Intimate Betrayal by Linda Barlow Page B

Berkeley to the right.
    Carlyle’s home was situated on a hilly lot, with high walls and terraced gardens surrounding it. A steep, winding driveway
     led up to the house from a security gate constructed of tall cast-iron pikes of the sort that, in ancient times, were used
     to impale the heads of one’s enemies.
    The mansion was a four-story monstrosity of “eclectic” style. The architect must have been either drunk or mad, Annie thought
     with some amusement as she pulled in and parked. He had combined Georgian ponderousness with a Gothic sense of the bizarre,
     and crowned it all with ornate Victorian touches. There were crenellated towers and rooftop galleries that resembled battlements,
     and the square, solid walls looked thick enough to withstand the siege of Troy.
    Keeping guard over a front doorway, that was tall enough to admit a giant on stilts, were three horrific stone gargoyles that
     looked as if they should have been guarding the gates of hell.
    What a perfect place for a wife killer to live,
Annie thought with a shiver.
    She parked her car in the half-moon area directly in front of the main entrance and climbed the wide stone steps that curved
     around the front of the house to the gigantic door. She saw no doorbell, so she raised the heavy knocker (the roaring head
     of a lion) and released it. The sound of the bronze striking its metal plate was like a gunshot. Startled, Annie felt little
     fear-devils chasing themselves up and down her spine.
    “Get a grip,” she ordered herself.
    She was expecting a lugubrious butler dressed like Boris Karloff to open the door, but all that happened was that dogs began
     barking inside. After thirty seconds or so she knocked again. She heard the sound echo through the house. Still, no one came.
    This is odd.
She began to wonder if she had the right day, the right time. She was sure his instructions had been clear, and that she
     had carried them out precisely.
    She was lifting the knocker one more time when Carlyle himself opened the door. “Sorry for the delay,” he said with a smile.
     “I was locking up the dogs, and my housekeeper, Mrs. Roberts, has the night off.” He stepped back and showed her in with a
     flourish. “Welcome to the ugliest house in Pacific Heights.”
    She smiled. “This
is
quite a place,” she said, crossing the threshold into a large foyer with a vaulted ceiling and a black marble floor.
    “Yes, isn’t it. As an architectural designer, you might be interested in knowing that the man who conceived and built it ended
     his days in a psychiatric hospital.”
    Annie laughed. She remembered his dry sense of humorfrom London, but she hadn’t seen much sign of it since then. “It’s certainly a mad mixture of styles.”
    “That’s for sure. Francesca and I moved in just a couple of months before her death. She thought it had ‘possibilities.’ She
     was going to have it completely redone, of course. But then she died.”
    The inside was perfectly in keeping with the outside—with high-ceilinged rooms and a seemingly infinite number of odd angles
     and small nooks and crannies. The walls were either painted in dark colors or hung with gloomy wallpaper that had seen the
     passage of several decades. The furniture was well made and expensive, but if any attempt had been made to choose the right
     piece for the right room, Annie couldn’t discern it.
    The interior of the house had no soul. She wondered if this indicated a similar lack in its owner.
    “In a way, I like the gloominess of the place,” he said, staring at her as if he guessed what she was thinking. “Its ponderousness
     and darkness seem appropriate to me somehow.” He came to stand beside her. “Have you ever been afraid of the dark, Annie?”
    She took a step away from him. “Well, yes, actually, I still am. I’m a bit claustrophobic, especially in the dark.”
    “I used to be terrified of the dark. As a kid, I’d curl up in bed and cover my head with the