Cruel as the Grave (16 page)

Someone had taken great pains over the family library, she realized, because the books were organized by category— European history, American history, gardening, cooking, fiction, psychology, law, medicine. The range of tastes represented by the books astonished her. In the history section she glimpsed the titles of several classics of medieval history, and in the fiction she found books by authors as diverse as Eudora Welty and Gunter Grass. Much to her delight, she found a collection of more recent mystery writers, such as Ruth Rendell, Martha Grimes, and Elizabeth Peters, to supplement the marvelous collection upstairs in her grandmother’s bedroom.

“You see you came by your bibliophilia quite honestly,” Gerard told her, his smile losing its pinched quality. He put his book aside and picked up his pipe from the table beside his chair. He began to fill it as he watched his daughter examine the contents of a shelf of books near his chair.

“It’s amazing,” Maggie laughed. “I thought you and I have a lot of books, but there must be four or five times that many here.”

Puffing at his pipe until he had it drawing to his satisfaction, Gerard took a moment before he answered. “And these aren’t all the books in the house, either. Harold and Helena have their own favorites in their rooms, and I believe Retty has quite a collection of Victorian novels in her room.” He laughed indulgently. “I think practically everyone in the family has a personal set of Jane Austen—not to mention a few other favorites.”

“Obviously a family of good taste, then,” Maggie replied, determined to keep her voice light.

“At least in literature,” he responded in kind.

With great reluctance she put back on the shelf an autographed copy of Eudora Welty’s
Delta Wedding
. Putting off the questions she needed to ask her father wouldn’t help solve anything, and she knew that they both would feel much better when the mystery of Henry McLendon’s death was resolved.

Maggie sat down in a chair which faced the one in which Gerard looked so comfortable. “Dad,” she began tentatively, resting her tired back against the reassuring firmness of the chair, “Helena, Ernie, and I have been talking things over—”

“I can imagine,” Gerard interrupted wryly. “If we give Ernie time she’ll have ferreted everything out and saved the police all the trouble of an investigation.” He frowned at his pipe, which had gone out. He put it aside for the moment. “So now, I suppose, you’ve been deputized to ask me some questions. Right?”

Maggie nodded. “As a matter of fact, yes. I hope you don’t mind, but I think we may be onto something.”

He sighed. “I’m willing—God knows I want this to be over as quickly as possible. Though it’s difficult for me to contemplate one of my family as a murderer, despite the cause my father may have given over the years.”

“Well, it may be just a little more complicated than that,” she hesitated in responding.

“What do you mean?” he demanded. He picked up his pipe again and lit it.

Waving her hand at the pungent pipe smoke drifting her way, Maggie wrinkled her nose in concentration before responding. “Yesterday, when I talked to Grandfather for the last time, he made an odd remark. I didn’t ask him about it at the time, because I knew he was tired. Now, with everything that’s happened, that remark seems more significant. He told me it was too late to do much about the years of estrangement, but that he could do something about my grandmother’s death.” An exclamation from Gerard startled her.

“It’s okay,” he said when she paused. “Go on.”

“Well, when Helena, Ernie, and I were talking things over, I asked Helena whether there had been anything odd or suspicious in the manner of my grandmother’s death, and Helena remarked that she hadn’t thought so at the time. But she was beginning to wonder herself, because apparently Grandfather talked with everybody in the house yesterday, and the one subject he discussed with all of them was the day of my grandmother’s death.” Maggie clasped her hands together in her lap and stared at the intertwined fingers. “What do you think about that?”

Gerard took a deep pull on his pipe and expelled another cloud of smoke before answering. “You’re right, it is odd. When he and I talked, though, it didn’t seem odd, because that day was at the root of our problem. But by the time I left him, I could tell that he did seem somewhat excited. Perhaps something either one of us said had sparked a memory for him. Maybe he remembered something that looked odd with the advantage of twenty-five years’ worth of hindsight.” He shrugged.

Maggie leaned forward. “Would you mind talking about it all with me? Maybe that way we can figure out what it was that made him suspicious. I have an inkling as to what it may be, but the only way I can confirm it is to find out more about what happened that day.”

In silence father and daughter regarded each other for several minutes. Maggie wasn’t entirely comfortable with the topic of discussion, and she knew that her father wasn’t, but surely he realized that only by delving into the past could they hope to understand the truth of what had led to Henry McLendon’s murder.

“Okay,” Gerard conceded. He smoked thoughtfully for a minute before he continued. “I tried very hard over the years to forget as much as possible about that day, but it never really worked. Some scenes from one’s life remain vivid, I’ve found, despite the passage of time, while others fade quickly from memory. The day my mother died is definitely one of the former.”

As he paused, struggling for a moment with the memories, Maggie did her best to relax.

“I came home that time hopeful that finally my father and I could reconcile our differences. We had been at odds so long it was difficult for me to remember a time when we weren’t arguing over something. When I arrived, rather late in the evening, around eight o’clock, I visited with Mother for a while, showing her pictures of you and your mother, telling her all the inconsequential things that grandmothers want to know. She was recovering from the pneumonia but still very weak, so I left her when I saw her beginning to tire.

“That evening—what was left of it—I spent visiting with the rest of the family, again showing off your picture and regaling everyone with stories. Father was, as usual, reserved but not openly disapproving. I believe he quite enjoyed seeing your pictures, but he had little to say that night. The next morning I visited with Mother again. I left her after about an hour. She was going to rest a while, and then either Lavinia or Claudine was going to come in to read to her. She fretted a lot about not being able to be up doing something, so the family tried to keep her as occupied as possible while she was recuperating. Without exhausting her completely, of course.

“After my talk with Mother, I decided that I couldn’t put off much longer a confrontation with Father, so I went downstairs looking for him. While Mother was ill and then convalescing, he spent as much time as possible at home. I found him in his study, and I told him I thought we should talk, but he put me off, saying that he had to finish something that morning. There would be plenty of time after lunch, he said, for us to talk.”

Gerard paused, sucking at his pipe. Maggie squirmed a little in her chair and rubbed her arms. The temperature in the room was cool, and her bare arms were beginning to feel the bite of the house’s efficient air-conditioning system.

“After lunch,” he continued, “Father asked me to join him in the drawing room while the rest of the family went off to do whatever it was they usually did after lunch. For ten or fifteen minutes everything was going well. Father asked me for more details about you and your mother and your mother’s family. I did my best to satisfy his curiosity, and to keep my temper while I was doing it. He seemed pleased with most of what I had to say. Then we began talking about my job. I told him a little about my teaching duties and my prospects for advancement. Then he wanted to know about my salary, the house we lived in, what kind of car I drove, whether Alexandra worked, and on and on.

“I knew what all these questions were leading up to, of course, and I tried hard not to let my resentment show. I could tell, though, that my answers certainly weren’t pleasing him. It became increasingly obvious that he thought I wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of you and your mother financially. Finally he just sniffed—he had a horribly offensive way of sniffing to make a point—and remarked that I had indulged myself long enough and it was time now to consider someone besides myself. I had ‘responsibilities,’ and I should take a more practical attitude toward attending to them. The upshot of it was,” he continued wryly, “that I should come back south, enroll in a respectable law school, then go to work for him after I graduated. I didn’t quite laugh in his face, but I let him know that I found the idea offensive, and that set him off.”

Pausing to lay his pipe aside, Gerard shifted positions in his chair. “My father never—well, almost never—raised his voice at me. That was one of the frightening things about him, he always had such control. We sat there for nearly an hour, talking quite heatedly, and he never once raised his voice. He always maintained that quiet tone because it sounded so frighteningly reasonable, I think, and made it even more difficult for anyone to argue with him.

“We went back and forth over the same ground we had covered countless times before, and neither one of us was willing to give an inch. I had hoped that, for Mother’s sake, we could at least agree to disagree, but with him, it was all his way or nothing.

“I was sitting with my back to the door, and Father was facing it. Twice during the time that we talked, I heard someone open the door and come into the room. It’s no wonder we were interrupted, because anyone standing outside the door couldn't have heard any sign of an argument in progress. Anyway, I don't know who came in, but Father naturally saw whoever it was, and both times he waved the person away without even pausing.”

Maggie ventured a quick question. “Can you remember the timing of the interruptions?”

Gerard frowned in concentration. “Rather toward the end, I think. They weren’t very far apart actually, and I believe the second person came in maybe ten minutes, maybe less, before I decided it was useless to talk any further.” He shrugged. “Do you think that’s important?”

Maggie nodded. “Yes, I’ll tell you why in a moment. Please go on.”

Again Gerard shrugged. “There’s not much more to tell. Having had enough, I guess, I got up and told Father that I might as well leave, and I walked out of the room. He followed me and caught up to me near the foot of the stairs. He demanded that I come back, and I told him to ‘Go to hell,’ or some such nonsense, and that infuriated him. He grabbed me by the collar, and I actually think he was going to box my ears, when I heard someone cry out my name and ask me to stop.

“We both looked up, and there was Mother, standing at the head of the stairs, clutching at the baluster.” Gerard frowned with the effort of remembering something so painful. “I shook Father’s hand off and was going up to her, but she turned slightly sideways, as if to look over her shoulder, then she jerked forward. She was too weak to hold on to the baluster, and she pitched forward, striking her head hard against one of the steps. She just kept on rolling down, while Father and I watched, too stunned to move. When we did move, and got to her side, it was obviously too late. She had struck the marble so hard that she must have died almost instantly.”

For a moment the two sat there, Gerard reliving the horrible moment of his mother’s death, and Maggie visualizing it all too easily. After giving both of them a few minutes to regain their composure, Maggie felt she had to go ahead with her questions.

“Dad,” she said, “there are several things about what you just told me that are curious, but the main thing is this: How did my grandmother know where you and your father were and that you were arguing?”

Chapter Eleven

“That,” Gerard responded tensely, “is just what both Father and I wanted to know.” He rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Witnessing Mother’s death was such a shock that, for a long time afterward, I couldn’t really bear to think about it. But as time passed, and I could look at it more or less rationally, I realized that it had to be more than mere chance that brought her out of her room. She was too weak to get out of bed, so she didn’t just come wandering down the hall and happen upon the argument.”

“Exactly,” Maggie said, relieved that her father agreed upon the importance of this point. “Did you or Grandfather know whoever told her that you two were arguing?”

Gerard shook his head wearily. “No. We talked about it yesterday for the first time. Oddly enough, that one significant detail had escaped Father all these years. He told me yesterday that he had actually suffered a minor stroke that day, and I never knew it, because he ordered me out of the house and the only time I saw him after that was two days later at the funeral. By then he had recovered somewhat, but the stroke had affected his memory of that day.” Gerard sighed. “He did seem a little excited when I asked him the very question you asked me, but he told me it was too late to worry about it now and that I should forget it. I see now that he evidently wasn’t willing to do the same.”

“And trying to find out who told her may have cost him his life,” Maggie said.

“What do you mean?” Gerard demanded, his voice harsh. “I think,” Maggie answered slowly, “that it’s very possible that your mother was murdered.”

“Oh, no,” he muttered. He shrank back in his chair as if trying to distance himself from her.

“I’m sorry, Dad, but I really do believe it’s possible.” Maggie was stricken by her father’s suddenly pale face, but she had to go on. “Think back,” she urged softly, “to what you told me. Remember, you said that Grandmother, after she called out, seemed to glance back over her shoulder, then she jerked forward and fell.”

Gerard nodded, his eyes screwed tightly shut, as if to ward off the vision of his dying mother. “Yes,” he whispered. “She looked slightly puzzled as she turned back to look down at us, and then she fell. It was if her knees suddenly gave way.” He opened his eyes. “Are you trying to tell me that someone pushed her?” He flinched at Maggie’s nod. “But why? Why?”