The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  The ponytailed nurse was at his side. “I’m sorry,” he said. He grabbed Rollins by the arm. “He’s not supposed to be in here.”

  “It’s all right, Daryl,” Elizabeth rasped out.

  “You’re in no condition—” Daryl objected.

  Elizabeth raised an arm slightly. It seemed to take all her strength. “Please.”

  Daryl looked at Payzen and then at Rollins. “Okay then.” Shaking his head, he left the room.

  Rollins turned back to Elizabeth. A great weight seemed to have settled over her. With some effort, she reached a hand up to touch his arm. Her fingers felt like a tiny bird landing on him. “I was expecting you,” she whispered. She looked over to the day nurse. “Could you give us a moment alone, please?”

  “If you like,” the woman replied in an Irish accent. “She’s very weak,” she told Rollins. “Try not to tire her. And only a few minutes, all right?” She stepped toward the door. “I’ll be just outside.”

  “So those were your faxes?” Rollins asked when they were alone. He spoke gently, she was so frail. He was afraid he might hurt her otherwise. Perhaps he already had.

  “Yes, from the office.” She raised a finger weakly toward the hallway. “I shouldn’t have been so coy.” She took another moment to breathe. “I needed to talk to you, but I—well, I wasn’t sure I dared. So I just kind of put it out there and let God decide.” The edges of her mouth lifted into a half smile. “Forgive me. I’ve become quite religious in my last days.” For a moment, her eyes sparkled.

  “You knew my father?” Rollins asked.

  Elizabeth brought a slim finger to her dry lips. “Later.”

  The first time Rollins had met her, he couldn’t imagine what Cornelia had seen in her, Elizabeth had been so brusque and evasive. But now, as she labored to draw the breath to speak, he had a different impression. She was obviously trying so hard to connect. But there was something else, a wryness that reminded him of Neely’s own off-kilter quality, which he had nearly forgotten. Neely rarely came at anything quite straight. She was always dashing about, bright-eyed, emitting gales of laughter over jokes and antics that flew over his head as a youngster. She’d eluded him then, he realized, just as she was eluding him now.

  “Cornelia spoke of you,” Elizabeth went on with some difficulty. “Often. I think she was in love with you a little.”

  Rollins’ heart swelled: Cornelia seemed to be hovering there before him like an angel. “But I was just a boy.”

  “Oh, heavens. Age doesn’t matter. She once told me that the thought of you made her want to have a child.”

  “I had no idea.” Rollins dropped down on his knees beside her, to bring his head close to hers.

  “Oh yes. You—” she paused for a moment, looked down at her hands—“and your sister.”

  “Stephanie,” Rollins said quietly. For a moment, she was in the room, too.

  “She died, didn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “For years, I couldn’t be sure. Cornelia was often—what’s the word? Metaphorical.” She breathed quietly for a moment, as if she was trying to find her peace with that realization. “Cornelia actually tried to get pregnant. She told me so—on her fortieth birthday. She cried, telling me. I guess she realized then that she never would.” She smiled again as she looked over at Rollins. “But I enjoyed our own mating dance.” Elizabeth’s eyes glittered. “So suspenseful.” She looked up at the wall beyond the foot of her bed where, Rollins saw now, a slim crucifix hung, its Jesus hanging in silent agony.

  There was a commotion in the hallway. “I need to go in there!” Marj shouted, then lurched inside the room. “Rolo! I didn’t know where—” She stopped still when she saw Lizzie.

  “It’s Lizzie Payzen,” Rollins said. “She’s been sending the faxes.”

  “And Neely?”

  Rollins shook his head.

  “It’s all right, Nancy,” Elizabeth told the nurse, who was hovering nervously in the doorway.

  “Okay then,” the nurse replied, and withdrew once more.

  “Do I know you?” Elizabeth asked weakly, gazing up at Marj.

  “I saw your picture,” Marj explained shyly. “At that house.”

  “Marj—” Rollins broke in. “This isn’t the time—”

  “Oh, the Gliebermans’,” Elizabeth interrupted. “Yes, that was wild.” She paused again, then looked up at Marj, who seemed very nervous all of a sudden. “It’s all right,” Elizabeth assured her. “Heavens! Dying, you’ll find, is very liberating. Cornelia—” she stopped—“I gather you know about Cornelia?”

  Marj nodded.

  “I’m glad.” Elizabeth smiled. “I was just telling Rollins that she was hoping to get pregnant. That’s what drew her there—all that sperm.” She smiled again, more weakly this time. Then her face clouded over. “Well, partly. It was also the drugs, the lunacy. She went a little crazy toward the end.” She fell silent, her chest slowly rising and falling under the bedclothes.

  “Crazy in what way?” Marj asked.

  Elizabeth pondered that a moment. “Crazy from sadness, I suppose. She always carried this deep sadness that no one could ever reach. Your sister’s death, Rollins—that ate away at her.” More breath, more rapidly this time. Like a fish, Rollins thought, desperately flapping its gills on the shore. “I went with her once, to the house, to see what it was all about. Later, I went back.” Elizabeth closed her eyes. “God forgive me.”

  “For what?” Rollins asked, suddenly worried.

  “For being so D-U-M-B.”

  Rollins leaned in closer. “Lizzie, there are rumors—”

  “I’ve heard them,” Lizzie replied quickly. “The whispers. I’ve had to live with them.”

  “Did you—?” Rollins pressed.

  “No!” Her eyes blazed, but her voice was little more than a whisper. “Absolutely not.”

  “But you had a reason.”

  “Why, because we weren’t getting along?”

  “Her will, Lizzie.”

  She fell silent for a moment. “That was supposed to be our secret.” She breathed, more haltingly this time.

  “You never said where you were,” Marj added.

  “I didn’t have exactly the nicest alibi.”

  “What do you mean?” Rollins asked gently.

  Lizzie’s eyes shot over to him. “I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Tell me, Lizzie,” Rollins said. “Where were you? I have to know.”

  “It’s too awful.”

  “Please.”

  Elizabeth Payzen looked up at the crucifix again, then back at Rollins. “I was at the Gliebermans’.” She shook her head, as if to free herself from the memory. “Things were not going well with Cornelia. She’d been seeing other people. She told me it didn’t mean anything, but I knew it did. I had to show her that I didn’t need her either. I wanted to lose myself. Just throw myself into the depravity, the soulless sex. And so I did. And I lost her.” More raspy breaths, this time followed by heavy coughing that reddened her face and made the veins bulge an alarming blue on either side of her neck. The nurse came in and raised her up in bed. She poured her some water and brought the cup to her lips. Elizabeth grasped it with unsteady hands and took a few sips. She passed the cup back to the nurse, her chest heaving.

  The nurse bent down to her. “You need the oxygen?”

  There was a steel canister in the corner, Rollins could see, with tubes coming out to a clear plastic mask.

  “I’m okay,” Elizabeth rasped out.

  “I don’t want you getting tired now.”

  “Really. I’ll be fine. Another few minutes. Please?”

  The nurse looked at her, obviously pondering. “Just a few,” she said finally, and retreated again.

  Lizzie grasped Rollins’ arm and pulled him down to her. “If only I’d stayed home that night, she’d still be with us. I would have—I would have heard Cornelia on that road. She was coming to see me. I’d have had her back, I’m con
vinced of it.” She slumped back against the pillows again, exhausted. Her eyes looked hurt now as they met Rollins’. “Terrible, isn’t it, what people do to each other?”

  “But you never said anything,” Rollins told her. “You never explained.”

  “I couldn’t! I didn’t want to lie, and I couldn’t tell the truth. The truth was too horrible.” Her frail chest swelled under the bedclothes. “So I said nothing.” She swiped at her eyes with her hand, to clear away some tears. “I had to let people think what they were going to think.” She turned to Rollins. “People like you.”

  Rollins looked at her, uncomprehending.

  “In that story of yours.”

  “I didn’t make any accusations,” Rollins said, panicky. He swung around toward Marj for confirmation, and she gave him a blank look back.

  “You made some comments,” Elizabeth said. “You said I was ‘under suspicion in some quarters.’ I’ll never forget those words. My mother called me about them. Everyone in town started staring at me.”

  “My editor added that,” Rollins said unhappily. Grant Bowser had assured Rollins that the line was “safely vague.”

  “I didn’t know where you were coming from,” Elizabeth said.

  “A lot of people have that problem,” Marj said.

  “But I need to trust you now.”

  She offered her hand, and Rollins took it. The loose skin was cool, and he could feel the delicate bones underneath. He enclosed her hand in both of his, hoping to give some strength to this poor, sad woman stretched out before him, with death in her lungs. She was his last link to Cornelia. They might have been friends, if only he’d known. “You can trust me.”

  She looked up into his eyes, as if searching for something inside. “I didn’t know what you were after.” She coughed again, another hard cough that brought the nurse back to the doorway. But Marj gave Elizabeth a sip of water, settled her down on the pillows, and Elizabeth waved the nurse away.

  “What happened to Cornelia that night, do you know?” Rollins asked.

  Elizabeth took a moment to compose herself, to wait till her breath steadied again. “The night she disappeared, I got back very late.” She spoke in the barest whisper, her voice nearly all air. To hear her better, Rollins had to crouch down, his ear turned toward her mouth. Her breath made a slight wind on his cheek as she spoke.

  “I called her, as I always do, first thing in the morning,” she told him. “But I got no answer. I thought, ‘That’s odd.’” She rested again, her chest straining for breath under the sheets. “I went to her house to look for her. I tried the doorbell. Nothing. The front door—it was unlocked. I went inside. I was frightened. I didn’t know what I’d find. I’d been very worried about her. She’d been so anxious, those last months. So depressed. Jumpy. I was afraid she might—”

  “What?” Rollins asked.

  “Might harm herself. She bore so much guilt, don’t you see? She could be—so black. Oh, it was so terrible, thinking these things.”

  “What did you find?”

  Another long pause. “Her bed was still made, as if she hadn’t slept in it. Everything was in its place. From what I could tell, only her raincoat and a pair of boots were missing. It seemed she’d gone out in the rain the night before, and not come back.” She started to cough again. Marj reached quickly for the water glass and handed it to her. Elizabeth took a sip and went on: “I went out searching for her, calling her name. I went out into the woods. I checked the pond. I didn’t know what I’d find. She’d been so unhappy those last months…. Finally, I went out onto the road. I was the one to find her footprints. I saw where the trail ended. That’s when I called the police.”

  “Who took her, do you know?” Rollins asked.

  Elizabeth took several breaths, then fastened her eyes on Rollins’. “I thought you might know.”

  Behind him, Marj reached for his shoulder.

  “Me? How could I know?” Rollins asked.

  Elizabeth’s gimlet eyes pierced him, but she said nothing.

  The nurse came into the room again. “I’m sorry. It’s time, Elizabeth. You need to rest now.”

  “Just a moment, please,” Rollins implored her.

  The nurse looked at Elizabeth, who nodded. The nurse bowed her head. “Two minutes. No more.”

  “Those faxes,” Elizabeth whispered. “They did their work.”

  “What do you mean?” Rollins demanded.

  “I need to give you something—something that fills in a part of the mystery that was Cornelia.” Elizabeth shifted in the bed and turned to Marj. “Do you see my shoes there?”

  Rollins watched as Marj’s eyes found a pair of black shoes on the floor by the bureau.

  “Reach into the left one for me, would you?”

  Marj bent down to the shoe and pulled out an envelope that had been curled up inside. “This?” she asked, holding up the envelope.

  Elizabeth nodded, and Marj passed it to her. Elizabeth held the envelope in her hand. “This will explain—a part of her. This is why I wanted you to come. This is also why I wasn’t sure I dared. But I think it’s safe now.” She handed the envelope to Rollins. He pressed it down on the side of the bed, and smoothed it out with his palm. The envelope said Rollins in blue ink. It was the same handwriting as the original note with the fax number.

  “I found it in a book of poems I’d given to Cornelia. John Donne. ‘A Valediction Forbidding Mourning’ was always one of her favorites. Do you know it?”

  She recited, quietly, as if singing to herself: “‘Dull sublunary lovers love/ (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit/ Absence…’” She stopped, wiped away a tear with a finger. “Ever since Cornelia left, I’ve thought of those lines again and again and again. I meant for her to keep the book, but she returned it to me one night after an argument. I put it in the bookcase and didn’t look at again until a few months ago, when I was sorting out my things before coming here. Cornelia had left a poem in it. Just a little scrap. From the date, she must have written it just before she left us.”

  Rollins started to open the envelope, but Elizabeth stopped him. “Please, not now. Keep it for later. We don’t have time for that. You’ll want to have some time to yourself, to reflect.”

  Reluctantly, Rollins slid the envelope into his pocket.

  “But listen. There is something I’d like you to do for me in return. I’ve been thinking about Cornelia’s poem while I’ve been lying here. It reminded me—we buried some things of hers in her garden, years ago. They’re in a strongbox. I need you to bring it to me.”

  “But the house has been sold.”

  “Sold?” A look of astonishment came over her face. “But—her will! That house was to come to me. She promised it to me. It couldn’t have gone to—not without—” She coughed, a terrible wracking cough. Rollins quickly brought some water to her lips, and she sipped a little. “No matter. There’s no time for that. I’ll never live there now anyway. Dig up the box, would you? I can’t get there, can’t dig—but you can. The box will still be there. You’ll find it.”

  “But where?”

  “It’s in with the peonies in the far right-hand corner of the garden. You understand?” She reached for his hand, held it. “The peonies.”

  Rollins nodded.

  “But you’ll have to dig deep.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Something very personal. She wouldn’t let me see. This was years ago. She’d been—troubled. Very troubled. Sleeping badly. Cross. Then one night she called and said she wanted to ‘bury her past.’ Her words. When I arrived, she was holding a strongbox of her grandfather’s, a battered old thing with his initials on it.” She stopped to catch her breath, loosened her grip on his hand. “It was dark out, but she had a candle and we made a kind of procession down to the garden. Silly, I suppose. But Cornelia took it very seriously. She could be very melodramatic. I did the digging. Cornelia was always hopeless with a shovel. It was like a funeral.”

  �
�And that’s in the poem?” Rollins asked.

  “Obliquely, yes,” Elizabeth said. “That…and other things. But please—bring me the strongbox. I want to see it before I die.”

  “I will.” Rollins got up to go. Clearly, it was time. It was past time. “Thank you for trusting me.” He touched her hand lightly.

  “God provides,” Elizabeth said.

  “He has for you,” Marj added.

  Elizabeth looked puzzled for a moment. “Not financially.” She smiled wanly. “Cornelia was never wealthy. All she had was that house, and it’s gone now.”

  “Oh, but that was then,” Rollins added. He told her about Cornelia’s grandmother’s bequest. “There could be ten million in her estate now.”

  Elizabeth looked startled. “That’s quite a sum,” she said finally.

  “I assume you’ve made some provision for it,” Rollins said delicately.

  Elizabeth seemed quite agitated now. “Why—why yes. I finalized everything just a few days ago. Notaries, lawyers. This form, that form. I couldn’t think why there’d be such a fuss about a tiny little estate. No one told me anything had changed. She was gone—how could it have? My heavens—I had no idea there was so much—”

  Elizabeth’s eyes turned from Rollins toward the door past the foot of the bed. Rollins was expecting the nurse, but a man was there. Even before he could tell who it was, Rollins felt a chill of fear. It was like hitting a film of ice on the highway. He’d lost traction. He was adrift, vulnerable. He prepared for impact.

  “So much what?” the man asked. It was Jerry Sloane. He was smaller than Rollins remembered, somewhat slimmer, almost wiry, as if his body had been honed for action. It was stunning to see him here. And so breezily here, as if he’d been here before and belonged here now. Sloane had his salesman’s cheery bonhomie, radiating happiness to be in the presence of the two people whose lives he had so unaccountably upended. Yet there was something about Sloane’s very comfort here that kept Rollins from saying anything about him to Elizabeth. Seeing the two of them together, Rollins suddenly feared that Sloane’s alliance with Elizabeth might run deeper than his own.