The Clarrington Heritage

by Ardath Mayhar

  When had Penelope seen him? When could she have seen him looking like that? Or had the woman’s fertile imagination conjured up from her own troubled spirit this vision she’d painted.

  A shiver shook her, warm though the evening was. Penelope’s face loomed behind the boy’s head, almost seeming to thrust out into the room. Her look of triumph—what had she seen or dreamed to make her paint herself so?

  Marise turned and left the room, descending to the study. There was still work to do, and she suspected her time was limited. She closed the door behind her and sat in the big chair behind the desk where Father Clarrington had spent so many busy hours. His father and grandfather before him had worked here to build that empire that now rested in her weary hands. But it was about to change. Some sure instinct told her so.

  She drew from a drawer a pad of lined yellow paper. At the top she wrote in firm letters,

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF

  MARISE DERING CLARRINGTON

  August 28, 1997

  She wrote busily for a long time. When she was through she read the paper through three times, changing a word or a punctuation mark. She knew the legal system could undo even the most careful of wills, given sufficient reason and pressure; forty-seven million dollars, plus hundreds of thousands of acres of timber and farms and rental housing would be, she was sure, more than enough to snare lawyers into trying to make a change.

  When the document satisfied her, she sealed it into a large manila envelope marked—

  FOR EVAN TURNER

  IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH

  Again she bent over the pad, her pen busy. This was not to be a will, but it would put the management of Clarrington Enterprises fully into the control of Evan Turner, reducing the Board of Trustees to a purely advisory body. Each member would be responsible for keeping up with the specific area of the business he had been chosen to oversee.

  Evan had been patience itself, all those years, asking nothing in return. She was too mature not to understand the emotion behind his devotion, though there had been nothing she could do to satisfy his need.

  Yet if power could reward him, she could provide that. She doubted, in her heart, that this document would substitute for the thing for which he had never asked. However, it was the best she could do.

  Again she read the paper three precise times, making the necessary corrections. Then she signed it and sealed it, too, in an envelope, which she marked, “Have the lawyer put this into proper form and return to me for another signature if possible. Lacking that, this constitutes my wishes as to the disposal of Clarrington Enterprises.”

  She took both to the big, old-fashioned safe hidden behind a coy painting of a nymph who was trailing strategically placed draperies in order to give the impression of being nude, while showing nothing of importance. The combination was automatic, by now, as she twirled the dials, turned the knob, and looked into the oily smelling depths of the monster.

  A grown man could have hidden inside it. The right side consisted of dozens of narrow shelves, and across the bottom were two large drawers, with individual locks. On the left was ample space for bags of gold or bundles of currency or whatever valuables might need safe-keeping. With so much space, the small bundle of deeds and insurance policies that now sat there looked ridiculous.

  There had been massive files of ancient documents there when she first became its keeper. She had sent those to the local museum as curiosities. Now the space held only a double handful of folders, on top of which she put the two envelopes with their inscriptions plainly visible.

  “If I come through alive, I’ll send both to my own lawyer, though even as they are they should stand up in court,” she said aloud. Her voice seemed wry in her own ears. “If I don’t, Evan will open the safe at once, as he has been instructed to do in the event of any emergency. I need not worry about that. But God, if what I fear is true, don’t make me have to live with it!” She hadn’t realized she was praying until she stopped speaking.

  She pushed the heavy door shut, spun the dials, and left the room. It was time to build up her strength for the thing she felt coming, so she went to the kitchen, heated canned soup, opened crackers. She wasn’t hungry, but she felt convinced that before the night was over she might need all her energy.

  Then she made coffee and put it in a Thermos. She brought out cookies left from Evan’s last visit and put them into a canister, which she tucked under her arm. Cups and spoons, sugar...she packed them into a small basket with napkins.

  Her heart had begun to race, thudding with dread or excitement or fear, she wasn’t sure which. Basket in hand, she went up the stairs to the first landing. Then she paused and set her burdens down.

  “I almost forgot,” she exclaimed, feeling in the pocket of her jumpsuit for her keys. Hurrying down again, she unlocked the front door and went out onto the entry porch for the first time in years. The night air was warm and humid, but it seemed intoxicating.

  For ten years she had not set her foot on the steps or the walk beyond them. She touched the iron gate. Then she set her own key in its lock and turned it gently, silently, and heard the tumblers move smoothly to unlock the stout barrier. She didn’t push it open but left it, held shut by the latch.

  She cocked her head to stare at the sky, which still held a trace of light in the west, although it was somewhere near nine o’clock. A faint smear of stars was visible, even through the reflected lights of the town. A breeze rustled down the street, moving the stiff crepe myrtles that gave it its name.

  Marise felt suddenly giddy with this sudden freedom from the confinement of those stone walls. She felt as if she had dissolved into the night and the breeze and the asphalt scented air.

  Now that she was outside, she hated to return through the carved door into the musty space of the house. She knew she must, for her duty lay there, for as long as she was alive to perform it.

  She turned, her steps slow and reluctant. The thud of the closing door behind her gave her a feeling of entrapment she had thought lost, years before, when she chose this strange imprisonment. She stood for a moment in the entry hall, remembering once again her arrival there.

  It had not changed, though the carpet was a bit worn, perhaps, the paint now less than fresh. But the mirror in the hall tree winked in the light of the overhead fixture as she moved toward it and bent to peer into the clouded glass. The fairy forest was still there, blurred into the old mercury of the backing. Her face stared back at her, its lines of strain and age erased in that magical mirror.

  “Ben!” The name was jerked from her, but she closed her eyes, held her breath and endured until the need to cry left her.

  Marise straightened and went up the stairs, right up, past her waiting basket, her own landing, to the third floor. Down the hall she went, around the turn to Penelope’s door, which she had left open on her last visit. The flower basket lamps were bright enough to show her the way as she examined the bolts, the sockets into which they slid, and the lock. Nothing had settled out of plumb enough to disengage any of them. They were still capable of securing this prison.

  She leaned her head against the wall and now the tears came, but the fit of weeping was short. She straightened, listening. Had there been a sound below?

  No, it was too early. Traffic still moved on the street. Young people zipped past in cars, their radios so loud she could hear them even inside her stone walls. He wouldn’t come yet. Not before midnight, she felt with strange certainty.

  She knew now that she should have cleaned these rooms, as well as those below, but she hadn’t been able to force herself past the door. It might not—surely it would not!—be used at all. This was just an aberration of her own that made her consider such a use to be possible. She had to be wrong.

  Suddenly she yawned. She was exhausted, and there would be time to sleep before anything would happen. She could set her alarm, so as
to wake in time.

  It didn’t occur to her as she went back down, got her basket, and entered her own quarters, that to be able to sleep at such a time was not truly sane.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Watcher

  He waited impatiently as the evening dragged past. Once in a while his landlady came to his door with offers of hot tea or cough syrup, and her good intentions irritated him past bearing. He managed to sound properly grateful and hoarse and sleepy, and at last she left him alone.

  People wandered in and out until it seemed the house had to be some sort of way station for the restless. He ground his teeth.

  Eleven o’clock came at last. Eleven-thirty. Don Glass would be coming back at about one, he thought, unless there was some sort of emergency. The watcher wanted to wait for him to come, for if he took his medicine from the policeman’s hand it would be proof he had been here all night.

  Midnight came. The traffic in the halls and on the stairs began to slow. By twelve-thirty, things were quiet. At a quarter of one there was no sound in the house at all, except for a relentless mouse between the walls.

  He dared not wait much longer to leave. If he missed Glass, so be it. He cracked the door and peered sideways down the hall. Only the dim nightlight could be seen. Nobody was about. He slipped out of his door and padded softly in his sneakers to the head of the stair. Nobody at all was in sight, and he sighed.

  He drifted like a shadow down the steep flight of steps, his slender figure in its dark T-shirt and jeans blending into the dimness at the foot of the stair. The entry hall held a ten watt bulb in its six-bulb fixture.

  The street was quiet, but he would not risk going out that way. Instead, he crept along the hall to the rear of the house. The back door had, he had discovered long since, a spring lock that snapped automatically. He used it, locking himself out into the warm, exhaust-smelling night.

  He moved through the back garden into the long space behind the line of big houses and vacant lots where others had stood in the past. He went into the weed-grown area that had been cow pastures and truck farms, back when the first of these old homes had been built. Now it was the Little League field, and it had been recently mowed.

  The Watcher kept clear of the rear fences of those houses that were occupied, for he wanted no dogs announcing his passing. The distinctive shape of the tower against the pinkish glow on a layer of high cloud guided him toward his goal. There was a light in the lower tower room. The sitting room study.

  His lips pulled taut in an unconscious grin. He slipped through the vacant lot where his hideout had been. He’d policed that carefully, the day before, and now he passed it without further thought.

  Now he was on the sidewalk, beside the iron fence. He followed it silently to the gate, his key in his hand. He couldn’t even recall, any longer, how he had come by the key.

  He slid the metal shaft into the lock and turned it softly. Then he pushed at the gate, but it didn’t move. Panic rose in him. It had to work! He had seen the postman open this gate with this key every day for a week, and it was the only key of its kind he had. It simply had to work!

  He turned it again, and the gate opened. It was a moment before he realized what that could mean. He paused, his hand on the gate’s flowery grillwork.

  It had not been locked...something thudded inside his chest. That gate was always locked. Even by day, and without fail every night. Who had left it open? And why?

  Was this some sort of a trap?

  All those years of deceit, of hiding and moving and avoiding the past, now made him wary. Something smelled wrong. The house waited, dark and enigmatic, while he made up his mind.

  He had planned for so long, working and being patient and making his plans for years and years. He could not give it all up now. She was already primed for this night; his letter had seen to that. Whatever came, he had to carry on.

  He knew just the cellar window he could force to get into the house. He closed the gate behind him and cut around to the rear of the place. It never occurred to him to try the front door.

  He carried a jimmy in his pocket, especially for forcing windows. Burglary had paid his way for much of his life. He knew just how to get into any sort of house in the quietest manner possible, and this time was no different. He dropped into the basement at the very back of the house two minutes after he came through the gate.

  His tiny flash guided him through the cobwebby space. There was a door, but it was closed. That must be to the apartment in the basement. It had been open before, he thought—but he wouldn’t think of that now.

  He went past it to the other door opening into the basement hall. Going up the stair in a rush, he found the night light glowing above, lighting the entry hall. He set his feet softly on the steps, the carpet feeling like velvet underfoot.

  Then he stopped. No, he would not creep up like a thief. He wanted her to know he was coming, to dread every step, every inch of his progress upward. His lips pulled back again, and he thumped his foot on the carpet. Again and again he stamped on the stairs. He savored every slow, deliberate step.

  He pictured her there in her tower room, cowering against the wall, perhaps? Pale, shivering, her narrow hands trembling. Maybe she held a weapon...he hoped she did, for it would make it real and exciting. To kill a frightened rabbit would be no sport at all.

  But he loved to kill a struggling cat that could threaten him with sharp claws and angry hisses. Such a victory was tremendously satisfying.

  He rounded the landing. Pausing, he looked up the corridor, seeing the flower basket lights glowing dimly. There was no dust here. No cobwebs. He’d hoped she was trapped here in a sort of haunted house, surrounded by guilty memories.

  He should have known better. She was strong. His own recollections told him so. And he had been told it by another too.

  That would make it even more satisfactory. He felt in his pocket and found his long knife there, sharp in its leather scabbard. It was a useful tool, and he had used it well on more than one occasion.

  If she fought, he would feel he truly had the revenge he had dreamed of for so long. A sob of breath came from his throat, surprising him.

  He paused, breathing deeply. He must not let himself get all worked up. That led to mistakes. He couldn’t afford any of those tonight. He had to do his work here, get back to his room, and be totally unsuspicious to any probing eye.

  The single time he’d let his emotions get away from him he had come perilously close to being caught. That mustn’t happen tonight.

  His heart steadied and he went on, stamping his feet firmly. She must be frantic, he thought.

  The half landing was on his right. He touched the doorknob leading into her sitting room, though he knew it would be locked. It turned, and the door opened without effort on his part.

  “Come in, Benjie,” said his mother.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Benjie

  Marise slept deeply, as if having this gnawing question answered had given something inside her release. Only her alarm, which waked her at midnight, kept her from sleeping through until morning. But she rose and moved her small table out from the wall, setting onto it two cups and saucers, spoons, and a bud vase holding a late rose.

  When the sound of his feet moved onto the stair, she smoothed her hair and looked about her room. She gave one last touch to the table. She felt nervous but contained.

  The opening of the door set her heart fluttering, but by then she sat in her rocking chair, composed, her voice quiet when she invited him in. He stood in the doorway, his stance wary and somehow dangerous. She knew those signs. She had seen them before in her son’s aunt. “Come and sit down. I have coffee and cookies. We have to talk, son.”

  His gaze strayed over the room as if in search of some kind of ambush. She knew what he feared, and she said, “Nobody is here except me. Believe that
, Benjie. Come, sit here in Ben’s chair. There is no trap here, whatever you may think.”

  He sidled into the room and pounced into the angle behind the door. When he found nothing there he moved like some jungle predator toward the chair. She tried to smile, but gave it up as he slipped cautiously into the seat opposite her at the table.

  “Coffee?” It might have been any cozy get-together between mother and son. To someone looking in from the outside, it would seem quite natural, the son sitting there quite calmly, Mama with cookies on the table.

  “No.” His voice was husky, as if he couldn’t quite trust it.

  She gazed at him and he stared back. Then he glanced aside at the painting she had put down here that evening. His black eyes narrowed.

  “You knew!” he accused her. “She painted it, and you knew.”

  “Not until very recently. Until earlier this week, I hadn’t been into Penelope’s rooms since that terrible day. Even after I found the portrait, I didn’t put it all together. You see, I thought you were dead too.

  “Not until you stepped through the door did I know, with complete certainty, that it was you who let her in that night. You had probably been letting her out of her room at other times. Your father never did figure it out, and for that I am devoutly grateful.”

  He was watching her, his face set and pale, his eyes alert for danger.

  “It was you, wasn’t it? Or did you just run, terrified at what you heard from Aunt Lina’s room? Tell me that was it, and I will believe you. It’s what I want to believe, just as Evan and the police wanted to. They’ve been looking for you ever since, and I only just now learned that as well.”

  She poured coffee into his cup and put a cookie on the edge of his saucer. “Tell me you were out of your mind with fear. I want to hear you say it.”

  He laughed, then, doubling over with mirth. That made him bump the table and slosh coffee into the saucer, where it soaked into the cookie.