“Hannibal wouldn’t believe me when I told him, and I think that killed him. Your father didn’t want to believe, and it has probably killed him too. She won’t rest until she has done her worst. You know it and I know it. You have to tell Marise.”
She was turning blue, even as she spoke.
“Edenson!” Marise said. “Her medicine! Quickly!”
The nurse moved with accustomed speed, and soon the shot was easing the attack. Once his mother was asleep, Ben took his wife’s hand and led her away. Marise had dreaded hearing what he was going to say, for in some way she felt it endangered everything she knew and cherished.
And it did. Indeed, it did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Round Room
Marise had spent a good part of the intervening years trying to forget or suppress the memory of what Ben told her, when they reached their snug sitting room at last. The happiness she had known in the tower apartment was too precious to allow it to be tainted by the terrible thing her husband had said.
Even after the last anguished confrontation there, a major act of will allowed Marise to continue living where she had lived with Ben. She still might turn, sometimes, to envision his face there, hear his voice.
But then he had been almost as pale as his father. He stood before the tiny hearth, facing the rocking chair in which he had placed her. She knew from the tension in his hands and neck how hard it was for him to speak.
“We’ve been cowards. Cowards and fools and villains,” he began. “I suspected it from the first, but when you’re faced with the kind of agony this family has known for generations, you don’t always do the wise thing.
“You asked me once why I stayed away from home for so long before I got sick and you saved my life and gave me the courage to come back here. You could see at once that the bunk I told you about quarrelling with my father wasn’t true. I saw it in your eyes.
“No, it wasn’t problems with Hanni or Father or Mother or Aunt Lina that drove me away. There was another reason, one that affected me more than anyone else in the family, I was sure, though now that seems egocentric. Everyone suffered, and I was the only one to run away.”
Marise stretched her hand toward him, trying to touch, to comfort him. “Why, Ben? I have begun to suspect, but the time has come for hard facts, not intuition. Is there still someone locked up there in that third floor room?”
He took her extended hand and gripped it tightly. “Yes.” He swallowed loudly, unable to say more for a moment.
His fingers tightened painfully around hers. She looked up quietly, waiting, though dread filled her. She breathed deeply, trying to remain calm, while her husband regained his control.
“Who is it? Ben, I can see you’ve kept it back so forcefully that it’s almost impossible for you to get the words out now, but the time has come. Not only for me; we have to do our best for Benjie too.”
Color was coming back into his face as he sighed. “Right. I’ll put it to you straight. I, too, had a twin. A sister. That was why mother had such a hard time with the birth, why it strained her heart almost fatally.”
Marise understood at once. “Once your mother said she’d had a little girl, but I assumed that was a stillbirth.”
He shook his dark head. “No. A double birth. Benjamin and Penelope. Two dark-eyed children who lived the first few years of their lives together as only twins can seem to do, thinking together, acting together. We adored each other...or at least I adored her. There’s no way to be certain what her feelings for me might have been. Not now.
“Like so many in our unhappy line, we were bright, healthy, happy. We were hardheaded, of course, as all Clarringtons seem to be, mad or sane. But we seemed normal, whatever that is. For years things were fine. Then we went to school. I loved it, but Pen hated it from the first day.”
Marise was still, quiet, waiting. That was all she could do to make this easier for him.
“They put us in different classrooms, which seemed to be their policy with twins. They’d found, I learned later, that it made for greater independence for both children, which seems sensible. I missed Pen, naturally, but there was so much to do, so many children to get to know, new things to learn that I didn’t make a fuss. We had plenty of time together after school.
“I thought she was having as much fun as I was.” He stared out of the window, across the garden below, where tree shadows streaked the grass with purple. “Right down there beside the rockery I learned the truth.
“‘They don’t want me any more!’ she yelled at me. ‘They’ve taken me away from home and away from you, and they’ve put me with dumb kids who don’t like me.’
“I tried every argument I’d heard our parents use for going to school, but she didn’t listen, to me or to anyone else. Ever. Anything that didn’t conform to her iron convictions of what was right, which meant what she wanted, never penetrated her skull.
“She called me a traitor. She thought, I learned at that moment, that I belonged to her totally, body and mind. I had no right to enjoy school alone, to know any child except her, to play games she refused to learn. When I objected, she picked up a rock off the rockery and tried to brain me with it. We were seven years old, Marri.”
She stood and took him in her arms. His head came down and she felt his cheek against her hair. Tears trickled onto her scalp.
“Of course you told your parents!” she said.
“I ran for my life. Father was in his study with the manager of the lumber mills. When he looked up to see me standing in the door, wild-eyed, with a bruise the size of an egg on my forehead, he dismissed the fellow almost rudely. The first time I ever saw him short with anyone in my life.
“Then he took me on his lap. I felt him shaking when I told him what happened. That was when he told me about Clara. About them all, the warped, twisted Clarringtons going all the way back to the old country. He warned me of the flaw in our genes that made it dangerous to have children at all, even though those without the taint were usually fine people.”
He held her at arm’s length and looked into her eyes. He was solemn, his eyes shadowed with concern. “Marri, I needed you, wanted you. If that damn doctor hadn’t been convinced I’d be sterile and told me so, I’d have told you at once so we could take precautions. Before we married, of course, because I’m not that big a fool or a villain. But I thought we had time—years, he said, it might be before we had to think about having children.
“We’d already talked it out, and you seemed content that there might not be children at all. I thought we were safe.”
“We are,” she said. All the conviction she could muster strengthened her voice. “Benjie is fine and sane and normal. There never was a healthier child, one more balanced and cheerful than he is. Don’t torture yourself with impossibilities, Ben. Not with all the rest of the pain you’ve been handling alone. Why didn’t you let me help you?”
He shook his head. “We never said anything among ourselves, even. It wasn’t exactly a conspiracy of silence, keeping you from learning our secret. It was more the fact that all of us loved you and wanted you to be happy, without a cloud on your horizon.
“You seemed so content and so confident that we couldn’t bear to do anything to spoil things for you. And then when there was the baby coming, without warning and against all the odds, it was too late.
“That would have been a dreadful worry for a pregnant woman, one you didn’t need to have to cope with. I know you too well to think you’d have considered an abortion, and without that option there was no point in telling you. I think you may agree with me there.”
She nodded, understanding without agreeing at all. But there was no need to trouble him further.
“To this day, Penelope lives in that room up on the third floor. The one the poor young man killed himself in. The same one where Clara strangled her mother and died at the
hands of her father.”
Marise shivered. “No wonder Hildy nearly fainted when I said I’d go exploring back along that corridor. No wonder Father had his ear cocked in that direction, listening for any sound Benjie might make if he explored the upper story. How you could all live with such horror in your lives without showing the strain. I can’t understand it.”
“We’ve been doing it for generations,” Ben said. He sounded infinitely sad and incredibly weary.
Then Marise thought of the implications of her mother-in-law’s words earlier. “Ben, how does she get out? Your mother said she has known it for years. How could she escape from a third floor room with barred windows and, I would think, locks on the outside of the door?”
Ben shook his head. “We’ve tried and tried and never figured it out. We thought that had stopped, for it didn’t happen for years. Then when Hanni died, I felt in my gut he’d come face to face with her and the shock was too much for him. There’s no telling what she said or did to kick him over the edge.
“We’ve had Andy watching the door every night since you came. That worked fine for a long time, but you know too well that Andy is getting worse all the time. He used to be able to function normally even when he was drunk as an owl. Now he’s not handling it very well, but he’s so terrified of her he’d never neglect to check the locks. I just can’t think how she got out.”
Marise felt the blood drain from her face. “Benjie went up there once, years ago. Father heard him, somehow, and sent me to check. Benjie was almost to the door down at the end of the cross corridor. He seemed to be fascinated by it, though I couldn’t see too well. It’s very dark up there. What if he unfastened a lock? Just through curiosity? She might have gotten out then....”
Ben closed his eyes. “Father could always hear a fly walking on the ceiling. Thank God he could hear a little boy’s feet on a carpeted stair. I don’t want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t. For that is Pen’s door, and it has bolts on the outside, not locks.” He opened his eyes again and stared at her, but he was seeing something inside his own mind.
“Mother has always been terrified of fire. She was afraid that if the house caught, Pen might burn to death while somebody searched for keys. A child could open that door from the outside.”
Now, standing in the middle of her sitting room, Marise felt a long shudder shake her middle-aged bones. They had been so certain, then, that they could manage the problem and make Benjie safe from his aunt. Ben went at once to the upper floor and checked the bolts on his sister’s door.
She knew, for she went with him. They had bundled Benjie off to school, as if things were normal, and both had climbed the stairs, wondering what they would find at the end of the corridor.
But the bolts had been fastened. The moment Ben touched the wood, sliding the top bolt back and forth to check it, a voice sounded from the other side.
“Who’s tapping at my door? Father? Edenson? Andy? Hildy? Have I guessed right?” The tone was light and childish, and Marise felt sure that was the voice she had heard when she thought herself going round the bend.
Ben answered, his voice quite steady. “Only Ben, Penny. I’m just checking to see everything is secure. Andy will bring up your breakfast soon. Do you need any new books or painting supplies? You just let me know, if you do.” His face was taut, the lines from cheekbone to chin deep and agonized.
“I need alizarin crimson,” came the reply from beyond the door. “And viridian. You might get some more of those canvas panels, the ones that are already stretched. It’s easier than doing it myself, but mind you get the good canvas, not the cheap kind.”
“I’ll make sure it’s done. Take care, dear.” Even in the poor light of the shadowy hall, Ben looked suddenly old, as he turned to leave.
Marise felt a jolt of pity, for the girl as well as for Ben. “She is talented too? Like the musician and poor little Clara?”
He plodded beside her as if infinitely weary. When he spoke it was quietly, with an undertone of tragedy. “Yes she is. Fantastically. Father has sent some of her work to an agent in New York, and some is in a gallery there right now. We sell a piece from time to time and put it into a trust for her.
“Her work is...an acquired taste. It frightens me, for one, but it’s bright and fierce and compelling. There is a growing following, believe it or not, and critics have been wildly enthusiastic, on occasion. We have spread the story that she is crippled and housebound. That isn’t really a lie, is it?” His smile was crooked, but it was there.
Again in her lonely present, Marise shivered. Would those memories never fade and leave her to do the same?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Hannibal’s Room
As she went about the house on her regular cleaning run, every door held a memory that distressed Marise. There was not one she disliked opening more than the door to Hannibal’s room; not even the library held sadder memories, though she had seldom opened that door when her brother-in-law was alive. Hannibal was one of those vital, busy people who keep moving unless very ill or sound asleep. Their frequent conversations had taken place principally in the parlor in the evenings or in the library, and she recalled them with pleasure. His was an acute mind, full of odd facts and unexpected observations. Every exchange with him was one from which Marise came away feeling she had learned something valuable.
As his work dealt with the legal and investment aspects of the Clarrington business enterprise, he had done most of his work at home. The law office he maintained in downtown Channing was for his private practice, which he cheerfully neglected, leaving much of the work to his young partner. Nevertheless, she knew he had stayed on top of any case with which his partner was concerned, and she knew that Hanni had possessed that brilliant “edge” her Ben had, though it was focused in a different direction.
Once Hanni had said, “Ben is a genius with trees and growing things. He seems to feel sap in his veins, instead of blood, and he can tell the foresters when a blight is taking hold of a piece of timber land before any outward sign can be found. They marvel at him.” He’d laughed his rich laugh.
“He can also feel what the housing market is going to do before either lenders or builders have a clue. I don’t have a scrap of that sort of intuition, though I use his constantly in our work. I’m just a stodgy old lawyer, incapable of flights of brilliance.”
That wasn’t true, of course. Hanni had a sense of people to rival Ben’s understanding of growing things. Though he never called any names, her brother-in-law told wild tales about his clients’ affairs, his comments cutting to the bone.
“If I could make him see why he’s behaving like a four star ass, I think he’d straighten up,” he said of one young millionaire who was about to take on his seventh liability for alimony.
“I’ve decided people don’t want to behave sanely. I’ve come to the conclusion that sanity is completely out of style, though perhaps one with my heredity shouldn’t say such a thing.”
Marise remembered laughing in spite of herself. Who except Hanni would have joked about the tragedy of his family’s history? But if she had known at the time how very tragic that was, she would never have laughed, she now knew.
That conversation had taken place in the library, of course, but now she must go into his empty bedroom to clean, and she hated the thought. It had been there she had met Penelope, face to face, for the first time.
Hannibal had been dead for four years, Father Clarrington for two. Benjie had been almost nine, growing very quickly and making a start at becoming as tall as his father and grandfather. To her satisfaction, he had seemed sturdier than either, and she could see a hint of her own father’s solid squareness in his small body.
At that time Marise was in her mid thirties, still soundly convinced of her own health and sanity. She had taken on as much of the household duties as she could manage, along with the farm and he
r family, and she made it a point to visit her mother-in-law as often as possible.
Hildy was getting feeble, and rheumatism had begun to bother her badly, the pain affecting her disposition. She even snapped at Andy, when he ventured into her kitchen. Once she even lost her temper with Benjie, which told Marise how much pain troubled the old cook.
Marise had volunteered to clean the upper floors of the house, though she never bothered with the unused rooms. That would have been foolish, given the shorthanded condition of the household. What was done there, Andy did without mention or supervision. She also carried up her mother-in-law’s meals on the occasions when Miss Edenson was away or was too busy to come down after them.
While upstairs, she usually inspected a few chambers for damp, dust, and the mildew that crept into walls and carpets because of the damp southern climate. It had been on such an errand that she came into Hannibal’s room, using the key she now carried in the pocket of her coverall.
To her shock and dismay, she found someone inside the room she been certain would be empty. A tall, stocky woman, black-haired and black-eyed, stood there. She was dressed in faded jeans and a paint-smeared smock. It could only be Penelope, and Marise felt sudden terror as those sharp eyes skewered her, inspecting her from head to heel.
She was speechless, backing away toward the door, when the woman spoke. “Where is my brother Hannibal? This is his room, and even if he’s out, his things should be here. Who’re you? The new maid?”
Then the black eyes narrowed. “No. You’re the one who drove him away, aren’t you? You took my brother Ben away from me too. I knew you would as soon as I heard about you.” Her voice grew shrill with fury.
“You took my Ben. You took my father. You are taking away my home every day, and now you have done something to get rid of Hanni. You’re an evil, wicked woman. I heard all about you from Andy, just after Hildy read the telegram.
“He knows about women like you who nurse rich men and get them into their clutches and marry them. And don’t look so innocent; you can’t fool me, though you do seem to lead the rest around by their noses.”
The Clarrington Heritage Page 7
