“True enough. But the answer is the same: To my knowledge, Monterey neither experienced any widespread witchcraft scares nor held public witchcraft trials, much less hangings. To be fair, I haven’t read every single document in our manuscript collection. We just don’t have the budget for a professional historian or archivist. We do our best to acquire and save papers from the established Monterey families and businesses, but usually the best we can manage is to keep the stuff dry and safe from insects and fire.”
“Which is no small thing,” said Harper. “The work you do is invaluable.”
“I appreciate that. It’s a bit of a thankless job, but I love history and since I’m not wild about being around people, working here suits me fine.”
“Are you from this area originally?”
Constance laughed. “Goodness, no. I’m from Washington state, near Tacoma. Got my master’s in library science at U-Dub. But my late husband was a colonel in the army and was posted here to help oversee the closing of Fort Ord. We liked the area so much we stayed after he retired.”
“I can see why. It’s beautiful around here. Not as much left from the early years as I’d hoped, which is unfortunate. What do you have on the history of the Perles Mansion?”
“Now, that I can help you with,” Constance said. “We were able to digitize our local newspaper collection thanks to a generous grant from a local citizen, and you can search it at any of our computer terminals. For a small annual fee, you can become a society member, which gives you access to our digital library from your computer anytime you want.”
“Sounds like a bargain,” Harper said, and paid to become a member.
Constance handed her a membership card. “There’s our website address, and your passcode for the digitized collections. We also have some papers from the Perles family in our manuscript collection, though I’m afraid there are only a few items. So few, in fact, that I suspect Soren Perles, or one of his servants, may have burned most of the family’s records and correspondence before he died. That seems almost quaint, doesn’t it? Today we just hit ‘delete.’ ”
“I’d like to see the papers you do have, if I may,” Harper said.
Constance nodded. “First, though, I have something special to show you. You’re going to love this. Follow me.”
Harper followed the librarian to a room jammed with shelves full of boxes, books, journals, and miscellaneous items. Constance pulled out a set of large rolled-up papers, laid them on the wooden table in the center of the room, and unrolled one with a flourish. “Madam Professor, I present to you: blueprints of the Perles Mansion.”
“The original blueprints?” Harper asked, looking for a date. “Surely not.”
“Not the original, no. According to lore, those were burned.”
“Along with the other family papers you mentioned?”
Constance hesitated, as though choosing her words carefully. “No. Apparently, after the untimely deaths of the Perles family and then everything that happened with Soren and Isabel, some of the locals decided that the adobe used in its construction was cursed. In fact, there was an attempt to burn the building itself, but…”
“Brick doesn’t burn,” said Harper.
“Exactly.”
“When was this?”
“Right after Soren Perles’s body was found. Long enoughago for there to have been local lore made up to explain the family’s bad luck.” Constance gave a little shrug. “In any case, the building did not, in fact, burn, and these blueprints were drawn up much later by the historical society that saved the Perles Mansion from being demolished.” She tapped on a date noted in one corner. “In 1927, I believe.”
Harper studied the blueprints.
“Their goal was to renovate the building and use it as their headquarters,” Constance continued. “Unfortunately, it was a disaster: One worker fell from the scaffolding and was severely injured, and another was found in the dining room dead of an apparent heart attack. The old lead pipes burst and flooded the place, causing considerable water damage, and then the renovation was paused after a small earthquake brought down part of one wall. The Great Depression was the coup de grace: Funding dried up, and the project was abandoned altogether.”
“And after that the building was left unoccupied?”
Constance nodded. “From what I’ve read, the historical society boarded the place up, but they kept finding the doors left open. Not just unlocked, but standing wide open.”
“Joel said unhoused people found refuge there,” Harper said. “That would explain the open doors.”
“Well, that’s another interesting thing about the Perles Mansion. According to locals, the doors open and close of their own will. Over the years, vagrants have been enticed by those open doors and tried to make themselves at home, but only one lasted more than a single night. In the 1950s, a fellow calling himself Mack, after the Steinbeck character inCannery Row, declared himself ‘king of the Perles Mansion.’ ”
“Dare I ask what happened to King Mack?”
“No one knows. He disappeared. There one day, gone thenext. At least, that’s what the ghost stories allege. The mansion ate him, or something like that; the details are rarely made clear.”
“A carnivorous adobe mansion. I’ve heard stranger things.”
Constance laughed. “Of course, the truth is probably much less colorful: more likely Mack moved on to another abandoned building. And there are plenty of vacation rentals in town, so he might have found an empty one to squat in. He was known to have a drinking problem, and with all the coastal cliffs around here…really, anything could have happened.”
