Chapter Eighteen

Nothing unusual happened the rest of the weekend. I kept waiting for the General, but he didn’t come. Then on Monday afternoon Dr. Tully paid us a visit. I wasn’t pleased to see him, to say the least, but I was civil to him.

He stood in the front room, beaming with delight. “This is the first time I’ve been in this house,” he said.

“Does it fulfill a longtime ambition?” Jack asked jovially.

“Oh dear, yes.”

“Dr. Tully is an anthropologist at the college in Ashland,” I said quickly. “He’s making a study of old local families.”

“Then he and Duff ought to get together.”

“I should very much like to meet Duff,” Dr. Tully said.

“Some other time. He’s in school now.”

“He ought to be home soon,” Jack said.

“Not for a couple of hours possibly. And Dr. Tully probably can’t stay that long.”

“Oh, I have plenty of time,” Dr. Tully assured us. “I have no more classes today and since I’m a bachelor with no family ties, it doesn’t matter how long I stay.”

It matters to me, I thought. I didn’t want him asking a lot of questions and possibly upsetting Duff. I was sorry I had ever let Father Jackson get me involved with him.

I took him upstairs, mainly to get him away from Jack, and showed him the bedrooms.

“Marvelous,” he said. “This house is supposed to resemble Libby Prison, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve been told that.”

“But have you been told why?”

“I’ve read part of a journal that mentions it was at Libby Prison that General Caine first took up the practice of Satanism.”

“A journal kept by the General? I should very much like to see that.”

“I’m not sure it’s in the General’s own hand. And I don’t know where the book is right now.”

“If you find it—”

“Of course.”

We were standing in my room and Dr. Tully said, “I imagine this was the General’s bedroom.”

“Why?”

“Well it’s the larger of the two bedrooms on this floor. The two downstairs bedrooms are much smaller and were probably conceived as servants’ rooms, although possibly never put to that use. Yes, I’d say he slept in this room and in that bed, and died there too, probably.”

“What happened to him?”

“There is a legend that he was poisoned by his mistress.” Dr. Tully rubbed his head. “I think I’ve mentioned her—Margaret Dorn. Apparently she was a local siren, a widow who was also suspected of having murdered her husband. He had a farm somewhere on this road, I think. Margaret is said to have been a member of the circle of worshipers, and after her husband was out of the way, she took up with the General. He may have been involved in the death of Margaret’s husband too. This was a year or so after his wife died and he sent his children away. Margaret evidently moved in here, which so incensed some of the more respectable local citizens that they burned down her house and barns. Then later she and the General seemingly had a falling out. Anyway, it was suspected that he did away with her.”

“I thought you said she poisoned him.”

Dr. Tully chuckled. “That came later. She died very suddenly in the summer of 1890, but no investigation was made. There was a local physician in the group, and he apparently signed the death certificate. Then a week or so later some local children found the front door here open and they decided to explore the house. The General’s body was here on the bed, dressed in his uniform. He had evidently been dead for several days. Some slices of fruitcake containing arsenic were found on a downstairs table, and it was assumed that Margaret Dorn had baked the fruitcake for him.”

“And he ate the cake after she was dead and buried.”

“Very possibly.” Dr. Tully gave a mock shudder. “I’ve often thought if I had to be confronted by one of them on a dark night, I would prefer it be the General. At least the General never killed any of his relatives.”

We went to the storeroom. “Some of this furniture may have belonged to Margaret Dorn,” Dr. Tully said. “She may have brought some of it here before her house was burned. I imagine a lot of the other things were picked up on the cheap by the General. He may have bought them at auction from the homes of people he frightened away from here.”

Our visitor wanted to see the third floor, but I told him there was no key for the door. Naturally, I didn’t say anything about the uniform I had found. We went back downstairs then and he prowled around some more in the kitchen, and then we went outside and he looked at the barn and the sheds.

“And here’s the graveyard,” he said as we came upon it. “I’ve visited here before. As I told you, I could never get into the house while Miss Hannah was alive, but I did manage to explore the grounds.”

“You probably know that this is—or was—General Caine’s grave, then,” I said as I indicated the place where the soil had recently been overturned.

“I’m sure it isn’t. Or at least I’m sure he wasn’t buried here originally.”

“But Father Fogarty told me—”

“Father Fogarty is wrong. Unless, of course, the stones here have been misplaced for a long time.” He was searching the long grass, kicking through it until he found a small stone, only a rectangle of slate really. Some letters were crudely scratched on it. “m. e. d.”

“There you are,” said Dr. Tully. “Margaret Edith Dorn. She was buried here, or so I always assumed, because the stone was here. I imagine that the General dug the grave himself, since few of his neighbors would’ve been likely to help him. He probably cut the initials on the stone too. Then a little more than a week later he was buried over here.” He led me to where the General’s stone was standing.

“But you can see how that stone has been propped up recently.”

“Oh, not so recently, I think. It was like this the first time I saw it several years ago. Of course, it was probably taken down a few times when the General’s coffin was removed, although it doesn’t seem as if the earth here has been disturbed for a long time. I imagine the stone was knocked down a few times too, by some of the General’s ill wishers.” He moved back toward the gate. “Here’s where his poor wife is resting, do you see? Hannah Caine’s mother. Really bad taste, wasn’t it, to later put his mistress next to his wife.”

The small stone, almost hidden in the grass, was engraved Ada Danvers Caine 1850–1881.

“Do you think Margaret Dorn’s coffin has been dug up?” I was very nervous, for some reason.

“It looks like it, doesn’t it. That’s a new twist.” He went back to Margaret’s grave, stopped and picked up a handful of the soil. “There are several possibilities,” he said finally. “One, Margaret is still here. Two, her body has been removed. Three, Margaret and the General are both here. Partners in evil resting together. Four, perhaps the General was put here with Margaret a long time ago, and has only recently been disinterred. Five, if Margaret and the General were both here, maybe both were recently taken away.”

“But why would anyone want to dig her up?”

“She was an important figure too—maybe even second-­in-command of the group during her lifetime.” Dr. Tully took my arm and we left the graveyard. “There’s another point of which I’m sure you’re unaware. I only discovered it myself after your recent visit to my office prompted me to do some research into county records. I think I have found that your Mrs. Reddy is a granddaughter of Margaret Dorn.”

“And the General?”

“No, I don’t think she ever bore any children by him. But she had a daughter before she came to him. The girl was put in a county home, and in the Ashland courthouse there is a record of her marriage in 1899 and the birth of a daughter named Hazel in 1901. Then in 1930 the marriage of Hazel and a man named Steven Reddy was recorded.”

“And that’s Mrs. Reddy down the road?”

“I’m reasonably sure of it. She was away from this area for a long time, and then came back with her daughter Rose in the late forties or early fifties. Then Rose married Emil Weber, and later Hazel took the job here with your aunt. I’m sure your aunt knew nothing of Hazel’s connection with Margaret Dorn, or she would never have taken her on.”

We were at the front of the house now, and I saw the school bus approaching. I steered Dr. Tully toward his car.

“I’ve tried to ascertain your Mrs. Reddy’s first name in order to confirm my theory,” Dr. Tully went on, “but so far no luck. She has apparently never voted here, nor has she any bank accounts in Cainesville or Ashland. Is that your son?”

The bus had stopped and Duff and Franny were getting off.

“Why don’t you just call and ask her,” I said. “Pose as a census taker or an Internal Revenue agent.”

Duff and Franny had crossed the road and were coming toward us. Why was I afraid to have him question Duff? It might’ve been better if I had permitted it. Maybe he could’ve found out something that would’ve saved us. Instead I opened the door of his Volkswagen.

“Would you mind, ” I said. “I don’t feel well.”

“I’d like to say hello—”

“Please, some other time.” I was pushing him into the car. Then I closed the door.

“May I come again?” he shouted.

“Call us first.”

Duff and Franny had reached the house and were watching with great curiosity. I took their arms. “This is Duff, this is Franny,” I called. “Duff, Franny—Dr. Tully.” Then I took them inside.

“Who was that?” Franny wanted to know.

“A salesman,” I said.

Duff grinned and went upstairs. Jack didn’t even lift his gaze from his yellow pad. I watched through the window for several minutes until Dr. Tully finally gave up and drove away.

Then I went upstairs. Duff’s door was closed. I went to my room and lifted the mattress. The uniform coat was gone. I ran into the storeroom and pulled the cupboard aside. The door to the third floor wasn’t locked.

Without the flashlight, it was almost impossible to see anything as I groped my way up the stairs, biting my tongue to stop from screaming every time a cobweb brushed my face.

At the top I called, “Duff? Duff?”

There was no answer. I made my way through the darkness to the other side of the room and found the settee. The rest of the uniform was gone too. I got down on my knees and felt around on the floor, but I couldn’t find the boots either.

Then before I could get to my feet, I heard the door in the storeroom slam. I did scream then and stumbled in what I thought to be the direction of the stairs. There had been a faint light from below before, but now there was nothing.

I missed the stairs and ran into the opposite wall, then coming back, I missed the stairs again and ran into some furniture. I thought I heard the guttural laugh. Was he here?

Then reason took over. I dropped to the floor and crawled until I reached the far wall again and then crawled back obliquely until I found the stairs, went down them, half-­falling, and threw myself against the door, screaming Duff’s name.

He opened the door.

“Mother, what have you been doing? You’re a mess.”

“You locked me up there,” I sobbed.

“Mother, the door wasn’t locked. Look, there’s no key. An air current must have blown the door shut.”

“The key is on your bureau.”

“No, it isn’t. I did find it a few weeks ago and I went up to the third floor once, but then I misplaced the key.”

“You lie, you lie, just as you lied to the psychiatrist!”

“Mother, Mother . . .”

He tried to put his arm around me, but I pulled away from him and ran to his room. There was no key on the bureau now, but the eyeglasses were still where I had left them.

Duff picked them up. “These are yours, Mother.”

“They’re yours!”

“Try them on.”

I refused to try them. I was sure they weren’t mine. They looked like a pair of mine, it was true, a pair I seldom wore. In fact I never wore them except for sewing.

“Where are yours, if these are mine?”

“Here.” He took another pair of glasses from his shirt pocket. They were very like the other pair, although the lenses were thicker. Duff had switched them, I was sure. He had gone to my purse or my sewing basket and gotten my glasses and then put them on his bureau in place of his.

“Liar,” I said softly. “You’re a liar, as well as something worse.” I walked away from him and went into my room and closed and locked the door.

He came and knocked at the door later, and so did Franny and Jack, begging me to come down to dinner, but I refused. In fact, after a while I didn’t even bother answering them.

General Caine came to me again that night while I slept. Shortly after dawn I awoke and he was gone, but again there was evidence that he had been there.

I got out of bed and went to my dresser and picked up my brush. Then I stood in front of the mirror, and began to brush my hair. I think I had only just lifted the brush when I fainted.