peeling, the blankets and drapes threadbare and musty, the carpets veiled with a fine layer of cobwebs that separated and curled around her every footstep. The surfaces were furred with a fine white dust that coated the back of her throat and lay salty on her tongue. After a half hour of wiggling under beds and rifling through closets and wardrobes, she was thirsty as if she’d been wandering the desert.

In old houses, the worst furniture was banished to the highest floors. As Helen descended, she expected the furnishings to become newer, lighter, prettier, if just as dusty. In the main rooms, the ones Peter’s mother would have used, the furniture was the same: blackened oak carved into intricate birds, fish, and beasts. The sort of furniture that infested Black Forest hunting lodges, but raw and awkward, as if one of the family’s great-uncles had taken up a late-in-life passion for wood carving and filled the house with his amateur efforts.

Still, if she could get the servants to clean it properly, she might adopt the large sitting room as her own. She could teach Peter just as well there as in the nursery. It would save her from climbing up and down stairs all day long. And though the sofa was backed by a winding serpent with a gaping maw, it was still a more likely setting for seducing a nursemaid than a drafty nursery window seat.

Under one of the beds she found a thin rib from a rack of lamb, riddled with tooth marks. Somewhere in the house was a dog. She’d have to take care to make friends with it.

Still no sign of Peter. Perhaps he was a troubled child, despite his placid looks. If so, this summer wouldn’t be the holiday Bärchen had promised. She’d found him in a booth at Bistro Bélon Bourriche, downing himself in cognac. Within five minutes, he’d offered to pay her to join him for the summer at his family home and teach his nephew English. It would be easy, he said. Bärchen knew how badly she needed money. He was always so kind—famous for his generosity among the boys of Montparnasse and Pigalle.

Helen tapped the rib in her palm as she descended to the ground floor. There, the staircase widened and spread into the foyer, forming a wide, grand structure. At the back of the foyer, the stairs continued through a narrow slot in the floor. To the cellars, no doubt. Exploring down there would be an adventure.

Helen’s trunk still sat by the front door, waiting for the steward to bring it upstairs. On the near side of the foyer, tobacco smoke leaked from the library. It smelled heavenly. She hadn’t been able to afford cigarettes for months. She’d almost ceased yearning for the taste of tobacco, but her mouth watered for it now. Bärchen would give her a cigarette, if she asked for one. But no. She wouldn’t disturb him. He had kept a brave face all through their journey. He deserved some time alone with his grief.

She padded into the murky parlor opposite the library and pulled aside the heavy green drapes, holding her breath against the dust. The sun was high above the mountains. The lake gleamed with light. Dust motes swarmed the air. The sunlight turned the oak furniture chalky, the heavy brocade upholstery nearly pastel. The walls were festooned with hunting trophies—stuffed and mounted heads of deer, wild goats, even two wolves and a bear. Their glass eyes stared down through the cobwebs as if alarmed by the state of the housekeeping.

She skated her finger through the dust on the windowsill. P-E-T-E-R, she wrote in block letters. When she began the boy’s lessons there’d be no need for work books and pencils. Any flat surface could be used as a slate. It might embarrass the servants into doing their work.

Stepping back from the window, her foot jittered over a lump on the floor. Two tiny bones nestled under the carpet’s green fringe—dry old gnawed leavings from a pair of veal chops. She tucked them in her pocket with the lamb bone. Then in the dining room she found a jawbone under a chair—small, from a roast piglet. She put it in her pocket.

Helen found her way to the kitchen at the back of the ground floor. An old woman chopped carrots at the table, her wrinkled jowls quivering with every blow of the knife. Beside her, the steward crouched over a cup of coffee. He was even older than the cook, his skin liver-spotted with age. They watched as Helen poured herself a glass of water from the stoneware jug.

“Peter likes to play games,” she said in German. “I can’t find him anywhere.”

The cook began fussing with the coffee pot. The steward kept to his seat. “We haven’t seen the boy, Fräulein York.”

“I hardly expected bad behavior from him on my very first morning at Meresee.”

“The boy is with the nursemaid. He is always with the nursemaid.” The steward’s tone was stern.

“How can you say that? He’s certainly not with her now.” She brushed cobwebs from her dress. “I’ve searched the house thoroughly, as you can very well see.”

“You must continue to look for him, Fräulein,” the steward said.

The cook bit into a carrot. Her jowls wobbled with every crunch.

They were united against her, but it only made sense. They were old country people and she was just an English stranger in a dirty, dusty dress. Raising her voice would win her no friends.

“Could you bring my trunk up to my room?” She smiled brightly. “I’d like to change out of my traveling clothes.”

“Yes, Fräulein York,” the steward said.

The cook went back to chopping carrots. The steward sipped his coffee. Did they expect her to retreat now?

“There is still the matter of Peter,” Helen said.

The cook’s knife slipped. Carrots scattered across the floor.

“The French girl takes care of the boy.” The cook’s words were barely understandable, some kind of antique form of Bavarian. “He’s not allowed in the kitchen.”

The steward’s mouth worked, thin lips stretching over his stained teeth.

“Is that true?” Helen asked the steward. “Why not?”

The steward covered the cook’s hand with his own. “The boy’s welfare is your business now, Fräulein.”

Helen found Peter at the back of the freezing cellar, hunkering in front of a door set deep into rock. The walls were caked with frost. The boy’s breath puffed like smoke.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked. “Come back upstairs now.”

“Bitte , miss,” the boy said. He wedged two fingers under the door, then crouched lower, head bobbing as he worked them deeper and deeper. His hair was neatly parted, two blond wings on either side of a streak of skin pale as a grub.