Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) Read online

  Before she found it, a man strutted up to her, grinning. “Gosh, a new face!” he said, in an accent she couldn’t quite place. He held out his ungloved hand in invitation. “Where’ve you been all this time, fair lady?”

  Before she could answer, the ship pitched wildly. Allison found herself gripping the strange man’s hand for balance. The people on the dance floor cried out and seized one another. Even the band faltered for a moment.

  As Berengaria righted herself, the man holding Allison’s hand laughed down at her. He was young, she saw, redheaded, and liberally freckled. He exclaimed, “Aren’t you scared?”

  “No,” she said. She tried to free her hand, but he refused to give it up.

  “Then dance with me, strange maiden!” he demanded. “I swore I would dance with every beautiful girl on this ship, but I’ve missed you somehow!” Still holding her hand, the sweat on his palm visibly staining her white gloves, he bowed, more deeply this time. “Tommy Fellowes, at your service. Newly freed from Exeter College, Oxford University, and delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  Tommy Fellowes’s hands were bare, but he was otherwise properly attired in a tuxedo with a white vest and tie. He sported a wonderful set of dimples in his freckled cheeks, and Allison couldn’t help laughing with him. She was quite sure Adelaide would have despised him, and though Tommy Fellowes couldn’t know it, that was the highest recommendation he could receive.

  Using her free hand, Allison unwound his fingers from hers and smoothed her sweat-stained glove. “Allison Benedict,” she said, dropping a mock curtsy. Then, laughing, “Newly freed from the First Class Lounge.”

  “Golly!” her new acquaintance cried. He clapped his hand to his starched breast. “Too posh! I’ll bet they’re all wearing tails up there!”

  “Of course they are. And gloves, too.”

  He was utterly unabashed by this. “Got too hot!” he declared. “But I promise, I wore them at dinner.” He pulled a pair out of his pocket and waved them at her before jamming them back in and seizing her hand again. “Come on, old thing,” he cried. “Let’s cut a rug!”

  A quartet of young dancers, still struggling for balance on the dance floor, called Tommy’s name, beckoning to him. He tugged Allison toward them. The jazz band had found its beat again, and the music struck up more loudly than before. It was all irresistible.

  Allison, her silk wrap trailing behind her, followed Tommy, and in moments was trying to dance the Black Bottom in her too-long skirt. Berengaria rolled from time to time, and she found herself holding on to whoever was nearest, sometimes Tommy, sometimes one of the other men, once even one of the girls, a plump, red-cheeked brunette wearing a short beaded dress. When one song ended, the band went straight on to another. Allison, caught up in the moment, stripped her own gloves off and tossed them on one of the upholstered chairs, along with her silk scarf. When the musicians finally took a break, the dancers collapsed into chairs, calling for drinks and grinning at one another. Allison was perspiring, out of breath, and happier than she had been in weeks. In months.

  And, she thought now, disconsolately staring out at the drab landscape beyond the train’s windows, if she had stopped then, returned to the suite and to her mother, she would probably be safely at home in San Francisco. She might even be choosing her clothes, packing up her tennis racket, and buying books for her frosh year at Mills. She most certainly wouldn’t be on this train, imprisoned by a turncoat maid and a warden in the form of a Pullman porter, chugging her way toward the most boring winter ever.

  Yes, it was her own fault. She should have left brash Tommy Fellowes and the rest of his gay group in Second Class and trudged back up the stairs to the stiff confines of First. Where she belonged. Where, as her papa reminded her endlessly, her future was. Where, her mother would say, she would associate with people of her own class.

  She couldn’t make them understand, Papa and Mother and all the other parents who meant to mold their children into younger versions of themselves, that the world was changing. The lines were blurring, not only between social classes but between men and women. Women could vote! Women could serve in Congress! She had been born in the twentieth century, a new world of opportunities! Why, look at Cousin Margot!

  But that was a thought she didn’t want to pursue. She was still nursing her resentment of Cousin Margot for suggesting this whole stupid scheme.

  In some ways, she envied Ruby. There were many advantages Ruby didn’t have, but Ruby, at least, could change jobs if she wanted to, live where she wanted to, choose her own life’s path. She was limited only by her ability.

  Of course, Allison thought, casting her maid a guilty glance, Ruby’s abilities were unremarkable. She knew that.

  But what was she supposed to do in Seattle? Was she supposed to play the role of companion, solace to her poor bereaved aunt Edith? Not that she didn’t care! It must be awful to lose a son, such a handsome and charming one, especially after having him come home safe from the Great War. Still, she didn’t want to be trapped in a sprawling big house with a woman who by all accounts barely set foot outside her bedroom. The winter stretched ahead of Allison, dull and dim and relentlessly wet.

  Maybe she should have chosen the Bella Vista Rest Home!

  She pulled the curtains shut with a snap that made Ruby jump. Allison threw her head back against the sofa, an action that made her head spin. She closed her eyes, waiting for the dizziness to fade. There was nothing to look at in any case. She was already tired of the monotonous view, rain and clouds and tossing gray water, and they hadn’t even reached Seattle.

  Ruby was wrong. A person could easily expire from boredom.

  CHAPTER 3

  In the Moreno Valley, where Frank Parrish stood ankle-deep in yellowing grass, late autumn sunshine slanted across the barracks and mess halls of March Field. A dry wind fluttered the brim of his Stetson as he squinted into the afternoon glare to watch the JN-4, dubbed the Jenny, joyously carve the empty sky with turns and rolls and dives. Its double wings flashed in the sunlight, and he had the odd, poetic thought that the airplane seemed to be laughing.

  The Jenny banked, angled toward the runway for a touch-and-go, then sailed up and over Frank’s head where he stood with Captain Carruthers. His ears thrummed with the sound of the engine, and the airplane was so close he could see the vibration of the struts between the double wings. The student in the front seat was grinning ear to ear. The instructor, in the back, waved to the men on the ground. Frank tipped his head up, one hand on his hat, but keeping a close eye on the undercarriage, the slight movement of the lower wing, the landing wheels spinning in the wind.

  “What do they say about the stick?” Frank asked, after the noise of the plane’s motor died away. “Advantage over the wheel?” The Jenny had previously been controlled by a Deperdussin control wheel, but this version, sometimes called the Canuck because of the Canadians who had redesigned it, used a stick. Frank’s right hand twitched with the urge to know for himself what it felt like, to understand the connection between the control and the craft.

  Carruthers said, “Depends who you ask. Some like it better. Some think the Jenny was fine the way it was.” He clapped Frank’s shoulder. “You can ask the pilot yourself.” The two men started across the field. The desiccated grass rustled under their feet, and the sun burned Frank’s shoulders through his jacket.

  He had arrived just that afternoon, climbing off the train in Riverside to be met by one of Carruthers’s sergeants. The sergeant had installed him in bachelor officers’ quarters, then brought him to the airfield to meet the captain.

  Captain Carruthers was exactly the sort of clear-eyed, broad-shouldered military man that a younger Frank Parrish had dreamed of becoming when he enlisted in the King’s army. He had been impatient to be in the show, to ride off in glory to fight the Hun. The British Army had snapped him up in a heartbeat, eager to commission a young officer with both engineering skills and a lifetime of horsemanship to recommend him. Fr
ank thought he would be like Carruthers, career military, straight-backed, proud, with clarity of purpose and a taste for adventure.

  He sometimes thought, now, that the greatest shock of his war experience was not even the loss of his left arm, which was misery enough. The worse shock, in many ways, was the profound shift in his perception of the world. He came home stunned by the carnage, the cruelty, and the excesses of war. He might, he supposed, have regained his commission once he was able to tolerate his prosthesis, but he could never have accepted it.

  None of that dimmed his respect for Carruthers. The captain, and the others who labored here at March Field, had been essential to the ultimate victory of the Allies. Frank knew Carruthers by reputation, and the efficient operation he saw around him proved that the captain had earned it. Frank had saluted him in all sincerity, and shaken his hand, finding his grip as firm and friendly as he could have wished.

  “The Boeing Company appreciates this access,” Frank told the captain.

  Carruthers grinned, his face creasing in weathered lines. He looked every inch a flyer, Frank thought, with a twinge of envy. He looked to be a man as much at ease in the air as on the ground. Carruthers said, “Your company makes fine airplanes, Major Parrish, and has done wonders refitting some of the old ones. The army is happy to oblige Bill Boeing whenever possible.”

  “I’d like to talk to all your pilots,” Frank said.

  “You mean, the ones I have left?”

  “Right.” Since the end of the war, operations at March Field were being gradually phased out. The same slowdown of operations that had cut Boeing’s army contracts in half had sharply reduced the number of pilots being trained. The Jennys were disappearing, one by one, mostly snapped up by barnstormers.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the flying business, Major,” Carruthers said. They reached the mess hall, and Frank, a little self-consciously, reached for the door with his left hand, his prosthetic one. He had found, in the year he’d had it, that he wanted to use it as much as possible, not just for the practice, but to prove he could. He felt the curious glances when people noticed it, but very few made any comment.

  He didn’t blame anyone for looking. It was called the officer’s arm because it was the finest of its type, the best modern technology had to offer. Still, it hardly looked real. It looked like what it was, metal and leather and rubber, but Frank didn’t care about its appearance. He loved the thing. He felt as if it—and Margot—had given him back his life.

  Thinking of Margot confused him just now. His feelings for her hadn’t changed, but it had been something of a relief when Boeing sent him here to study the JN-4. It gave him time to think about what had come between them. He was embarrassed, though, to realize how much he missed her. At the thought of her, his solar plexus ached with longing to see her tall figure striding toward him, shining dark hair ruffling in the breeze, clear dark eyes lighting as she saw him. Damn, Cowboy. You have to set this right. But he couldn’t think about it now. He had a job to do, and he was grateful for the distraction.

  He and Carruthers poured coffee for themselves and sat at one of the long tables in the mess, their legs stretched out from the bench seats, a sheaf of blueprints between them. Carruthers tapped the papers. “There’s a lot of good work here,” he said. “Side benefit of war, I guess.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had a very different war from mine, Major.”

  “Expect so.” There wasn’t much to say about it, Frank thought. Not that he ever had much to say. Carruthers had been part of the supreme American effort to match the Germans’ airpower. Frank figured that was probably more meaningful, and a hell of a lot more productive, than his own service with Allenby in the Judean hills. He tried, now that he had a functional hand and arm, not to think about the day he was wounded, but sometimes the memory caught him unawares, and he felt the horror and disgust of it all over again.

  Carruthers didn’t press him. He seemed an affable enough fellow, career army, well past his youth. Frank had studied his record before he came, and he knew Carruthers had put up March Field, with its machine shop, hospital, supply depot, and aero repair building, in just sixty days. It was an impressive accomplishment.

  Carruthers said, “So, Major. Your boss believes airpower is here to stay.”

  “He thinks it’s going to transform the world.” Carruthers lifted his eyebrows, and Frank smiled. He was on sure ground on this topic. When it came to airplanes, and the Boeing Airplane Company, Frank could be more forthcoming, even talkative. He shared Bill Boeing’s passion for the possibilities and the opportunities available to the masters of the air. “We’re already carrying mail, a commercial enterprise. Building seaplanes, touring airplanes, the MB-3A pursuit fighters—there’s no limit. We’re going to build lighter airplanes, carry a heavier payload.”

  “Douglas got ahead of you with the Cloudster.”

  Frank chuckled. “That got under Mr. Boeing’s skin, I can promise you.”

  “But now the war’s over. I wonder if there’s enough demand to keep all of you in business—Boeing and Douglas and Curtiss, too.”

  “Mr. Boeing’s looking ahead, Captain. He’s got all his engineers working on the next step.”

  “So he sent you here. He doesn’t mind that Curtiss built the Jenny?”

  “Not at all. He figured a good close look will help us understand why the Jenny is so efficient and so stable. Is it the ailerons, you think?”

  “Maybe. The Jenny’s slow, which is why the barnstormers like it. It won’t ever work as anything but a trainer.”

  “We’ve heard the Canuck has a lighter interior. We’re interested in that.”

  “Happy to help however we can.” Carruthers emptied his coffee cup. “I’ll give you a tour of the place, so you can look around on your own.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe, if you feel like it, you’d like to go up for a spin?”

  Frank set down his coffee cup with a decisive click. “Oh, yes, Captain,” he said fervently. “There’s nothing I’d like better. If the United States Army would allow an ex–British Army man in one of their airplanes, I would very much like to go up.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Allison had forgotten the magnificence of Benedict Hall. Four white-painted stories were surrounded by a wide porch. There was both a large and a small parlor, a long dining room, and so many bedrooms she hadn’t been able to count them yet. Her parents’ house in San Francisco was tall and narrow, but Benedict Hall was tall and broad, sprawling among gardens that must be beautiful in the spring and summer. There was an old coach house in back, now converted into a garage, where the Essex motorcar rested in shining black splendor.

  Cousin Margot, oddly enough, lived above the garage in a small apartment. Allison didn’t know why that should be, when there was an enormous bedroom with attached bath right at the front of the house, a room everyone referred to as Miss Margot’s.

  Allison pictured Cousin Margot scowling, sour with disappointment over not marrying her major. She probably went around most of the time in heavy shoes like Ruby’s, dark stockings, even spectacles. She probably wore a stethoscope around her neck and had a thermometer sticking out of her pocket. Maybe what happened at Allison’s party had ruined everything, and now she was a bitter old maid ready to take her misery out on Allison.

  Allison felt like a stranger here, even though they all bore the same name. She knew about the family mostly from letters and conversations with her parents. Papa said Uncle Dickson’s business had thrived in Seattle, even after the war and the general strike that had brought down so many others. He always said, with gruff admiration, “That Dickson can see five years into the future! Hell of an advantage.” Dick, the oldest son, worked in the business with his father, and his wife, Ramona, was a conventional sort, fair and pretty, not much at conversation but wearing very good clothes.

  The Benedicts’ cook, Hattie, was a Negro. Adelaide, after their last visit, had decl
ared on the train back to San Francisco that she didn’t know what Edith was thinking, hiring a colored cook. Papa had made some remark about Hattie being with the family a long time, and Adelaide had retorted that with all their money, Dickson and Edith could do better. She said it was all well and good to have colored help in the laundry or to clean, but she wouldn’t have it in her kitchen. Allison had stopped paying attention then, because her mother never went in the kitchen that she could see, so she didn’t think her opinion mattered much.

  Hattie had made what she called her “special cake” on the night Allison arrived. She served it herself, so Allison had to eat a few bites to be polite. It was marvelous, flavored with almond and topped with coconut, and Allison could still taste the sweetness in her mouth when she went to bed that night.

  Uncle Dickson had driven the Essex himself to King Street Station to meet Allison and Ruby. His butler and chauffeur, as Allison had learned from Papa, had suffered cerebral apoplexy the year before, and Uncle Dickson refused to replace him, which meant there wasn’t a single manservant in Benedict Hall.

  In Mother’s view, this was foolish, and created more hardship for Edith. In Papa’s opinion, Dickson Benedict was just looking for an excuse to drive his own motorcar, something no one in his position should do. Whatever the reason, Uncle Dickson had been at the wheel of the Essex, which was quite a respectable automobile. With him, to help with the luggage, was one of the maids, a redheaded, freckle-faced girl named Leona, who bobbed a curtsy every time anyone spoke to her, and whose presence had Ruby stony-faced with resentment by the time the valises and the trunk were wrestled into the back of the Essex.

  Benedict Hall and the other grand mansions of Seattle occupied Fourteenth Avenue, opposite a park with a glass-walled conservatory and a brick water tower soaring toward the leaden clouds. It all would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been for the unrelenting rain, which depressed Allison and made Ruby sniffle.