Houses of Stone

by Kathy

  The incredible message they conveyed would have meaning to her later; now she shunted it aside into a separate compartment of her mind. No time now, no time for anything except trying to stop what was happening. The sounds she heard, distorted though they were by echoes and distance, turned her stomach.

  Her sudden appearance made the men start. They hadn't known she was there. Stupid of them, she thought with icy detachment; they ought to have noticed Peggy's car.

  "Well, just look what we got here!" Bobby crowed. "Reckon this is your lucky day, honey. Take good care of my favorite brother-in-law, boys, while I give the little lady a hearty welcome."

  Cameron raised his head. Two of them were holding him by the arms. He would have fallen if they had let go; his eyes had difficulty focusing and blood dripped from his mouth. "Don't be a damned fool, Bobby," he said thickly. "If you lay one finger on her she'll press charges, and so will I. Aren't you in enough trouble already?"

  One of the men holding him relaxed his grip and said uneasily, "I don't need that kind of shit, Bob. Maybe we better—"

  "It'll be their word against ours," Bobby said. Thumbs hooked in the belt of his jeans, he studied Karen from head to foot and back again. She knew, with the same cold detachment, why he hadn't moved in on her. He was waiting for her to run.

  Somehow she doubted that the application of conscious virtue would have much effect on Bobby. Running or screaming would have been fatal, though. He'd love a show of fear. She stared back at him, unblinking, and said coolly, "My word carries more weight than yours, Bobby. I'll have your ass in jail if you don't let him go and get the hell out of here right now."

  "You and who else?" He took a step toward her.

  "The others will be back soon. Professor Meyer—"

  "The big hero that saved you from being run over?" Bobby's grin stretched another couple of inches. "Who do you think it was set that up, honey? The cheap bastard only paid me fifty bucks, so I gave myself the pleasure of coming a little closer than he expected. He won't interfere with me. He wouldn't want the fuzz to find out about that stunt."

  The low-hanging clouds parted momentarily, and the dying sun sent a last ray of lurid crimson light into the clearing, flushing the faces of the men and casting dark, distorted shadows across the uneven ground. When it died the darkness seemed even deeper. A distant rumble of thunder rolled and faded.

  "I've had it," one of the spectators muttered. "Let's get the hell out of here."

  "Five more minutes," Bobby said softly. He started toward Karen.

  She stood her ground. It was not courage that kept her from retreating or screaming for help; it was a queer, cool sense of anticipation.

  Cameron thought, as he later admitted, that she was too paralyzed with fear to move. With a sudden, violent movement he twisted away from the grasping hands, but one of the men stuck out a foot and he went sprawling.

  It came then, as Karen had known it would, rising instantly from a distant wail to a ghastly shriek that assaulted the ears and pierced the heart. It filled the clearing like dark water and shook the branches. When it died away, she and Cameron were alone.

  Karen had dropped to the ground and covered her ears with her hands. It was that bad, even for someone who had heard it before and who had anticipated . . . something.

  She rolled over and sat up. Cameron had raised himself to his knees. The fall must have knocked the wind out of him; he was whooping for breath, but he managed to gasp, "Christ Almighty! What in God's name was that?"

  Karen crawled across the few feet of ground that separated them. Rising to her knees, she threw her arms around him. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes, fine." The strain in his voice and the tremors that ran through his body made him a liar. She was trembling too, now that it was over. They clung to one another, shaking and panting.

  "What was it?" Cameron repeated.

  "A guardian angel, maybe."

  "Didn't sound like an angel. We'd better get out of here."

  He got shakily to his feet, raising her with him.

  "Just a minute." She moved out of his hold, toward the tunnel.

  "For God's sake, Karen!"

  "I'm coming." Carefully she wrapped the broken shaft of bone in Peggy's jacket. As they started down the path toward the house, the first drops of rain began to fall.

  "So you were right," Peggy said. "It's another Edwin Drood. We'll never know how it ended."

  Karen gathered up the last pages of the manuscript. They had finished breakfast; Peggy leaned back, her bandaged foot on a chair, a cigarette in her hand. The windows streamed with rain.

  "We can make an educated guess, can't we?" Karen said. "Someone is following her as she steals through the night-darkened garden, her bundle over her arm. The reader knows that, if Ismene doesn't. The doctor is waiting for her at the gate, so the follower has to be Edmund. There will be a confrontation between the two men, a final admission of guilt by one of them, and Ismene will fly into the arms of the other."

  "But which one? You don't know how many pages are missing. The confrontation could result in an entirely new plot twist. Even if the doctor is telling the truth, Ismene has to go back to the house with the proof he's promised her, to free her poor crazy mother and convince Clara that she'd better stop making eyes at Edmund. I must say," Peggy went on, reaching for her cup of coffee, "you were right about Ismene's feelings for her sister. That scene where she tries to warn Clara makes the latter look like a vindictive bitch."

  "A lot of people will be speculating," Karen said. "There's another possibility, though. Ismene may not have finished the book."

  Peggy had been trying not to look at the cotton-lined box and its grisly contents. They made an incongruous addition to the breakfast dishes. "It could be a woman's," she said. "Men were shorter back then, though. With only one bone—"

  "It's hers," Karen said quietly. "I saw a few other bones before the light went out. Some are probably gone, smashed or carried off by animals. But there will be enough left to prove I'm right."

  "I'm surprised you aren't heading back there, rain and all," Peggy said, shifting position with a grimace of pain.

  "I've found what I had to find. The bones are just . . . left-over pieces. Anyhow, they shouldn't be moved by amateurs. There are people at Williamsburg or William and Mary who will know how to deal with them." Karen stood up and stretched. "We'd better start packing. I don't know how we're going to cram all that stuff you bought into your car."

  "Oh, come on, it's not that bad." Peggy squirmed. "Damn this foot. Suppose we sort through the loot and see what can be discarded. We should be able to squeeze some more into the trunk."

  Karen dragged the boxes and bundles nearer to the invalid. They made a discouragingly large pile. "What do you want with this petticoat?" she demanded, lifting a mass of white fabric and shaking it out. "It must have ten yards of material in it. It's way too long for you, and the waist ..."

  "Look at the tucks and the handmade lace," Peggy protested. "I have to keep that."

  "Oh, all right." Karen raised the lid of the trunk and crammed the petticoat in. "How about this?"

  After some heated debate Peggy consented to discard two pairs of knee-length split drawers and a bundle of long underwear. "See," she said with satisfaction, "the rest fits in the trunk."

  Karen sat on the lid and managed to close it. "That finishes that box, except for these papers. You said they weren't—"

  "Let me have another look." Peggy sorted through the bundle, accompanying the search with a muttered commentary. "I suppose I could dispense with the newspaper clippings, they're all about turn-of-the-century social activities. The recipe book . . . no, I can't part with that, it's too delicious. 'Take fourteen eggs and a pint of heavy cream . . .' "

  "Hurry up," Karen said impatiently. "I want to get out of here before noon. It's a long . . . What's that?"

  "Seems to be a diary," Peggy said, riffling through the pages. " 'I have been reading the new novel b
y Mr. Hardy. It does not seem to me to measure up to his earlier works.'

  "It must be one of Eliza's. Same binding, same metal clasp. I wonder why it didn't end up at the Historical Society with the others."

  "My, my, she did think well of herself, didn't she? 'There are few individuals, particularly among the ladies, with whom I can converse without feelings of boredom. Their intellectual capacities ..." "Chuckling, Peggy turned over a few pages.

  "You can keep it if you insist," Karen said resignedly. "It's not that big, I can probably squeeze it in somewhere. Come on, we've got another box of clothes to ... Peggy?"

  She had stiffened, eyes wide, mouth ajar.

  "Peggy! What is it?"

  "It's the answer," Peggy said in a queer choked voice. "All the answers. My God, how could I have been so stupid? I should have known it was Eliza."

  "Eliza was Ismene? That's impossible!"

  "That's why she hid this volume of her diary," Peggy muttered. "She had enough intellectual integrity to refrain from destroying the truth, but that awful Victorian prudery kept her from publishing it."

  "What are you talking about?" Karen demanded, leaning over her shoulder to peer at the close-written pages. " 'Houses of Stone' could not have been written by—"

  "Listen." Peggy cleared her throat and began to read. " 'I watched the fire take hold and then I knew I could not do what I had contemplated. I took it out with the tongs and beat out the flames. Only a few pages were lost. They were the ones that mattered, for they contained the awful accusation that had moved me to destroy the papers. It is only a story, of course, pure fiction, without foundation in fact; but anyone who read it would recognize the individuals on whom she had based her characters, and those readers would believe the worst, as people always do. The malicious gossip, the whispers would ruin us and cast a stain on the character of my sainted mother. I cannot allow it to be published or even read by another. But neither can I destroy it. Would that I had never found that recess in the paneling of the room that must have been hers! Would that I had never read it, or the little sheaf of verses! Would that my antiquarian research, my pride in the antiquity of my family, had not led me to search out the evidence that has provoked such fearful doubts!

  " 'My mother never spoke of her. She does not lie in the family plot. It was not until I began looking through old newspapers in the hope of finding information for the genealogy that I came upon the notice of her death. She had fallen or thrown herself from the cliff, it said; there had been a witness who tried in vain to hold her back, but the body had not been found. The river was high, it must have washed her far away.

  " 'I know this is true. The story is only a story. But I will hide it away, with this journal. Fate will determine what becomes of it. I cannot.' '

  For a while there was no sound except the patter of rain against the window. Then Peggy muttered, in obvious chagrin, "And I call myself a historian! The clothes in that trunk were Late Victorian in style, so the manuscript must have been hidden after that time. Well, there won't be any difficulty identifying Ismene now. Her sister was Eliza's mother. Hand me my briefcase, will you, please?"

  Karen obliged. It didn't take Peggy long to find the genealogy. She was as methodical about her work as she was careless about her personal property. "Here she is. Helena Cabot, wife of Frederick."

  "Her brothers and sisters aren't listed." Karen craned her neck to see over Peggy's shoulder.

  "Well, you knew that. I understand how you feel," Peggy said with a wry smile. "We're so close now, closer than we ever hoped; and yet we still don't know Ismene's real name. But now we know her last name, and we can go on from there."

  "Cabot's an awfully common name," Karen muttered.

  "Not as bad as Smith. And it's commoner in New England than in the South."

  "That's right," Karen exclaimed. "And according to the manuscript, Ismene's father came from 'a northern city.' "

  "Interesting," Peggy muttered. "Am I stretching things, or is Helena's name significant?"

  "You probably are stretching things. But . . . Peggy, look at the dates. Helena was two years older than her husband. Edmund was born after Ismene and Clara's mother left her husband, so he would have been ..."

  "Younger than either of the girls," Peggy finished. "So—how much of the novel is autobiographical?"

  "We'll never know. We don't even know how it ended."

  "Ah, but we can make some educated guesses." Peggy's eyes gleamed. Karen recognized the look; it was the pleasurable anticipation of scholarly speculation. Peggy went on, "If those bones are Ismene's—"

  "There should be enough left to indicate sex, age and race. If they are those of a female Caucasian under thirty, she's the most logical candidate. Her body was never found, remember." Karen stared at her clenched hands. "Of course we can't be certain until the experts have examined them. I don't know anything about anthropology. I'm jumping to the wildest of all possible conclusions."

  "But you're sure, aren't you?"

  "Yes," Karen said quietly. "I'm sure."

  Peggy nodded thoughtfully. "All right, let's accept that as a working hypothesis. Let's also accept the likelihood that the book had a happy ending; most of the novels of that type did. Even if Ismene the heroine met a tragic end, it would be too much of a coincidence to suppose the author died in exactly the same way as her heroine. However, Eliza did read the ending, and it horrified her so much she tried to burn the manuscript because it 'cast a stain' on her mother. Suppose it described a murderous attack on Ismene by her own sister? The novel would mirror reality to that extent at least—not the manner of Ismene's death but the motive for it."

  "Motive," Karen repeated stupidly. She couldn't deal with the problem as dispassionately as Peggy.

  "You can't get around it," Peggy insisted. "If those are Ismene's remains, she was deliberately murdered. If she had been crawling around in the tunnel involved in some kind of antiquarian research and died of natural causes, they'd have gone looking for her and removed her body. She was trying to get out; that's the only logical reason for her to be there. Someone had shut her up in her own house of stone, and barred the door."

  "And invented a story about her falling off the cliff in order to explain her disappearance." Karen shivered. "It fits, doesn't it?"

  "Could Clara have managed that by herself?"

  "It would have been easy." Karen's lips twisted. "Ismene must have had a key; she wouldn't leave the place unlocked, not with her private papers and books there. But when she was there, she'd have no reason to lock herself in, would she? She may have been in the habit of leaving the key in the lock—outside. So ... just turn the key and walk away. No blood or mess, no unpleasant confrontation. The place had been long abandoned, none of the servants went near it. The walls were too thick for cries to be heard ..." She broke off, biting her lip.

  Her voice deliberately matter-of-fact, Peggy said, "But Edmund—Frederick—knew about the stone house. Even if he believed his wife's lie about Ismene falling into the river, wouldn't he have gone to the house to retrieve her books and papers? He knew how much they meant to her, and he was fond of her—"

  "Are you talking about Edmund or Frederick? We're back to the same question: how much of the novel is autobiographical?"

  "Right." Peggy shook her head. "I can't keep them straight. But I still think Frederick must have been involved. Or guilty."

  "I'm inclined to agree. But it was her mother, not her father, that Eliza mentioned. Maybe one of them did the actual dirty work and the other was an accessory after the fact. If there was a great deal of money involved, and Ismene was about to marry someone else, on the rebound, Clara would get the whole bundle if her sister died, and a woman's property belonged to her husband. That would give Frederick a strong motive. But we'll probably never know the truth."

  "This answers all the other questions, though." Peggy shook her head. "To think this diary was lying there, in the box, while we were speculating and guessing! Eliz
a must have had the poems published as a kind of expiation. She wouldn't use her aunt's real name, so she chose that of the heroine of the book. Come to think of it, that's the one question we haven't answered. Why did she call herself Ismene?"

  Karen got up and went to the window. The rain had slackened; it slid like tears down the wet pane. She followed the path of one drop with her finger till it melted into the puddle below. " 'There is no triumph in the grave, No victory in death.' She had no patience with the kind of martyrdom Antigone courted. She wouldn't walk meekly to her death. They had to kill her. And she was still fighting, still trying to get out when she died—at the farthest end of that pitiful tunnel, which had been begun and deepened by other prisoners with the same unconquerable will to live."

  Peggy cleared her throat. " 'Dying for a cause is just one of those silly notions men come up with. It has always seemed to me more sensible to go on living and keep on talking.' "

  After a moment Karen turned from the window. Smiling, she said, "Are you composing aphorisms now?"

  "No, I read it someplace. It's not a bad motto, though. Keep on talking."

  "Ismene would have agreed. That book is her triumph over death and silence. That's why I'm not concerned about her poor bones; she wouldn't have cared about them."

  "You are going to get them out, though."

  "Not me. Cameron said he'd take care of it."

  "Are you going to marry him?"

  Karen stared at her friend in openmouthed astonishment. "Good God, no. I hardly know the man. What put that idea into your head?"

  "The way he looked at you last night. And you weren't exactly scowling at him."

  "I like him a lot," Karen said primly. "And I feel very sorry for him. He's had a hard time and—"

  "Good Lord, you sound like Jane Eyre. No, Jane Austen! Jane Eyre had at least the guts to admit she was sexually attracted to Rochester."

  "So I'm sexually attracted. A long-term relationship requires a lot more than that. Something may develop," Karen admitted. "But as Joan might say, why should I deprive all those other guys of a chance to win my heart?"