Sisters (23 page)

Sophie was near exhaustion
when she saw the street. There were lights in the houses on the other
side, but she was so drained by fright and effort, she wondered if
she could cry out loudly enough to draw attention. And then she saw
the barbed wire. Of course, she thought. To keep cattle and antelope
out, and any other animals that might be tempted to graze in the
park, the perimeter was fenced except where the pathways entered. She
approached the barbed wire and decided she would crawl under. That
would be easier than braving the gravel pathway again. She lay on her
right side and worked her head and right arm under the fence, until
her skirts became entangled. She tried to free them, but no sooner
would she get them loose from the fence in one place than they would
become caught in another.

The effort was too much.
She put her head down on her arm, wanting to sleep, to retreat from
pain and exhaustion. She wouldn't try anymore. She didn't need to. It
wouldn't be long before they began looking for her, and now she would
be easy enough to find, sprawled half in the roadway as she was.

Footsteps! This time there
was no mistake about it. She jerked her head up and saw a huge figure
approaching, a huge female figure, skin pale in the moonlight, an
unreal color, almost blue. Looked at from the street where Sophie was
lying, the woman's huge neck tapered even more oddly into the face of
almost normal size. And when the hands reached down, it seemed some
perverse trick of perspective that they should balloon so quickly
into those monstrous oversized arms.

The hands grew nearer and
nearer, and Sophie screamed, waiting for the hands, thinking they
would close around her throat. Instead there was a gentle touch on
her cheek and the giantess began to speak in a soft voice. "It's
all right, Mrs. Dymond. You don't need to worry none. I just wanted
to bring you your purse. A gentleman asked me to. But I think maybe
you're needin' some help.

Sophie found herself
weeping, crying like a small child. And the hands which had seemed so
threatening released her from the wire, and the huge arms gathered
her up.

"Now, now, you'll be
all right. Don't you cry."

"Why are you here?
Why? I don't understand." Within the warm protection of the
giantess' arms, it was difficult to want to understand. Sophie felt
like shutting her eyes and letting the rhythm of the giant woman's
stride lull her to sleep. Indeed, in some way she felt she already
was asleep, dreaming an ancient dream in the moonlight.

"It was that little
fella in dark clothes. He said I should follow you and give you back
your purse."

"Rodman? Was his name
Jake Rodman?"

"He didn't give a
name, but he was a little fella, and he seemed half-lazy, slow-like,
you know. Maybe I shouldna let him talk me into it, but he said I'd
be helpin'."

Sophie saw a troubled look
pass over the woman's face, and suddenly it was very important to her
that the giantess not be upset. "You did help me. You did. Thank
you very much."

The woman stopped for a
moment to shift Sophie's weight, and as she did so, she looked down
and smiled. The effect, Sophie thought dreamily, was beatific. For a
moment the woman's size did not seem grotesque, but magical.

When they arrived at the
Stevenson house, Honoria--for such Sophie found the giantess' name to
be--did not wish to come inside. She turned Sophie over to Connie and
Mrs. Syms at the front door, and then disappeared into the night. The
maid and the housekeeper bathed Sophie and put her to bed, where she
immediately fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

*

When she awoke the next
morning, anger began to build within her. She had been tricked again,
duped. She kept thinking how she had not only fallen into a trap. but
how she had done so in truly spectacular fashion. It galled her to
imagine Rodman's satisfaction when he heard, for she was sure it was
he who had set in motion the events of the evening before.

Well, it couldn't continue,
certainly not for a week. She simply wouldn't wait for James to
return, wouldn't sit by passively while Rodman devised ways to
frighten her off. There was little she could do today, since it was
Sunday, but tomorrow she would go on the offensive. She'd find out
exactly who this Rodman was, seek out his vulnerabilities just as he
had sought out hers.

Sophie heard a noise,
turned over, and saw Sally, looking unusually well-scrubbed, sitting
in the chair beside her bed. Tom was in the girl's lap."

"The giant brought you
home," Sally pronounced loudly. "The one from the circus."

Sophie hadn't seen Sally
when she arrived at the Stevenson house last night, but the girl must
have seen her. Wha awe that arrival must have inspired, Sophie
thought. "Yes, she helped me when I fell and twisted my ankle."

"She carried you like
you were a baby."

"She gave me my purse,
too. Remember when I lost it at the circus?"

"Did she find it
there?"

"Something like that."

Sally fidgeted in the
chair; Tom jumped down, then up onto Sophie's bed. She scratched
behind his ears. "You look pretty this morning," she said
to Sally. "Are you going someplace special?"

"Just church. Mrs.
Syms takes us."

"If you could, I'd
like to talk to Mrs. Syms. Or if she's busy, Connie. Would you ask
whoever's coming to bring a glass of juice?"

Sally ran from the room,
and Sophie, forgetting her injury for a moment, braced herself with
her left foot in an attempt to sit up. The effort caused her to
wince. She'd certainly made a mess of it, she thought. No one had
really been trying to harm her, just frighten her, that was all.
Imagining that they were trying to hurt her, thought, she managed to
do quite a creditable job of it herself. Perhaps it served her right
for peeping and prying, reading someone else's letters. The letters.
Sophie recalled the love words: "And then we shall go to bed,
our bed, my dearest girl." There had been no notes from Helen,
but Sophie didn't doubt their existence. The trunk had obviously
contained things retrieved from the Stevenson house after Helen's
death. The letters in there were the ones Helen had saved, and
somewhere else were some Amy Travers had lovingly put away, ones
Helen had written to her. Sophie was sure of it, and she was certain
those notes were as passionate as the ones her sister had received.
Everything pointed to it.

Everything except the
person Sophie had thought her sister to be. Cool, controlled,
dispassionate, that's how she had thought of her. And what James had
said about their marriage seemed to fit. But now she was beginning to
see there had been another Helen, though she still didn't know what
to make of her. Clearly, there had been a love affair between Helen
and Miss Travers, but of what had it consisted? The letters seemed
explicit enough, but if this had been a... sexual relationship, would
Helen and Miss Travers had seen a hymn, a religious song as a fitting
description of it? Would they have dared save the letters? Again
there was a tugging at Sophie's mind, something she was reminded of,
but whatever it was eluded her, frustrated her.

She so much wanted to
understand the relationship between Helen and Miss Travers, because
James' words kept echoing through her mind: "I can imagine Helen
and Amy having quite a violent lovers' quarrel." She had
dismissed the idea at first, but now she was no longer sure. Did the
attachment between the two women have the potential for violence,
even murder?

She shook her head as if to
rid it of the thought. She hadn't even established that there had
been a murder. Yet here she was looking for a murderer. It was as
though she'd got in the habit of thinking this way and couldn't stop.
Or was it the things she kept discovering about her sister? They took
her so far along the path of the unthinkable that it became a
relatively easy matter to imagine Helen had been pushed down the
stairs.

Sally returned with the
housekeeper, who was carrying a breakfast tray. "Mrs. Dymond,
how are you feeling this morning? How's your leg?"

"It's my ankle. I've
wrenched it, that's all. I wonder, is there a cane in the house I
might use?"

"I know where there's
one," Sally exclaimed. "Up in the tank room. I'll get it."

"You let Esther help
you," Mrs. Syms called after her. Then she began to arrange the
tray on the bed. "There've been so many calls askin' after you.
Mr. Bellavance is real concerned. Do you want visitors?"

"A little later. I
want to get dressed and go downstairs first."

"It might be wise to
stay up here today."

"I'm sure with the
cane I can manage."

The cane Esther and Sally
brought had a handsome carved ivory handle. After Sophie finished
breakfast, she experimented with different ways of using it. "It
would seem I'd want it in my left hand," she said to Connie, who
had come in with the girls. "Since it's my left ankle that's
injured, the left hand seems more logical. But it works better for me
in the right." Better for the ankle, at any rate, she thought
after a few more steps. The cane did her right hand no good where she
had cut it on the gravel.

When she had dressed,
Sophie started downstairs and quickly perceived she had more
assistance than she needed. "Why don't you two go ahead?"
she said to Esther and Sally. "You take Tom and go on down and
wait for me." Connie stayed by her, but Sophie declined the
offer of her arm. She decided there would be better times to trust
her well-being to the girl, times when she had two good legs, for
instance, and could afford to put one at risk. Ah, that wasn't kind.
Her injury was making her irascible, she decided as she put her
weight on the bannister and made her way down.

She settled herself in the
drawing room. Esther was arranging the mantelpiece pictures again,
while Sally was rolling an iron toy back and forth across the carpet.
It was a chariot in the shape of a swan, and the wings flapped and a
bell rang as it moved. Sally tried to interest Tom in chasing it, but
he was comfortably curled up and refused to do more than eye it
suspiciously as it clanged across the room. Busy with her thoughts,
Sophie watched without really seeing as Sally stopped the chariot for
a minute, went into the dining room, and returned with a tiny object
which she put into the chariot's passenger seat."

"Esther, ring for Mrs.
Syms for me, will you?" Sophie asked. When the housekeeper
appeared, Sophie told her she would be happy to see Paul Bellavance
now. "And there's one other person I'd like to see. Could you
telephone Lydia Swerdlow and tell her I very much want to talk with
her? Explain about my ankle and ask her if she could pay a visit."

Tom had begun to follow the
swan chariot now, and Sally was wheeling it across the carpet faster
and faster. The wings were flapping frantically, the bell clanging,
and Tom began to bark.

"Land's sake, child,
quiet down now," Mrs. Syms admonished. "What you got here?"
She bent over. "It's the jelly pot! What you doin' with a
crystal jelly pot in your chariot? If was to spend a whole day makin'
a list of everything you aren't supposed to do, I'd never think to
put this on it. Here, give it here."

"It's my cattle
baron," Sally protested.

"Your what?"
Esther asked sharply from over beside the fireplace.

"I lost the real
passenger somewhere. Outside, I think. Me and Jonas were playin'
Custer with it behind the carriage house and it just disappeared. So
I thought the jelly pot'd fit. See, it's my cattle baron, ridin' in
his landau."

"Sally, that's dumb.
You don't know anything," Esther said.

"I do too!"

"'Cattle baron' is
what Easterners say about men like Father. It's an insult to Father."

"Cattle baron! Cattle
baron!"

Esther raced across the
room and delivered a loud smack to Sally's arm. "Don't say it
again!"

Sally's eyes widened; then
she threw herself at her older sister, managing to knock her over
before Mrs. Syms intervened. "Both of you upstairs right now!
And don't come back down, either of you, until I call you for
church!"

"Don't you ever say it
again," Esther hissed at her sister on the way out of the room.
Sally's desire for confrontation had waned but not disappeared. As
the girls went up the stairs, she hummed the tune to which she had
chanted the taunting words moments before. Esther glared at her
venomously, but by the time they had reached the landing, both of
them were giggling. They ran up the rest of the flight and across the
upstairs hall to the back stairway.

Listening to their pounding
footsteps, Sophie had a thought. "Mrs. Syms, when my sister
fell, you were downstairs, down in the basement."

"I'd gone down there
to talk to one of the maids."

"Did you hear Mrs.
Stevenson fall? Did you hear anything?"

"I... I did hear her,
but I didn't know it till later. When I heard the noise, I didn't
know what it was. Thought it was the children playin' maybe. It was
around the time for them to be home from school, and Sally's always
runnin' and jumpin', I thought it was probably her. But then a little
later when Sally came to get me and I saw Mrs. Stevenson, I knew that
it was her fallin' I'd heard."

"How was she lying
when you found here?"

"She was on her back.
Her neck was bent strange."

"On her back? Didn't
that strike you as odd? If she tripped coming down the stairs,
wouldn't she have fallen forward and landed face down?"

"I didn't think about
it. She bumped against the wall, maybe, and that threw her over."

"Was there anything
that'd strike you as strange? Something you might have wondered about
at the time and then forgot when everyone started rushing around?"