by P. N. Elrod
He glanced up and I could see there was a brain working inside his head. “Maybe as much as you do?”
“What do you know?”
He drew out the needle, detached it from the syringe, and carefully poured the contents into a bottle. “I know I got a steady job here, the pay is good, and I have a lot of free time. How many people can say that these days?”
“Then you’ve seen Barrett—”
He nodded, tapping in a final drop. “Yeah, he’s careful, but I seen him a couple times down in the yard.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
He shrugged. “It scared me at first, but not now. He don’t hurt no one, he don’t hurt the horses. This is a good place to work and he’s a nice man, you know?”
“What about Miss Laura? What d’you think of her?”
Another shrug. “She’s all right, maybe a little too full of herself.”
“How do you mean?”
“She’s just not the type to think about others, but I guess she’s still young yet.”
I took the bottles to Escott. “Any change?”
“Look at his teeth.”
I did. Barrett’s piercing canines had been even with his others, but now they were more prominent, as though ready to feed.
“Of course, it might only be a reflex of some kind,” he cautioned. “I don’t want to get too hopeful.”
“What about his chest?”
Escott’s own heart was beating very fast. “The hole has closed up.”
I felt a grin start up on my face. “I’ll go get another couple bottles.”
When I came back, there was a definite change in Barrett’s appearance. His face looked fractionally fuller and the skin was flexible to the touch. “It’s working, Charles.”
He nodded, but his own expression was still tight. “You were a long time.”
“I was having a talk with Haskell.”
“Yes?”
“He said he saddled a horse for Laura at one-thirty, and then she asked him to wash her car. He’d washed it earlier that morning, but she gave him some guff about dust and told him to wash it again anyway. It kept him busy on the opposite side of the house and he didn’t see where she went.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, especially when you realize she’d have no problem getting back into the house from a patio door on the far side. I checked—”
Barrett’s body spasmed and he suddenly gagged on the tube down his throat. Escott quickly pulled it out.
“Charles, you’re a goddamned miracle worker!”
His face flushed. “Some days are better than others.”
Barrett’s lips moved, his teeth still prominent. Escott put the tube to them, but Barrett drew the blood out too fast and the tube collapsed from the suction. Escott detached it from the plug and put it straight into the bottle like a straw.
“We need more,” he said.
“I’m moving.”
In the end, Barrett drained away just over six quarts of the stuff, and I witnessed a faster version of the kind of recovery I’d gone through myself. The wrinkling smoothed, dry flesh-colored twigs turned into fingers, and stiff parchment filled out to became skin again.
He began coughing at one point, getting rid of the fluid that had built up in his pierced lung. It was a mess, but Escott grabbed a towel and I helped turn him on his side. The back of his pajama shirt was practically glued to the floor.
“How long do you think he’s been here?” I asked.
“An expert could estimate from the condition of the blood, but I’m no expert. Perhaps it was concurrent with the incident on the stairs.”
Barrett would be listening. Escott knew there was no need to hit him with the news of Emily’s death just yet.
“Logically and practically, I would say it was done earlier, as this was a crime that was never meant to be discovered. Later than two o’clock and she would never have had the chance to be alone long enough to do it.”
“And he’s been here like this all day.”
“He may not have been conscious.”
He was only trying to ease my mind, but I knew better. Once his body had been dragged from the bed, Barrett’s contact with his soil would be severed. He’d have been aware. Unable to act, but aware. For myself, there is no feeling worse than that kind of helplessness.
I stood and motioned Escott to come with me to the far end of the library, and kept my voice very low. “I need to go back upstairs again. Can you handle all this with him?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’m going to have a talk with Laura. It’s way overdue.”
“Agreed, but I’d like to be there myself.”
“I know, but I need you to keep Barrett busy.”
Whether he could read anything else into that, I wasn’t ready to guess. The important thing was to say something that was halfway convincing so I could get out of there. He was distracted because Barrett was coughing and still needed help, otherwise I might have gotten more argument from him. Escott finally nodded, and if he knew what I had in mind, he chose not to comment.
“This might take awhile,” I added, risking it anyway. A part of me hoped he would catch on and try talking me out of it.
He didn’t, or wouldn’t. “Very well. Take as long as you need.”
I shut the metal fire door behind me and climbed the stairs up to the deserted wing. Inside me, equal portions of fire and ice went to war.
11
THE last of the relatives were gone and the staff had cleared away their debris and swept up. Except for the stale stink of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, no signs were left of the recent invasion. I made a careful and quiet sweep of the place to make sure Cousin Abigail hadn’t lingered in some corner, but all was clear and silent. In a den off the main hall I found a third of a bottle of whiskey in a liquor cabinet and took it upstairs.
The door to Emily’s room was locked, probably as a precaution against family souvenir hunters. The room was undisturbed and both jewel safes in her closet were firmly shut, but I wasn’t interested in them. I pocketed what I needed and left.
I listened for a long time outside Laura’s door to be certain that Mrs. Mayfair was gone and that the girl was alone. Water ran and splashed; she was having a long shower to steam away the day’s troubles. The water sound cut off and softer, less distinct ones replaced it as she toweled down and padded barefoot around her room.
Her door abruptly opened in my face and her light blue eyes flashed on me in shock and fear. She nearly screamed, but didn’t. The house was empty, no one would hear.
She was head to toe in black, her bright blond hair covered by a black scarf.
“Going to a funeral?” I asked.
Her heart jumped and she backed away, but I caught her wrist, swinging her around until she was pressed against the wall. Now she did try to scream, a normal reflex to the situation, but I stopped that with one hand and talked quickly, urgently, focusing in hard enough to crack through her terror. It eventually worked and she relaxed against the wall and I took my hand away from her mouth.
“Where were you going?” I asked.
“The basement.”
“Why?”
“I have to get rid of him.”
It was no galloping surprise. At this point I was just being thorough. “Did you try to—did you kill Barrett?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He knew—knew—” She was struggling against it and could shake it off if she fought hard enough.
“All right, calm down. Everything’s okay.”
Her breathing smoothed out.
“Go back into your room, lock the door, and sit down.”
I followed her in. She chose to sit at her dressing table on a little satin stool much like one Bobbi had. I checked the place, keeping well clear of the veranda windows. The stables were at an oblique angle to them on this side, but there was a chance Haskell might look out and see my figure against La
ura’s curtains. It was very important that she appear to be alone now.
She was—at least in the mirrors.
It was a cheery place, with yellow flowers blooming in the wallpaper, and a thick rust-colored rug covered most of the floor. The bath was warm and damp from her shower, and that day’s black dress was crumpled into a hamper. She’d rinsed her stockings herself and hung them over the shower rod to dry.
I found a chair and dragged it over to face her. In the mirror-covered wall it moved all by itself.
She was very still, waiting for me to speak. Her body rhythms were strong and even. After an active summer of swimming and riding, her skin was tanned and healthy. She was quite a beautiful girl and her youth attracted me even as it must have attracted Barrett.
“Laura, my name is Jack. You remember me from earlier tonight?” She nodded.
“I’m going to ask you some questions and you will want to answer them. You can tell me the truth, to do so will make you feel very good.”
She waited, disinterested and seeing nothing.
“Laura, did you kill Maureen Dumont?”
“Who?”
And that threw me until I realized she might never have heard the name. “Remember the summer of the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Remember the dark-haired woman who came one night to see Barrett?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill that woman?”
She’d buried it deep and it didn’t want to come out. Her breath got short, and for a second, real awareness came back to her eyes. I steadied her down and soothed her, keeping my voice low, but pitched so she had to listen. I told her it was all right to answer and repeated my question, and then she said yes.
I felt nothing looking into her blank eyes. Her face ceased to belong to a person and took on the smooth, bland beauty of a mannequin. The lost years and the emotional racking and the physical trauma had taken all feeling from me. The worry, fear, and doubt that had once driven me were gone, and I was empty. We mirrored each other now. All I had left were questions, and they weren’t really mine, but Escott’s.
“Laura, talk to me. Tell me about it. Why did you do it?”
She revealed no surprises. Escott had been right. She was in love with Barrett and had killed to keep him.
“Did you kill Violet that summer?”
“No, the fire did.”
It was an odd answer and I picked a subtle change in her tone of voice, as though I were talking to a child. “Did you set the fire in the house?”
“No.”
“How did it start?”
“The lamp cord.”
“Did you do something to the lamp cord?”
“I fixed it.”
“So that it would start the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Then you did kill Violet.”
“No, the fire killed her.”
I could argue with her, but to no point. Her exacting logic was how she could live with herself, by shifting the blame. “Why did you kill her?”
For Barrett, all for Barrett. She’d wanted him that badly. She’d frayed the wires and fixed the rug so that air could feed in. All she had to do was turn on the lamp and wait. When the first flames sprang up she went out the door and snuck back to her room.
“How could you do that?”
She gave a little shrug. “It was easy.”
Fire and ice inside me and now the same sickness I’d felt when Banks had died.
“How did you kill Maureen?” Someone else seemed to be talking to her but using my voice.
She’d read up about vampires that summer. She knew more about us than Barrett had ever suspected, and she knew what to do.
Being a strong girl, it had been nothing for her to lift Maureen’s small body from her trunk to the bath in the bright light of morning. She’d filched a sharp stake of wood from Mayfair’s work shed and she had a hammer. Frozen by daylight, Maureen had died without a sound. The only problem for Laura was the blood. Her clothes had been soaked with it and she was frightened she’d be found out. She’d spent hours cleaning it up.
In a cardboard box scavenged from the kitchen she hid Maureen’s body. It was very light now, hardly more than a husk. She had no trouble getting it downstairs and out the side door, away from the servants’ wing. Dragging it into some trees, Laura used their cover to take it to the ruins of the old house.
She’d been forbidden to play there, but such rules had never stopped her before. There was a broken spot in the floor above the deepest part of the cellar. It sagged under her weight, but she was careful to move slowly and test each step, pushing the box ahead of her. Grating against the soot and debris, it barely held together. She just managed to get it to the edge and pushed it in.
It had been a rainy summer, but the splash still startled her. She hadn’t expected the cellar to be so full of water. A cautious look over the edge showed only a rippling reflection of the sky behind her head. There was no sign of the box or of Maureen’s body. Laura was safe.
The parallels of what happened to Maureen and what nearly happened to me were all too clear in my mind. I knew exactly what she had gone through, and inside I was screaming for her. I stood and backed away from the girl. Not all feeling had died. The war was still going on between fiery rage and cold justice. Neither was canceling the other out, both seemed to be fusing together somehow.
“What about Maureen’s things?” I asked, a calm stranger once more using my voice.
The only real problem was in getting rid of the woman’s trunk. The earth she mixed in with the flower beds, the clothes Laura took to her room and hid under the bed. She spent the rest of the day reading and dancing by herself before the mirrors, as she usually did.
The household schedule was unorthodox, but regular. The staff did downstairs maintenance until midafternoon, when Emily woke up. After her breakfast, the maid was allowed to work upstairs. No one paid much attention to Laura or her activities. Showing up on time for meals was all that was expected of her.
She and Emily shared supper just before sunset, as usual, then Emily went downstairs to be with Barrett. Whenever Emily was with him, they almost always spent an hour or more together. Laura returned to her own room and changed into Maureen’s clothes, called for a cab, and waited by the phone. Both Violet and Emily had been generous concerning her allowance. She had over two hundred dollars on hand. She took it all, not knowing how much it would cost to go to Port Jefferson.
The call came from the gatehouse. Laura answered on the first ring and gave Mayfair permission to let John Henry Banks through. The main danger now was that Barrett might break his pattern because of his guest and come up earlier than usual. He didn’t, and she brought the empty trunk safely downstairs and out the front door.
Two minutes later she was on her way to Port Jefferson. Banks dropped her off near the ferry and drove back to Glenbriar to celebrate his five-dollar tip.
“What happened to the trunk?”
“I found stones to put in it and dropped it off the end of a dock.”
“You take another cab home?”
“Yes.”
She had the Port Jefferson driver drop her near the gate, snuck through, and walked back to the house without being caught. She listened to her radio and danced before her mirror, pretending that Barrett was her partner.
“What did you do with her clothes?”
“I pushed them into the house incinerator. Haskell burned them up the next day with the usual trash.”
She watched the trucks and crews roll in and begin tearing down the ruins. The blackened shards of wood were torn away, and the broken glass was removed. What was left of the floor was pounded apart and allowed to cave in to the cellar, which gradually filled with the packed debris. A few days later more trucks came in with topsoil and covered it all like a grave.
All too fitting.
I found it difficult to look at her. “Then you just went on as before?”
“Yes.”
“No questions, no guilt?”
She blinked.
“Didn’t you feel bad about what you did?”
“Why should I?”
“You killed. You murdered an innocent woman you knew nothing about.”
“Well, I had to.”
No guilt, no regret. A job finished and a goal achieved. Barrett would be hers when the time came.
“What about Barrett? When did he start to notice you as a woman?”
She smiled at the memory. “He’s always been looking at me. Always, always, always. I’m young and I’m beautiful and he wants me.” The little-girl voice was back again.
“What about Emily?”
“He wants me, not her.”
“But what about her?”
“She’s dead.”
“I know. Did you kill her?”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“She heard us talking.”
“About what?”
Barrett had wasted no time last night. After punching me out he went straight home to Laura, finally hypnotizing her to get the truth.
She’d heard about the man asking questions about the fire from the house staff. The story of Banks and his memorable tip came up. Laura left to find him, to see for herself if he was a danger. She carried along a small suitcase. Inside it was a club.
Parking her car near a gas station with a phone, she called for Banks to come pick her up. They drove a little and she talked with him. Her questions about his Port Jefferson trip clicked things together in his memory, and he recognized her. He thought it to be an amazing coincidence.
She asked him to stop the car and he did so, still chattering about her and how she’d changed. She brought the club out of the suitcase and smashed it into the side of his head as hard as she could. She hit him several times to make sure, then took his money box to make it look like a robbery.
The storm was bad by now, but her car wasn’t too far from where they’d stopped. She got out, but before she could get away, another car appeared and she saw the driver talking to Banks. She took care of him as well, then fought her way through the rain to her own vehicle.
Breathless, she tumbled into it and crept home again. She laughed to see a third car in line behind the others as she passed. The frantic man waving at her to stop looked so ridiculous.