“You’re a good girl, Susie. I intend to see that you’re rewarded for this.”
The voices faded. The clouds began to evaporate. I groaned. I opened my eyes. I was in my bed. The room was filled with bright sunshine, but everything was distorted, seen through the mist. The tall white wardrobe seemed to expand, growing fat and rubbery, and the large green chair melted. The carpet undulated like waves. My cheeks were hot. My hair was damp with perspiration. Curiously objective, I watched the walls billow like the walls of a tent, and somewhere deep inside of me a calm voice informed me that it was all right, it was the laudanum wearing off. Laudanum is a polite name for opium, Jane. Remember Coleridge and “Kubla Khan,” De Quincey and his bizarre visions.
“You’re awake,” Susie said.
“Yes.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’m still a bit foggy.”
“I’ve brought some soup. I made it myself. Cook left. She won’t be back.”
“Leave it, Susie.”
“Now I want you to eat it, Miss Jane. You need it. I’m going to sit right here until you’ve eaten every bite.”
I ate the soup. I had a curious sensation that I was underwater, that Susie and I were on the bottom of a clear, crystal pool, and I thought it strange that I could be eating the soup, that we could both be here down below surrounded by clear rippling waves and not be wet. I set the bowl aside and frowned. I spoke, but my voice sounded distant.
“She killed herself—”
“Try not to think of it, Miss Jane.”
“But she didn’t, you see. Not really.”
“That drug hasn’t worn off yet. You’d better try to sleep.”
“That’s what he wanted people to believe. He did it—”
“Now, Miss Jane—”
“I knew it. I knew it before I opened that door—”
Gentle hands pushed me back onto the mattress. A soft palm brushed a damp lock from my forehead. I closed my eyes, hoping to find the soft pink comfort, the light golden glow, but there was only blackness. I could feel the heat withdrawing from my body. I grew cold. Susie was gone now, and I was getting out of bed, hunting for the key, finding it beneath a stack of linen handkerchiefs … I slept heavily, deeply, and when I opened my eyes it was late afternoon. I was very, very tired. I closed my eyes again, my lids heavy, shutting out the light.
“Jane?”
Her voice was soft, dream-like.
“You’ve come,” I whispered.
“There was no time to write another letter.”
“Jamintha, he—”
“I know. He came to see me this afternoon. He was upset. I gave him brandy. He drank far too much. He said he was in love with me. He said he had to kill her. She was going to tell you about that night—”
“He told you?”
“The brandy hit him hard. He finally passed out. I left him sprawled out there on the sofa.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Jane—the necklace. He told me about—”
“I don’t remember. I can’t remember—”
“You must.”
“Please don’t go away. Don’t leave me.”
“You must remember, Jane.”
“Jamintha—”
Light streamed through the window. The furniture cast long black shadows. I sat up in bed, completely awake now. My head was perfectly clear, and there was a hard core of calm inside. It was an icy calm, resolute. I got out of bed and dressed. I sat at the mirror and began to braid my hair. The eyes that stared back at me in the mirror were perfectly level. My face was composed. It had happened during my sleep.
I remembered everything.
I was in her sitting room, waiting for her to come back. I was upset, because I had heard her arguing with Uncle Charles. Neither of them had been aware that I was sitting in the vast armchair in the drawing room when they came in, shouting at each other. I waited now, huddled in the corner of the lemon velvet sofa. I wanted her to read a story to me. I wanted her to tell me everything would be all right. I could hear her footsteps in the hall. She stopped. There were other, heavier footsteps.
“He told you to leave, Charles. He wants you gone by morning. Don’t you think you’d better start packing?”
“I’ll leave, Jeanne, but I intend to take something with me.”
“What?”
“The necklace. George can have the house. He can have the mill. But I want the necklace.”
“What are you talking about? What necklace—”
“The one you were wearing at dinner tonight. I know all about it.”
“How could you—”
“I couldn’t sleep the other night. I picked up a book from George’s study. The de Soissons. Very interesting, particularly the chapter about Jacques and his flight to England. Tonight, when I saw that necklace around your lovely throat—”
“You think I’d let you have it? You’re insane! It belongs to me. It’s been in my family for—”
“You’re going to give it to me, Jeanne.”
“Why should I? You’re stark raving mad—”
“I intend to have it.”
“Get out of my way, Charles. Get out of this house.”
She came hurriedly into the room. She slammed the door behind her and locked it. Her cheeks were flushed a blazing pink, and she looked afraid. I started crying. She held me tightly in her arms and rocked me, and I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew I was in my own bedroom with the gaily striped wallpaper. The dolls were sitting helter-skelter on top of the bureau. I sat up, rubbing my knuckles over sleepy eyes. A lamp was burning. My mother had come into the room. I smiled at her, and then I saw that her face was drawn and pale. She was crying. She had a handful of stars, glittering stars, sparkling bright with all the colors of the rainbow.
“They’re fighting—Charles will kill him! He has a gun! Jane, you must take this necklace. You must hide it. Quickly, quickly!”
She thrust the stars into my hands. She was frantic. She rushed out of the room. I tumbled out of bed and hurried across the floor, my long flannel nightgown dragging. She wasn’t in the hall. She had vanished. I heard loud, angry voices coming from a distant room. I started to sob. I clutched the heavy glittering beads in my small hand. I couldn’t understand what was happening. Mother … she wanted me to hide them. Uncle Charles wanted to steal them. I must hide them well so that he’d never be able to find them …
Calmly, so calm, I wound the braids into a tight coronet and fastened them with pins. Eleven years of amnesia had fallen away, a dark blank spot in my mind had been filled in, and I understood what had done it. When I opened that closet door, when I stared at the hideous sight in front of my eyes, the shock had jolted me, a wall had come tumbling down, and I remembered another hideous sight. The drug had held it in abeyance for a while, opium shrouding my mind with false, feverish serenity. The drug had worn off, but the memory remained.
Cool, objective, I knew that I should be hysterical. I should be weak, but I was strong, stronger than I had ever been before. I should be terrified, but there was no fear. There was no room for anything inside but this singleness of purpose. I would get the necklace. It would serve as proof. I would see to it that Charles Danver was punished, not just for one murder but for three.
Leaving my room, I moved unhurriedly down the back hall. The light was deepening as the sun went down, but there was no need for a lamp. I would have plenty of time to fetch it and return to my room before dark. The huge old wardrobe stood in the hall, almost blocking the passage. I squeezed past it, noting that the enormous doors were still wedged tight. Farther down the hall, Susie’s door stood open, but the tiny room was empty. She was probably in the kitchen, I thought, moving on toward the backstairs.
There was a loud creak far behind me, as though someone had placed too much weight on one of the old floorboards. Startled, I turned around and swept the hall with my eyes. Something flickered. It seemed that my heart actua
lly stopped beating for a second as I stared at that dense thickness of shadows. Was someone crouching there? Had someone been following me? Imagination, I decided, scolding myself. I had imagined it all. Still, the incident unnerved me and I felt a curious apprehension.
I found the kitchen empty, too. The deep red tiles gleamed darkly in the fading sunlight. The fireplace was a cavernous black hole. The copper pans shone dully. There was a heavy silence. “Susie,” I called, but there was no answer. Where could she have gone? Why would she have left without coming to my room and telling me? It wasn’t like her. Standing in the middle of the room, I frowned, worried by her absence. There was probably some perfectly logical explanation, yet I was disturbed nevertheless. I had been so calm in my room, so resolute, and now … I heard another creak, from the backstairs this time. Someone hovered there, listening. “Susie,” I called again. The word echoed in the silence. No one was there. My nerves were on edge, causing me to imagine things.
I moved through the swinging wooden door. It made a soft swoosh as it swung back into place. I walked down the long, narrow corridor that led into the main hall. The staircase was already becoming the nest of darkness it had been the previous night when I had hesitated to come down it. The house was still, too still. Nothing stirred. Nothing moved. It might have been abandoned for years. The silence was heavy, pressing in on me, broken only by the sound of my breathing.
And then, far behind me, there was a soft swoosh.
I tensed, waiting. Standing beneath the great chandelier, I waited for what seemed an eternity, but there was no repetition of the noise, and there was no sound of stealthy footsteps. Satisfied that no one crouched there in the darkness, I proceeded across the hall and turned down the long corridor that ran the length of the west side of the main house.
It had been a long time since I had come this way, it seemed. I had been at Danver Hall for less than two weeks. I had been upset by my first encounter with Brence, unaware that I was shortly to have another, even more dramatic encounter. It seemed so long ago, a lifetime ago. So much had happened since then. The man who had so arrogantly demolished me that morning now wanted me to be his chum. In my heart, I knew that I preferred his disdain to patronizing friendship.
Turning the corner, I saw the huge mahogany doors. They were locked. I pushed and shoved in vain, frustrated by this obstacle. I wasn’t going back to my room empty-handed. I would get into the library even if I had to break these doors down. While this melodramatic determination was highly commendable, common sense told me that such a course would be virtually impossible. The doors were solid, hardened by age. A robust man in his prime could have battered against them with little result beyond fatigue. There was a simpler way to gain entry, and it took me but a moment to think of it. Leaning my head down, I pulled out one of the long hair pins that secured my braids in place.
The lock was old and rusty, and the task wasn’t easy. The pin jammed, twisted and broke, making a loud grating noise. I pulled out another and inserted it into the hole, probing less vigorously, with a more delicate touch. After five minutes of scratching and scraping, there was a satisfying click and the heavy doors swung inward with a painful creaking.
The dust-covered shapes of furniture were like so many ghosts crouching in the dim semi-light, and the fetid odor of dust and rotting leather and yellowing paper seemed to make a physical assault. Moving to the center of the room, I stared up at the towering walls of decaying books. As I stood in the ruined room memories came flooding back. I had loved this room—the woodwork had shined with polish back then, the books new and inviting, the large bronze and red globe on its golden oak stand an intriguing toy. The galleries had been sturdy, reinforced with tall pillars since destroyed, and I had been fascinated by the hidden staircase winding up in the hollow tower. Many a rainy afternoon I had spent here, stretched out on the carpet in front of a roaring fire, turning through the picture books that were so plentiful. It had been my favorite room, and I had come here that night …
A little girl in a long flannel nightgown that trailed behind her, her cheeks streaked with tears, her hand clasping the heavy strand of diamonds that blazed like silver fire, like stars. She had come running into this room, her bare feet slapping against the carpet. She had gone over to that corner, pressed the near-invisible knob, started up that cold iron staircase curling up into the darkness … I could feel her panic now. I could feel her heart pounding, and I could hear her sobs as she climbed higher and higher. No, it was my own heart, and they were my own sobs … I stopped, halfway up the spiral staircase, in almost total darkness, just enough light coming through the tiny slit windows to give a vague outline of the staircase. I was stunned to find myself there. There were salty trails of wetness on my cheeks. I was tensed, waiting for the noise that failed to materialize: a loud, sharp explosion that I knew now had been a gun shot. There was no gun shot now, just the steady pad of footsteps crossing the floor of the library below.
Wiping the tears from my cheeks, gaining a shaky composure, I went on up the staircase. On the second landing, I groped for the knob and pressed it. The wall swung outward, revealing the shadowy, sagging gallery.
I moved very slowly, very carefully, each step cautiously placed on the warped, rotten floorboards. It wasn’t going to tear away from the wall. I was certain of that. It had supported the weight of both of us that morning. No matter how it swayed, no matter how it creaked and protested, it would hold. I told myself that with great confidence. Nevertheless, I was absolutely terrified. I could feel the panic threatening. My throat was dry. My legs trembled. Waves of dizziness swept over me, and I leaned back against the wall of decaying books. Don’t look down, Jane. Don’t look down. But I couldn’t help myself. Something compelled me to peer over the railing at the floor three stories below. So far down … so very far. I closed my eyes, realizing my folly. I must have been out of my mind, out of my mind …
There had been lamps burning that night, warm yellow light that burnished leather bindings and picked out gilt lettering. The floorboards had been sturdy beneath my bare feet as I scurried along in that absurdly long flannel nightgown. I had to hide the necklace. Mother told me to hide it. Uncle Charles wanted to steal it, and something was wrong. Something was dreadfully wrong. Mother had been crying as she rushed out into the hall, and those angry voices had shouted and raged in some distant room. “Charles will kill him! He has a gun!” she had cried, and I knew what that explosion had been. Uncle Charles had killed Daddy, and he wanted the necklace …
I forced myself to move. Leaning against the books, I edged my way along, inch by inch. There was the hole Brence had made, jagged splinters of wood hanging down, torn, shattered books surrounding it. The air was thick with dust, and every movement I made stirred up more. The platform sagged, creaking, seeming to pull away from the wall, but somehow I forced myself to go on.
Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I remembered that title, and I could see the books in my mind, a set of six, bound in tan and brown leather. Where? Further along. I could never locate them in this position, back against the wall. Steeling myself, I moved away from the books and closer to the railing so that I could read the titles as I went. A horrible tearing noise rent the air. The gallery tilted, the floor slanting down and out like the deck of a ship dipping in the water. The slant was no more than two inches, but it seemed I would surely slip and fall crashing against the fragile railing. It would snap in two like dry matchsticks. I would go hurtling through space … No, no, I mustn’t think about it. I must remain calm. Steady. Weight balanced, no sudden movements.
The books were on the fourth shelf, their titles almost obscured by thick layers of dust. I had to bend down to pull them out, but they had been at shoulder height then … I pulled them out and hid the necklace behind them and pushed them back in place, and then I heard footsteps in the hall, running, high heels clattering on the parquet, and I knew it was my mother. She came rushing into the library, her long b
londe curls spilling in every direction, the elegant black lace on her blue satin dinner gown torn, one sleeve of the gown ripped away. She pushed against the doors, trying to close them, but the doors flew back, knocking her down. He stood over her, his face contorted with fury. “Where is it!” he yelled, and she crawled away from him, on the carpet, cringing. He seized her arm and pulled her to her feet and struck her face, again, again, again. She was screaming now, and I was screaming, too, but they couldn’t hear me. They didn’t know I was there. “Tell mel” he shouted. Her face was bruised, her cheek bleeding, and he seized her throat and shook her. Her arms waved in the air and she fell to her knees and he was still shaking her. Mother was a rag doll, limp, and when he let go of her she dropped in a jumbled heap, her head at such a funny angle. I made no sound. I was still screaming, but the screams were all trapped inside. He stared down at her, and then he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder and took her away, and I stayed there all night, still screaming. I heard the low rumble. The house seemed to shake. There was a great crash, then another and another. It was morning when I crept down the staircase and back to my room, and when Uncle Charles came in looking grave and upset I just stared at him, wondering why he had come into my room instead of my mother, wondering what he was talking about, what accident …
I pulled the books off the shelf. They crumbled, bindings splitting, pages falling loose. Reaching into the space, I felt the hard stones and pulled them out. The necklace was heavy in my hands, the diamonds yellow with dust. I stared at it numbly, tears in my eyes. The gallery sagged again, and there was a splitting, ripping noise. I paid no attention. I looked at the cursed, dust-dimmed jewels in my hand, thinking of all the tragedy they had brought.
“You’ve found them,” Charles Danver said.
I turned very slowly and looked at him. He had only come a short way along the gallery, not more than ten feet, and he stood very still, his face white, a streak of dust across one cheek.
Jamintha Page 21