Barrett's Hill

by Anne Stuart

  “Yes, Karlew.” I smiled demurely after I felt all danger of gagging past. “He sent his best to all of you and asked me to tell you that he wouldn’t be back for a while yet.” I pushed the delicate china plate with its revolting load a little away from me.

  “Oh, how sad for you!” Maxine was all solicitude. “You know, Miranda, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d scared him off. Men like women to be a little bit retiring sometimes, but you’ve been downright hostile.” She exchanged amused looks with Roxie.

  “Maxine, my dear,” I said smoothly, “when I need advice on how to handle my love affairs, I’ll ask someone who’s had a little more success than you have.” I looked at Roxie’s petulant countenance meaningfully. “If I ever find anyone, that is.”

  “Ladies, ladies!” Karlew admonished as Roxie was about to retort. “This is the dinner table. You may have your petty disagreements when you are by yourselves.” I lowered my eyes meekly, but not before I’d seen a look of such absolute hatred from Roxie that I felt chilled. Elinor immediately suggested that the weather had been mild for March—what did Fathimore think? Fathimore never had an independent thought in his life, but he answered her in his nasty little voice, and the argument was seemingly forgotten.

  I kept away from everyone after that. I was suddenly more frightened than I had ever been. I felt sure that it was Roxie who’d tried to strangle me, yet I decided to acquit her of Carly’s murder. Roxie was older than she pretended, of course, but she still could scarcely have been more than perhaps twelve or thirteen at the time. Yet I didn’t know whom I could trust. I could feel the tension mounting in the house, like an evil fungus growing and spreading. I was convinced that something horrible was about to happen, and Adam wouldn’t be here to stop it. Not that he would stop it even if he could, I told myself. He was inciting the current tension—if anything happened he’d be to blame.

  I longed more than ever to hide myself in my room until this was all over. But even my room began to seem less like a shelter and more like a prison as each day passed. I didn’t dare go out of the house any farther than the snow-covered boundaries of the kitchen garden, and that short walk had begun to pall on me with its constant repetition. I stared at the blue-flowered wallpaper around my room, finding no stimulation in its fading patterns. There was a slight touch of aqua in the center of each delicate flower, and the color reminded me of the dress I had so foolishly worn to that ill-fated skating party. Could someone have put it back in the attic? I decided to go exploring and hastily changed into an old brown frock, shrunken and faded after years of wearing.

  The stairs to the attic were hidden in one of the storerooms on the third story. When I opened the door I noticed the dust thick upon the floor. Obviously no one had been up here since Emma had returned the old trunk. I started up the narrow, twisty staircase, not even bothering to hold my skirts away from the dust. I’d remembered to bring the lamp from my room, and as I got to the top of the stairs I stopped to light it.

  The attic looked like a cross between a barn and a church bazaar. Boxes and trunks were stacked haphazardly around the edges, piles of newspapers surrounding them. Two moderate-sized windows at either end of the long room shed a little light on the shabby furnishings. These consisted of three broken rocking chairs, an old cradle that had probably held Maxine; and an old horsehair sofa that rats had gotten into. I looked around nervously, but the rodent population had fortunately abated with the advent of two strong house cats. And there was an ornate brass bed with a very sagging mattress in the center. I remembered when I’d first come up here, a few weeks after Karlew had fetched me from Boston. The mindless hypocrisy of my new-found relatives had finally driven me past endurance and I’d run up here, not knowing what to expect but only wanting to escape. I had flung myself on that bed and wept for what had seemed like hours. When I had finally calmed down, I had lain there and watched the sun disappear in red and gold glory through the dusty window, and so had discovered there were rare moments of beauty to help me through the rest.

  But I wasn’t here to indulge myself in hysterical fits, I thought firmly. I went to the trunk that had held Carly’s dress and opened it. Maxine’s red monstrosity was jumbled back in there. I searched through the rest of the outmoded costumes but found nothing of that telltale color. I had settled myself comfortably on the floor when a sound behind me made me jerk around.

  Roxie was standing by the stairs, her eyes glittering in the gloom—malevolently, I thought. I felt a stab of fear somewhere in the region of my stomach.

  “Good afternoon, Roxie,” I greeted her politely. “I was just looking through some old clothes of Cousin Elinor’s.” She said nothing, just continued to watch me with those glazed, hate-filled eyes. I got up slowly, afraid that any sharp movement would start . . . I didn’t know what. “Is something wrong?”

  She seemed to sway in the gathering darkness that the one lamp and the faint twilight from outside did little to dispel. She took a slight, staggering step forward, and I saw tears streaming down her haggard face.

  “Adam . . .” she gasped, and pitched forward on the floor.

  I ran to her side and knelt down. Her back was red with blood—there was so much blood I didn’t have the faintest idea where it was coming from. I turned her over. Her eyes were blank and staring, her face and body covered with a light film of dust from the floor where she’d fallen. She was dead.

  Chapter 17

  I DON’T KNOW how long I sat there with her body cradled in my arms, screaming like a person demented. After what seemed like an eternity the attic was filled with people, people carrying lamps and tramping around with noisy boots. Someone slapped me, and I stopped making that awful noise. My mind was a babble of confusion to match the sounds coming from all those people around me.

  I was pulled roughly away from the dead girl and taken downstairs into the library, where a glass of brandy was thrust into my hand. Downing it absently, I was surprised to note it calmed me a bit. I started recreating the dreadful scene I’d just witnessed in my mind. I had recognized our local constable up there and knew with a certainty that a cross-examination was about to ensue.

  Time seemed terribly confused to me during all that. From the moment I’d first seen Roxie staring at me glassy-eyed till the men had responded to my screams had been not more than three minutes and yet had seemed to last forever. Now the constable, led, of course, by Reverend Karlew and a sickly looking Fathimore, came into the library.

  “Now, Miranda,” Karlew began importantly, “I know this has been a dreadful shock to you, but Constable Putnam has a few questions to ask you, and I’m afraid it can’t wait.” He turned to the others. “We must catch this fiend before another innocent young thing has been destroyed!”

  I cold-heartedly disagreed that either Roxie or Carly had been innocent, but I said nothing. I had caught Karlew’s fatuously affectionate smiles at Maxine’s friend when he thought no one was looking, so charitably I allowed him his partiality.

  Constable Putnam, a short, rosy-cheeked, sweetly ineffectual public servant put into office by his brother, the Mayor, came over to me and began questioning me in his soft, kindly voice. I answered him as best I could, truthful on all points but one.

  “Did she say anything to you? Anything at all?” he asked me again, his bland, middle-aged face concealing the guile of a potato.

  “Not a word,” I lied baldly.

  Inwardly, I was thanking Karlew’s God and my own that Adam was safely away in Boston, when he walked in the library door. If I’d been expecting him I would have been in better control of myself, but the combination of the brandy, the shock over seeing Roxie die, and seeing the man I loved walk into the room unexpectedly was enough to snap the control of a saint. As it was, I threw myself into his arms, weeping, I’m afraid, hysterically.

  He held me quietly, having the good sense to say nothing while I was so ove
rwrought. Through my tears I could see the shocked reactions of the room’s inhabitants. I had committed myself.

  Constable Putnam hopped around, looking uncomfortable and guilty. “I didn’t mean to upset her,” he told anyone who would listen. “I’ve got to ask these questions, you see . . . His voice trailed off as he met Adam’s commanding stare.

  “All right, Constable,” he said shortly, loosening his hold on me as he felt my body relax. “I think she understands.” He drew me back to the horsehair couch and sat down with me, ignoring Karlew’s protestations and Maxine’s tear-drenched glare. She had been fond of Roxie, I remembered belatedly.

  I didn’t care what they thought—I was ridiculously pleased to have Adam beside me, and I managed to smile apologetically through my tears. He looked down at me with surprising tenderness and smoothed the hair back from my ravaged face. I must have looked absolutely hag-ridden. And then I remembered the body upstairs and didn’t care what I looked like.

  “Roxie’s been murdered,” I told him, waiting to see the shock and sorrow fill his face and pull him away from me.

  “I know,” he said calmly. “I’ve already spoken with the constable.” I looked at that gentleman and was sickened to see the suspicious expression on his face as he watched Adam. Why did you have to come back now, my mind wept. I managed to gaze back at the constable levelly.

  “I guess that’s all for now, Miss Miranda,” he said. “I’ll have more questions for you later, but in the meantime you can get some rest. I do hope I haven’t upset you. It’s my duty, you know, nothing more. We’ve got a brutal killer to catch, and I wouldn’t be right easy in mind if I didn’t.”

  “That will be sufficient, Constable,” Adam dismissed him coolly. “Miss Miranda’s been through more than enough for one day.”

  Pity for the poor constable and gratification at Adam’s protectiveness warred within me. I smiled reassuringly at the miserable policeman as I rose. I could see Nanny waiting impatiently for her poor lamb at the doorway. I glanced back at Adam, but he was involved in a conversation with Fathimore.

  I had never seen the two of them together, and the disparity was almost surreal. Adam’s six foot two inch of lean masculinity compared to Fathimore’s wasted sexual neutrality. I felt a pull on my sleeve from Nanny, and together we went upstairs.

  The door to the attic was opened, and I averted my eyes, shuddering.

  “Now, now, lamby—they’ve taken the poor thing away. There’s nothing can hurt you in this house,” Nanny comforted me with a fine disregard of logic. There obviously must be something in this house that was very dangerous indeed, and if it was gone for the moment, who knew when it might come back to strike again.

  Nanny sat with me for the few hours remaining in the day. The very thought of food made me quite faint with longing, but I decided that announcing my hunger would brand me a very cold-blooded person indeed, and any nourishment needed could be gotten by stealth after the rest of the house had retired. So I sat patiently in the cushioned rocker Nanny had vacated in favor of the less comfortable ladder-back chair and waited.

  I think Nanny decided to chaperone me until Adam was safely asleep in his room across the hall before she left me alone. But age and weariness undermined her moral resolve, and, when the town church bells announced it was eleven o’clock and Adam’s leather boots hadn’t yet sounded in the uncarpeted third floor hallway, she gave up and kissed me good night.

  “Now you go right to sleep, Miss Miranda, and don’t let no one in to talk with you. You need your rest, I was telling Cook, and I won’t have any chatterboxes depriving you of it.” I nodded compliantly, and she seemed satisfied.

  I lay in the dark for a while, listening to the sounds the old house made. I could fancy I heard steps up in the attic and quickly shut that ghastly thought out of my mind. I hadn’t sent Nanny away so that I could be tormented by supernatural fears. Resolutely I got out of bed and crept downstairs. For some odd reason I was absolutely unafraid in this house that had just seen a murder. Perhaps I knew somehow that I wasn’t in danger at that particular time. Though up to now my intuition hadn’t stopped me from being attacked twice. Perhaps I was just a lucky fool. Anyway, as I was coming back from the kitchen laden with buttered muffins and a large glass of milk, I stopped by Karlew’s study—the chink of light under the sill inviting my all too healthy curiosity. With my usual delicacy I put my ear to the door.

  “It’s gone much too far, Karlew.” Adam’s voice sounded clear and reasonable to me. “I’m afraid I can’t give you any more time.”

  I couldn’t make out the whining response at all, but, knowing my cousin Karlew, he probably didn’t say anything of interest. My feet were freezing from the late March wind blowing through the hall from the cracks in the front door, but bravely I held my ground. I was determined to find out whatever I could. Perhaps their guard was lowered by the lateness of the hour and the stillness of the house, enough to incriminate the murderer.

  But luck wasn’t with me. As my bare feet turned to blocks of ice the sounds from the study were totally inaudible. I sighed. “Enough of this,” I told myself firmly, and started up the stairs. Belatedly I decided that I really didn’t want to hear anything. Someone I cared about, or at least knew, was a madman, and I wanted to put off the discovery of who it was for as long as possible. I finished off my midnight snack and fell into a dreamless sleep amidst buttery crumbs.

  When I first opened my eyes the next morning I was vaguely aware that something was wrong, though for the life of me I couldn’t remember what. I lay there, half asleep, trying to dismiss it from my mind when the elusive memory intruded. Roxie was dead. I sat up, no longer able to take comfort from my tumbled bed, and I stared disconsolately out my window at another of those interminable snow flurries we seem to get every other day at the end of March, telling us we have to wait still longer for spring. I sat there for only a minute, thinking about Adam’s surprise appearance yesterday, when the wind decided to remind me of its presence by seeping through the window and turning my hands to ice. I jumped out of bed and dressed quickly, although the haste involved in the operation in no way precluded the extreme care to which I went.

  When I decided I looked as good as I possibly could in a day gown of soft gray wool (I thought semi-mourning might be in good taste, since Roxie had so to speak, died in my arms), I left my room. My heart was pounding wildly as I descended the broad oak stairway, the thought of Adam efficiently driving all other considerations from my mind. I remembered in time and entered the breakfast room looking suitably morose.

  I murmured greetings to the family and quietly slipped into place beside Maxine. Her eyes were red from weeping. I had forgotten how close she’d been with Roxie. I looked at her curiously, since strong emotions involving anyone besides herself were rare, but her grief seemed genuine enough. She caught me watching her and, in response to my sympathetic look, smiled bravely and lowered her eyes to the cold and jellied scrambled eggs on her plate.

  “How are you feeling, my dear?” Cousin Elinor asked solicitously as she dished me some of the same unappetizing eggs. “We decided to let you sleep late, considering all you’ve been through.”

  Before I could thank her, Maxine burst out in a fury.

  “Considering all she’s been through!” she screamed. “She wasn’t the one who lost the best and dearest friend she’s ever had! She’s not the one who lost her one and only true love!”

  “Oh, was she your one and only true love?” I questioned sympathetically. “I hadn’t known.”

  “No,” she said heatedly. “She and Adam were going to get married as soon as this was all over. She told me all about it. You can’t imagine how they used to laugh at you, mooning over him like that—”

  “That will be enough, Maxine,” Karlew broke in sternly. “There’s already been too much hysteria around here for a gentleman’s household
. You may go to your room until you are ready to apologize to your cousin and behave like a normal human being.”

  “I am behaving like a normal human being!” she shrieked. “That’s what’s wrong with this house; no one ever says what they feel.”

  “Well, you certainly make up for everyone else’s deficiencies in that area,” Adam said drily, rising and tossing his napkin on the table. He turned to me. “Miranda, when you’re finished I wonder if you’d care to take a walk with me?”

  “Certainly,” I said calmly. “As a matter of fact I seem to have lost my appetite.”

  I excused myself and left the tension-filled room while Karlew was attempting some garbled protest. I grabbed my cape in a rush, terrified that if I kept him waiting too long he’d go off without me. I met him on the porch a minute later. He didn’t say a word to me, just took my hand in his strong capable one and led me along the pathway up Barrett’s Hill.

  The snow flurries had stopped, and I was comforted to see that the level of the snow had gone down considerably in the recent warmer weather. Nothing lasts forever, I told myself. The path itself had melted completely, and my semi-mourning gown had a brown trimming of mud around the hem after a few minutes. I didn’t care in the slightest. I was climbing slowly up a beautiful hill, and I was with the one man I thought I would ever love. It never entered my mind that I was going off alone with a man suspected of murdering at least one girl—and from the look on Constable Putnam’s face last night it was more likely two. Being foolhardy has its advantages sometimes. Though I’m afraid at that point I would have gone with him even if I’d known he murdered two girls.