Noah guided her into the living room with the black-and-white checkerboard floor and sofas with arms edged in brass.
Carolyn Yates sat in a black armchair with a high back. A portrait of a gray-haired man hung on the wall behind her, and by his looks Minerva took him to be Carolyn’s father or another relative on her side of the family. They had the same eyes, the meager smile.
Carolyn’s head was wrapped with a red turban this time. A black tea set with gilded edges had been placed upon a table.
“Are you going to paint afterward?” Noah asked. “The easel is set up already. Should I—”
“I don’t know. I’ll make up my mind about it later. You can serve the tea, Noah,” Carolyn said, motioning at the cups. “Milk, lemon, or sugar?”
“Sugar,” Minerva said.
“How many lumps?”
“One.”
Noah picked up a cup and a pair of silver tongs, tossed a cube into the cup, and handed it to her. Then he poured milk into another cup and passed that to his grandmother.
“Sit with us. You look perfectly presentable, for once,” Carolyn said, giving her grandson a half smile of approval.
Noah replied with a half smile of his own, plopping himself down on the other end of the couch Minerva was occupying.
“How does your research proceed?” Carolyn asked.
“Very well, Mrs. Yates.”
“Any deep insights you can share with me?”
“I’m afraid not yet. I do have some questions. In one of Beatrice Tremblay’s short stories, ‘A Wisp of Fog,’ she seems to parallel an incident after a party you attended on Halloween.”
“I’m sorry, dear, I’m not very familiar with her stories.”
“There’s a masked ball and a stranger slips into the party. The protagonist keeps looking in his direction because he’s wearing a carved mask with horns. The stranger is concealing a knife—”
“Oh, I’ll have to stop you.” Carolyn shook her head. “I never shared Beatrice’s love of the macabre. I suppose you like those strange, dramatic stories of ghosts and ghouls?”
“I do. I think the stories are beautiful.”
“Well, I don’t, and I didn’t bother to read more than a page or two of her works. I don’t enjoy being frightened. Do you have any other questions?”
Minerva looked down at her notepad, shifted direction. “In her manuscript, Betty mentions that she kept many of Ginny’s drawings and Spiritualist correspondence. Noah showed me a few sketches, but I’m hoping to look at more of them. And I haven’t come across her correspondence.”
“There are no more. This is what she left behind when she passed away. Many things were lost when she moved to Boston with Benjamin Hoffman.”
“Her date for the Halloween party?”
“Yes, he was her date for several functions,” Carolyn said as she took a sip of her tea. “Benjamin was a good friend, there was no romantic connection there. He took her in. The cancer wiped outmost of her savings and Betty was not exactly wealthy in her last few years. It’s really a pity, Betty could have married well, but she chose to ignore the good prospects that came her way.”
“I thought she liked women,” Minerva said. “She was a lesbian.”
“What a bold way to put it!” Carolyn raised a thin eyebrow and sipped her tea. “You mustn’t judge me closed-minded, but we tended to be more discreet back in my day and didn’t discuss our love lives, especially when they veered in certain directions.”
“She means it’s not polite to say it out loud,” Noah said cheerfully. “There are many things you’re not supposed to say around these parts.”
Carolyn gave her grandson a pointed look before speaking again. “When she moved, she took her things to Benjamin’s apartment, and whether he has any of those drawings or letters somewhere, I do not know,” Carolyn said.
“Grandfather would have known,” Noah said. “He wanted to preserve those scraps of paper and old documents. But he died a couple of months after Beatrice, and dear old Granny has never bothered much with memorabilia, have you?”
“Perhaps there is something else that might help your research?” Carolyn asked, ignoring her grandson and focusing instead on Minerva. Clearly those two did not get along well. Minerva thought to simply mumble an apology and step out quickly, but she did need help.
