The Clarrington Heritage Page 15

  That instant had cost them dearly, for it gave Penelope all the lead she needed. She bounded out of sight into the trees bordering the far side of the cemetery.

  Aunt Lina, standing beside Marise, grasped her elbow painfully. The bruise lasted for weeks afterward, she recalled. “Oh, Marri, if she gets away! She has no idea how to survive on her own. She can’t know where she is or what to do to find her way home again, if she should want to. She’s never been off the grounds alone since she was ten years old!” The woman’s voice cracked.

  “God, let them catch her! She is dangerous!” It was not an exclamation but a prayer, and Marise recognized it as such.

  As long as they could see the bobbing heads of the pursuers, they stood in the rain, watching. At last Benjie tugged his hand loose and darted forward. That woke her from her bewilderment, and she caught him, just, by the tail of his jacket.

  “No, son. That’s your Aunt Penelope, you know. We told you about her. She is too ill to know what she’s doing, and you can’t help her. I’m not even sure they can catch her, and they’re grown and have long legs.” She caught his reluctant hand again.

  “We must get into the limousine right now and go home. We’re all wet and we’ll get sick too.” She managed, with Lina’s help, to put the struggling, distracted child into the vehicle, and the quiet young man from Offberg’s drove them home as calmly as if he saw madwomen escape and go haring away from funerals every day of the week. Marise had been oddly grateful for that.

  The drive home had seemed much longer than the few miles warranted. Marise had sat, hands clasping Lina’s and Benjie’s all the way, with her mind racing. She had known, intuitively, that those men would never catch Penelope. Her flight had seemed, once Marise looked back on it, entirely too well timed and coolly carried out to be the sudden impulse of a demented mind.

  She had to delay thinking about it, however, when they arrived at the house, for neighbors and friends had lunch on the table when they got there. Explanations had to be made, of course, and Marise could see the thought of that escaped madwoman running like a blaze through the thoughts of everyone there.

  Although few knew of the Clarrington heritage and the trauma suffered by the neighbor’s child had never been laid at Pen’s door, the rumors about poor Clara still survived among the older generation of Clarrington acquaintances. It made everyone extremely nervous.

  It was with considerable relief that she had seen the cousin, the neighbors, and the elderly group of friends take their departure. That left Marise, Lina, and Benjie to their grief.

  Hildy went down to her own quarters almost immediately, and Marise knew she was worrying about Andy. He was too old to go running around in the wet, chasing after their charge. But he did come in, damp and defeated, in the mid-afternoon.

  This time his wordless code was not sufficient. He had to talk aloud in words, and the effort seemed to exhaust him more than those exertions in the woods and the fields.

  “She got away,” he said. “Chased her clean into the woods, over the fields, and into the woods t’other side. Woods go clean to Pear Ridge. Never find her now. God knows what’ll happen to her. Got to lock the gate.”

  He’d hurried away before any more words could be pried out of him. His key was in his hand, ready to secure the lock. Marise gaped after him until Aunt Lina touched her hand and pulled her into the parlor to set her down in a deep chair.

  “Don’t you see?” the old woman had asked. “Now she’s tasted freedom. She was unpredictable before, when the entire world was contained by her room or at least parts of the house she could reach before someone caught her. Now, who knows?

  “She might murder us in our sleep. That’s a possibility, Marise. Remember the family in England and poor Clara. It’s in the blood. I asked our lawyer to tell the police to keep a watch on the house tonight. I’ve never admitted it before, but I’m terrified of Penelope.

  “She’s hated me since that day she was locked away. She believes I persuaded her parents to do that, after she attacked me. Ben told her many times that it was his insistence which finally made them act, but she never has believed it.” Lina was pale, the jade green eyes almost faded.

  “I’m old, Marise. I used to be strong enough to cope with anything, but now I’m too tired. Tired and full of grief. I simply don’t care, any more. But I don’t want to die in any way Penelope would arrange for me.”

  Not only the outer gate was locked. The house, too, was locked tightly, the shutters latched, and even the iron fence was inspected for flaws. Aunt Lina’s lawyer phoned to say the police would send a car past regularly, all through the night, in case the runaway tried to come home.

  Marise tried to persuade her son to stay with her in the tower suite. “It’s so lonely there without your Daddy,” she told him. But the black eyes avoided hers, and he shook his dark head.

  “My father is dead now,” Benjie said, his tone flat. “Everything is different. There’s no family any more, except for you and me and Aunt Lina. And Hildy and Andy, of course. It’s just no good any more. I’d rather be in my own room.” His voice had been cold, almost hostile.

  Though watery sunlight peeped through the clouds before sunset, night came at last. If the day had been incredibly long, the night was interminable. Alone in the round bedroom for the first time in years, Marise tried for a while to sleep, but even one of her tranquilizers hadn’t helped.

  She rose at last and tried to read in her sitting room, but she couldn’t concentrate. She felt like a clock whose spring had broken, letting everything fly apart in wild spirals. She simply couldn’t be still.

  At last she went to the kitchen and heated water for tea. She took the hot brew into the study, locking the door behind her compulsively, and sat in Father Clarrington’s deep chair. Something of his steadfast quality still lingered there, and it comforted her, just a bit.

  But the night was full of menace that reached for her, though she knew on some level of her consciousness that the pill she had swallowed was working to distort her perceptions and tweak at her nerves. She had to be busy, or she would go mad.

  The company books had not been brought up-to-date in two weeks, because she had been so busy with Ben. If anything could put her to sleep it was those columns of figures, she felt sure. She remembered struggling through them, jotting down totals, seeing the figures blur before her eyes. She must have drifted off fairly quickly, with her half filled teacup at her elbow.

  Something had waked her. Even after so many years she could still feel the start with which she had jerked back to alertness. She sat up, her cheek sore from resting on her knuckles.

  The tea was cold, and she knew she had slept for some time. She felt lightheaded and dizzy, and it was dark, for the bulb in the desk lamp had evidently gone out while she slept. The darkness was relieved only by a trace of moonlight filtering through the open draperies at the rear window.

  She rose from her cramped position and stretched. Perhaps she could go to bed now and sleep. Marise reached for the brass lever that unlocked the door, fumbling awkwardly in the darkness.

  But the door was not locked. It wasn’t even quite touching the jamb.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Aunt Lina’s Room

  Marise pulled her sweater more tightly around her shoulders. The August heat had not been able to warm her since she began her quest backward through the years to that hideous day and night. She felt as if she were in a crypt, damp with old horrors and fears.

  She lifted the telephone from the table beside her and touched the dial. Then she set it back in its cradle. No, she would not give in to this panicky feeling.

  Evan would call as soon as he arrived. She could depend on that, if upon nothing else in her strange life. To call again so soon would merely give Gertrude Fisk evidence to use if she tried to bring her competency into question. Besides, the call was only an ex
cuse.

  Her mind was playing tricks, trying to sidle away from pursuing the task she was requiring of it. She didn’t, on some deep level, truly want to know what had happened that night. Perhaps her subconscious knew quite well that she had abetted Penelope in her terrible work. Perhaps her conscious mind wanted to avoid realizing her own guilt.

  She stood and went into the entry hall. That night had begun, for her, in the study. She had to go there and repeat every move, every thought. She must see again everything her eyes had found as she staggered out of the dark room.

  She opened the door and, once inside, she turned and closed her eyes to recapture the darkness in which she had stood. The door had, most certainly, been open when she woke. Even disoriented as she had been, there was no doubt of that, although she could recall turning the brass lever when she went in, hearing it click as the locking mechanism snicked into place.

  Those were two incontrovertible facts. It had been locked. It was open when she woke. No matter what the tranquilizer had done to her perceptions, that much was certain. CERTAIN.

  Following that old pattern, she opened the door again and went into the entry hall. There had been a draught there, she remembered clearly. It had chilled her bare ankles beneath the hem of her robe. She had thought at once of the door closing off the apartment below.

  Andy frequently forgot to close it, and a draught pulled through the hall when that was done, because of the vent fans in the basement apartment. She remembered thinking about it, and that was another fact.

  It had been entirely dark, though the fixtures along the stairwell should have been lit. She had left them on to cast their dim, warm light. Perhaps there had been a power failure.

  She returned to the study, she remembered, and felt in the second drawer of the desk for Father Clarrington’s huge flashlight. When she switched it on, its white beam cut through the darkness like a beacon. She followed it gratefully to the basement stair.

  It had been terribly quiet down there, considering that Andy’s snoring was famous for both volume and virtuosity. When he slept, even catnaps in the daytime, the sonorous rasps often found their way to the entry hall, if the door was left open. But there was only silence.

  Their stair, too, stood in darkness, though its small light was never turned out. Marise set a foot on the top step and shifted her weight downward. She felt oddly disembodied. Worse than that, she had been filled with dread, for something had happened down there. Something she didn’t want to see or even to find out about.

  Reaching the middle of the stair, she shone the light downward toward the main door shutting off this part of the house. It stood open, and beyond it Hildy’s door, too, was ajar, though the old couple usually sealed themselves into their quarters at night, whatever the weather.

  Marise took another step downward. Something glistened on the floor just inside Hildy’s doorway. It was shiny in the beam of the flash.

  Sticky.

  Red.

  She had almost dropped the flashlight as the smell reached her. It was not the familiar faint odor she had found so often in this house where so many had died. It was sharper, one she hadn’t met in years, since her work in the operating room.

  Blood.

  Now she opened her eyes, almost feeling the shape of the flash in her hand, even after all those intervening years. She felt through her memories. What had she done at this point? Had she stood as she did now, paralyzed with terror?

  She thought not. She should have stood frozen for only a few moments, though it might have been more. The medication had warped her time sense, she thought, and maybe it had distorted more than that.

  She had to remember. She’d avoided thinking about this for too long, allowing it to trap her in this house, allowing her life to drift with time. She had taken refuge from herself even more than from the world. Now she had to know.

  That letter had been the last straw. She relaxed, allowing her mind to go back to her younger self, terrified, dizzy, filled with grief. Long or short, the time on the steps had ended at last, and she had rushed up to the entry, down the hall, into the kitchen. That light had come on without hesitation. So it was no power failure.

  The kitchen had been ransacked. Drawers were left pulled out, spilling their contents onto the spotless floor. Cupboards stood open, their boxes and bags and cans disarranged. Someone had searched here frantically. For what? But even in her dizzy state she knew what had been done.

  Drawn by instinct or memory, Marise had gone to the knife cupboard and looked inside. Two of the slots were empty. The carving knife that had reduced so many Christmas turkeys to bare bones was missing from its place. So was the cleaver. Even now she shuddered, remembering.

  She had turned, feeling her robe swirling around her legs, and suddenly Aunt Lina’s words came back to her with the emphasis of a shout. Shaken, she fled up the stair to the second floor, flicking switches as she passed, for all the flower fixtures had been turned off. They bloomed softly in that corridor as she reached the head of the stair.

  She pounded on Aunt Lina’s door, but it was not locked, though Lina had made a constant practice of locking herself in at night. That door, too, moved under her fists, and it swung open when she pulled at it. This made her stop short.

  Always, they had locked their doors, Ben, Hanni, Father Clarrington, and Miss Edenson. With Penelope likely to escape from confinement, it was mad not to. Suddenly she didn’t want to go into the room. She dreaded what might lie on the other side.

  But she was a nurse, and she had bragged about her tough peasant heritage. She had the ability to cope with anything, come what might. Grasping the flash firmly, as much as a weapon as a light, she stepped into the room and switched on the light.

  Her first thought was that Aunt Lina had repainted her room. But who would paint a bedroom red?

  She reached to steady herself against the bureau and stopped just in time. It, too, was smeared with red. That could only be Aunt Lina lying there on the bed, and the floor, and the bedside table. But it was impossible to tell for sure now.

  Marise’s stomach had turned. No nurse or surgeon or even soldier had ever seen anything worse than that room. The worst thing of all was the giant painting on the wall facing the door. A great Cheshire cat grin was drawn there in shades of drying blood.

  Her adrenalin had been flowing. Marise had felt her wits shake free of the clogging pill at last and throw aside the quaking of her own flesh. For she thought of her son. Benjie had been alone on this floor with Penelope, who must have achieved at last her long planned revenge against her aunt.

  What had the woman done to her son? She turned, her robe flapping against the wet smears on bureau and doorjamb. Her heart tight in her chest, Marise had run for Benjie’s room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Benjie’s Room

  Caught in the grip of those old memories, Marise fled along the corridor to the room that had been her son’s. They had not used the old nursery on the third floor, but had decorated one near the head of the stair with the gnomes, elves, and nursery story figures Marise loved when she was a child.

  When Benjie was eight, he demanded that his walls be painted off-white. He favored a spartan style, with a camp bed, desk, folding chair. “Like a safari,” he pleaded, after seeing a movie that caught his fancy. That was what they had done, and he had seemed quite pleased to let it remain that way.

  She remembered running to this door and slowing to a stop. What would she find inside? Could she bear it if her son had suffered the same fate Aunt Lina had?

  Then she had caught herself. Benjie might be in there right now, she thought, cowering in the dark, terrified of what he must have heard from the adjoining room where his great-aunt had died so horribly. She touched the knob and found this door was locked.

  Her heart thudding with relief, she sped down to her own rooms and got the key fr
om her desk, which also held spare keys to all the rooms in the house. As she turned it in the lock of Benjie’s room she was crooning comfortingly, “It’s all right, darling. Mama’s here, and it’s all right. We’ll pack right up and go back to New England.”

  There was no sound from inside and she redoubled her assurances as the door opened. “I’ll get a job and we’ll live in an apartment and have a wonderful life. Don’t be afraid, son, no matter what you’ve heard. I’m here now.”

  The light was on. Benjie wasn’t in his room, though the bedclothes lay in a tangle, and his sneakers, which he insisted on using as house slippers, were not under the bed.

  There was blood on the door knob, the pillowcase, and it had dribbled down the khaki colored counterpane.

  Marise’s knees went out from under her and she sat abruptly on the floor. She could taste vomit, but when her stomach heaved nothing came up.

  She gagged again. Then she drew a deep breath and called, “Benjie! Benjie!” She knew with bitter certainty there would be no answer.

  Nevertheless, she hauled herself upright and pulled open the closet door. Nothing there. She stooped and peered under the bed. No trace of her son was to be found in his room.

  She asked aloud, “What would...what could Penelope have done with him? I have to think like a crazy person. Where would I hide a little boy, living or dead? This house is too big—there must be a hundred places Penelope knew as a child but I could never discover. I’ve never even walked through all of it.”

  She strained to think, to work her way into that demented mind. “The attics? I never went there. Nor to the rest of the basements, beyond Hildy’s apartment. There must be cubbies and crannies and closets I don’t even suspect are there.

  “Too many! Too many!” Tears had streamed down her face, but she paid no attention.