The Glass Flame

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  While there was still time? Why had those words run so invidiously through my mind?

  We climbed the steps of the house to the shelter of the veranda just as thunder rolled down from the mountains and a flash of lightning turned the world pale green. The front door was locked, the lion’s-head knocker snarling, but Chris said he knew a window where the lock never worked. We ran around to the rear and I helped him lift the sash. He climbed through first, pulling me after him, and we hurried through a big kitchen that I hadn’t seen before. Chris led the way through to the central stairs and, as we started up, Commodore came out upon the landing above and stared down at us haughtily with his blue and yellow eyes. The pirate captain challenging boarders?

  Chris ran up the stairs and around the cat, and I ran after him. “Giff has some towels in Cecily’s room,” he called back to me.

  No one had repaired the damage I had done to the door of Cecily’s sitting room, but I left it wide open as we went inside. Chris found towels in a cabinet and held one out to me, so that I could wipe my face and blot my wet hair. At least I had a raincoat, while Chris had only a jacket. As he toweled himself I could see that he appeared to have recovered a little. The sharing of so terrible a burden could not help but be a relief. Now I carried it with him.

  When I was dry I went to look out the window, remembering how I had considered an escape that day when I had come here with Lori. I tugged the window up and leaned out to see that the rain was over.

  “I think we can leave pretty soon,” I said over my shoulder to Chris. “But first maybe we could talk a little more about your father.”

  He held up a hand in warning. “Listen!”

  The sound of a car reached us through the open window. The driveway was on the other side of the house, but I knew Trevor must have come at last, and I rushed across the room to the door.

  Chris, however, didn’t expect him, as I did, and he blocked my way. “Wait, Karen! Don’t go out there. We don’t know who it is. Nobody drives a car that close to this house anymore. The road’s too bad.”

  His fear reached me, and I remembered that there were others on the island. I waited in the doorway beside Chris while we both listened.

  From the far side of the house came the sound of voices, followed by unidentifiable noises from the doorway below. Then a car door slammed and we heard the car moving slowly away over uneven ground. But why should there be voices—in the plural? And why was the driver leaving?

  This time I pushed past Chris and walked softly toward the stairs. From the bare boards of the floor below came again the sounds I couldn’t immediately identify. Someone was down there, brought here by the car, left here when it went away.

  “It’s okay,” Chris said. “It’s only Aunt Nona. Let’s go downstairs and find her.”

  Eleven

  Chris had identified the sound of Nona’s crutches more quickly than I, but I still felt uncertain as I followed him downstairs. I had no idea why she had come, or even if it had been Trevor who had brought her.

  “She’s in the library,” Chris whispered to me. “That’s one of the rooms they’ve left almost the way it used to be. Except that the best books have all been taken somewhere else.”

  The door stood open and Nona was inside, propped on her crutches, idly studying a row of partly empty shelves. For once she wore slacks of brown corduroy with a zippered jacket, instead of her usual long gown.

  As we came into the room she looked around. “So there you are! Trevor has gone hunting you in the theater.”

  Chris and I looked at each other.

  “I’m sorry he got here late,” Nona ran on. “It was my fault. When I found out he was coming over here, I asked him to bring me along. But he was in a terrible hurry and said he couldn’t. I wasn’t dressed and he didn’t want to wait.”

  “Did you tell my father we were coming here, Karen?” Chris challenged.

  “I had to, Chris. It might have been dangerous for us to come alone. He promised to stay back and not try to listen to anything you said. How did you get him to wait for you, Nona?”

  “I invented,” she told us, her eyes brightly green. “When he was about to leave, I hurried down the ramp in my wheelchair and said that Lori had just had a bad fall on the hillside below the house and needed help. I told him I’d seen her from the deck. So he ran down the hill—it’s a long way around and a steep climb back—to have a look. That gave me time to change. He was pretty mad when he knew what I’d done, but I was already in his car by that time, and he couldn’t very well turn me out. What’s going on, Karen? What did you mean by ‘dangerous’?”

  There was no time for further explanations. Chris had apparently decided to forgive my betrayal for the moment, and he was looking at me, entreating.

  “If Dad’s gone to the theater—”

  “We can see it from the tower,” I said. “Let’s go up there.”

  We left Nona gaping and tore up the flights of stairs to the top. The shower was over by the time we stepped out on the wet balcony, and wind was ripping away the clouds. We looked across the washed green world of the island toward the theater, but trees concealed both Trevor’s ear and Lori’s, if they were there. Nothing moved, and that portion of the amphitheater we could see lay white and empty against the hillside.

  “It’s no use,” I said. “We can’t see anything.”

  Chris was quiet, studying the scene. Across the lake no houses were being worked on today, and there were none of the usual sounds. Nearby foliage dripped steadily, and wind rushed across the island, stirring the trees.

  “Look!” he cried, pointing.

  From somewhere near the theater, smoke plumed into the air, to be bent and carried away by the wind. Fire! A sick fear went through me, and even as I watched, the gray thickened and spread. Surely after the heavy rain there couldn’t be a fire. But something was burning out there.

  “Let’s go!” Chris was already on the stairs and I knew there would be no stopping him.

  As we rushed down, Nona hobbled into the hallway, and I called out to her. “There’s a fire near the theater!”

  Chris and I ran out the front door and I wished vainly that I’d left my car near the house. But it would take as long to cross the causeway to reach it as to follow the shortcut path to the theater on foot.

  Chris was fleeter than I, but I kept up with him pretty well. As we tore past the mound of kudzu I gave it no more than a fearful glance. Where the path we followed ended near the side door to the theater, I saw the two cars—Lori’s and Trevor’s. Inside the theater there was no sign of fire, but only that rising plume of smoke beyond the stage area. Trevor stood near the stage, not looking at the sky, clearly unaware.

  We cut along the tiers of steps, running.

  “Dad, there’s a fire!” Chris shouted. “It’s out in back by the dressing rooms! Maybe Mom is there.”

  Trevor stared up at us for a startled instant. Then he climbed to the stage, ran across it and disappeared into the greenery beyond. Chris rushed ahead, and by the time I had taken the same route across the stage and come down to the space of ground before the dressing rooms, I could see the source of the fire.

  It was burning inside Cecily’s room. The door was closed, but glass had broken in the one window and flames were already licking upward, hissing and turning to smoke as they reached the wet wood outside. Trevor battered at the closed door—apparently jammed—and when it gave before his shoulder he disappeared inside. We could see flames back in the room and hear their crackle and roar, but they hadn’t reached the door as yet. I was just in time to catch Chris by the arm so that he wouldn’t follow his father.

  Above the window flames licked the edge of the roof, drying wood that was only surface-wet, catching along the rim. Trevor stumbled into the open, carrying Lori in his arms. He bore her to a grassy space a little way off and laid her on the ground. Her green jumpsuit was burning and he tore off his jacket to smother the flames. Yet her face seemed unmarked, t
he eyes closed as if she were sleeping, and the fire hadn’t touched her pale hair. Chris cried out and fell to his knees beside his father.

  Lori opened her eyes and looked up at Trevor. At once there was terror. “The flame!” she gasped. “In the glass! I couldn’t put it out!” She choked and coughed and Trevor held her.

  From inside the dressing room came the sound of a splintering crash as Cecily’s mirror shattered. I could catch again the sickening smell of sandalwood. Nona’s candles once more. I had seen them there in the dressing room that time I had visited it.

  For me sandalwood would always be the odor of death.

  From far off we heard a siren. Someone in a hillside house must have seen the telltale rise of smoke from Belle Isle.

  “The engine can’t make it onto the island,” Trevor said. “Not over these roads. But I’ve got my car here. We must get her to the county hospital over near Sevierville.”

  He picked Lori up and carried her toward the car, while Chris ran anxiously at his side. I followed, looking back only once to see that all of Cecily’s dressing room was now ablaze. With old, dry wood beneath the wet surface there would soon be a coronet of fire around the entire half circle. At least the theater was safe, being built mostly of stone.

  Trevor placed Lori gently on the back seat, and Chris knelt on the floor beside her to keep her steady. I rode in front and we drove back through the island, bumping along as fast as Trevor dared push the car.

  We could hear Lori’s ragged breathing in a choking effort to get air into her lungs, and when I looked over into the back seat I saw Chris holding her with both arms, his face white and strained. I longed to help him, but there was nothing I could do.

  As we drove, I tried to tell Trevor what little I could about her being there—that Chris and I had seen Lori dancing on the stage, and that the man, Bruen, had been watching her from the side. Whether she knew he was there or not, I wasn’t sure. The realization came to me only now that she hadn’t seemed to be dancing for anyone. It had been as though she danced only for her own release and pleasure.

  “Did you find out what Chris wanted to show you on the island?” Trevor asked softly, so the boy couldn’t hear.

  I couldn’t possibly tell him all that now, urgent as it was. “Later,” I said.

  “I don’t think she’s badly burned,” Trevor told me as we drove across the causeway. “But the room was thick with smoke and she was unconscious when I found her. One of those sandalwood candles was burning and the smell of it was almost stronger than the fire. She may have started the blaze herself in that dry interior.”

  I had a horrible feeling that she hadn’t. A lighted candle could be set with an accelerant around it, and by the time the candle burned down and started the fire, an arsonist could be far away. But a candle, depending on its length and thickness, could take hours to burn, and not that much time had passed. Something else must have helped to start this fire.

  I wondered aloud to Trevor, and Lori heard me from the back seat and tried to speak, her voice hoarse and tortured. “A match. In a box. The candle too. I saw.”

  “Who put you in there?” Trevor asked again urgently. “Tell us who it was, Lori!”

  But she broke into a fit of coughing, and Chris said brokenly, “She can’t talk now.”

  When we were over the causeway Trevor stopped to let me pick up my own car.

  “I’ll follow you,” I told him, and he drove on.

  When I reached the side road that led away from Belle Isle, I saw the fire truck and the chief’s car stopped on ahead, with Trevor halted beside them. He was explaining that the fire was on the island and the roads would never take the big truck. Several men got into the chief’s car and they headed for the lake, while we went past the parked engine. Trevor drove at top speed now, and I followed, keeping close behind.

  At the hospital Lori was rushed into emergency, and Trevor went at once to the phone to call the police. In the waiting room Chris and I sat helpless, able to do nothing but wait. Once or twice I tried to speak to him, but his face still had a white, empty look, and I doubted that he heard me. His state worried me. He had endured more in these last weeks than any ten-year-old should have to bear.

  When Trevor returned, he seemed to look at me closely for the first time and he saw the mud stains and the stains of green on my coat, my scratched hands.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told him, and right then it didn’t. He had to be told, but not now, when Lori was fighting for her life. Suddenly I remembered Nona. “She’s still in the house on the island,” I reminded Trevor.

  “I didn’t want her along.” He sounded grim. “It was because of one of her tall tales that I was delayed so long. Now she’ll have to wait until someone can pick her up.”

  Nevertheless, the thought of Nona alone in the octagonal house worried me. Trevor didn’t know everything that had happened on the island.

  “I’ll phone Giff at Eric’s office,” I offered. “Maybe he can pick her up. I don’t think she should be left alone with whoever’s roaming that island now.”

  “He’ll be away and gone,” Trevor said. “This time he won’t dare to stay around, because Lori knows who he is. I’ve already told the police there was someone there.”

  “He can’t hide in that cabin under the kudzu anymore,” Chris put in.

  “Cabin?” Trevor stared at his son.

  In spite of Lori, a way had opened. This was our chance.

  “Tell your father the whole thing, Chris,” I said. “I’ll go and phone.”

  A little color had returned to Chris’s face, and I saw that he had rallied. He didn’t falter as he faced his father.

  When I found a telephone and dialed Eric’s office, the switchboard answered, but neither Giff nor Eric had come in that morning. Nor did I get an answer when I called Maggie at home.

  Back in the waiting room, I found Trevor with an arm about his son, and saw that Chris’s cheeks were streaked with tears. For this reconciliation, at least, I could be glad. Chris would be free of torment about his father from now on.

  An intern in a white coat came out to speak to Trevor. “You’d better come. She wants to talk, but she’s very weak.”

  They let Chris and me accompany him. Lori reached out weakly and he took her hand, leaning to catch her words.

  “Joe set the explosive.” She spoke in a hoarse whisper, but her words were clear. “He hid in the cabin on the island. David knew. But Joe never meant to kill anyone in that house. He just—” Her voice faded into silence and she closed her eyes.

  The nurse waved us all away. Just as we were leaving the room, Lori tried again to speak, faintly. “The flame—the flame in the glass—”

  There was no more and we returned to the waiting room, frustrated and helpless.

  “Why didn’t she try to get out of the room when the fire started?” I asked. Trevor. “Surely she could have escaped easily enough.”

  “The door was jammed.” Trevor’s tone was deadly. “Purposely, I think. She smashed the window glass but the smoke got to her before she could get out. I had to break through the door.”

  After that I sat in silent horror. We had only a little while longer to wait, however, before a doctor came to tell us that it was over. The smoke and gases had done their deadly poisoning and it had been impossible to save her.

  “Take Chris home with you,” Trevor told me numbly. “And pick Nona up on the way.”

  His son came with me in silence and there was no comfort I could offer him other than my hand on his arm now and then as I drove.

  This time I went straight to the island house, regardless of the bad road, and we found Nona sitting on the veranda steps, with Commodore on her lap, the lion door knocker behind her staring arrogantly. Lori’s words came back to me—that the lion always reminded her of Vinnie Fromberg.

  Nona’s temper had reached the boiling point. “What’s happened?” she called the
moment we stopped. “I’ve heard the cars and the fire engine across the lake. You said there was a fire, and I could smell the smoke. But nobody came here and I’ve been trapped. Did you forget me? What burned—tell me!”

  The acrid smell was on the wind, but everything seemed quiet now, with no smoke rising above the trees. Perhaps wet wood hadn’t burned for long after all.

  Chris spoke first. “My mother is dead.”

  Nona pushed the cat aside and took him into her arms. She sat on the steps and held him, while I leaned against the rail and Commodore stared at us with his strange eyes, looking wise and superior, as though he could answer all our questions if he chose.

  While Nona held Chris, comforting him, I told her everything I knew—even to the part about the cabin hidden under the vines, and Chris’s finding of David’s body.

  She rocked the boy in her arms as though he’d been the baby she remembered, and he clung to her as I’d never seen him cling to Lori. I envied her a little sadly.

  After a time she released him and reached for her crutches. “We’d better go home now. We’ll need to be there when Trevor comes.”

  Thus appealed to, Chris helped her to stand, then assisted her down the steps and into the front seat of my car. I sat beside her to drive, with Chris between us.

  We had little to say on the way up the mountain. When we arrived, the house seemed strangely empty of Lori’s presence, and I found it hard to believe that she wouldn’t walk in at any moment, bright and provocative, her moods never to be counted on ahead of time. That she should be gone so suddenly and so terribly—once more through the horror of fire—was impossible to accept.

  Lu-Ellen had to be told the worst of what had happened, and Nona managed this crisply, with the fewest possible words, and she dealt with Lu-Ellen’s tears gently. We all waited for Trevor’s return.

  During the next few days Nona was busier than ever, taking as much as possible off Trevor’s hands. The brief closeness between father and son had somehow lessened and each had retreated into his own defensive silence.