Curse of Black Tor

by Toombs, Jane

  “ I’d prefer coffee, sugar only,” Martha told her. “Otherwise I like surprises.”

  Josephine narrowed her eyes. “I don't think you do, not really. You're a Capricorn, and they always like to know exactly where they are. ” ''

  “How did you know I was a Capricorn?”

  “You act like one. I can usually tell. Cathleen's a Gemini—very charming. Of course, you can't trust her. But, then, I don't trust people much, anyway. And Sarah's a Sagittarius, arrow straight.”

  “What are you?” Martha asked.

  “A Scorpio. That's why I have secret knowledge of things. Scorpios do.”

  “Then your birthday is soon. ” ''

  “Oh, yes. Soon. And daddy promised me he wouldn't change his W w ill like Jules wants. So I'll have money, and then I'll leave. Diego will come and get me, he'll take me away from Black Tor and I'll be safe forever.”

  “Does—does Diego know about the money?”

  Josephine shook her head and laughed. “I know what you're thinking. But he doesn't know—how could he? It's me—he loves me, and he's come back for me.”

  Then why doesn't he come to the house? Martha thought. Why doesn't he meet your brother and ask to see you here? But she remained silent.

  “Daddy gave you the history—are you really going to read it?” Josephine pointed to the book Martha still held.

  “Yes.”

  “There've been others like me—you'll find out. That's when I knew I wasn't mad at all—when daddy gave me the book to read.” Josephine sat on the bed. “You expect me to be sorry about him dying, don't you? But it was too late when he started paying attention to me. I couldn't pretend to love him. He never loved me or my mother. Only Jules's mother. He even named me after her. That's why I won't let anyone use a nickname for me. No one called her Josephine, even if it was her real name. She was always Josie.”

  Josephine got up with a sudden movement and brushed past Martha. “I'm going to my room. I'll leave the door open, though, so you can come in if you want later on. ” ''

  After Josephine went out, Martha lay on the bed and began thinking of Simon, the man who took care of Norman Garrard. Could Simon have been the one in her room the night before? She hadn't liked the way he'd looked at her—not at all.

  She picked up the history of the Garrard family.

  “If Abel Garrard had been in the right place at the right time, he would have, without question, become a pirate and a very capable one,” the book began.

  Martha read of how he'd made a fortune in sealing and built Black Tor in 1880, when he tired of rented quarters. Norman, his first child, was born ten years later. Old Abel had turned up his nose at building on the fashionable streets in Victoria. Not for him a mansion along Rockland Avenue next to Robert Irving's or Rout Harvey's. He wouldn't have a Stoneyhurst, but he'd have Black Tor, built where he wanted his home. Apart from others as he felt himself apart from the common run of humanity. The prominent of Victoria be damned. With mounting horror, Martha read of the cruelties of the sealing industry. When so many of the breeding females had been killed off that the seal population declined, Abel Garrard, foreseeing the death of the industry, sold his boats and got out before the market plummeted. He then managed to latch on to the very profitable market for outfitting eager gold seekers on their way to the Klondike. He still made still more money. Victoria boomed with the Canadian-Alaskan gold rush.

  Norman's mother had died only a few years after his birth, and Abel raised the boy as best he could with a succession of Indian and Scottish housekeepers. He didn't marry for years. Then, when Norman was eighteen, Abel surprised everyone by his marriage to a young woman. This second wife in due time produced Natalie, but then she succumbed to “galloping consumption.” So much death among the Garrard women—

  So Norman had been raised without a mother—as Josephine had been, Martha thought sleepily. And how about Sarah? What had become of her mother, whoever she was? Had Jules bought her off, or was she dead, too?

  Martha jerked herself awake. / I shouldn't sleep, she thought. Rising, she made her way to Josephine's room.

  Josephine was lying face down on the bed. She sat up and glared at Martha. “What are you doing in here?”

  Martha stepped backward. “I thought you didn't mind if I came in.”

  Josephine's eyes were red rimmed, as though she'd been crying. “Why can't you leave me alone? I don't care what Dr. Marston told you—I won't try to kill myself. Stop watching me!”

  “I'll be next door if you want me,” Martha told her as she left.

  What was wrong with Josephine now?

  After an uneventful dinner, Martha returned to her room and locked the door. Then, recalling Dr. Marston's words, she turned off her light, lifted the lithograph from the wall and peered into Josephine's room. It's no worse than looking through the window slit at a psychotic patient behind the locked doors at Camarillo, she told herself. Still, Josephine wasn't psychotic. Or was she? Martha shifted from one foot to the other as she watched Josephine, then turned away as the girl began to undress. I / don't like spying, Martha thought, and got into her bed.

  The next she knew, the room was bright with morning. Her eyes flew to the clock beside her bed. Eight! She hurried to the peephole and saw that Josephine's bed was empty, but she could hear water running and thought the girl might be taking a shower. Martha hung the lithograph back in place and hurried to dress herself. She wore khaki denim pants with a rust-colored buttoned shirt that she left open at the neck. Would Josephine still plan on the picnic, or would she have a new whim that day?

  She unlocked her door and knocked at Josephine's.

  Josephine's eyes were clear when she came out of her room—no sign of the previous day's tears. “You haven't forgotten about the picnic?” she asked.

  “No, I dressed purposely for it.”

  “We can leave about ten-thirty—Sarah will be through with her morning lessons by then.”

  Lessons? Oh, yes, with Louella Gallion, the cousin who had retired from school teaching. Louella, who never spoke at the table.

  “Where are we going?” Martha asked.

  Josephine glanced at her sideways. “You said you liked surprises.”

  Martha frowned at something odd in Josephine's voice. She looked at her, but Josephine's face was averted.

  They ate breakfast with Cathleen.

  “A wonderful day for painting,” Cathleen said. “Look at that sky. I'm going down to the cove and paint corny water scenes until I drop.”

  “What do you do in Seattle?” Martha asked. “Do you have a gallery?”

  “I should be so fortunate.” Cathleen's voice was rueful. “No, I'm in commercial art. Tiresome, but a living.”

  “Where's my picture?” Josephine asked.

  “Oh, it's still in the car—I forgot to bring it in last night. Hold on—I’ll get it now.” Cathleen put down her coffee cup and went out. The canvas was large—at least three feet by four.

  “You got it right,” Josephine said, her eyes shining. “How did you know, Cathleen?”

  “A fishing boat you asked for, a fishing boat you got,” Cathleen answered. She smiled, seemingly gratified by Josephine's pleasure.

  “Look, Martha, see how the nets go up here like this? Have you ever seen a salmon boat?”

  “Not that I paid attention to,” Martha replied.

  She gazed at the painting. The boat stood by a wooden dock at sunset. The fishermen were gone, only a few gulls remained, not flying but perched on the posts of the pier. Like mourners, Martha thought unexpectedly. The work was skillfully done, but the picture depressed Martha. Was it the color? Red with the sun setting? No, not exactly, though the red was disquieting—a bloody red.

  I don't like it, she thought. I feel as though everyone isn't just home having supper but permanently gone. Dead. The boat will rot and the gulls fly away. She shivered involuntarily and tried to mask it by rising and pouring herself more coffee.

  At
ten-thirty Sarah skipped into the foyer, where Martha and Josephine waited for her, and the three of them went out into the woods. Martha wondered where they were in relation to what she'd seen from the tower windows. She turned around and tried to tell. Although she could see the tower rising white, the windows glittering in the sun, there were too many trees between them and the house to pinpoint their position.

  “I could easily get lost,” Martha said.

  “No, you couldn't,” Sarah told her. “You can always see the tower, so you don't have to worry. They came out at last onto a promontory where rock pushed through the ground. Geraniums grew in the soil between the rocky outcrops and tumbled in colorful fountains over the cliff edge. Sarah ran and peered over, while Martha caught her breath in alarm.

  “Sarah—be careful!” she called after her.

  “Oh, I won't fall. I'm a—I'm an ibex. That's a mountain goat.” She grinned widely, then scampered back the way they'd come. “I saw some blackberries,” she said. “I'm going to pick them.”

  Josephine dropped the blanket she'd been carrying, then bent to spread it out, and Martha set down the basket.

  “We're not—are we going to eat right on the cliff?” Martha asked.

  “Why not? There's a wonderful view. Look.” Josephine threw out her hand in a gesture that took in the water, the sky, the islands and the mainland of Canada and the United States.

  Martha wondered at her own uneasiness. Heights had never bothered her. She approached the verge and looked down. High enough that a fall might well be fatal—especially with the boulders at the bottom. If not, one could drown in the water lapping at the base. She glanced back and was disconcerted to find Josephine directly behind her, her hands half raised.

  “Were you thinking of how lucky I was?” Josephine asked. “I haven't been back here since the day someone pushed me over.”

  Chapter Nine

  Martha looked behind Josephine, but Sarah was nowhere in sight. A tingle of f ear ran along her spine.

  “Of course I wouldn’t push you over,” Josephine said.

  Was there a tinge of mockery in her voice? Martha took a step toward her and Josephine turned aside to let her pass. Surely she’d imagined the implied threat. Why would Josephine want to harm her?

  “The insane have their own logic.” Who’d told her that? One of the doctors at Camarillo, most likely. “Don’t think they can’t reason--it’s just that they reason from their own reality, instead of the one we recognize.”

  Was Josephine’s reality so different that it didn’t fit into the real world?

  Despite the sun glittering on the water and warm on her shoulders, Martha felt cold. A fresh breeze blew across the promontory. An unlikely place to choose for a picnic.

  Why had Josephine brought her here?

  “How--what were you doing when you fell?” Martha asked.

  “I didn’t fall. I’d been sitting on a blanket reading, and the next thing I knew I was home in bed.”

  “I found her.” Sarah’s voice startled Martha.

  She turned and saw the girl standing beside her, mouth stained by blackberries.

  “I was sort of following Jo--she used to yell at me when she caught me, but I did anyway. When she started to read, I went to see if I could find any chestnuts, and I heard something—I don't know, a kind of noise like word Ahlmakoh would make--and I was a little scared so I ran out of the woods toward the cliff, but no one was here. Only the book and the blanket and the basket. At first I though t maybe he really had gotten Jo and I wanted to run but I looked over the edge in case…”

  “There's a rock about ten feet down,” Josephine said. “I'd gotten lodged there, somehow. I don't know how they ever got me back up.”

  “Bill Wong climbed down with a rope,” Sarah said. “Henry helped him. It was real exciting.”

  “This is the first time I've been back,” Josephine said.

  “Who did you think you heard in the woods?” Martha asked Sarah.

  “Oh, that's those Indian legends Matthew tells her,” Josephine said. “Ahlmakoh is sort of a—a woods demon, I guess you might say.”

  “Do you believe he's real?” Martha asked Sarah.

  “Not exactly,” Sarah said. “Mostly I'm not afraid in the woods. But it was a funny noise.”

  Sarah walked over and opened the basket lid. The cook had fixed egg and salmon-salad sandwiches. There was a thermos of coffee, as well as one of hot chocolate, and apples, cheese and peanut butter cookies for dessert. The food was well prepared, and Martha enjoyed her salmon-salad sandwich, but she found the coffee so bitter it was almost undrinkable and swallowed only enough to wash down the bread and later a cookie.

  “Do you want to pick blackberries?” Sarah asked. “I know where they are.”

  They were sitting on the blanket, and the breeze had lessened, making the spot more pleasant. Martha looked at the green islands against the blue water and thought she'd never seen anything quite so beautiful. The clear sharpness of the colors was different from the tropical lushness of the Hawaiian Islands, although, come to think of it, she felt some of the same languor.

  “I'm going to read,” Josephine said.

  “I think I'll just sit here and relax,” Martha told Sarah. She watched the little girl walk away from the cliff, then stretched out alongside Josephine, who was lying on her stomach, the book open in front of her.

  “I’m so sleepy ” Martha said. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.” She saw Josephine glance at her, and then that was all she remembered until she heard a child screaming somewhere.

  Why couldn't she open her eyes? Martha wondered. That child, whoever it was, needed help. She was a nurse, she could help… But the soft darkness held her suspended.

  Too much effort to wake up. Best to forget, to sleep…

  “Martha!” Her name, the girl was calling her name—shrieking, rather. Was it Sarah?

  Martha opened her eyes. All she could see was water, dark blue water swirling into white foam over the black rocks below her. She blinked, trying to clear her head.

  “Martha! Please wake up and move—you're going to fall.”

  It was Sarah's voice. Martha tried to raise her head and realized with a sudden jolt of terror that she was lying on the very edge of the cliff. She scrabbled backward as best she could, sending a shower of dirt and broken geraniums down the cliffside.

  “Oh, Martha, I thought you'd never hear me!” Sarah said.

  Martha crawled away from the cliff, unable to trust herself to stand. She felt dizzy and uncoordinated. The blanket surely hadn't been that close when she'd gone to sleep…

  Sarah grasped the corner of the blanket and pulled it away from the cliff edge. “Why did you move the blanket over?” she asked Martha. “You almost fell like Jo.”

  Josephine! Where was she? Martha looked around, her head spinning. She caught her breath—had Josephine gone over the edge?

  She stared at the little girl, with her blackberry-stained hands and mouth. Obviously Sarah had been in the woods again. “Did you see anyone?” she asked. “Where's Josephine?”

  “Jo's gone somewhere. She was gone when I came back.”

  Involuntarily Martha stared at the cliff.

  “Jo's not down there,” Sarah said with an unbelievable calmness. “I looked. She must have gone for a walk.”

  Martha tried to organize her thoughts. First of all, she'd been drugged. It wasn't hard to connect that with the bitter coffee. Thank God she hadn't had much of it. Barbiturates? If so, the coffee must have been really supersaturated for her to be so affected from the small amount she'd drunk.

  She remembered telling Josephine the day before that she'd rather have coffee than hot chocolate. Had Josephine drugged the coffee to get her out of the way for a while? Out of the way permanently? Why? Operating on her own logic?

  “We've got to find Josephine,” Martha said to Sarah. “Where do you think she went?”

  Sarah shook her head and shrugged.
/>   Martha got slowly to her feet, clutching at the girl's shoulder for support.

  “Don't you feel good?” Sarah asked.

  “I'll be all right.” But she swayed, unable to walk. As her legs gave way under her, she saw a man come out of the woods. Jules. She was helpless, falling forward, the blackness closing in....

  Martha roused to voices: “Couldn't wake her up. I knew something was wrong so I...”

  She opened her eyes and saw Josephine’s concerned face above hers. Jules was kneeling beside her. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Groggy. The coffee--”

  “Oh, of course,” Josephine said. “Sarah and I didn’t drink any coffee.”

  “Can you walk if we help you?” Jules asked. “I’ll try,” Martha said. “Exercise may help clear my head.” Jules assisted her to her feet. “I had to pull her blanket back from the edge of the cliff--it was right there,” Sarah said. She pointed. “I made Martha wake up so she wouldn’t fall.”

  Josephine clutched at Martha’s arm, eyes wide with what looked like genuine panic. “Did you move that close to the edge, Martha?”

  “No. But I--I don’t know what happened.”

  When they arrived back at the house and Martha got up to her room, she fell asleep almost immediately, not rousing until she became aware of an insistent tapping. The room was dark. Martha sat up in bed, the coverlet falling away from her. In confusion, she realized she was dressed, even though it seemed to be night.

  Someone was rapping at her door. She flicked on the bedside light and saw that it was almost ten o’clock. Her mouth tasted stale and her head throbbed. She made her way to the door and opened it.

  Jules stood in the hall with a tray, “I watched Elsa fix this food,” he said. “I can vouch for it.” She wanted to trust him, but right now it was hard to trust anyone. Could Jules be trusted? She stood aside and Jules entered her room. She tried to smooth her hair and was conscious of her rumpled clothes.

  “I'm sorry to have to wake you, but we must talk,” Jules said.