Marise watched her as she backed very slowly and cautiously toward the open door. She tried to smile, but her face was so stiff it felt it might crack with the effort. She had to say something, pretend things were safe and normal, or who knew what this madwoman might do?
She gauged the distance left between her and the doorway. “Ben tells me you are a fine painter,” she ventured. She took another soft step backward. “He says your work sells well in New York. I would love to see some of your paintings some time.” She knew she was babbling, but her tongue seemed to have taken over the task of concealing her fear.
Penelope looked down at her disdainfully. Her raven wing brows rose sardonically. “Don’t think you can flatter me. I am totally above that sort of thing, and the only reason I don’t choke the life out of you at once is the fact that you gave Ben a son.”
Marise felt herself jerk, though she tried to control it.
“Don’t flinch. I know about Benjie. I know about everything that goes on in this house, from top to bottom, and nobody can keep me from finding out what I want to learn. They’ve tried for years to keep me locked away in my room all the time, but they’ve never figured out how I manage to get out. I get out whenever I want to, remember that.
“No, Marise, I know all about your son. I like little boys, and I see him playing in the garden on fine days. He’s a lot like my Ben was at the same age. When I want him, he’ll be mine. Just wait and see.” She laughed, a low chuckle that held great humor and charm.
“Ben was mine, you know,” she said. “Hanni was too old, too big, too grown up. I couldn’t manage him the way I could my twin. Hanni was cruel to me, you know. He bought all new locks, and it took me ages to learn how to get out again. When you came he used to check my door every day, so nothing I did was any good.
“He stood outside and sang your praises until I nearly went mad. I hated Hannibal, you know. I still do, but he’s my brother. A Clarrington. He belongs to me, like it or not. What have you done with him?”
She moved toward Marise, sheer menace in her expression. Marise backed another step toward the refuge of the hallway behind her, but she knew it was too late to run. She had to use shock tactics.
“Penelope, Hannibal is dead. Don’t you remember? I suspect it might have been you who surprised him in the library. He wouldn’t have expected to see you, after taking such care to keep you confined. He must have inherited your mother’s bad heart, though nobody seemed to suspect it. He died in the library, whether or not you were there.”
Penelope laughed. The sound brought Marise’s neck-hairs upright.
“I did give him such a start,” she crooned. “Poor Hanni thought he had me fixed at last. He was so sure I was locked away and forgotten and helpless. He didn’t count on….” she stopped short and peered suspiciously at Marise. “But I mustn’t give away my little secrets, now must I?” she asked, her tone sickeningly coy.
Marise found her fear replaced by anger. “That shock killed your brother, so it was you who sent him away, not I. It was I who found him lying on the carpet, his hands on his chest. His eyes were filled with astonishment, though I didn’t know what could have caused it at the time. Now I do know.”
“He thought he had me safe and sound, but that was not entirely true. I was a surprise, but the thing I told him was much, much worse. I will never forget his face.” Again that laugh chilled Marise to the marrow.
“So he died? Yes, I seem to remember now. There was a funeral downstairs. I heard everything that was said, you know. Nothing can be kept from me. The ducts run through the walls, up and down.” Penelope sidled closer, for now she too seemed to have thought of the open door. “I’m faster than you, faster than anyone. You can’t get to the corridor before I do, and if you run I’ll catch you. I get... excited when I chase people. A little girl ran from me once, and I got excited. That was when they locked me up in that room on the third floor. I hate those bars!”
Frightened as she had been, Marise felt a stab of sudden pity for her sister-in-law. None of this was any of her doing. Those greedy ancestors back in the old country had sowed a shocking crop, and their unfortunate descendants must harvest it, like it or not.
With cold certainty, Marise knew she stood in mortal danger. The woman was set to explode like a bomb. Calculating her chances, Marise whirled and fled through the door to the sanctuary of the corridor. She barely made it, for Penelope’s heavy body slammed into the door just behind her, as she turned to lock it.
She couldn’t hold it shut. She felt it wrenched from her grasp and jerked open from inside. Marise gasped and ran, shouting for help. Hildy and her husband were far away downstairs, deafened by circumstance and alcohol. But Edenson was nearby, though the nurse might not come to her aid.
As Marise neared Mother Clarrington’s door, it opened and the nurse’s face appeared in the crack. “Help me!” she panted. “Penelope’s loose, and she’s after me. I think she intends to kill me.”
Edenson scowled and shut the door with a snap, almost in Marise’s face. The sound brought her to her wits, and she paused in mid-flight.
Marise turned to face her pursuer. Not for nothing was she trained in one of the best nursing schools in New England. She knew how to handle the heaviest invalid, the most violent delirium. She knew how to deal with madmen.
Penelope, seeing her stop, slowed cautiously, warily. She was much taller and heavier than Marise, though, and that seemed to reassure her. She lunged forward at last, hands out, reaching for her prey.
Marise sidestepped neatly, tripping her antagonist with one knee, and slammed her elbow behind the big woman’s neck as she bent to catch her balance. Penelope went down with a thud.
The stubborn anger she must have inherited from her peasant ancestors was running in Marise’s veins. She didn’t wait for help to come. Instead she reached for the big vase of dried grasses that sat beside Mrs. Clarrington’s door and caught it up in one hand, though the weight should have been prohibitive.
She swung it around and heard it shatter against Penelope’s skull with a satisfying crunch. At last the woman slumped at her feet, unconscious or nearly so.
The sound of feet on the stairs caught Marise’s ear, and she moved to the head of the flight. Andy was rolling upward drunkenly, and a gasping Hildy followed him.
“Marri! Did Pen...?” Hildy’s voice trailed off as she reached the corridor and saw the mess near Mrs. Clarrington’s door. “My God! Is she dead?”
Marise still remembered leaning against the ivory satin wallpaper. “No,” she’d said. “She’s just knocked out. I found her in Hannibal’s room, and she accused me of driving him away. Then she admitted she had surprised him in the library. She may or may not remember that he died, though I told her just now. I think things come and go in her mind.
“She wanted to kill me, and I ran, anyway.” She’d stared at Mother Clarrington’s door with some bitterness. “Don’t ever call on Edenson for help. She slammed the door in my face, when I called out.”
Hildy frowned. “She does not like you. I think it is because you are a nurse, and she feels you might take her work from her.” Hildy bent over the unconscious woman. “Andy, you come here this moment. We must get her into her own place before she wake up. Much trouble there will be if she is awake. You agree?” She asked Marise.
“I do agree. Let me help you lift her. Andy, you reach under her other side. Hildy doesn’t need to lug all this weight up a flight of stairs. Ready? Now!” She heaved, and they got the heavy body up, catching her under the arms from either side.
They started upward, Penelope’s feet dragging, toes down, on the carpet. They left a pair of furrows in the velvety nap, and Marise, glancing back, thought those looked strangely sad.
It was a long climb, and Marise felt her breath coming short before they reached the top. It was a long way down the corridor, too, and into the cross p
assage. The door in which Benjie had showed such interest now stood wide.
Hildy pushed back the door to avoid bumping Marise’s shoulder. “How she get this open we never can learn. It is mystery.” She motioned through another door. “Her bed is there. We put her in it, take off her shoes, and she never remember she was outside.
“A sore head is all she know, and she is used to that for she often bang it against the wall, thump, thump. When Andy stay in the room across the hall, he hear her many times.”
Any other time, Marise would have paused, transfixed by the blaze of color covering the walls of the square sitting room through which she carried Penelope. But she was altogether occupied with the woman she supported, and only later did she have a dim memory of the paintings that hung there. Now she could think only of getting the unfortunate Penelope into her bed.
Hildy had the covers turned back as Andy heaved and Marise guided Penelope Clarrington onto her own bed. They stood back while Hildy removed the sneakers from her long, narrow feet and pulled the comforter up to her chin.
Lying there, eyes closed, face slack, she looked altogether too much like Ben as she had seen him so many times. The lines of maturity were smoothed from the oval face, and the dark hair spilled across her pillow. Marise reached to smooth the tangles into order. Those glossy tendrils even felt like Ben’s or Benjie’s.
“What a shame,” she said to the waiting couple. “So much talent. She has an attractive face. And she’s shut up here for all her life. I don’t wonder she gets out whenever she can, but how in the world does she do it?”
There was no mark of prying or chipping on either side of the door. The bolts were undamaged, and Marise could only feel they had been shot from the outside, leaving the way clear for the prisoner to escape. The crossbar of the heavy lock was turned and its tang retracted. Who could or would have done this?
“It is always so,” Hildy said. “Never any sign to say how she has it opened, but no one here would dare to. Always, always for years it has been so, when she got out.”
“I’ve heard there are people who are geniuses when it comes to escaping,” Marise said. “She has one kind of genius. Why not another? Houdini had tricks that went to the grave with him.... I wonder if she has some strange gift of that kind.” She sighed.
“However it is, we’d better put everything back as it was, for whatever that is worth. I’ll talk to Ben about things when he comes in tonight.” She pushed the four bolts smoothly into their sockets and turned the handle of the lock. Beside the lowest of the locks she found a smudge.
“A long time ago,” she said, “Benjie found his way up here. Father Clarrington heard him, and when I came after him he was at this door. You don’t...suppose...he couldn’t know who was inside.”
“No!” Hildy’s high voice was emphatic. “It has happened many times, long before you came and years before Benjie was born. How it happens I cannot say. Don’t worry about this. We find some way, maybe, to keep her inside now.”
Heaven knew, they had tried. Ben installed a new lock that night, along with two more bolts, one let into the facing above the door, and he also screwed on hasps and padlocked the door. “If that doesn’t hold her, nothing will,” he said grimly.
Marise had reached for his hand, for she could see the pain in his eyes. Wordlessly, they locked their fingers together and stood staring at that enigmatic door.
“If we only knew how it’s done,” Ben said. “Even, mad though it would make them seem, the person or persons who might open it for her. Something! Anything to solve this.” He sounded defeated, and he had been. They never did solve the mystery of Penelope’s escapes, try as they would.
Now Marise turned off the light and stared again around the dim shape of Hannibal’s room. It was now bare of any trace of the hearty man who had lived in it. Even the memory of Penelope was growing dimmer, she found with some thankfulness.
Maybe time and increasing age would succeed at last in erasing the terrible years from her mind. As opposed to the possibility of her own madness, blank senility would be a blessed relief.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Outside
The Trustees were meeting in the posh boardroom of Clarrington Enterprises. Evan Turner sat at the head of the long, polished table with Mrs. Fisk at his right. The four other trustees were clumped at the same end of the table, leaving a long expanse with eight more chairs empty.
Gertrude Fisk cleared her throat as Corrigan, the securities officer, completed his report. Evan could tell she was anxious to say something, for she kept shifting in her seat, not much, just enough to give the impression of nervous energy controlled with difficulty.
“If I might say something,” she said at last.
Corrigan relinquished the floor gracefully. “Of course, Gertrude. Our attorney is always welcome to make her views known.”
She leaned forward, eyes bright, hands controlled on her leather notebook. “I had occasion to talk with Mrs. Clarrington some weeks ago, when she called in her usual request for the delivery of her groceries. She asked, at that time, for the balance sheets for every branch of the business. This seems to me to be both presumptuous on her part and a waste of time on ours.” She took a deep breath, and Evan saw that she was building to what she considered an important point.
“It seems to me that enough time has passed and her behavior has continued to be eccentric enough to have her declared incompetent, removed from titular control of the estate, and assigned a guardian. Waiting on her signature or her approval for new projects has slowed business severely.
“This middle-aged recluse cannot possibly comprehend those balance sheets or the attendant reports. Her input is irrelevant and even, I am certain, disruptive. I think it is time we had her committed either to an institution or to the care of some psychiatric nurse who would attend to her personal needs.”
Evan heard a communal gasp not quite audible but there nevertheless, disrupting the decorum of the group. The impression of a sharp inhalation lingered in the air of the boardroom, as the Trustees looked about at each other.
Turner glanced at the faces of his associates, all of them young, now, except his own. Nobody but he had been a part of the firm at the time the Clarrington family ceased to exist except as a single widow, barricaded in her huge house.
To this generation her unusual behavior might well seem crazy, though he knew, none better, it was not that at all. He had to find a way to make these youngsters understand what he had seen more than a decade ago in the Clarrington house.
He sighed and stood. “Keep your seats,” he said as the others shifted uneasily. “I can make myself clearer if I walk about a bit, and I must make this extremely clear. Some of you already know, intellectually, some of the facts I will mention. It is doubtful if you can really comprehend it unless you listen hard.”
They looked intensely uncomfortable, but he began anyway. “First, you have to understand that eccentricity is not insanity. No competent judge is going to rule that it is. Gertrude should know that, if anyone does. Only if Mrs. Clarrington began neglecting her house and her person would I ever consent to consider such a procedure. None of this has happened or showed signs of occurring.”
Grebel, the accountant, fidgeted with his note pad, and Evan nodded toward him. The young man sat forward, hands clasped together before him. “You have to admit it isn’t normal for anyone to become a hermit. Not in this day and age, whatever used to happen in the distant past. No one sees the woman to know how or what she’s doing or how she’s getting along.”
“You’re forgetting, Ed, I see her.” Turner kept his voice cool. “I see her every month, without fail. I send Alistair with her groceries and other necessities. He always has tea with her in her parlor, after he puts things away for her. Never has he had anything but compliments for her personal appearance and the neatness of her house.
“W
e both marvel at how well she manages, all alone, to keep that huge place going. She is quite organized and orderly, and when I go we do discuss those balance sheets and reports, Gertrude. Thoroughly. She understands just what is going on in every segment of this business in which her competence lies. She keeps at me until I explain to her satisfaction all the rest that is not in her field of expertise.”
Gertrude frowned. “Are you absolutely certain? Sometimes unbalanced people can be very persuasive.” She tapped her pencil on the table in an annoying rhythm.
Evan shook his head. “You forget that I knew her before the tragedy. I have known her almost since she married Ben Clarrington, and I can bear witness that she managed the farms almost from the first days of her marriage. She was reared on a farm, had it in her blood. Her understanding of agriculture is solid.” He cleared his throat and paced quickly back and forth behind his chair.
“She absorbed Ben’s theories of silviculture, and she keeps a knowing eye on our practices in that area. Heaven forbid that she ever should catch you, Englund, clear-cutting. Considering the stability of our timber branch’s profits, Ben’s theories have been proven ten times over.”
Englund squirmed, and Evan knew the young man had envisioned huge machinery capable of clearing large tracts, then replanting with finger-sized trees. This was a good chance to drive home the company policy before he brought that subject up again.
“Marise Clarrington has a clear and logical mind. She understands bookkeeping; never doubt it. While she may remain inside her house and run things from there, that does not mean she doesn’t know what we are doing and how we are doing it.”
Englund, unsquelched, flushed. “The big companies are making pots of money with clear-cutting. It saves time and labor, which both mean big money, and the row planting makes it possible to use machinery to harvest. I’ve begged and pleaded to be allowed to clear-cut, and you tell me this unstable woman is the reason we can’t do it! I just can’t accept that.”
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