The Clarrington Heritage Page 13

  Fisk said, “Certainly, Mrs. Clarrington. You’re sure there’s nothing else I can do to help?”

  “Thank you, but no.” Marise hung the receiver, feeling the woman’s curiosity still pulsing in her ear. She knew she should ask that the young lawyer be replaced with one she could trust, for an enemy connected with the Board of Trustees was not a thing she needed right now. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

  One thing Ben and Hanni and Father Clarrington made an article of faith was fair dealing with employees. They always bent over backward to avoid mistreating anyone working for them. No, Mrs. Fisk would stay, even at the risk of some danger to Marise’s own authority. She had been too well conditioned to Clarrington ways to change now.

  Marise tapped on the base of the phone with her thumbnail. Should she seek further advice? She didn’t know anyone with the police or sheriff’s department any longer. Emanuel’s old friend the sheriff was long dead, and even the shocked and sympathetic young police chief who had come on that last unforgettable night had now gone on to a better job someplace else. She felt unable to explain the entire affair, from beginning to end, to some newcomer who might think her completely unbalanced or incompetent.

  She turned away from the telephone. No, if there was any real threat in that strangely elliptical note, she had to face it alone, as she had faced these past years. As she had dealt with the horror of that night and the ghost-memories in this house.

  But she needed Ben! More than any other time in these past years, she needed to lean on his strength and to consult his unfailing good sense.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Round Bedroom

  Marise climbed the stairs wearily. Although the years had slid by so slowly, so quietly, leaving her hair ungrayed and her face unlined, she knew by the ache in her bones and her lessening vitality that she was aging. The steps she had run up with so little effort during the years when Ben was alive now seemed to have grown steeper and longer with the passing of time.

  She could easily have moved into one of the bedrooms on the second floor, which would have saved half a flight of climbing. Or she might have turned the small sewing room into a bedroom, and closed away the entire second and third floors of the house. But she had found herself unable to do that.

  Ghosts though they were, memories were her only companions, now. Those rooms held a significant portion of her life and her memories. Closing away the past would narrow her present to almost nothing.

  Marise couldn’t bear to give up any of the memories of Ben that lived in their tower apartment. The sitting room was so full of his presence, even after so long, she still looked up from book or paperwork from time to time, thinking to see him in his recliner. He had rested there after his strenuous days, watching TV or dozing or reading the newspaper.

  Their bedroom held even dearer recollections. They had known eleven years of marriage, a gift, she often thought, from Providence. Notwithstanding the things that came later, the years with Ben in those rooms had made up, just a bit, for what must happen.

  Now she went up the last six steps that curved along the wall and stood on the wedge-shaped landing to open her own door. She had always loved the light there, for the tower, standing almost free of the rest of the house, caught the sun. Be it winter or summer, the windows held a blaze of skylight from dawn to dusk, for the big trees in the garden spread their broad limbs low and did not interfere.

  The creamy walls, the rust and blue print of the curtains, softened the light without diminishing it. Her low antique bed, shaped like a boat whose prow-shaped foot curved gracefully to a small figurehead that was the head of a young girl, dominated the room. A matching chest and dressing table all but filled the available space, but there had been enough room there for a great deal of love.

  Benjie had been begotten there, warming them with his brief life. Their unique fires had burned there, for the years given to them.

  She had learned to understand that it was fitting somehow. Illness had given Ben to her, and it had been the same illness that took him away at last. There was a balance, a justice to the thought, painful though it might seem.

  Dr. Pell sent Ben to a specialist at once, when he began to lose weight without any obvious cause. Hildy cooked like a madwoman, all Ben’s favorite dishes, and Aunt Lina made up herb teas from the fragrant plants in her garden patch, even coaxing him to drink them at times.

  Benjie had been old enough to understand something was badly amiss with his father. He’d taken to following Ben’s every step, when he was at home, and whenever school was out he went to the forest with him as well. Marise’s comfort, now, was to hope the two were together in whatever life might come after this one.

  As for herself, she had simply dug in her heels for another battle to the finish for her husband’s life. She had thought this time too, she might win that contest with death, for the first had looked even less promising. Then Ben had been underweight, hadn’t eaten properly for years, and was terribly ill when he finally went to a doctor.

  But after these intervening years he had been fed well, was hard with physical work, and was surrounded with loving care to help his body fight that nameless enemy. And it was still nameless, for even specialists could not identify it.

  Allergists had followed internists. Surgeons had explored. Technicians had drawn enough blood to satisfy a Dracula without finding what it was that was draining the life from Ben Clarrington.

  He had died, slow inch by slow inch, withering from a slender six-footer to a wasted figure that Marise had no trouble in lifting and turning. His flesh melted away over many long months, until only his black eyes still held a spark of his old self.

  Long before she would admit defeat, he had known this was the last fight of his life. Even now, she could see him lying there, black hair and black eyes the only contrast to the pale sheets, so thin and colorless had he become.

  A week before the end he called her to his side. “I want to talk to Benjie,” he said. “He knows I won’t make it, though he seems to be denying it to himself. It’ll be easier if I tell him the truth, in plain words. It wouldn’t be fair for me to die without letting him know what’s coming soon. Tell him to come up as soon as he gets home from school.”

  She had, of course, though the hardest thing she had ever done in her life was to turn her back on their room and leave Ben and his son to talk alone. Yet it was their right to be alone for this terribly private discussion. She had managed to give them that.

  She had gone right down the stairs and taken refuge in Hildy’s kitchen, ending up crying on the cook’s solid shoulder. Bless Hildy. She had been the only one who hadn’t protested Marise’s decision to nurse Ben to the end, right there in the room where they had been so happy. Marise had been determined he would die in his own bed, rather than in some sterile hospital room.

  “Is best,” Hildy had said to Lina and Evan Turner. “Hospital can do nothing. Doctor can do nothing. Is no pain. Why should he not be at home with us who love him? Marri is nurse and can do what he needs better than anyone else. Is best!”

  That had quieted Aunt Lina’s objections, and those of the Trustees, who already were running a large part of Clarrington Enterprises. But Lina never gave up hope. She seemed to feel someone, somewhere could keep her nephew alive. Yet at the end even she seemed to realize that for Ben, in his present condition, life would only be a cruelty.

  Except for Penelope, everyone in the house visited Ben every day. Andy came faithfully, awash in whiskey fumes. He nodded and grunted and twitched his bushy eyebrows in the code Ben understood fully as well as Hildy did. Hildy came too, of course, several times each day, although the effort of hauling her bulk up the steps on those aching legs must have been torture.

  Aunt Lina spent a lot of time there, with a book to read aloud or her sewing, while Marise was busy in the house or out at the farm. His aunt’s presence h
ad seemed to quiet Ben more than anyone’s at the last.

  Benjie visited morning and evening. After the conference with his father, the boy had cried to Marise, “Why does he have to die? Why does everybody die? Uncle Hanni...I remember him, Mama. He wouldn’t talk to me, and his eyes didn’t see me. And Grampa died, and Grandmother and Miss Edenson. Everybody dies in this house. You’re a nurse. You could stop it, if you wanted to!”

  It had hurt desperately at the time, though she came to understand his childish anger. To his young mind she had seemed all powerful, as her own father had seemed to her at the same age. She had tried to explain, and he quieted at last, but still she sometimes caught a strange and thoughtful expression on his face. A judgmental expression, she thought.

  Time would have taught him better, of course, but he hadn’t had time. The memory of his fury and anguish still troubled her.

  Marise thought it was Ben’s illness and Benjie’s pain that filled the house with such gloom and foreboding. Her eyes opened each morning to a new day, but there was no trace of her old joy. Reality pounced on her instantly as she rose from the cot beside the bed where Ben slept in drugged relaxation.

  Grief, dread, frustration harried her through her days. Many of the nights were sleepless ones, despite the medication Dr. Pell had prescribed, and even when she slept nightmares hunted her through the hours of darkness.

  Without the tranquilizers there would have been no sleep, she knew, even the broken kind from which she roused frequently to listen hard for Ben’s labored breathing. When there was too long an interval between those breaths she came upright to check his pulse.

  She too lost weight, which caught Aunt Lina’s attention. It had been Lina who sent her off to Pell again for stronger medication, and those pills had helped. But it had been they, she thought, that caused those increasing lapses of memory that troubled her so deeply.

  Pell had advised putting Ben in the hospital, of course. “Not that you aren’t doing all that can be done, my dear, but because it is literally killing you. I can see that without any more examination. Since I saw you last you have dropped at least ten pounds and gained ten years.” He took her hand and shook it gently for emphasis.

  “It would be so much easier for you. I know Lina and Hildy do all they can, but the burden falls directly on you, day and night. Do let me admit him.”

  She remembered shaking her head, stubbornly determined not to give up until the last possible moment. “Thank you, Doctor, but no. I understand your concern, and I appreciate it. Truly I do. But if I sent Ben away from home now, when he needs us most, I’d never be able to live with myself afterward.

  “My husband is going to die in his own room and his own bed. With, God willing, his family gathered around him.”

  But it hadn’t quite worked out that way. She knew for two days that he couldn’t last very much longer, and she kept Benjie home from school so he could be with his father as much as possible. Though Ben was too weak to talk much, he enjoyed watching the boy describe ball games or expeditions to the Channing Zoo or as he caricatured his teachers.

  Benjie seemed to understand that his chatter pleased his father, and he seemed to generate it naturally. But one evening she found her son crying bitterly in his room, after a session with Ben. To her pained surprise, she knew he had been putting on an act to keep Ben occupied and amused.

  He refused comfort, turning from her to bury his head in his pillow. “Go away,” he sobbed. “You can’t help. You won’t help him. Go away!” He hiccupped and wiped his tears onto the pillow case. She touched his wet cheek, but he drew away from her hand.

  Ben died that night. Even full of tranquilizers, she heard the change in his breathing and knew he was in trouble in time to wake and try to help.

  His struggles for breath cut through her heart, as she rose from her cot and went to his side. The night light showed his dark eyes, wide open, looking past her at something she knew she would not be able to see even if she turned. His hands rose toward her, and she clasped them against her chest.

  “Tell Pen...,” he gasped. “Tell Pen….”

  “I’ll tell her anything you want, Ben. What do you want me to say? I’ll go as soon as I can. Ben! Ben!”

  But he had already gone away from her, his hands going limp, his eyes flat and empty. The labored breaths rattled to a stop, and the struggles of his heart no longer twitched the cloth of his pajama top.

  Marise laid his hands, now so uncharacteristically still, across his chest. She bent and kissed Ben’s forehead and pulled the sheet over his face, after closing the staring eyes.

  He had died in this room. Of all the deaths that had taken place in the house, his had been the only one she could swear was completely natural. Even Mother Clarrington’s had left a question with her, after Edenson’s talk of hearing voices in the night.

  There was something...was it the house itself that seemed threatening? It had not been the people, for she had loved them all, excepting only Penelope, whom she had feared.

  Had she feared Marise Dering? Had the strangeness emanated, in some way, from her own troubled spirit?

  Marise shook her head and crumpled the ominous letter in her hand. Then she straightened it smooth and laid it on the nightstand beside her pale blue telephone. Evan would call, when he returned.

  Until then she must take his advice. Painful though it was, she must relive that last terrible event in this house. She must examine every aspect of each incident, every reaction of the people involved, including her own reactions.

  As for the threat in the letter, she must ignore that. Whatever happened now would have to happen, for there was nothing at all she could do about it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  From the Channing Clarion

  POSTMAN FOUND DEAD

  The body of Floyd Neill, 41, of 811 Postoak Grove Road was found at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, August 3, in a vacant lot in the 2000 block of Grapevine Street. Neill, a postal carrier for eighteen years, had begun his round normally. Deliveries were made over half his route, and his mailbag was almost half full when he was found.

  Elmer Nichols, 18, of 830 Grapevine found the body while chasing his dog, which had run into the lot.

  Police reached the scene almost immediately, as Nichols hailed a passing patrol car half a block from the scene of his grisly discovery. Police Chief Roger Tory has withheld the cause of Neill’s death, pending investigation by the coroner’s office.

  Neill’s widow, Alice, told reporters she knows of no physical condition that might account for her husband’s sudden death. Funeral services will be held at Offberg Funeral Chapel, time and date pending.

  DEATH RULED MURDER

  Suspect Sought

  County Coroner Warren Slote has found Floyd Neill, 41, postal carrier found dead on his route last Friday, to be the victim of strangling. Police have given no hint of a reason for the slaying. Neill habitually carried little cash when on his rounds, and his wallet was untouched. Several money orders were found among the mail left in his bag, ruling out the possibility of robbery as a motive.

  Neill, an eighteen-year employee of the Postal Service, was well liked by fellow employees. Intimates insist he was happily married, regular in his habits, and had no known enemies. His widow, Alice Gerber Neill, is presently unavailable for comment.

  The only clue police mention is a ripped inner pocket of the mailman’s jacket. Fellow employees insist the jacket was intact before he left the Post Office on Friday. The rip seems fresh and indicates that some item may have been taken from the pocket.

  A fairly tall, dark man was seen in the neighborhood earlier on the morning of August 3 by a resident of the street, who was walking his dog. So far, no other stranger has been reported.

  Police Chief Roger Tory has neither confirmed nor denied that this stranger may be a suspect in the slaying.

  NEI
LL MURDER STILL UNSOLVED

  Widow Grants Interview

  Alice Neill, widow of Floyd Neill, the postal employee found murdered last week on Grapevine Street, spoke to this reporter this morning. Mrs. Neill, who is not a suspect in the case, insists that her husband was a man of quiet and easygoing habits, well liked by neighbors as well as by those with whom he worked. She insists she can find no reason why anyone he knew should kill him.

  Detailing his habits, she told this reporter that it was his invariable rule to stop to rest in the lot where his body was found. The stone bench under a tree at the rear of the grounds, which some may recall as the Olney property whose house burned three years ago, was his usual resting spot. At times in cold weather she would meet her husband there with a Thermos of hot coffee.

  Mrs. Neill insisted that anyone who watched her husband for several days would surely know the time he would arrive, which was between nine and nine fifteen, six days a week. She maintains that he may have been killed for an item he carried in the torn inner pocket of his jacket. Only personal items were found by police, but Mrs. Neill claimed that he kept another there, a heavy key. She was uncertain as to its use. Police Chief Roger Tory refused comment when asked for reactions to Mrs. Neill’s statement.

  A funeral for Neill was held at Offberg Chapel on Tuesday, August 7, at eleven o’clock.

  * * * *

  Marise seldom read the Clarion when it arrived. So little happened in Channing that there simply wasn’t much local news, and national subjects were better covered by the Charlottesville papers Evan brought her from time to time.

  She still subscribed, as the Clarringtons had for generations, and the paper arrived every afternoon.

  The newsboy always flung it into the mail slot from the street, seldom missing his aim, though she had to turn the thing herself to get the publication out again. Sometimes it waited there until the next day’s mail, but on Wednesday she usually took out the accumulation for the week to check for specials she might want Alistair to pick up for her.