*

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Chapter 2

Miss Micklewhite unlocks the Manor House door promptly at ten a.m. the next morning.  She is Teresa’s stereotype of the English spinster.  Dressed in a tweed skirt, a blue sweater set and sensible shoes, Miss Micklewhite has soft pink jowls, twinkling brown eyes, and a puff of white hair.

            “Good morning, dear,” Miss Micklewhite greets Teresa as she turns the sign in the door from “closed” to “open.”  “Did you have a good night?”

            “No, actually.  I was going to ask you.  How much time does one pound get on the electric meter?”

            “Oh, about four hours, give or take.  Do you need some coins?”

            “No,” Teresa answers.  “Last night the lights went out about forty minutes after I put a coin in.  And then they went back on a few minutes later.”

            “Oh, dear.  Up to her tricks again, is she?”  Miss Micklewhite shakes her head and smiles.

            “Who is?” Teresa asks.

            “Margaret, our ghost.”

            Teresa blinks.  “Your ghost?”

            “Oh, yes.  She does like to play with the electric.  I hope that—” Miss Micklewhite breaks off at the sound of tires crunching down the gravel drive.  “Here are our new guests,” she says, and walks out to meet the arrivals.

            Teresa watches from the flagstone patio as five people emerge from the blue mini-van: mother, father and three children all blond and pink-cheeked.

            “Stefan Roorda,” the man says, holding his hand out to Teresa. They exchange names.  The mother is Rhoda.  The son, Tom, appears to be about nine years old.  The little girls, Elsa and Susannah, are preschoolers, maybe about five and three.  They are incredibly cute in denim overalls with red blouses.

            Miss Micklewhite produces a room key.  Rhoda takes the girls with her to unload the van. Stefan and his son decide to take the tour.  Two more visitors join them, an elderly couple on holiday who come from Manchester.

            Miss Micklewhite begins the tour in the oldest part of the house, constructed in 1165.  Teresa stares at the bulky stone fireplace and finds it hard to imagine any house surviving for over eight hundred years.  Later, the manor belonged to a relative of Henry the VIII.  The scarred wood floors and the oak paneled walls seem to glow with the inner warmth of years of human occupation. 

            The next room, with its hefty desk, was the Manor House office.  Here the lord and his manager conducted business, kept accounts, and discussed the needs of the land.  The big, irregular beams, Miss Micklewhite tells them, came from ships.  Builders liked to use the wood from ships because it was already well-seasoned.

            Teresa gazes up at the ceiling.  She wonders if the beams were reclaimed from ships wrecked by wreckers.  A longtime fan of Daphne du Maurier’s books, Teresa is alert to references regarding the pirates and smugglers who took advantage of the many bays and inlets of the Cornish coast.

            As they follow Miss Micklewhite from room to room, Stefan translates her narrative to Tom.  Teresa likes listening to the sounds of the Dutch language.  Not quite as guttural as German, it still lacks the lyrical lilt of Spanish or Italian.  Between the office and the kitchen there is a small chapel with a narrow, stained-glass window.  The room is Shaker-plain, with a stone niche intended to hold a crucifix.  On a table spread with a red damask runner are a chalice and a pewter bowl.  Miss Mickelwhite explains that after Henry VIII separated from the Catholic Church and created the Church of England, practicing Catholics went into hiding.  From Elizabeth I until the early 1800’s, Catholics were often persecuted.  Hence the presence of a “priest’s hole” beneath the trap door in the floor.  Pulling up the door with its iron ring, she shows them a small room like a root cellar.  Teresa shivers as she considers what it might have felt like to hide in such a cold, dank cell. 

            Kitchens always fascinate Teresa, no matter to which era they belong.  The Manor kitchen was remodeled several times over.  The current one dates from the mid-1800s.  The kitchen is sparsely appointed.  Three copper pans hang on one wall.  There is a large fireplace big enough to stand in, a small baking oven beside it and a chopping block whose surface has been worn to a concave curve.  Teresa closes her eyes and imagines what this room must have been like when it was in use.  There would have been embers glowing in the grate, a pot of stew cooking.  The air would have been hot and filled with the fragrance of baking bread.  On opening her eyes again, Teresa is washed by a wave of sadness, that there is no life in this room that once was likely the heart of this venerable house.

            Having seen the first floor, the group follows Miss Micklewhite up a flight of stairs to the rooms above.  The first bedchamber is typical of what Teresa has seen in other historic houses.  A four-poster bed with heavy curtains dominates the room.  Beside it stands a washstand with matching pitcher, bowl, and shaving brush.

            “This was the main bedroom of the house,” Miss Micklewhite intones.  She seems a bit bored with her recitation.  Teresa thinks that she, herself, would also tire of giving the same speech several times each day, all summer long.

            Tom tugs on his father’s sleeve and whispers to him.  Stefan puts up a finger for Miss Micklewhite’s attention and says, “My son wishes to know where the children slept.”

            “Good question,” replies Miss Mickelwhite.  She must have been a teacher, Teresa decides.

            Miss Micklewhite bends down, lifts up the bedskirt, and shows Tom the trundle bed beneath. 

            “Children your age might sleep here, in their parents’ room.  Babies had cradles like the one you’ll see in next room.  Older children shared the second bedroom or slept together in the attic.”

            Stefan translates all this information to Tom.  Miss Micklewhite waits until Stefan has finished, and then she clasps her hands as if she is about to begin an aria.  “And now,” she says, “I should like to tell you a tale.”  She pauses; her air of boredom is replaced by an electric sparkle.  “It is a tale of murder and destruction and great sorrow.”  Another pause as if Miss Micklewhite is waiting for their attention, but there is no need.  She has it.