Houses of Stone (39 page)

"He wasn't." Peggy sat down on the edge of the other bed. "I hated to wake you, but time's awastin'. Your car has been removed; I told the guy from the garage he'd have to figure out what to do about the keys, since you'd lost yours in the fire. Simon has gone, innocent and unwitting." Peggy made a wry face. "You may have ruined the romance of
the century. When he finds out how I lied to him . . . Anyhow, he said to tell you if you weren't home by Friday, he'd come back and carry you off, bound and gagged if necessary. Tanya called. So did Lisa. So did Cameron. So did Bill."

"Wait a minute," Karen begged. "I'm still half asleep. Talk slower. When did all these things happen? I didn't hear the phone ring."

"I told the switchboard not to put calls through. I've been downstairs in the lobby for the past two hours; took the calls there. I had breakfast with Simon. Come and eat yours. And don't dawdle. We've got to buy you a whole new wardrobe, replace your credit cards, checks, keys—"

"Don't." Karen slumped into a chair and buried her face in her hands. "I don't want to think about it."

"Don't think. Eat."

Peggy waited until she had consumed a restorative amount of food before she spoke again. "The most sensible thing, of course, would be for me to drive you back to Wilmington today. Even if your car were operable, you don't have a driver's license and you can't get a replacement until—"

"You needn't go on. It would be the most sensible course."

"Are we going to do it?"

Karen swung around to face her. "I wouldn't be here this morning if two things hadn't happened. First, an irrational premonition that prompted me to buy that rope ladder. Second, a dream that woke me in the nick of time. That's not a figure of speech, Peggy. The smoke in the bedroom was so thick I could hardly breathe. Another minute and I'd have been unconscious."

Peggy rolled her eyes, clutched her head with both hands, sputtered, and finally managed to speak. "I had a feeling you were going to say something like that. It's partly my fault. I should have slapped you down when you started talking about cold spots and premonitions and Screaming Ladies. Speculating about such things is entertaining; I've always had a halfhearted, shame-faced desire to believe in them. But wishing don't make it so, Karen. You're losing your objectivity in your sympathy for Ismene. You're seeing her as you want to see her. And if you're counting on her to warn you—"

"I'm not. I'm counting on your skepticism and good sense to keep me
from going off the deep end. That's why I told you about the dream. I know I've allowed myself to become too emotionally involved in this business."

"Oh." Peggy sat back. "Then you're willing to do as Simon suggested?"

"Not yet." Peggy's lips parted; before she could speak Karen went on, "Simon made a good case, but he's allowing emotional considerations to affect his judgment too. So are you. You're both worried about me— with insufficient cause, in my opinion. Now just stop and think, Peggy. These last two incidents have been accidents, pure and simple. They can't have been anything else. Our original reasoning still holds. I don't present a threat to anyone and I possess nothing anyone else wants except the manuscript—and I don't even own it! It belongs to you. That fire would have destroyed the only accessible copy."

"Uh." Peggy looked horrified. "I hadn't thought of it that way ..."

"Had you thought of this?" Karen leaned forward, eyes intent. "Cameron said he had a potential buyer. Once the house is sold we may not have access to it. A new owner may demolish all or part of it, clear the woods for building sites, bulldoze that pile of stones. We can't count on Cameron's continued cooperation either. He doesn't owe us anything. Suppose he decides he doesn't want us hanging around? We've got to finish the job before we leave. We may not have another chance. At the very least we ought to take a few rolls of pictures. Well?"

Peggy sighed. "Your logic is irrefutable."

"Then you agree?"

"I have to agree. The only counterarguments I can produce are irrational. But I don't have to like it."

Having agreed, Peggy flew into action, as if she were determined to finish the business as quickly as possible. Shopping occupied the rest of the morning, in spite of Karen's determination to buy only the bare essentials. It was a relief to get into clothes that fit; Peggy's pants were six inches too short and several inches too large elsewhere, and her sandals left Karen's toes protruding painfully. When she could walk without limping she raced up and down the aisles tossing articles into the shopping cart and envying her primitive ancestors for the simplicity of their needs. On
the other hand, as Peggy pointed out when she expressed this opinion, if your sole article of clothing was a bearskin, you had to catch, kill and skin the bear first. Time-consuming, to say the least.

"Now what?" Karen asked, after they had stowed two large bags of bare essentials away in Peggy's car and were recuperating with coffee and sandwiches.

"I made a list." Peggy extracted it from her purse. "We're going to go about this methodically for a change."

She handed the paper to Karen. "Family Bible," the latter read. "You still believe there is one?"

"I intend to find out for certain one way or the other. When I talked to Lisa this morning I told her it was time to put up or shut up—that we were leaving town in a few days and probably wouldn't be back."

"What did she say?"

"Just what I expected. She'd have another look around and see if she had overlooked anything."

"Okay. Number two: talk with Mrs. Madison. Who's Mrs. Madison?"

"Tanya's mother. I told you, she called this morning—Tanya, not her mother—to ask if you were all right and was there anything she could do."

"How did she know I was at the motel?" Karen asked, momentarily distracted.

"My dear girl, everyone in town knows you're at the motel. They probably know every grisly detail, including a few that never happened. The fire was undoubtedly the main topic of conversation this morning."

"Oh. What do
you
hope to get from Mrs. Madison?"

"One never knows."

"All right, be mysterious." Karen glanced at the paper. "Number three: take photographs. You brought your camera?"

"Yes. I had planned to take photographs of the house anyway. I bought some extra film this morning."

"Do you want to do it this afternoon?"

"Tomorrow. I told Cameron to have the workers there—"

She broke off, looking as if she wanted to clap her hand over her mouth.

"So," Karen said gently, "you told Cameron we'd be there tomorrow.

I suppose we are calling on Mrs. Madison this afternoon? You made those appointments—you told Lisa we'd be around for a few days—and yet this morning you tried to talk me into leaving immediately."

"I made you an offer," Peggy corrected. "It had to be your decision. I wouldn't have blamed you for getting cold feet. Are you sure you want to go ahead with ..."

Karen's eyes returned to the list. "Number four: investigate the stone house. Of course I want to go ahead with it. If I don't go back to that clearing I'll wonder all my life what it was we heard that day, and despise myself for being too cowardly to find out."

"It should be an interesting experiment," Peggy said dubiously.

"It's a lovely old house," Karen said, as Peggy brought the car to a stop in front of one of the sprawling Victorian mansions on West Main Street. "What a pity the Madisons have let it deteriorate. I suppose they don't have much money."

"It's Cameron's house," Peggy said.

"What?" Karen stared at her.

"Get with it, girl. Didn't Tanya tell you her mother baby-sits with Mrs. Hayes? According to Lisa, the old lady is a candidate for a nursing home; she must be bedridden, or, as Lisa nicely put it, senile."

"She's got a heart as big as all outdoors," Karen muttered, remembering Lisa's cold dismissal of her aunt. "And Cameron's not exactly the dutiful son, is he? You'd think he could keep his mother's house in better repair instead of spending all his time and effort on something he expects to make money on."

The crumbling bricks of the walk and the overgrown lawn showed the same signs of neglect as the house. They approached the steps to the veranda cautiously; they were solid, though there was very little paint left on them.

Their knock was promptly answered. Mrs. Madison, a slim woman with a smooth, unlined face, had been watching for them. "It's nice to have company," she said ingenuously. "I get pretty bored with nothing to do all day except read and watch the soaps."

She must do more than read and watch the soaps. The living room was shabby but very neat and clean, and the silver tea set arranged on
a table shone with polishing. "You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble," Peggy said, as Mrs. Madison offered a steaming cup.

"Oh, it's no trouble. Like I said, I'm pleased to have somebody to talk to."

"Mrs. Hayes doesn't ..." Peggy paused tactfully.

Mrs. Madison glanced at a closed door. "She sleeps a lot. This is usually one of her quiet times, so I hope we'll be able to have a nice chat. Tanya told me what you're doing. It sounds real interesting. I don't know if I can be any help, but go ahead and ask anything you want."

Peggy beamed approvingly at her. "Good. You don't mind if I take notes?"

Mrs. Madison looked dubious. Interpreting her reaction correctly, Peggy added, "This is off the record. If we want to publish any information you give us, we'll ask your permission first."

The other woman's face cleared. She nodded. "That's fair. It's just that I wouldn't want to embarrass Cameron, or make trouble for Tanya. Some of the folks in this town take old history too personally."

"I know what you mean," Karen said, feeling it was time for her to join in the conversation. "My landlady, for one."

The other woman's face rounded with laughter. "Tanya told me about your talk. She liked it a lot."

"I probably shouldn't have done it, though," Karen said ruefully. "I was rather rude. And now Mrs. Fowler won't have anything to do with me."

"She wouldn't be much use to you. She's a terrible malicious old gossip. You can't believe nothing she says."

"I'm sure you'll be a much more reliable source," Peggy said, folding back a page of her notebook. "You lived at Amberley when you were a child, didn't you?"

"Uh-huh. My mama and daddy worked for old Mr. Cartright back— oh, land, it must be forty years ago. Before he got so queer and mean." She settled back, hands folded on her lap. "We lived in the main house, in those rooms near the kitchen. The servants' houses had tumbled down long before and there was plenty of room, with just old Mr. Josiah living there. It was a quiet, peaceful place for children to grow up, but awful lonesome, no neighbors or nothing. We had chickens and dogs and cats, though, and all those acres to wander in."

"Do you remember a kind of hollow, a clearing in the woods, with an old ruined building of some kind?"

"We didn't go there much."

"Why not?"

"There were stories about it." She shrugged deprecatingly. "You don't want to hear them; they were just old tales, the kind kids tell to scare themselves with."

"That's exactly what I want to hear," Peggy said eagerly. "Please go on."

"Well." She settled back again, a reminiscent smile on her face. "You know how kids are. My brother Tyrone loved to tease the little ones. He was the one who told us about the slave house. That's what the stones were, he said. The place where the old devil—not Mr. Josiah; the old man that built the house all those years ago—where he put the slaves who'd stood up to him or tried to run away. He'd shut them up in the stone house, in the dark, without food or water, and leave them there."

"How horrible!" Karen exclaimed.

"It was just a story," Mrs. Madison said.

"Maybe not," Peggy said quietly. "I've heard of worse things."

"There couldn't be anything much worse," Karen muttered. "God, how awful."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you," Mrs. Madison said. She and Peggy exchanged glances, and Karen realized she had sounded like a naive child. Of course there were worse things. And people had done them, all of them, to other people.

"Anyhow, it all happened a long time ago," Mrs. Madison said soothingly. "To us kids they were just scary stories. But we didn't go there much. The place had a funny feeling about it. Probably because Tyrone was such a good storyteller. He said he'd heard them screaming. Now you know that was just foolishness, because you couldn't have heard anything through those thick stone walls even if there had been people inside. There was no proof such a thing ever happened."

Peggy carefully avoided looking at Karen. "Was the stone house intact when you were a child?" she asked.

"I guess so. It was all covered with brush and vines, and we didn't look close at it."

"Do you know about Mrs. Fowler's book?" Peggy was scribbling furiously.

"The ghost book? Yes, sure. Lot of lies in it," Mrs. Madison said calmly.

"She mentions a Screaming Lady."

"Oh, yeah, that was another one of Tyrone's stories. I don't know where he heard 'em. He was the oldest."

"You never heard anything, or felt anything—in the house or elsewhere?"

Mrs. Madison frowned thoughtfully. "Hard to remember now what really happened and what's imagination. I was real little . . . We didn't go in the main part of the house much. We weren't allowed to, you see. Tyrone said there was some awful scary statue in the cellar, but I never saw it; Mama wouldn't let us young ones go down there, it was all mud and mess, she said. But Tyrone managed to have a look. He was a real curious youngster, and not scared of anything."

"Tyrone sounds like quite a guy," Peggy said with a smile. "What's he doing now?"

"He died in Vietnam."

"What a waste. I'm so sorry."

"Thank you." Mrs. Madison got to her feet. "Excuse me just a minute. I think I hear—"

Karen hadn't heard anything, but when Mrs. Madison opened the closed door, the sound came clearer—a wordless whine, like the complaint of a sleepy baby. A faint but unmistakable, unpleasant odor accompanied it.

"Excuse me," Mrs. Madison said again. She closed the door, but Karen had already seen the big bed and its occupant. The body under the heaped up blankets was invisible, too wasted even to lift them; the face might have been that of a man or a woman or a waxen mask, vacant and sightless. A stream of saliva trickled from the open mouth.

Peggy had seen it too. Karen heard her breath catch. Then she said softly, "For once Lisa seems to have understated the case."

"Good God," Karen breathed. "You sound so—

"Don't lecture me about compassion, Karen. I've just seen my worst nightmare—the thing all aging people dread most. To be a prisoner in your own rotting body ..."

"Let's go. I can't stand this."

"You
can't stand it?"

"Surely she doesn't know—"

"We can hope she doesn't, can't we? Sit down. We'll take a gracious, well-bred leave when Mrs. Madison returns. I think I've got most of what I wanted from her."

Peggy studied her notes. Karen studied her. After a while Peggy said, without looking up, "Sorry I snapped at you. Your kind heart does you credit. You'll toughen up as you get older."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

The walls of the old house were thick and solid. They had no warning of his approach; the door opened, and there he was.

The words of greeting froze on Karen's lips. She had once wondered what it would be like to see Cameron lose his temper. Apparently she was about to find out.

"What the hell are you doing here?" His voice was soft, but so distorted by anger it was barely recognizable.

"Why, Cameron," Peggy began.

He turned to face her, muscles squirming under the stretched skin of his cheeks and jaw. "You, too. Of all the contemptible, filthy tricks! Forcing yourself in here, invading the privacy of a woman who's too sick to protect herself—"

The bedroom door opened, and Mrs. Madison said quietly, "Oh, hello, Cameron. I thought I heard your voice. You're early."

He stared at her, struggling for breath as if he were choking on the words he wanted to say. At last habitual good manners—or Mrs. Madison's air of conscious virtue?—prevailed. He muttered, "I—I had to make a few phone calls. Go home, Jenny, there's no need for you to stay."

"I have to wait for Tanya to pick me up," Mrs. Madison said.

"We'll be happy to drop you off, Mrs. Madison," Peggy said.

Cameron offered to call Tanya, and refused to let Mrs. Madison clear away the tea-things; he was obviously desperate to get rid of them, so Mrs. Madison agreed. "I changed her and got her settled down," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "You should have a couple of hours to yourself."

Peggy cleared her throat. "Is it still on for tomorrow morning, Cameron?"

"Uh—yes. Right. Thanks, Jenny."