Miss Lizzie (40 page)

She nodded. She examined the cards again. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, they can.”

“How did he die?”

“He was stabbed. Mrs. Archer is the one who reported it. She told the police she came back from shopping and found him lying there. In the bedroom. She always maintained that a burglar had killed him.”

“Do you think that's possible?”

“Possible, certainly, from what Mr. Boyle says. As to whether it's true or not, I've honestly no idea. The police found out that she and her husband hadn't been getting along. Apparently she was seeing another man.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Boyle didn't say. He'll be back here in the morning. He said he'd bring all the information with him.”

“Do you think we should tell the police?”

“Mr. Boyle intends to. He's telephoning Chief Da Silva at the moment.” She frowned. “I suppose he has a moral obligation to do so.”

“You don't think he should, you mean?”

She frowned again. “I honestly don't know, Amanda.”

“But if she killed her husband, then it's possible she killed Audrey.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.” She shook her head abruptly, as though clearing it of thought. “Let's not worry about it now. The police can deal with her.” She looked down at the cards. “Now. Where were we?”

Miss Lizzie stayed downstairs, reading, when I went up to my room at nine-thirty. I was not especially tired, but I wanted to think. I undressed, put on my nightgown, and climbed into bed.

Mrs. Archer
?
Madame Helene
? Could she really have killed Audrey?

She was strange, yes, wearing that silly pseudo-Grecian gown, talking to spirits; but could she kill? (Had she run out of spirits and decided to create one of her own?)

Her having killed Audrey might explain why she had come to Miss Lizzie's house on Thursday. As Boyle had pointed out, she might have wanted to learn what we knew, and what we suspected, about the murder.

But she could have come, just as easily, because she honestly believed she might help us.

Could she kill?

I did not know. It was one of the many things I did not know. For the past four days I had been discovering that the boundaries of my knowledge were much less far apart than I had assumed, and that the territory which lay beyond them was enormous.

Until last Tuesday, I had believed that life was like a river, silver and clear, carrying me off idyllically toward the (presumably rosy) future. Now I had discovered that below the surface, other, darker currents flowed. And that below these, down at the murky bottom, down among the stones and the weeds and the muck, creatures lived whom I did not understand, but whose grotesque faces, as they rose to the surface, I feared I might recognize.

Downstairs, the telephone rang.

Who, I wondered, would be calling now?

After a few minutes, I heard the floorboard creak outside my room, and then a gentle tapping on the door.

“Amanda?” Miss Lizzie, calling very softly.

“I'm awake, Miss Lizzie.”

She opened the door and stood a silhouette, featureless, in the dim light of the hallway. “I'm going out for a few moments, dear. I wanted to let you know.”

“Where are you going?”

“I've some business to attend to. It shouldn't take long.”

“What time is it now?”

“A bit after ten. You stay in bed, and I'll be back before you know it.”

“Okay, Miss Lizzie.”

“And Amanda?”

“Yes?”

“Keep the doors locked. All right, dear?”

“Yes,” I said. “All right.”

Ten minutes later I stood at the window with a new set of questions to wonder about. Who had telephoned? Why had Miss Lizzie left? Where had she gone? And why the admonition about keeping the doors locked?

Below me, the fog had grown thicker. The sea was gone, lost in the murk. I could make out, barely, the gray shape of the hedges that separated Miss Lizzie's property from ours; but everything else was a blur of white.

It was moving, the fog, as though it were alive. Pale streamers would detach themselves from the main body and writhe and coil on their own, twisting about, slowly twirling, and then mysteriously blend back once again with the cloud. Sometimes a patch would open up and I could see through it to the ground, black now against the smoky white.

And then, as I watched, something else moved down there. Off to my left, beside the hedges.

I blinked. I had imagined it; I must have. Staring for so long at the fog, my eyes had amused themselves by inventing a presence that was not there.

But no. It moved again, away from the hedges, skulking, a dark form shrouded by the mist, but obviously human. Because it was dressed in black and appeared to be cowled, I imagined for a moment that it was a monk; and, idiotically, I actually wondered what strange Gothic mission he might be on.

And when the figure trod into a small patch of clear air and raised an arm, I expected to see a lantern at the end of it, or a candle, to light the way.

Instead, I saw a hatchet.

Since then, over the years, I have seen that hatchet many times, at night in dreams, during the day on misty streets when wisps of fog parted to reveal a form before me, black arm raised, a form that, after a frozen moment, metamorphosed into something harmless and prosaic and consequently mocking: a streetlamp, or a signpost. For years (and so habituated to it did I become that soon it was automatic) I have avoided standing beside, even looking at, windows when a fog rolled outside.

And for years, too, I have occasionally wondered what might have happened if I had not been standing by that particular window when that form stalked across the yard below. I would be dead, I expect.

At the time, standing there, I did not think that the figure beneath me might be Mrs. Archer, or that it might be someone else. I assigned to it no human identity at all. I knew only, as my heart rolled over in my breast and my blood turned to frost, that the
Thing
down there was the monster that had butchered Audrey and that now It was coming for me.

If I had run from the house, if I had tried to hide inside it (and I do not know, to this day, why I did not), I imagine I would be just as dead as if I had not seen the Thing approaching. Instead, I watched It disappear against the wall, and then, my heart drumming, I, glanced frantically around the room for a weapon, for something, anything, I could use to protect myself.

There was nothing.

Think!
I told myself.
Think!

There had to be something. Somewhere in the house there had to be
something
I could use against that beast outside.

Hatchet. Yes.
Miss Lizzie's hatchet
.

And I had to get to it before the Thing got in, before the Thing reached me.

I ran to the door, jerked it open, ran down the hall and down the steps. At the bottom, I swung myself around the corner and raced down the hallway. I tore open the closet door, yanked at the light string, and scrambled to the toolbox. My thumbs fumbled at the latches, and then I clicked them open and I tossed back the lid of the box and I reached inside, grabbed at the shelf, ripped it out and hurled it aside, boxes scattering across the closet floor.

And down there, inside the box, the hatchet was gone.

THIRTY-ONE

FOR A MOMENT I just knelt there, staring dumbly down at the toolbox.

It was impossible. The hatchet had been there only yesterday. I had
seen it
, I had
held
it.

Forget about the hatchet.
Do something
.

The telephone.

Call for help.

I sprang up and ran from the closet, ran down the hallway into the parlor to the phone. I snatched up the receiver.

Coming from the earpiece there was nothing, no sound at all. The phone was dead.

It might only be children, I told myself. Children playing pranks.

But it was almost eleven o'clock at night. The children were asleep. This was no prank.

That Thing, that beast, the monster who had hacked Audrey and left her smashed and torn, It was out there somewhere, hiding in the fog. From out there It was watching me, watching every move I made.

Fool
, I told myself, and ran over to the light, switched it off.

Standing in the dark, I could hear myself breathing, harsh and quick. My heart was pounding so quickly, so powerfully, that I thought it might tear itself from my chest.

I would wait. I would wait until the Thing tried to get in. Whichever door It tried, front or back, I would run to the other.

I waited, listening.

Nothing.

All at once I remembered the kitchen. The carving knives.

Moving on tiptoe, trying to be absolutely silent, as much to hear the Thing as to prevent Its hearing me, I crept across the parlor toward the hallway.

Suddenly there was a loud
thump
. I froze.

The noise came again.
Thump
.

It had come from the parlor wall, the one facing the street, and it sounded like someone slamming a hand against the wood outside.

Thump
.

What was happening?

I had not moved. Now, holding my breath, I edged closer to the parlor door.

Thump
.

The sound was getting closer to the window. All I could see out there was the oily whirl of fog.

I moved closer to the door, my stare locked on the window. I took another silent step and, just then, with a suddenness that chilled me, a figure appeared beyond the glass.

I did not recognize it at first. Its chest was black with gore and blood was pouring down its face, streaming past the white startled eyes.

Then I recognized the closely cropped hair, the trim mustache, both bright white against the blood.

It was Mr. Foley, the Pinkerton man.

Suddenly, as though in surrender, he slumped against the window. His mouth agape, his eyes still open, staring intently but seeing nothing, he began to sink toward the ground. In an instant he was gone, and there was only the broad black greasy smear along the glass and the swirling white fog beyond.