Free The Dark Closet by Miranda Beall Page B

buyer. As far as Crossett’s father was concerned, the Deerwood Baptists were seeing to it that it stayed that way. Rumor had it (no one knew for sure because no Barrow Catholic or Anglican deigned to look) that they knocked down walls to create a meeting area in the three small rooms that crossed the front of the house and erected other walls in the two large rooms beyond to create offices. It was a story that could blanche any citizen of Barrow worth his ancestral blood.
    “Why didn’t someone stop Mrs. Mainwaring from selling the house?” Crossett in his naïve youth had once asked his father.
    “She didn’t want to be stopped!” his father had bellowed. “She didn’t want to run the place!”
    “Then why didn’ t someone in the family offer to run it for her?”
    A reasonable suggestion, but a question to which his father gave no answer, for the answer was an axiom, cold in its truth but no source of embarrassment to its indifferent constituents: Mainwarings did not help other Mainwarings. They did, however, scrutinize one another’s affairs, albeit from afar, and criticize loudly among themselves but never face to face.
    No, Mainwarings did not help other Mainwarings, even within their own nuclear families. There was many a tale of wayward Mainwarings whose lifelines were unceremoniously cut by the family patriarch and the unorthodox kinsman let out to sea. Nor was there any coming back, prodigal or no, and no penance sufficient to obliterate the transgression. He knew. His brother Edmond was just such an ill-fated Mainwaring. Since the day his father had told Edmond he could indeed tend to his own affairs as he so impudently wished, he had been cast from Winterhurst. Calling everyone into the back parlor, his father gave them, especially and most cordially to Edmond, a highball and announced that Edmond was henceforth disinherited. He was as unrepentant as he promised to be, too. On a rainy, cold March day in 1949 in the offices of Maynard, Williams, Teilbright, and Laster, all instances of Edmond’s name were struck from the will of Winthrop Braden Mainwaring II.
    At a point, Crossett often thought, Edmond should be reinstated in some fashion, but at exactly what point Crossett had not yet determined nor did he seem of a mind to hasten his decision. Meanwhile, somewhere specifically where no one knew, Edmond languished in the humiliation of having been rejected by a man he could never again hope to approach, except perhaps in that life beyond the grave.
    Crossett resumed his reading, forgetting Edmond completely when he saw the next headline: “Harden House Ghost Disappears as Flames Sweep Building,” dated February 6, 1931. According to the article, the house was built by the Lords Baltimore in 1624 as a bride’s dowry, and Elizabeth Harden had burned to death there thirty-five years ago. The same Dr. Benjamin mentioned by Twynne claimed to have seen her ghost while wandering through the stone cellar, all that was left of the house. Details were few.
    The next article,  howev er, struck a familiar chord.
    “ Dr. Benjamin Tells The Rambler of His Latest Encounter with Mr. Magruder Green’s Ghost, January 23, 1949.”
    “ Dr. Benjamin has witnessed once again one of the most famous ghosts of Barrow, Md., Mr. Magruder Green’s diplomat, who appears leaning against the dining room Hepplewhite sideboard on particularly quiet evenings at Green’s Levels, the remaining 501 acres of the original 3,456-acre estate given to Winston Magruder Green by Queen Anne. Dr. Benjamin saw the ghostly personage himself as he walked into the room saying he sensed a presence. The red-sashed diplomat, after appearing in a gauze-like fashion, moved from the sideboard to the dining room table where he appeared to pour himself a glass of wine from the decanter placed there. After several sips he disappeared, apparently satisfied with the aperitif. Dr. Benjamin has prepared a written record of this encounter to add to the