Authors: Elizabeth Peters
Jacqueline was so anxious to accept, she rudely interrupted. Her mouth was watering.
The homemade vegetable soup was rich with beef stock and barley, and the bread was still hot. Jacqueline paid her hostess the highest compliment in her power by eating until she bulged. Her appetite and her praise melted Laurie’s shyness. By the end of the meal they both had their elbows on the table and were exchanging stories about their children.
Earl had fixed the house up nicely, but the pretty little touches were Laurie’s—the ruffled curtains at the windows, the quaint old pieces of mismatched china she had picked up at yard sales, the braided rug she had made from Earl’s old undershirts and overalls. Jacqueline would have paid a handsome price for it; the soft faded blends of blue and white were astonishingly lovely. She knew better than to commit such a breach of good taste, however.
It was interesting to see the varied outlets creative talent could take. Kathleen’s had been writing, Laurie’s were handicrafts; the other sister, Sherri… A particularly nasty and cynical thought made Jacqueline grimace, and Laurie broke off in the middle of a description of Bennie’s latest escapade. “Did I say something?” she asked, worried.
“No, no. I had a sudden—a sudden pain.” That was true, anyway. “I ate too much,” Jacqueline added, smiling.
“And I guess I talk too much. You’re an easy person to talk to. Like I said, we sure appreciate what you’re doing. I wish there was something we could do to help.”
“Maybe there is,” Jacqueline said, as if the idea had just occurred to her. “Marybee mentioned the other day that you had some snapshots of Kathleen. I’d love to see them. I know what she looked like, of course, but formal portraits don’t tell you as much as casual family pictures.”
Laurie was delighted to bring out the albums. Jacqueline insisted on looking through several volumes of baby pictures; it seemed the least she could do.
The pictures of Kathleen didn’t tell her much, but she had not expected they would; they had only been an excuse to start Laurie talking about her memories of her sister.
“In some ways she was more like an aunt than a sister, being so much older than me and Sherri.”
“But there is only—ten years, isn’t it?—between you and Kathleen.”
“It seemed like more. Ma never was strong, you know. Kathleen practically raised us younger ones. Now that I’ve got kids of my own, I see how hard it must’ve been for her. Ever since I can remember she was writing—or trying to.” Laurie shook her head, smiling faintly. “We’d take her papers, to draw on. She never had a place where she could work. There was only three bedrooms back then, and Ma had to have a room of her own, she was always delicate. Kathleen slept up in the attic. It was half-finished, and it couldn’t have been very comfortable. I remember she used to laugh about the mice nibbling on her notebooks. I’m sorry—were you going to say something?”
“No,” Jacqueline murmured. Her tongue was sore, she had bitten it so often. “Do go on.”
“And my father—well, he sure didn’t make it easier. That’s him, sitting on the porch at the old house with Ma.”
“He was a handsome man,” Jacqueline said, studying the hard, unsmiling face.
“He was a drunk,” Laurie said flatly. “It was lucky Ma had the house, because there was never enough money. He drank it all up. Drowned one night coming home from the tavern. He was so drunk he fell off the footbridge—so drunk he couldn’t swim.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jacqueline said. “Alcoholism—”
“Yeah, that’s what they call it now. It’s a sickness. Maybe so. It didn’t make any difference to us when we were kids, whether he was sick or just no good.”
“I know,” Jacqueline said. What bothered her most about Laurie’s comment was the complete absence of emotion. She might have been talking about characters in a television program. “Was that the worst of it—that he was no good?”
“You mean, like child abuse? No. He didn’t beat up on Ma, either. But that wasn’t because he didn’t want to. That was because of Kathleen.”
She fell silent, face impassive, hands folded. Jacqueline was afraid to comment or respond. She hadn’t anticipated this.
After a while Laurie said, “I remember one night. I must’ve been five or six. It was the first time I can remember that he was really stinking drunk. You don’t remember much before you’re that age. And I guess maybe he didn’t drink that much before. He wasn’t always that way.… Anyhow, Ma was yelling at him and crying, and he started after her; she was backed up against the wall with her hands up in front of her face, and he was going to hit her—I could tell he was—his fist was clenched. And then Kathleen got between them. The top of her head was just about on a level with his chin. She looked up at him, and she said, ‘You touch her and I’ll kill you. Maybe I can’t do it now, but sometime, some night, when you’re dreaming, you’ll dream of me coming into the room and killing you. I haven’t decided how I’ll do it. Maybe a knife, maybe a gun. Or maybe it won’t be at night. Maybe I’ll just put something in your coffee some morning. There are lots of things I could use. And you’ll never know till all of a sudden your stomach starts turning over; and by then it will be too late. Or maybe…’
“She went on like that, with him staring at her like she was some horror out of the graveyard; she told him all the things she could do—to the pickup or the tractor, or the air he breathed—to kill him. ‘You leave her alone,’ she said. ‘And you leave them alone.’ She meant me and Sherri. ‘You touch them except in love, and I’ll do it. You get no second chance. Just once, and I’ll do it.’
“He backed off. He never took his eyes off her. And he never did—he never touched Ma, or any of us. And she—Kathleen…”
The brittle mask of her face crumbled. “I never told that to anybody,” she whispered. “Except Earl. I’d almost forgot. Oh, Lord, Miz Kirby—Jackie—you said I could call you that.…”
Jacqueline had not, but she wouldn’t have cared if Laurie had called her Dracula. Laurie had started to cry. Tears she could deal with.
She hugged and patted and made meaningless, soothing noises until Laurie stopped crying and started to apologize. Jacqueline promptly got to her feet and picked up her purse. It was always a mistake to hang around after someone had bared the innermost secrets of her soul. Laurie would be all right now; the kids would be home soon, she’d put on a brave face for them. She might—she should—be all the better for having unloaded that burden.
The tragic story had been useful only insofar as it cast a new light on certain aspects of Kathleen’s character, but it was essentially irrelevant to Jacqueline’s theory. At least that was what Jacqueline thought until Laurie added a final, damning comment.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Jackie. I didn’t understand, till it was too late. We all did it. It was our fault.”
On the way back to Pine Grove, Jacqueline got stuck behind a yellow school bus, which stopped at every house. She was glad to be forced to concentrate on its erratic movements rather than dwell on what Laurie had said.
“I don’t do that on purpose,” Jacqueline exclaimed. “I don’t want people to unload on me. It’s not fair.” Nobody answered, not even the still small voice of her conscience. She went on, with added vehemence. “I never claimed to be a psychologist. Why do I always get stuck with other people’s problems? This one is a real bucket of worms; how can I be sure I didn’t say the wrong thing? But I had to say something, I couldn’t just walk away and leave her crying her heart out. Damn it, I like the woman. Maybe the rest of her family thinks she married beneath her, but in my book she’s the best of the lot. She has better manners than any of them—the instincts of a lady, as my dear old gran would have said.
“I almost wish she hadn’t told me that story. God, it was terrifying, even at second hand. She captured the flavor of it, though; I could almost see Kathleen, and hear her threatening the man, in that quiet, deadly voice. He was drowned, Laurie said. Fell off the bridge coming home, dead-drunk, couldn’t swim. Surely Kathleen wouldn’t… And what did Laurie mean when she said, ‘We all did it.’ What did they do? Damn, damn, damn! I’m more confused than I was before I talked to her.”
After-school traffic filled the streets of Pine Grove—mothers hurrying to be home in time to meet the school bus, students from the district high school in Meadowcreek driving their pickups and patched-up cars. As she slowed for the traffic light at the corner of Main and Williams, Jacqueline saw Sam Poffenberger, manager of the Bon Ton, sunning himself in his doorway. He grinned and waved at her. She waved back.
The light changed, but traffic continued to crawl, held up by a Brenner’s Bakery truck double-parked in front of the Jolly Giant market. Next to the market was the bank and next to the bank was the bookstore.
Should she or shouldn’t she? Her record for the day was not very good: one strike-out, one undesired and—she hoped—irrelevant confession. Waiting for a chance to pull out around the truck, Jacqueline reconsidered. Perhaps Laurie’s statement had more relevance than she had thought. And time was running out.
She moved into the left lane and managed to squeeze into a parking space ahead of the bookstore. The front door stood open, and planted squarely in the center of the walk, looking very ornamental and fully conscious of it, was the big black cat.
He didn’t move when Jacqueline approached. She walked around him, a concession he accepted as only his due. Having made his point, he followed her in.
Jan was alone. Seated in an armchair by the fireplace, her head bent over a folder filled with papers, she greeted Jacqueline politely, but without enthusiasm. “Are you looking for something in particular?”
“I came to see you.” Jacqueline took the other chair. The cat jumped onto her lap.
Jan frowned. “Get down, Lucifer.”
“That’s all right.” Jacqueline had almost reached a decision. In the few seconds it took Lucifer to settle himself into a comfortable position, she made up her mind. Be tactful, she told herself. Be subtle.
“That looks like a manuscript,” she said. “It wouldn’t be your version of the sequel to
Naked,
would it?”
Jan’s hands closed over the folder. “There’s no harm in it, is there, if no one else ever sees it? How is your version progressing?”
“It would progress faster if I hadn’t had so many distractions. Somebody dropped a chamber pot on my head last night.”
“A what?” Jan’s surprise appeared genuine.
“Well, actually it wasn’t a chamber pot, it was another of those china receptacles—bigger than a chamber pot and filled with rocks.” She went on to describe that incident and the others, exaggerating no more than artistic license allowed. “Who is trying to scare me off, Jan?”
A crooked smile curled Jan’s mouth. She did not answer, only held out her foot, with its heavy orthopedic shoe.
“If I suspected you, I wouldn’t be here,” Jacqueline said. “I’m not accusing you, I’m asking for your help. You warned me when I first came here. Why did you warn me, Jan?”
The other woman’s eyes avoided hers. Jacqueline had not expected it would be easy. Jan herself might have been hard-pressed to put her reasons into words. “Let me guess,” Jacqueline said. “It wasn’t a warning per se. You weren’t predicting that I would be in danger. What you were expressing was a general sense of something badly wrong—something about Kathleen’s disappearance.”
Jan’s hands played with the fabric of her skirt, pleating and squeezing the fabric. She’s used to having the cat on her lap, Jacqueline thought. They are useful creatures. Restless, nervous hands don’t look so ill at ease when they are stroking a cat. Her own hands steady on the animal’s plushy fur, Jacqueline persisted.
“You weren’t here when Kathleen disappeared. But you and Paul are close friends. You are both intensely, passionately, devoted to Kathleen. You talked about her. He told you things. He doesn’t believe she committed suicide, does he?”
There was no response, in words or in movement. Jacqueline went on, “He can’t believe it, Jan. He was in love with her. A suicide throws love away like garbage. Love means nothing, love is not enough. Suicide is the ultimate gesture of contempt for love. The person whose love is treated that way usually reacts in one of two ways: he denies the fact, or hates the person who rejected him. Paul can’t quite make up his mind, can he?”
“Stop it!” Jan threw her head back. “Her eyes were pools of midnight, black with pain and hate. Orana, priestess of the Dark God.…” Or whatever I named the creature, Jacqueline thought, as she waited for Jan to compose herself. It’s a false analogy anyway. Jan thinks of herself as the heroine—as Kathleen. Yet, in one sense, Kathleen had become Jan’s rival—for identity, for love.
“You’ve got it all wrong,” Jan said finally. “Paul isn’t indulging in sick, wishful thinking. There are good reasons for believing Kathleen would never take her own life.”
“There are indications that she planned to do precisely that. The new will, the outline for the sequel—”
“She was afraid she would die. But not by her own hand.”
“Ah.” That was what Jacqueline had been waiting to hear—her own farfetched hypothesis voiced by an independent observer. “Let’s stop fencing, Jan,” she said briskly. “I’m on your side, and Paul’s. I think someone was trying to kill Kathleen.”
“Trying? Someone did kill her. Kathleen Darcy is dead, murdered, and her killer is enjoying the fruits of her labor and her life. He’s walking in the sunlight and she’s in the dark… gone forever.…”
She covered her face with her hands. The cat stirred. Gathering its feet under it, it jumped to the floor and then onto Jan’s lap. One hand left her tear-streaked face and buried itself in the thick fur.
“All right,” Jacqueline said, feeling like a brute. This was the second woman she had reduced to tears in a single afternoon. A record, even for Jacqueline Kirby. “All right, Jan. If that’s true—and I believe it—then let’s do something about it. You said ‘he.’ Do you know who it was?”
“Don’t you think I’d have done something myself, if I did know? I don’t. Neither does Paul. But the verdict of suicide simply cannot be right. There are too many counterindications. You seem to be omniscient, Jacqueline Kirby; I presume you know about Kathleen’s ‘accidents.’ ”