Legacy Of Terror Part 2

'I choose not to talk about it.'

'I'm sorry if I've pried-'

'You better check on grandfather now,' he said. He turned away from her and went down the stairs.

Whatever had transpired on that Christmas Eve fifteen years ago had been an indeed unpleasant event. The old man couldn't summon up the will to tell her, and Gordon was clearly afraid to. But why was he afraid? Was it something that would so disgust her or scare her that she might decide not to work here after all?

She clamped her imagination into a can and sealed it away. She best do what Gordon had suggested and see that Jacob was all right.

The old man was sitting in one of the easy chairs, his tray of food mostly eaten and pushed to one side. A book lay open in his lap, though he did not seem to have been reading it.

'Come here and sit down,' he said. His voice was a file drawn over sandpaper, delicate as sugar lace and ready to shatter into countless pieces.

She sat in the other easy chair, across from him, and she felt as if she were being devoured by the huge arms, high back and extra- thick padding. The chair was so comfortable that it was almost uncomfortable.

'You've met them all?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said. 'Bess is a magnificent cook.'

'I hired Jerry and Bess when I was a young man- and they were younger. But that is neither here nor there. I want to tell you about the others.'

'Tell me what?' she asked. She was finding it easier to maintain her calm before the old man's pitiable condition. She supposed that, in a short while, a few days, she would be able to listen to his rambled tales of attempted murder without giving away her disbelief.

'First of all, let's take Paul. He is-was-whatever tense we need for this situation-the younger brother of Amelia, Lee's wife. He is the exact same blood as she was, and we should therefore pay closer attention to him that to either of the boys.' He coughed a dry cough and said, 'What did you think of him?'

She told him what little she could of her opinion of Paul Honneker from this first meeting.

'When you know him better,' Jacob said, 'you'll see more than his jolly side. The poor boy can't hold a job. He is thirty-seven years old and chronically unemployed. Its in his nature. He can't tolerate bosses. The same as Amelia. She loathed taking orders or even responding to any request that wasn't suffixed with a 'please'. He lives here because Amelia's will provided him a place here as long as he lives. She knew how s.h.i.+ftless he was. She also left him one third of the stock and bond fortune Lee had built for her with what inheritance she had received from her mother's estate.'

She said, 'You say these uncomplimentary things about Paul, but you seem to like him.'

'I do. Its not the boy's fault that he has that Honneker blood, the same blood that was Amelia's downfall. I pity him. I want the best for him. But the fact remains that he was her brother and must be watched.'

The soft chair seemed to be growing softer as she listened to the old man's directionless paranoia and tried to think of some way to change the subject.

'Denny,' the old man said, 'has a great deal of talent. He is an artist of some merit. He plays piano and guitar, and he writes a little.'

'He seemed frivolous to me,' she said.

Jacob raised his eyebrows, then chuckled. 'He is that. He certainly is frivolous. He spends his monthly check from his mother's estate as if the entire concept of money had been scheduled for the ash can the following day. He enjoys escorting pretty girls here and there-and pretty girls also require money. He drives too fast and drinks a bit too much. But, in the end, what is there to say against any of that?'

'He is still young,' she said. 'But when he's forty or fifty and still hasn't accomplished anything, what will he think of himself.'

'Perhaps you judge him too harshly. But that is good. Be wary of him, for half his blood is Honneker blood. As is half of Gordon's.'

'I like him.'

'Gordon is anything but frivolous,' Jacob noted. 'He'll run the family investments and eventually the restaurants. Sometimes, I wish he would gad about a bit more than he does.'

She slid forward in her chair, 'I'm confused, Mr. Matherly.'

'About what?'

'Why it matters that half their blood is Honneker- or that all of Paul's blood is.'

'Amelia and Paul's parents were first cousins. As a nurse, you must know that such a close marriage between relatives can often result in the transference of undesireable genes to future generations.'

'Hemophilia for one.'

'Worse things,' Jacob said darkly.

He was trying to frighten her, as he had frightened her before, but he was not going to succeed. Fear of an unknown quant.i.ty was senseless. One could only fear something concrete, something tangible whose threat was plain to see. Thus far, whatever Jacob feared seemed to be an unknown.

'Such as?'

'You haven't yet learned about Christmas Eve?'

'Just that, whatever happened, it was done with fifteen years ago.' She smiled and leaned towards him. 'You shouldn't be worried, still, about something so long forgotten, Mr. Matherly.'

'You don't know. You weren't here.'

'Tell me.'

'It was the worst thing in my life,' he said. 'It was the worst thing I had ever seen. And I had been to war, you know. I'd seen so much, but all of it was pale next to what happened that night.'

He was speaking very rapidly, breathlessly now.

'Don't excite yourself,' she said, suddenly concerned with his welfare, afraid that she might have generated some of his hypertension.

His hand strayed to his chest. He was slightly bent, as if he were trying to encircle the pain with his body and smother it. His face, the half of it which was not perpetually grimaced, was twisted in agony.

She rose quickly and went to the medicine cabinet where she found the glycerine pills. She took two of these back to the old man and fed him one with a sip of water from the gla.s.s on his food tray.

He remained in an agonized hunch for another few minutes.

When she gave him the second pill, he soon leaned back and breathed more easily. The tiny, whimpering sounds that had been caught in his throat were now gone.

'Angina,' he wheezed. The word caused as much pain as the symptoms it described. He disliked the idea of being ill, dependent. 'It's much better now.'

'You'd better get into bed,' she said.

'Perhaps I had.'

'And to sleep.'

'It's so early yet!' he protested, like a child.

'Nevertheless, I think you ought to take a sedative and try to sleep.'

He did as she asked. In twenty minutes, he was soundly asleep. She tucked the covers around him, turned out the light, turned on the tiny night light, and left his room, closing the door quietly behind her.

It was too bad that the attack had come when it had, for she had been on the verge of learning what it was that Jacob Matherly feared in the Honneker blood -and what had happened on that mysterious Christmas Eve more than fifteen years ago.

In her own room, once she had dressed for bed, she chose a book from the half dozen paperbacks she had brought with her and settled down under the canopy of the large bed. When she had finished only a chapter, her eyes were heavy. She marked her place and turned out the light. She had not intended to fall asleep so early, but she was exhausted from packing and driving and unpacking and meeting so many new people. It seemed impossible that this could be her first day in the Matherly house. Certainly, she had been here for years. At least months. At the very least, weeks. Sleep came instantly.

In her dream, a rare dream, it was the night before Christmas, and she was opening her gifts early. She no longer believed in Santa Claus, so what was the use in waiting for the sunrise? One of the presents was a large, red and green box with a bow as thick with ribbon as a head was with hair. She wondered what anyone could have gotten her that was so big, and she wanted to open it first. She pried the lid off and leaned forward, peered inside and swallowed hard and tried to look away and could not and opened her mouth and sucked breath and finally screamed- She woke, perspiring.

But the scream continued.

It was not her scream any longer, and certainly not the scream of a nightmare. It was real, and it was a woman's voice, the cry of a woman in the most terrible agony. It wailed on, rising and falling, cutting across the bones of anyone who listened, like an icicle across plate gla.s.s. And then it was over with.

Elaine thought she had recognized the voice as Celia Tamlin's, even though no words had been spoken in that horrid ululation of terror.

The clock on the nightstand read 11:30.

She slid out of bed, put on her slippers. She hesitated, as she took her robe from its hanger, not certain it was wise to become involved with whatever was going on. She could see Jacob Matherly's twisted face, the intensely blue eyes, and she could almost hear him warning her*

Enough! From the sound of that scream, the girl might very likely need a nurse. Already, several long minutes had pa.s.sed in which she might need help. She put on her robe and started for the door.

Chapter 3.

Before she could b.u.t.ton her robe and reach the door, someone knocked on it and called her name. She took the last few steps and opened it Gordon Matherly stood in the corridor, his face creased by anxiety, breathing rather heavily.

'Did you scream?' he asked.

'No. I thought it was Celia.'

'What room did Dennis give her? Do you know?'

She didn't and said so.

Dennis appeared at the head of the stairs. 'Is everyone all right up here?'

'It wasn't Elaine,' Gordon said.

Lee Matherly's door opened. He had been in bed but had taken the time to dress now. He said, 'It sounded as if it came from outside the house. I can see Celia's car halfway down the drive.'

Dennis turned and went down the steps two at a time.

When Elaine made to follow, Gordon said, 'Maybe you had better wait here until we know what's happened.'

'If she's had an accident, she might need my help.' She smiled at him, pleased with his concern for her. 'And don't worry-I'm used to helping victims of accidents.'

She followed the boys' father, Lee, down the steps, with Gordon thumping close behind her. They walked down the darkened main hall and through the open front door. The air was chilly for June; she was glad she wore a quilted robe.

As they hurried toward the Buick which Celia had been driving, they could see Dennis standing by the front fender, looking alongside the car. He was so still that he might have been a statue. When they were almost upon him, he turned around, trembling like a man with the ague. His face was chalky, and his eyes were very wide. He looked, to Elaine, as if he were suffering from mild shock.

He said, 'Don't look.'

Lee Matherly grabbed his shoulders. 'What?'

'Don't look at her.'

'Who?'

'Celia.'

His father released him and stepped around the car. He halted as if a brick wall had been placed in front of him, and his entire body jerked with the blow. Gordon went to his side and said, just loud enough to be heard: 'Oh, Christ, Christ, Christ.'

'What happened to her?' she asked Dennis.

'Someone-someone stabbed her.' The words were thick in his mouth, as if he had been drinking. She knew that could not be the case, for even if he had been drunk he would have been shocked into sobriety.

Before anyone could stop her, she went and looked at the body. Celia was lying on her side, one hand clutching her stomach, the other thrown out by her head, as if she were grasping for some handhold on life. The ground around her was thick with blood, so much blood that she could hardly have been alive.

'Get away from her, Miss Sherred,' Lee ordered.

'She may be alive.'

'She isn't,' Dennis said, his voice weak. 'She couldn't be.'

'Have any of you checked?'

'No,' Lee said. He seemed resigned, as if none of this were very unexpected, as if he had been preparing himself to face a similar scene at some future date, had been preparing himself for years.

'You should have. Maybe there's something I can do.'

She stepped between them, to the body, and knelt beside the girl. Careful not to disturb the one or two wounds she could see, she rolled Celia onto her back.

Two other wounds were centered in her abdomen. But when Elaine felt for a heartbeat, she discovered there was one. Feeble, but regular.

'Someone call an ambulance,' she said.

No one moved. The rain had stopped, now sprinkled them with fat droplets, a new prelude.

'Hurry!' Elaine snapped.

'You mean she's alive?' Dennis asked.

'Yes.'

Gordon turned and ran for the house to call the hospital.