Authors: Elizabeth Peters
“Cookies?” Jacqueline indicated her plump purse.
“Bring ’em out here on the step.”
She had a point. The sun-warmed bricks looked better than anything inside the house.
Jacqueline dragged her purse outside and the two sat down, side by side. The cookies were graciously received, and although Marybee remarked that she much preferred Dr. Pepper, she condescended to accept the can of Pepsi Jacqueline produced from the interior of the purse. For a short time they sat in silence, munching and sipping.
“Why don’t you want to go inside the cottage?” Jacqueline asked, after the child had eaten half a dozen cookies.
Marybee contorted her features in what she probably believed to be a look of horror. “It’s haunted.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You don’t have to laugh!”
“I’m not laughing.”
“Well, nobody else believes me.” Marybee absorbed an entire cookie. The next few words were muffled but intelligible. “I did see it, though.”
“What did you see?”
“Lights.” The child swallowed. “See, I like to watch animals, deers and rabbits and foxes. They come out in the evening, you know? So I’d come here when it was getting dark and sit over there”—she indicated a pile of firewood between the house and the cottage—“and keep real quiet, and watch for them. Ma let me, because I was close enough to the house to run for cover if anything bad turned up, like a burglar or a bear.”
Jacqueline could not help but be amused by the juxtaposition. “Have you ever seen a bear?”
“Not yet.” Marybee reached for the last cookie, hesitated, and, at Jacqueline’s nod, captured it. “But some people around here have. I sure would like to. They don’t bother you if you don’t bother them.”
“Huh,” said Jacqueline. “What about burglars?”
“It could’ve been a burglar, I guess. But why would anybody want to rob this place? There’s nothing left but rotten old books and junk.”
“But you saw lights?”
Marybee had a storyteller’s instinct. She might have been trying to build suspense, but the look of remembered fear on her face would have been hard for a child to simulate. “Funny lights. Sort of dim and yellowy. They moved around, like somebody walking and—and burning while they walked.”
“Nasty.”
“Yeah. But I didn’t run till the light went out and the front door opened.”
She gave her companion a sidelong glance. Jacqueline stared back in openmouthed anticipation, and after a moment Marybee went on, “I just saw something big and dark. Then I ran.”
“I don’t blame you. When was this?”
“Last week. Before you came.”
“And you haven’t been back to watch the animals since?”
“Not after dark, you bet. I figure she won’t come in the daytime. They don’t, you know.”
“She,” Jacqueline repeated.
“Has to be her. It was her place. And”—Marybee delivered the punch line with the assurance of a born raconteur—“I saw her cat.”
“Good heavens.”
“Yeah,” said Marybee, pleased at Jacqueline’s appreciative reaction. She licked her finger, scraped it across the crumbs in the empty package, and put it in her mouth. “That was just before you came. In the afternoon. It was a big black cat. We’ve got pictures of her holding it, in Ma’s album.”
“I’d like to see those pictures sometime.”
“I guess you could. Ma said we ought to ask you to come to supper or something.” Then her small face crumpled into a frown. “Hell. There’s Uncle Jack. I better go.”
Jacqueline wondered which of the cast of characters she had yet to meet. Following the child’s inimical stare, she beheld St. John coming toward them.
“That’s his real name. Pa says he’s just showing off with that Sin-John crap.”
Jacqueline grinned. St. John was attired in flannels, sports coat and silk scarf and he strutted as he walked. He must detest this candid young person as much as she despised him. “You don’t have to leave on his account,” Jacqueline said.
“I better go. Ma will lay me out, I’m supposed to come straight home after school. Only I saw your car and figured you were here, so I came.”
“I’m glad you did. I enjoyed talking to you.”
The child did not reply. She ran off, swinging her lunch pail. She met St. John while he was still some distance away and passed him without pausing or speaking.
Jacqueline bowed her head to hide her twitching lips. She only looked up when St. John came to a stop directly in front of her.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“And the same to you.” Jacqueline indicated the step beside her. “Won’t you join me?”
After due deliberation St. John spread his handkerchief carefully on the step and deposited his natty flannel posterior upon it. The posterior spread to such an extent that it nudged Jacqueline familiarly, but on this occasion St. John appeared to have something else on his mind.
He began by apologizing for not inviting Jacqueline to the house. “I would rather my poor dear mother did not overhear what I am about to say. She has a habit of popping up when one least expects her.”
“How is she?”
“Not at all well. She has been in what I can only describe as a state of febrile excitement. I don’t want you to blame yourself, my dear Jacqueline—”
“I don’t.”
“Uh—good. Good.” Gentle exercise, or some other factor, had brought a sheen of perspiration to St. John’s brow. He reached for his handkerchief, remembered he was sitting on it, and continued, “It is certainly not your fault. Your intention was to console. You couldn’t have known that you touched, inadvertently, on my poor mother’s weak point. She has never accepted Kathleen’s death.”
“Is it possible that she feels some guilt?” Jacqueline’s voice was very gentle.
St. John stared. “No, I don’t think so. Why should she feel guilty? It is not surprising that she should cling to hope, given the bizarre circumstances—no remains, I mean to say. And of late several other things have happened that have supported her fantasies. That is what I am anxious to discuss with you.”
“What things?” Jacqueline asked.
“Have you received any—any unusual letters lately?”
“I’m afraid I must ask you to be more specific, St. John.” Jacqueline knew she sounded awfully pompous. St. John’s verbal habits were getting to her.
The sweat on St. John’s forehead coalesced into drops that began to trickle down his face. With a giant heave he pulled the handkerchief out from under him and mopped his cheeks. “Letters purporting to be from my poor sister. Letters signed ‘Kathleen Darcy.’ ”
There are a lot of loonies out there.
The flip response slipped, unwelcome, into Jacqueline’s mind like a mental telegram from O’Brien. That’s what he would have said. Naturally she did not say it. As St. John went on to explain, he had a legitimate cause for concern.
It was his mother who had first seen and opened the letter, though it had been addressed to St. John. In the months following Kathleen’s disappearance, there had been a number of such communications, some purporting to be from Kathleen, some from psychics offering information about her whereabouts—or that of her body—a few, the most distressing of a distressing lot, confessing in lurid detail to having killed or kidnapped her.
Against her son’s advice and, in some cases, without his knowledge, Mrs. Darcy had responded to all of them. “We were besieged, my dear Jacqueline, absolutely besieged. The police assured me there is always a rash of such letters after a much publicized case. By the time I had finished dealing with them I was suffering from nervous exhaustion, and Mother… The strength of her obsession is astounding. She has never given up hoping to hear from Kathleen. She rushes for the phone when it rings, and is always the first to get the mail. I suppose I should have expected some such development at this time; but it’s very hard to control Mother when she’s in this state. Today I found her at the end of the driveway waiting for the mailman. It was seven
A.M.
!”
“Oh, dear.” It was all Jacqueline could think of to say, but she said it with all the sympathy of which she was capable. “What was in the letter?”
“I have not the least idea. She let me have one quick look at it before she went scampering off with it. Now she’s hidden it. She has her little secret hiding places all over the house. The signature was Kathleen’s…” He quickly corrected himself. “Her name, I mean to say.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.” Jacqueline patted his hand. “Unless she—I assume it is a woman—writes again, and says something that might give you a clue as to her identity or her whereabouts, there is very little the police can do. But anonymous letter writers aren’t dangerous, St. John; they just… write letters.”
“True.” The pat had been a mistake. St. John edged closer to Jacqueline. “I knew you would help me see this in perspective. You have such a sensitive, understanding heart.…” His pudgy hand went in search of that organ.
Jacqueline captured the hand and squeezed it. St. John let out a faint yelp of protest. “I’ve just had an idea,” she exclaimed. “Do you know—but of course you do—Brunnhilde Karlsdottir?”
The name proved an even more effective distraction than Jacqueline’s painful grip. St. John scowled darkly. “That dreadful woman! You may not believe this, Jacqueline, but she actually employed her—her—er—personal attributes, in an attempt to influence me in her favor.”
Jacqueline’s insides bulged with laughter she dared not express. “I believe it,” she mumbled.
“Well.” St. John preened himself. “One is not unaccustomed to advances of that sort, of course. But as I need not tell you, Jacqueline—my dear—a real man wants to be the hunter, not the quarry.”
He pursed his lips. Jacqueline said hastily, “What I was driving at, St. John, was that Brunnhilde might have written that letter. She has threatened me several times. I fear her mind may be affected.”
St. John unpuckered. “Oh, my! Oh, my God! She is a very large woman, isn’t she? Do you think she might be dangerous?”
“I think you might mention the possibility to your lawyers. It would do no harm to investigate the poor creature.”
“Quite.” St. John heaved himself to his feet, all thoughts of amorous dalliance forgotten in his concern for that most important of all subjects, his personal safety. “I shall do so at once. At once! Thank you, my dear.”
As soon as his back was turned, Jacqueline allowed the muscles of her face to relax; they had been sorely strained in the effort to keep from laughing.
She didn’t believe for a moment that Brunnhilde had written the letter. That fine figure of a woman was far less subtle, as witness her attempted rape of St. John. A smothered gurgle of laughter escaped Jacqueline. She would have given a considerable sum to have been present at that scene of passion.
St. John, moving faster than she had ever seen him go, disappeared into the house. The sound of the mower had stopped. Sunlight turned the stubbled grass to gold, and there was not a crow or a vulture in sight. Peace reigned. Jacqueline sat on the step, chin in her hand, and thought about murder. She was only distantly aware of a droning voice that repeated the words of an old ballad.
Her brother did place her on his steed
Ere he did the cruel deed.
“Kiss me sister, ere we part.”
As he kissed, he stabbed her to the…
Jacqueline jumped. Standing over her was a figure out of bloody balladry—a tall, towheaded youth carrying an earth-stained spade.
“Are you all right, lady?”
“Of course.”
“You was making this funny noise.”
“I was singing,” Jacqueline said coldly.
“Oh. See, I was over there, behind the bushes, and I heard this—”
“It was kind of you to inquire.”
After a while the young man went away. Jacqueline returned to her cogitations and her music. The cruel brother or the faithless lover?
Get down, get down, my right pretty miss,
Your hour has come, I see,
For here I’ve drowned nine young ladies,
And you the tenth one will be.
A chilly finger touched her foot and she looked up to see that the shadows of the surrounding pines were creeping upon her. She stood up. She was convinced Marybee had seen those lights. She did not believe they had been produced by the spirit of Kathleen Darcy, but a genuine phantom would have been more comfortable company than the flesh-and-blood person who had carried the candle through the long-abandoned rooms.
Twilight had fallen by the time she got home, and as she lugged the half-filled carton of books along the shadow-enshrouded path, she found herself moving a little faster than she had intended. What with one thing and another, dusk was not as pleasant a time of day as she had once thought it. Fumbling for the light switch in the dark house, she envied Jan the company of her cat—something alive and vocal, something that would come to greet the returning wanderer, even if not in words.
After fixing herself a drink she spread the books out across the floor and sat down among them, glasses alert on the bridge of her nose. Then, with a look of guilt that would have been entirely appropriate on the face of a serial killer, she reached into her shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes.
The first long inhalation wiped off the look of guilt and replaced it by one of pure rapture. One or two a day wouldn’t hurt her. Heaven, Jacqueline thought, is a place where you can smoke and not get lung cancer.
However, there were few earthly pleasures closer to heaven than being surrounded by books, vodka, and cigarette smoke. She began to sort the volumes she had selected.
Ten cigarettes and two drinks later, she was halfway through Suetonius. Those Romans. You name it, they did it.
Jacqueline was at her desk at nine the following morning, glasses firmly fixed in place, hair pulled back into a tight bun as solid as a rock. Like Jo’s cap in
Little Women,
Jacqueline’s coiffure symbolized her literary mood. This one meant hands off, no interruptions. Genius would burn if Jacqueline had any say in the matter.
For the next few days she crumpled papers, cursed, paced the room and pounded the typewriter. She stopped only long enough to sleep and to cram the necessary nourishment (Coke and cookies) into her mouth. Crumbs seeped into the mechanism of the keyboard; the pile of discarded pages mounted higher. The telephone rang from time to time. Jacqueline didn’t hear it.