“I’m here!” I cried. “You came just in time. I’ve never been so frightened—”
And then I saw her.
The whiteness of her dress stood out in a pale slash against black trees. Her face was a white oval in the starlight, and one hand was extended toward me. A lopsided moon was rising above the trees and its rays struck a glint from the thing Aunt Amalie held in her right hand. And I knew. It was not Floria I needed to fear. I knew fully and completely in a rush of acute awareness that needed no pause for reasoning. In the same instant I recognized that I stood entirely exposed only a little way from her, with fresh moonlight falling upon me, as it fell upon her.
There was just one thing to do. I stepped backward into the tomb. My foot missed the top step and I lost my balance. With my arms reaching futilely for the wall, I fell down three shallow steps and lay half stunned on the brick floor.
Her voice called to me matter-of-factly. “That was foolish, Lacey. Did you hurt yourself? Because I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Not now. Not yet.”
Painfully, I sat up on the cold brick floor and rubbed the back of my head. I seemed to be all right. I seemed to be able to move. And I was hidden by a dank and musty darkness. From outside, she could not see me. I pulled myself up and stepped silently toward a side wall and flattened myself against it. She could not see me now, even if she came to the opening to the tomb, but I was trapped here as thoroughly as it was possible to be. There was no way out but one. The wide arch of curving masonry rose over my head, shutting me in. The distant back wall of the tomb was flat, without any opening. I could creep back there into slimy darkness, but I could not escape. For me, this might very well be my tomb.
Her voice reached me again. “Floria’s gone now. She came to rescue you from me, you know. And Paul has gone to talk to Charles. He’s been worried about Floria and me. He’s begun to suspect. Floria loves me, poor dear. She’s tried to protect me. She guessed that I’d loosened that rock the night of the ball. She went down later that night to make sure that it wouldn’t move if anyone examined it. Not that I cared any more. Not that I could care—when it was Elise who fell, and not you, as I’d intended.”
I had read a dreadfulness into Floria’s voice, but this was real. There was a cutting, matter-of-factness here that chilled me inwardly, as the stones of the tomb chilled my flesh and bones. I wanted to cry out to her. I wanted to ask her why—why?
Without my asking, she was quite willing to tell me.
“I want you to know,” she said. “This time there will be no pranks to try to frighten you away. Like a sand dollar in your napkin. There’ll be no effort at injury that may fail—as it failed that day at Bellevue, when I rode Mayfair around by the wall and pushed over that block of tabby.”
My breath was coming quickly, my heart pounding. Yet there was nothing I could do. If I tried to storm out, if I tried to rush her and get away, she would shoot me down quite coldly. I knew that now. The gun from Giles’s desk was not locked safely away, as I had thought. It was there in Aunt Amalie’s hand.
As I waited, she ran on. “What happened at the freezing plant that day puzzled you, didn’t it? I’d warned you that you must leave the island and never come back. That you must never interfere when it came to Richard. But you were uncertain. You didn’t know if you could keep your hands off him. So I wanted to frighten you a little. Oh, I wouldn’t have left you inside the freezer for long. I didn’t mean you serious harm. Not then. It was too bad that Richard saw me close the door. I was afraid he might say something about it. But instead, he decided that if I would do such a thing, then you must be an evil person to be punished, and he took his stand against you. It would have been better for you if he had held to that attitude.”
Once she had loved me, I thought in fearful bewilderment. Once she had been kind to me, concerned about me, but at some time or other all that had changed. I had gone on seeing her as she once was, unaware of the inward change.
The light, calm voice had paused for breath. Now it went on as serenely as ever.
“Do you think I will allow the past to repeat itself? Do you think I loved my sister when she took Charles away from me? Do you think I ever forgave her? And did you think I would let her daughter take away my daughter’s husband, take my daughter’s son? Oh, of course I wanted you here. I wanted to learn what you were up to, and I wanted you to come to the island long enough to be thoroughly defeated, thoroughly frightened away. But you wouldn’t accept that. You wouldn’t take the sensible way out and give Giles up. You began to interfere with Richard. So now—there’s only one ending. What happens to me afterward no longer matters. Not even Charles is really mine.”
I wanted to cry out that there was still Richard, whom she loved. But I dared not speak and give away my position.
“You believed everything, didn’t you?” she went on. “All my pretense of being so fond of you! Oh, it was true enough once, when you were younger. And I could be fond enough of you while you stayed away from the island. But after you became a threat to Elise as Richard’s mother, pretending to love you turned into a role that nauseated me.”
I listened to her, sick at heart to think how fondly and trustingly I had accepted her seeming affection.
“It gave me real pleasure to tell Elise where the emerald brooch was hidden,” she went on almost conversationally. “I knew she would go and get it and defeat Kitty’s intention of having Charles find it where she had left it. Though of course I’d foiled that intention the first time long ago. You said your mother must have left a letter for Charles when she went away. It’s true—she did. But I found it first and hid it away all these years. I wanted Charles to think Kitty had kept the brooch deliberately. I didn’t care whether it was ever found or not. Later I gave the letter to Elise, and she tried to find their mailing place. But she never could until you gave Charles the real clue as to where the brooch was hidden. Then she went and got it at once. Paul was coming across from The Bitterns that morning, and he almost caught her coming out of the tomb with it. She coaxed him away among the trees to talk to her, and while they were walking about, you and Charles went into the tomb. You heard them from there. Elise always wanted that brooch, and in the end she had it for a little while. Though only for—a little while.”
The words choked off, and for an endless length of time the night was still. Nearby insects had hushed at the sound of a human voice, but now they took up their clatter again. My flesh crept at Aunt Amalie’s words. I could see Elise wearing the brooch secretly, superstitiously, the night of the ball, conniving with her mother.
“Are you listening to me?” Aunt Amalie’s voice sounded closer this time. “I’ve wanted you to understand fully why you must make a payment now. The past can’t repeat itself, I tell you. Now you’ll never have Giles or Richard.”
Helplessly, I crept toward the back along the rough wall. She could not see me. She could not know where to aim. That was my only hope.
The first shot crashed into the long cave of the tomb and ricocheted against the arch of the roof. The explosion seemed to echo and re-echo forever in that dark and hollow place. I sobbed for breath and moved frantically away from the back wall.
“You can’t escape,” she called to me. “I’ve plenty of ammunition. And I can be a patient woman.”
Once more she pulled the trigger. The awful crash of the explosion was repeated as the bullet splintered tabby and brick from the wall at the back.
Would it do any good to plead with her? Would it help to point out that if she killed me she would destroy her own life and injure Floria and Richard? But I knew it would not. She had crossed some invisible line into alien territory. Had she been in a passion of grief, or even a passion of hatred toward me, she might have been more approachable. But this was cold madness. The strain in her fabric had always been there, waiting, concealed because she was letter-perfect in the role she had chosen to play. S
he had called me to her, tested me out, and finally gone deliberately about her intention to destroy me. Until now she had failed. But now—
She had not fired again and I wondered what fearful strategy she meant to try now. I had not heard her move. I could not see her out there among a hundred other shadows. But she was there and she waited, perhaps moving nearer under the very sound of her firing.
Her voice cut suddenly through the stillness, chill with warning, and I realized the words were not addressed to me.
“Don’t come any closer. Stay where you are, whoever you are! This is between Lacey and me.”
“Mother!” Floria cried. “Mother, you can’t do this. It will harm all of us tragically. Giles is here, and Charles, and Paul—”
My heart leaped with unexpected hope. Floria had gone for help. They had heard the shots. Giles was here.
Amalie did not raise her voice. “Stay your distance . . .”
I shrank against the wall and steeled myself to the inevitable roar of sound. There were cries outside in the grove and the running of feet. Then another shot, close at hand, but not directed at me. Floria screamed, and under cover of the confusion, I rushed up from the tomb and I tried to slip around behind it. The next bullet grazed my shoulder. I went stumbling to my knees with pain searing my upper arm as I tried to crawl away into shadow. I could see them now in the moonlight. Giles was struggling with Amalie, fighting to wrest the gun from her hand.
They seemed to move in a dreadful, endless dance, with Floria and Charles and Paul locked to the outskirts of a circle around them. Then Paul moved in and clasped Amalie by one arm. Giles tore the gun from her hand and flung it into the underbrush. A moment later he came running toward me and nearly stumbled over me. Then he knelt and touched me gently.
“It’s my shoulder,” I said.
He picked me up in his arms and carried me away from the burying ground. The others were gone, suddenly, strangely, and I heard a shouting, no longer near. Giles paid no attention. He carried me along the path and up the steps to the house. The servants had gathered about on the drive, and Vinnie came running toward us as Giles brought me inside. She gave me a single look, and fled away to fetch whatever was needed.
Upstairs in my room, the two of them worked over me quickly and efficiently, and I did not mind the pain, now that the nightmare was over. I lay quietly on my bed, and from where I lay I could see my packed suitcase standing near the closet door, my raincoat flung over a chair. The sight of them reminded me.
“Tomorrow I’m going away,” I told Giles again. “I won’t come back here any more.”
“Don’t talk foolishness,” Vinnie said. “You ain’t goin’ no place right away.” Then she murmured, “Oh, poor Miss Amalie,” and went out of the room to hide her own emotion.
I tried desperately to sit up, and Giles pushed me back with a firm hand. “Lie still. Give the bleeding a chance to stop.”
I had to talk to him. I had to try, but he hushed me at once.
“I know there are things you want to tell me, but now isn’t the time. I know there’s more to the story than Floria blurted out, but I can wait for the rest.”
I knew all the more why I loved him. He would be fair, at least, and as generous as was possible.
He bent over me. “I will never forgive you, Lacey, for not telling me at once. But I love you, and I will try to understand the rest of what you’ve done.”
He kissed me almost angrily, and I knew he was angry because of all those wasted years that lay behind us. Yet in the same instant I remembered Elise. Remembered her as she had been as a young girl. Would it ever have worked out if I had gone to Giles with the truth at that time? Would he not have felt bound to me because the baby was his, and not because of the love he could feel for me now? I didn’t know.
When the others returned to the house and came upstairs, he was sitting beside my bed holding my hand. They came into the room, and Floria dropped into a chair nearby. She looked quite dreadful, her face drawn and haggard. Charles went to stand beside a window, to stare into the darkness toward whatever nightmare now haunted him. It was Paul who stood at the foot of my bed and told us what had happened.
“Amalie broke away from us and ran toward the ruins of the old fort. We went after her, but we were confused about her direction, and she was well ahead of us when she climbed up on the parapet and went over into the river. We were too late. There’s no way to find her until morning.”
The room was quiet. I closed my eyes and thought of this double loss. I had lost Amalie in life. Lost the loving aunt I had believed in. Now we had all lost her in death. She had thrown everything away so needlessly. Even Elise’s life had been thrown away because of Amalie’s obsessive hatred of her sister’s child. And now what of Richard, who must face another death? Where was he? I wondered. Why hadn’t he heard the shots and the noise when we came back to the house? Why had he not come to this room?
Before I could ask about him, Charles turned from the window. I saw how white and old he looked. “It’s better this way,” he said. “Amalie couldn’t face the aftermath of Elise’s death—the aftermath of causing it. Paul has told me what she did. I’ve been worried about her for several days, but I was afraid to face the truth. Part of this is my fault.”
Floria made a harsh sound of pain, but she did not repudiate Charles’s words. “I knew! I knew the night of the ball. I saw her coming back from the beach, and I knew she was planning something dreadful—just as she had planned other attempts upon Lacey’s life. That was why I had to accuse Lacey so recklessly—so I could hide my mother’s actions. Later, after Lacey talked about the loose stone, I put on my Merlin cape and went down there to fix the rock so that Mother would not be blamed. The beard was in a pocket of the cape, and I must have lost it there among the rocks.”
All the small details were coming clear now, and I felt sorry for Floria, who had never been her mother’s favorite daughter.
She went on, still not through. “This afternoon, when I was putting Elise’s photographs and letters back together after Richard spilled them out of their box, I found the letter Kitty wrote you many years ago, Charles, telling how she had left the emerald brooch for you to find.”
“Aunt Amalie told me about that letter,” I said to Floria. “It was she who gave it to Elise. Now it must be given to Charles.”
“It doesn’t matter any more,” Charles said sadly.
“I still wanted to save her from herself,” Floria ran on. “Tonight I tried as brutally as I could to send Lacey away under a cloud that would separate her from Giles forever. That was the only thing that would have satisfied my mother. But I knew quickly enough that it was the wrong thing to do. I’m sorry, Lacey. I almost cost you your life.”
I had never seen Floria cry before. Paul went to her and put an arm about her. “Don’t take so much blame on yourself. We’re all partly at fault. For what we saw and didn’t speak about. For the things each of us thought he wanted and couldn’t have.”
A silence lay upon the room as the truth of his words came home to us. A sound from the hallway caught my attention, and I turned my head as the others swung around. Richard stood in the bedroom doorway.
“What has happened?” he asked. “I was up in the lighthouse tonight when I heard the shooting. It took me a long time to get back here. Where is my grandmother?”
“There—there’s been an accident,” Floria said feebly.
Richard came past the others toward the bed and stood looking at me. “You’ve been hurt!” And then anxiously, “Cousin Lacey, are you all right?”
I held out a hand to him. “I’m fine. What happened to me isn’t serious.”
“I’m glad,” he said with a relief that touched me. His gaze traveled from one to another of us around the room, and I think there was not a pair of eyes that could meet his own.
“He’ll have to
be told,” Floria said harshly.
Richard threw her a quick look and then turned back to me. “My grandmother wanted to hurt you, didn’t she, Cousin Lacey? She didn’t like you. She tried all the time to make me hate you, just the way my—my mother did. But I never could. Tonight she tried to shoot you, didn’t she?”
It was chilling to hear him. I had forgotten how calmly in our time the young can take the subject of violence. I had forgotten how they are so often bombarded with it on every side that horror can sometimes be accepted as we could never accept it when we were as young as Richard.
“Is she dead?” he asked us point-blank.
There was not one of us who could answer him easily. But I was his mother, and I had to try.
“We think she is,” I told him. “She—fell into the river. We can’t search for her until morning.”
His long lashes came down over his eyes and then he opened them and looked steadily at his father. Giles went to him and put an arm about his shoulders.
“It got to be so I was afraid of her,” Richard said.
“There was no need to be,” Giles assured him. “She always loved you very much. And you must go on loving her. If you want to go to your room now, I’ll come in later and say good night.”
Floria jumped up from her chair. “I’ll come with you, Richard.”
They seemed to have forgiven each other for their earlier quarrel.
When they had left, Paul said, “I’d better go downstairs and phone the police.”
Giles nodded, and Paul and Charles went out of the room together. Giles returned to his place beside my bed.
“Richard will be all right,” I said to him in relief. “He has more strength in him than we give him credit for. I’m glad you gave his grandmother back to him. The truth needn’t ever be known outside of this room.”
He took my hand and held it against his cheek. “We’ll tell him soon that you are his mother. We’ll tell him that he’s our son.”
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