The Glass Flame

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “Yet we all watch, don’t we—when it comes on television?” I said. “Though I do agree. I’ve seen the callousness displayed, and I suppose I’m thinking in different terms. Not just the news story that has to be caught right now. I like to think of some of the great pictures that have been taken without any special pressure, simply because the photographer had a perceptive eye. There’s something else, too. I wonder if it’s ever possible to photograph good and evil? So they can be recognized, I mean.”

  Trevor was listening with more interest now. “At least the effects of either can be caught on film.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” I said eagerly. “But I wonder if there’s something in a face—something caught in some one frozen moment that tells you everything?”

  Giff laughed, but the sound carried no ridicule. It was soft and easygoing. “Sure—but what’s caught is usually false. Take almost any candid shot of the great and famous and it can be made to look like something from a police line-up.”

  “Some of that is deliberate trickery,” I said. “Downward shots can be flattering and ones from below devastating.”

  Trevor said, “Why don’t you try it out, Karen?”

  For just an instant his eyes held mine, and the old warmth and affection for his friend’s daughter looked out at me. Though now there was something more—as though he had recognized me as an individual and a woman. With his own intuition he had cut through—for the moment, at least—whatever lies had clouded his memory of me. In surprise I recognized that perhaps no explanations, no contradictions of David’s lies would be necessary with him. In the long run he would trust his own judgment.

  Without warning tears rose in my eyes, and I blinked hard and turned my attention to eating. Such foolish weakness wasn’t for display.

  Not until an odd silence fell upon the table did I look up again, aware of tension. They were all staring toward the door, where Lori stood looking in.

  Dressed now in white pants and a blue flowered blouse, her fair hair floating to her shoulders, she looked almost as slight and delicate as the flowered print she wore, and hardly older than her son. Hysteria was past, and her wide blue eyes, still a little red from weeping, regarded me with a fixed look that was unsettling.

  “Come on in, honey,” Giff called to her, and Trevor pushed back his chair.

  “Would you like to join us, Lori?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, thanks. I was just wondering when you’d be through.” She gave me another long, oddly questioning look and vanished from the doorway. We could hear her light steps as she ran down the uncarpeted hall, and I could only wonder why she had come back, and why she had stared at me in that strange, intent way, as though she wanted something of me.

  “She’s got to come out of this!” Nona snapped. “She can’t always shy away from you, Trevor.”

  “Give her time. She’ll recover. She mustn’t go on thinking—” Trevor broke off, and Nona finished the words for him:

  “Thinking that you planned David’s death? Of course she mustn’t! It’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. Maybe what happened was planned—who knows? But not by you.”

  I must have drawn in my breath sharply because Trevor looked at me down the table—a strange, bleak look that asked nothing, revealed nothing. The moment of warmth was gone as though it had never been.

  Once more Giff began to talk in his light, cheerful way, filling in with a change of subject that drew us all to safer ground. For the rest of the meal, however, I found that I didn’t want to look at any of them. I fixed my gaze instead upon the giant ferns writhing about their evil queen in Maggie’s mural. They were nightmare ferns, really—not pretty plants one would want to share a lifetime with.

  Nona saw my fixed attention. “Sometimes that beastly vegetation gets into my dreams at night. Don’t misunderstand—I’m very fond of Maggie, and she has real talent. But her imagination can go off the deep end. Maybe it’s therapeutic, but sometimes I wonder.…”

  I hardly listened to her words because once more I had a sense of some current running beneath the surface. Not only here at the table, but through the entire house. Though I couldn’t tell from which one of them it emanated. Someone disliked me fervently and wanted me gone. Of that I was sure.

  I couldn’t shake off this feeling, and when we had finished our fruit and cheese, I excused myself the moment I could leave and hurried to put them all behind me. I was driven now by the new and frightening thought that Nona had stated so bluntly—Lori’s belief that Trevor was behind David’s death. I could see the trend of her thoughts clearly enough. Trevor discovering his wife’s infidelity, yet perhaps blaming David more than he did Lori; perhaps quarreling with his brother so fiercely that others had observed the quarrel. It could easily have happened that way. Whatever had occurred had clearly left him with a furious resentment—yet still he seemed to be protecting Lori, who was clearly in deep need of his help.

  All this I could see, and I could imagine him striking out against David in the hot anger of the moment. But to plot against him, to murder by calculated plan—never!

  Nevertheless, there had been plotting. Otherwise why the use of an explosive, when only fire had been needed before? No matter—this would never be Trevor’s way, and I knew that my instincts were right and that he could never have changed that much in the years since I had known him. I would never believe anything else.

  I had reached the lower hallway on my way to my room, and now, for the first time, I noticed something that I’d hurried past before. Halfway along the hall a glass door, leading outdoors, had been set into the passageway. With the bright sun of early afternoon shining down, the exterior was brightly lighted and I saw that the door slid open upon the little grotto I had glimpsed earlier from above.

  Under the sky the fishpond shone blue-gold, and I could see goldfish darting in its shallows. But what arrested my attention was the sight of Trevor’s son standing beside the stone lantern that was a little taller than the boy. He seemed to be reaching up beneath the curved top, probing into openings cut into the stone, where candles might be placed. As I stood watching, he reached into his pocket and drew out something thin and a few inches in length. He rose on tiptoe to thrust this object into a hollow in the stone.

  Having hidden whatever it was, he stepped back and looked around, his eyes searching the high rail on the cliff above, where I had stood early this morning. I barely had time to step back out of sight before his eyes turned my way. When I looked out again cautiously, Chris was kneeling beside the pond, feeding scraps of fish food from a paper packet.

  I opened the glass door and went out to stand beside him, watching the reflected face that looked up at me. This boy was Trevor’s son, and an unexpected feeling of tenderness toward him touched me.

  Under golden bangs the face in the water scowled and Chris rose to his feet. As he stepped back from me, I experienced a swift flash of recognition that marked the resemblance to his father. Not feature by feature, but in the grave, remote expression that withheld and concealed. Then the resemblance disappeared as such things sometimes do and I could see only Lori in his face.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

  “Why?” He could speak as bluntly as his father.

  I answered him quietly. “Because your father was a friend of my father’s a long time ago. I was only a little older then than you are, and he was kind to me. I’d like to know his son.”

  The blue eyes seemed dark and stormy, as his father’s could be, and his chin had Trevor’s firm set.

  “You’re his wife,” he said.

  The rejection of me was complete—a rejection of me as David’s wife—and I couldn’t allow that to remain.

  “I wish you’d help me,” I said, snatching at the only idea I could think of.

  His backward movement halted with the dawning of curiosity. “How do you mean—help you?”

  “Just now at lunch I was talking to yo
ur father and the others about wanting to photograph people as well as houses. People doing interesting, natural things. The sort of things they do in real life. This would be a good place to start if you could help me think up something. Not just a pose, but something you could be doing. Will you wait until I get my camera, so we can try?”

  He gave me neither agreement nor dissent, but stood where he was, staring at me with those wide dark eyes that were so much like Trevor’s.

  “Just wait there a moment,” I said and ran into the house and down the hall to my room.

  Its door was ajar, though I seemed to remember closing it. When I pushed it open and stepped inside, I found her waiting for me—Lori Andrews, in one of the armchairs beside the cold hearth.

  “Hello, Lori,” I said in uneasy surprise. But I couldn’t stay now to find out what she wanted. “Back in a moment,” I told her, caught up my camera and returned to the grotto.

  Chris was already in retreat, climbing the steps that had been built into the rock. “That’s a good idea!” I shouted, setting the stops in a hurry, looking for him in the finder. He was halfway up the cliff when I caught him just as he paused to look angrily down at me. When I’d snapped the shutter twice I waved to him.

  “Thanks, Chris! I’ll give you prints when I have them made.”

  He stood for a moment longer, staring down at me, and unexpectedly his mouth spread into a lightning smile that vanished almost as quickly as it had come.

  “You sure are fast,” he said.

  I returned the grin as jauntily as I dared. “Photographers learn to work fast. Sometime I’ll show you my camera, if you like.”

  He didn’t answer that but disappeared behind the guard wall above. I gave a last curious look at the stone lantern and then returned to my room. I wanted to know what Chris had hidden there. Not out of idle curiosity, but because this was a troubled boy and he was Trevor’s son. Also because I sensed that whatever worried him might be part of my search for the truth. However, this was not the time to investigate, while his mother waited for me.

  She was still there when I returned. “Your son was posing for me,” I said and dropped my camera on the bed.

  She looked a bit surprised, regarding me with those deeply blue, dark-fringed eyes, and I returned her look with frank interest. This was the first time I had seen her long enough to note the details that made up the whole.

  Her mouth was small, with a bee-stung look, and I thought of Eric Caton’s odd remark about bee venom. Her hair fell to her shoulders, not in a shining sheath like Lu-Ellen’s, but in a curly mass that badly needed brushing.

  “You’re not a bit like David said you were,” she told me, indulging in her own appraisal.

  I tried not to sound grim. “Sometimes David liked to fantasize.”

  “He said you were terribly dull and serious, and not very pretty,” she went on, speculating almost as if she spoke to herself.

  “I expect I can be all those things.”

  “It’s true you’re not pretty. I’m pretty. But people look at you, don’t they? Because something reaches out of you toward them?”

  Her words surprised me, and I sat down in the chair opposite her, waiting. I didn’t think she had come here to analyze me.

  “I liked what you said about photography,” she went on after a moment. “I was listening to that from the hall. I’ll pose for you, if you want. I’d make a good model.”

  I could only watch her in growing amazement. Where were the tears I had seen, the evident despair?

  “You’d make a lovely model,” I said, “but posed pictures aren’t exactly what I’m looking for.”

  “You want something unexpected and dramatic, don’t you? Do you think I can’t be those things?”

  “I think you can probably be very dramatic and unexpected.” Oddly enough, talking with her was a little like talking to a child. Or was that only the role she played?

  Her smile was faintly sly, and again I felt uneasiness. “Okay, then—come along and we’ll take some pictures now. I know exactly the right place.”

  I sat where I was, not trusting her, not wanting to follow her lead. Besides, I had come to my room to be alone, to think about the new and terrible idea that had been put into my mind concerning Trevor. I had to think about it quietly and sanely, in order to dismiss it fully.

  She must have seen that I wouldn’t be easily moved, for she leaned toward me, not touching me, but very close. “Please, Karen. If I sit around and do nothing for another moment I’ll go absolutely mad. And I think you will too. It’s all too horrible to think about. We have to push it away until we can get used to it.”

  But I had no time to push anything away, I thought. Horrible it was, and it might become more so, but I had to face what was there because I owed that at least to David Hallam. I wondered what Lori might know. If what Nona said was true and Lori thought that Trevor …

  “All right,” I agreed, and once more slung my camera bag over my shoulder. Oddly enough, as I lifted it from the bed I had a feeling of being watched. Lori had gone to the door to wait, paying me no attention. Remembering the skylight, I looked up, and caught what might have been movement as something up there slipped out of sight. For a moment I stood still, listening, but there was no sound from the slanting roof and I decided that I must have been mistaken. Drifting clouds overhead, a change of light and shadow could give an effect of something moving. On the other hand, Chris might be up there. It didn’t matter.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  Lori led the way into the hall. “We can go through the door down here. We needn’t take the inside stairs.”

  Following her, I stepped into the little pocket of garden and pond. Lori crossed the patch of grass, hurrying ahead to climb the steps up which Chris had disappeared. Moss grew upon the uneven face of rock, and there were bits of clinging lichen, but the steps had been kept clear and I went up after her, holding onto the iron railing. Once, when I stopped for breath, I looked back. I was well above the lower wing of the house and I could see that it too was bordered by the pocket of rock, with the overhang of the roof extending sufficiently so that no one without a ladder could climb above my skylight. A boy might know a way.

  “Come on!” Lori called down to me impatiently, and I mounted the remaining steps and followed her toward the red Ferrari. When I got into the low bucket seat she had already turned the key in the ignition, and a moment later we were rolling out of the drive and down the mountain.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.” Her words were curt, and I could tell by her hands clasped tightly on the wheel that she was tense and trying not to snap at me.

  We said nothing more on the way down the mountain and I saw that we were taking the road by which I had come only last night. It wasn’t until we turned off at the Belle Isle sign, however, that I knew with dismay where we were going. When I glanced at Lori, questioning, she spoke for the first time since we’d left Trevor’s mountain.

  “Even if you’ve been to Belle Isle, I don’t think you’ve seen everything I can show you. Of course we’re just going to take a few pictures. Remember that—it’s only for the pictures.”

  I nodded, understanding. “Not for questions?” I said. “Not for trying to find out what really happened?”

  “I don’t want to know what happened!” Tension crackled in her voice and I touched her arm lightly.

  “I do. I think David would want me—want us—to find out.”

  “Yes—I’m sure he would. An eye-for-eye and all that! But not right now. Now it’s only for the pictures.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “But just for now.”

  “Nona told you, didn’t she? About David and me?”

  There was no point in pretending anything else. “Yes.”

  “And you don’t really care?”

  “It’s happened before. I got over caring a long time ago.”

  “If you ever did care,” she said.

/>   I had no answer for that. I no longer knew what the answer was.

  The car was moving more slowly now along the narrower road to the lake and Lori eased her foot on the gas still more.

  “You don’t really care,” she repeated and I heard the break in her voice, and could only pity her. David had left so much damage behind in his philandering.

  I tried to be honest with her, to an extent at least. “Perhaps not in the way you mean. But I do care—about David’s death. And about people being hurt.”

  The sound she made was probably laughter—a strange little gurgle of mirth, when nothing was funny.

  We reached the branching road that wound around the lake and I saw something that I’d missed last night. A small building—hardly more than a hut—guarded the entrance to Belle Isle, with a sign marked PRIVATE. A different watchman came out, recognized Lori and waved us through. As I had done last night, she chose the way to the left, slowing the car as we neared that dreadful, burned-out ruin. A shiver ran from the back of my neck down along my arms.

  “Hurry past,” I said, unable to help myself. “I don’t want to see that place again.”

  Instead, she put her foot on the brake and stopped where the broken path led between scarred trees. Before I knew what she intended, Lori was out of the car.

  “Come with me,” she ordered. “This is your first picture.”

  Watching her run toward the house, her white trousers brushing indifferently past a charred bush, picking up a smudging of black, I felt a little ill.

  “Not here!” I managed to call after her. “Please come back, Lori.”

  She turned and I saw her face—blank as though she were sleepwalking. “Come!” she directed. “Bring your camera. Now!”

  Four

  Something about Lori’s look, her voice—no longer light and childlike and feckless—commanded me. I took the camera from my bag and got out of the car.

  By daylight I could see that the walk to the house was littered with ash and cinders. Leaves on the nearest trees hung scorched, withered, telling me of the intensity of the heat. Ahead stood the roofless shell of what had been a house, and I walked toward it, aware once more of the terrible burned-out smell—symbolically, for me, an odor of death.