Where the Summer Ends

Blue Lady, Come Back



•I•

This one starts with a blazing bright day and a trim split-level house looking woodsy against the pines.

Wind shrieked a howling toscin as John Chance slewed his Duesenberg Torpedo down the streaming mountain road. A sudden burst of lightning picked out the sinister silhouette of legend-haunted Corrington Manor, hunched starkly against the storm-swept Adirondacks. John Chance’s square jaw was grim-set as he scowled at the Georgian mansion just ahead. Why had lovely Gayle Corrington’s hysterical phone call been broken off in the midst of her plea for help? Could even John Chance thwart the horror of the Corrington Curse from striking terror on the eve of Gayle and young Hartley’s wedding?

“Humph,” was the sour comment of Curtiss Stryker, who four decades previous had thrilled thousands of pulp readers with his yarns of John Chance, psychic detective. He stretched his bony legs from the cramped interior of his friend’s brand-new Jensen Interceptor and stood scowling through the blacktop’s heat.

“Well, seems like that’s the way a haunted house ought to be approached,” Mandarin went on, joining him on the sticky asphalt driveway.

Stryker twitched a grin. Sixty years had left his tall, spare frame gristled and knobby, like an old pine on a rocky slope. His face was tanned and seamed, set off the bristling white mustache and close-cut hair that had once been blond. Mandarin always thought he looked like an old sea captain—and recalled that Stryker had sailed on a Norwegian whaler in his youth.

“Yeah, and here comes the snarling mastiff,” Stryker obliged him.

A curious border collie peered out from around the Corvette in the carport, wondered if it ought to bark. Russ whistled, and the dog wagged over to be petted.

The yard was just mowed, and someone had put a lot of care into the rose beds that bordered the flagstone walk. That and the pine woods gave the place a cool, inviting atmosphere—more like a mountain cabin than a house only minutes outside Knoxville’s sooty reach. The house had an expensive feel about it. Someone had hired an architect—and a good one—to do the design. Mountain stone and untreated redwood on the outside walls; cedar shakes on the roof; copper flashings; long areas of glass. Its split-level design adapted to the gentle hillside, seemed to curl around the grey outcroppings of limestone.

“Nice place to haunt,” Mandarin reflected.

“I hope you’re going to keep a straight face once we get inside,” his friend admonished gruffly “Mrs Corrington was a little reluctant to have us come here at all. Doesn’t want folks laughing, calling her a kook. People from all over descending on her to investigate her haunted house. You know what it’d be like.”

“I’ll maintain my best professional decorum.”

Styker grunted. He could trust Russ, or he wouldn’t have invited him along. A psychiatrist at least knew how to listen, ask questions without making his informant shut up in embarrassment. And Russ’s opinion of Gayle Corrington’s emotional stability would be valuable— Stryker had wasted too many interviews with cranks and would-be psychics whose hauntings derived from their own troubled minds. Besides, he knew Mandarin was interested in this sort of thing and would welcome a diversion from his own difficulties.

“Well, let’s go inside before we boil over,” Stryker decided.

Russ straightened from petting the dog, carelessly wiped his long-fingered hands on his lightweight sportcoat. About half the writer’s age, he was shorter by a couple inches, heavier by forty pounds. He wore his bright-black hair fashionably long for the time, and occasionally trimmed his long mustache. Piercing blue eyes beneath a prominent brow dominated his thin face. Movie-minded patients had told him variously that he reminded them of Terence Stamp or Bruce Dern, and Russ asked them how they felt about that.

On the flagstone walk the heady scent of warm roses washed out the taint of the asphalt. Russ thought he heard the murmur of a heat pump around back. It would be cool inside, then—earlier he had envied Stryker for his open-collar sportshirt.

The panelled door had a bell push, but Stryker crisply struck the brass knocker. The door quickly swung open, and Russ guessed their hostess had been politely waiting for their knock.

Cool air and a faint perfume swirled from within. “Please come in,” Mrs Corrington invited.

She was blond and freckled, had stayed away from the sun enough so that her skin still looked fresh at the shadow of forty. Enough of her figure was displayed by the backless hostess ensemble she wore to prove she had taken care of herself in other respects as well. It made both men remember that she was divorced.

“Mrs Corrington? I’m Curtiss Stryker.”

“Please call me Gayle. I’ve read enough of your books to feel like an old friend.”

Stryker beamed and bent low over her hand in the continental mannerisms Russ always wished he was old enough to pull off. “Then make it Curt, Gayle. And this is Dr Mandarin.”

“Russ,” said Mandarin, shaking her hand.

“Dr Mandarin is interested in this sort of thing, too,” Stryker explained. “I wanted him to come along so a man of science could add his thoughts to what you have to tell us.”

“Oh, are you with the university center here, Dr Mandarin?”

“Please— Russ. No, not any longer.” He kept the bitterness from his voice. “I’m in private practice in the university area.”

“Your practice is... ?”

“I’m a psychiatrist.”

Her green eyes widened, then grew wary— the usual response—but she recovered easily. “Can I fix something for you gentlemen? Or is it too early in the afternoon for drinks? I’ve got ice tea.”

“Sun’s past the yardarm,” Stryker told her quickly. “Gin and tonic for me.”

“Scotch for you, Russ?” she asked.

“Bourbon and ice, if you have it.”

“Well, you must be a southern psychiatrist.”

“Russ is from way out west,” Stryker filled in smoothly. “But he’s lived around here a good long while. I met him when he was doing an internship at the Center here, and I had an appendix that had waited fifty years to go bad. Found out he was an old fan—even had a bunch of my old pulp yarns on his shelves alongside my later books. Showed me a fan letter one magazine had published: he’d written it when he was about twelve asking that they print more of my John Chance stories. Kept tabs on each other ever since.”

She handed them their drinks, poured a bourbon and ginger ale for herself.

“Well, of course I’ve only read your serious stuff. The mysteries you’ve had in paperback, and the two books on the occult.”

“Do you like to read up on the occult?” Russ asked, mentally correcting her—three books on the occult.

“Well, I never have...you know...believed in ghosts and like that. But when all this started, I began to wonder—so I checked out a few books. I’d always liked Mr Stryker’s mystery novels, so I was especially interested to read what he had to say on the subject of hauntings. Then, when I found out that he was a local author, and that he was looking for material for a new book—well, I got up my courage and wrote to him. I hope you didn’t think I was some sort of nut.”

“Not at all!” Stryker assured her. “But suppose we sit down and have you tell us about it. From your letter and our conversation on the phone, I gather this is mostly poltergeist-like phenomena.” Gayle Corrington’s flair-legged gown brushed against the varnished hardwood floor as she led them to her living room. A stone fireplace with raised hearth of used brick made up one wall. Odd bits of antique ironware were arranged along the hearth; above the mantelpiece hung an engraved double-barrelled shotgun. Walnut panelling enclosed the remainder of the room—panelling, not plywood, Russ noted. Chairs and a sofa were arranged informally about the Couristan carpet. Russ dropped onto a cream leather couch and looked for a place to set his drink.

Stryker was digging a handful of salted nuts from the wooden bowl on the low table beside his chair. “Suppose you start with the history of the house?” he suggested.

Sipping nervously from her glass, Gayle settled crosslegged next to the hearth. Opposite her a large area of sliding glass panels opened onto the sun-bright back yard. A multitude of birds and two fat squirrels worked at the feeders positioned beneath the pines. The dogs sat on the patio expectantly, staring back at them through the glass door.

Gayle drew up her freckled shoulders and began. “Well, the house was put up about ten years back by two career girls.”

“Must have had some money,” Russ interposed.

“They were sort of in your line of work—they were medical secretaries at the psychiatric unit. And they had, well, a relationship together.”

“How do you mean that?” Stryker asked, opening his notepad. Mrs Corrington blushed. “They were lesbians.”

This was heavy going for a Southern Belle, and she glanced at their composed expressions, then continued. “So they built this place under peculiar conditions— sort of man and wife, if you follow. No legal agreement as to what belonged to whom. That became important afterward.

“Listen, this is, well, personal information. Will it be OK for me to use just first names?”

“I promise you this will be completely confidential,” Stryker told her gravely.

“I was worried about your using this in your new book on haunted houses of the South.”

“If I can’t preserve your confidence, then I promise you I won’t use it at all.”

“All right then. The two women were Libby and Cass.”

Mandarin made a mental note.

“They lived together here for about three years. Then Libby died. She was only about thirty.”

“Do you know what she died of?” Russ asked.

“I found out after I got interested in this. How’s the song go—‘too much pills and liquor.’”

“Seems awfully young.”

“She hadn’t been taking care of herself. One night she passed out after tying one on, and she died in the hospital emergency room.”

“Did the hauntings start then?”

“Well, there’s no way to be sure. The house stood empty for a couple of years afterward. Legal problems. Libby’s father hadn’t cared for her lifestyle, and when she died he saw to it that Cass couldn’t buy Libby’s share of the house and property. That made Cass angry, so she wouldn’t sell out her share. Finally they agreed on selling the house and land, lock, stock and barrel, and dividing the payment. That’s when I bought it.”

“No one else has ever lived here, then?”

Gayle hesitated a moment. “No—except for a third girl they had here once—a nurse. They rented a third bedroom to her. But that didn’t work out, and she left after a few months. Otherwise, I’m the only other person to live here.”

“It seems a little large for one person,” Stryker observed.

“Not really I have a son in college now who stays here over breaks. And now and then a niece comes to visit. So the spare rooms are handy.”

“Well, what happened after you moved in?”

She wrinkled her forehead. “Just... well, a series of things. Just strange things...

“Lights wouldn’t stay on or off. I used to think I was just getting absent-minded, but then I began to pay careful attention. Like I’d go off to a movie, then come back and find the carport light off—when the switch was inside. It really scared me. There’s other houses closer now, but this is a rural area pretty much. Prissy’s company, but I don’t know if she could fight off a prowler. I keep a gun.”

“Has an electrician ever checked your wiring?”

“No. It was OK’ed originally, of course.”

“Can anyone break in without your having realized it?”

“No. You see, I’m worried about break-ins, as I say I’ve got double locks on all the doors, and the windows have special locks. Someone would have to break the glass, or pry open the woodwork around the doors—leave marks. That’s never happened.

“And other things seem to turn on and off. My electric toothbrush, for instance. I told my son and he laughed—then one night the light beside his bed flashed off.”

“Presumably you could trace all this to electrical disturbances,” Russ pointed out.

Gayle gestured toward the corner of the living room. “All right. See that wind-up Victrola? No electricity. Yet the damn thing turns itself on. Several times at night I’ve heard it playing—that old song, you know...”

She sang a line or two: “Come back, blue lady come back. Don’t be blue anymore...”

Stryker quickly moved to the machine. It was an old Victrola walnut veneer console model, with speaker and record storage in the lower cabinet. He lifted the hinged lid. It was heavy. Inside, the huge tonearm was swomg back on its pivot.

“Do you keep a record on the turntable normally?”

“Yes. I like to show the thing off. But I’m certain I haven’t left ‘Blue Skirt Waltz’ on every time.”

“It’s on now.”

“Yes, I leave it there now.”

“Why not get rid of the record as an experiment?”

“What could I think if I found it back again?”

Stryker grinned. He moved the starting lever with his finger. The turntable began to spin.

“You keep this thing wound?” Russ asked.

“Yes,” Gayle answered uneasily Curtiss swung the hinged tonearm down, rested the thick steel needle on the shellac disc.

I dream of that flight with you

Darling,, when first we met...

“Turn it off again—please!”



•II•

Stryker hastily complied. “Just wanted to see what was involved in turning it on.”

“Sorry,” Gayle apologized. “The thing has gotten on my nerves, I guess. How about refills all around?”

“Fine,” Stryker agreed, taking a final chew on his lime twist.

When their hostess had disappeared into the kitchen with their glasses, he murmured aside to Mandarin: “What do you think?”

Russ shrugged. “What can I say from a few minutes talking, listening to her? There’s no blatant elevation of her porcelain titer, if that’s what you mean.”

“What’s that mean?” the writer asked, annoyed.

“She doesn’t come on as an outright crock.”

Stryker’s mustache twitched. “Think I’ll write that down.”

He did.

“Useful for rounds,” Russ explained in apology.

“What about the occult angle? So far I’m betting on screwy electrical wiring and vibrations from passing trucks or something.”

Stryker started to reply, but then Gayle Corrington rustled back, three glasses and a wedge of cheese on a tray.

“I’ve been told most of this can be explained by wiring problems or vibrations,” she was saying. “Like when the house settles on its foundation.”

Russ accepted his drink with aplomb—wondering if she had overheard.

“But I asked the real estate man about that,” she went on, “and he told me the house rests on bedrock. You’ve seen the limestone outcroppings in the yard. They even had to use dynamite putting down the foundation footings.”

“Is there a cellar?”

“No. Not even a crawl space. But I have storage in the carport and in the spare rooms. There’s a gardening shed out back, you’ll notice—by the crepe myrtle. Libby liked to garden. All these roses were her doing. I pay a man from the nursery to keep them up for me. Seems like Libby would be sad if I just let them go to pot.”

“Do you feel like Libby is still here?” Russ asked casually.

She hadn’t missed the implication, and Russ wished again Curtiss hadn’t introduced him as a psychiatrist. “Well, yes,” she answered cautiously. “I hope that doesn’t sound neurotic.”

“Has anything happened that you feel can’t be explained—well, by the usual explanations?” Curtiss asked, steering the interview toward safer waters.

“Poltergeist phenomena, you mean? Well, I’ve only touched on that. One night the phone cord started swinging back and forth. All by itself— nothing near it. I was sitting out here reading when I saw that happen. Then my maid was here one afternoon when all the paper cups dropped out of the dispenser and started rolling up and down the kitchen counter. Another night that brass table lamp there started rocking back and forth on its base—just like someone had struck it. Of course, I was the only one here. Christ, I felt like yelling, ‘Libby! Cut it out!”’

“Is there much truck traffic on the highway out front?” Stryker asked. “Stone transmits vibrations a long way, and if the house rests on bedrock...”

“No truck traffic to speak of—not since the Interstates were completed through Knoxville. Maybe a pickup or that sort of thing drives by. I’ve thought of that angle, too.

“But, darn it—there’s too many other things.” Her face seemed defiant. She’s thought a lot about this, Russ surmised—and now that she’s decided to tell someone else about it, she doesn’t want to be taken for a credulous fool.

“Like my television.” She pointed to the color portable resting on one end of the long raised hearth. “If you’ve ever tried to lug one of these things around, you know how portable they really are. I keep it here because I can watch it either from that chair or when I’m out sunning on the patio. Twice though I’ve come back and found it’s somehow slid down the hearth a foot or so. I noticed because the picture was blocked by the edge of that end table when I tried to watch from my lounge chair on the patio. And I know the other furniture wasn’t out of place, because I line the set up with that cracked brick there—so I know I can see it from the patio, in case I’ve moved it around someplace else. Both times it was several inches past that brick.”

Russ examined the set, a recent portable model. One edge of its simulated walnut chassis was lined up one row of bricks down from where a crack caused by heat expansion crossed the hearth. He pushed at the set experimentally. It wouldn’t slide.

“Tell me truck vibrations were responsible for this” Gayle challenged.

“Your cleaning maid...”

“Had not been in either time. Nor had anyone else in the time between when I noticed it and when I’d last watched it from outside.”

“No one else that you knew of.”

“No one at all. I could have told if there’d been a break-in. Besides, a burglar would have stolen the darn thing.”

Russ smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. Stryker was scribbling energetically on his notepad.

Gayle pressed home her advantage. “I asked Cass about it once. She looked at me funny and said they used to keep their TV on the hearth, too—only over a foot or so, because the furniture was arranged differently.”

Stryker’s grey eyes seemed to glow beneath his shaggy eyebrows. Russ knew the signs— Curtiss was on the scent.

Trying to control his own interest, Russ asked: “Cass is still in Knoxville, then?”

Gayle appeared annoyed with herself. “Yes, that’s why I wanted to keep this confidential. She and another girl have set up together in an old farmhouse they’ve redone—out toward Norris.”

“There’s no need for me to mention names or details of personal life,” Curtiss reassured her. “But I take it you’ve said something to Cass about these happenings?”

“Well, yes. She had a few things stored out in the garden shed that she finally came over to pick up. Most of the furnishings were jointly owned—I bought them with the house—but there was some personal property, items I didn’t want.” She said the last with a nervous grimace.

“So I came flat out and said to her: ‘Cass, did you ever think this house was haunted?’ and she looked at me and said quite seriously: ‘Libby?’”

“She didn’t seem incredulous?”

“No. Just like that, She said: ‘Libby?’ Didn’t sound surprised—a little shaken maybe. I told her about some of the things here, and she just shrugged. I didn’t need her to think I was out of my mind, so I left off. But that’s when I started to think about Libby’s spirit lingering on here.”

“She seemed to take it rather matter-of-factly.” Russ suggested. “I think she and Libby liked to dabble in the occult. There were a few books of that sort that Cass picked up—a Ouija board, tarot deck, black candles, a few other things like that. And I believe there was something said about Libby’s dying on April the 30th—that’s Walpurgis Night, I learned from my reading.”

Witches’ Sabbat, Russ reflected. So he was going to find his gothic trappings after all.

It must have showed on his face. “Nothing sinister about her death,” Gayle told him quickly. “Sordid maybe, but thoroughly prosaic. She was dead by the time they got her to the emergency room, and a check of her bloodstream showed toxic levels of alcohol and barbs. Took a little prying to get the facts on that. Family likes the version where she died of a heart attack or something while the doctors worked over her.

“But let me freshen those ice cubes for you. This show-and-tell session is murder on the throat.”

Stryker hopped out of his chair. “Here, we’ll carry our own glasses.”

Smiling, she led them into the kitchen. Russ lagged behind to work at the cheese. He hadn’t taken time for lunch, and he’d better put something in his stomach besides bourbon.

“There’s another thing,” Gayle was saying when he joined them. “The antique clocks.”

Russ followed her gesture. The ornate dial of a pendulum wall clock stared back at him from the dining room wall. He remembered the huge walnut grandfather’s clock striking solemnly in the corner of the living room.

“Came back one night and found both cabinets wide open. And you have to turn a key to open the cabinets.”

“Like this?” Stryker demonstrated on the wall clock.

“Yes. I keep the keys in the locks because I need to reset the pendulum weights. But as you see, it takes a sharp twist to turn the lock. Explain that one for me.”

Russ sipped his drink. She must have poured him a good double. “Have you ever thought that someone might have a duplicate key to one of the doors?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gayle answered, following his train of thought. “That occurred to me some time ago—though God knows what reason there might be to pull stunts like these. But I had every lock in the house changed—that was after I had come back and found lights on or off that had been left off or on one time too many to call it absent-mindedness. It made no difference, and both the TV and the clock incidents took place since then.”

“You know, this is really intriguing!” Curtiss exclaimed, beaming over his notepad.

Gayle smiled back, seemed to be fully at ease for the first time. “Well, I’ll tell you it had me baffled. Here, let me show you the rest of the house.”

A hallway led off from the open space between living room and dining area. There was a study off one side, another room beyond, and two bedrooms opposite. A rather large tile bath with sunken tub opened at the far end.

“The study’s a mess, I’m afraid,” she apologized, closing the door on an agreeably unkempt room that seemed chiefly cluttered with fashion magazines and bits of dress material. “And the spare bedroom I only use for storage.” She indicated the adjoining room, but did not offer to open it. “My son sleeps here when he’s home.”

“You keep it locked?” Russ asked, noting the outdoor-type lock. “No.” Gayle hastily turned the knob for them, opened the door on a room cluttered with far more of the same as her study. There was a chain lock inside, another door on the outside wall. “As you see, this room has a private entrance. This is the room they rented out.”

“Their boarder must have felt threatened,” Russ remarked. He received a frown that made him regret his levity.

“These are the bedrooms.” She turned to the hallway opposite. “This was Cass’s.” A rather masculine room with knotty pine panelling, a large brass bed, cherry furnishings, and an oriental throw rug on the hardwood floor. “And this was Libby’s.” Blue walls, white ceiling, white deep-pile carpet, queen-sized bed with a blue quilted spread touching the floor on three sides. In both rooms sliding glass doors opened onto the backyard.

“Where do you sleep?” Russ wanted to know.

“In the other bedroom. I find this one a bit too frilly”

“Have you ever, well, seen anything—any sort of, say, spiritual manifestations?” Stryker asked.

“Myself, no,” Gayle told them. “Though there are a few things. My niece was staying with me one night not long after I’d moved in—sleeping in Libby’s room. Next morning she said to me: ‘Gayle, that room is haunted. All night I kept waking up thinking someone else was there with me.’ I laughed, but she was serious.”

“Is that when you started thinking in terms of ghosts?”

“Well, there had been a few things before that,” she admitted. “But I suppose that was when I really started noticing things.”

Russ chalked up a point for his side.

“But another time a friend of mine dropped by to visit. I was out of town, so no one answered her ring. Anyway, she heard voices and figured I was in back watching tv, with the set drowning out the doorbell. So she walked around back. I wasn’t here, of course. No one was here. And when she looked inside from the patio, she could see that my set was turned off. She was rather puzzled when she told me about it. I told her a radio was left on—only that wasn’t true.”

“The dog ever act strangely?” Stryker asked.

“Not really. A few times she seems a little nervous is all. She’s a good watchdog though—barks at strangers. That’s one reason why I don’t suspect prowlers. Prissy lets me know when something’s going on that she doesn’t like.

“Aside from that, the only other thing I can think of is one night when my son was here alone. I got back late and he was sitting in the living room awake. Said he’d seen a sort of blue mist taking shape in the darkness of his bedroom—like a naked woman. Well, the only mist was the smoke you could still smell from the pot party he and his friends had had here earlier. We had a long talk about that little matter.”

Stryker studied his notepad. “I’d like to suggest a minor experiment of sorts, if you don’t mind. I’d like for Russ and myself to take a turn just sitting alone in Libby’s room for a few minutes. See what impressions we have—if any.”

“I’ll take first watch,” Russ decided, at their hostess’s expression of consent.

Curtiss shot him a warning glance and returned with Gayle to the living room.

Waiting until they were around the corner, Mandarin stepped into the room now occupied by Gayle Corrington. Cass’s room. There was a scent of perfume and such, a soft aura of femininity that he hadn’t noticed from the hallway. It softened the masculine feel of the room somewhat, gave it sort of a ski lodge atmosphere. The bedroom had the look of having been recently straightened for company’s inspection. As was the case. There were crescent scratches about three feet up on the corner panelling next to the head of the bed, and Russ guessed that the pump shotgun did not usually hang from brackets on the bedroom wall as it did now.

The bathroom was out of Nero’s mountain retreat. Big enough to play tennis in, with synthetic-fur rugs scattered on the slate-tiled floor, and with a dressing table and elaborate toilet fixtures that matched the tiles and included a bidet. A cross between a boudoir and the Roman baths. The sunken tub was a round affair and like an indoor pool. Russ wondered if the mirror on the ceiling fogged up when things got hot.

Swallowing the rest of his drink, he stepped into the guest room. Libby’s room. This would, of course, be the Blue Room in one of those sprawling mansions where pulp mysteries had a habit of placing their murders. Come to think of it, hadn’t he seen an old ’30s movie called something like The Secret of the Blue Room?

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he crunched an ice cube and studied the room about him. Very feminine—though the brightness of the patio outside kept it from becoming cloying. It had a comfortable feel about it, he decided—not the disused sensation that generally hangs over a guest room. There was just a hint of perfume still lingering—probably Gayle kept clothes in the closet here.

Russ resisted the temptation to lie down. Glancing outside, he reflected that, when drawn, the blue curtains would fill the room with blue light. Might be a point worth bringing up to Curtiss, in case the old fellow got too excited over ectoplasm and the like. Aside from that, Russ decided that the room was as thoroughly unhaunted as any bedroom he’d ever sat in.

Giving it up at length, he ambled back to the living room.

Stryker was just closing his notepad. Either he’d got another drink, or else he’d been too interested to do more than sip his gin and tonic. At Mandarin’s entry, he excused himself and strode off for the bedroom.

Gayle’s face was a trifle flushed, her manner somewhat nervous. Russ wondered whether it was the liquor, or if he’d broken in on something. She had that familiar edgy look of a patient after an hour of soul-bearing on the analyst’s couch. As he thought about it, Russ agreed that this interview must be a similar strain for her.

“You’ve eaten your ice cubes,” she observed. “Shall I get you another?”

Russ swallowed a mouthful of salted nuts. “Thank you— but I’ve got to drive.”

She made a wry face. “You look big enough to hold another few. A light one,then?”

“Hell, why not. A light one, please.” Probably she would feel more at ease if she supposed his psychiatric powers were disarmed by bourbon.

He paced about the living room while she saw to his glass. Coming to the fireplace, he studied the beautifully engraved shotgun that hung there. It was a Parker. Russ started to touch it.

“That’s loaded.”

He jerked back his hand like a scolded kid. “Sorry. Just wanted to get the feel of an engraved Parker double-barrel. That’s some gun you have to decorate your fireplace with.”

“Thank you. I know.” She handed him his drink.

“Don’t you worry about keeping a loaded shotgun in your living room?” The drink was at least equal to its predecessors.

“I’d worry more with an empty one. I’m alone here at night, and there aren’t many neighbors. Besides, there aren’t any kids around who might get in trouble with it.”

“I’d think a woman would prefer something easier to handle than a shotgun.”

“Come out on the skeet range with me sometime, and I’ll show you something.”

Mandarin must have looked properly chastened. With a quick grin Gayle drew down the weapon, opened the breech, and extracted two red shells. “Here.” She handed the shotgun to him.

“Double Ought,” Russ observed, closing the breech.

“It’s not for shooting starlings.”

He sighted along the barrel a few times, gave it back. Briskly she replaced the shells and returned it to its mounting.

“Might I ask what you do, Mrs Corrington?”

“Gayle. I assume you mean for a living. I own and manage a mixed bag of fashion stores—two here in Knoxville, plus a resort wear shop in Gatlinburg, and a boutique on the Strip by the University. So you see, Doctor, not all working girls fall into the nurse or secretary system of things.”

“Russ. No, of course not. Some of them make excellent psychiatrists.”

She softened again. “Sorry for coming on strong for women’s lib. Just that you find yourself a little defensive after being questioned for an hour.”

“Sorry about that.” Russ decided not to remind her that this was at her own invitation. “But this has been extremely interesting, and Curtiss is like a bloodhound on a fresh trail.

“But how do you feel about this, Gayle?” Do you believe a poltergeist or some sort of spirit has attached itself to the house?”

She gave him a freckled frown and shrugged her shoulders. No, Russ concluded, she wasn’t wearing some sort of backless bra beneath her gown—not that she needed one.

“Well, I can’t really say. I mean, there’s just been so many things happening that I can’t explain. No, I don’t believe in witches and vampires and ghosts all draped in bedsheets, if that’s what you mean. But some of the books I’ve read explain poltergeists on an ESP basis—telekinesis or something on that order.”

“Do you believe in ESP?”

“Yes, to an extent.”

“Do you consider yourself psychic?”

She did the thing with her shoulders again. “A little maybe. I’ve had a few experiences that are what the books put down as psychic phenomena. I guess most of us have. But now it’s my turn. What do you think, Russ? Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Well, not the chain-rattling kind anyway.”

“Then ESP?”

“Yes, I’ll have to admit to a weakness toward ESP.”

“Then here’s to ESP.”

They clinked glasses and drank.

“I’ll second that,” announced Stryker, rejoining them.