The Vanishing at Castle Moreau(9)
Author: Jaime Jo Wright

 

“You like to collect things?” Cleo tried a different tack, born out of her own personal interest. “When I was little, I used to collect stuffed animals.”

 

Mrs. Tremblay’s mouth quirked. “I collect . . . a variety of things.”

 

“Such as?”

 

Mrs. Tremblay pursed her lips for a long moment, then answered, “Well, I would invite you in, but—”

 

“I’m all right with a little mess,” Cleo interrupted, hoping to squelch the woman’s reticence before it grew any more. “My mother—she wasn’t a great homemaker, so I’m used to messes.”

 

Mrs. Tremblay responded with another snort. “Mona Lisa, your maman’s messes are foothills to my Everest.”

 

 

 

She’d seen the reality TV shows about hoarders, their addictions, and the baggage—literally—that went along with it. Cleo quickly determined that hoarder was an inadequate term for describing Virgie Tremblay and her centuries-old American castle.

 

Cleo followed the stoop-shouldered woman through a maze of boxes that were stacked at least six high and five deep in the main entrance of the castle. The stacks spanned a floor that appeared to be inlaid wood in an intricate pattern but was now covered in years of grime.

 

Cleo lifted her eyes to take in the vaulted ceiling. The stairwell reminded her of the movie Titanic and its iconic stairway scene. Only this set of stairs led up to a balcony and was marred by rows upon rows of boxes and crates, books strewn about, and a variety of old clothes hanging over the banister.

 

No. Mrs. Tremblay was a collector who hoarded—everything collectible—but she wasn’t unclean. There were no cat carcasses, no rat droppings, and thankfully no cockroaches scurrying around. It was just a mass collection of things, yet all was being kept as neatly as an old lady could keep them.

 

Mrs. Tremblay gave Cleo a sidelong glance, wary and obviously distrustful of Cleo’s reaction.

 

Cleo offered a small smile that wasn’t so exuberant as to appear manufactured to cover the real emotion she hid inside: absolute petrified terror at the idea of having to organize it all. How? How did one even begin to dig through piles of collections and sort them? Certainly not everything could be kept, and if that was the objective—getting rid of things—how did she convince this stubborn woman that it was time to part with the bulk of her things?

 

“Worse than you thought?” Mrs. Tremblay’s chuckle held an edge of challenge.

 

Cleo shrugged, hoping she came across nonchalant. “I’ve seen worse.” She hadn’t, of course, but lying was coming more naturally to her as the years passed.

 

Mrs. Tremblay narrowed her eyes. “No, you haven’t.”

 

Cleo diverted by pointing to an open box at the base of the stairs. “I see you collect books?”

 

“Who doesn’t?” Mrs. Tremblay waddled toward the box and kicked it lightly with the toe of her orthopedic shoe. “I snagged these at a garage sale last week.”

 

“Are they good ones?” Cleo attempted to continue the conversation.

 

Mrs. Tremblay gave her a snort. “How would I know? I haven’t read them—probably never will.”

 

“Oh.” Of course. Cleo was finding Mrs. Tremblay’s communication style was marked by logic, taking a realistic view of things. Very literal.

 

“I suppose you want to get started.” Mrs. Tremblay eyed her, assessing her like a surveyor with high-end equipment judging boundary lines on property.

 

Cleo swallowed hard. They hadn’t moved from the center of the room, which looked less like a grand entrance and more like a museum’s warehouse.

 

Mrs. Tremblay cleared her throat, phlegm rattling in her chest. She pursed her lips to the side, then offered Cleo a grimace mixed with a sigh of resignation and some other undefinable emotion Cleo couldn’t quite put her finger on.

 

“I’ll show you to your room.”

 

“My room?” Cleo couldn’t help the squeak in her voice. This was beyond unexpected. It was unexplainable. Just moments before, Mrs. Tremblay had wanted to throw her out. Unsettled, Cleo was positive the last place she wished to stay was at Castle Moreau. “No. I mean . . . I was going to get a hotel room.” If she could find a place that took cash.

 

Mrs. Tremblay placed her arthritically bent hands on her hips. She was about four inches shorter than Cleo. She blinked behind her Harry Potter spectacles, then smiled thinly. “You’re worse off than I thought,” she said after studying Cleo. “I’ll bet your name isn’t even Cleo.”

 

Cleo choked. “Excuse me?”

 

Mrs. Tremblay waved her off. “It’s all right. I’m not new to this.”

 

“New to what?”

 

Mrs. Tremblay shook her head. “There you go again. You may have pulled the wool over my grandson’s eyes—seeing as he’s probably desperate for anyone to help who doesn’t want media attention—but you’ve not pulled it over mine. My eyes are wide open.” Her smile was unnerving, and her stare didn’t falter.

 

Cleo swallowed. This was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.

 

Mrs. Tremblay spoke before Cleo found the words to politely decline the offer of employment, the offer to stay in the castle and cohabitate with this woman whose ancestry was built on the golden foundation of American dreams.

 

“You can call me Virgie. I much prefer that over anything ‘Mrs.’” The woman crooked her finger at Cleo and beckoned her to follow. “You’ll have to clean it, but there’s a room for you in the north wing.” She quirked an eyebrow. “And when you chat with my grandson, you can tell him that next time, if he thinks he can outsmart me, he’s sorely mistaken. I gave him the Tremblay name. I can take it away.”

 

With that, Mrs. Tremblay—Virgie—withdrew her sharp attention from Cleo and pushed her way up the stairs.

 

 

 

 

 

five

 

Daisy

 

 

It was as she’d feared. There was no other staff to care for the castle. This was made more apparent when she entered the kitchen. The chill was stark, the stove cold, the hearth dark, and it was void of the smells that should accompany the room.

 

Hungry, Daisy poked in cupboards and in an icebox. Aside from a stale loaf of half-eaten bread, there was not even a crumb. What the occupants of Castle Moreau ate was befuddling! Daisy crept to a doorway and opened it, staring down at a flight of stairs that disappeared beneath the earth into a cellar. Even that looked abandoned, as spiderwebs cascaded along the walls in swoops and swags. A chill blew up the wooden steps, causing Daisy to shiver and shut the door. She could explore the dark beyond of the castle another time. The idea that food would be stored down there was not enough of a motivation for her to risk her life against arachnids and rats and other creatures that had enough fortitude to create a home in the darkness. Not to mention, she’d read in a novel once that a man had buried a peddler in his cellar after he’d rammed a pitchfork into the man’s back. All because the peddler stole an apple from his tree. No. No cellars today—even if novels were known for being more gruesome than real life. The perversion of an author’s mind.