The Clarrington Heritage Read online

  But he thought she looked too pale and drawn for anything that had happened ten years ago, however terrible it might have been, to warrant. He followed her into the parlor and set his briefcase aside.

  “Let’s skip the tea this time, all right?” he said. “You want two things from me. Which do you want to do first?”

  She braced herself against the back of her low chair. “I want to know about Benjie. Where you found him. What...happened to him. Once I realized I never asked and you never said, it began haunting me. I can bear it, Evan. I saw Lina as Penelope left her, and anyone who could stay sane, more or less, after that can stand anything.

  “Tell me. Everything, down to the last detail. Nothing you can say to me can possibly be worse than the things I have been imagining for the past night.”

  Evan looked down at his hands, which had clasped involuntarily in his lap. He relaxed them with an effort of will. He knew she was watching him closely, and he tried to seem at ease, though he felt certain he was almost as tortured as she.

  “It is going to bother you to tell me,” she said. “Think about it while I get the tea. That will give you something to do with your hands, and it will warm you up inside.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. When she returned with the hot cup, he sipped gratefully. It was August and very hot, but he felt as if it might be winter, so chilled was he with the story he must tell.

  “You asked for everything,” he began. “I’m going to give you just what you ask for, and when I’m done you may ask for my resignation, which you will be welcome to. But don’t...don’t interrupt me until I’m done, all right?”

  She nodded. Her face was still, but her hands crumbled a cookie in her saucer.

  “After I got you off to the hospital, that night, we began to search the house. Officer Burt was the one who looked down...down there. Hildy and Andy were both dead, carved terribly, but it was nothing like what she did upstairs to Lina. The young man was staggered, for he hadn’t seen the other yet. He ran back up the stairs, yelling for the sergeant and me.” Evan cleared his thought and loosed his hand from the arm of his chair.

  “We didn’t notice until he was in the entry that he had blood on his boots. He tracked it onto the carpet.” Evan felt himself pulled back into the memory of that night. The tidy room went out of focus as he saw into the past.

  “It warned us, of course, what was to come. Once we found the gate open we feared the worst, but that didn’t help much. He told us what was downstairs, and we looked up the stairs toward the second floor. He went pale, and I know the sergeant and I must have looked pretty sick as well.

  “You had left all the doors open behind you. That helped us avoid wasting time looking in empty rooms. Benjie’s door, nearest the stair, was the first we entered, and that wasn’t so bad, except for the blood. But it was only blood, as I know you found for yourself.

  “When we went into Lina’s it was different. Burt vomited on the floor, and I would’ve, too, it I hadn’t been so focused on finding what had become of Ben’s son. We looked around on that floor, but all the other doors were unlocked. We knew there had been only five of you in the house, not counting Penelope. Four of you were...accounted for.

  “We went down to the tower landing. The light was on, the door standing open. We could see Penelope’s foot from where we stood before entering. The room was almost tidy, except for the ripped-out telephone. We could read what had happened without any trouble, for it was perfectly clear.

  “You came there to call for help and found Penelope waiting. The blood on her hand had glued the knife to her skin, and we didn’t try to force it out. We just looked, saw what you had done to save yourself, and went down to meet the police chief and the coroner. That was before Tory, of course. I can’t recall that one’s name without looking it up.”

  He accepted a glass of water from the carafe on the table beside Marise and felt the cool liquid ease his dry throat. “The chief asked me immediately if you could have had anything to do with the murders. I didn’t have to say a word, for Burt made as fine and succinct a report as I ever heard. He’d noted exactly how much blood was on your robe and gown, and where it was located. He saw that your hands were clean. Not washed clean but not bloody. He cleared you of any part in the killings, and I didn’t have to say one word.” He sipped water again, feeling his old gratitude well up in him. It had been a remarkable job for a youngster to do.

  “You had a lot to thank him for, but he went on to a much better job out of state, before you were out of the hospital. Once the technicalities were out of the way, and with the murderer dead there was no need for a trial, he was free to take the offer that came almost at once.”

  Marise opened her mouth, but he shook his head. “I’m getting to it. Takes me a while, I know, but I am almost as hung up on that night as you are. I have to work my way into it, so to speak.” He sighed and set the glass down. “We got a lot of help, and we went to work on the house and grounds. There was so much of it, and so many places where he might have been, but we looked for Benjie through every closet, floor by floor, cupboard by cupboard. And we found nothing.

  “Then we did the grounds, and in the dark that was an incredible job. We took the rockery apart, stone by stone. I had someone put it back together before you came home. We dug in all the loose ground we could find. We even...looked up in the trees. And we found nothing.

  “We knew one of two things must have happened. Either Penelope killed him and hid him so well there was no way for anyone who didn’t know the house intimately to find him, or he saw what happened. His great-aunt’s door was next to his, and he might well have heard something to bring him out to see. If that had occurred, he might well have run for his life, driven by a terror that might well have caused amnesia.”

  Now Marise spoke at last, sitting forward with color in her cheeks for the first time. “You mean...he might still be alive?” Her voice trembled with unbelieving hope.

  “It is possible. Just possible, no more.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me? I’d have searched the world over, done anything at all, whatever it cost. Why else should I have all this useless money?”

  He leaned forward in turn. “What do you think we have been doing? For ten years we’ve had investigators hired, running down even the most trivial clue. You were in such a state when you got out of the hospital...well you can’t remember, and I don’t want to remind you of anything you’re better off forgetting. We figured, and Dr. Pell agreed, that if you thought your son was safely dead—damned crazy term anyway—if you thought everything was ended for good, it would help you get your feet back under you.

  “You’re tough, Marise, but you nor anybody else is that tough. And you did get them back. You got everything under control, took charge of the businesses, set the goals and met the challenges. I still think we did the right thing.” His gaze dared her to protest.

  “Detectives have been working on this since the day after the tragedy. More than one agency on more than one continent has given it their best. The boy might have been frightened literally out of his wits. Who knows where he might have run to or who might have picked him up or taken him in?

  “His description has gone all over the world. We turned every surrounding town, from Deep Creek to Tolliver, upside down, and nobody had seen a child of his description. We couldn’t find a single lead. There was nothing you could have done differently, if you had been managing the hunt yourself. And there it is.

  “Either he is still right here, his bones hidden someplace only Penelope knew, or he’s out there somewhere. If that is true, he doesn’t remember who he is or where he came from.”

  He stared down at his hands. His knuckles were white again. When he looked up she was regarding him with a strange expression.

  “Well?”

  She shook her head. “I suspect I would have done the same thing, in yo
ur place. I can’t blame you. Probably I am just now able to take this in stride anyway. Don’t feel guilty, Evan. I understand.”

  He sighed and reached again for the glass of water. She was still an amazing woman.

  “Now what was that other problem you wanted to see me about? Some letter you got in the mail?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, that. It’s not important, anymore. I threw it away after I called you. I was ashamed of getting into a flap over nothing, I suppose.”

  There was something in her voice, a shadow behind her eyes that troubled him, but Evan knew better than to try pushing his way past her guard. She had never allowed that.

  But it bothered him all the way home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Watcher

  The key worked in the iron gate. The watcher had tried it, waiting until after midnight to venture out of his nest of hedge bushes. The street was empty at that hour, and in this neighborhood of elderly people there were seldom any late cars to disturb such activities. He had memorized the schedules of the few night workers as well.

  He’d slipped along the fence to the gate and the lock had turned noiselessly. Somebody kept it oiled, he knew at once. But it was not time yet. He had to do this with finesse and wait for the perfect moment to go to work.

  Now he lay on his bed in the rooming house, the key hidden under his pillow. As usual so early in the evening, the house was a bit restless. He could hear Ellie complaining to her husband in the room just beneath his. People came and went on the stair, their footsteps and voices irritating him almost beyond endurance.

  Once in a while he would stick his head out of his door and greet one of the other roomers with false cheer, for it was important they remember that he was in his room this evening. He had to drive that fact home to more than one.

  Glass, the police dispatcher, opened and closed his door, which was down the hall. He worked a split shift this weekend and he was on his way to work. When he reached the corridor outside the Watcher’s room, the man opened his door and called, “Don! Will you do me a favor?”

  The dispatcher turned, smiling. “Sure, Rick. What do you need?”

  “Pick me up some cold tablets, will you? Doesn’t matter what brand. I’m coming down with a cold, and there’s nothing like late summer crud to lay you low. Just so it eases my sore throat and clears up my head, anything will do.” He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a bill.

  “Here’s five. Is that enough?” He managed a hollow cough.

  “No problem,” Glass said. “I’ll put the packet on the hall table, if you’re asleep when I come in. I wouldn’t want to wake you up, if you’ve finally made it off.”

  “That’s fine. I usually hear your steps coming up the stair or your door closing. If I’m awake I’ll go out and pick them up. Thanks, Don. I really don’t feel like going out myself.”

  Closing the door, he turned back to his narrow bed and felt the waiting key burning through the thickness of the pillow. It was almost time. Almost time...almost time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Outside

  “You’re in love with her! I should have seen that years ago. That’s why you won’t make any move to take over the Enterprises, and it’s why you put every roadblock you can find in our way, every time the Board and I try making changes.” Gertrude Fisk was trying to control her voice, but fury tinged every word.

  “And that’s why you are so picky you have CPAs breathing down our necks every quarter. You don’t trust us.”

  Evan watched her with great indifference. She’d knocked on his door ten minutes ago, and this was only the second time she had ever come to his home. The first time had been a matter of urgency, the out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit brought by an injured worker at Clarrington.

  He hadn’t expected anything like this, although his personal secretary had warned him about Fisk months ago.

  “She’s got her eye on you, Evan,” Mrs. Drake had told him. “She’s no fool, and she knows you hold all the cards at Clarrington, as long as you have Marise Clarrington’s confidence.” The secretary’s round face looked like a concerned sofa cushion as she stacked sheets of paper with a crisp snap.

  “Fisk wants power and she wants money. I’ve seen hundreds of her sort come and go in my business career. They’re mostly male, to be sure, but when females get into that mode they may be worse. They use everything they have to make their mark, though I think it isn’t just the position that attracted Fisk to you. She took a shine to you from the first.”

  She chuckled. “The fact that you paid no attention at all to her just made her frantic to attract you. She’s...not unstable. I wouldn’t put it so strongly. She’s ambitious and self-willed to the point of egomania. Is that put tactfully enough for you?”

  He’d laughed at the time, but she’d kept him informed about such matters over the years and she had never been wrong. Bless her! She served as Gertrude’s secretary too, so she had more than limited access to the woman Fisk was in private.

  Now he understood what she’d meant. There was something rabid in the woman’s eyes as she stood in his living room.

  “I am sure you have better things to do than question me about my love life,” he said, trying to make his words sound teasing. “But I’ve had an exhausting day and a trying evening. Let’s talk this out next week, when we’re both fresh. I’m certain an attractive young woman like you must have a date on a Friday night.”

  He moved toward his front door, which he had left open, letting the conditioned air waste into the humid outdoors. She followed him and stood, staring at him enigmatically.

  “Evan, you’re a fool. She’s used you all these years, and you’ve protected her interests at the expense of your own. You take her part, keep the Board from becoming anything but a rubber stamp, though you are the head and could be in control. Why don’t you see she’s insane, tied up in that wild past you had nothing to do with making?

  “You can’t cure her. Let her go! Sink her into her own madness and take hold of what ought to be yours!”

  Fisk was just a bit drunk, he decided. He could smell the faint aroma of bourbon on her breath, as she drew near. That explained this loosening of her inhibitions, he thought.

  “Good night, Gertrude. Have a good time tonight. I’ll forget this, just this once, but not afterward. Clarrington is not yours and it isn’t mine. It’s the creation of generations of gifted, hardworking people who put everything they had into building it.

  “They’re all dead, yes, and the entire responsibility rests on the shoulders of a lone woman who is handling it well. If you bring this up again, I shall have you replaced.”

  She flushed and went pale almost in the same instant. He closed the door behind her with relief and regret.

  Fisk would have to go. He would visit Myrtle Street in the morning and get Marise’s okay for a replacement. A lawyer they couldn’t trust was a liability, and he wasn’t willing to risk another week. He knew he should have made the move before, but Fisk had been very good at her job. He had no hope of finding her equal in skill, or, he thought sadly, her superior in professional integrity.

  But he had to admit she had assessed him correctly. He had been in love with Marise since that terrible night. She had been unconscious when he found her, bloodstained and crumpled like a lily on the Persian carpet in her study. Once he realized what she had done, left alone and seemingly defenseless with a madwoman, he had admired her extravagantly.

  Much later, he realized that what he felt was love, but he knew better than to give any indication of his feelings. She was caught in a web too strong for him to break without taking the chance of breaking her along with it.

  There were still some things that troubled him about the end of the Clarringtons. He wondered, as he made his way back to his chair and his papers, what that letter had contained. She was not one to
become disturbed about trivial things. And she had not looked into his eyes when she talked of destroying it after she decided it was from a crank.

  He reached for the telephone, touched the cool plastic with his fingertips. Then he drew back his hand. She would tell him, in time. She always had, though sometimes it took years for a confidence to emerge from the depths of her stubborn heart.

  He took the papers onto his lap and began going over them. Outside, the night fell softly over Channing, lapping Myrtle Street, a half-mile away, in its dark embrace.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Tower

  Marise had read the letter until it was crumpled and stained with perspiration. She was certain she had been right to keep it from Evan Turner, now that she had all the threads in her hands at last. Every instinct warned her something unbearable was coming. It was better to protect poor Evan from more pain.

  The part of the house which she used was as neat, as dust free, as tidy as her hurried hands could make it. The kitchen was scrubbed spotless. The parlor shone, its cut glass and porcelain newly washed and the upholstery vacuumed.

  Whatever was going to happen, the house would present a respectable front to anyone coming into it.

  She went up to the tower apartment and bathed slowly and luxuriously, after the hard work was done. She changed into a neat jumpsuit and, sitting before the gold-mounted mirror Ben had given her, she brushed her fine, light hair a hundred carefully counted strokes. Then she stood and looked critically at her reflection.

  She nodded. “I’ve done the best I can,” she told the fragile shape in the glass. “I understand, and God knows nobody on earth knows better than I, how messy death can be. But what can be done, I’ve tried to do. Now I can only wait.”

  She turned her gaze toward the painting of Benjie, which hung on the wall beside the door. It stared out at her, the black eyes unreadable, filled with a sort of excitement she had not yet been able to understand. Behind his image the shadow image of Penelope’s face seemed to grimace.