Around the bell tower, the leaves were falling, but the ill wind named Hugo had been dealt with. Walking down the spiraling steps of the tower, Eve watched as several of her staff efficiently escorted the ranting dwarf back to his room. The victorious Hugo had been in particularly rare form today, swinging through the air like some deranged ape and gleefully ringing the bells. But she had discovered that, this time, the reason the hunchbacked dwarf was ringing bells was to let her know that Fester was once again digging in her garden.
Muttering to herself, she resolutely headed there. "Fester. He must be having one of his paranoid delusions. But is he trying to hide his nonexistent pots of gold or find them?" Really, she thought peevishly, she didn't need any of the leprechaun's shenanigans right now. Didn't she have quite enough on her plate as it was?
If only Fester's pots of gold really did exist, then her funding problems for the Towers would be resolved and she wouldn't be worrying herself sick about tonight's dinner. But her guests would be arriving soon, and she was out trolling for devious dwarves and lunatic leprechauns! She had to stop Fester from his digging, and fill in the holes before any of her guests could fall into them.
Knowing that she had only a few precious hours, Eve hurried from her massive manor home, which was dotted with lichens and overhung with ivy. Its stone was now weathered to a deep grayish brown. Built during the Elizabethan age as a country retreat, it was a massive structure in an L shape, with towering spires and the bell tower from which she had just came. The tower's loud, pealing bells were much to Eve's and everyone else's annoyance, with the obvious exception of Hugo.
The grounds were extensive, with rolling lawns dotted with oak and chestnut tees, and overflowering with rosebushes and other budding plants. A great marble-and-basalt fountain lay behind the house, and Greek columns were placed elegantly among the clipped hedges and terraces. There was also a hedge maze.
As she passed her head gardener, Totter—cousin to her butler—she gave a quick nod. He was busy clipping an overgrown hedge, but he touched his forehead in respect and shyly pointed to a path through the maze.
"Dat Fester's over dere," he said.
Totter was an excellent gardener, but he had a slight speech impediment. And though he facially resembled his lanky cousin, he wasn't quite as tall. He had more bulk to his physique, which hinted at his ogrish ancestry.
Eve smiled in thanks and took the pathway he indicated, passing brightly flowering roses and traversing the lush hedgerows until she spotted Fester's little baldhead, with its few tufts of gray hair sticking out. The crafty leprechaun was bent over an enormous hole by the hydrangea bushes.
Shaking her head in exasperation, Eve hurried over to him, wondering what to expect. Fester was sometimes quite cranky and other times quite gregarious. With an Irish lilt to his voice but a ruddy face, the little fellow was almost ugly—all but his slanted eyes, which were fringed with thick black lashes and the color of fresh mint.
"Fester, I've told you time and again that these holes are a danger to anyone walking in the gardens. One could break a limb if they fell into your hidey-holes."
Fester glanced up, his eyes all buggy and round. "Well, me bucko… they're after it again, I tell ye. I heard them talking through the gilt-framed mirrors in the library this morning. They want me pots of gold. Each and every last one of them! Well, they won't find 'em—I tell ye that now, Dr. Eve! I'm onto their wicked, slick ways, and know their black hearts."
Not the old voices of Parliament through the gilt-framed mirrors again! Eve opened her mouth to speak, but the little man before her began hopping up and down.
"I've foiled them this time, I have! I hid me pots of gold in the house," he said between hops, then stopped to point proudly. "So, you see, this hole here is a decoy. Parliament will think me gold is out here, when it's really inside!"
"I see," Eve remarked, staring at the gaping wound in her garden. "That was rather clever of you." She held her temper by a slender thread indeed. She wanted to beat her head against the proverbial wall. After two years of treating Fester's paranoia, she felt he was getting no better. He was an enigma, a paranoid character with delusions of grandeur along with peculiar conspiracy theory after peculiar conspiracy theory. One of Eve's personal favorites was about Napoleon. Fester believed that Bonaparte was not really dead, and that both the British and French governments wanted gold to finance a secret army to go against him. Those governments were always trying to steal Fester's imaginary gold.
Catering to the leprechaun was all Eve could do for the time being, as a person could argue until she was blue in the face and get nowhere with the wee stubborn man. "Well, since you've fooled them, could I request your arm in escorting me back to the Towers?" she asked politely, but her tone of voice spelled out that she would brook no argument. She would have to get Totter to attend to this hole as quickly as possible.
"Be proud to, Dr. Eve. You never know when one of them British spies might spirit you away and torture you to find out me secrets."
Eve gave a patently false smile and extended her arm. Fester took it, his itty bitty baldhead barely reaching her chin, and as they walked back to the asylum he began babbling more of his far-fetched theories. "I tell ye true, there ain't never been a war with them American colonies, since there ain't really any land called America. It's only British propaganda to trick people into moving to the middle of the ocean, where they set up towns like Venice..."
Through Fester's whole paranoid tirade, Eve kept a smile plastered on her face. Here at the asylum, she had perfected that look. And as they reached the marble fountain, she handed her patient over to Mrs. Fawlty, who took Fester's arm none too gently.
The leprechaun gave Mrs. Fawlty a kiss on her chin, knowing it would set the housekeeper off. Then, turning to Eve he said, "Me thinks our hausfrau is a double spy, pretending to be English when she really is German. She's not after me gold, but me jewels." He patted his pants with a leer.
Smacking the lusty leprechaun on the back of his bald-pate, Mrs. Fawlty snapped, "Humph! You should be lined up against the garden wall, shot, and buried in one of your holes, little man. I'm as English as the rain, and well you know it."
Fester laughed. "Don't be too rough with me, my English clover."
"English clover, my foot! I won't stand for your foreign ways. I'll plant you in the garden myself—six feet deep," Mrs. Fawlty warned. "And look how dirty you are, little man. Covered in filth. Now I suppose I'll have to give you a bath!"
Fester squealed in delight.
The housekeeper simply shoved the leprechaun forward, remarking knowingly over her shoulder, "Irishmen."
Shaking her head at the odd pair, Eve picked up her skirts and made great haste to her room.
Dressing and having her hair done in a fashionable style left Eve barely enough time to be downstairs to greet her guests. But she managed. And as she smiled up at them, hope beat like a caged bird in her chest. They just had to help her with her funding, and perhaps offer some advice on two of her patients who were not responding to her treatments as well as she'd like.
The members of the Supernatural Science Foundation entered in fine form: troll, warlock, and wereowl. Two of the three members—Dr. Sigmund and Count Caligari—had brought their wives, but Dr. Crane was a bachelor and attending alone.
After Eve greeted her guests, everyone adjourned to the blue salon for an aperitif. Eve found herself holding her breath, watching her six-foot-four butler towering among the guests, trying to do his duty and serve them each a glass of sherry.
Normally, Teeter would be a starched shirt, a paragon of proper English butlerdom. But the winds of change had recently blown through her asylum, and tonight found Teeter's hair in wild disarray, his clothing disordered, his cravat askew, and his homely face reflecting abject, stupid misery.
Silently, Eve cursed a blue streak. Apparently her butler and housekeeper had had another of their flaming rows. Their romance was of recent origin, and was causing chaos in her madhouse. Well, more chaos than usual, she reflected morosely. She had the overwhelming urge to vent her temper, to throw a fit to make her father proud, for it appeared her non-teetotaling butler had totaled a bottle of something that wasn't tea.
Wanting to tar and feather Teeter, she kept her face politely composed, hoping that anyone looking at her would miss that she had mayhem on her mind. Sending a warning glare at the inebriated butler, she decided that she really had to run a tighter ship—but she already had so much to do. Now she would have to add daily discipline for her staff, it appeared. How dared her butler get tipsy tonight of all nights? After dinner, she was going to bang a gong over Teeter's head that would put Hugo's capricious bell ringing to shame.
Wryly, she shook her head, wondering what could occur next to upset her nerves. First her father had discomfited her with his daunting demands, followed by the dustup with the damnable Hugo. One of the gardeners had fallen into one of Fester's holes while trying to fill it in, and severely cut his leg. Following that fiasco, her cook, Sybil, had burned the roast lamb in basil sauce, as well as the Barcelona hens, while the inebriated Teeter had dropped a bottle of port on the dining room rug. When the cock had crowed this morning at dawn, she should have stayed firmly ensconced in bed with the covers pulled over her head.
"Your drinkie, Doctorrr," the tipsy Teeter pronounced, clearly hoping to hide his besotted state. With his very long arm extended, he tried to hand Dr. Crane a glass of sherry. Unfortunately, he tipped the glass while trying to master his feet.
Eve gasped, feeling like a green recruit before her first battle, frozen, helpless to avert disaster. She wanted to cower, or at least to cover her eyes. Yet she kept her eyes open, and breathed a sigh of relief when the good doctor deftly righted the downward-dropping drink. He quickly took it from her butler's hands.
Pretending that she hadn't seen the incident, Eve approached Dr. Crane. "I am so glad you could make it tonight, Doctor," she said. Though he was in his mid-thirties, the slender wereowl's hair was a curious mixture of pale black and whitish silver. The smile he gave was both warm and speculative, with only a faint hint of lecherous intent.
She smiled back, noting vaguely that Dr. Crane was attractive in a bookish sort of way, and that he carried a truly distinguished air. If the rumors were true, he was a fine psychiatrist, if a bit pontificating in lectures, and he was an expert in the classics as well as the field of the supernaturally feathered fou. He was also reputed to have a taste for soiled doves.
He lifted her hand to his lips and bent low, kissing it and eyeing her assets with a connoisseur's delight. Eve managed to gracefully withdraw her hand with her smile still in place.
"By Jove, my little chickadee, I would have contrived to meet you sooner had I known how lovely you are." Dr. Crane gave her another appreciative glance, his big, yellowish-brown eyes glittering. He cocked his head and studied her with practiced ease. "I had not thought our hostess would be so stunning. It's as if Helen of Troy and Minerva, goddess of wisdom, are combined in your form. Even male peacocks must envy your splendor. How is it we have not met? Such a fowl trick, to be deprived of such an egg. Surely the Fates have been cruel."
"Perhaps your reputation precedes you, and Dr. Griffin prefers to keep herself tucked safely in her nest," Count Caligari remarked arrogantly, appearing and bowing to Eve. She could hear the stays creaking in the corset he was wearing. She made a curtsy with dignity and grace, keeping her features politely reserved. She had met the warlock before, at various medical lectures. He was not one of her favorite colleagues, this Italian doctor with a sly intelligence and an inflated sense of his ancestry.
"There's no need to be huffy, Caligari. You're still perturbed by my latest book's reviews. You know how they raved and flapped about my brilliant deductions on hen-witted chicken hawks."
The count drew his rotund little body up to all of its five-foot-seven-inch height, a scowl on his features. "Pray disregard his comments. My books are as well received—if not more so," he added with an unflappable air. "My latest, Practical Magic for the Abnormal Paranormal, won critical acclaim."
"A lot of hocus-pocus, I rather thought." Crane clearly knew the count well, for he was inured to Caligari's condescension. He turned his attention back to Eve. "Now, really. Why haven't I seen you around and about before now?"
"You wouldn't know brilliance if it swept you off your taloned feet!" Caligari ejaculated.
Eve smiled politely at them both, praying to defuse the tense situation. "Dr. Crane, I fear I haven't been in London all that long—a little less than three years—and have been much occupied with running the Towers and treating my patients."
He bowed slightly at her words, and Eve noticed that at least Dr. Crane didn't creak.
"I am glad to finally make your acquaintance," he said, "and am eager, quite eager, to hear of your work." Dr. Crane paused momentarily, then remembered, his round eyes joyous at his recall: "Ah, Verbal Intercourse is your theory, is it not?"
Trying hard not to preen, Eve ignored the word emphasis and the gleam of sexual interest in both doctors' eyes, and focused on her growing reputation.
Count Caligari seemed to have forgotten his anger at Dr. Crane's slights. He added, "Yes! A method that I hear is similar to Dr. Sigmund's own treatments."
Dr. Sigmund, upon hearing his name, left his wife's side. He was an older man, in his mid-fifties, with an ancestry that included trolls and endowed him with a bushy head of long white hair, a thick white moustache, and a tall but bulky body. He also had a troll's dark brown eyes—eyes so deep brown that they appeared black. With relish, the noted psychiatrist entered the conversation.
"Yes, of course. I was fortunate to study with Charcow on hysteria and engaging the mind over matter and madness. From reading your hypothesis, Dr. Griffin, I find that your Verbal Intercourse is similar to my own sessions. My Id and TAT therapies are world-renowned, and used by many a modern psychiatrist. I find it quite useful to let the patients converse about themselves and their dreams or fantasies. One can never tell what nonsense or revelations might be revealed from the foggy mists of their ravaged, demented minds. As well you know, the journey from the outer limits of our consciousness to the inner limits of our most secret places can be through a hell filled with fire and brimstone."
"Yes, without dreams where would the arts be today—or music, for that matter?" Nodding, Eve eagerly continued, feeling a need to impress this most famous of all modern psychiatrists. "I have read all six of your books, Doctor, and always enjoy your articles in the Journal." She looked enthusiastically forward to Dr. Sigmund's articles, although she did not agree with everything the respected doctor said. Still, she did admire his verve and his devotion to duty. He also was quick to try new methods, and to discount those that didn't work while advancing those that did.
Dr. Sigmund gave a brisk nod, quite used to the homage of the masses.
"Please don't keep me in suspense. Have you read my books also, Dr. Griffin?" Dr. Crane asked, eyeing her delectable décolleté.
Of course I have, Eve thought smugly, keeping her face a mask of polite interest. To know one's enemy had been a lesson drummed into her at an early age by her father, along with the "Be Prepared" pirate motto. Although these men weren't exactly enemies, they were at least opponents. They held the purse strings to the foundation's coins. Coins she desperately needed to help with her work.
"I have, and I was quite impressed with your work on the lineage of the weredodo, citing that constant inbreeding has caused these werebirds to have more feathers than wit."
Ruefully, Dr. Crane shook his head. "Sad but true. In-breeding has left them with madness, bird-wittedness, and an unfortunate few live births. I imagine we will see the extinction of the weredodo before the twentieth century comes to pass. So sad, the loss of any of my feathered friends."
The conversation progressed into the myriad difficulties faced by wereshifters who were birds, and Eve soon heard the dinner bell tinkle, announcing that the food was ready to be served. As she was about to suggest that they all go into the dining room, the blue salon's doors slammed open against the wall. Dr. Sigmund jumped a little, and Count Caligari sneered.
"Did you ring?" Teeter asked the room at large. "Heavens! Has Hugo escaped again?"
Trying to hide the blush starting up her neck, Eve shook her head. "It was the dinner bell, Teeter!" Repressing the urge to add, You old fool, she gave him a look that promised dire retribution later. She should really sack him, but he was good with patients, and nobody was a better gardener than his cousin. And wherever Teeter went, so, regrettably, did Totter, since the two had been raised like brothers by their grandfather.
"Dinner. Shall we retire to the dining hall?"
"Jolly good, I'm quite famished," Dr. Crane said calmly. Noting Eve's dismay, he added, "Pray drop your distress, my dear. My own butler is dreadfully correct. Of course, my stable master is a horror—refuses to clean the eaves in the barn half the time. Eaves, where I love to roost on eves of the full moon. I detest messy nests," he groused. "I seriously doubt anyone's home runs like clockwork these days. And as your husband is absent, I'm quite sure you are struggling to stay afloat without him. You must miss a man around the old asylum."
Eve appreciated his helping relieve an awkward situation, yet wanted to kick him in the shins for the remark about her husband. "How polite you are to relieve my feminine sensibilities!" she said. At the same time she was thinking that tomorrow she would lock Teeter in his room for a month with only bread and water. No, that was too nice. She'd lock him the bell tower with Hugo. Her smile widened.
Extending his arm, Dr. Crane asked, "Well, my little dove, shall I escort you to dinner?"
Taking his arm, she nodded. The two of them chatted about the asylum as they led the other guests, following Eve's butler, who lurched into the dining room.
Once they were seated, it wasn't long before the guests' previously stilted conversation became highly entertaining. Eve was greatly relieved as the doctors discussed various treatments and lamented certain patients. Mesmer's hypnosis therapy was discussed and dissected, a subject she particularly found fascinating.
Her guests appeared to be enjoying themselves, Eve decided happily. The doctors' wives were rather quiet, but the food was excellent, in spite of the burned bits, and the conversation was riveting. The seas were smooth sailing, with no skulls and crossbones looming ugly on the horizon—with the exception of the soused butler, who continued to totter about the room, his eyes slightly glazed. Eve's mood lightened, and her blue eyes sparkled.
After the way the day began, Eve had quite feared for the night, but it appeared that her fears were unfounded and she could relax; the ill winds had receded from her sails. If the rest of the night went as well, she would be content. Providing no new disaster arrived, she just might receive some of the funding she needed.
A strong masculine voice suddenly interrupted the conversation. "Hello, my darling Eve."
Eve choked a little on her wine. Hastily she set her glass down and glanced up in surprise. Who was this man, and what was he doing at her dinner party uninvited? And how had he known her name? Appalled, and yet at the same time intrigued, she assessed the fine specimen standing just inside the doorway to the dining room.
The room, lit by a dozen or so candelabra, softened the handsome, swarthy face, with its strong chin and patrician nose. The man was dressed in a deep green superfine jacket that outlined his broad shoulders, and his doeskin breeches were tucked into gleaming Hessians and emphasized his taut leg muscles. Although this was not a tall man, perhaps just under six feet, he was well built, with hair the color of polished walnut wood, and his hazel eyes were a mixture of colors, mostly amber. He reminded her of one of her father's pirates, but better dressed.
He opened his mouth to speak, and Eve's interest was doused like a fire by water: "My dearest, how good it is to see you again! I could barely wait to reach the Towers and see my devoted wife."
A dreadful silence filled the shadowy room, and Eve's stomach clenched in preparation for a disaster of epic proportions. Her ill winds had turned into a hurricane.