“True.”
“That noise didn’t come from the second floor. I’m sure of it.”
“No,” I agreed. “It didn’t.”
She stared at me, eyes narrowed. I sighed, wishing that I had coffee.
“All houses make sounds, Elspeth—especially big houses. My daughter could undoubtedly tell you why—I can’t, though I can guess now and then. All I can tell you is that when the wind’s in the east, we often hear that particular noise from the third floor.”
“Oh.” She relaxed a little, and took another sip of whisky. “Why do you not just leave that door shut, then?”
“There aren’t any doors on the third floor,” I said. “Yet.” I took a sip of my own. The whisky wasn’t Jamie’s special, but it wasn’t at all bad. I could feel it spreading through my middle in a soft cloud of warmth.
“Are you telling me,” Elspeth said, a few moments later, “that you consider an unfinished floor in a new house to be haunted?”
I laughed.
“No, I’m not. I don’t know what does make that noise, but I’m sure it isn’t a ghostly door of some kind. Really,” I added, seeing her still dubious. “Dozens of people have worked up there over the last couple of months, and none of them have died there—nor did any of them ever see or hear anything odd. And you know that’s true,” I finished, pointing my little finger at her, “because if anyone had, the whole Ridge would know about it by now.”
She’d been on the Ridge long enough to realize the truth of this and nodded, relaxing enough to resume drinking whisky. The tension in the room began to ebb, disappearing up the chimney in a wavering white stream of hickory smoke.
“The attic,” she said, after a few minutes of silence. “Why? It’s a remarkably large house, without adding a third floor.”
“Jamie insisted on it,” I said, with a one-shouldered shrug.
She made a noncommittal noise of acknowledgment and went on sipping. But her sparse gray brows were drawn together, and I knew she wouldn’t stop thinking about it.
“My husband is the Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge,” I said. “If there should ever be … an emergency of some kind that compelled some of the tenants to leave their homes, they could take temporary refuge here. I’ve had that happen before,” I added. “Had refugees in my kitchen—in the old house, I mean—for months. Worse than cockroaches.”
Elspeth laughed politely at that, but she wasn’t troubling to hide her thoughts, and I knew that she appreciated exactly what sort of emergency I had in mind.
“Your son,” I said, feeling that I might as well be blunt. “You believe him?”
She swallowed slowly and leaned back, seeming to look at me from a great distance, as one might regard a bear on a mountaintop: interesting, but no great threat.
“You mean, of course, what he told his congregation, about his son’s death. Yes, I believe him. It is a comfort,” she added softly.
I nodded, accepting this. The story had been a comfort to many more people than her—including me, I realized, with a small sense of surprise. But that wasn’t what I was getting at.
“I was thinking specifically of what his son said to him, that he—your son, I mean—would see him again in seven years’ time. Do you believe that? Or rather—does your son believe that?”
Because a man who believed beyond doubt that he would die on a certain date might just feel himself able to take risks before that date.
Elspeth made no bones about understanding what I meant. She sat silently looking at me, rolling the empty cup slowly between the palms of her hands, the air between us thick with the ghosts of barleycorn and burning wood. At last she sighed and, leaning forward, gingerly, put the cup on the table.
“Yes. He does. He’s adjusted his will so that I will be taken care of—should I outlive him, which I actually don’t plan to.”
I waited, silent. She must of course know that Jamie—and thus I—knew about the captain’s attempts to raise a militia unit of Loyalists. I didn’t think the captain could have hidden the gunrunning incident from her.
“Jamie won’t let him do it,” I said, and she glanced sharply up at me.
“Perhaps not,” she said, over-enunciating in the way that people do when slightly drunk. “But it won’t be up to your husband, in the end.” A small, lady-like belch interrupted her, but she ignored it. “General Cornwallis is sending an officer—a very effective officer, supported by the power of the Crown—to raise Loyalist regiments of militia throughout the Carolinas. To suppress local rebellion.”