Madame Desjardins
When Natalie Childress walked into her grandfather's office, she felt as though she were entering a museum. Although most reporters had already made the switch to computers, an old manual typewriter sat on the extension of his desk. Tears came to her eyes as she recalled the last time she visited him at the paper.
"I just saw him a few months ago when I came home at Christmas," she told Bronson Jagger, the late Roderick Childress's lawyer and a classmate of Natalie's from high school. "He seemed in good health."
"I understand that's often the way it is with old people," Bronson said. "They're fine one day, and the next .... But he did have a good, long life."
"I can almost see him sitting in this chair. After losing both his wife and son, this newspaper became his whole life."
"He still had a granddaughter he doted on. He and I spoke of you whenever we met."
"Grandpa raised me after my parents died," Natalie added, feeling her throat constrict as she fought back her tears. "He was always very supportive of everything I did. Even when I moved away after graduating college."
"He was proud of you. You were covering major news stories in New York while he was writing about day-to-day happenings in a rural New England town."
"Maybe I shouldn't have left. Running a newspaper, even a small weekly one, was probably too much for a man in his nineties."
"Your grandfather had the means to retire decades ago. He didn't want to, and he certainly wouldn't have wanted you to forego your own career for his sake."
Natalie walked behind the desk and sat in her grandfather's chair as though the simple piece of furniture could give her some of the old man's strength and resolve.
"Did you know the Courier has been in the Childress family since the late 1700s?" she asked.
"No, I didn't."
"My great, great—whatever—grandfather, Simeon Childress, was the son of a minister. He was a divinity student at Harvard, intent on following in his father's footsteps, when the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain became strained. Against his father's wishes, he wrote a pamphlet protesting taxation without representation. When the British further antagonized the colonies by levying more taxes and passing laws that restricted trade, he left Harvard, joined the Sons of Liberty and began a weekly newspaper to help further the patriot cause."
"No wonder Roderick refused to pull the plug on the paper."
"Pull the plug? Do you mean shut it down? Why would he even consider doing such a thing?" Natalie cried.
"Surely, you're aware that the Courier is operating in the red?"
"No. I know it's never been a big moneymaker, but I didn't know things were that bad."
"It's been losing money for the past five years. More and more people are relying on the radio and television to get their news. If it weren't for his other investments, your grandfather would have bankrupted himself."
"What you're saying then is that I've inherited a white elephant."
"Basically, yes. Ten years ago, you could have sold it and made a small profit, but now ...."
"Now, my best bet is to liquidate it. Right?"
"Yes. But your grandfather also had a portfolio of stocks that have done well over the years. And then there's his house. A lot of people like those old colonial homes. You could probably get quite a bit for it, not to mention all those antiques he had."
Natalie closed her eyes. It made her feel sick talking about selling off her grandfather's belongings.
"I don't want to make any decisions right now," she announced after brief reflection. "I'll have to think about it."
Natalie went through her grandfather’s desk, hoping to find bank statements that would reveal how badly off the Courier really was, but she found no financial papers. The drawers contained only the tools of her Roderick’s trade: pens, notepads, typewriter ribbons, paper clips and well-worn copies of The Associated Press Stylebook, The Miriam Webster Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus.
Meanwhile, the filing cabinets were a repository for photographs, rough drafts and marked-up articles that appeared in the Courier. Time did not permit her to look through all the material, but a cursory examination revealed that Roderick Childress had folders for every month going back to 1927 when he took over as editor following his father's tragic death.
"I never knew my grandfather was such a pack rat," she said as she closed the last of the overstuffed cabinet drawers. "It doesn't look like he ever threw anything out."
Midafternoon, she left the Courier's Main Street office and walked along the tree-lined side road to her grandfather's house, a three-story Federal mansion designed by Salem’s Samuel McIntire. She stood on the curb looking at the house for several minutes.
"Bronson is right. I could probably get a few million this place."
However, the thought of selling it saddened her. Like the Courier, the house had been in the family for more than two hundred years. Many generations of Childresses lived and died under its roof. Although her grandfather breathed his last in a nearby hospital, he had been born in the house ninety-two years ago and lived there his entire life.
After unlocking the door and stepping across the threshold, she immediately turned to the right and gazed up at the portrait of Simeon Childress that hung above the fireplace mantel. Those steely blue eyes that once gazed in defiance at the British Empire seemed to implore her to stand her ground.
How dare you take the easy way out? they seemed to ask. Are you not a Childress?
Standing in that formal living room, surrounded by furniture that dated back to the days of the Founding Fathers, she felt much more at home than she did in her studio apartment in Manhattan saddened her.
"I don't have to sell the house," she told herself. "It's not as though I have to make mortgage payments on it. I own it free and clear."
But how could she afford both the rent on her apartment and the taxes and upkeep on her grandfather's house? If she wanted to live in it, she would need to quit her job in New York.
"I suppose I could become a freelance journalist, but there's no steady income in that. And as for the Courier ...."
Was it an optical illusion or did Simeon Childress's steely blue eyes follow her as she paced the living room floor, trying to come to a decision? She looked up at the portrait as though asking her revered ancestor for his advice.
"How long could I afford to keep a failing newspaper? I might wind up losing both it and this house."
Simeon Childress had risked much more than money when he started the newspaper. He and his fellow patriots bravely went up against the most powerful empire in the world. His inflammatory writings would have been seen as seditious or treasonous and might have gotten him jailed or even killed.
"If I don't succeed, what's the worst that could happen to me? It wouldn't be the end of the world. I'd just have to go to New York or Boston and get a job with another paper."
By the time Natalie took her suitcase up to the second-floor guest room, she had already made up her mind to try to follow in her grandfather's footsteps.
* * *
Early Monday morning, two days after Roderick Childress was laid in his grave, his granddaughter sat at his desk in the offices of the Weekly Courier. When the paper's two reporters showed up for work, they were worried that their livelihoods were in danger. Although they both attended the funeral services for the late editor, neither had asked the heiress what she intended to do with the paper.
"Good morning," Natalie cheerfully greeted her employees when they entered the building. "Could I see you both in my office?"
Uh-oh! Here it comes, thought Mary Jo Robb, a middle-aged woman who had been with the Courier since graduating from junior college.
"Before you begin updating your resumes," the new editor joked after they were all seated around Roderick Childress's former desk, "let me assure you that I have no intention of shutting down the paper. Nor do I intend to sell it."
"Are you going to run it yourself?" asked Morris Westfall, a man four months short of turning sixty-five and thus eligible to apply for Medicare and Social Security should the paper flounder under the new leadership.
"Yes. I have some experience in the field of journalism."
"Your grandfather was so proud of you, working for one of New York's large daily papers," Mary Jo commented.
"Thank you. Now, I've been told the Courier is losing money."
"It's hard for a weekly paper to compete with faster news sources," Morris said in defense of their failed efforts to boost circulation.
"And even with local stories that don't make the mainstream media," Mary Jo added, "in a small town like this, by the time the paper comes out on Sunday, the news has already spread through the grapevine."
"If we want to turn things around, we'll need to give our readers a reason to buy the paper. Tell me how the two of you divided up the work in the past," the editor said.
"I wrote the women's section, which consisted of recipes and household and gardening tips. I also handled the social pages: birth announcements, engagements and the like."
"Does that include the obituaries?"
"No. Drafts are submitted from the funeral home, and Morris just polishes them up before they're printed."
"And what else do you do?" Natalie asked the elderly reporter.
"I helped your grandfather cover the local news: elections, fires, traffic accidents, community events. This isn't New York. We don't have a lot of major stories."
"I want the both of you to continue what you've been doing. However, I want to concentrate my efforts not on current events but on nostalgic pieces."
"What do you mean?" Mary Jo wondered.
"As far as covering the news goes, we'll never be able to compete with CNN. I want to give people something they won't get through other news outlets. I briefly looked in my grandfather's file cabinets. He's got articles and photos going back to the Twenties. I think some of our younger readers would like to learn more about the history of our town. Maybe see how Main Street looked during the Depression or read about their parents' lives during the Second World War."
Morris, a lifelong history buff, was excited by the idea.
"The pictures in Roderick's file cabinets are just a small portion of what we've got. There are at least a dozen boxes of old photographs in the attic. Some date back to the Civil War."
"Maybe all three of us can infuse nostalgia into the Courier. For instance, if we have a photo of a woman winning a baking competition at the county fair, Mary Jo can print her blue-ribbon recipe or write a little where-are-they-now piece on her."
"That's a great idea!" the female reporter exclaimed. "I must admit I'm getting a little bored with casserole recipes that use Campbell's cream of mushroom soup."
"All right, then," Natalie announced, placing her hands palm down on the desk, a gesture her grandfather often used. "We've got our work cut out for us. I'm going to start by going through those old pictures in the attic."
* * *
In only seven months, the Courier's balance sheet was out of the red and into the black. Subscriptions were up thirty percent, and circulation had nearly doubled.
"Here's the last of the boxes from the attic," Morris announced, temporarily placing a dusty cardboard carton on the editor's desk. "What do you want me to do with it?"
"Just put it on the credenza, if you don't mind. I'll go through the pictures later and then file them away with the others."
Since taking over the paper, Natalie had created an efficient archival system that incorporated back issues and photographs with the documents in her grandfather's filing cabinet. She had even hired a high school student on a work-study program to spend four hours a day compiling a computerized database.
Once she finished writing her article on Senator John F. Kennedy's brief stop in their town while campaigning for president, she poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and opened the box of photographs. She did not need to read the captions on the back to know that the pictures were not as old as the others that had been brought down from the attic. The clothing and hairstyles of the people and the cars parked on the streets were indicative of the Twenties, the decade when Roderick Childress was learning the newspaper business from his father.
I'm glad Grandpa kept these, she thought. I'm sure our readers will love seeing them as much as I do.
Each week, Natalie dedicated an entire page of the Courier to old photographs. The page was entitled "Remember When" and was one of the most popular features of the paper.
"Oh, my God! This a Grandpa!" she exclaimed after seeing his name written on the reverse side of a 1928 photo.
Mary Jo, who overheard her, came into the office.
"Can I see?" she asked.
"Certainly."
"I often tried to imagine what he looked like when he was young," the reporter said, leaning over the editor's shoulder to get a good look. "He was quite handsome. You have his eyes."
"People often said I resembled my father's side of the family. I can see why now."
"You've got to put this one in the paper."
"Maybe I'll write a biographical article on him, as well," Natalie declared, excited by her find. "I can run it on the front page as a memorial to him. Hopefully, there are more pictures of him in this box."
"I can help you look through them if you'd like," Mary Jo volunteered.
"Would you? That would be great."
For the remainder of the workday, the two women searched through the box of photographs, often finding it difficult to read the faded handwriting on the back of them.
"I think this is your grandfather," the reporter announced, handing over a picture of a young man standing beside what could only be described as a flapper.
"It looks like him," the editor replied, but her attention quickly shifted from her grandparent to the woman beside him. "But who is this with him?"
She turned the photo over to read the caption on the reverse side. "Madame Desjardins. Have you ever heard of her?"
"The name sounds familiar."
It took more than forty minutes for the memory to coalesce in Mary Jo's mind.
"The castle!" she cried, startling her editor with her sudden outburst.
"What castle?"
"Desjardins Castle. That's where I heard the name. The castle must have been named after the woman in that picture."
"What exactly is Desjardins Castle?"
"It was once a huge mansion, but it was destroyed by a fire. Little of it remains except for the foundation and a stone staircase."
"A fire?" Natalie echoed, narrowing her eyes as she tried to nudge her memory. "I remember seeing an article in my grandfather's filing cabinet about a fire that destroyed a mansion near Gadsden Lake."
"That's the one. Desjardins Castle was built alongside the lake."
"If you come across any pictures of the house, put them aside. After I've written the article on my grandfather, I might write one on the castle and its owner."
* * *
Natalie navigated her Honda CR-X along the dirt roads through heavily wooded areas in search of the ruins of Desjardins Castle. After several wrong turns, she finally found what remained of the mansion by the lake. Wanting to get a better look at the ruins, she parked the car and walked through the weeds to what had once been a magnificent garden.
Neither the foundation nor the curving stone staircase gave any hint as to what the house may have looked like before the fire. However, she had found three photographs of the place in her grandfather's filing cabinet. No doubt, the readers would want to see before and after photos in the article, so she had taken her camera along with her. As she raised the viewfinder to her eye, she caught a glimpse of movement at the top of the steps.
"Hello? Is anyone there?" she called, but no one answered.
A sudden chilly breeze on an otherwise hot and humid day caused her to shiver. Realizing how vulnerable she was out in the woods alone, she quickly snapped several shots of the castle's remains and returned to her car.
"I wonder what type of woman Madame Desjardins was that she would want to live in such a remote area?" she asked herself.
That one question led to several others. Who exactly was Madame Desjardins? Where did she come from? Whatever became of her? How well did Roderick Childress know her? Why did she become a recluse in her later years?
When Natalie returned to her office, she pulled her grandfather's article on the fire out of the filing cabinet. His only reference to the owner of the castle was that she was born in Paris and later moved to New York before building her castle in New England.
To build a mansion that size, she must have been well off, the editor reasoned. Perhaps I might learn more about her in New York.
After quickly writing an article about the castle that would appear in the following week's edition of the Courier, she packed an overnight bag and headed south. Her first stop was the daily newspaper where she used to work.
"I never heard of a Madame Desjardins," her former editor said. "But you're welcome to browse through our back issues and see if you come across anything on her."
Thankfully, the paper had a fairly extensive database. She was able to find dates for at least a dozen columns on Antoinette Desjardins. While reading the articles on microfilm, she took notes on a yellow-lined legal pad.
Antoinette was born in France where she became a dancer and appeared at the Moulin Rouge in Paris. While performing there, she met Darian Camus, an American costume designer. The two had a whirlwind romance and were married just weeks after their first encounter. The couple settled in New York where the French beauty joined the Ziegfeld Follies. The Camuses soon became known throughout the city for the extravagant parties they hosted where alcohol ran freely despite Prohibition.
Since she could sing as well as dance, Antoinette graduated from the chorus to a larger role in the production. She was well on her way to stardom when tragedy struck: Darian Camus was killed in a traffic accident while driving under the influence. Since there were no articles written about Madame Desjardins after her husband's death, Natalie assumed that was when she moved to New England.
Although Natalie knew more about the mysterious Frenchwoman than she did before she went to New York, there were still many unanswered questions, not the least of which concerned what eventually happened to her.
She must be dead by now. But how and when did she die?
With no answers to be found in the back issues of the newspaper, she returned to her hotel room. She planned on staying the night and making the drive back in the morning. While she was organizing her notes, an idea came to her.
One of the articles claimed that the couple was famous for their parties. Surely, then, they were no strangers to high society.
She went to the telephone on the bedside table and called Liza Odom, a woman who had authored books on the Astors, Vanderbilts, DuPonts and, most recently, J.P. Morgan. Liza possessed a fount of knowledge about the social elite.
"Antoinette Desjardins? Yes, I've heard of her," the author replied to Natalie's question.
"Can you tell me something about her?"
"Why don't we talk over lunch?" Liza suggested. "There's a delightful little bistro in the Village, not far from my loft."
"I'll see you there," the editor said and grabbed her microcassette recorder so that she would not have to waste time taking notes.
When Natalie arrived at the restaurant, she was surprised to see that Ms. Odom had brought someone with her. Although the stranger's hair was dyed a carrot-orange, it was obvious beneath the thick layers of makeup on her face that she was as old as or even older than Roderick Childress had been when he passed away.
"I'd like you to meet Ruby Golding," the author introduced the nonagenarian. "She was in the Follies with Antoinette."
"Really? I never dreamed I would meet someone who actually knew her!"
"We were great friends," the old woman said. "Even after she moved to the boondocks!"
"You visited her castle?"
"Oh, yes! I was a houseguest of hers many times. She always threw the best parties! Lots of us were willing to make the long drive from New York to attend them."
"So, she still threw parties after her husband died?"
"That was her way of dealing with grief, to surround herself with crowds of people, music and dancing. And she always served genuine alcohol brought down from Canada by bootleggers, not bathtub gin."
"I saw an old photo of her. She was a very beautiful woman."
"That she was! The men adored her, and the women envied her both here in the city as well as up there in God's country. There was one man, in particular, a newspaperman."
Can Ruby be referring to my grandfather? Natalie wondered.
"He was quite smitten with Antoinette. Although he was a few years younger than her, that didn't seem to matter to him. He followed her around like a lovesick puppy."
"Do you know what eventually became of her?"
"I last saw her in the summer of 1929. She seemed as full of life as ever, but then I heard from a mutual friend that she lost her money in the crash and wanted to return to Paris. I never saw or heard from her again. I assume she went back to dancing at the Moulin Rouge or one of the other cabarets in Montmartre."
"If she did return to France," Natalie said, "it was at a much later time. My research indicates that she lived in the castle until it burned down in 1937, but by that time, she had become a recluse."
"A recluse? That doesn't seem at all like the Antoinette I knew," Ruby declared. "But then losing both her husband and her money could have affected her mind. The poor thing."
* * *
"Your article on Desjardins Castle stirred up quite a hornet's nest," Mary Jo announced when Natalie returned to work later that week.
"What do you mean?"
"It appears to have made quite an impression on many of the teenagers and youngsters in town because they've been flocking to the ruins. Things have gotten so bad that the town council has decided to bulldoze the entire site."
"Why would they do that?"
"They're afraid someone will get hurt climbing on that stone staircase."
Natalie went to the Mr. Coffee machine, poured herself a cup and then walked into her office. The old manual typewriter still sat on the desk's extension, but there was an IBM computer nearby. As the editor waited for the newly installed WordPerfect program to load, she sipped her coffee and thought about her conversation with Ruby Golding.
Could her grandfather have been in love with Madame Desjardins? He would have been in his early twenties when she moved into her castle. At such a young, impressionable age, he would no doubt have been susceptible to such a beautiful, cosmopolitan dancer.
He didn't marry my grandmother until he was nearly forty. Could it be he married so late in life because he still carried a torch for the reclusive Frenchwoman?
Throughout the day, the editor remained at her keyboard, typing in the details of Antoinette Desjardins' life. It made for an interesting article; however, she could not tell the final chapter of the biographical story since she had no idea what eventually happened to the dancer.
For all I know, she might still be alive somewhere in Paris. After all, Ruby Golding is still living, and the two of them were about the same age.
When she could think of nothing further to add to the article, she backed up the file onto a floppy disk and turned off the computer. Mary Jo and Morris had already left for the day, so she turned out the lights and locked the door. It was still light outside when got behind the wheel of her CR-X. On impulse, she headed not for her grandfather's colonial home, which now belonged to her, but to the ruins of Madame Desjardins' castle.
She shut off the Honda's engine and stepped out of the vehicle. It was a quiet world she entered. There was not a bird's chirp or leaf's rustle to be heard. It was the silence of a church—or of a tomb. She did not even hear her own footsteps as she neared the remains of the stone staircase that once led to the elaborate mansion.
Natalie closed her eyes and tried to imagine the Gatsby-like parties that were once held there before the fire destroyed the house. Jazz music would play as flappers danced and glasses of alcohol, forbidden by Prohibition, were poured, downed and refilled.
Grandpa probably attended some of those parties, she thought, finding it hard to imagine her beloved elderly grandparent acting like an irresponsible youth. Was he in love with Antoinette?
Other questions, all to which she had no answers, began to flit across the editor's mind. Why had the vivacious dancer become a recluse? Was it really because she lost a fortune in the stock market crash or was it prompted by a disastrous love affair?
"I don't suppose I'll ever know," Natalie said, giving the ruins one last look before the bulldozers came to tear them down.
As she turned to leave, once again she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. Was it a teenager come to explore the fabled castle?
"Who's there?" she called. "You shouldn't be on that staircase. It's too dangerous."
A figure suddenly appeared at the top of the stone steps, but it was no teenager. It was a woman in 1920s-style attire.
"Who are you?" the editor asked.
The mysterious woman vanished before her eyes, but before the specter disappeared, Natalie got a good look at her face. Despite her trembling hands, she was able to safely drive back to town.
"I've seen a ghost!" she announced to the empty rooms when she entered her home.
She had never believed in phantoms or anything else that even hinted at the supernatural. Having seen one with her own eyes, however, she could no longer remain skeptical.
An hour later, Natalie sat at her kitchen table, her uneaten dinner on a plate in front of her, trying to come to terms with what she had seen. The face of the ghost had been that of a young woman, not an old one. Did that mean Antoinette died at a young age? If so, then surely she died in America, not France, yet there was no record of her death.
"If only I knew what happened to her! If I could just learn ...."
Having seen a ghost, her mind suddenly became open to other paranormal possibilities. Could the living communicate with the dead? If so, perhaps a psychic could help her find answers to the questions that plagued her.
* * *
Natalie had no idea what to expect when she rang Katia Wilford's doorbell. Images of gypsy fortunetellers often seen at carnivals mixed with those of Macbeth's Weird Sisters in her imagination. She was surprised to discover the psychic was a petite young blonde with blue eyes who resembled a high school cheerleader.
"Are you Katia?" the editor asked.
"Yes, I am. You must be Miss Childress. Won't you come in? I just made a pot of Earl Grey, if you'd like some."
The psychic told Natalie to make herself comfortable in the living room while she poured the tea. After the two women dispensed with the usual small talk, Katia put down her cup and leaned back on her wing chair.
"I'm going to see if I can find answers to the questions you have," she announced.
The psychic closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
"I see a woman who has known great sadness," she said, her eyes still closed to the world around her. "She has left her native country to live in America with the man she loves. Unfortunately, he died young. She cannot bear to remain in the city where everything reminds her of him, so she escapes to the country where she builds a great house and surrounds herself with music, laughter and happy people; but beneath her false gaiety, she is heartbroken."
"What about my grandfather?" Natalie asked. "Do you see him?"
"There is a handsome young man who attends the widow's parties, a local man, not one from the city. He runs a newspaper that he inherited when his father died."
"Yes. That's him."
"He is quite taken with the woman. He makes several attempts to court her, but she is not interested in him or any other man. His persistence causes her to avoid him altogether. Yet the more she spurns him the more obsessed he becomes with her."
"Obsessed?"
Natalie did not like the negative connotations of the word. She could sympathize with a young man who suffered from unrequited love, but obsession was something else. Could her grandparent have carried things too far?
"He will not let her alone," the psychic continued. "He comes to her house at all hours of the day and night, demanding to see her."
"Grandfather was stalking her?"
"He ... he ...."
Katia's blue eyes suddenly opened and widened. She appeared visibly shaken by what she had seen in her vision.
"I'm afraid that's all," she announced, her voice barely above a whisper.
"What is it?" Natalie demanded to know. "What did you see?"
"Nothing," the psychic lied. "I saw nothing more."
* * *
The next day, as Natalie was debating whether to pay a second call on Katia Wilford or contact a different psychic, construction worker Garth Fincher turned the key in his bulldozer's ignition.
I hate to level what's left of this old place, he thought. There's a lot of history here.
However, the town council had decreed the ruins of Desjardins Castle were a danger to public safety and, as such, were to be destroyed.
"This is it. Sayonara," Garth said and drove forward toward the stone staircase.
* * *
Morris Westfall barged through the door of Natalie's office early the following morning, excited about what he had learned from Garth Fincher.
"What's gotten into you?" she laughed.
"Haven't you heard?" the reporter asked excitedly.
"Heard what?"
"The town had the ruins of Desjardins Castle leveled yesterday."
"What a shame! I almost wish I hadn't written that story."
"Wait! You haven't heard the best part. They found a body buried on the site."
Natalie felt as though the wind were knocked out of her. She wanted to silence her reporter or to put her fingers in her ears to block out the words she knew were coming.
"The medical examiner hasn't made a positive ID yet, but from the bones, he can tell the skeleton belonged to a woman."
"Was there any indication of how she died?" the editor forced herself to ask.
"The skull was cracked open, so he thinks she either fell or was pushed off those stone stairs."
As though she were a psychic herself, Natalie envisioned Antoinette's final moments. Roderick Childress, desperate to gain her affection, had shown up at her home while she was out in the yard. Hoping to avoid an unpleasant confrontation, the Frenchwoman climbed the stone steps to her front door. The despairing suitor tried to prevent her from entering the house by grabbing her arm. She pulled away and fell, hitting her head on the stones beneath her. Her grandfather must have then buried the body rather than report the death to the police.
"It has to be her," Mary Jo declared. "Don't you agree, Natalie? Natalie ...?"
The editor, who had been lost in her own thoughts, forced herself to pay attention to the conversation between her two reporters.
"Sorry. I was thinking about something else. What did you say, Mary Jo?"
"I said the skeleton has to be that of Antoinette Desjardins. That would explain why no one knew what happened to her in later years. She died before her house burned to the ground."
"But what about all the stories that she became a recluse?" Morris argued. "Dozens of people claim to have seen her. Roderick himself swore he saw her walking down the stone steps a week before the fire."
Of course, he'd say that, Natalie thought, realizing the grandparent she had adored, if not actually guilty of murder, had committed a crime by concealing a dead body. He would want everyone to think she was still alive. And the other people who claimed to have seen the reclusive Antoinette walking the grounds of her castle must have seen her ghost, as I did.
"So, can I?" Morris asked.
The question brought her back to the conversation.
"Can you what?"
"Cover the story," the reporter replied. "It's the first time in years something big has occurred in our little town."
"Okay. You go ahead and write the article. We'll run it on the first page."
After Morris left her office in high spirits, Natalie turned to Mary Jo.
"I want you to write a companion piece on Antoinette Desjardins."
"I thought you were doing that."
"There are a few other things I'd like to do. I'll give you my notes from the meeting I had with Ruby Golding, Antoinette's friend from New York. She describes the young widow as quite the party girl. Maybe that's how she died. She could have had too much to drink and fallen down those steps."
"If that's the case, then who buried her? She didn't crawl into an unmarked grave herself."
"Who knows? By all accounts, Antoinette ran with a wild crowd, including bootleggers and gangsters."
"You don't think the mob ...?"
"I don't know what happened to Madame Desjardins, but it's possible she made enemies in New York. Maybe that's the real reason she fled the city and went into hiding in the country."
And that's how easy it was to deflect suspicion away from her grandfather. By using a few choice words such as "wild crowd," "bootleggers" and "gangsters" and the phrases "fled the city" and "hiding in the country," Natalie was able to shift potential blame from a lovesick newspaperman to an unknown member of organized crime. After Mary Jo's article appeared in the Weekly Courier, the unsolved death of Antoinette Desjardins would be attributed to mysterious underworld forces and not to an obsessed and scorned lover.
Besides, Natalie thought, feeling no guilt over her decision to conceal her grandfather's possible role in the Frenchwoman's death, the organized crime element makes for a better newspaper story.
This story was inspired by Antoinette "Madame Sherri" Bramare, a Parisian-born dancer who built a "castle" in West Chesterfield, New Hampshire. The remains of the building (the foundation and stone staircase) still stand and attract sightseers to the New Hampshire woods.
Salem once built his own castle. Too bad the high tide destroyed it.
