Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
“Guess I better call Doris,” Rountree groaned. “I sure do hate to ask her to come in tomorrow.”
“You can’t be that concerned about spoiling her weekend, Wes,” said Clay.
“No, the fact is I’m not,” Rountree admitted. “But if I ask her to come in, she’ll want to know why, and if I tell her, it’ll be all over the county by morning.”
Geoffrey had been cutting tuna fish sandwiches in resolute silence for several minutes. Elizabeth had not talked to him, partly because she was preoccupied and
partly because she didn’t know what to say. Any expression of sympathy might provoke either tears or an outburst of mordant wit, neither of which she was prepared to deal with. She had confined her utterances to basics: pass the mayonnaise, is there more bread? The rest of her mind retraced the sequence of the day’s events and tried to make sense of them.
She stole a glance at Geoffrey, still working like an automaton on the pile of sandwiches. “Do you think this will be enough, Geoffrey?”
“What? Oh. I suppose so. I won’t be eating any. Are you hungry?”
“Just a little,” Elizabeth admitted. She was starving.
Geoffrey set the last sandwich precariously on the heap. “I guess we’re finished. I seem to have run out of things to do.”
“Geoffrey, listen, about Eileen—”
“I’ll just carry the tray into the library,” he said quickly. “Then I’m going to my room.”
Elizabeth put away the bread and mayonnaise, lingering over her self-appointed task of cleaning the kitchen. Mildred would take care of it tomorrow when she arrived. To hell with Mildred, Elizabeth thought, she needed something to do right then. She tried to decide why she was so reluctant to join the family in the study. Because I feel like an outsider, she thought. Geoffrey’s grief and the fierce restraint of the others made her awkward. She couldn’t pretend, but to exhibit a lack of bereavement within the family seemed unnecessarily rude. The best course would be to go to her room, but she needed to talk. She felt that if she could hear herself talk, things would sort themselves out. She rinsed the tuna fish bowl and washed the knives while she considered the matter further.
A few minutes later, Elizabeth picked up the yellow wall phone by the refrigerator. “Long distance, please.” Soon she was connected with the proper city.
“Hello, Brookwood Apartments? Are you the manager? I’m calling long distance. My brother is a tenant of yours. In Apartment 208, and he doesn’t have a phone,
but there has been an emergency in the family. A death, in fact, and I must speak to him.”
Elizabeth paced the length of the phone cord while she waited for Bill to be fetched from his lair. If he didn’t feel like listening to her in the manager’s apartment, which was probable, maybe he could call her back from a pay phone. She decided that it would be very comforting to talk to Bill, as long as they got it straight right from the beginning that he was to listen to her as a brother, and not as a student of criminal law. I know I have the right to remain silent, she quipped to herself; I waive that right just now. She heard the phone being picked up.
“Hello?”
“Bill! I have to talk to you. It’s urgent. Don’t interrupt. Can you talk or shall I give you the number here? You can call me back collect, just—”
“Uh—Elizabeth? I’m sorry, but Bill isn’t here right now.”
“He isn’t? Who is this?”
“Milo.”
“Milo! Oh, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m looking forward to meeting you.” Even in an emergency, we don’t forget our manners, Elizabeth thought grimly. “But listen, we have a sort of family emergency, and I really need to talk to Bill. Where is he?”
“What’s the matter? Where are you?”
He sounded quite concerned, as though he were ready to throw down the phone and come to her rescue. Elizabeth felt slightly better. “I’m all right,” she assured him. “I’m at Chandler Grove for my cousin’s wedding. At least, there was supposed to be a wedding, but she’s dead. The sheriff has been called in, and they’re investigating. They seem to think it was murder, but—” She was about to launch into the whole story, when she pictured Milo standing uncomfortably in a strange apartment, with the manager glaring at him. “I’m so sorry to be going on like this, Milo. I’ve never even met you.”
“It’s okay. Bill told me about your relatives. He was
expecting melodrama, but I don’t think he would have predicted this. Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course. I just wanted to talk to somebody. Where’s Bill?” Much as she needed to talk, she didn’t feel like beginning at the beginning with even as kind a stranger as this. With Milo, she would only be reciting facts; with Bill she could progress to feelings.
“I’ll have him call you as soon as he comes in, of course, but I haven’t seen him since last night. I think he pulled an all-nighter with some other law students, something about a case …”
“Law or beer?” snapped Elizabeth.
“I just got home myself. My class is doing site work at some Indian mounds near here, and—well, don’t get me started about that … Bill should turn up soon. If you give me your phone number, I’ll have him call as soon as he comes in.”
Elizabeth supplied the number, and a brief account of the situation. She thanked Milo and assured him that some other time she would very much like to hear about Indian mounds, and then she hung up, unreasonably annoyed with Bill for not being in. She reluctantly admitted to herself that she felt better. Milo was all right. Idly she wondered if he had brought home any more bones for the kitchen table. With a weary sigh, she prepared to join the mourners in the library.
To her relief, she found that only Captain Grandfather remained downstairs. He was sitting at the table, making sketches on a notepad.
“The others have gone to bed,” he told her. “I have so much trouble sleeping that I have abandoned even the pretense tonight.”
“Is there anything I can get you?” asked Elizabeth.
“No. More coffee will only make the improbable impossible. Have you eaten anything?”
“That’s what I—no. I guess I will.” She sat on the couch with a napkin in her lap, and helped herself to sandwiches.
“The sheriff called Robert a little while ago. Says they got the results of the autopsy.”
“Oh? What was it? Heart failure?”
“They claim that Eileen was hit on the head, then thrown into that boat. It doesn’t seem possible, does it? It isn’t as if she were a stranger.”
Elizabeth considered this. “I know what you mean,” she said at last. “I always think of violent death as something that happens to people I don’t know. How is—everybody?”
“I can’t say that I took the trouble to find out. I let Robert handle them. He’s a doctor; he’s used to it.”
“And Dr. Shepherd?”
“He went up to his room hours ago. The boys are all right. It’s just Amanda.”
Elizabeth nodded. It would be. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
“Not that I—oh yes, there is one thing. I promised Amanda hours ago that I’d let them know across the street.” He inclined his head toward the castle. “It completely slipped my mind.”
“Would you like me to tell them? I could go in a few minutes.”
“Please. They’re back now. Been to some flower show all day. You tell Alban that it’s a murder case, and that the sheriff will be back in the morning questioning all of us.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Captain Grandfather, do you think Eileen’s fiancé killed her?”
Captain Grandfather snorted. “Him! It would surprise me if he had the guts to shuck an oyster, missy. And there’s going to be enough turmoil in this house without you taking up detection as a hobby. Just stick to making sandwiches, that’s my girl.”
Elizabeth bristled. Make sandwiches, indeed! “I’ll have you know I finished college,” she snapped. “I wasn’t the one who was planning to get married and be a housewife!”
Captain Grandfather eyed her speculatively. “No? Well, what are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to have a career, of course.”
“I see. Well, as soon as you know what it is, let us all in on the secret.”
“I already know!” said Elizabeth with great dignity. “I am going to be an archeologist!”
She tossed her napkin on the silver tray and left the room.
The night air was chilly, and Elizabeth wished she had brought a shawl or a sweater. Still, it wasn’t far—just down the wide lawn and across the road. The quarter moon cast a gray light on the long grass and the live oaks lining the drive. Elizabeth was nearly halfway across the yard—silent, except for the sound of her feet in the grass—when she realized that there might be a murderer loose somewhere on the grounds. She should have waited for someone to come with her, she thought with sudden panic; or at least, she might have called to let Alban know she was coming. She found herself watching the shadows among the trees, looking for shapes that moved. It was too quiet.
The lights on the first floor of the castle twinkled from between the folds of heavy curtains. Safety was a hundred yards away. With a sob of terror, Elizabeth fixed her eyes on the steep front steps and began to run. As her feet pounded against the asphalt of the road, she imagined dark shapes gliding across the lawn in pursuit. At last she reached the great double doors, her breath coming in heaves, and her mind reeling with the sinister figures she had conjured from the darkness. There didn’t seem to be a bell, and she took no time to search for one, pounding on the door as hard as she could.
After a few moments, the door opened to the dimly lit hallway, and there stood Alban, incongruous but safe-looking in his red sweatshirt and faded jeans.
“Elizabeth, what a pleasant—What’s wrong? Are you crying?”
Without waiting for an answer, he shepherded her into his study and settled her onto the velvet loveseat. “Now, you just sit right there and take deep breaths,” he advised her. “Don’t talk!” He went to the sideboard, took out a cup and saucer, and began to arrange spoons and napkins on a tray.
“No coffee, please!” she called to him. “I’ve been drinking it all day!” Her voice broke as she finished.
“I am fixing you tea,” said Alban, pouring water into a small china teapot. “You cannot drink and cry at the same time. Scientific fact. So you’re going to drink. And then you’ll tell me what this is all about.”
He brought the tray over, and set it down on the marble-top table beside the loveseat.
Elizabeth took a few tentative sips of the tea. She settled back against the cushions and concentrated on untensing her muscles. Somewhat to her surprise, Alban was not hovering. Instead he poured himself some tea, then walked to his desk and returned his attention to the checkbook and bank statement in front of him. Elizabeth watched as he worked.
There was very little family resemblance among the Chandler cousins. The Chandler genes must be recessive, she thought. Their looks ranged from the tall, sandy blondness of Bill MacPherson to the Scotch-Irish look of Alban: a short, trim Celt, with dark hair against too-white skin and cold blue eyes. Eileen had been the middle ground: mousy. Elizabeth decided that she looked more like Alban and Geoffrey—the dark Celts of the family. The Highlanders of Clan MacPherson would approve, she thought to herself, and she smiled for the first time in several hours. Alban looked up just then and returned her smile. “Feeling any better, fair lady?”
“As much as I’m going to,” Elizabeth replied. “I have some bad news, Alban.”
He heard the urgency in her tone and stopped smiling. “Tell me. What’s wrong?”
“Eileen is dead! They think it was murder, and the sheriff was here, and—”
“Stop. Right there. You’re going off again. Take another sip of tea.”
Elizabeth picked up her cup, and gulped a swallow of tea. After taking a deep breath to compose herself, she recounted the day’s events, ending with Captain Grandfather’s news of the sheriff’s call to say that Eileen had been murdered.
“… which was just a little while ago, and then I came
over to tell you. It was dark outside, and I was about halfway here when I suddenly realized that the murderer might still be around. I just panicked. When you opened the door—I was never so glad to see anybody in my whole life!”
But Alban was not listening anymore. He stared down at the rug as if she were no longer there.
“Alban?” said Elizabeth, touching his shoulder. “Alban!”
“How do they know?” he murmured.
“Know what?”
“That she was—that somebody put her in the boat. How do they know?”
“Oh.” He was looking at her again, but his attention was now on the events themselves, not on comforting her. Stifling a flicker of annoyance, Elizabeth answered, “The lab report said that she had been hit on the head. But they seem to think it was the snake that actually killed her. Do you think the killer knew that the snake was in the boat?”
Alban shook his head, uninterested in the question. “Poor Eileen. You know, every year, Miss Brunson from the high school brings her class up here when they’re studying
Macbeth
.”
Elizabeth nodded, wondering what this had to do with Eileen.
“I give them a tour of this place—even though it has nothing at all to do with Scotland. And well, she even talked me into reading the Tomorrow soliloquy for them this year.” He smiled, remembering himself at the top of the staircase quoting Shakespeare to thirty restless seniors. “I started with the line ‘She should have died hereafter.’ That’s what this made me think of. That line—‘She should have died hereafter.’ ”
“I know.”
“How are they taking it?” he asked.
Elizabeth frowned. “Oh, different ways, but they’re putting up a good front.”
“Is there anything I can do, do you think?”
“The sheriff will probably want to talk to you tomorrow. And you might try to keep Satisky occupied.
He’s underfoot, nauseating everybody with quotes. In fact, when we found her body, he started spouting poetry. From
The Lady of Shalott
by Tennyson.”
“Oh, you recognized it?”
“No. Geoffrey told me later. But I thought it was very insensitive of him. Oh, another thing you might do, Alban, is to tell your mother about this …”
“Tell me what?” Louisa, bundled in a lavender bathrobe, stood smiling in the doorway. “Oh, tea! Splendid!”