surrounded by knees. Forsyth had made his fortune in the West, sliding needles into mineral veins, fueling the factory fires of the Cuyahoga, the construction of highways across the Atlantic Coast, the general choke and rattle of the late Industrial Revolution. Perhaps in response, he built Fleur-de-Lys deep within the Berkshire hills, surrounded by trees and fields, an Eden, a solace, a place where he could pretend to be a naturalist. Fresh air and clean water. He shipped Helene and baby Guy up here and rarely visited, and when he died, not soon enough, he left the entire estate, all 36 acres and 900 statues and forty rooms, to the child, who was eight at the time.
Life was a series of nannies and clowns and croquet parties for Guy and his lonely mother, who cared less for the sleepy hill towns and their inhabitants than her husband seemed to want of her. Guy made few friends among the local children, many of whose parents worked for him, and his summers were spent in carriage rides from one cottage party to another, social events where the bonhomie was largely ceremonial. After Forsyth died, Helene was less and less in residence, taking the train back into the city at every opportunity and more often than not leaving Guy behind, on his massive estate, with his handlers and his jugglers and his short pants. As he hit his teens, things got a little crazy: wilder parties, construction projects commenced and halted, visitors of all shapes and sizes. Skinny-dipping. Naked lawn bowling. He developed something of a reputation.
Then, in his early twenties, Guy went big. He’d hosted a traveling circus at Fleur-de-Lys, putting them up for the entire summer, the performers in the main house and the animals in stables and tents he’d commissioned. In the evenings, servants regaled the uptown taverns with stories of bearded women and dwarves and sword-swallowers, and some days you could catch an occasional glimpse of great gray beasts wandering aimlessly across the property’s back fields. When that summer ended, rumor had it, Guy had kept a rhino.
We learned all this from Florence Banish, who had a whole folder of Fleur-de-Lys material in a fireproof cabinet in one of the library’s archival spaces. At that point, Head-Connect hadn’t yet purchased the property, although some of the local realtors whispered of overtures from Lake Tahoe. Chick and I sat at a circular table and spread the contents of the folder out in front of us. Grainy pictures, newspaper clippings, yellowing photocopies of deeds. Florence Banish watched hawk-like as we sifted through them, her voice a cross between a croak and a flute: no bending, no drinks, careful with the artifacts. Of course no drinks. Jeez, couldn’t she see we had no drinks?
By our third day of research at the library, I was bored and had started to try and work out how big we could make our margins. Chickie, on the other hand, was engaged.
“Shit,” he said, sliding a frail slip of newsprint my way.
It was a clipping from the
Berkshire Record
, an old weekly newspaper now subsumed by the
Franchise
, an inside page dated April 1927. The paper was brittle and the color of Florence Banish’s hands. It was an obituary. Guy Van Nest, erstwhile owner and sole occupant of Fleur-de-Lys, died of pneumonia at the young age of thirty-eight and was buried on Long Island.
“Shit,” I said. I got it right away.
Florence Banish hissed at me.
“Shoot. Sugar. If he’s not buried here, we can’t use him for Ms. Flemmy.”
We were combining our probationary report for Chief Winston with our history paper, of course, but the latter depended on the subject being buried in town. Now Guy Van Nest didn’t qualify. We could still use the material for Chief Winston, but the one for Ms. Flemmy was due in a week and that’s the one for which we were suddenly without a subject. Chick groaned. Then he began shuffling through the papers again.
“Maybe he had a kid?”
I checked the obituary. Van
Life was a series of nannies and clowns and croquet parties for Guy and his lonely mother, who cared less for the sleepy hill towns and their inhabitants than her husband seemed to want of her. Guy made few friends among the local children, many of whose parents worked for him, and his summers were spent in carriage rides from one cottage party to another, social events where the bonhomie was largely ceremonial. After Forsyth died, Helene was less and less in residence, taking the train back into the city at every opportunity and more often than not leaving Guy behind, on his massive estate, with his handlers and his jugglers and his short pants. As he hit his teens, things got a little crazy: wilder parties, construction projects commenced and halted, visitors of all shapes and sizes. Skinny-dipping. Naked lawn bowling. He developed something of a reputation.
Then, in his early twenties, Guy went big. He’d hosted a traveling circus at Fleur-de-Lys, putting them up for the entire summer, the performers in the main house and the animals in stables and tents he’d commissioned. In the evenings, servants regaled the uptown taverns with stories of bearded women and dwarves and sword-swallowers, and some days you could catch an occasional glimpse of great gray beasts wandering aimlessly across the property’s back fields. When that summer ended, rumor had it, Guy had kept a rhino.
We learned all this from Florence Banish, who had a whole folder of Fleur-de-Lys material in a fireproof cabinet in one of the library’s archival spaces. At that point, Head-Connect hadn’t yet purchased the property, although some of the local realtors whispered of overtures from Lake Tahoe. Chick and I sat at a circular table and spread the contents of the folder out in front of us. Grainy pictures, newspaper clippings, yellowing photocopies of deeds. Florence Banish watched hawk-like as we sifted through them, her voice a cross between a croak and a flute: no bending, no drinks, careful with the artifacts. Of course no drinks. Jeez, couldn’t she see we had no drinks?
By our third day of research at the library, I was bored and had started to try and work out how big we could make our margins. Chickie, on the other hand, was engaged.
“Shit,” he said, sliding a frail slip of newsprint my way.
It was a clipping from the
Berkshire Record
, an old weekly newspaper now subsumed by the
Franchise
, an inside page dated April 1927. The paper was brittle and the color of Florence Banish’s hands. It was an obituary. Guy Van Nest, erstwhile owner and sole occupant of Fleur-de-Lys, died of pneumonia at the young age of thirty-eight and was buried on Long Island.
“Shit,” I said. I got it right away.
Florence Banish hissed at me.
“Shoot. Sugar. If he’s not buried here, we can’t use him for Ms. Flemmy.”
We were combining our probationary report for Chief Winston with our history paper, of course, but the latter depended on the subject being buried in town. Now Guy Van Nest didn’t qualify. We could still use the material for Chief Winston, but the one for Ms. Flemmy was due in a week and that’s the one for which we were suddenly without a subject. Chick groaned. Then he began shuffling through the papers again.
“Maybe he had a kid?”
I checked the obituary. Van
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