Mrs. Barnaby said, “Joe, the allowance cut is restored.” That’s all.
And Tench. Tench had known for three days.
Before the doctor left, he talked to me. He said, “Your mother’s relatives tell me you were never reconciled to your father’s death. That’s very interesting. Did you feel from the first that it was—unfinished business, my dear?” I must have nodded, because he talked about prescience. He collects examples of prescience. He said it was far from uncommon. “You, his own flesh and blood, resisted what others accepted. Instinctively you knew the tie had not been broken. When he came, you were ready for him, waiting. Very interesting. I may use it in a little brochure—no names, of course.” He was pleased with his evening’s work; he had been interviewed and photographed and would be quoted.
In my father’s room, with the door closed and the shades drawn, my father told the others what my mother was and why he had sent me away. He had told me before, when we were alone.
My mother wanted to own, to possess, not share. She wanted things and money and people in her own hands; she wanted lives and destiny in her own hands. She wanted to give and withhold, she wanted everything to come through her. Food, clothing, pain, and pleasure, all must come through her. She wanted the power of life and death, and she took it. She almost took it.
Mike and Joe, my father and I, and Tench. And Tray. In a closed room with drawn shades.
“You must remember her background,” my father said. “Respectable poverty, the great test She fought it every day of her life, not with work but with dreams. Her cousins denied themselves to give her the things she wanted, and she took what they gave and dreamed of more. Marriage was her goal, not love. A house, a mansion, not a cottage. She’d had enough of cottages. When Isobel was born, even before she was born, I began to be uneasy. Her mother made no preparations for her. And although Isobel started life with a smile on her face it went away too soon. I saw it change to a look of quiet wonder that was ugly and frightening in a child. She looked as if she were on trial, as if she had to placate and please, or be punished. So I sent her to boarding school, as an experiment, and when I saw that she accepted the new life and was healthy and cared for, I kept her there. And I thought I had found the right solution. Her mother was happier during those years, I thought we could adjust our lives eventually.”
I remembered that my mother had never touched me, never smiled at me, until she thought my father was dead. On my rare visits home I would run into the house, looking for her, hoping each time that she would tell me I could stay.
My father said that, in those years, he lived for the day when I was grown and we could talk together as two adults. He thought he could make me understand. He never considered a legal separation—he had nothing to tell in a courtroom. He planned to bring me home when I was twenty-one; he planned to give me the house on my twenty-first birthday. Early in the spring he told my mother his plans.
He said, “I told her because I wanted to be sure of Isobel’s welcome. I wanted us to be three again, not two. I spoke of travel together, of parties and young people, of our courtship and love. She listened quietly, and smiled and nodded; but when I spoke of giving Isobel the house, she shook her head. She said the house was hers; she said it had always been hers. She smiled and cried, “My house, mine! Darling, you know it’s mine.’
“It was never hers; it was the one thing I had kept in my own name. Throughout the years, I had given her the greater part of my possessions, and I thought I had given them freely; but when she fought my gift to Isobel, I knew I had never given, that she had taken. She had plundered me, using my love and need. She emerged clearly, but I refused to believe what I saw. I didn’t want to believe. I fought the truth. I fought it until tonight when she stood at the top of the tunnel stairs, looked at me, turned and ran...I’m hurting you, Isobel.”
I said no.
“Talk to Isobel now,” Mike said. “Not to me this time, to Isobel.”
He talked to me. “When you came home, my illness began. I mean the physical illness; my mind was already ill. I began to wonder if I were being poisoned, and I condemned myself for such thinking. I took refuge in the shacks. Throughout those days she was tender and considerate. I convinced myself that I was approaching madness. I know the truth now. You saw her tell me the truth, without words, tonight, when she chose death. She had been giving me arsenic.”
Tench spoke quietly, bitterly. “I should have guessed from your looks. We’ve always had arsenic on the premises, a large tin, on a shelf in the cellar. We keep it for rats and foxes. People with country houses can always buy it, and they can keep it in plain sight and spoon it out as needed. Spoon it out when they want it and replace what they’ve used.”
My father said, “Replace what they’ve used. Yes. She kept her own supply in her medicine chest. I found it last night when she was away. In a plain jar, ready to play its part in the long, sad history of unlabeled drugs. Ready for an accident, a post mortem; for tears and self condemnation. She used to stroke my hand and say, “Poor Marsh, you are not yourself.’ If she had won, she would have said, ‘Poor Marsh, poor darling, and it’s all my fault, my carelessness. It was an accident, wasn’t it? Make me believe it was an accident!’”
I said, “Its all right, Father.”
He said, “Thank you. I think now that she gave it to me in the breakfast coffee, in the wine we drank at dinner. She scolded me gently when I complained about the bitterness. ‘Poor Marsh, you are not yourself.’ And when I improved, she repeated the dose, always a small one, always a small, tormenting one. She sat by my bed and asked me how I felt and talked about my nerves. I think she was driving me to take my own life; I think she wanted it to be that way. My nerves were fast becoming a legend—she saw to that. She was prepared for suicide or murder. The unlabeled jar, a fumbling, desperate man. Suicide, murder, accident. Can you understand that I still find this incredible?”
Mike said, “You mean baroque. Baroque is the word for this. You’ve been having a high old time, haven’t you?”
The ghost of a smile moved across my fathers face, but Joe laughed out loud, like a child released. Joe said, “Baroque? Baroque? I could say it more colloquially. I say it’s the nuts. Go on, Mr. Ford, please. Doesn’t anything come next?”
“Isobel comes next. I didn’t desert Isobel. I’ve known everything Isobel has done. I’ve known everything her mother did. I took no chances. I died by proxy so that I could watch her. When people came to the house, I stood in the upper hall and listened. When Isobel walked at night, Tray followed. And I was never far behind. When I heard she was not well, I waited for the first illness, like mine. I told myself it would never come, that a woman’s child is always safe. I told myself again that I was mad, but I was prepared to wait indefinitely, until I was sure. Then I heard talk of a marriage between Isobel and Mike. Marriage would have taken her away—that was one solution, that was what I wanted. After that, I don’t know. I didn’t plan beyond that. I suppose I would have gone away myself, eventually. And now, in spite of my care, Isobel knows. I’ve saved her nothing.”
“You did, too,” Joe said. “You did fine, you did a fine job. But if you ask me, you were plain lucky when you showed that light.”
“My curtain fell, twice. The first time, no one saw it.”
“No?” Joe said. “Well, anyway, we got away with it.”
Tench cleared his throat “Mr. Ford,” he said, “would have got away with nothing more. I had reached the end of my endurance. I think I would have taken steps.” Tench had known for three days. He had seen Tray coming down from the top floor. “A oneman dog Tray was and is,” he said, “and not a sign of grief. And what would he be doing on the top floor? I set myself to find out, and three nights ago I caught him at it. He went to one of the turret doors and stood there, waiting. The door opened, from the inside. I knew it was kept locked. I don’t mind admitting—“ Tench mopped his face, but no one smiled.
“I have known Mr.
Ford since he was twenty-one. I was steward at his club. I tell you I knew him. I came to him when he married, at his own request, and brought my wife and Anna with me. I served him through the years and minded my own business and kept my thoughts to myself, no matter how I felt about certain things. I identified his car and jacket and believed it was him. I watched his daughter eating her heart out. I felt what she felt—we both loved him, you see. And when I saw that door open and Tray go in, I told myself that what I saw was none of my business. I told myself the world got crazier every day, but praise the Lord. And I bought a little spirit stove and plenty of good ground meat and put it outside the door. When it disappeared, stove and all, I knew Tray hadn’t taken it. But the young people worried me a bit when I saw them going up there tonight.”
“You worried me,” Mike said to Tench. “But when we found that room, I knew you had a hand in it somewhere.”
“Only the meat, Mr. Mike. Mr. Ford never saw me nor I him. But after that first night I never really worried. I knew Mr. Ford, see? What was that word you were passing around? Baroque? I think I know what that means.” He built a monument with his hands. “It means a large design and sound material, put together in a kind of style. I think it’s out of fashion, though its much admired by many people still. Among them, myself.”...
I am waiting in my room for the last time.
My father and Mike are talking to the lawyer, and when they have finished, we are going to the Barnabys’. After that, I don’t know where we will go, but we will never come here again. Someday we three will have another house, with Tench and Mrs. Tench and Anna.
Baroque. A large design and sound material, put together in a kind of style. That’s what it means to Tench. But it means something else, too. Grotesque.
It means a girl who tied candy-box ribbon in her hair, who wore sapphires—“under my pillow until the engagement is announced. They are much too grand for my present position, and I will be talked about.” Who said she wanted children. “Why do you think I love that great enormous house?”
It means a woman who made no preparation for her coming child, and kept a bowl of flowers in the room of the man she tried to kill. Baroque.
After the house is cleaned and closed, there will be nothing left of her unless the cleaners overlook a drop of candle wax in some dark corner. But if my father had died as I thought he did, I would still have something—“Always open doors when you hear music.”
We always will.
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