The Scent of Heather

by V. J. Banis

  “I think nothing of the sort,” Rebecca said. “George is dead and so is Rod.”

  Although Rebecca’s words came out firmly, there wasn’t any conviction behind them. Maggie thought back, remembering the first time she began to believe that Rod was still alive. It was the day the insurance company delivered their very sizable checks. She’d told Rebecca that she really believed Rod to be dead. Rebecca had overreacted. Thinking back on that conversation, Maggie frowned. Was it possible that Rebecca, too, believed their husbands were still alive? The thought was most disturbing.

  Perhaps Rebecca knew something Maggie did not know.

  “Surely you aren’t serious about buying Heather House?” Rebecca asked.

  Maggie had to smile to herself. Rebecca had always been an expert at changing uncomfortable subjects neatly. “Why not?”

  “Oh, Maggie, really! You can’t mean to bury yourself out here in this hick town?”

  “Wasn’t it your idea we come here? Wasn’t it you who leased this place for us?”

  “But I never intended for us to live here the rest of our lives,” Rebecca said. “I thought it would do us both good to get away from our friends and those old memories for a short while.”

  Maggie kept her eyes fixed forward and her foot steady on the accelerator pedal. “You needn’t stay in Pinebrook. I have no chains on you, Rebecca. As for myself, I think I’ll stay and wait for Rod.”

  “You’re crazy! Rod’s dead, for God’s sake. He’s dead. Can’t you get that through your skull?”

  Maggie found herself smiling. “Think me crazy if you wish, Rebecca, but somehow I am more convinced than ever that Rod’s alive. He’ll show up eventually, just you wait and see.”

  Rebecca merely sat there, staring at her.

  * * * *

  Sophie was coming down the stairs with a large cardboard box filled with burned debris. When she saw Maggie she stopped midway down. “I was just cleaning up your room,” she said.

  My room, Maggie thought with a wide, pleased grin. Sophie had said “my” room, not “the” room. Yes, she was home. She sighed and nodded to Sophie. “Good girl. There’ll be a workman here today, I hope, to fix the window.” She turned and started toward the kitchen. She turned back. “Incidentally, Sophie, when the workman arrives tell him to check my bedroom door. It sticks.”

  “Sticks?”

  “Yes, it stuck last night; I couldn’t open it.” Then she remembered the sound of laughter that she’d heard on the other side of that door. She felt a chill and it started her into thinking again about who had moved the candelabrum. She shook her head. She wouldn’t think about anything unpleasant today.

  “It works all right now,” Sophie said.

  “Well, regardless,” Maggie said, dislodging her unpleasant thoughts, “have the man check it when he comes.”

  Rebecca must have come up behind Maggie. She didn’t hear her but she saw Sophie’s eyes move toward the front door. The girl looked at Rebecca in a strangely unfriendly way.

  “The car’s loaded with stuff, Sophie,” Maggie said, secretly pleased at the look Sophie had cast at Rebecca. “We’ll put the groceries in the kitchen. You can put them away later, but I’d like you to show me where everything is.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Maggie noticed that Rebecca and Sophie did not greet each other, not even with a nod. That also pleased her.

  Within the hour things were put away and Maggie and Rebecca had changed into housedresses. To Maggie’s surprise Rebecca chose one of the large downstairs bedrooms for herself.

  “But the room next to mine is lovely,” Maggie said.

  “No, I think I’d prefer to sleep on the ground floor. Besides, it will give each of us more privacy.”

  Then Maggie understood. Privacy, indeed. Rebecca would find it easier to sneak David in and out without Maggie’s knowing about it. Well, she’d handle that when the occasion arose. She had in the past.

  “Have it your own way,” Maggie said with indifference. She smiled to herself, thinking that a new Maggie Garrison was being born...a Maggie Garrison Rebecca never knew and would obviously dislike. Rod had known, or had at least suspected, this new Maggie Garrison existed. She was sure he’d be pleased to find her when he came back.

  The carpenter came. There was nothing wrong with the bedroom door. The window would take a lot of work, however. For the time being he measured and made sketches for the wood carving and glass work, then draped a white sheet over the gaping frame.

  Maggie was upstairs hanging up her dresses when she heard a car drive up. She glanced out the window and saw that it was David, followed by a van from the power and light company. She went to the top of the stairs just as she heard Rebecca greet him.

  “David, is that you?” Maggie called, not showing herself.

  “Yes. Hi, Maggie. Everything going okay?”

  “Yes, fine. Did you take care of everything?”

  “Yes,” he called. “Trunks have been sent for; the carpenter should be here already.”

  “He’s been and gone.”

  “I had the electricity turned on. There’s a man here now to check over the circuits.”

  “Good. Are you staying for dinner?”

  “Dinner? Do you think you’re interested in having company already?”

  “No trouble,” Maggie said.

  She heard David hesitate and was sure she’d heard whispering between him and Rebecca. Then David said, “I have some things to clean up at the office. I can be back about seven if that’s all right.”

  “Great. See you at seven.” She left the head of the stairs without having shown herself at all. Let him see Rebecca in her housedress and low-heeled shoes, her hair in a bandana. Maggie had never really flirted with a man before, not even Rod (he had flirted with her), but she’d seen Rebecca do it often enough to know just how it was done. Tonight she’d do it. Tonight she’d give Rebecca a taste of her own medicine. The house was weaving its spell, having an influence on her and she liked it very much.

  As she went back into her room and snapped shut the empty suitcase, she was thinking how wonderful it was to be alive. She went back out into the hall, looking for a storage room or any suitable place to keep her empty luggage. There was only one large hall closet and that was stacked with linens and towels and other odds and ends. Since Rebecca would not be using the other bedroom, Maggie decided to put her cases in the closet there.

  Just as she stepped over the threshold she again smelled the faint hint of heather. She stopped in her tracks and sniffed the air. It was heather, there was no doubt about it. The room was dark, its drapes drawn closed. She went toward the windows and pulled back the curtains, letting the afternoon sun bring life to the room. As the room brightened the smell of heather seemed to dissipate.

  Strange, she thought as she looked about the room. It was dusty and unkempt-looking. The bed was stripped and cobwebs hung from the ceiling. The windows hadn’t been washed in years. Why had Sophie bothered to scour and scrub the big bedroom and not this one, knowing that both she and Rebecca would be sleeping here?

  She didn’t have long to ponder the question because she saw something else that made her thoughts deepen. There on the dusty night table next to the unmade bed was a bright, shiny key. It caught the rays of the sun and glinted back at her. She picked it up, noticing that there was no film of dust on it as there was on top of the night table. She ran her thumb over it. Her thumb came away clean. It was a large key, a door key, she decided. On impulse she carried it back out into the hall and fitted it into the lock of her bedroom door. The key turned easily, noiselessly, sending the bolt into place.

  Her door hadn’t stuck. It had been locked.

  She felt the pulse in her temples begin to throb. Someone had locked her in the room last night after moving the candelabrum. Someone meant to do her harm. But who? And more important, why?

  As she stood there in the hallway trying hard not to feel afraid, out of the corner of her eye s
he thought she saw movement. Something white and filmy fluttered out of sight down at the far end of the dim corridor.

  “Sophie?” she called, but no one answered.

  She unlocked the bedroom door she had just locked and pushed it open. Then she turned and started in the direction of where she thought she had seen movement. There was nothing there, she found, except the stairway—narrow and dark—leading up to the tower room. She started up them, remembering that David had said the stairs were unsafe, and testing each step as she went.

  There was nothing wrong—that she could see—with the steps. They seemed in perfectly good condition...a bit dusty perhaps, but nonetheless in good repair.

  The landing at the top had but one door. It was open. She went to the threshold.

  “Sophie? Are you up here?”

  No answer.

  She stepped into the room, looking around. The room was beautiful. It was round, with windows looking in all directions. It was much larger than she had imagined it to be and furnished as a kind of bedroom-sitting room with a handsome bed draped in filmy lavender. The walls were a soft pink, the ceiling domed and carved like intricate French lace. A chaise lounge was covered in rich purple and trimmed with cream-colored velvet. A thick, fur rug, dyed the lightest shade of blue, covered the floor. Matching blue silk covered the occasional chairs. The furniture’s wood was a warm brown...teak, Maggie thought.

  The room had a strange, almost oriental, flair, or perhaps like something out of the Arabian Nights. It brought back memories of childhood fairytales with the princess locked in the tower...of Rapunzel who lowered her hair so that her lover might climb it and rescue her, of black knights and white knights, of dragons and flying carpets.

  Her romantic thoughts fled when she saw a pair of white gloves lying on the counterpane. There were her gloves. She picked them up and confirmed the monogram on the inside: M.G.

  “Maggie Garrison,” she said aloud

  Somewhere far, far away she thought she heard someone laugh.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Even with her clothes in the closet and a few personal appointments scattered around the room, Rebecca disliked the place. It was her fault that she was here, she admitted that. It had been her idea to get away from the city, and it had been her idea to come to Pinebrook after reading a description of this house in the real estate section of the Sunday paper.

  Heather House, as it was called, had seemed to be the answer to her prayers when David McCloud forwarded the photographs. It was uncanny, she thought, that a house could be so different in reality...so big, so formidable, so seemingly indestructible.

  She had to stick it out, though. It had taken a lot of persuasion to get Maggie to pull up her roots and come here. She had managed, however, and she would see it all through somehow, even though she would have to force herself to make the best of a bad situation.

  Strange how things had made such a complete about-face. She blamed the house for that. Rebecca shook her head. She mustn’t blame anyone or anything but herself for the predicament she was in. Besides, there was one redeeming feature about living here that she had not anticipated—David McCloud.

  Memories of the night spent with him trickled back. She felt an all-over tingling sensation as she recalled the pleasure he’d given her. It was unfortunate that Maggie had found out about their all-night rendezvous, but then Maggie always found out everything, and what she did not find out Rebecca always told her when it suited her.

  Men were Rebecca’s nemesis and she frankly admitted it. And if men were the strongest of her faults, truth was the strongest of her virtues. That’s why everything seemed so difficult now. She knew all of her shortcomings and faced them without trying to delude herself or anyone else. Happiness was only achieved by knowing oneself and being true to that self. Living a lie never accomplished anything.

  Was she living a lie by staying here with Maggie in Heather House? No, she didn’t think she was. Maggie knew she wasn’t happy with the house, that she was merely tolerating it. She’d bide her time here until the moment came to move on. And until that time came there was David to keep her amused and occupied.

  Rebecca listened to the footsteps overhead. They sounded light and happy and she imagined Maggie humming to herself as she worked.

  Maggie. How strange it was to realize that you could know someone the whole of their life and yet not know them at all. These past few days had brought out a different Maggie, a sister who was almost a stranger. The sweet, loving sister who’d cared for her all her life seemed to have vanished and in her place was a cold, domineering woman who was determined to have things her way.

  Rebecca shrugged. Why not? Maggie was entitled to her own life. The thing that upset her was the fact that this side of Maggie’s personality had never manifested itself before. Maggie had kept it hidden deep inside all these years. It was Maggie who had lived a lie, if this new Maggie was the true Maggie Garrison.

  Or perhaps it wasn’t the real Maggie she was seeing now. Perhaps it was merely a phase. Perhaps it only represented a flaw that she’d never recognized in her sister before. She remembered something Rod had said to her one time: most diamonds are imperfect. It held some comfort to know that Maggie was human after all and had flaws of her own.

  Maggie had always done everything to insure Rebecca’s happiness; now she was trying to interfere with it. She had the right, Rebecca supposed as she wandered around the room, coming to rest at a window overlooking the garden patio. After all, Maggie had been the one responsible for making her past life a happy one. Yet the only emotion Rebecca felt was that of resentment. Her desire to be honest with herself made her admit it.

  Rebecca grimaced as she spotted a large, fat-bellied lizard scoot up over the root of a cactus plant and settle itself in the sun atop a flat rock. It lay there motionless, letting itself melt into its surroundings until it became invisible. She looked away and when she looked back she could not find the slithering little creature. Having seen it, however, she imagined the place being alive with such odious, crawling things.

  “Rebecca.”

  She turned and found Maggie standing in the doorway. Rebecca was surprised to see that Maggie wasn’t the happy, humming, smiling girl she’d pictured trotting about upstairs.

  Maggie walked toward her carrying a pair of white gloves in her hand.

  Rebecca grinned. “You’re hardly dressed for white gloves,” she said. “They don’t go very well with that saggy old housedress and those work shoes.”

  “I found these up in the tower room.”

  “I thought David said it wasn’t safe to go up there.”

  Maggie made a face to show that she did not put much importance in anything David said or would say. “I laid these beside my purse on the table in the living room last night. They disappeared. I just found them up in the tower.”

  “Sophie most likely was playing around with them.”

  “Sophie wasn’t home last night. She was at a Halloween party at the church.”

  “Then she borrowed them this morning.”

  Maggie frowned down at the gloves. “No, they were missing last night. I looked for them.”

  “Maybe it was the ghost,” Rebecca said with a laugh. She saw that Maggie wasn’t amused, however.

  “You have a pair just like these, don’t you?”

  “You know I do,” Rebecca said. “You gave them to me. You bought both pairs at the same time, if I remember correctly.”

  “Where are yours?”

  Rebecca reached out and took the gloves from Maggie’s hand. “These are yours, Mag. Your monogram is on the inside.”

  “I know,” Maggie said, sounding a little impatient. “You do have yours, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Rebecca answered, looking a bit mystified. “They are over there in my bag. I wore them last night.”

  Maggie moved toward the handbag and snapped it open. She pulled out the pair of white gloves that were tucked in one corner. She flattened
them in her hand, turning them over. She did not know what was pressing her on to examine the gloves, but when she did her fingers touched hard little drops of wax encrusted on the right-hand glove. She tested the wax drops with her nail. A tightening feeling crept over her.

  “There’s wax on them,” she said softly, almost fearing to say the words.

  “So there’s wax on them. I may have been fiddling with the candles on the table in the restaurant.” She flushed slightly. “David lit candles in his apartment last night. I may have put them down nearby.”

  Maggie tossed the gloves down as though they were contaminated. There hadn’t been any candles on the table in the restaurant and she doubted if David McCloud was the type of man to burn candles in his room during a sexual interlude. She had a dreadful fear that she knew how the wax got on Rebecca’s glove. She did not want to face the realization but the proof was there, hardened on the soft, white fabric, and she could not ignore it.

  “Why did you do it, Rebecca?” Maggie turned slowly and fixed her eyes solidly on her sister’s.

  “Do what? What are you talking about?”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. You came into my bedroom upstairs and moved the candelabrum. You set fire to the room. I want to know why.”

  “Are you insane? In God’s name, why would I want to do a thing like that? Maggie, you must be mad to even suspect I could set fire to a room with you asleep inside it. What kind of a monster do you think I am? Surely you know me well enough by now to know I’d be incapable of such a thing.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Good God, Maggie! That was almost twenty years ago. I’ve changed; you know that.”

  “I don’t think I know anything of the sort, Rebecca. I don’t think I’ve ever known you at all.”

  “Nor I you,” Rebecca flared. “I don’t know what the devil has gotten into you these past few days but, whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

  “And so you tried to set fire to me?”

  “Maggie!” They stood glowering at each other. “If you weren’t my sister I’d slap your face for that crack. How dare you insinuate such a thing?”