Meg gasped. Andy dropped the bag of groceries.
It split and bounced; for a few seconds Meg saw nothing but oranges, gyrating like a conjurer’s balls. When the bruised groceries had settled, Culver was on the ground. Andy stood over him, his foot planted on Culver’s wrist. Andy wasn’t even breathing hard.
Cherry let out an inarticulate howl and sprang at Andy. He backed away, his arm raised to shield his face against her clawing nails. The chipped, scarlet polish looked like blood.
Meg put her bag of groceries carefully on the ground. She had to force herself to touch Cherry; it was not that she feared being hurt, she simply loathed coming in contact with the unwashed body. Cherry had no such compunctions. She lashed out with a booted foot that caught Meg on the shin and sent her sprawling. Andy lost his patience. He slapped the girl twice. She sat down with a reverberant thud. Culver had gotten to his knees but he made no attempt to rush to his lady’s assistance; in fact, as Andy turned toward him, he started crawling backward.
Andy picked up the knife, retracted the blade, and put it in his pocket.
“You all right, Meg?” he asked. Cherry had marked him; his shirt sleeve was torn and three parallel scratches on his left cheek oozed blood.
“I’ll be limping for a few days,” Meg said, nursing her calf. “But I don’t think anything is broken.”
She looked around to see Georgia trotting toward them. The shaded windows had been misleading; Georgia didn’t keep up with local gossip by avoiding the windows.
“I’ll call the cops, Andy,” she wheezed, glaring at Culver, who was now peering at them from behind the protection of the back fender.
Cherry snarled.
“Sure, you call the fuzz. Wait’ll I tell how he hit me. Right in the face. I bet I’m all bruised.”
“Wait, let’s not lose our tempers,” Culver said.
Andy began to laugh. “No, we wouldn’t want to do that. Forget it, Georgia. Just get out of town, Culver,” he added, out of the corner of his mouth. “If you don’t, I swear I’ll get you!”
“It isn’t funny,” Georgia snapped, advancing on Cherry.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Cherry whined. “We’ll go. People like us never get a square deal.”
“Sure, we’ll go,” Culver said. He held out his hand. “Gimme back my knife, okay?”
The request set Andy off again; he bent over, gasping with laughter. Meg still didn’t feel like laughing, and Georgia was crimson with fury. She picked up a can of tomatoes and threw it at Culver. The can whizzed close by his head and crashed against a rock. Georgia reached for another can, and the Culvers fled.
“Did you ever pitch for the Phillies, Georgia?” Andy was still grinning. “Forget about the police. Those two won’t bother us again.”
“Andy, you have to file a complaint,” Georgia said. “The whole town has been waiting for an excuse to get rid of that precious pair.”
“She’s right,” Meg said. “Culver may try to get back at you, Andy. Good Lord, you can buy a gun in this country as easily as you can buy a pack of cigarettes. Suppose he takes a shot at you from behind a tree!”
“Okay, okay. Anything to shut you girls up.”
Georgia helped them retrieve their scattered and bruised supplies, and then they started for home. Neither spoke at first. Andy was whistling softly under his breath as he drove. His torn shirt and the ragged scratches on his face made him look like a brawling schoolboy. The whole encounter seemed to have cheered him, in some incomprehensible male way. Meg was a little impressed. Whatever Andy’s other failings, he was not a physical coward.
“How did you do that?” she asked finally.
“Do what?” Andy’s eyes were intent on the road.
“Knock him down. Was that judo, or what?”
Andy smiled. “I’m tempted to brag about my black belt. No, honey, a ten-year-old in reasonably good condition could take Culver; he’s an undernourished slob and his reflexes are shot to hell. Cherry is a different story. I’d hate to tangle with that girl if she had a knife. You noticed how I tried to run when she jumped me?”
“I noticed your gentlemanly instincts held you back far too long. Why didn’t you clobber her before she scratched you?”
“I don’t mind the scratches so much,” Andy said. “But I’ll never forgive her for ruining my one good shirt.”
“Oh, damn the shirt. I hope your tetanus shots are up to date. You could get lockjaw just from breathing the same air she does.”
Chapter 10
By the time Meg had finished smearing iodine on the scratches, Andy said he looked like an Indian on the warpath. He insisted on getting dinner, pointing out that she had been feeding him for the past few days. Meg assented with a smile and an inward groan; Andy really was a terrible cook, but she was feeling kindly toward him just then. She was secretly amused at her feelings; all a man has to do is flex his muscles, she thought, and we poor females flip.
The muscle flexing, or something, had done wonders for Andy’s disposition. When they went to the library after dinner he came over and looked at her embroidery.
“How do you do that?” he asked. “Don’t you need a pattern or something?”
“Sometimes you work with a pattern printed on the cloth. But I’m doing it the same way Anna Maria did— counting threads. Two each way, up and down and crosswise, form a square. It’s cross-stitch.”
“It looks nice,” said Andy graciously.
“Thank you. Aren’t we polite this evening?”
“It’s high time.” Andy sat down across from her and reached for a book.
“Go ahead and work on the masterpiece,” Meg said, determined to match him in courtesy. “The typewriter doesn’t bother me.”
“I’m not in the mood. Don’t faint—but I think I’ll get back to ghost hunting.”
“I thought you’d given that up.”
“I have ambivalent feelings about it,” Andy admitted.
“So I noticed.”
They smiled at one another.
“Maybe we ought to discuss it for once when we’re both in a reasonably good mood,” Andy said. “It’s funny, the way the thing has developed. It was my idea to begin with. Then I got cold feet and you got interested.”
“How do you feel about it now?”
“I’m still mixed up. But I have to admit the evidence for genuine occult phenomena is just about incontrovertible. You haven’t had one of your odd-type hallucinations since you got here, have you? I mean, like elephants in the drawing room.”
“No. In fact, I haven’t seen anything at all, except when you were with me. That’s significant, I think. We’ve both experienced emotional states—that feeling of anticipation I told you about, for me. And you—”
“You know about my emotional states. Lucky you. But so long as we’re leveling with each other…” Andy looked sheepish. “That first hallucination you had, the day you got here. I saw it too. Then I—well, I chickened out. I was afraid to admit it.”
Meg waited, hoping he felt secure enough now to explain why he had been afraid to admit it. But he said no more and she didn’t want to shatter their confidential mood by asking the wrong questions. Still, she was disappointed. He wasn’t ready to trust her yet.
“One funny thing about the visions,” she said. “They are without sound or motion.”
“Yes. What that means, if anything, I can’t imagine. I can’t see any time sequence either. But we seem to be seeing these people over a relatively short period of time; I mean, they don’t age visibly, or change in appearance.”
“The visions seem so inconsequential,” Meg complained. “We just see people engaged in ordinary daily activities. According to all the ghost stories I’ve ever read, restless spirits don’t linger unless they have a problem. Oh, I know; murder victims make fine ghosts. But wouldn’t you think we would see them do something significant— being murdered, or about to be murdered, or—”
“I’ve wondered about tha
t too. Another thing mat puzzles me is that the anniversary of the murder went by with no particular fuss.”
“We made quite a fuss.”
“That was the first time we saw—them. But was it the first time they were there? They are still there, Meg. Every night.”
“I know,” Meg said, in a low voice. “I’ve seen them too.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Why didn’t you?”
There was no need for either of them to answer.
“Have they always been here?” Meg asked, after a while.
“They sure as hell weren’t when we used to live here,” Andy answered. “Or if they were, they were better behaved. Dad and Sylvia did some entertaining, and I don’t recall any of the guests having a fit when they left after a party. Far as that goes, I’ve been back and forth at night all summer. I never felt a thing, till the experience I told you of.”
“Maybe they’ll go away.”
“Or maybe they won’t. Maybe we’ve raised something we don’t know how to dismiss.”
“Now we come to it,” Meg said. She didn’t look at Andy; she concentrated on sliding her needle in and out. “This isn’t just a question of finding out what happened. We have to do something about it.”
“Or else move out. We can’t spend the whole winter hiding in the house between twilight and dawn. The nights are getting longer.”
“What do you propose?”
“I propose to fight it out on this front if it takes all winter.”
Meg dropped her embroidery and looked up. “Oh, Andy, I’m so glad. I don’t want to give up; but I didn’t think I could stick it out alone.”
Andy was smiling; now his face grew serious. “I’ve got only one reservation about this, Meg, and I’m going to be honest about it even if you get mad. I’m worried about you.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?”
“You’ve changed. You can’t see it, but I sure can. When you got here, you were a city girl—cynical, uptight, sarcastic. Now look at you.” He gestured at her embroidery. “You’re turning into a crazy-clean Dutch housewife. Baking, sweeping floors, getting chummy with Georgia and gossiping with little old ladies about the best way to hem dishcloths… Jim Stoltzfuss thinks you’re a nice little girl. Nice little girl, for God’s sake!”
Meg couldn’t help laughing. “Andy, that’s ridiculous. Why shouldn’t I embroider if I want to?”
“Oh, it isn’t the damned embroidery…” Andy flapped his arms distractedly. “I can’t explain it. It’s your whole attitude. Hell, you haven’t even made a nasty remark about Sylvia lately.”
“I feel happy here,” Meg said. “I’m not mad at anybody these days. I feel as if I’ve come home…”
The words startled her a little; but they had a devastating effect on Andy. His face went white. The iodine-stained scratches stood out like a brand.
“Why don’t you be honest?” Meg asked. “That’s what you’re afraid of—you think Anna Maria is taking me over. Andy, that is so foolish! Don’t you think I would know if somebody were trying to move in on my mind? Of course I identify with the girl; any woman would. She was young and pretty and in love—”
“Aha!” Andy pointed an accusing finger. “That’s what I mean. That’s what worries me. Sure, it’s natural for any woman—or man, my God, we aren’t all monsters—to sympathize with a girl who was brutally done to death. But how do you know all these things about her? You keep coming up with statements, flat statements based on nothing. Why do you say she was in love?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, haven’t you ever heard about hunches? She was young and pretty; what girl of seventeen isn’t in love? We saw her once looking out the window, as if she hoped to see someone coming… That’s enough for a good imagination to work on. Now are you going to stop cross-examining me?”
“AH right, I’ll lay off. Shall we assume that the house is haunted because the spirits of the victims can’t rest? We could have a nice friendly exorcism, or call up a medium—”
“No.”
“I’m inclined to agree. Then we can go on as we’ve been doing. Try to find out what really happened. Though if a jury—”
“We’ve got sources of information the jury didn’t have. If we keep on… looking… sooner or later we’re bound to see what happened. But maybe we don’t have to wait that long. Suppose this was a real case, I mean a contemporary murder case. Or suppose you were writing a mystery story. How would you go about solving it?”
“That isn’t how you write a mystery story. You imagine the crime first and then plant clues so the detective can solve it.” Andy’s expression was thoughtful; as always, he was distracted by an appeal to reason. “But in a real murder case… What have we got? Three people killed—”
“Two. A third missing, presumed dead.”
“You’re a stickler for details. But it’s barely possible that the girl did survive, isn’t it? Suppose she escaped, fled from the house while the killers were butchering the others. The shock alone would be enough to make her lose her wits, even her memory. She might wander in the forest for days.”
“You’re getting off the track,” Meg said. “Two people dead, one missing. The method, the usual blunt instrument. Motive?”
“That has bugged me all along,” said Andy, now completely absorbed. “A frustrated lover might attack the family in order to get at the girl; but a whole group of unsuspected sex maniacs? It’s unlikely. The most obvious motive is robbery.”
“Surely the newspaper would have mentioned it if anything had been stolen.”
“Right. The more you think about it, the more puzzling it is. They were the most harmless people—an old man, an old woman, a young girl. Why should anyone want to wipe them out?”
“Lust, greed, revenge, fear,” Meg recited. “Aren’t those the usual motives? You’ve eliminated lust and greed—”
“Not eliminated. Merely reduced them to improbabilities. That leaves us with revenge—”
“But as you say, they were so harmless.”
“Well, we don’t know that they were as harmless as they looked. It would be easier to find a motive if there had been only a single murder. The fact that the whole family was attacked almost suggests a kind of feud.”
“Did they have feuds?”
“Everybody always had feuds,” Andy said sweepingly. “The feud came from Europe. In Sicily it was called a vendetta—”
“None of the people around here were Italians.”
“What does that have to do with it? The Scots were great on family feuds. Some of the settlers were Scotch-Irish—”
“That would imply that the roots of the trouble lay in Europe. Like, if old Mr. Huber was the last member of a family which was feuding with another family that had also moved to America.”
Andy laughed. “Sorry. The Huber-Schutzfuss feud? Not only is it ridiculous, it’s too coincidental. So far as I know, the bourgeoisie of central Europe didn’t indulge in such wasteful activities as feuds. And it would be too much if Huber happened to move into an area where his deadly family rivals had also settled.”
“But there wouldn’t be any other reason for revenge,” Meg argued. “What harm could he do anyone personally, a noble-looking old man like that?”
“Then there’s only one motive left,” Andy said. “Fear.”
The word echoed in the shadowy room. Meg shivered.
“That’s just as ridiculous as the idea of revenge,” she said, raising her voice to overpower the faint echoes of a word. “Why should anyone fear a kindly old man like that?”
“It isn’t ridiculous, it’s hopeless. I can think of a dozen reasons, and we’ll never be able to substantiate any of them. Mr. Huber recognized one of the neighboring families as well-known European criminals; they were afraid he’d turn them in. He was a usurer—a man’s features don’t reflect his character, Miss Innocence—and held a mortgage he was threatening to foreclose. He had seduced a neighbor’s daughter—”
“Oh, stop it. That old man?”
“They’re the worst,” Andy said.
“All right, I see what you mean. Maybe we’ll never find out, but we can try, can’t we? When you said the trouble might go back to Europe, where these people came from, I had a flash of intuition. We don’t even know when Huber arrived in this country.”
“He bought the property in 1728.”
“He could have been living in Virginia or New England before that.”
“I doubt it. The earliest settlers were English or Dutch. The Pennsylvania Dutch didn’t come from the Netherlands; they were German—deutsch in their own language. When did they arrive? My history teacher always told me I’d be sorry if I didn’t study…”■ Andy reached for a reference book. “Here it is. Penn went to the Rhineland in 1671, trying to drum up immigrants. The area had been wasted by religious wars, and many of the people were followers of a sect that had a lot in common with the Quakers; it’s no wonder they responded to Penn’s descriptions of a fertile new land where every man had the right to worship as he pleased. The waves of immigration started in 1683 and went on up to the French and Indian War. It was a rough trip. The ships were packed so full that passengers died like flies. Rats used to lick the sweat off the faces of sleeping men and women. The ones who didn’t die of typhoid and malnutrition and fever often had to sell themselves as indentured servants. Seven years of your life in exchange for passage across the Atlantic…” Andy’s voice had changed. “I wonder if that’s how my ancestors got their start.”
House of Many Shadows Page 18
