Chapter Thirty

 

 

The happy shouts of the children rang through the Hall. Rebecca stood in the window, slitting her eyes against the glitter of the snow. Brian and Mandy, so bundled in snowsuits they could hardly walk, were urging Peter on as he maneuvered the head onto their snowman. The maple trees were black stitches basting together white lawn and brilliant blue sky. The mausoleum was an unobtrusive white mound by the churned ruts of the driveway.

Rebecca smiled. The movement cracked her face and sloughed several layers of anguished frown. She turned, limping, back into the room.

Michael sat at the table, his mug of tea in front of him, looking at his hands as if he were about to launch into Lady Macbeth’s “out damned spot.” Rebecca rubbed his shoulders and laid her cheek on the top of his head. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Remember how brave you were. Did you realize what it was you shouted? ‘Cruachan!’—the old Campbell war cry.”

“Racial memory.” He looked up at her with eyes drained into gray by weariness. “I wisna brave, I was scared spitless.”

“So was I.” Her mind was still buffeted by the sound of Eric falling down the stairs. It might have been poetic justice, but that didn’t make it any the less horrible. He had told her, “No one knows the end is near—a mercy, that”. But he wouldn’t have been merciful to them.

Darnley lay asleep on the carpet in a patch of afternoon sun, paws splayed, looking like a lady’s fur wrap tossed carelessly down. “The vet says he isn’t hurt,” said Rebecca. “Nice of the man to make a house call.”

“I doot he was as curious as everyone else.” The telephone rang for the fiftieth time. Jan’s voice answered and calmly interceded.

It had been a dark, cold midnight when police, paramedics, Warren Lansdale and both Pruitts descended upon Dun Iain. It had been an even darker four-thirty when they’d retreated, taking an already twitching Heather and Eric—what had been Eric—with them. Despite infusions of coffee from Phil’s thermos, Michael and Rebecca had been numbed beyond speech long before they were left to lapse into blessed oblivion.

Rebecca had regained consciousness at ten to find the morning bright with promises, not the least of which was Michael’s bleary, unshaven face on the pillow beside her. Next time, she thought with a wry smile, she’d notice she was sleeping with him. Complicating relationships were the only ones worth the effort of having.

There was another knock on the front door. She kissed Michael’s forehead and went to see who Jan was dealing with this time.

Alerted by the Putnam grapevine, Jan had arrived with breakfast just as Rebecca finished a cold water spit bath, flinching from her face in the mirror—it’d looked as squashed and slept in as her blouse.

The lights had flashed on within the hour. The telephone had taken a little longer. Not only were the lines down in the woods, they’d been neatly cut just where they entered the house. Rebecca had promised herself she wouldn’t think about that.

Phil had appeared next. He’d plodded upstairs in delightful silence to fix the broken windows, the one Michael had kicked out and the one shattered by Eric’s first shot. Elspeth’s window, the one Michael had climbed in. Rebecca wasn’t going to think about his precarious climb, either.

A reporter from the Putnam Enquirer had come about noon. Rebecca and Michael had agreed to talk to her; the dramatic events at Dun Iain were, after all, going to bump the breakdown of the traffic light at Elm and Main off the front page whether the actual participants had anything to say about it or not. When the reporters from Dayton and Columbus had arrived soon after, Jan sent them off to the Enquirer office to copy the prepared statement.

Now the voice echoing up the stairwell was Warren Lansdale’s. He stood holding his hat next to Queen Mary’s supine marble body, talking earnestly while Jan nodded understanding. “. . .I never realized—God rot me for a complete idiot—excuse me, ma’am. . .” He saw Rebecca at the top of the flight of stairs and stopped. His moustache was looking distinctly moth-eaten.

Rebecca summoned a smile for him. “Come on up, Sheriff.” Poor complacent Warren had been severely shaken last night. He’d been just as much a victim of the plot as she had.

He shook hands and settled at the table, clasping the cup of coffee Jan brought him and staring up at the piper’s gallery. Rebecca turned to see what he was looking at. Elspeth’s portrait still peered out between the railings. But her face was just paint on canvas, her body a husk in the mausoleum; her awareness was gone. “You can’t blame it all on her,” Rebecca said quietly. “Everyone made wrong choices, including me.”

“And me,” said Michael as Jan wafted discreetly away.

“Well,” Warren said, “Let me begin by apologizing. I knew Eric had a gun, he’d reported it missing. I never dreamed. . .”

“You did enough apologizing last night,” Rebecca told him.

“Oh, well. . . I should’ve suspected something was going on right before James died, when he was so upset about the taxes. I bet Eric was telling him the taxes were a lot higher than they really were, not only so he could skim off the top but so James would agree to willing the Estate to those imaginary ‘relatives’.”

“What if,” Rebecca asked, “there really are some relatives of Rachel Forbes’s out there? Do they get the Estate after all?”

“I got hold of Benjamin Birkenhead this morning. Once I convinced him that Eric really was—gone—and that he’d been manipulating all of us out here. . .” Warren cleared his throat. “Birkenhead says the State can sue to have that will thrown out and the one James made several years ago re-instated. That wouldn’t affect you. You’d still get the artifacts.”

Michael nodded. “So Eric began simply wi’ a campaign of harrassment, tryin’ to scare us out, or, failin’ that, to keep us from takin’ all the dearest things.”

“And then he had to cover up what he’d already done,” said Rebecca. “by making me suspect Dorothy or Phil or you, Sheriff, or even Michael.” Beside her Michael stared down into his cup. So he’d had a half-baked scheme of his own—that hadn’t helped. But that, too, was finished. “Dorothy’d been part of Eric’s plan all along, hadn’t she?”

“Chuck found Dorothy overdosed on tranquilizers and vodka last night. Suicide attempt. She’d left a note saying she never meant things to get away from her. Apparently she’d drugged your food as Eric told her, and then realized he meant to kill you. She’d already come around by the time I got to the hospital this morning, and she wanted to talk. Did she ever want to talk!”

Warren drank, fortifying himself. “The only prints on the jeweled box, besides yours, were hers. She’d been taking things all along, in spite of Eric warning her to wait for the pay-off. We even found that picture of Katherine Gemmell and James’s letter in her pantry, behind a flour canister.”

“Eric was going to share the inheritance with Dorothy?” asked Rebecca.

“He’d promised to pay off Chuck and Margie’s house and set up a college fund for their kids. She still believes that she was using Eric, not the other way around. But then, how can you tell who was using who?”

“You canna,” muttered Michael.

“She never suspected Eric killed James, not until the last few weeks,” Warren continued. “What could she have done if she had? She was in it too deep herself.”

“What happened to Eric’s father?” Rebecca asked.

“Dorothy says she was never married to Donald Adler. By the time she knew she was pregnant he was in jail on a burglary charge. Taking after Fred, his stepfather, who was a petty thief and hoodlum. I checked with Columbus, his record’s as long as your arm. But Donald was killed by another inmate before Eric was born. Katie and Fred took the baby to California, and then Fred walked out. Or so Eric told Dorothy.”

“Funny, it was Eric’s middle initial that tipped me off, and I was wrong about that. She’d named him ‘Forbes’” Rebecca shifted on the hard chair. Her head ached, her shoulders ached, her knee throbbed. Even her mind was tired, sprawled as limply as the cat in the confines of her skull. “Maybe Katie intended to start over. We’ll never know if she deliberately drove Eric into going after the inheritance, or whether he simply picked up so much of her resentment he decided it was something he should do. Eric said she always pushed him to make something of himself. Strange what love will make you do. And hate, and how thin the boundary is between them.” Beneath the table Michael took Rebecca’s hand and squeezed it against his thigh.

Warren puffed his moustache uneasily. “Dorothy didn’t know where Eric was until he appeared on her doorstep three years ago and started playing on her guilt about giving him up as an infant.”

“Would he have told her who he was if she wisna so cozily bidin’ here at Dun Iain?” Michael asked.

No one answered. The happy voices of the children rang through air sparkling like cold club soda. Darnley twitched, stretched, and yawned.

“As for little Heather,” continued Warren. “Dorothy didn’t know a thing about her and Eric. Heather was running Steve, and Eric was running Heather, just to hedge his bets. That’s one reason things got so complicated. Every now and then the different teams would start working at cross purposes.”

“Like Heather eatin’ the drugged food,” said Michael.

“His plan wasn’t nearly as tight as he imagined,” Rebecca said. “Is Heather all right?”

“She was sitting up and demanding to know what happened when I left the hospital a couple of hours ago. I imagine Sandra will tell her all about it.”

“I hope Sandra decides to make friends with her. If the kid had more self-esteem she wouldn’t have. . .” Neither would I, Rebecca thought. “Was Eric giving her drugs to pass on to Steve?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so, although the boy’d been hooked for years. That fire was the best thing that could’ve happened to him, considering. Once he was off the dope he realized it was time to start controlling his own life. George Velasco said he was hysterical when he came in last night, shouting that they had to get out to Dun Iain right away before something terrible happened. But they had to put the snow chains on the ambulance first.” He stared out the window. “I can’t believe Eric’s dead. And like that.”

Michael clutched Rebecca’s hand. “Eric would’ve gone to prison, right enough, but no forever. We’d have been lookin’ ower our shoulders the rest o’ our lives, waitin’ for him to catch up wi’ us.”

Amen, thought Rebecca. She returned the pressure of Michael’s hand. Eric was at peace, boldness burned away, intelligence wasted, charm soured. He’d cheated himself the most.

Warren said, “Eric must’ve set the fire in the shed to catch Steve because the fire Steve set in the trashcan made us put a dead bolt on the door. Eric had to be careful, then, how he used the tunnel, or you’d have realized there was another entrance. Dorothy didn’t know about the tunnel, by the way—Eric must’ve wormed it out of James when James still trusted him.”

“But I didn’t tumble until it was too late to hurt him,” said Rebecca. “And Phil, I guess, is completely innocent.”

“Just not too bright,” Warren returned. “He let Steve go without supervision much too often. Never asked questions like he should have. Kind of like me, I guess.”

Rebecca made soothing noises. Michael smiled with dry sympathy. The front door slammed. Up the stairs echoed the voices of the children demanding food and Peter bellowing for coffee.

“It turns out,” said Warren, “that Heather’s the one who took the mazer, not Dorothy, and she handed it right over to Eric. I’ll get onto Sotheby’s tomorrow morning, see if I can get the names of those collectors.”

“Thank you,” Rebecca said.

“Steve suspected there was more to Heather’s wanting to harass you than she was letting on, but he couldn’t admit to himself she was—er—with Eric. A lot of the things Steve did were without her instructions, trying to get back in her favor. Like setting the fire in the trashcan, and stealing the mausoleum key right out from under us. He also locked you in the storeroom, Michael, and tore up your tape. He says he’ll get you another one.”

“I’ll get me one when I get home,” replied Michael. “It’s hardly important noo.”

“Scared the heck out of him, though, when all the lights in the house came on by themselves,” Warren added with a short laugh. “Served him right.”

Phil trudged down the staircase carrying his tools. He stopped in the doorway. “Is there anything else, Miss Reid? I need to get home.”

“Thank you,” called Rebecca. “And don’t worry about Steve. Mr Birkenhead knows that the Estate is to cover his medical bills.”

Phil shuffled his feet, tugged on the bill of his cap, and fled. What must it be like, Rebecca wondered, to have a mind that moved like a snail crawling laboriously up a single leaf, thinking that leaf the entire world? For a moment the prospect was almost tempting. Then she caught the acerbic gleam in Michael’s eye. No, she didn’t want to be a snail.

“Well,” said Warren, picking up his hat and standing, “I need to go fill out some more reports. This is going to generate more paperwork than the tornado of 1972.”

“Sorry,” said Rebecca. Reluctantly she laid down Michael’s hand.

“It’s not you who should be apologizing.” Warren smoothed his hair and fingered his moustache. “The inquest into Eric’s death won’t be for a few days. I know you’re leaving the country in a couple of weeks, Michael, but it won’t take long.”

A couple of weeks, Rebecca repeated silently. Michael frowned.

“The inquest will bring in a verdict of self-defense,” the sheriff assured them. “No one doubts it happened just as you said. I’ll keep you posted.”

Warren’s descending footsteps were crossed by approaching ones. Jan ushered in a pale, willowy figure. “Heather!” Rebecca exclaimed. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital!”

“I checked myself out. I’m okay. I had to talk to you. Sandra drove me out here. She’s really been halfway decent about all this, especially since I’m not. . .” She rolled her eyes at Michael. He looked back, brows arched. “. . .pregnant,” she concluded defiantly. “I was just upset because everything seemed to be falling apart, Steve hurt and Dorothy acting weird, and Eric—well, he was getting to where he kind of scared me.”

“Sit down,” Rebecca told her. Heather sat, her hands folded on the table in front of her. Michael muttered something and went upstairs, Jan mumbled something and went downstairs, where Sandra’s brassy voice was trying to coerce Peter into helping light the living Christmas tree at the mall.

Heather’s complexion was pristine. Even her stark black hair lay softly around her face instead of standing up in spikes. Her features clung desperately to an expression of stubborn pride.

“Why?” Rebecca asked.

“I loved him,” Heather returned. “He said he loved me. He made me feel good.”

“Three pretty good reasons, depending on your point of view. What about the drugs?”

“Those were for Steve. They made him feel better. I mean, I smoked a joint or two with Eric, just to—to make things different, you know? He really didn’t like it. Said it slowed him down.”

Rebecca laid her chin on her fist. Her fist was trembling. “I’ve heard my students say it has that effect.”

“It started last summer, before you ever got here.” Heather’s expression cracked slightly, revealing bewilderment. “He was good, so much better than Steve. Men are just supposed to know what to do, aren’t they?”

“No. Why should they?” Rebecca’s whole arm was shaking. She stood and started pacing, her hands clenched behind her back, her knee twingeing.

“He didn’t want anything kinky, nothing like that.”

Just that he was thirty-five years old, and you’re sixteen. There was some kind of psycho-anthropological wrinkle to that, the wealthy mature male and the nubile female, but Rebecca wasn’t about to explore it now. She turned at the window and paced back.

Heather’s bewilderment shattered into sorrow. A tear ran down her cheek and hung on her jaw. She didn’t seem to have the energy to brush it away. “Sometimes he’d only want to hold me. He was awfully lonely. And then you came. He told me to mess something up in the house, he didn’t say what. I picked on your room because I was jealous. I mean, you’re so much more sophisticated than I am, I thought he liked you better.”

“But that’s just what he didn’t like about me.”

Heather shrugged. “He asked me to call that place in Missouri, pretending to be you. That was really clever of him.”

“He was using me,” said Rebecca. “Much more so than he ever used you. He cared for you, Heather.”

“It would never have worked,” the girl replied. More tears rolled down her face and she laid her head on her arms. “He told me he had to take you away for a cruise, but then he’d come back, and you wouldn’t be here any more, he’d be all mine. He said for me to finish school, not drop out like Steve. He wanted me to go to college, he said I could be a paralegal. But he didn’t really need me, he didn’t need anybody. I think I knew that all along.”

The lonely little girl, and the lonely man. Rebecca stopped behind Heather’s chair and laid her hands on her shoulders. She felt as if she could crush the girl’s fragile bones. “If you want to believe it would’ve worked, go ahead. You may have been the only person he ever did need.”

Heather shook her head against her arms. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” Rebecca replied. “Get some counseling, Heather. Talking about it’ll help. And stick with Steve. If anyone needs you, he does.” Gently she heaved the child to her feet and dried her tears with a tissue from her pocket.

Jan appeared, murmuring about cups of cocoa, and led Heather away. The girl paused in the doorway, glanced up the stairs, then called conspiratorially to Rebecca, “He really is cute, you know, even if he talks funny. Good luck.”

Rebecca blew her nose. Surely she had milked her tear ducts dry the last few days. For the rest of her life she’d never cry again. Or be angry again, or be frightened again. . . She collapsed in the closest chair, giggling insanely. Of all the epithets she’d applied to Michael, “cute” wasn’t one of them. And she didn’t think he talked funny at all.

The castle dozed in the crisp sunlight. The voices in the kitchen were only a subliminal murmur. Steps padded across the floor and hands touched her shoulders. Long, strong, flexible fingers rubbed the back of her neck.

Rebecca leaned her head against his sweatshirt. “Michael, this would be a great time for you to trot out the Erskine Letter.”

His sigh ruffled her hair. “That would come a treat, right enough. But I’m afraid it’s gone. Elspeth or John must’ve destroyed it.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter so much any more. There’s plenty of other work yet to do.”

“Aye. We’re no in the clear yet, are we?”

Rebecca closed her eyes and nestled against his chest. His fingers caressed her face, stroking smooth the lines of worry and sorrow and fear.