To Darkness and to Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming Page A

Russ said, emerging from the pantry clutching a jar of blackberry jam. “The old Haudenosaunee had Victorian extravaganza in spades. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a firetrap.”
    She leaned on the granite-topped work island. “How do you know?”
    “Everybody in Millers Kill knows at least the bare bones of the story. The van der Hoevens were downstaters who made a bundle in the Civil War, and the head of the family liked to hunt. But he liked to do it in comfort. So he dragged his wife and kids and the servants and the dog up here—in those days it was by private rail and boats and portage—pitched a dozen tents, and oversaw the building of Haudenosaunee.” Russ put the jam on the island top and hitched up onto a stool. “At first it was a big, plain log building, styled like the communal hunters’ lodges that were popping up throughout the mountains.”
    “Sort of like this building,” Clare said.
    “Sort of. Anyway, twenty years later, it was rebuilt in the grand Adirondack style by a van der Hoeven trying to please his pretty young wife. There are pictures in the historical society—I guess the best way to describe it was Swiss chalet meets twig Gothic.”
    “Did it work?”
    “Did what work?”
    “Did he please his young wife?”
    “She couldn’t have been that impressed, because she took off for Europe with their son and stayed there for the next few decades.”
    “Oh, that’s too bad.”
    “Well, the son returned from Europe right before the First World War broke out.”
    “Good timing.”
    “This would have been Eugene’s… let me see… greatgrandfather. Can’t remember his name.”
    “You’re really good with all this local history.”
    He smiled like a shyly pleased schoolboy. “I did a report on it in high school. Even then, I was into old houses.” Russ had extensively rebuilt his Greek Revival farmhouse.
The house where he and his wife live
, she reminded herself.
    “That van der Hoeven thought what the place needed was Old World elegance, so he added on turrets and towers and battlements and the like, trying to turn a Swiss-Gothic chalet into a castle. Even in his day, when rich people were building privies shaped like Versailles and carriage houses that looked like the Tower of London, it was considered a great big ugly heap.”
    Clare looked around her at the clean lines of the current Haudenosaunee. “Is that when the family built this house?”
    “No, that came when Eugene’s grandfather tried to modernize the old building. Evidently the older van der Hoeven wasn’t content to merely build castles. He wanted to live in the Middle Ages.” Russ tapped his temple meaningfully.
    “You mean… ?”
    “No running water, no electricity, no central heating. He actually disconnected the bathrooms that had been state-of-the-art in 1880 and installed drop toilets.”
    Clare made a face.
    “Yeah. So when his son inherited the place, he decided making the fourteenth century fit for human habitation wasn’t worth the trouble, and he had this house built.”
    “What happened to the old camp?”
    Russ’s blue eyes clouded over. “It burned down.”
    Comprehension dawned. “Is that what happened to Eugene?”
    He nodded. “Whoever says money solves all your problems never met the van der Hoevens.”
    She was climbing onto the stool kitty-corner from Russ when the letter and pamphlet crinkled inside her pocket.
Speaking of problems
. She pulled them out. “Take a look at this.” She held them out to him. “Have you ever heard of this organization?”
    He scanned the letter and unfolded the brochure. “One of the radical environmentalist groups, right? Like Earth First? Volunteers living in trees, that sort of thing?”
    She shook her head. “More like spiking the trees and then blowing up the loggers’ equipment. The Planetary Liberation Army believes in direct action.”
    “That’d be pretty direct, yeah.” He read the back of the pamphlet. “I don’t see anything