Legacy Of Terror Part 10

She did not say anything as she considered the consequences of Celia's hysterical memory loss.

'Her doctor is bringing in a psychiatrist to see if he can make her relive those missing minutes,' Jacob explained.

'Do they think he can do that?'

'He uses hypnosis to cause age-regression in his patients, to make them remember traumatic episodes in their childhood. He should be able to regress Celia to the time of the attack.' He peered over the rims of his gla.s.ses at a story on the sports page.

'When?' she asked.

'Excuse me?' He looked up, quizzical, as if he had become so quickly immersed in the story that he had forgotten their train of conversation. It was clear that he did not want to consider the subject and that he was putting on an act he hoped would dissuade her from questioning him about it.

'When will the psychiatrist treat Celia?'

'Today, perhaps.'

'Perhaps?'

'Or tomorrow,' he said.

'And Captain Rand is just going to wait?'

'What else should should he do?' Jacob asked, finally putting the paper down, convinced his ruse was worthless. he do?' Jacob asked, finally putting the paper down, convinced his ruse was worthless.

'Have you told him what happened last night?'

'Nothing happened,' he said.

She was so surprised by his statement that she could not speak.

'We'll know soon enough,' Jacob said. 'When the psychiatrist gets Celia to describe the hitchhiker, they'll round him up in no time.'

'Last night, you didn't think it was a hitchhiker,' she said.

'I had a bad dream last night.'

'It was more than that.'

'No,' he said. 'A nightmare.'

She realized that, again, the old man was fighting against the acceptance of the truth. He wavered between rationality and an almost absurd degree of head-in-the-sand ecscapism. Right now, he was playing his ostrich role.

She decided that it would be useless to tell him about the nightlight bulb having been unscrewed. And he would probably flatly refuse to accept her story about the man who was trying to pry open her door with the blade of a knife. He didn't want to believe, and therefore, he would not She would have to wait for Lee Matherly and tell him everything. He would know what to do. He would, most likely, call Captain Rand at once.

'Well,' Elaine said, 'I think I'll see if Bess has anything to serve a late breakfaster.'

'You run along,' he said. 'I'll be just fine.'

'I'll check in on you after lunch.'

As she opened the door, he leaned forward in his chair, folding the paper haphazardly against his lap. 'Lock the door, please.'

She turned and faced him, wondering if his facade of cheerfulness was about to break down. 'Why?'

'I'd feel better.'

'Why?'

The old man looked pained, as if he were confronted with a child he loved, but a child intent on being nasty with him. His face was drawn tight, holding back a flood of emotions. His eyes were filled to br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a sadness that had been nurtured for a long, long time, a sadness that had become as deep as his soul. He clearly could not bear to offer her another reason. And if he were forced to tell the truth, to explain the nature of the fears he wished to deny, he would break down and he would cry-and he might very well suffer another attack of his crippling illness.

She felt that she was his friend, which meant she could not permit the tears. And as his nurse, she could not permit the attack of angina.

'All right,' she said.

She closed the door and locked it, tested the k.n.o.b, then hurried down the steps and along the narrow first floor corridor toward the kitchen.

As she pushed open the kitchen door, Bess wailed as if she had been struck; a short, sharp wail of pain.

Chapter 12.

For the first time in many years, Bess was both at a loss for words and incapable of functioning. Usually, the white-haired, jolly woman was vivacious and talkative, abustle with the ch.o.r.es of her position as if she were a wind-up machine that could not stop until its mainspring wound loose again. Now, however, her ruddy complexion had turned a gray ash, sickly and defeated, and her almost nervous abundance of energy had drained from her and left her wilted, sagging.

'I can't believe it,' she said to Elaine, though she seemed mostly to be speaking to the wall in front of her.

'It's all right now,' Elaine said. 'It's over with now; there isn't anything you can do.'

'I should have known,' Bess said, accepting the gla.s.s of water the nurse gave her but not bothering to sip of it. 'He was missing this morning. I said to Jerry, I said, he wouldn't have gone out before we got up and fixed his breakfast, now would he. And if he'd gone out sometime during the night, he should have come back. Unless something happened to him.' She shuddered uncontrollably and blinked tears from her eyes. 'And something did, didn't it?'

Elaine had often handled situations where children needed comfort at the death of parents or where parents were deeply grieved by the loss of a child. That was hospital duty that every nurse learned to cope with, though she might not like it much. But this was the first time she had run across grief over a dead pet, a black and tan mixed- breed cat.

'Bobo was with us for eight years-until last night,' Bess said. 'He has a little hatchway in our front door that he can use to go in and out whenever he feels like it. With all this going on with the Matherlys, though, I should have locked his hatch. I should have.'

'You couldn't have known,' Elaine said, taking the old woman's hand and patting it. 'No one could expect you to-'

'I should have,' Bess said. 'I should have known. After Miss Tamlin, I should have been careful even with Bobo.' She looked up at Elaine with very clear, blue eyes and said, 'Bobo was a skitterish cat. He wouldn't have gone to anyone unless he knew them. You know what that means, Miss?'

'You think someone in this house killed him?'

Bess looked very sober, and her eyes were lined with fear. 'In a manner of speaking, Miss. In a manner of speaking, it was someone from this house that did it.'

Elaine thought of the feline corpse which she had seen lying in the garbage bag. It had been stabbed repeatedly with a sharp knife, then slit down the stomach as a final gesture. It had lain in that plastic sack all morning while Bess made breakfast, concealed by other pieces of trash which had been neatly wrapped around it. If the blood had not soaked through and collected in a puddle in the bottom of the bag, and if Bess had not noticed it and begun to empty the sack to discover its source, it would never have been found.

She did not know whether it was a good thing that Bess uncovered the cat's corpse or whether it would have been better all around if the cat had simply disappeared. It proved, in a gruesome way, that the killer was indeed a member of the Matherly household -if one could make the police see that there was a connection between the attempted murder of Celia Tamlin and the brutal slaying of the cat. On the other hand, having seen the mindless violence vented upon the cat, how could any of them think clearly enough to deal with a crisis if one should arise? Any fears that already plagued her-she knew-had begun to grow like cancerous cells, and she imagined the same would be true for everyone in the house.

'Perhaps we should call Captain Rand,' Elaine said.

'Won't do no good.'

Bess dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.

'But you said that someone in this house was responsible. It seems very possible that the same person took a knife to Celia, someone deranged enough to-'

'I said it was someone in this house, in a manner of speaking,' in a manner of speaking,' Bess corrected her. Bess corrected her.

'I don't understand.'

'It wasn't no one living living here,' Bess said. here,' Bess said.

Elaine could not understand what point the old woman was trying to make. 'Just the same-'

'Let's go tell Jerry about Bobo,' Bess said. 'He'll feel just so terrible awful about it.'

It seemed to Elaine that they should call the police first, but she was a nurse who always put the values of her patient first-and Bess had become a temporary patient in her grief.

Jerry and Bess lived in an apartment over the garage, separated from the house by only a few steps. At the top of the outside stairs that led to their back door, Jerry came out to meet them.

Inside, while Bess tearfully related the tale of the discovery of Bobo's mutillated body, Elaine looked about the large, poorly lighted front room, fascinated by, at first, the singularly odd collection of furniture and, later, by the unusual volumes which filled the wall-sized bookshelves behind the sofa. The chairs were a mixture of padded, reupholstered monsters with heavy arms and high, deep backs, and heavy, unpadded rocking chairs which bore the scars of long use. All the lamps were floorlamps, the last having been bought no later than the late 1940s, a silk-shaded thing with gold ta.s.sels hanging around its rim, catching the light like hair and diffusing it. Some of the other pieces were Victorian, some early American and some in styles she could not identify. The room had the look of an auction platform in the country or perhaps the look of a room wherein each piece holds family memories and has been handed down from generation to generation for sixty or eighty or a hundred years. She supposed this last was true, since Bess and Jerry were surely paid enough to afford whatever they might wish. Obviously, they spent a handsome sum of money on books. And such strange books*

She walked along the shelves, her head tilted as she read the t.i.tles: The History and Practice of Magic The History and Practice of Magic by Paul Christian, by Paul Christian, The Paganism in Our Christianity The Paganism in Our Christianity by Arthur Weigall, by Arthur Weigall, Natural Chiromancy Natural Chiromancy by Rampalle, the two Pennsylvania Dutch hex books, by Rampalle, the two Pennsylvania Dutch hex books, The Long The Long Lost Friend and and The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, a number of collections of unexplained, possibly supernatural events edited by Frank Edwards or Brad Steiger, a number of collections of unexplained, possibly supernatural events edited by Frank Edwards or Brad Steiger, The Study of Palmistry The Study of Palmistry by Saint Germain* by Saint Germain*

She looked up suddenly, aware that Jerry had addressed her.

'Excuse me? I was absorbed in looking at your books.'

'I asked if you were aware of the ghost,' Jerry said.

He was standing beside his wife where she had settled into the musty embrace of a large and utterly unattractive easy chair.

'What ghost is that?'

'The Matherly ghost,' he said.

'Amelia's ghost,' Bess added by way of further clarification.

'I don't believe in ghosts,' Elaine said.

The old couple looked knowingly at each other, then looked back at Elaine-as if they pitied her ignorance.

'No, really,' Elaine said. 'When you're a nurse and you've had to study medicine and biology and chemistry, and when you've read lightly in the other sciences, it just isn't possible to believe in things like that any more.' She wanted to say more, but she restrained her impulse to lecture.

She realized now that she should have expected something like this from the moment that she had seen the nature of their library. This was not the first couple she had ever met who professed a sincere belief in the occult, in supernatural goings on, curses and hexeroi and ghosts. At one time, she had gotten angry and had tried to argue the superst.i.tious out of their silly beliefs, but now she understood that such a task was Herculean, all but impossible. After all, not everyone looked upon the world quite so sensibly as she did. She would always have to tolerate the most fanciful of philosophies in other people-but she did not have to like it. And she did not. Usually, when she saw that scenes like this were inevitable in any relationship with other people, she excused herself. The discovery of the dead cat and all the previous tension of the Matherly house, however, had dulled her perceptions a bit.

'We've educated ourselves, too,' Bess said defensively, though Elaine had not meant to imply that they were poorly educated. Even the best educated and the most intelligent people became involved in occultism, searching for some rea.s.surance they apparently did not find in their daily lives or in their regular church attendance.

'We haven't delved into the sciences which you mentioned-medicine and biology and such,' Jerry said. 'But we have read and studied the sciences of the occult.'

'They're hardly sciences, though,' Elaine said.

'Some think they are.'

Elaine did not answer, and she felt much better for having held hen tongue. She liked both of these old people and did not wish to become involved in some petty and bitter argument about something so silly as the existence of demons and witches and-ghosts.

But Jerry was not satisfied. He said, 'Perhaps if you heard about the Christmas Eve murders, you'd believe in ghosts after all.'

'I've heard about them.'

'From whom?' Bess asked. 'Jake?'

'Yes. And the Bradshaws.'

'Neither of them would tell it all,' Jerry said to his wife.

'Course not,' Bess agreed.

Jerry said, 'They wouldn't have told you about the knife.'

'I heard that, all the terrible details,' Elaine said.

'But did the Bradshaws or Jake tell you that the knife Amelia used was never found?'

Elaine recalled the story as Jacob Matherly had told it. Amelia had killed the twins and then had stabbed him. She had fled the room and had broken her neck on the stairs while fleeing from-whatever a mad woman might imagine was chasing her. The knife should have been found alongside her or somewhere between the nursery where she wounded Jacob and the spot where they had found he body.

'A mystery, isn't it?' Bess asked.

She seemed to have recovered from her grief for Bobo, and she leaned forward in her chair, her eyes bright and her lips curved in a gentle smile.

'She hid it somewhere,' Elaine offered.

'Why would a madwoman take the time to hide a knife when her guilt was plain enough without it?'

'Why would a madwoman do anything?' she replied to Bess by way of another question. 'She had lost all her reason, remember. She was not behaving logically. You can't try to reason what she did and why.'

'What you say may be so,' Jerry offered. His voice was breathy with expectancy which Elaine found unsettling. 'But, then, why didn't a search turn up the knife?'

'Who searched for it?'

'The police.'

Bess said, 'They gave us all a hard time for a while when they couldn't find the knife. Especially Jake, poor man.'

'Why especially Jake?' Elaine asked.

'Fools!' Jerry said, shaking his head at the very thought of the police.