Houses of Stone (45 page)

Ducking her head, Karen scuttled into the opening. Cameron didn't follow her immediately; she assumed he was hesitating, fighting his phobia, and was about to tug at his pant leg when a shower of dirt rained down across the opening. Shielding his face with his arm, Cameron came
through it and dropped down onto the floor just inside. The shower trickled down and stopped, leaving a pile of debris, dirt mixed with cut vines and branches, half-blocking the entrance.

"Good thinking," she whispered.

He didn't answer. She could tell by the way he breathed how much he hated this, though he was still just inside the entrance, too close for safety.

"Can you move farther back?" she asked.

"No. You'd better, though."

Karen crawled back another foot or two. The air was warm but surprisingly dry, and she had no feeling of discomfort though the ceiling was too low to enable her to stand. The surface under her hands was rough enough to scratch them, even under the inch-thick layer of earth that remained. The womb, the enclosure, the primal cave; now she knew firsthand how the heroines of the romances had felt. Which was worse, to be shut in by impenetrable walls or to know that the walls were not impenetrable—that something threatening could get in? Right now I'll take the impenetrable walls, she thought, and prayed for rain as devoutly as any drought-afflicted farmer. A heavy downpour would cool the pursuers' enthusiasm.

The voices rose to a clamorous howl and then stopped. "Shit," said a voice loudly. "There's nobody here."

"Where'd he go?" demanded another voice. "I told you you shouldn't've yelled like that, he heard us and now he's run off like the yellow coward—"

"There's no place he could run to." That was Bobby. "You see any way out of here?"

"Well, damn it, he ain't here, is he? Maybe he's hiding in the house."

"Or someplace closer," Bobby said.

Turning, Karen saw Cameron's head and shoulders silhouetted against the opening. "Get back," she mouthed at him, but she dared not speak, and she knew he was probably incapable of going farther inside. She could hear the crackle of brush underfoot as someone approached the stone walls.

"Come on, Bobby," one of the others called. "I tole you, he ain't here. Let's get out of this place. I don't like it."

"Is the little boy scared?" Bobby's voice was terrifyingly close. "Did his mammy tell him scary stories about bad things in the woods? Don't worry, little feller, Bobby'll protect you from the boogeyman."

The object of his derision muttered something obscene. Bobby laughed. "Here, have another drink. Nothing like it to chase the spooks away."

There was a brief silence while—Karen assumed—the bottle was being passed around. Then twigs snapped under approaching feet. He was so close she heard his breath go out in a soft, ugly sigh of satisfaction. The form silhouetted against the lacy fretwork of vines was not Cameron's. He had flattened himself against the wall.

Karen clawed at the rock beside her, trying to break off a fragment large and sharp enough to use as a weapon. The limestone crumbled under her nails. Lifting Peggy's jacket, she fumbled frantically in the pockets, hoping against hope there would be something there. Even a nail file would be better than nothing. Not much better, though . . .

Crumpled Kleenex, cigarettes, lighter. Nothing sharp, nothing heavy. Turning with difficulty in the cramped space, Karen snapped the lighter. The small flame wouldn't be visible from outside with her body shielding it. Anyhow, Bobby knew they were inside the tunnel. He had burst into raucous, off-key song—something about a fox in its hole.

Karen crawled forward, holding the lighter high. Through her mind ran a prayerful litany: a large rock, a forgotten trowel, a lost knife . . . Why don't you pray for a .45 Magnum while you're at it, she thought despairingly. The ceiling lowered till it brushed her bowed head. She saw it drop to meet the floor, marking the end of the tunnel, and at the same moment she heard the crackle and crunch of brush and a shout of triumph from Bobby. Cameron had gone out. Damn him and his gallantry! If he had stayed put, they would have had to come at him one at a time, and it wouldn't have been easy for them to drag him out into the open. But then they might have seen her.

The lighter was scorching her fingers. Her desperate gaze swept the rough surfaces. Nothing. Bucky had been too damned efficient: he had taken his tools with him and cleared out every rock larger than a pebble.

Then she saw it—a rounded shaft, brown, brittle and broken. Too fragile to serve as a weapon—but her fingers closed over it, and before the lighter died she saw other things in the dust.

The incredible message they conveyed would have meaning to her later; now she shunted it aside into a separate compartment of her mind. No time now, no time for anything except trying to stop what was happening. The sounds she heard, distorted though they were by echoes and distance, turned her stomach.

Her sudden appearance made the men start. They hadn't known she was there. Stupid of them, she thought with icy detachment; they ought to have noticed Peggy's car.

"Well, just look what we got here!" Bobby crowed. "Reckon this is your lucky day, honey. Take good care of my favorite brother-in-law, boys, while I give the little lady a hearty welcome."

Cameron raised his head. Two of them were holding him by the arms. He would have fallen if they had let go; his eyes had difficulty focusing and blood dripped from his mouth. "Don't be a damned fool, Bobby," he said thickly. "If you lay one finger on her she'll press charges, and so will I. Aren't you in enough trouble already?"

One of the men holding him relaxed his grip and said uneasily, "I don't need that kind of shit, Bob. Maybe we better—"

"It'll be their word against ours," Bobby said. Thumbs hooked in the belt of his jeans, he studied Karen from head to foot and back again. She knew, with the same cold detachment, why he hadn't moved in on her. He was waiting for her to run.

Somehow she doubted that the application of conscious virtue would have much effect on Bobby. Running or screaming would have been fatal, though. He'd love a show of fear. She stared back at him, unblinking, and said coolly, "My word carries more weight than yours, Bobby. I'll have your ass in jail if you don't let him go and get the hell out of here right now."

"You and who else?" He took a step toward her.

"The others will be back soon. Professor Meyer—"

"The big hero that saved you from being run over?" Bobby's grin stretched another couple of inches. "Who do you think it was set that up, honey? The cheap bastard only paid me fifty bucks, so I gave myself the pleasure of coming a little closer than he expected. He won't interfere with me. He wouldn't want the fuzz to find out about that stunt."

The low-hanging clouds parted momentarily, and the dying sun sent a last ray of lurid crimson light into the clearing, flushing the faces of
the men and casting dark, distorted shadows across the uneven ground. When it died the darkness seemed even deeper. A distant rumble of thunder rolled and faded.

"I've had it," one of the spectators muttered. "Let's get the hell out of here."

"Five more minutes," Bobby said softly. He started toward Karen.

She stood her ground. It was not courage that kept her from retreating or screaming for help; it was a queer, cool sense of anticipation.

Cameron thought, as he later admitted, that she was too paralyzed with fear to move. With a sudden, violent movement he twisted away from the grasping hands, but one of the men stuck out a foot and he went sprawling.

It came then, as Karen had known it would, rising instantly from a distant wail to a ghastly shriek that assaulted the ears and pierced the heart. It filled the clearing like dark water and shook the branches. When it died away, she and Cameron were alone.

Karen had dropped to the ground and covered her ears with her hands. It was that bad, even for someone who had heard it before and who had anticipated . . . something.

She rolled over and sat up. Cameron had raised himself to his knees. The fall must have knocked the wind out of him; he was whooping for breath, but he managed to gasp, "Christ Almighty! What in God's name was that?"

Karen crawled across the few feet of ground that separated them. Rising to her knees, she threw her arms around him. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, fine." The strain in his voice and the tremors that ran through his body made him a liar. She was trembling too, now that it was over. They clung to one another, shaking and panting.

"What was it?" Cameron repeated.

"A guardian angel, maybe."

"Didn't sound like an angel. We'd better get out of here."

He got shakily to his feet, raising her with him.

"Just a minute." She moved out of his hold, toward the tunnel.

"For God's sake, Karen!"

"I'm coming." Carefully she wrapped the broken shaft of bone in Peggy's jacket. As they started down the path toward the house, the first drops of rain began to fall.

"So you were right," Peggy said. "It's another
Edwin
Drood.
We'll never know how it ended."

Karen gathered up the last pages of the manuscript. They had finished breakfast; Peggy leaned back, her bandaged foot on a chair, a cigarette in her hand. The windows streamed with rain.

"We can make an educated guess, can't we?" Karen said. "Someone is following her as she steals through the night-darkened garden, her bundle over her arm. The reader knows that, if Ismene doesn't. The doctor is waiting for her at the gate, so the follower has to be Edmund. There will be a confrontation between the two men, a final admission of guilt by one of them, and Ismene will fly into the arms of the other."

"But which one? You don't know how many pages are missing. The confrontation could result in an entirely new plot twist. Even if the doctor is telling the truth, Ismene has to go back to the house with the proof he's promised her, to free her poor crazy mother and convince Clara that she'd better stop making eyes at Edmund. I must say," Peggy went on, reaching for her cup of coffee, "you were right about Ismene's feelings for her sister. That scene where she tries to warn Clara makes the latter look like a vindictive bitch."

"A lot of people will be speculating," Karen said. "There's another possibility, though. Ismene may not have finished the book."

Peggy had been trying not to look at the cotton-lined box and its grisly contents. They made an incongruous addition to the breakfast dishes. "It could be a woman's," she said. "Men were shorter back then, though. With only one bone—"

"It's hers," Karen said quietly. "I saw a few other bones before the light went out. Some are probably gone, smashed or carried off by animals. But there will be enough left to prove I'm right."

"I'm surprised you aren't heading back there, rain and all," Peggy said, shifting position with a grimace of pain.

"I've found what I had to find. The bones are just . . . left-over pieces. Anyhow, they shouldn't be moved by amateurs. There are people at Williamsburg or William and Mary who will know how to deal with them." Karen stood up and stretched. "We'd better start packing. I don't know how we're going to cram all that stuff you bought into your car."

"Oh, come on, it's not that bad." Peggy squirmed. "Damn this foot. Suppose we sort through the loot and see what can be discarded. We should be able to squeeze some more into the trunk."

Karen dragged the boxes and bundles nearer to the invalid. They made a discouragingly large pile. "What do you want with this petticoat?" she demanded, lifting a mass of white fabric and shaking it out. "It must have ten yards of material in it. It's way too long for you, and the waist ..."

"Look at the tucks and the handmade lace," Peggy protested. "I have to keep that."

"Oh, all right." Karen raised the lid of the trunk and crammed the petticoat in. "How about this?"

After some heated debate Peggy consented to discard two pairs of knee-length split drawers and a bundle of long underwear. "See," she said with satisfaction, "the rest fits in the trunk."

Karen sat on the lid and managed to close it. "That finishes that box, except for these papers. You said they weren't—"

"Let me have another look." Peggy sorted through the bundle, accompanying the search with a muttered commentary. "I suppose I could dispense with the newspaper clippings, they're all about turn-of-the-century social activities. The recipe book . . . no, I can't part with that, it's too delicious. 'Take fourteen eggs and a pint of heavy cream . . .' "

"Hurry up," Karen said impatiently. "I want to get out of here before noon. It's a long . . . What's that?"

"Seems to be a diary," Peggy said, riffling through the pages. " 'I have been reading the new novel by Mr. Hardy. It does not seem to me to measure up to his earlier works.'

"It must be one of Eliza's. Same binding, same metal clasp. I wonder why it didn't end up at the Historical Society with the others."

"My, my, she did think well of herself, didn't she? 'There are few individuals, particularly among the ladies, with whom I can converse without feelings of boredom. Their intellectual capacities ..." "Chuckling, Peggy turned over a few pages.

"You can keep it if you insist," Karen said resignedly. "It's not that big, I can probably squeeze it in somewhere. Come on, we've got another box of clothes to ... Peggy?"

She had stiffened, eyes wide, mouth ajar.

"Peggy! What is it?"

"It's the answer," Peggy said in a queer choked voice. "All the answers. My God, how could I have been so stupid? I should have known it was Eliza."

"Eliza was Ismene? That's impossible!"

"That's why she hid this volume of her diary," Peggy muttered. "She had enough intellectual integrity to refrain from destroying the truth, but that awful Victorian prudery kept her from publishing it."

"What are you talking about?" Karen demanded, leaning over her shoulder to peer at the close-written pages. " 'Houses of Stone' could not have been written by—"

"Listen." Peggy cleared her throat and began to read. " 'I watched the fire take hold and then I knew I could not do what I had contemplated. I took it out with the tongs and beat out the flames. Only a few pages were lost. They were the ones that mattered, for they contained the awful accusation that had moved me to destroy the papers. It is only a story, of course, pure fiction, without foundation in fact; but anyone who read it would recognize the individuals on whom she had based her characters, and those readers would believe the worst, as people always do. The malicious gossip, the whispers would ruin us and cast a stain on the character of my sainted mother. I cannot allow it to be published or even read by another. But neither can I destroy it. Would that I had never found that recess in the paneling of the room that must have been hers! Would that I had never read it, or the little sheaf of verses! Would that my antiquarian research, my pride in the antiquity of my family, had not led me to search out the evidence that has provoked such fearful doubts!

" 'My mother never spoke of her. She does not lie in the family plot. It was not until I began looking through old newspapers in the hope of finding information for the genealogy that I came upon the notice of her death. She had fallen or thrown herself from the cliff, it said; there had been a witness who tried in vain to hold her back, but the body had not been found. The river was high, it must have washed her far away.

" 'I know this is true. The story is only a story. But I will hide it away, with this journal.
F
ate will determine what becomes of it. I cannot.' '