Lisa

by Joan Van Every Frost

  She nodded. “I remembered. I finally remembered,” she said in a shaky voice, “and I wish to heaven I hadn’t.”

  “I know,” he answered, “but your bravery will let you live with it.”

  “Eric?”

  “There is nothing we could have done for him. I think he wanted to die.”

  “He was in it all the time with Miss Jarr — Mrs. Stephens, wasn’t he?”

  “They were beautiful, wanton children, those two, but God left something out of them. Poor, lost, deadly children.” His eyes were wet.

  “Where is she?” Lisa asked, peering around. She could see Mrs. Lewis dabbing at Toby’s face with a wet cloth, and Fred the gardener piling the last of the tack over near the horses, but of Carrie Stephens there was no sign.

  They called and looked for her, finally searching the house, but there was no sign of her. It was she who had taken the gun. “Would she be hiding, waiting to come back and kill us all in our beds?” Mrs. Lewis had only voiced what they were all thinking.

  “Well, it’s no use going looking for her tonight,” Jarrell said. “We would never find her if she didn’t want us to. Thank heavens Priddy and the maids have gone to bed, or we’d have more hysterics on our hands, and I’ve had enough scenes to last me a lifetime. I don’t really think she’ll be back tonight.”

  Nonetheless, they checked and double checked the locks on the doors. “Come on in the study,” Jarrell told Lisa and Mrs. Lewis wearily. “A glass of brandy and some food will help us all to sleep.”

  Lisa and Mrs. Lewis carried in plates of cold meat, cheeses, and fruit that Priddy had left out for them, and Jarrell poured three glasses of brandy. The debris from the night before he had tossed in the fireplace. “You wouldn’t think I’d want any more to drink, would you?” he said. “Yet somehow I’ve run clean through the old lot.”

  “My thoughts are racing around like mice in a trap,” Lisa said. “Why would Papa have told everyone I was dead?”

  “I think he suspected what happened to your mother and brother,” Jarrell guessed. “Now I know why he drank. He must have been afraid that if he brought you back home, something would happen to you as well.”

  “But why did they kill him? He was killing himself already.” Lisa shuddered, thinking of the gay, warm, handsome man she remembered, and then of the haunted wreck he had apparently become. Ah, that warmth and gaiety were perhaps his undoing, were what had attracted the attention of the belle dame sans merci who destroyed him.

  “He may have found Eric and Carrie together, and even drunk as he was, that would have been too much for him. He could have threatened to expose them, perhaps even have accused Carrie of murder. Her answer was the deadly nightshade.”

  “How would they get him to take it?”

  “Put it in his liquor, of course. He really wanted to die anyway. Imagine trying to love with the knowledge that you had been instrumental in the agonizing deaths of your wife and small son. I can see where he was ashamed to face you.”

  “She killed Cynthia, too, didn’t she?”

  “That’s what I can’t fathom. She may have been jealous, probably was, or she wouldn’t have flaunted Toby in front of Eric tonight, but she knew better than most that he wouldn’t stay with Cynthia long. He’d refused her before, even when she was carrying his child.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it for a long time, but one night Cynthia and I saw Eric and Carrie in Christian’s stall. I couldn’t see what they were doing, but Cynthia might have; she’d been standing there for some time before I woke up. Do you suppose she saw them burying Henry? It was right after that she started looking smug and not long afterward Eric began to make up to her again.”

  “I wouldn’t say that blackmailing those two would be a very healthful occupation in which to engage,” Mrs. Lewis observed dryly.

  “I can’t help thinking that I could have stopped it all some way, could have done more to bring them to their senses when they were still small. I know that later they both resented our father leaving me all the money.”

  “Nonsense!” Mrs. Lewis declared. “Utter nonsense. They were born bad, and from what I’ve been told of their mother, she was, too. The only difference was that she was fortunate in getting everything she wanted for the asking.”

  “I must say, you do look for things to feel guilty about,” Lisa couldn’t help but add. More important, though, what are we going to do now?”

  “Tomorrow I’ll send Toby with a note for Ames, and I’ll go after her myself. She couldn’t have made it on foot at night to Burresford — or even to Dunwiddleston, where she’d be sure to be caught. I think she’s waiting up there in the gorse to make Toby or me take her somewhere in the trap, somewhere far away. I’m the most likely candidate because she can make me give her money as well,” Jarrell said.

  “Why not let Ames look for her? She has a gun, remember.”

  “They use dogs. No matter what she’s done, I’ll not have my sister run to ground like a hunted vixen by a pack of hounds.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lisa offered.

  “You will not!” he retorted.

  “Oh, and how good are you at tracking on the heath? I’m sure I can tell you if she headed out on the shortcut to Burresford or circled around and came back near here.”

  “We’ll see,” he said shortly. “Let’s try to get some sleep.” Pale and unshaven, he looked as if he needed it.

  There was none of the three of them who didn’t have a vision of a desperate, frightened woman thrashing through the gorse thorns in the dark, and they took little comfort in their soft beds. At least it was summer, and the nights were warm. Lisa found herself pitying Carrie, who always seemed to have so much and now had nothing. But it was Eric’s silver laughter that echoed through Lisa’s dreams, and his tear-streaked face that haunted her when she woke once briefly. She set her mind not even to think of her mother and Nicky, who mercifully stayed in abeyance through the night.

  The next morning they all rose even before it was light. Without asking anyone, Lisa put on a pair of Eric’s pants, one of his plainer shirts, and some low jodphur boots of her own.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Jarrell asked ominously at breakfast. He still looked pale and tired, and had no doubt slept no better than she had.

  “I’m only going as far as the stables to see you off,” she said calmly. “Perhaps I can aim you in the right direction.”

  Jarrell sulked all through breakfast, but she saw that he made himself eat. He may have thought Carrie had possibly gone to Burresford after all. Lisa watched him covertly, all thought gone for the moment except how much she loved him. He darted a furtive glance at her as he. finished his tea, and their eyes locked for a heartstopping moment. They they both burst out laughing.

  “Well, I must say I see nothing amusing about all of this,” Mrs. Lewis said indignantly.

  At this they laughed harder than ever until their eyes watered, like a pair of naughty children. “Sorry, Maud,” Jarrell gasped, “it’s just that if we don’t laugh, we’ll weep.”

  Later on, Lisa and Toby separately quartered the ground below the stables and finally picked up a track leading down into the little valley. It was almost like the old days tracking rabbits, and had it not been for the nature of their quarry, Lisa would almost have though thought it fun.

  “All right, Toby, I can take it from here,” Lisa said. “You go on in to Dunnwiddleston. Ames may think of it, but in case he doesn’t, we’ll need five or six men to shift lumber and beams. You’d best tell him to bring the dogs, too. Did Dr. Jarrell give you the note?”

  Toby shook his head and went back to saddle Pearl. Lisa had Dancer’s reins looped over her arm and had started walking up the other side of the valley when Jarrell overtook her on Cleo. She went out of her way not to look back at the blackened stone shell that was all that was left of the stables.

  “Just don’t cut the track in front of me,” she warned him. “Once we get up in the gorse,
I can ride too because she’ll have to take a beaten path or be scratched to ribbons.”

  She found where Carrie had entered the gorse, mounted Dancer, and they rode on up the hill, Lisa checking every now and again and leaning down to be sure she hadn’t doubled back.

  “What are we going to do if we find her?” she asked. “She’s got the means to kill us, too.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want you to come along. I’m going to try to talk her out of it.”

  To herself Lisa hoped he would have better luck than when he tried to talk Eric out of Christian’s stall, but she held her tongue. There was once a time, she realized, when she would have spoken out, but now her heart stilled her all-too-ready tongue. They came to a fork in the path, but she spotted a wisp of blue material on a gorse thorn to the left, and they went on without stopping. Gradually Lisa realized that Carrie had indeed made a great circle that wouldn’t have been so large except that there was no direct way down to the house again. In the dark, it must have taken her a good part of the night to go so far, for three different times Carrie had taken a false trail that petered out into a rabbit track, and had to retrace her steps.

  The sun was hot on their backs by the time they came full circle and were down in the valley again, this time aimed at the house from the opposite side, a way that would take them past the pool and the cemetery. They let the horses drink at the pool, then Lisa got down and examined the ground.

  “She slept under this tree,” she said, indicating an oak with low-hanging branches by the pool, the same one where she had stood and heard the sated laughter when she had been pushed into the water. Although now she favored Tatty, it could have been Carrie at that. It would never have occurred to her, hating the water as she did, that anyone else could swim.

  She led Dancer away from the pool, and half past the cemetery realized she had lost the track. She backtracked, watching closely each side of the path. All at once Jarrell, who had lagged some yards behind so as not to disturb the ground, yelled, “Look out!”

  Lisa turned to find herself face to face with Carrie, both of whose hands held the gun pointing at her. “Die, bitch!” Carrie cried, and together with seeing the gun kick and Carrie knocked flat by Jarrell on Cleo even as the gun discharged, Lisa felt a terrible blow on the upper part of her body, and suddenly she was lying on the ground, swimming in and out of consciousness.

  “Lisa, Lisa, what have I done?” He was tearing the shirt off her shoulders. He turned her gently on her side, probing with his fingers, which came away bright red with blood. “Thank God,” he breathed. “My dearest love, I thought I’d lost you.” He put his head briefly on her breast. “I love you, Lisa — I’ve no choice anymore, nor ever had.”

  She looked up at his anguished face so close to hers and grinned. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said weakly and sank back into a ringing darkness.

  She came to once more while Jarrell was binding the torn shirt sleeve around her shoulder. He picked her up and carried her toward the stables. Partway, Ames and two other men met them, along with three hounds on leashes.

  “Your horses came galloping in riderless, and we feared for you. Where is she?”

  “She made off from the cemetery down toward the pool. I’ll be up at the house with Miss Stephens here if you want me.” He paused, then added, “Be gentle with her — she hasn’t a gun anymore.”

  Miss Stephens! Well, she guessed she was Lisa Stephens, at that. Oh, Papa, what did she do to you? For a moment then, there was only the feel of his arms supporting her, and she remembered her father once carrying her upstairs when she had fallen asleep listening to him read a story. Then nothing again until she smelled a familiar dreadful smell and heard Mrs. Lewis say, “Breathe deep, Lisa, that’s it.”

  *

  When she came to again, she was on a bed in the surgery, and Jarrell was sitting beside her holding her hand. Her shoulder was swathed in bandages and her arm strapped tight to her side.

  “We didn’t want to move you any more than we had to,” he explained. You’ve bled quite a bit, and you’ve got some torn muscles and ligaments, but otherwise you’re as good as new. The worst was fishing all that cloth out of the wound.”

  “Did I talk under the ether again?”

  “Did you!” He pushed the hair off her cheek with his fingers, his face as open and tender as it had been when he said goodbye to Teddy. “You quite embarrassed me, you know.” He kissed her gently on the lips, his mouth a promise.

  “No more fear?”

  “It’s way too late for that, my love. Will it bother you to marry beneath you? As my stepmother was fond of pointing out, being a physician simply isn’t done, my dear — all that blood and smell, how awful!”

  The door burst open. “Put ’er on the table, lads,” Ames said. “Can’t hardly tell is she dead yet or not, doctor. We found ’er in the pool with a great smear of blood around ’er in the water. Looks ter be stabbed.”

  “All right, Ames,” Jarrell replied wearily. “You can stay, but I want the others out. I wouldn’t look if I were you, Lisa.”

  But Lisa couldn’t look away. The elegant head dripped water and slime, and the golden skin was golden no longer; her face looked like that of a marble statue. With a scalpel, Jarrell cut away her dress and corset, releasing the full breasts that had once driven Matthew Stephens half out of his mind. Beginning just above and to the side of

  the navel a long, open wound like an obscene mouth ran up and across her ribs almost to her breast. There wasn’t even much blood.

  Jarrell and Ames stood looking at her for a moment. “I hope she died before she drowned,” Jarrell said at last. “She was always terrified of the water.” He covered her with the sheet.

  “Who did it?”

  “Tatty Price.” At Ames bewildered look, Jarrell went on, “She came back looking for her Henry, who was killed by my sister and brother in self-defense and buried in one of the stalls.” He shook his head. “Difficult as it seems to believe, she apparently genuinely loved that fat, slovenly, lecherous creature.”

  “And where is she?”

  “She shouldn’t be difficult to catch, but you may have to hurry if you want to beat her to it, taking her life, that is. Call some of your men back, though, and we’ll bury Carrie and Eric together. Henry you’ll have to take back to Dunwiddleston.”

  Jarrell and Ames left, and she drifted back to sleep again. It was dark by the time she woke, and Jarrell had lit a lamp and was once more sitting beside her.

  He saw she was awake. “I’m past all feeling,” he said. “I had them get the old stone sled from the carriage house. Toby and I hitched Samson to it, and we took Christian and buried him on one side of Eric, Carrie on the other. If it weren’t for you, I’d wish to be buried there myself. Oh God, I’m so tired.” He bent his head until his forehead rested on her good shoulder.

  “The nightmare is over, my love,” she said, stroking his head. “We’ll go away from here, and you shall have your hospital and I shall have your children and we’ll live happily ever after. I promise.”

  He raised his head. “We’ll find a place that has moor for you and ocean for me. And when no one’s looking, we’ll dress you in my clothes and go searching for the red and fallow deer.”

  “How nice,” Lisa said dreamily. “You know, I’ve never even seen the sea.”

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  Joan Van Every Frost, Lisa