The Clarrington Heritage

by Ardath Mayhar

  Now Edenson lay beside her longtime friend and patient. Not once in the ten years since she was put there had Marise visited their graves, though she had a standing order that flowers be put into the marble vase regularly. The Trust had arranged for perpetual care for the plot as well. It was the least she could do for the strange little woman who had consistently refused to be her friend.

  Once inside that room, Marise paused to look around. The place was tidy, though very dusty. There was no point in cleaning it now, for there was no smell of mildew or mice. She sighed and turned her back on the chamber where Edith Edenson had lived for two decades.

  There are many things I could and should have done, Marise thought. If I had been alert and taken everything into account, watched for warnings and indications, perhaps I might have saved those I love from what came afterward.

  She closed the door behind her with a definitive click and turned the key in the lock that had not kept death away from the tenant of the room.

  Another thought, which had haunted Marise for a decade and forced her to shut herself into this house, she pushed resolutely out of her consciousness. Yet it still lurked there, hard and cold as a pearl in an oyster.

  What if it was I, all the while? What if I, all unknowingly, insanely, managed to help to do what was done to my family?

  She had been left with that, at the end, for it could not have been Penelope, unaided, who brought things to their hideous conclusion.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Trustee in the Parlor

  Evan Turner surveyed the front of the Clarrington house with a critical eye. It had always been his intention to keep the place up to the standard required by the family, and he felt he had done well, with Marise’s help.

  The ironwork was solid, as he found when he shook one of the iron spears. The shrubbery had been trimmed recently and looked crisp and tidy. The woodwork around the windows had been freshly painted and the stone façade had been cleaned. He was satisfied with the results of his efforts.

  As he turned his key in the expensive lock securing the gate, he had a feeling of motion beyond the tall privet hedge that divided the Clarrington grounds from the vacant lot beyond. He stared keenly through the bushes, but there was no repetition of whatever it was that had caught his eye. Perhaps a bird had hopped from branch to branch.

  He shook the fence again, after locking the gate behind him. Nobody could possibly get into the grounds without a great deal of work and noise and a lot of trouble. The alarm system would betray any effort to get over or through the fence, except for this gate, and trying to jimmy the lock would set off its own alarm.

  As well as possible, he had tried to protect Marise Clarrington from anyone who thought to find easy pickings in a widow living alone in such a huge house. He thought of Ben with grief, but he had begun thinking of Ben’s widow in a more tender and personal manner. It had, after all, been ten years.

  He rang the bell and waited for the click of her heels on the floor beyond the heavy door. After a moment the door opened, and her face, pale for lack of sun, beamed out at him.

  “Evan! It is always so good to see you. Do come in.” She took his hat and hung it on that ornate hall tree with the mirror. He envied that piece every time he saw it. But he followed her into the parlor, which was, as always, immaculate.

  “I have coffee ready,” she said. “You always come promptly at four o’clock on the dot. And I made a batch of Hildy’s special cookies, too. Sit down. I’ll be right back.” She tapped away down the hall, leaving him to check out her housekeeping without being obvious about it.

  He sat in one of the deep chairs, looking about him. He thought of Gertrude Fisk’s impassioned argument at the last meeting of the Trustees, and again he felt a flush of anger. He had never seen a room less likely to harbor someone who was unbalanced or incompetent.

  Though it was tidy, it was not obsessively so. Marise had been reading, for her book lay face-down on a small table beside her special chair. The print of her heels marked the upholstered ottoman. He peered at the book, though it was rather far and he was beginning to need glasses.

  Thoreau. He smiled, for that was so like her. If she could not visit the woods in person, then she would go in spirit.

  He heard her step in the corridor, and she was there with the tray. When they were settled with thin Belleek coffee cups in their hands and cookies within easy reach, he said, his tone serious, “I’ve brought something besides balance sheets this time, Marise.”

  She looked up, surprised. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  He sipped his coffee and set the empty cup on the piecrust table beside him. “The natives are beginning to get restless,” he said, trying to lighten his own mood. “Clarrington is a rich outfit, and the board members are looking at their own departments with both ambition and greed.

  “There’s too much money involved in the enterprises, and that arouses greed in even the most dependable people sometimes. There’ve been rumbles of discontent from time to time. At the last meeting one of the high-level people said to my face that you should be declared incompetent and given a guardian, taking control of the corporation away from you.” He felt sick at having to say the words, but her expression did not lose its calm.

  “I tried to make my position quite clear. If I succeeded, I’m afraid it will only be temporary. They have their eyes on you, and they are typical young materialists, without any understanding of people whatever.”

  He leaned forward, hands on knees. “You really ought to open up the house and go out to those meetings. Or better yet, sell the white elephant or make a home for the elderly out of it. Come back into the world. Sit at the head of that table and give the orders you have been giving to me. Show them who you are.

  “If anything should happen to me, they’d be at your throat. I have no doubt of that at all. They may even try to sidestep me, trying to keep me in the dark until it’s too late. You need to protect yourself. Besides...”—he tried to relax and be persuasive—“…it isn’t right for someone to imprison herself this way. You lost all you loved, I know. But it shouldn’t prevent you from living yourself.”

  Her fair head tilted, the narrow face sober and the blue eyes intent while she listened. “They have logic on their side,” she said. “I can see their viewpoint, even if you can’t. They’re young and full of vigor.” Steel came into the line of her jaw.

  “But this is not theirs. It boils down to that, doesn’t it? Clarringtons worked and connived for generations to accumulate the elements of the enterprises, and this was not done in order to provide a bunch of upwardly mobile executives a quick way to wealth.”

  Her eyes were bright and steady. “This was left to me to run, for the good of the estate and its employees. I have to do that, like it or not. If Benjie had lived...but I won’t even bring that up.” He could see her swallow hard.

  “I have never entirely confided in you, Evan, because I dislike even thinking about the thing I have to tell you. I actually can’t bring myself to believe in it myself, and if I ever do bring myself to, I’ll ask you to draft the papers allowing me to commit myself to a mental home. Yet this is a very real possibility I cannot discount.” She drew a deep breath, held it for a moment, and exhaled wearily.

  “The last months before the tragedy were disturbing, stressful, and full of tension. Something in the very atmosphere of this house seemed threatening, menacing. It affected me very strongly. So much so that I found myself listening to sounds that were not there. Benjie’s ball bouncing down the stair or Ben’s voice heard unexpectedly in the hall could make me jump out of my skin.

  “I lost weight and began to have trouble sleeping. Dr. Pell gave me tranquilizers, and they helped a bit. Not enough.

  “I have thought about this for years now, and I believe they affected me in an unusual fashion. I would lose entire blocks of time, during which th
ings would get done in the kitchen or about the house or out on the farms, but I couldn’t recall doing them. Looking back, I find the thought terrifying.” And she looked frightened, Evan thought.

  “I believe I may have been at least partially responsible for what happened in this house that last evening. For this reason, I can’t risk going out among others who might be harmed if I am actually mad. If I should be dangerous, let it be only to myself.”

  He was suddenly angry. Not at her, but at the maelstrom of madness and murder that had pulled her into its current, and, even now, did not let her go.

  “That’s insane!” he said.

  She smiled. “That is exactly what I fear,” she said.

  “No, I don’t mean you. Anyone who is actually insane never admits or suspects it. As a nurse, you should know that.”

  “I also know there are as many exceptions to rules as there are rules,” she replied.

  He tried another tack. “But it was Penelope. The authorities were entirely satisfied that was the truth of the matter. They never questioned it.”

  “I agree that Penelope did the deeds herself, with her demented brain and busy hands. Mostly. But there were aspects nobody ever examined. I have mulled this over for ten years, and I come up against a final, impenetrable fact. I was the only person left alive in the house. The only one who could possibly have let her out, and that allowed her to do...what she did.” She fought for control, and he saw her fingers clench in her lap.

  “I don’t remember doing it, but this isn’t proof I didn’t. God knows, before that evening ended I was more than half out of my mind, at best. At worst...I don’t want to think about that, but I must. I have been thinking about it for ten years.”

  Evan put the remnant of a cookie carefully onto the saucer. “Marise, I have known you for a very long time. I knew Ben and the rest of the family almost as well as I did my own, except, of course, for Penelope. Never in all that time, even when you were left alone amid all that horror, did I see you less than sane and aware, when you were conscious at all.

  “I cannot believe you had anything at all to do with freeing Ben’s sister. It’s to your credit that you feel the way you do. I can see that a decade of living with the thought might well convince you of things which simply are not true. Things which are not logical!”

  He chose his words carefully. “I am asking you to do this because of our long friendship, as well as our business relationship. Look in another direction. Tell yourself it is loneliness that has put this notion into your head. Explore the whole sequence of events again, minute by minute. Find the truth, if it takes you a year.” He smiled at her with all the warmth of his hope and his faith in her.

  “Then open your door to the world again. You aren’t old by any means, and you might find life still holding good things for your future.”

  She smiled back, but the lines still marked her forehead. “You are literally my only friend, except for Alistair, who is more like a son or a nephew by now. All right, Evan, I will think it all over again, I promise. Now bring out those balance sheets, before I lose all my nerve.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Watcher

  A middle-aged man had come to the Clarrington house, opened the gate with his own key, and been admitted to the house. The watcher waited patiently, without moving, for he thought his involuntary motion of surprise had been detected by the visitor. He wondered who the man was and how he might gain access to that key, for the gate was the only feasible way to get into the grounds.

  He knew, for he had checked everything out carefully, by twilight and dawnlight and moonlight. That damned electric alarm system to the fence was the problem. If he tried prying a couple of the iron spikes loose, the vibration alone, much less the movement of taking them out, would set the thing off. He’d met that kind of system before in his checkered career.

  But there was his letter still to come. He felt that if it had been delivered already there would have been some sign from the tenant of the house. No, he had to allow time for the delivery, time for her to become fearful and nervous. Then he would get into the place.

  He had decided the mailman was the easiest source of a key. He walked a long route, for the watcher had followed him, far behind or across the street so he wouldn’t notice. It would be simple to waylay him someplace a long way from this quiet street at the edge of town. It would rouse no suspicions regarding this area.

  His lair among the shrubbery of the vacant lot was becoming littered with candy wrappers and cookie boxes and discarded cigarette packs. He made a mental note to clean everything out before his last move. He wanted no clue to point to his being here...or to anyone being here.

  The glance the man had turned in his direction had shaken him unduly. Had he seen a person in this distant clump of bushes? Or had he merely seen movement?

  But the shrubbery was very thick, untrimmed for years, and the watcher had frozen instantly and remained still for a long time after the visitor disappeared into the house. If he had suspected anything, it was almost certain the stranger would have investigated.

  Satisfied, the watcher lay back in his cushion of dead leaves, munching on peanuts. The climax was very near. He had waited so very long for this score.

  It was almost time now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Doorbell

  Marise felt she knew her mailman, Mr. Neill, very well, though she had only communicated with him by way of notes for many years. He always rang when he had deposited the letters and turned the rotating drum that put the slot inside the entryway.

  His solid shape, seen through the glass panels beside the door, was somehow comforting, a last connection with the world of life. If she needed stamps or had to sign for a letter from the Board, a note left in the box for him, or a ring on the bell for her, would take care of that without ever needing to open the heavy panel.

  But she had expected no mail today. Her packet of new books ordered from Barnes and Noble wouldn’t be due this soon, and nothing was expected from the Trustees. There was nobody who might write her casually, and Mr. Neill never rang the bell for junk mail.

  Nevertheless, she heard the sharp ring clearly as she washed her few dishes in the kitchen. She wiped her hands on one of Hildy’s embroidered dish towels and hurried toward the entry and the mailbox.

  A single small envelope lay in the compartment. Unfamiliar handwriting formed her name. Perhaps it was some newcomer to a local charity, demanding a contribution. She smiled, for it happened at times, and she always had the Board remind them that contributions came from the office, not the home.

  Yet this was not the usual crisp, embossed envelope. It was, indeed, a bit grubby, as if it had been carried in a pocket for a while. There was no return address, and the postmark was from a nearby town, where she knew no one.

  It was very odd. Intrigued, she ran her finger under the flap. Inside there were two sheets of cheap notepaper, the sort you bought at the supermarket in a plastic wrapper.

  Marise took the letter into the parlor and turned on her reading lamp. Her eyes were not as strong as they had been, and she knew she needed glasses, but the handwriting was clearly formed and easy to read, though somewhat labored.

  The letter had neither date nor return address. She read quickly:

  Madam:

  I have waited for years for this opportunity. Both you and I have been waiting, actually, though you haven’t known it until now. I could have come before, might have rushed things, but the time had to be right for both of us.

  Now things are right, for me if not for you. I know, you see, just what happened that night. You’ve never known for sure, and I’ve often laughed, thinking about you, trying to understand and failing. Too much had to have happened too fast. And you survived, which wasn’t intended at all.

  The two who did the work were the only ones intended to live
through that night. They would have had everything: the money, the house, the business, all to themselves.

  I owe you something. I was told about you by someone very close to me who knew you, what you did to that family and how you did it. You deserve to die, and I want to see it happen, feel it happen.

  Look for me. Listen for me. It makes me happy to think of you shivering when the bushes scrape the house or the wind rattles the shutters. Jump at sounds. Be afraid. I am coming.

  There was no signature. Marise stared down at the smudged paper. What could it mean? Had some crank dug up old files of news stories and decided to torture her? Or perhaps to rob her?

  Who could resent her enough to condemn her as this letter had done? Only she had survived that night...unless that other, the mysterious presence who, through the years, had loosed Penelope from her prison, unlocking locks and sliding back bolts, had been in the house, too. Watching.

  Was he watching now?

  Marise shuddered. Dropping the letter onto the table, she went to the telephone and rang Evan Turner’s office. Gertrude Fisk answered.

  “I’d like to speak to Evan, please. This is Marise Clarrington.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Clarrington. Mr. Turner is out of town this week. Is there something I could do for you?” The voice was filled with avid curiosity.

  Marise caught her lower lip between her teeth. Did she dare to risk telling Mrs. Fisk about this letter? Evan had made it quite clear that she, more than the others who headed the corporation, was champing at the bit to find any excuse to remove the reins of Clarrington from her hands.

  No, that wasn’t prudent. It wouldn’t seem sane to be so disturbed over an anonymous letter, even though there had never before been anything like it.

  She made up her mind swiftly. “Do make a note for him, will you? I’d like to talk with him as soon as possible, when he returns. I have had a communication I need to discuss with him. Be sure he gets your note, please, for I believe this may be important.”