Cruel as the Grave (8 page)

Retty and Gerard kept them all laughing with a mock argument over the virtues of life in Houston. Helena couldn’t resist baiting her elder sister, and Harold jumped in loyally to support Helena when Retty thundered a broadside in her direction. The mood of the dinner was rather frenetic, and Maggie and Adrian sat quietly while the others kept the conversational ball zipping around the room. Claudine Sprayberry joined them as they were all sitting down at the table. In contrast to the nurse’s white uniform she had been wearing earlier, she now wore a bright yellow, sleeveless dress. Across her shoulders, Maggie noticed enviously, she wore a scarf interwoven with streaks of blue, red, and green. As cool air from the house’s overly efficient air-conditioning system drifted across her shoulders, Maggie wished that she too was wearing a scarf. Then her attention turned to the food, and she forgot about being cold.

After dessert—homemade vanilla ice cream that was so wonderful Maggie had no trouble eating a second helping—Retty steered them all toward a room at the back of the first floor. This room was their entertainment center, Retty explained to a curious Maggie. There was a state-of-the-art sound system and a huge collection of music. Mounted against one wall was a huge television screen, which looked to Maggie more like a small movie screen. Otherwise the room was furnished with leather chairs and small leather sofas scattered casually about, and the dark richness of the leather Maggie found oddly reassuring. This room, at least, looked like a place where someone spent a lot of time.

Sylvia joined them as they were discussing what movie to watch. She had given Henry his dinner and left him to sleep, she reported as she patted a beeper in her pocket. “If he can’t sleep or if anything bothers him, all he has to do is press a button, and I’ll be right upstairs,” she explained to Maggie and Gerard.

Helena suggested they should let Maggie or Gerard pick the movie for the night. Gerard waived his choice in favor of his daughter’s, so Maggie contemplated the astounding video collection. There had to be several hundred tapes in the specially designed cabinets in one wall, but finally her eyes rested on one title, “The Lion in Winter.” She hadn’t seen that one in quite a while, and it was one of the Audrey Hepburn movies she hadn’t bought for herself yet. “How about this one?” She handed it to Helena.

“Oh, we’re all Hepburn fans here,” Helena said, pleased with Maggie’s choice. “You’ll get no argument from me!”

Everyone else—including Adrian, Maggie noted with pleasure—seemed amenable. Adrian set everything up while the others arranged their seats. She found herself with Helena on a small couch directly in front of the screen, about eight feet back. The others settled themselves in chairs scattered in a loose semicircle behind the couch. Adrian turned off the lights, found his own seat, then clicked the remote control. Maggie snuggled down contentedly in the soft leather to watch one of her favorite movies.

For two-and-a-quarter hours she sat, barely moving, enthralled with a movie that she could quote in some scenes. Vaguely she was aware that, behind her, some of the others on occasion moved around, but her attention focused upon the screen. Helena beside her seemed just as absorbed in the movie as Maggie; she also never left her seat.

When the movie ended, Adrian flicked on the lights and set the tape rewinding. Retty had nodded off during the movie. The bright lights woke her up, and rather shamefacedly she rubbed her eyes as she smiled at Maggie.

Sylvia stretched before announcing that she was going to run upstairs to check on Henry. As she went out the door, Adrian asked them whether anybody would like something to drink. Before he had gone completely around the room, taking requests—Helena having dithered between a Shirley Temple and a Bloody Mary—Sylvia reappeared in the doorway, her face a grotesque caricature of horror.

She grasped the doorknob for support as her legs threatened to give way. “Somebody’s killed Uncle Henry!”

Chapter Five

For a long moment Sylvia’s words hung in the air, while all activity in the room froze. Stunned and disbelieving, Maggie glanced quickly around at the rest of the family.

The faces of her relatives were curiously blank, she noted. Adrian and Claudine were the only two in the group, besides Gerard, who evinced any emotion. Adrian was swallowing convulsively, while Claudine hugged herself and shivered, running her hands up and down her arms, her hands coming to rest on her bare shoulders.

The expression on Gerard’s face registered unbelieving horror, and Maggie could feel her own face slipping into a mirror image of her father’s as she finally accepted what Sylvia had told them. Trying not to cry, Maggie clutched at her father’s hand. He grasped it in his own. She noted dully that his hand felt as cold as hers.

Claudine moved first, her bright yellow dress a sudden blur of color and movement, pushing her way through the door, jostling Sylvia aside. Quickly Adrian followed her, and after a moment they could all hear the footsteps of the two rapidly ascending the marble steps. Gerard and Maggie began to follow, while Lavinia herded Sylvia toward a chair, clucking solicitously over the young woman. Retty, Harold, and Helena remained where they were, standing aimlessly near the doorway, still trying to absorb the impact of Sylvia’s announcement.

When Maggie and Gerard reached Henry McLendon’s bedroom, they found Claudine leaning against the closed door. “Don’t go in there,” she advised them bleakly. “Dear God above, it’s awful. I’d better go call the police.” She proceeded on shaky legs down the hall and disappeared inside her room next door.

The door opened, and Adrian stepped out. Pale of face, one hand rubbing his stomach, he glanced nervously between Maggie and her father. “There’s nothing any of us can do now,” he said blankly. “You’d better go back downstairs.”

He tried to push them gently back toward the stairs, but Gerard stood firm. “What happened?” His tone of voice was stern, a tone which had forced many a cocky graduate student to quail. Adrian’s normally assured manner was no proof against the older man’s air of command.

“He’s dead, and someone killed him,” Adrian said, his breathing ragged. “Let’s just leave it at that. Please.” He closed his eyes and covered them with one hand.

“Could someone have gotten into the house and done this?” Maggie asked, trying to control her trembling.

“No,” Adrian said, his voice flat. “I switched on the security system before we started the movie. No one could have gotten in.”

“Oh, my,” Gerard said softly. He reached out blindly for Maggie, who herself felt as if the floor were about to disappear beneath her. They clung to each other for a moment, until Adrian, recovering slightly, urged them to go downstairs.

With Adrian on one side and Maggie on the other, Gerard moved down the stairs as if he had aged forty years. This frightened Maggie for several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she had never seen her father in such a state. But at the back of her mind, she fretted over the fact that one member of the household was a murderer. Someone in the family had killed Henry McLendon.

By the time they reached the entertainment room again, Sylvia had evidently recovered enough to tell the others what she had found. Helena, pale but curiously dry-eyed, sat in the corner by herself, her fingers picking ceaselessly at something on the leg of her tracksuit. Retty sat with Sylvia, who cried quietly, while Retty patted her hands soothingly. Harold stood in a corner, his back to everyone else in the room. Lavinia sat curled up in a corner of one of the couches, nursing a glass of some dark-colored liquid.

Gerard’s entrance roused Helena from her quiet perch. After one long look at his face, she moved quickly to a cabinet in the wall, fetched out a decanter and a glass, and poured a generous amount of what looked to be brandy into the glass.

“You look like you need this,” she said gruffly to Gerard as she pushed the glass into his hands. “Drink up.”

Maggie weakly smiled her thanks at her aunt, who promptly fetched another glass for Maggie, whose pallor she seemed to notice for the first time. Gratefully Maggie sipped at the liquid while she watched the color come back into her father’s face. His breathing became gradually less labored, and Maggie’s concern for him ebbed a fraction.

“The police are on their way,” Claudine announced from the doorway. She headed for the brandy and poured herself a generous amount. Her hands were unsteady as she lifted the glass to her lips. She bolted back the shot of brandy like it was orange juice, then put her glass away. She plopped down on one of the sofas and leaned back, her eyes closed. Her arms crossed across her chest, Claudine massaged her shoulders through the thin material of her dress.

The silence grew uncomfortably longer as every person in the room glanced surreptitiously at the other occupants. The only exception was Gerard, whose eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the nearly empty glass in his hands. As she observed each of her relatives in turn, Maggie noted curiously that the blankness of expression had not cracked.
Why wasn’t anyone saying anything?
she wondered.
Were they all still so stunned that they couldn’t absorb what had happened?

Or were they afraid to look one another in the eyes, knowing that one of them had murdered Henry McLendon?

All at once, Maggie wanted nothing more than to leave the house, to go outside and breathe deeply of the outside air. The tenseness of the atmosphere crowded in on her, making her claustrophobic. She forced herself to calm down.

They sat in that chilling silence for perhaps ten minutes, not a one of them ever speaking. When the doorbell rang, Adrian got up to answer it. The others waited patiently for his return. A few minutes later he ushered into the room ahead of him a distinguished-looking man Maggie guessed to be about her father’s age.

He went immediately to Retty. “Mrs. Butler, I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear about this. I promise you we’ll find out who’s responsible as soon as we can.”

Retty took his proffered hand listlessly. “Thank you, Arthur. I know you all will do your best.”

Arthur nodded to the others, then his gaze rested on Gerard. “Good lord, nobody told me you had finally come home.” He moved forward to extend a hand.

Gerard looked up at him for a moment, unable to focus upon the smiling man in front of him. After a few seconds his gaze cleared, and a slow, strained smile broke across his face as he stood up to shake hands. “Arthur Latham! I thought they would’ve run you out of town years ago. Don’t tell me you’re a cop.”

Latham smiled back. “They couldn’t run off their top man, now could they?” His gaze rested on Maggie, and she registered his slight intake of breath, though he tried to cover it with a courtly nod of the head. “This young lady must be your daughter.”

Maggie stood up to offer him her hand while Gerard performed the introduction. “Arthur and I go way back,” he told his daughter. “He got into so much mischief as a teenager, I figured he’d be a life-resident of Parchman by now.”

Seeing the puzzled look on Maggie’s face, Latham explained that Parchman was the state penitentiary. She smiled dutifully back, uncomfortable over the man’s scrutiny of her. She matched him look for look, noting the streaks of gray in the dirty-blond hair and the many lines etched in a face burned red by the sun. His body, slightly overweight to judge by his incipient paunch, looked powerful. His shoulders strained at the seams of his fashionably cut—and expensive—suit.

Abruptly the lighter mood of reunion vanished as Latham switched his attention to the matter at hand. Nodding at Adrian, he announced, “I’ll take a look around upstairs, then I’ll be back down to talk to each of you while my men go about their business.” He strode quickly from the room, followed by Adrian.

Before the door closed behind them, a young man in uniform, his cap deferentially tucked under one arm, stepped inside. He smiled politely at them as he assumed a stance of seeming indifference near the door.

Latham’s energy had managed to break through Gerard’s state of inertia, Maggie was relieved to see. Despite a lingering air of incredulity, Gerard looked more like his normal self now as he sipped the remainder of his brandy.

Under the seemingly disinterested gaze of the policeman, they all sat quietly and waited. Occasionally someone moved an arm or a leg into a more comfortable position, but for the most part the room was still, except for the sound of breathing and an irregular, unconscious sigh.

Maggie sat, one shoulder touching her father’s shoulder. She drew comfort from his presence while her mind busily tried to think of anything it could besides the awful implications of her grandfather’s murder.

From her many years of reading mysteries and reading about real crimes in the Houston newspaper, she knew only too well that the murderer had to be a member of the family. Who else would have had the opportunity? She couldn’t believe, as much as she would like to, that someone had wandered through the extensive grounds and into the house to murder her grandfather. The fact that Adrian had set the alarm before they sat down to watch the movie clinched it.

She glanced warily around the room, feeling bereft. She had come here this day and had found a family, only to have all that taken away from her by a brutal murder. Until the police could figure out who was responsible, Maggie wouldn’t feel she could trust any member of her family except her father. And perhaps Helena.

Helena had never moved from her side while they watched the movie. And surely, Maggie thought, it must have been during the movie that the murder had taken place. The opportunity would have been too good to miss for someone bent on mischief. In the darkened room, and during a long movie, anyone could have slipped out for a few minutes without any of the others paying much attention.

If her idea about the timing of the murder was correct, Maggie decided, then both she and Helena would have an alibi. Each could attest that the other never left the room during the movie.

But what about her father? Maggie’s stomach churned in fear. Would the police think he had no motive for murder? Or would they see Henry McLendon’s murder as the result of an attempt at reconciliation gone violently wrong?