Day 17

When Ash arrived at the Lake House the following afternoon, he was directed into the library on the first floor instead of Danny's room; once there, he found a sort of tea-party in progress: all three of the Aunt Ems were there, along with their butler Oscar, having decided that they couldn't do without Danny for another afternoon and so brought afternoon tea to him; Danny's mother was also there, since the Aunt Ems were senior members of the family and etiquette demanded she join them, but she mightily resented them bringing their own servant and so sat sourly in a corner disapproving of the whole thing; and Jeremy was there, seated next to Aunt Mathilda and gazing around at the room with interest.

The library is a long and relatively narrow room, with a wide, low brick fireplace at one end, lined with built-in bookcases and floor-to-ceiling paneling decorated with carved poppies in an Art Nouveau Chinoiserie style; the windows were leaded diamond-panes with stained glass insets, draped in heavy brown velvet embroidered with bronze chrysanthemums, and one double French door stood open to the broad flagstone terrace that ran the length of the house; the furniture is solid and heavy, square with rounded corners, upholstered in the same embroidered velvet as the window treatments, and quietly lit with Tiffany-style stained-glass lamps all around.

Danny was at the center of the room in an armchair with his foot up on a low stool, industriously flexing his now-brace-free ankle to get the circulation going in preparation for walking on it the next day; he was dressed a little more formally than usual, in a royal blue fine-gauge cashmere sweater and tan chinos.

"Ash! Come in," Danny cried out when he spotted the newcomer standing diffidently in the doorway, an armful of books propped against his hip, "May I present my friend, Ash Phillips? This is my mother, Mrs. Taylor Vandervere, and my great-aunts Miss Mathilda, Miss Myrtle, and Miss Maude Vandervere. And I think you may already know Jeremy Miller from school."

"Hi," Ash responded to the barrage of greetings with a small wave of his free hand. Oscar stepped forward and indicated a free spot on the sofa next to Miss Myrtle, then brought him a cup of tea and a plate of cookies.

"Ash is a very promising artist," Danny told the assembled company, making the boy blush.

"What is your medium?" Aunt Mathilda asked seriously.

"Oils, mostly," Ash responded, "though I do a lot of sketching with pencils and pastels, and some photography as well."

"Very sound," the old lady approved, nodding sagely.

"Did I miss anything interesting at school today?" Danny asked Ash.

"No, not really," the boy shrugged, concentrating on his cookies.

"Actually," Jeremy cut in, "there was something -- not interesting so much as awful. They called an assembly of the whole school this morning, and told us that one of our teachers had died. Mr. Janacek, the math teacher."

"Oh, dear," Myrtle and Maude gasped almost in unison; but there were rather fewer gasps of surprise at this information than Jeremy expected; Danny and Ash of course already knew, and Mrs. Vandervere had heard it from her husband, while Aunt Mathilda had heard it from a friend on the police force.

"Wasn't that the man whose body you found, Marc-Daniel?" Beatrice Vandervere asked, surprisingly loudly.

"Yes, Mother," Danny answered sheepishly, not wanting to talk about that horrible morning.

"You never told me," Jeremy sounded hurt and angry.

"I didn't think I was supposed to," Danny explained, looking over at his boyfriend with a look that begged forgiveness, "It's a police investigation, Officer Kelly warned me not to talk about it to anyone."

"And I seem to recall you were involved also Mr. Phillips?" Beatrice went on blithely, sensing that she was causing trouble somewhere, and though she didn't know where or between whom she was determined to enlarge on it, "though 'Ash' isn't the name my husband mentioned, it was 'Eugene.'"

Ash's head shot up in surprise, looking at the woman as if she'd slapped him, "I go by Ash. It's a nickname."

"It's a very unusual nickname, is it short for something?" she dug the wound a little deeper.

"Ashtaroth," the boy almost whispered.

"Marc-Daniel," Beatrice laughed, turning to her son, "Isn't there an old black horse at the hotel named Ashtaroth? I seem to remember."

"Yes, ma'am," Danny replied, wishing she'd shut up but unwilling to be rude to her, "A very fine Arabian, he looks like one of the horses of the Apocalypse, but he's gentle as a lamb."

"How fitting," she gave Ash a feline smile, "I suppose you're quite gentle, too, Mr. Phillips?"

"Beatrice," Aunt Mathilda jumped into the fray, sensing the boy needed rescuing, "I seem to remember that your given name is Agnes. Pronounced with that charming Bostonian flat A."

"It's an old family name," Beatrice answered defensively.

"And quite a good one," Mathilda went on, "It's ancient Greek, and means 'chaste.' And that's as in 'untouched,' not as in 'run after.'"

"And what does 'Mathilda' mean?" Danny wondered, hoping the conversation could be routed into neutral territory.

"'Strength in battle,'" the old lady answered, an eyebrow arched triumphantly at her niece-in-law, "It's Germanic. The name 'Eugene' is also Greek, as we're on the subject, and means 'well-born' or 'noble.' And Ashtaroth, aside from being the name of a Biblical demon, means 'house of Ishtar.' Ishtar was of course a Babylonian goddess, and the Hebrews always made demons of the gods of the lands in which they were captive."

"Fascinating," Aunt Maude piped in, "What does my name mean, dear?"

"Actually, your name is a diminutive of my name," Mathilda told her sister, "And so means the same thing. Myrtle of course is named for the myrtle tree, which was sacred to Aphrodite and was therefore a popular name for prostitutes in ancient Greece."

"Mattie!" Aunt Myrtle gasped, horrified, "How could you?"

"It's just trivia, dear heart," Aunt Mathilda smiled soothingly, "It doesn't mean anything."

"But the meaning of a person's name often connotes something about a person's personality, don't you think?" Danny wondered, "Especially names one chooses onesself?"

"Perhaps, Marcus, perhaps. You for example: your front name is derived from the Roman god of war, Mars. But your middle name, which you seem to prefer, means 'God is my judge,'... make of that what you will. And your mother, who prefers to be 'Beatrice,' which means 'voyager,' is I think rather fond of travel."

"How do you know all that?" Jeremy wondered, awestruck.

"I've been sitting in a library for sixty years, my dear boy," Aunt Mathilda brushed her hand against Jeremy's smooth cheek and smiled at him. Your name, incidentally, is an old English version of Jeremiah, which means 'God has uplifted.' Do you feel like God has uplifted you?"

"Sometimes," Jeremy admitted, looking meaningfully at Danny, "And sometimes not so much."

"We used to have a gardener named Jeremiah, didn't we Mattie?" Aunt Maude was still on names.

"But wait," Jeremy interrupted, his mind catching on something that had been said earlier and not explained, "How did you and Ash find Mr. Janacek's body?"

"It was on the path where I run," Danny explained, frowning to indicate that the subject should be dropped, "And Ash was working on his photography on the same trail."

"How did he die?" Jeremy wanted to know.

"Strangled, I think," Danny said quietly, "With a belt."

"They just said he 'passed away' at school this morning," Jeremy leaned back in the sofa and took a sip of his tea, "I suppose they couldn't say he'd been killed, it would have upset everyone too much. As it is, we have grief counselors camped out in the library if anyone wants to talk to them, and they're requiring all of Mr. Janacek's students to go."

"Have the police been there?" Ash asked.

"Not that I saw," Jeremy answered, not looking at the other boy, "But they told us he'd passed away on Friday night, so the police had all weekend investigate at the school."
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