The Demon Lover by Juliet Dark Read Free Book Online Page A

short when Dory slid back the doors to the library. This room, which faced east, got the morning light. Streaming through a screen of shrubbery, it turned the room a glassy green, like a forest glade, but instead of being lined with trees the room was lined with floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases. There was enough room in here to shelve all the books in my apartment and storage unit and still have spare space to acquire more books.
    “Is this where Dahlia LaMotte wrote?” I asked.
    “No,” Dory answered. “Her study was upstairs in the tower room off her bedroom.”
    A study and a library! In my apartment in Inwood I wrote at my kitchen table. I stored files and books in the kitchen cabinets. I imagined what it would feel like to have a proper desk and to wander into my own library to find any book that I needed. No wonder Dahlia LaMotte was prolific—she wrote more than sixty novels—this was the perfect house to write in.
    Dory preceded me up the wide oak stairs. Her high-heeled pumps clicked lightly on the bare wood, while my crepe-soled sandals awakened a chorus of creaks and cracks that sounded like a swarm of crickets.
    “You wouldn’t have to worry about a burglar sneaking up these steps,” I said. “They’re like an alarm system.”
    Dory turned to me on the second floor landing. “No,” she replied, taking my remark seriously. “You wouldn’t have to worry about anyone breaking in . Besides, the town is quite safe.”
    She showed me four small bedrooms—one complete with built-in bed and cabinets exactly like a ship’s cabin, which Dory told me had been Silas’s bedroom—a linen closet, a bathroom with an enormous claw-foot tub, and then, finally, she opened the last door at the end of the hallway. “The master bedroom,” she announced.
    The corner room faced the east side of the house. Two large windows overlooked an overgrown garden and the mountains in the distance. The bed would go up against the west wall so you could lie in bed and look out at the mountains. At night you’d see the moon rise. The southeast corner of the room opened into an octagonal turret. A desk had been built across three sides of the turret; on the other three sides were built-in bookshelves below the windows. A straight-backed wooden chair with a needlepoint cushion stood facing the desk. I sat down at it. The desk had been fitted out with dozens of tiny drawers and shelves. I opened one of the drawers and found, to my utter delight, a blue robin’s egg.
    “I suppose Dahlia LaMotte’s papers were given to the library with her books,” I said, trying another drawer that turned out to be locked.
    “Actually, I believe Matilda moved all her aunt’s papers up to the attic.”
    “The attic?” I asked.
    Dory Browne sighed. “I suppose you’ll want to see that, too.”
    Having spent most of my life living in apartments I had very little experience with attics. I was picturing a dusty, cobweb-filled space at the top of a rickety ladder, but the room, which we reached by a narrow flight of stairs, was clean and smelled pleasantly of tea. It smelled of tea because Dahlia LaMotte’s papers had all been stored in tea crates, each one marked with the insignia of the LaMotte Tea Company and the type of tea inside—Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lapsang souchong, and other exotic varieties.
    “They were left over from her father’s warehouses,” Dory told me.
    There were twelve of them. I opened one gingerly, half-afraid after my experience in the woods that a mouse would jump out at me, but the only thing that came out of the box was the scent of bergamot. Three notebooks, each one bound in the same marbled paper, lay across the top of the chest. I picked up one and saw there was another identical notebook beneath it. I turned to the first page and found Dahlia LaMotte’s signature and the dates August 15, 1901–September 26, 1901 in a florid but readable hand. She’d filled up the book quickly.
    “Why aren’t these in