Margot did her best to smooth the crumpled pleats of her dress as she walked to the dining room, but she was sure she looked a fright. She wished she could slip upstairs for a shower before speaking to anyone, but it didn’t seem fair. She knew her father, like Hattie, would be terribly worried.
She opened the door to find a quiet group around the table. Hattie was right. No one was eating much except Preston, who, despite the plaster of Paris cast on his arm, was working his way through a thick slice of ham. The bandage on his head was fresh and unstained, and both eyes were now uncovered. He said brightly, “Margot! So good of you to stay with our Blake all night! I don’t think Mater would have slept a wink otherwise!”
Margot moved to her chair, and Leona was there with the coffee before she had sat down. The girl stood back, the pot in her hands, and Margot nodded to her. “Thank you, Leona,” she said. “You can stay and hear about Blake. Then please explain everything to Loena.”
Leona bobbed a curtsy before she stepped forward to pour the coffee. Margot was too tired to feel even a flicker of annoyance at the curtsy. She picked up her cup, and took a grateful sip before she looked around at her family’s faces.
Dickson looked as worn as she felt. Dick wore a worried frown, and his eyes flicked between Margot and Preston. Margot met his gaze, and gave a brief shake of her head. She thought she would speak privately to him later.
Edith and Ramona, other than looking a bit pale, seemed as always. Edith leaned forward and said in her breathy voice, “Margot, dear. Is Blake all right? We’re just shocked to see how badly Preston was injured—he might have been killed!”
Preston took a mouthful of ham steak, and chewed it. She watched him as she set her coffee cup down. She said quietly, “I’m sorry, Mother, to bring bad news, but I’m afraid Blake is not all right.”
“Oh, dear,” Edith said.
Preston lifted his head, his blue eyes as innocent as a child’s. “He’s going to get better though, isn’t he, doc?”
“I wish I could say that with any confidence. He’s very ill.”
Leona gave a small hiccup of a sob. Edith breathed again, “Oh, dear. Poor Blake.”
Dick leaned forward, pushing his half-eaten breakfast out of the way. “Father said he hit his head and then had a heart attack. Does that make sense?”
Preston put down his fork, saying irritably, “Come on, Dick. Use your brain. He must have had the heart attack first, and that caused him to crash the car.”
Everyone turned to Margot for confirmation of this. She sighed. “We just don’t know. Preston was there, and if he can’t tell us what happened, we may never have an answer.”
“I told you what happened!” Preston said indignantly. “Why don’t you believe me?”
“Now, Preston, dear, you mustn’t excite yourself,” Edith said.
Dickson spoke over her. “You haven’t explained, Preston. Why not tell us now?”
“Tell you what?” Preston demanded. “I told you Blake crashed the car! What else do you need to know?”
Margot dropped her hands to her lap and wound them together. Perhaps she could hold on to her temper with her two hands, stop herself from throwing her coffee cup at Preston the way he had thrown his cut-glass tumbler at her. She spoke past a knot of anger in her chest. “Did Blake complain of chest pain while he was driving? Was he rubbing his arm, or doing anything to indicate he wasn’t feeling well?”
Preston glared at her. Margot noted that his color rose, and she could see the pulse speed in his throat. She liked it. Offense felt ever so much better than defense. She held Preston’s gaze with her own, and relaxed her hands beneath the table.
“Preston?” Dick prompted.
“How do I know how Blake was feeling?” Preston snarled. “He was the chauffeur—”
“Is,” Margot said icily.
“Oh, damn it, Margot. Slip of the tongue. Is the chauffeur! Am I supposed to notice everything about him? He was driving, I was thinking of something else. Bang!” He slammed his good hand on the table, making the china and both Edith and Ramona jump. “The car smashed into a tree.”
Margot’s own heart beat faster, as if she were running a race. Or doing battle. Preston’s gaze bored into hers, and she had no doubt he knew exactly what she was doing. He knew she didn’t believe a word he said.
She didn’t, in fact, believe him. It was not just that his injuries and Blake’s were so utterly different. She felt it in her belly, in her bones, that her brother had been lying from the beginning. She might never know the truth, but she would not give him the satisfaction of thinking he had deceived her. She pressed him. “How did you break your arm, Preston? How did you get that cut on your head?”
He suddenly sagged back in his chair, putting his hand to his face and causing his mother to lean close to him with concern. “I don’t know,” he said in a piteous voice. “I can’t remember. It’s all—it’s all black.” He dropped his hand. “Is that normal, do you think, Margot? Will it ever come back to me? I mean, a trauma like that—”
Margot said, “Blake is lying unconscious in the hospital, Preston, and you’re the only one who was there when he was injured.”
Ramona snapped, “For heaven’s sake, Margot. It seems you’re more concerned about a chauffeur than your very own brother!”
Margot turned swiftly to face her sister-in-law with cutting words rising to her lips. Dick forestalled her, saying, “Ramona, Blake is much more than a chauffeur to this family. He’s been with us since before I was born. You know that.”
Ramona cast an irritated glance at her husband, but she subsided. Hattie came in with a plate of freshly scrambled eggs and set it before Margot. She guided Leona out with her when she left the dining room. Margot picked up her fork and began to eat.
When she had finished the eggs, and declined a piece of ham steak, she lifted her coffee cup again. Edith said, “I’ll ring for fresh coffee, dear,” but Margot shook her head.
“This is fine, Mother.” She looked around the table at her solemn family. “I wish I had better news for you. I thought I should warn you, though—” Awareness of what might happen rolled over her again, all at once, and her hands suddenly trembled. Her eyes stung, and she thought, for a terrible moment, she might cry. She couldn’t do that. She didn’t dare. Not with Preston watching her across the table, searching for signs of weakness. She made herself drain the coffee cup before she put it down. “I thought I should make you aware of how serious it is.”
“Edith, we’ll go to visit Blake in the hospital,” Dickson said.
His wife turned a wide-eyed look on him. “In the colored wards, dear?”
Dickson, with a sudden movement, shoved his cup away from him so that coffee slopped over the white tablecloth. He growled, “Why the hell not, Edith dear? You didn’t mind if he took care of your children all of their lives! If he served your meals, managed your house, drove you to your endless luncheons, or waited in the car while you shopped for face powder or had your hair dressed. Why wouldn’t you walk into the hospital ward to see him?”
He pushed back his chair and stood. His jaw clenched as if to forestall more angry words. Everyone stared, shocked into silence, as he stalked out of the dining room.
Margot waited until he was gone before she, too, excused herself. She placed a call to Thea to explain why she wouldn’t be able to keep her clinic hours, then went up to her room, showered, and fell into bed to sleep for six solid hours.
When Margot woke, she dressed in a fresh skirt and shirtwaist before she went downstairs and out through the kitchen to go up to Blake’s apartment. She wanted to fetch him a proper set of nightclothes, perhaps a dressing gown. She stepped out the back door and looked up at his little window, the one that faced the lawn, the one where he often stood gazing at Benedict Hall. It was unthinkable that Blake might never again cast his protective eye over the house before he went to bed.
She was halfway down the short walk when the Essex rolled into the
drive. It made a terrible scraping noise as the wheels turned. Her father was in the front passenger seat, and Frank Parrish was driving.
Margot stopped to watch Frank negotiate the turn toward the garage. He seemed to manage the gearshift without trouble, moving his hand quickly back to the steering wheel when he had shifted down. He nodded grimly when he saw her, and turned off the motor.
Both men climbed out of the car and stood in front of it. The hood was crumpled, its hinged top flying open on one side. The windscreen was cracked, with great chunks of it gone. The fender on the driver’s side was scraping against the tire. Frank glanced up as Margot approached. “I’m so sorry to hear about Blake,” he said.
“How did you—” Margot looked at her father.
Dickson said, “I knew Major Parrish wasn’t working, so I called his rooming house. I was the one who bought this automobile, but I have no idea how to drive it. I didn’t know Preston did, either.”
“We all drove bits of machinery out in the East,” Frank said. He stepped away from the smashed car, and came to Margot. He took her hand, and said again, “So sorry, Margot . . .”
She clung to his hand, grateful for its warmth and strength. “Is it bad inside?”
“No. Just what you see, the fender and the hood and the windscreen.”
Startled, she turned toward the car. “There’s no damage inside at all? Blood, jagged bits of metal, maybe broken glass?”
“None that I saw.”
“Did you look in the backseat?”
He shook his head. Together they walked to the car, and Frank opened the rear door. He bent to look inside, and when he straightened, he said, “Don’t see anything.”
“But Preston—Preston was bleeding, and he has wounds on his head and face.”
“Maybe he was in the front.”
“He could have been, but there would be some sign, surely, if he hit the windscreen or the dashboard. . . .” Her voice trailed off as her father came around the car.
“I’d better go in. I’ll have to apologize to your mother,” Dickson said.
“She’s in the small parlor, I think.”
He nodded. “Thank you again, Major,” he said. “I don’t know what I would have done.”
“Happy I could help, sir.” Frank’s hand found Margot’s again as Dickson disappeared through the back door. As it closed behind him, Frank squeezed her fingers. “Are you all right?”
“He did something, Frank. Preston did something to Blake.”
“Your father said Blake had a heart attack.”
“He did.” She edged closer, yearning toward Frank’s strength and steadiness. “And a subsequent stroke. But there’s something strange about the whole thing, and Preston—he won’t talk about it. Now he claims he doesn’t remember, but I don’t believe him.”
“How is Blake doing now?”
She took an unsteady breath. “I’ve just spoken to the hospital. He’s still unconscious. I want to get back there as soon as I can.”
“It’s not good, is it?” he asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “There’s not much hope, I’m afraid. We’re doing all we can.”
He looked down into her face, and said softly, “Awfully hard on you, Margot.”
“Frank, I can hardly bear to look at him, lying there, so . . . so vulnerable.”
“I know.” His arm slipped around her, steadying her. It seemed impossible that only the night before they had laughed over dinner, that he had kissed her on the doorstep as if they were courting. As if they were innocent young lovers.
“I learned something last night,” Frank said. “After I left you. It’s something I think you should know.”
It didn’t take long to tell her about Carter, and about what he had done. Frank didn’t mention his money problems, because he was afraid she would try to give him money, and he couldn’t have borne that. He would have to find a way to explain his imminent departure from Seattle without sounding pitiful.
He followed Margot up the garage stairs to the small apartment where Blake had lived. It was painfully neat, just a few small belongings tucked into a cupboard. The door stood open to a narrow bedroom with a single bulb hanging from its ceiling. The little kitchen had a hot plate and a woodstove. A teacup rested in a strainer beside the tiny sink. A winter coat of brown wool hung on a peg rack, and over the back of a chair, Blake’s driving jacket. His cap lay on the table.
Margot sat down, and drew the cap toward her. She gazed at it as Frank explained that he had seen Carter out of town, that he had thought it best under the circumstances. “I hoped, if the rumors stopped—”
She nodded. “I appreciate that, Frank. It’s too late, unfortunately.”
“Is it?”
“It hardly seems to matter now, when Blake is all I can think of.” She turned her dark eyes up to him, and they were so sad his heart twisted with sympathy. “I went before the board this morning. They revoked my hospital privileges, because Preston told them I performed Loena’s abortion. As if I would have botched such a simple procedure!”
He sat opposite her, shaking his head, stunned by the unfairness of it. His arm ached, but that was no surprise. The whole world was full of pain.
“Blake found that out, and he was furious,” Margot said. “He was going to talk to Father, he said. I can’t think why he was driving Preston, or where they were going. He never did that.” She looked around the cramped kitchen. “Blake used to fix us cocoa up here,” she said in a small, flat voice. “Sometimes when it rained. And cinnamon toast. He let me use the toasting rack. Mother was never around, you know, and Blake was—he was—” She made an awful sound in her throat, more a groan than a sob. She buried her face in her hands and hunched forward, as if she could hold in her grief that way.
“Margot!” Frank got up, kicking his chair out of the way, and went to kneel beside her. He was on the wrong side, and it was awkward to try to reach his right arm around her, but somehow he managed. “Margot, for God’s sake. Cry if you need to.”
“He’s a servant!” Her voice was muffled by her hands. “Everyone will say he’s a servant, only Father’s Negro butler—but he’s so much more!” Her shoulders shook, and he held her tighter, as tightly as his one arm and strained position would allow. “No one will understand.” She shook with emotion within the circle of his arm. “Without Blake, I wouldn’t have survived my childhood. No one believes me, not even Dick, but Frank—Preston would have killed me! He tried, over and over again, and only Blake—”
Frank wanted to pry her hands away from her face, to draw her head to his shoulder, but he had no way to do that. Frustrated, feeling useless, he could only whisper, as she sobbed into her hands, “It’s all right, Margot. It’s going to be all right. Sweetheart, I’m right here.”
Margot, when the storm of her tears subsided, was afraid to show her face. She knew it must be red and swollen, and her nose as runny as an urchin’s. She drew a shuddering breath as she sat up, and tried to turn to one side.
She found Frank’s handkerchief, neatly ironed and folded, in front of her. With a little hiccup of thanks, she took it. When she had dried her eyes and blown her nose, she kept it. “I’ll see it’s cleaned,” she said lamely.
“Throw it away.” He helped her up, but she kept her eyes averted.
In a voice raw with weeping, she said, “I’m so sorry.”
“For being human?” She felt his arm come around her again, and she pulled away for fear the flood would return. He stepped back, a little stiffly.
“I don’t—I just don’t want to cry anymore, Frank. It won’t help Blake, and it never does any good that I can see.”
He said with a touch of irony, “I wouldn’t know.”
She managed a shaky laugh. “Most women cry often, I guess. I learned a long time ago that tears are a waste of time.”
“Not if they make you feel better.”
“Well.” She made a futile attempt to smooth her hair, then gave it up.
“I suppose I feel a little bit better.” She looked at him then, and tried to smile. Her lips felt thick and unsteady. “Maybe you should try it.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “No, thanks,” he said.
“No. I didn’t suppose you would.” She wiped her eyes again. “I’d better get back to the hospital. Blake’s nurse will need time off, and I don’t know if there’s anyone else to stay with him.”
“I’ll take you there.”
She gave him a grateful look. “Thank you,” she said. “That would be good, Frank.” She turned to Blake’s bedroom. “I want to take some things to him,” she said. “Nightclothes. A dressing gown. Maybe his toothbrush—what else does a man need?”
“Razor. Shaving soap and brush. Comb.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
Together, they went in search of these things. They were easily found among Blake’s simple, orderly possessions. There was a suitcase on the top shelf of the wardrobe, as well, an ancient cardboard one with a cracked handle. Frank pulled it down, and Margot looked at it doubtfully. “It’s awfully old,” she said. “I’ve never seen it before.”
“Doesn’t smell too good,” Frank said.
“I’ll get one of mine. I have an overnight case we can use.” They turned toward the stairwell, Margot’s arms full of clothes, and Frank carrying the shaving things.
Just at the top of the stairs, Margot stopped beside the peg rack. A sweater hung there, one he sometimes wore on cool nights. There was nothing else. “Why wasn’t he wearing his driving coat? And—where’s his cane?”
“He carried a cane?”
“No, he never carried it, but he had one. It had a marble head on it in the shape of a lion—we always loved looking at it when we were children, though we weren’t allowed to touch it. I think it belonged to someone he knew, out in South Carolina. His parents were slaves, you know. That cane always stayed right there, leaning against the rack. Always.”
“Was it worth stealing?”
“I don’t think so. The head was marble, but it wasn’t very big. The wood was cracked. It looked old.”
Benedict Hall Page 27