The Marlowe Murders

by Laura Giebfried

  “Mary,” he said again as we half-walked, half-stumbled from the room. Edie's screams were still audible below, haunted and ghostly through the old wood.

  “You can't die! Please! Please!”

  Something in her frantic voice jogged my memory, and I though tried to push the thought away, knowing that I didn't have time for it, when Lennox said the name once more and Edie gave another scream, the voices melded together and my mind took over.

  Three murders in one family … Four if you count Mary, Bernadette had stated. To which Edie had replied in a panic –

  No one's counting Mary.

  We reached the stairwell and he slumped up against the wall.

  I can't watch someone else die in here! Edie's voice screeched in my head. But she had only found Mary on the ground, hadn't she? Because if she had watched her die in the room, then that would have meant …

  “Sit down –” I told Lennox. “I can pull you down –”

  He was barely responsive. His knees bent and he sank down to the topmost step. I moved in front of him and grasped him by the ankles, pulling him with a thump thump thump down the stairs.

  It had been Edie who found Mary's body: Edie who had apparently never been the same again after she had died. Edie who had taken the Christening gown belonging to Lennox's dead son from the nursery. And it must have been Edie, then, who had stabbed the lifelike doll in her room with the piece of stained glass, when the only stained glass window in the house had been the one that Mary and the baby had fallen through … I shook my head to clear it. I wasn't thinking properly. For how could the fearful, faint-hearted woman who jumped at the mention of ghosts have killed her sister?

  No one knows how long she'd been laying there when Edie found her.

  We reached the landing and I heaved Lennox back up. The staircase closest to us was blocked by fire. I pulled him toward the one on the far side of the hall. Flames followed us, grabbing at everything in sight as they continued to eat the house alive.

  “Sit down,” I ordered Lennox again, but his unfocused eyes had muddled beneath a frown as he stared into my face.

  “You're not here,” he murmured. “You're not … you're a ghost.”

  I'm telling you that it was a ghost! No wonder Edie had an obsession with ghosts that she was certain were haunting her. They were haunting her. I was haunting her. The way she had spoken of seeing Mary in her mother's room, not knowing that it had been me standing there after Mrs. Tilly had sent me to the Augustus Suite to find her, and the way she had fled upon seeing me in her room when I had taken my hair down … Bill's words rang in my ears next: You talk in your sleep! You beg for forgiveness! But he had gotten it wrong. She wasn't begging for forgiveness for her children's deaths: she was begging for her sister and nephew's.

  And then, through the thick smoke, came Edie's voice again – so frightened and desperate that it sounded as though it was one of my memories.

  “Cassie – you've got to come out!”

  I turned my head toward it. Why hadn't she left?

  “No!” Cassandra's voice returned, and it was no longer the child-like one she had so often used, but the harsh, angry tone she had adopted to impersonate her mother. “They're trying to drive me out! They want my house!”

  “Cassie – please! You'll die!”

  “I haven't left this house in sixteen years and they won't make me do it now!”

  It felt as though my skin was melting off of my face, and yet I couldn't move.

  Leave her, I said to myself. Let her die like she let her sister die.

  But if I did that, then no one would know what she had done. I yanked Lennox back up and hobbled blindly through the smoke toward her. She had collapsed outside the door of the Augustus Suite.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted at her. “Come on! The stairs will be blocked any second!”

  She was shaking all over, sobbing into her hands. There was no way to grab her while holding him.

  “Mary,” Lennox murmured again into my hair, and the realization of how to get them both out trickled over my skin.

  “Edie!” I said, changing my voice to a softer, higher tone that I hoped matched the one of the woman in the portrait I had just seen at Kneller's. “Edie, it's me! It's Mary!”

  Her head jerked up and she wheeled around to face me, her eyes widening.

  “N-no – no, it can't be –”

  “You have to leave the house, Edie,” I said. “You have to leave and tell everyone what you've done!”

  “No – no, you're not –”

  Her eyes had narrowed, trying to see me through the smoke, and the disbelief in them was too strong. I searched my memory, trying to find something that would make her believe it was her sister rather than me.

  “You Made Me Love You,” John's voice spoke in my head, referring to the song that had played on the radio the first night that Lennox had come to the house. “Mary loved singing this.”

  I opened my mouth, letting out a cough as smoke poured down my throat, then forced myself to remember how the song went.

  “You made me love you: I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it,” I croaked out, the lack of air strangling my voice into a haunting sound. I had no idea what Mary's voice sounded like other than Marjorie's mention that her singing had been off-key, and all I could do was hope that Edie was convinced. “You made me want you, and all the time you knew it, I guess you always knew it –”

  “No,” Edie said. “No, no, no –”

  “You made me happy sometimes, you made me glad,” I went on, and as I sang, Lennox's grip on me tightened as though he was being shaken from his stupor. “But there were times, Dear, you made me feel so bad ...”

  “No! Mary, no!”

  Lennox pushed against me to straighten up.

  “You have to tell everyone what you did to me, Edie,” I said. “It's the only way –”

  “No,” she pleaded, scrambling to retreat further into the master bedroom. “No – please – I didn't mean to –”

  The door she was leaning against opened and she stumbled into the room to get away from me.

  “It's the only way I can stop haunting you, Edie,” I said, following her inside. The open windows dispersed some of the smoke in the air. “Just come out of the house and we can tell them.”

  “No – no, Mary – I didn't mean to! Please! I didn't mean to!”

  “But you did, and now you have to admit it to everyone I left behind. Admit it to my siblings – admit it to my husband!”

  “But it wasn't my fault!” Edie cried, tears running down her face and dragging the black soot down her cheeks. “The window – the baby – you weren't supposed to fall! You weren't supposed to fall!”

  As I took another step toward her, she took another back, unable to be any closer to me.

  “Please! Please!” she said again, and her voice was so strangled that it was barely recognizable. “Mary, please!”

  “Tell Isidore why you did it,” I said, my heart pounding as Lennox's fingers clenched my arm. “Tell him why you killed me and Oliver.”

  “I didn't mean to! You know I didn't mean to! But you wouldn't let me hold the baby, and you knew I just wanted to hold him, but you acted like I was a monster! Like it was my fault that my children died! I was a good mother! I was a good, good mother! I just wanted to hold him! I just wanted to hold him –!”

  “You did it?” came a voice, and I whirled around. Cassandra was on Mrs. Marlowe's bed. She was still dressed in the funeral gown and adorned with the heavy, gaudy jewelry that didn't belong to her, and yet there was no longer any sign of the dead woman. The face that I had seen beneath the veil only hours before had changed once again: it was bloodied and swollen, and one side of the mouth had been pulled down into a permanent frown. “You killed my baby? My Mary?”

  Her chest rose and she stood up, looking more ghostly now in the smoke than she had even with her veil on. Edie gave a start.

  “No – Mother – I didn'
t mean to! I didn't mean to!”

  Cassandra moved toward her, and her gruesome face was marred further by the look of sheer wrath that pulled at every crevice in her skin.

  “You killed my baby!”

  She leaped toward her, but only I seemed to realize her mistake. Edie jumped back from her to flatten herself against the wall, only it wasn't the wall at all but the open window –

  Cassandra's form pounced on top of her sister's, causing Edie's lower back to hit the windowsill. Together they flopped backwards over it. Edie's hands flew up to grab the window frame, but before the fingers could reach them her feet were jolted from the floor, and with Cassandra on top of her there was too much weight pulling her down –

  “No!” I shouted, and at the same time, a man's voice hollered the same thing.

  They disappeared through the emptiness. There was no sound that followed over the crackling of flames.

  I grabbed Lennox and turned to hurry from the room, but was met with the sight of Bill in the doorway. He must have come back to get Edie when she hadn't come outside. His face was startled and pale, and he was staring at the spot where she had vanished through the window in horror. I opened my mouth to try to explain what had happened, but before I could, he turned and fled down the stairs.

  I heaved Lennox further onto my shoulder and went after him. They would be fine, I thought: they had only fallen from the second floor, and the thick snow would break their fall. And they had to be alright, because Edie had to admit to her family what she had just admitted to me.

  We reached the stairs and I forced Lennox back down to a sitting position, then grabbed his feet and pulled him downstairs.

  We reached the Foyer and I pulled him along the hallways and through the rooms to the servants' door. The frigid air slapped me as I dragged him through the snow and around the back of the house. Bill's outline was visible ahead of us, still and illuminated by the flames that leaped down above us. I halted before I reached him.

  Cassandra and Edie hadn't fallen in the snow, but rather onto the back patio that Bernadette had insisted Kneller shovel down to the bare stones. Edie's crumpled body laid atop it, and there was no mistaking the dark red stain that seeped out from her colorless hair to create a halo of blood around her head. Cassandra was splayed over her, her arms outstretched but unmoving, and her already damaged face was now broken beyond repair. The entirety of it had been smashed inward, and her head sat at an odd angle on her neck.

  “No,” I said. “No!”

  Bill dropped to his knees. He rocked slowly back and forth in front of the terrible scene, his breathing heavy and erratic.

  “Mr. Burton –” I began, “– I – I'm so sorry.”

  He didn't answer. For a moment I stared at him, wondering if I should try again to explain what had transpired, but then voices from around the corner sounded and I grabbed Lennox to pull him down the path.

  “Frank! Where's Frank?” Marjorie's voice said from up ahead. “He needs to put this out!”

  “He's – not – answering – the door –” came Bernadette's voice, her figure just a huge blob of an outline as she waddled back down the path from the guesthouse.

  “What do you mean 'not answering?'” Marjorie screamed. “He's not paid to not answer during emergencies!”

  “Well, he's not answering!” Bernadette repeated.

  I led Lennox away from them to go around the other side of the house. The darkness could only cover us so much, though: we would have to go straight past the Marlowes to get to the dock, and the struggle of supporting his weight and walking in bare feet would make it nearly impossible.

  “Come on,” I huffed, speaking more to myself than Lennox now. “Come on – we can make it –”

  I pulled him off the path to go around the front clearing, trying to avoid the family. They were screaming and waving their arms, and for a moment I felt a twinge of hope that they would be too distracted to notice us, but –

  I slammed into something hard, my balance thrown off from the sudden stop and Lennox's weight. We fell sideways to the ground, sinking into the deep snow. I scrambled up again, not understanding what had hit us, when –

  “You.”

  Mrs. Tilly glared at us, her face illuminated from the blaze of the house. She snarled as she took in the sight of us, her cheeks reddening in anger.

  “No – please –” I started. “Please don't –”

  “Mrs. Pickering!” she exclaimed. “Mrs. Carlton! They're here! They got out!”

  I raised my hand and struck her across the face, but not fast enough to halt her words. The Marlowes' voices halted, and I knew there was no way to get away now, but I dragged Lennox forward even so, desperate to make it to the dock with him.

  “They're here! They're over here!” Mrs. Tilly repeated, taking off toward the Marlowe women to alert them, and I dragged Lennox in the opposite direction even though I knew there was no chance of escaping now. His injured leg wobbled uselessly beneath him as we hobbled through the snow.

  “Get them!” came Marjorie's voice. “Grab them!”

  “Come on, Dr. Lennox –” I panted. “Come on – you've got to move faster –”

  “There!” shouted Amalia. “They're right there –!”

  “Please,” I begged him, though I knew that he couldn't possibly do what I was asking. “Please – we've got to run –!”

  Footsteps were upon us: steps that crashed into the snow and flung it from side to side as they neared us, and my feet burned with cold and pain, and my legs weakened from the weight of trying to heave Lennox any further, and I felt myself falling downwards toward the ground, accepting the defeat that my mind couldn't –

  “Here!”

  Someone reached us and grabbed onto Lennox, pulling him from my grip just as I hit the ground. I blindly stared up into the darkness at the form of his captor, the shape illuminated by the dancing flames in the distance, and I cried out even though I knew it would do nothing to stop them from taking him away from me. I had failed. I hadn't been able to save him.

  “Come on!” the voice said to me. “Get up!”

  And before I knew what was happening, Bill had reached down and yanked me by the arm to bring me back to my feet. He put one of Lennox's arms over his shoulder. I slid beneath the doctor's other arm to help him.

  “Go to the dock!” I told him. “The ferry's there!”

  We hurried off toward the cluster of trees. The house was spitting and crackling so loudly that the ocean barely made any sounds above it. My legs were soaked and Bill's breathing was labored, but finally, finally, I saw the ferry bobbing up and down ahead waiting for us.

  We pushed Lennox inside and undid the line, then jumped in after him. My hands were shaking so much that I could barely start the ferry up.

  “Here – steer!”

  I shoved Bill over to the wheel and then dropped to my knees beside Lennox. He had curled up on the floor, his murmuring unheard beneath the howling of the wind. I pulled off Kneller's coat and laid it on top of him as Bill yanked the wheel to turn us away from the shore.

  “Wait! Wait!” came Amalia's screams as she reached the dock. “You can't leave us here! You can't –!”

  But as the ferry sped away from the island, her screams were drowned by the roaring engine. The Marlowe house was nothing but a huge bonfire in the distance, dancing beneath the sunless sky and reaching out to try and touch the nearby pine trees. It gave a cry as it burst, exploding from within as though its heart had been flung from its chest, then writhed in its place as it burned like the distress signal from a red flare. And as I imagined the wood burning and the porcelain shattering and the silverware blackening, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Alexandra,” Lennox murmured, pulling my eyes away from the disappearing island.

  “It's alright, Dr. Lennox,” I told him, leaning down so that he could hear me. “You're going to be alright.”

  “Alexandra.”

  “It's alright: don't try
to talk. We're going to get you help.”

  “Alexandra,” he said again, and he reached up and grasped my hand. The blood covering his fingers rubbed off onto mine, and his pain-stricken face stared at me with such reverence that, had he not said my name three times, I might have thought he still believed I was Mary. “Thank you.”

  I gave his hand a squeeze in return. He visibly relaxed, his face managing a smile, and leaned his head back against the floor with one hand still clutching mine. And I knew that, when we reached the shore and Bill ran to get someone who could help get him to safety, I would be sorry to let him go.

  Bangor, Maine

  March, 1956

  The car pulled up to the front of my building shortly after nightfall. I had just come outside to light a cigarette since my aunt refused to let me smoke in the apartment, and barely paid it any mind other than to note that it was far too fancy a car for the area. I stepped back to lean against the weathered stone wall, hoping to avoid the path of the melting snow dripping from the roof above, when the car window opened and someone called over to me.

  I paused midway through a drag, not quite able to hear the voice over the sound of rain hitting the slick pavement, and squinted over at the car. The window on the backseat had been rolled down to reveal an old woman in a blue coat and hat. Her outfit matched her Bentley perfectly.

  “Alexandra Durant?” she called.

  “Yes?”

  I took a few steps closer to her, my cigarette still clutched between my fingers. The damp air moistened my skin in a mimicry of sweat, though nothing about her sweet tone made me uneasy. Still, I reasoned, people didn't often come around to my place of residence calling my name unless they were police officers with inquiries about John Marlowe's ongoing murder investigation – which, despite Kneller's written confession, wouldn't seem to leave me alone.

  “My name is Adelaide Dabney,” the woman said. “I've been looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled, revealing short square teeth that had yellowed with age behind her red lipstick.

  “Would you care to take a ride with me?”

  “No.”