When We Believed in Mermaids(6)
The splendor of the house would be a find even if it were classic Art Deco, but this house was built with a sense of Oceanic pride. The stairs are polished kauri wood, the banister Australian blackwood. A theme of stylized ferns and kiwis weaves through the accents and woodwork and tiles, and as we move through the hallways and rooms, I trail my fingertips over the precise inlays and carvings, wondering who the woodworker was. French doors with stylized cutouts lead from room to room and to a vast patio that looks out to sea.
Only three rooms of the twenty-two have been updated—a bedroom and sitting room at the back of the house, which are an ode to the charmless seventies, and portions of the kitchen, which has a stove and fridge that both look to be about a decade old. The stainless steel appliances clash with the rest of the room, which was designed for a household filled with servants and is suitably vast. The tile work is less spectacular here, but the stove sits in a tiled alcove, and I can see that there might be more buried beneath an unfortunate coat of paint.
Simon and I wander back through the butler’s pantry, still stocked with everything from fish knives to soup tureens and china in every possible variation. I open one of the glassed doors and take out a bread-and-butter plate with a dark-blue rim on white china, a pattern of dual lionesses and stylized flowers in gold along the edge. “This is . . . incredible. It’s like a museum.” Carefully, I settle it back in place. “Maybe that’s what it should be. Maybe it’s selfish to want to live here.”
“Don’t be silly, darling.” He tugs me through the narrow room and into the dining room and through one of the French doors in the long line. “Look at that.” He flings his hand toward the horizon, as if he’s painted the view himself. “Imagine our children growing up with this. Imagine that the house finally has life in it.”
The breeze ruffles his hair, and I’m drawn, as always, into his vigorous, optimistic view of the world. “You’re right.”
“Right.” He pats my shoulder and slides his sunglasses down to his tanned face. “I’m going to take a look at the boathouse and leave you to your explorations. We’ll have lunch at Marguerite’s, shall we?”
“Yes. I’d like that,” I say, but I’m already drawn back into the house, anxious to put my hands on everything, touch it, make sure it’s real.
As I walk through the rooms now, touching doorjambs and walls and artwork and vases, I listen to the atmosphere for anything ghostly or sad, but the rooms are only quiet. Hushed, almost, as if waiting. Leaving the master bedroom for last, I explore it all, then move silently up the swirling staircase to the room that occupies fully a third of the second floor. French doors open to a balcony that extends the length of the room, and opposite rise ceiling-high closet doors, sleek and varnished, with discreet chevrons inlaid along the edges.
Ghoulishly, I look at the floors, parquet covered with pink and gray rugs. This is where the original owner of the house was found murdered, stabbed to death at the tender age of twenty-eight.
Veronica Parker, a dark-haired and voluptuous beauty, was a New Zealand lass who’d risen to Hollywood stardom in the midtwenties. In 1932, the Olympics were held in Los Angeles, and Veronica was part of the welcoming committee for the athletes of her country, which was how she met Auckland native George Brown, an Olympic swimmer. A tumultuous love affair began. Veronica had already built Sapphire House, but George was married to his high school sweetheart, who refused to give him a divorce.
It was, by all accounts, the undoing of Veronica.
The turbulent romance lasted six years. On April 9, 1938, she was found stabbed to death after a party on the hill. Dozens of suspects were interviewed, but everyone was sure it was George who killed her. His world in tatters, he secluded himself for the last three years of his life. Some said he died of grief. Some of guilt.
I toe the floor, wondering, but I can see no signs of foul play. Of course, it was scoured some eighty years before. Still, I find it intriguing that Veronica’s sister lived in the house all this time and never slept here.
Or not. Who would want to sleep where a sibling had been murdered? Why did she live here, alone, for such a long time? Had she been so grief stricken that she could find peace only in this house her sister had built? Or was it simply expedient?
Not expedient. She could have done a hundred other things. Sold the house, made it over into her own tastes. Instead, she lived in those three unassuming rooms, leaving the rest of the house almost exactly as it was when her sister was alive.
Except here.
Rounding the room, I open drawers and find them empty. The closets are bare. Only the desk, sitting in the corner, holds any artifacts. Yellowed paper and desiccated sealing wax fill one drawer. In another, I find a dried-up bottle of ink and a fountain pen.
My fingers curl around the pen, and a shimmer of loss brushes the edges of my throat. The pen is substantial, smoothly inlaid with geometric patterns in green and yellow. Tugging off the lid, I find a carved silver nib.
Time slides away.
I am ten, practicing calligraphy with a dip pen as a storm pounds the windows of the bedroom I share with my sister. Her curly hair falls in her face as she bends over her page, meticulously drawing an L, her favorite letter. It’s better than mine. Her calligraphy is always better than mine.
I drop the pen back in the desk drawer and wipe my hands on my thigh.
The house might not be haunted, but I surely am.