Closer than the Bones (26 page)

“Do you have some gloves? Thin cotton ones, perhaps?” I asked her.

Though her eyes rolled with impatience, she directed me to a drawer in her ancient wardrobe. Pulling out the drawer, I beheld an assortment of gloves, in myriad colors and fashions. She probably hadn’t worn most of them in decades, but there they were, just in case she ever needed them. Trying not to disturb their arrangement too much, I rummaged through until I found a pair of white summer gloves, made of a very fine cotton and embellished with small pink roses across the back. Thank goodness she had hands as big as mine. Pulling the gloves on to my hands with care, I felt almost like a girl in Sunday school again. Back in the days when I was a girl, we did wear gloves to church.

The gloves were a bit snug, but not much. Back in my chair again, I fumbled with the purple ribbon which bound the manuscript together. After a moment, I got the knot loose enough so that I could pull the ribbon off, and the manuscript lay free in my lap.

I held it up in one hand and riffled through the pages. “It’s not very long,” I observed. “Only about two hundred and fifty pages.”

“Good,” Miss McElroy said. “Then maybe we can read most of it before Jack Preston gets here and takes it away.”

Before I started reading, I finally asked her the one question that had been burning on my lips. “Why didn’t you turn this over to Jack right away?”

She turned away from me. “I know I should have,” she said, her voice low. “If I had, that wretched girl would still be alive, and I’d have one less death on my conscience. But I had to know, and in my own way. I’ve always had to do things my own way, no matter what.” The bitter self-reproach in her voice surprised me. “After Katie was murdered, I was too shocked to think clearly. I should have put an end to it, right then and there, but I couldn’t cope. I’m stronger now, and I’m ready for the truth.”

In that moment, the full realization hit me. Miss McElroy knew perfectly well who the murderer was, but it was something she had tried not to acknowledge to herself. She had hoped—against all hope, I suspected—that she was wrong, but she could no longer deceive herself, or anyone else, for that matter.

Taking a deep breath, I picked up the first page of the manuscript and began to read aloud. “Here’s the dedication. To Mary Tucker McElroy, for all she has wrought, so may she reap.’” My voice faltered. I glanced over at Miss McElroy, and her mouth had twisted, as if she were in pain. I turned the page. “Here’s a quotation,” I said, scanning it before reading it to her. “The source of her title. ‘He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied.’ It’s from Edith Wharton’s
The Age of Innocence
.”

That was why the title had sounded vaguely familiar to me, I realized. I had read that passage countless times, because I assigned the book frequently over the years in my senior English and honors English classes. I thought for a moment about the doomed love between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska, and I had a dreadful premonition of the tale which Sukey Lytton’s novel would reveal.

“Go on,” Miss McElroy said, her voice barely above a whisper.

And so I read. The story unfolded quickly, of the passion between an older man and a young woman. The man was married to a socially prominent, wealthy woman, and the girl came from a sordid background. Though they frequently declared their undying love for each other, the man could never make the break from his wife in order to marry the girl because he felt constrained by his social position and his wife’s wealth. They continued to meet and indulge their passion whenever they could, often while the girl was a guest of her lover and his wife. The girl was a talented opera singer, and the wife was well-known as a patroness of the arts who often took on gifted young persons as her proteges.

The further I read, the more depressing it got. The girl became unable to sing, she was so tormented by her lover’s unwillingness to acknowledge her publicly. In despair the girl turned to other men, throwing herself at them with little discretion. She would then write long letters to her lover, taunting him with her escapades, but still he would not break with his wife.

The whole thing was wretchedly self-indulgent, but I had to admit that Sukey Lytton could write. Despite my distaste for the subject matter, I recognized the skill with which the author had constructed her story and the subtle power in her delineation of her characters.

She had spared no one. All of them were in the book: Russell and Alice Bertram, Lurleen Landry, Brett Doran. She had been merciless in exposing them, sparing them not the least shred of dignity. If I hadn’t known the people she was writing about, I might have viewed the novel very differently. As it was, I felt like a voyeur.

Finally, I could take no more of it. In the middle of a sentence, I put the page down and announced, “That’s enough. I can’t read any more of it.”

“No,” Miss McElroy said, her face ashen. “That’s more than enough.”

I had gotten so caught up in what I was reading that I had forgotten to pay attention to Miss McElroy and gauge the effect the story was having on her. “Can I get you something? Do you have some brandy or something like that here?” Her color, or lack of it, alarmed me.

“No,” she said, her voice suddenly stronger, as if by a great act of her will. “No, that won’t be necessary.”

“Are you sure?” I was doubtful, but already some of her color was coming back.

“No, I don’t need anything,” she said.

We sat and stared at each other for quite some time. I broke the silence by asking, “Was this what you were afraid of?”

“Yes,” Miss McElroy sighed. “Though it’s all really my fault, I suppose.”

“What do you mean? How can all this be your fault?”

“Don’t be so naive,” she said, her voice sharp. “Do you think that, if I had been any other kind of wife than what I’ve been, he would have gotten involved with that girl?”

I started to protest, but she waved me to silence. “Spare me the feminist rhetoric. I know very well he was the one who made the choice, not me, and that is well and truly his responsibility, not mine. But I never made much attempt, in nearly fifty years, to do things other than the way I wanted them. I never really gave much thought to what he wanted, because I was the one who mattered. The Good Lord forgive me for my arrogance, but it was what I wanted that mattered. Or so I thought.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“You really love him, don’t you?” I asked.

“I always have,” she said, her voice breaking. “There has never been anyone else. Except myself. Perhaps I loved myself more than I loved him. And that’s why I blame myself for all this. I couldn’t give him enough of myself to make the difference, when he really needed it.”

The tears had stopped, and she mopped at her face with the edge of the sheet. “I didn’t want to believe that he had killed her, nor that he had killed anyone else. I wanted so much to believe one of the others had done it. They had enough motive, each and every one of them, because Sukey was relentless. She could never have all she wanted, so she did her best to make anyone around her as miserable as she was. I wouldn’t have blamed any of them if they had killed her.”

“Then why didn’t you leave it all alone?” I asked. “Why didn’t you let her death remain an accident?”

“Because I couldn’t let well enough alone,” she said. “I had to do what I thought was right, no matter what the cost to all of us. Truly a Pyrrhic victory.”

“What now?” I said. I could think of nothing else to say, in the face of her bitter self-reproach.

“The choice is no longer mine,” she said. “He has to decide how to end this. I just pray that he will remember how much I love him and how sorry I am.” She had raised her voice, almost as if she were speaking to someone else. As I watched, she leaned forward, toward her bedside table. She fumbled, pushing aside a box of tissues and a glass of water, reaching for something behind them. I could see now what she wanted.

With a quick stab of a finger, she punched a button and turned off the intercom.

Chapter Nineteen

A massive thunderstorm had rolled in, bringing the night in its wake, before Jack Preston and his men returned to Idlewild.

Morwell Phillips had disappeared from the house, but I suggested to Jack where he might find him. His body was floating in the pond, pelted by the heavy rain, bobbing up and down as the water moved in the wind.

Or so Jack told me. I couldn’t face the thought of witnessing the scene for myself. Besides, I was afraid to leave Miss McElroy, even in the capable hands of Selma Greer. She wouldn’t talk, even when Jack, dripping despite the rain gear he'd been wearing, came back in the house and asked her, gently, to tell him what had happened. She had retreated into the deep silence of grief and guilt from which we could not rouse her.

I had to take over and tell what I knew. I showed Jack the manuscript, and he had his men bag it and mark it as evidence. I gave him a quick summary of the contents, all the while keeping an eye on Miss McElroy across the room, while Jack and I talked near the door.

“Just wish I could have gotten here when you first called,” he said, his shoulders slumped in tiredness.

“What was all the big fuss, anyway?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, some bubba got tanked up on beer and hauled himself off to the convenience store where his ex-wife worked. He couldn’t handle the fact that she had divorced his sorry self, and he thought waving a deer rifle around would impress her.” He grimaced. “And then when somebody from our department answered a call, he started threatening to kill everybody in there. So we had us a hostage situation on our hands.”

“Good grief,” I said, “how did it all end?”

Jack snorted. “Well, after about three hours of constant beer-drinking, bubba passed out, fortunately, and nobody was hurt.” He grinned. “Nobody but bubba himself, that is. By the time we got inside, his ex-wife had taken away the rifle and was working over certain parts of his anatomy with the heavy shoes she was wearing.”

“Ouch!” I said, trying not to grin. Despite the gravity of the situation here, or maybe because of it, I couldn’t help responding to the comic overtones of what Jack had related.

Quelling my impulse to laugh aloud, I returned to the more pressing matter. “Jack, even if you had been here, I don’t think you could have prevented Morwell Phillips from killing himself. He’d have found a way, I’m sure.”

“So he was listening on the intercom the whole time?” Jack shook his head.

“Probably,” I said. “Miss McElroy had already instructed Selma Greer to make sure he went into his office downstairs to turn it on. I doubt he missed much of what we talked about, or of my reading the manuscript aloud.”

Jack glanced over at the bed, where Miss McElroy lay, almost asleep, her left hand clasped in the consoling warmth of Selma’s. “You know, I want to be angry with her, because she could have prevented so much of this. But looking at her, I just don’t have the heart.”

Her doctor had come and gone, prescribing more of the sedative she was already taking. “She’s one tough lady,” he had said, his voice full of admiration, “but she needs some time.” He then instructed Jack not to press Miss McElroy, unless she herself wanted to talk.

Jack had promised not to badger her, even though he was impatient to wrap up his investigation. For now he had to make do with me.

Selma gently disengaged her hand from Miss McElroy’s and stood up. Moving quietly, she approached Jack and me. Her face heavy with sorrow, she said, “She’s asleep now. Let her rest, and she’ll be ready to talk to you in the morning.”

“Do you want me to sit with her for a while?” I asked. Selma looked exhausted, as if she could do with a long night’s rest herself.

She shook her head. “No, Ernie, I’ll stay here with her. She needs me.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “They ain’t nobody else, not now.”

I felt the tears coming to my own eyes, and I blinked them away. My voice was husky when I spoke. “If you need me, don’t hesitate, okay?”

She smiled, briefly. “I will, I promise. Now you and Mr. Jack go on downstairs and finish up your talking there. Looks like you could both do with something hot to drink.” Jack nodded fervently and followed me out the door without argument. Downstairs, in the kitchen, we found Brett Doran nursing a cup of coffee.

“What a mess!” he said, shaking his head at the sight of us. He got up and retrieved mugs for both of us and poured them full of coffee.

“Thanks, Brett,” I said, and Jack raised his cup in salute.

“How’s she doing?” Brett asked. “I mean, this must really have rocked her.”

“She’s taking it very hard,” I said, “as you might expect. Even though I think she knew it all along.”

Brett’s eyes widened in shock. “You mean she knew he was going to kill himself?”

“That, too,” I said. I looked at Jack, and he nodded. “I found Sukey’s manuscript, and I was reading it to her in her bedroom. She had her intercom on the whole time, and I didn’t know it. He”—here I had trouble making myself say his name—“was down in his office, listening. By then he realized it was all over, and he took the most expedient solution. For himself, at least.”

“I still can’t believe he was the one who did it all,” Brett said, shaking his head. “I had Alice pegged for it, or maybe Russ. But not Morwell.” He waved a hand around. “He was always a background kind of guy. You never thought of him doing anything like this. He was like part of the furniture.”

“Which is how he moved around the house without anyone paying that much attention to him,” I said. “Everyone was accustomed to his going about, looking after the house, checking on guests, and so on. He wasn’t doing anything unusual, so nobody paid much attention.” I sighed. “Besides, most of the time, he could slip in and out of rooms, because he knew where everyone was.”

I took a sip of my coffee. “Which reminds me, Jack, I need to tell you a couple of things.” First, I described my little episode with the booby-trapped stairs. Brett denied having slipped the note under my door, and I assured him that I didn’t believe he was responsible. Then I told them both how I had discovered the manuscript.