The Demon Lover by Juliet Dark Read Free Book Online

She laughed nervously as she fished out a key from her quilted tote.
    Diana squeezed the Realtor’s arm. “Well, I’m just across the street if you need anything.”
    I couldn’t imagine what the two women were worried about. Mice, maybe? Rotting floorboards? But when we walked up the porch steps I thought the wood seemed firm and in good repair. The wooden face in the pediment gleamed as if it had been washed clean by yesterday’s rain. It glowed in the morning light with the complexion of a young person who’d had a good night’s sleep. And when Dory opened the front door (with a long iron skeleton key that turned smoothly in the lock) there was no moldy or mousy odor. Instead the air the house huffed out at us smelled like honeysuckle. Dory held the door open and I stepped through first, into a wide foyer. Light from the stained-glass fanlight spilled onto the polished wood floor like a scattering of rose petals strewn for our arrival.
    “The floors are oak,” Dory said, closing the door behind us. “As well as the banister.” She ran her hand over a carved newel post at the foot of a wide flight of stairs. “Silas had the wood milled himself at his shipyards. He wanted everything built like a ship. There are pocket doors leading into both parlors.” She opened a double door, both sides sliding into the walls with a shoosh ing noise that echoed loudly in the big, empty house. A draft from the stairs moved at our backs as we entered the dim parlor. Although the shutters were open, the honeysuckle shrubs and vines had grown over the windows, blocking out the light. Dory turned a switch and a crystal chandelier sprung into sight high over our heads.
    “The ceilings are twelve feet high,” Dory informed me. “The chandelier was made in Venice.”
    “It’s beautiful,” I said, marveling at the fanciful shapes and colors of the crystal droplets. “Kind of exotic for these parts, isn’t it?”
    “Silas made his fortune in the shipping business. He brought back treasures from all over the world. The tiles around the hearth”—she gestured to the fireplace—“are Wedgwood from England. The mahogany mantelpiece was brought over from an Italian castle.” I walked over to the fireplace and ran my hand over the intricately carved wood. A satyr’s face stared out of the center roundel; a procession of Greek gods and goddesses adorned the top frieze.
    “The mantelpiece depicts the wedding of Cupid and Psyche,” Dory said in her tour guide voice. “The theme is repeated in the dining room frieze …” Dory had opened another pocket door that led into a large octagonal room. Plaster figures paraded across the walls beneath swags of pine boughs and acorns. There were built-in china cabinets in the corners.
    “And here’s the kitchen. I’m afraid it hasn’t been modernized since the sixties …”
    The “modernization” consisted of an Amana refrigerator and gas range, both in the same hideous shade of lime green. The floor was worn linoleum in a faded checkerboard pattern. “Matilda had this addition built on and spent most of her time back here,” Dory said, opening a door onto a mudroom with a washer and dryer and then another door to a rather drab bedroom papered in yellowed, peeling wallpaper with an old iron bed frame painted a matching peeling yellow. “Her arthritis made going up and down the stairs difficult and it was cheaper just to heat the downstairs. She closed off the library …”
    “The library?” I asked. I was glad to leave Matilda’s little apartment behind. It had the atmosphere of a retirement home and, curiously, felt older than the rest of the house even though it was a newer addition.
    “Matilda didn’t read much, so she had no use for the library. She donated all her aunt’s books to Fairwick College and closed off this room.”
    I wondered if Dahlia LaMotte’s books were still in the college library. They might have notes in the margins …
    My musings were cut