Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (115 page)

“You must be crazy,” Margo shouted. “What do you think you’re doing? If you harm me, they’ll know … what do you hope to accomplish? They’ll know it was you … I didn’t think you were that stupid!”

“No, they won’t know it was me,” Norma said contemptuously. “They’ll think you came here for a swim and … damn it, Margo, you were never at your shining best in the water. All of us, we grew up here, water rats. Many’s the time you had to be carried ashore out of breath …”

“That was because you tried to drown me … oh, yes, I remember now!”

The branch hit the water again, this time so near Margo that she stumbled backwards, and the water swirled around her, not help but hindrance. And now she knew, irrevocably. Norma had made certain that John didn’t know of her whereabouts, that Pompey didn’t know … and those drinks had been potent
… too
potent. Yes, and try now as she would, she couldn’t recall Norma sipping her own drink.

Then the madness of it brought some of her reason back. It was not possible that Norma meant to do this. People did all sorts of shabby things, but not casual murder: Norma was only trying to scare her away, show her she wasn’t wanted here. The girl knew her family was rich … then let the rich girl leave the premises and leave it to those who belonged there.

“Norma, let’s go back,” she said, angered at the trembling of her voice, angered and fighting for control.

“Go back? Only one of us will go back,” Norma said. “I haven’t gone this far for nothing.”

And now the meaning of the shawl, in a blinding insight, came to her. Like a caul … the soft, Shetland strands cast over her face … Norma’s shawl, smothering her …

“It was you,” she said, stunned. “It was you, in my room that night. With that shawl … you tried to — ”

“Prove it,” Norma said viciously. “Prove it.”

“But why, but
why?
”

“Because you came here
again.
Wasn’t it enough all those years ago? And now you came here again. You dare ask me
why?
Everything for you and nothing for me. You don’t think I’ll take that lying down?”

“What … in what way does it affect you?”

There was a cry of jubilation. Norma, rising in the lake like Venus from the sea, was suddenly beside her. “There you are,” she shrieked, and the inexorable arm was raised. Margo ducked, feinted, but the branch came down across the base of her skull, sending her into a tailspin, with stars and stripes and colored circles whirling, whirling, whirling …

“Ugh,” she said thickly, and then the water into which she was plunged pulled her back, a little back, the cold of it reviving her, enough so that she started struggling, weakly, flailing her arms about, and heard her own hoarse voice.

And another hoarse voice, rapid and impassioned, wild and infuriated. “Affect me!
Affect
me! Where am I going to live? Brand House is mine! If it weren’t for you it would be mine! It — ”

Water trickling from her mouth, her nose streaming. Breathing like an engine. Voice weak, strained. “If it weren’t for me,” Margo said, wheezing, “it would belong to the Historical Society.”

“No! If it weren’t for you she would have left it to John, it belongs to
John.
How could she
dare
leave it to you … and then, as if that weren’t enough, you find something that was there all the time, and we never knew it at all. Sixty thousand dollars … those damned, rotten stamps that were there all the time, just waiting for you, for
you.
” There was a kind of sob. “It’s just too much to be believed, the way everything falls into your lap.”

She was crying now, tears were streaming down her face. “Some people don’t deserve to live,” she said, raggedly.

“Norma, but Norma … if you do anything to me, how do you expect to get back? How are you going to get home again?”

“A friend is coming for me,” Norma said, dashing a hand across her eyes. “A friend. And if I need help, he’ll help. You’re trapped, Margo. Ambushed. Your luck has run out.”

“A friend … what friend?”

“Never you mind.”

John.

It was the last punishment. Whatever else she might have thought about John, she could never have imagined this. John, her aunt’s protege. John …

There was something evil about this upstate country, with its hexes, its inbreeding, and its burned witches all those years ago, its crooked crosses atop barns, and a girl with a beautiful face who had a stone for a heart …

Then, as if at a signal, there was the sound of a car in the night, the revving motor, and then the dying of it. “All right,” Norma said, her voice sounding tired now. “Now he’s here, now I’m not alone. Ben’s here and you can forget about going home again. He’ll come and help me. Better say a prayer, Margo, you’re going to die.”

“Ben?” Margo repeated, wonderingly. “Ben?”

“Of course Ben,” Norma said quietly. “Of course Ben. Ben would die for me; I’m surprised you didn’t catch on to that.”

“You mean not John?”

There was a contemptuous laugh. “John? John, for Christ’s sake. John wouldn’t have the guts to — ” She was babbling now, her words running into each other. “You, Margo,
you.
Coming here and wanting to take everything away from me. I knew right away that I’d have to get rid of you, and when you found those damned, infernal stamps … all that money … why, you’re a witch, you should be binned on the Common, everything going your way all your life. You never did an honest day’s work …”

With heroic strength Margo tried to beat off the hands that held her head under the lake water. She gasped, couldn’t see, struggled wildly, felt flesh against her hands, beat against that flesh, using her nails.

“Forget it,” Norma said, her voice thin and spent. “You’re going to die, you’ve got to die. He was like a son, John was like a son. Where were you? I sat there, hour after hour, holding that horrible old hand. Where were you? We earned it, we earned it! Where were you? It’s our future … you think I want to be a secretary all my life? He’ll stay there, and I with him … and you’ll be dead. Who are you, Golden Princess? Spoiled, rotten spoiled … we’ve put it off year after year … that terrible old woman … she hated me, did you know that? I wasn’t good enough for her. And meanwhile, where were you? I heard about you, wonderful Margo, until it came out of my ears, and nose and throat, and gut. And you come here and want to take it all away. Die, you parasite,
die …
”

The branch came down again, like Aaron’s rod. The water broke its impetus, but it was just about enough; it sent her reeling, almost senseless, into the beautiful rippling lake, and the moon was like a golden eye. Choking, sinking, she implored, “Let me live.” But the water drowned her, drowned out her words, and the hands held her face under.

“I’ll take over,” a voice said, from somewhere very far away, and it was Ben Blough’s voice, quiet and deadly. “I’ll finish her off.”

“No, me,” the hysterical voice cried. “Let me do it, I want her to suffer, I
insist
on doing it … get away you fool, I want to — ”

How could it be
, Margo thought, floundering, knowing she was half dead, knowing it was the end, and tired unto death. Yet … how could it be that she heard Doug’s voice?

And then other voices, muttered oaths, someone running, crashing through trees, cursing, shouting …

Bedlam …

Bedlam … crawling like some prehistoric monster, sea-creature, she heard the shouts and the cries, the quiet night no longer quiet … horror, unimaginable horror …

And then the sound of bone against bone, a sickening thing, and another curse and then once more the thud of a blow …

And the eerie, long-drawn sigh of a man in agony …

“Out like a light,” Douglas said, from somewhere far away, and there was nothing else, just blackness.
Dead, I’m dead,
Margo thought, and then thought nothing more.

• • •

She opened her eyes, on dry land, to the blinding light of the moon. Retching, she heard Pompey’s voice. “Get that damned water out of her. Get it out, get it out …”

A scream sounded through the night. A terrible, despairing scream.

“Let it go, let it go,” Doug said harshly. “We don’t have time for it. Pompey, help me. she looks so white, Pomp.”

“No,” Margo said, belching water. “No, Doug. I just have to get some lake water out of myself. I’m all right.”

“She’s alive,” Doug said, and she heard him sobbing, like a woman. A man crying?

“Don’t touch me,” she pleaded. “Don’t touch me, for the Lord’s sweet sake. I’m going to vomit …”

She screamed it.

“Stay away! Let me alone, stay away … let me get it out, once and forever … don’t touch me!”

But he did. He lay down beside her, while she got a bellyfull out, and clamped his strong hands over her forehead when she said she was perishing of a headache, and after a while there was nothing but the two of them lying there, breathing hard, and Pompey standing over them, saying, “Mr. John, she be all right, won’t she? Mr. John, don’t let her die, please, Mr. John, don’t let her die.”

She looked up, her eyes crossed and unfocused, and said, “John?”

“Yes,” he said calmly. “Come on now, you’ve got to get home. Just go limp, I’ll lift you, don’t fight it, that’s the girl.”

All the way home, in the car, the back seat, he held her. “Soon now,” he kept saying. “Just a little way longer. Hold on, Margo.”

“Yes.”

“We’re almost home.”

“Okay, yes.”

“How’s your headache?”

“Pretty bad.”

“We’ll put you to bed, don’t worry, some aspirin. You okay, dear?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Did you call me dear?”

“Why not, you’re dear to me.”

They got to the house. She could smell the house when they went in, the smell of age and must and beautiful memories. “But what about Norma?” she asked.

“We’ll talk about that tomorrow.”

“You’re not kidding me,” she said, quietly. “I heard her dying scream. She’s dead, isn’t she? All of them, dead. John, hold my hand, I’m so sad and lonely. Don’t let me go. I don’t want to be alone, I can’t bear to be alone.”

“I’m here,” he said quietly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you wake up, and long after that. Don’t worry. I love you, Margo, I always have. Rest now. I love you. Pompey, get her clothes off. That’s the girl.”

Her eyes smarted and her stomach was working. “I think I have to throw up again,” she said apologetically. “Pompey, can you get me to the bathroom?” And then the terrible scream came to her again.

“I heard Norma scream … where is she?”

“Hush,” Pompey said, his dark face floating in front of her. “Hush now. I don’t want to hear no more.”

In the bathroom she got rid of some more lake water, and then Pompey helped her to bed. John stood there. He talked to Pompey, and Pompey said, “Now you just take these here pills, Miss Margo.”

“What are they?” she asked, with only a kind of half vision.

“To make you sleep, that’s all,” John said, and the authority in his voice was exactly what she wanted.

She looked up trustingly. “I always knew she despised me, poor girl, but I don’t want her to be dead. Can’t you help her, can’t you help?”

“It’s too late for that,” someone said, and the pin-wheels danced, and the circles widened, and then there was silence, complete and wonderful. “Oh,
now
I feel better,” she heard herself say, and pillowed a head beneath a hand. The night closed around her; she was really so terribly tired.

“Are you there, John?” she asked.

He said, “Yes, I won’t leave. Go to sleep now,” and like a child she drifted off, because he was there, he had promised to stay there. “That’s my girl,” she heard someone say, and then that was all, but it was enough … it was enough …

Morning came, and with it the memory of what had happened. A bad taste in the mouth, a bile taste, and then a scream, echoing through the night. The water in her nose and mouth, the branch raised … Ben’s voice …

All this, and then the mist cleared, and she looked up, saw him sitting there. “What are you doing in my room, Pompey?” she asked.

“I didn’t want you to wake up to nothing,” he said simply, and when her tears came, wiped them away with a tissue from her Kleenex box. They sat and held each other and then she asked him why he and John had come after her.

“Tell you the whole story,” he said quietly. “Something happened the night you fell down them stairs. I plumb forgot the next morning, because I sleep hard, you know. Fact is, a little kitten mewed at the door, and I let her in. A cute little bugger, belongs a ways down to the Pipers’, and since I feed her now and on occasion, she thinks she has two places to go for eats. She’s a pretty little half Persian, and I took her into my bed. Then I heard something, so I got up, recalling them telephone calls you had, and wondering about all that. I went out to the big room, and everything seemed right enough.

“Then next morning you told me you fell down them stairs.

“It was then this old lame brain started putting two and two together. I had some ideas, not nice ideas, but I know Mr. John and I know Mr. Doug, and whatever their faults those are two good-hearted fellas, still young and raw, maybe, got a lot to learn, both of them. All right, the telephone calls. Mr. Douglas? Well, why? You were seeing each other, then why should he make nasty calls? Mr. John? If he wants to make a play for you, the way Mr. Doug did, he could do that, couldn’t he? Both of you in the same house?”

“Then who else?”

“There was, the way I saw it, only one other; Miss Norma. Since she was a child too, I know that girl. Smart in school, with all she had to live down, those parents nothing to brag about. But she had a brain and she used it. First it was Mr. Doug, but that didn’t lead nowhere, so then it was Mr. John.

“The years, they come and go, and all them years she tries to pin down Mr. John. Not much opportunity in a small town like this, and she wanted more than some clerk in a store. Oh yes, she had ambitions. This house, she came here all the time, like it was her own, but Mr. John never paid her no mind. His mind too much on his work, for one thing.