Curse of Black Tor

by Toombs, Jane

  “So you really have only one year accounted for?”

  “I guess so. But I don't actually remember the farm, either. Only about the zodiac and my—occult learning. That came from the two years.”

  “Did your father ever mention how he located the farm?”

  Josephine shook her head. “He wouldn't tell me.”

  Martha made up her mind to visit Norman Garrard again. He had wanted to tell her more before Natalie had interrupted. Was it about the missing years in Josephine's life? If he really believed his daughter was in danger, couldn't it be because of those two years? After all, she had always been his heir, hadn't she? She and Jules. Back to Jules again.

  Martha rose from the bed. “Cathleen's invited Bran Lowrey to the party tomorrow,” Martha said. “You'll have a chance to meet him. I think you'll like him.”

  Josephine clasped her hands together convulsively, dropping her book. “Maybe I will,” she said after a moment. “Do you like him?”

  “Yes,” Martha answered.

  “Do you think he's good-looking?”

  “I suppose so, yes. Cathleen certainly thought so.”

  “Are you--interested in him?”

  Martha glanced at Josephine, who smiled disarmingly. “I don't know exactly how to put it. I like Bran, just as I like Charn. But interested...?”

  Josephine looked at her slyly under her lashes. “You like Jules better, don't you? Cathleen does and you do, too. I can tell. Well, you'd best be careful. Jules can be ruthless. Cynthia was terrified of him before she--died.”

  “In an accident?” Martha asked.

  Josephine laughed shrilly. “Yes, an accident. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Like I was supposed to fall off the cliff, only I didn't die.”

  Martha stared at her.

  “Everyone said Cynthia was clumsy because she was pregnant,” Josephine added.

  “The baby...?”

  “Oh, it died, too. Inside her, I mean. She was only about six months along.”

  The Garrards had an unpleasant history of accidents, Martha thought. Had she been meant to have an “accident,” too? To fall from the cliff while she was drugged?

  “Miss Eccles slipped on the stairs, just like Cynthia,” Josephine said. “She was lucky to only break a leg.”

  Sarah edged into the room. “You went someplace two days in a row,” she said accusingly, glowering at Martha. “You didn't even ask me if I wanted to go on the boat yesterday, and neither did Charn. I thought you were going to be my friend.”

  “I am,” Martha said. “And next time I go anywhere, I'll see if you can come, too. After all, Josephine didn't go with me, either, so you shouldn't be angry.”

  “Cathleen says I can come to the party for a while tomorrow, but I know Aunt Natalie will make me go to bed early and I'll miss most of it,” Sarah complained.

  Why didn't Jules send this child to school, where she'd have other children her age to make friends with? It was monstrous shutting her up in that house. Martha wondered if she could tackle Jules about finding a school for Sarah.

  “Jo, what are you reading?” Sarah asked. “Will you read to me?”

  “Not this. You're too young for Sylvia Plath.”

  Martha eyed the slim white volume in Josephine's lap. Ariel. Johann had liked Plath. “She's right, you know,” Martha remembered him saying. “Dying is an art, the greatest challenge for any human. Not the phony staggering around clutching at one's chest and then delivering a three-minute monologue—not a stage death. But dying. Going out with style.”

  “I thought Plath stuck her head in an oven,” Martha had said.

  Johann had flung Ariel across the room, crying, “You can't understand the simplest abstraction! God save me from Capricorns!”

  When Martha went to her own room, Sarah was sitting in Josephine's lap, the two of them on the floor, and Josephine was teaching her a song about the wind, which she said she'd learned when she was a girl in school.

  After dinner that evening, Martha made her way quietly along the corridor leading to Norman Garrard's quarters. She kept an eye out for Natalie, not wishing to upset her again. What an odd match, Matthew and Natalie, She had married late in life, according to Josephine, and Matthew was certainly younger than she. It was hard to think of any man falling in love with the formidable Natalie. Yet Matthew certainly seemed to care for her.

  In Norman's room Martha found Simon helping the old man drink orange juice. “Hello, Mr. Garrard,” she said, deliberately not speaking to Simon. “Are you feeling well enough for a visitor?” Simon put down the glass and hurried toward her. “What're you doing in here?” he muttered as he came close. “Mr. G. didn't ask you....”

  Martha ignored him and went to the bedside.

  “Evening,” Norman said. He caught Simon's eye and motioned for him to go out.

  Simon stood his ground for a moment, glaring at Martha. Then he shrugged and obeyed.

  “I wanted to ask you where you found Josephine. She thinks it was Oregon.” Martha grasped the hand that groped toward her, feeling his thready pulse under her fingers.

  “Malville. Inland. Farm. People named Reynolds. Thought the woman knew. Something. Wouldn't tell me. Offered money. Nothing. Brought Josephine back here. Take care.”

  “I will. But how did she get to Oregon?”

  He shook his head. Oxygen bubbled through the water bottle on the tank and into the old man's nose. His lips were blue.

  “Does Jules...?” she began, and then saw Norman's eyes widen and look past her.

  She turned. Jules stood in the doorway.

  “I hardly think my father's in any shape to have you visit him daily,” Jules said.

  “That's what I told her,” Simon said from behind Jules. He stalked toward the bed. “She walks in here like she owned the place, and I said—”

  “Please come downstairs,” Jules said to Martha.

  She followed him.

  When they were in the library, he closed the door and sat behind the desk, stranding her on the other side. “What's your business with my father?” he asked.

  “Josephine, ” she said bluntly. “He knows where she was. He brought her back to Victoria.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “He did. He sent for me yesterday and told me. I went back today to find out more if I could— because Natalie interrupted yesterday. He—your father—won't talk if there's anyone else around. He says nobody knows but him.”

  “That's true. What else did he tell you?”

  “Just that he wanted me to—to keep Josephine safe.”

  “So you said yesterday.”

  “He says she's not crazy. Jules, why is everyone in the house so—strange about Josephine? Cathleen treats her like a child, Charn teases or ignores her and you—punish her.”

  “Punish her?” Jules's voice rose.

  “You keep her a virtual prisoner in this house. She's immature—she does react childishly—but no one's allowing her to grow up. She needs people her age, something to do...”

  “She won't see her friends.”

  “Oh, Jules, she doesn't have any friends after all this time—she's too far removed now from those girls she went to school with.”

  “What would you suggest I do?”

  “Bran Lowrey offered to take both Josephine and me on a sightseeing excursion. I think it would do her good, and surely with two of us to look after her....”

  “I'll consider it.”

  “Then maybe next semester Josephine and I could go together to a class or two at the university. Something like that.”

  Jules sighed. “I wish I could be as optimistic as you are,” he said.

  “Stasis solves nothing,” she told him. “I'm sorry if I've troubled you by seeing your father, but I certainly know enough not to endanger his life.”

  “I should have known a redhead would demand action.”

  Martha touched her hair. “Oh, I'm not really,” she said.

  “
Blond Marty Collier,” the papers had called her.

  “A red-gold,” Jules insisted. “You have lovely hair.”

  “Thank you.” She heard the stiffness in her words. But he'd been the one to put the desk between them, reminding her that she was his employee. Still, it warmed her that he liked her hair. Johann had insisted that she become a blonde for him--

  “Martha...”

  She looked up and met Jules's eyes. Her breath caught.

  The door flew open. “Aha—there you are!” Cathleen whirled into the room and perched on the desk. “Jules, I absolutely must have both Henry and Bill for at least an hour this evening or the treasure hunt will be a total failure.”

  “Can I help?” Martha asked politely.

  Cathleen looked at her. “Why—I imagine you can. Help me round up the men and we'll see.”

  Once they had left the library and were crossing the foyer, Cathleen grasped Martha's arm. “If you know what's good for you, you'll leave Jules alone,” she said.

  “I'm not—”

  “Don't come over all smarmy with me like you do with him. I'm no fool. I can tell what you're up to. Stay away from him if you want to stay at Black Tor.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  After Cathleen stalked off. Martha went upstairs and continued reading the Garrard family history.

  She found that Norman's mother had also died in an accident, a streetcar had been crossing the Point Ellice Bridge on a May afternoon in 1896, when a rotten beam in the center span of the bridge gave way and the streetcar plunged into the water below. Amanda Garrard was one of the passengers who perished. What she was doing on the streetcar without her husband or son was not mentioned. It seemed odd to Martha—surely with Abel's wealth Amanda would have had her own carriage.

  At least everyone had been sure of her death, unlike Abel's twin sisters, who were “presumably lost overboard” while on a boat bound for Vancouver. Or the Garrard cousin—again female—who was “missing from her room one morning and was never again seen on the face of this earth.”

  Is that what Josephine had meant when she'd said there were others like her? Was there a sinister quirk in the Garrard heritage—a darkness that settled over the mind? For certainly the tendency toward a certain type of mental illness was inherited.

  Martha's attention strayed from the book and she found herself wondering about Miss Eccles's accident. Josephine's former nurse suspected that she hadn't merely fallen on the stairs. I could go and see her, Martha thought. She's right here in Victoria, in St. Joseph’s Hospital.

  Jules might not approve, but he needn't know. Jules. Martha sighed. She didn't need Cathleen's warning to realize that she should avoid him. Not that Cathleen had the right...

  Martha closed the book sharply.

  The party was the following day. She wasn't looking forward to it at all. Parties were a reminder of the bad times with Johann; toward the last, his parties had been demonic nightmares.

  But presumably there'd be no overt sex at a party held at Black Tor. Jules wasn't the kind of man to permit it.

  Why do I find him so fascinating? she asked herself. Must I always choose badly? He's a dangerous man. He could be hoping to gain control of Josephine's share of their inheritance. Would that be so very difficult? Have Josephine committed to a mental hospital—be declared her guardian. What choice more natural than her brother? But, then, why try to kill Josephine?

  However the next morning, when Jules invited her to visit Butchart Gardens, she accepted without any hesitation, all dark thoughts of him firmly pushed to the back of her mind.

  “Josephine's caught up in the party plans,” he said. “This may be your last outing for—well, for some time.” He frowned. “I'd like to think she won't descend into her usual depression afterward, but I'm not an optimist. Besides, I’d like to take you somewhere.”

  She wrenched her gaze from his face. “I'd love to go,” she said. “Bran told me the gardens are unbelievable.” She thrust Bran's name between them deliberately, but Jules seemed not to notice.

  How does Jules feel about me? Martha asked herself. Was there no love in his kiss, in his embrace? Does he see me as a Nidat to be conquered by sex? Has he known all along about Marty Collier?

  But none of it mattered. She wanted to go with him, and she felt a flare of satisfaction as she thought of Cathleen’s annoyance .

  “We’ll go after lunch. ” Jules said.

  Martha found Josephine on the back terrace with Cathleen and Sarah. Sarah ran over to her and took her hand. “They aren't going to let me help in the treasure hunt tonight!” she complained.

  “You know very well you aren't allowed outside after dark,” Cathleen told Sarah.

  “Don't be sulky,” Josephine added. “Aunt Natalie would never let you, even if we said you could.”

  “But I'll miss all the fun!” Sarah wailed. She tugged at Martha's hand. “Can't you make them let me?”

  “It's not my party,” Martha said. “And if the treasure hunt is to be after dark, then I think probably you should— ”

  “Oh—you're as bad as they are!” Sarah cried. Then she ran from the terrace, across the lawn, and disappeared behind a privet hedge.

  Martha hesitated, then started after the girl.

  “She's spoiled,” Cathleen said. “Always gets her own way. Just ignore her—she’ll get over it.”

  Spoiled? A child for whom no one seemed to take direct responsibility? Martha walked across the neatly clipped grass. When she came to the hedge, she peered around, but there was no sign of Sarah. A man bending over a flower bed glanced up when she appeared.

  “Have you seen Sarah—the little girl?” she asked.

  He stood up. “She ran past me but I don't know where she went.”

  Martha noted his Oriental features. “Are you Bill Wong?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Then you're the one who took the note for Josephine the other day. Sarah said a man gave you the note.”

  He looked at her, saying nothing.

  “Could you describe the man? Have you ever seen him before. Do you know who he is?” Martha asked.

  Bill Wong shook his head.

  “You can't even describe him?”

  He shrugged. “Didn't pay any attention,” he said.

  “Well, was he tall? Short?”

  “I couldn't say, miss.” Bill knelt beside the roses and began digging around their roots with a cultivator fork, dismissing her.

  Martha controlled her annoyance and walked on past him to the edge of the woods. “Sarah!” she called.

  The trees had huge trunks, with their branches meeting overhead to darken the paths between them.

  “Sarah!” she called again, not eager to venture into the gloom.

  “What do you want?”

  Martha started as the girl seemed to materialize in front of her. “I thought maybe we could talk.”

  “What about?” Sarah's eyes were red, but she'd stopped crying. “You don't really like me, either. Nobody does.”

  “I do like you,” Martha said. “How can you find your way about in the woods? I'm afraid I'd be lost in no time.”

  “It used to be a grove,” Sarah said. “But then they let the trees go wild. Most of the time I like the woods. I don’t really believe Ahlmakoh lives in there. That’s for babies.”

  “Ahlmakoh--the woods spirit?”

  “That’s right, Ahlmakoh’s sort of a bad spirit who lives in the woods. He can be real fierce and mean.”

  “Does your Uncle Matthew tell you lots of stories about the Indian spirits?” Martha asked.

  “Some. There‘s the Yaai. They live on mountaintops and disappear like fog. Only they’re little and can sort of fly like fairies. He says maybe they’re the ghosts of little girls.” Ghosts of little girls? Martha thought. Isn't that rather gloomy to be telling a child?

  “I don't know your Uncle Matthew very well,” Martha said to Sarah.

  “He talks to me sometimes. I
like him better than Aunt Natalie. But Uncle Norman's the best of all. I'm sorry he's going to die.”

  “Do you have any friends to play with around here?” Martha asked.

  “I used to play with Jimmy Smithson sometimes—Bill Wong is his grandfather. But Aunt Natalie made Bill stop bringing him here.”

  When they neared the terrace, Sarah darted away from Martha and went around toward the front of the house. Martha climbed the steps to rejoin Cathleen and Josephine.

  “Well, is she over her sulks?” Cathleen asked.

  “More or less,” Martha said. “I’ve wondered why she isn’t sent off to school--it seems so lonesome for her out her. No other children to play with.”

  Cathleen shrugged. “That's Jules's stiff neck.” She smiled narrowly. “You don't know him very well.”

  “Oh, Martha's half in love with him just like you are,” Josephine said. “For all the good that will do either of you. He's like Grandpa Abel—he'll never marry again until he gets old. Daddy was like that, too. And he shouldn't have married my mother. He never loved her at all.”

  “What are you making?” Martha asked, hoping to change the subject. She picked up one of the small packets bound with red ribbon that lay on the table.

  “Oh, we can't tell you—it's part of the treasure hunt,” Josephine said. “Only Cathleen and I know.”

  Thus dismissed, Martha entered the house. I must talk to Jules about Sarah, she thought. We could take her with us today, at least. I could say Josephine and Cathleen don't want her underfoot—which is true enough. When Jules and Martha drove away in the MG after lunch, Sarah was with them.

  “I thought this was Charn's car,” Martha said.

  “The cars belong to the estate,” Jules said. “My father wanted—wants—it that way.”

  That means what? Martha wondered. That Norman Garrard owns everything? “Is there a family business?” she asked.

  “Not any longer. Investments, mostly. My father inherited old Abel's penchant for selling out at the right time. We don't own anything outright, not now.”