Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) (23 page)

The razor was nearly new, from Sheffield, with a pearl Bakelite handle and a blade that had been freshly honed when he lifted it from the barbershop down on Post Street. He held it up so she could see it clearly, and advanced toward her with an unhurried step. She emitted one small whimper and shrank back against the brick wall. The starlit fog outlined her fair hair and her slender silhouette, and he was tempted—oh, so tempted!—to do exactly what she feared, to slash through that tender throat and see the hot blood pour over her georgette dinner frock.

He had done it before. He relished the feeling of power, of reckless daring. It was how he had acquired the stone in the first place. He could imagine it with no difficulty, a single swift stroke, her body crumpling to the floor, himself leaping back to avoid being stained by the spray of her heart’s blood. He could take what he needed, wrap it in something—what? A scrap from her dress, perhaps? His message would carry the greatest impact that way, but . . .

The image faded. Margot would never come to him if Allison were already dead. He needed her alive, his pretty little cousin, cowering now in terror against the brick wall.

He reached her, stretched out his hand, and lifted a lock of her pale hair. A good, thick strand, one that would be easily identifiable, too much to have been given up willingly. He lifted the razor with his right hand.

She cried out and tried to duck away from him. He held tight, forcing her to dangle from his handful of her hair. Some of it came away on its own, tearing free of her scalp, but the rest held so her head was twisted upward, her eyes turning to him in the most pitiful way.

He grinned behind his mask of dark wool. “Shhh,” he said. “I’m not going to cut you, little cuz. I just need a hank of this.” He poised the blade close to her head and wielded it. The blade was sharp, even sharper than the saber he had wielded in Jerusalem. It cut through the strand easily, instantly. Her support gone, she fell to her knees.

He held up the fistful of hair in triumph. At his feet, Allison sobbed, which made his groin tingle again, but he ignored that. He needed to be moving, to get this done.

“I,” he told her, turning toward the stairs, “will be back before you know it.”

He clattered down the long curving staircase, unlocked the door with the key he had lifted so neatly from the maintenance shed, and locked it again when he had gone through. He laid his palm on it, briefly, a gesture to reassure himself he had her safely stowed. It was all going just the way he had planned.

He had known, once he had the sapphire in his possession again, that it would. Margot had shown him herself, though she would never know it. She had poked at the building’s footings where the stone was buried, drawing him to where the bubble had emerged from the cement, practically begging for him to retrieve it. The hammer and chisel had been laughably easy to lay his hands on, lifted from a toolbelt hanging by the back entrance to the Compass Center. He had only to wait until it was too dark for anyone to see what he was doing, and then it was a simple task to chisel out the stone. It practically met him halfway, in any case, bulging out of the concrete that way. He had to repress an urge to apologize for taking so long, as if it were an abandoned child or a pet left behind! That was laughable, too, but he couldn’t help thinking that if he had only had it with him, all those months while he tried to heal in an obscure country hospital, he might not look like a monster now.

The good thing, he saw, once he got the chunk of concrete into the light and could see the stone, was that its true color had returned. It was alive again, its depths glistening, reflective, gleaming almost as vivid a blue as it had that day in Jerusalem, when he had
liberated
it from that arrogant Turk. He had made mistakes, he knew. He had pondered each one of them while he lay in the hospital swathed in such layers of bandages he could barely see. He had examined them, considered them, assessed where he had gone wrong, what he should have done.

He understood clearly, now, what he had to do. He wouldn’t try for subtlety. He wouldn’t take the indirect approach, as he had in his attempt to burn down Margot’s building. He had his bait, and he had a plan. It wasn’t in his nature—as it hadn’t been in
hers,
the incomparable Roxelana—to flinch from what was necessary. Roxelana had imbued the sapphire with all her power, and despite the price he had paid for his mistakes, he would wield that power effectively this time, and then his work would be finished. He could leave this earth without regret, and be united with Roxelana wherever it was people like the two of them ended up.

He listened hard to be certain no automobiles were approaching on Fourteenth Avenue before he dashed across. He took care not to let the gate creak as he came through it. He crept up the porch to the front door in perfect silence. He left his shoes there, gingerly lifted the latch, then tiptoed across the hall and up the staircase.

It was strange, being in Benedict Hall after all this time. The smell of it was achingly, even perilously, familiar. The air was redolent of the past, of easier times. His half-destroyed nostrils flared at the reminiscent scents of cooked food, of floor wax and furniture polish. He detected random ghosts of perfume in the air, like imprints of the ladies who had passed through the house. Lights burned in the small parlor and in the hall, lighting the staircase from below. The second floor, where the family’s bedrooms were, was dark, every door closed, every light off. He breathed slowly, wary of the sounds his lungs made, and which he couldn’t control. He stepped gently on the strip of carpet as he moved to the front of the house, where Margot’s bedroom faced north, to the park.

Despite the need to hurry, as he passed his old bedroom, opposite hers, he was tempted. Just one peek, one quick glance inside. It would be his final glimpse at his boyhood sanctuary. It was sentimental, no doubt, but in the face of what he was about to do, surely he was entitled.

He listened at the door first, to be sure there was no one occupying it. He wondered if it was Allison’s room now. That would have been logical, placing her close to the front of the house, next door to Margot. If it was hers, of course, it was now conveniently empty. That made his scarred lips curl beneath the cover of his muffler, and he gently, slowly, eased the door open.

He caught a breath before he could stop himself, and the whistle of it in his scarred throat sounded like an explosion in his ears. He tensed, listening for any sign that someone else had heard, but there was nothing, only the natural sighs and creaks of a big sleeping house. He sidled into the room, pushed the door closed behind him, and looked around the bedroom he had slept in since he was a child.

It was, in this room, as if the past year had never happened. It was as if he could turn back the hands of a clock and make it once again the summer of 1920, when he was still Preston Benedict, popular columnist for the
Seattle Daily Times
. When he was the handsome war veteran, scion of one of the city’s best families, the sought-after creator of “Seattle Razz.” In this bedroom, nothing had changed. Nothing had been moved. Nothing had been added.

There was no smell of dust or mold or mildew, so clearly someone was cleaning it. His silver-backed brushes lay where he had left them, and the little case for his cuff links and tie tacks still rested on the dressing table. The silver-inlaid tray, where he used to drop his keys and the change from his pockets, waited, empty, on the chest of drawers. His red onyx fountain pen lay across it at a neat angle. No doubt, if he opened the wardrobe, he would find all his clothes hanging there, waiting.

Waiting for whom? For him to come back from the dead?

His scarred flesh was too stiff for a proper grin, but he tried. He felt his cheeks twist with the effort, an appropriately bitter and pointless one. This mausoleum of a room was the perfect memorial, and he had no doubt who was responsible for it.

It was Mother, of course, his bereft, grieving mother, and it was his fault. If he had done it right, he would have come home to her as if nothing had ever happened. He would have driven Margot off to make her life somewhere else, out of his way, out of his life. Mother could have accepted that. She would have recovered from that loss, and swiftly.

Damn, Preston. You’d better get it right this time.

He took one last look around the room, feeling an undeniable stab of regret, then padded out of the room and closed the door behind him. He turned to Margot’s room, where the door stood open. He stepped inside, hurrying now, not bothering to take in the details of her private life. On her narrow bed, with its white quilt and lacy pillows, he laid the chunk of concrete he had chiseled out of the clinic foundation. He arranged it so the sapphire buried in it faced upward, into the dim glow from the window. Next to it, he laid the hank of Allison’s hair, nicely fanned, bright gold against the white.

When Margot returned, exhausted from the fruitless night’s search, she would know. Margot was hateful and selfish and revoltingly mannish, but she wasn’t stupid. She would know he had been there, and that she was the only one who could save Allison.

C
HAPTER
21

Before turning for home, Margot asked Blake to drive her to the hospital. He parked the Essex near the entrance, and she went in to ask if anyone had been admitted overnight, or if anyone had tried to visit her patient with the broken arm. The receptionist shook her head, and assured her she had been at her desk since nine the previous evening. Margot thought of trying the other hospitals, but Blake argued against it.

“You can telephone to them,” he said reasonably. “Or, if Miss Allison went to a hospital, they will undoubtedly telephone to Benedict Hall.”

Margot collapsed against the seat. “You’re right, of course. It’s probably better to go home, but I’m really worried.”

“Maybe when we get back, she’ll be there.”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Margot murmured.

“Ah. Quoting Hattie,” he said.

“Sometimes she’s the only one who knows the right thing to say.”

It took longer than usual to make their way up the hill to Benedict Hall. The fog had persisted through the hours of darkness, and though the sluggish light was beginning to rise, Blake was wary of early-morning vehicles emerging without warning from the mist. As he pulled the Essex into the driveway and around to the garage, Margot looked over her shoulder. Benedict Hall looked much as it had when they left, lights on in the hall and the small parlor, everything else dark.

She felt dry-mouthed and edgy as they left the garage and walked across the lawn to the dark kitchen. Hattie, it seemed, had taken her advice and gone to bed. Blake turned on the light, and Margot saw by the Sessions wall clock that it had just gone six. She went out into the hall and into the small parlor, where she found her father, still fully clothed, sound asleep on the divan. She left him there, turning off the lamp on its side table, closing the door as softly as she could.

The rest of the house was quiet. The maids weren’t due out of their beds for another half hour. Margot slipped off her shoes before she climbed the stairs to go to her room, glancing toward the back of the house. Allison’s door stood open. The door to the bedroom Henry and Adelaide were sharing was closed.

In the vain hope she might find her, she walked down the hall to look in Allison’s room. As before, the bed was made, though it was rumpled. A plaid frock had been tossed on a chair. Allison’s nightdress and dressing gown waited at the foot of her bed, and her brushes and face creams were arranged before the mirror, but there was no sign of Allison.

Margot sighed and turned toward her own bedroom. There would be no sleep tonight, but she could at least wash her face, change her clothes, and—

She was only two steps through her own bedroom door when she saw it. An icy wave of shock swept over her, making her skin crawl and her face go cold. A cry of protest, wordless, involuntary, rose in her throat and died there. Her bare feet carried her forward almost without her realizing it, and she fell to her knees beside her bed in the gray half-light, staring at the—the
thing
—awaiting her.

It looked gross and offensive on her clean white quilt. The jagged bits of concrete clinging to it couldn’t disguise it, and she could see at a glance it had been arranged with care, so she would recognize it in an instant.

The sapphire. Preston’s sapphire, the one he had placed such faith in. It had been an uncharacteristic bit of mysticism for her brother, his belief that this stone gave him strength and influence, and he had died—supposedly—with this jewel in his hand. Only Frank knew where she had buried it, how she had pressed it down into the wet concrete of the foundation. They had smoothed the spot with a trowel, the two of them together, and agreed the stone would remain there, out of anyone’s reach.

Margot knelt there for a full minute, staring at the sapphire in its jagged coating. It stared back at her, glinting faintly as sunrise began to filter through the mist. When she reached out her hand for it, the shattered cement scratched her palm, but the sapphire glowed an invitation.

It meant nothing to her, of course. It was a stone. A rock, as she had declared before she interred it. It possessed no inherent powers except the ones her brother, a man out of his mind with rage and hatred, conferred upon it. She remembered the bulging spot in the footings of her clinic, and the tingle on her neck that day, that old familiar sense of danger. He had been watching. He had seen her examining the flaw, and he had dug the stone out of the concrete, and he had left it here for her to find. She knew precisely what this meant.

Preston was alive.

He had escaped the fire after all. Slid from the stretcher, and left the sapphire behind in the folds of the ambulance blanket. He had run, fled from the consequences of his actions, hid himself somehow, somewhere. Left his mother to grieve until she very nearly lost her sanity. Let the family bury an empty coffin beneath a meaningless headstone.

She was just about to push to her feet, to carry the thing downstairs to show Blake, when she saw the lock of hair.

She couldn’t mistake it for anything else. It was Allison’s, silky and fair, the way Edith’s used to be. She wished she could think it meant something else, that it had come from some other source, but she couldn’t. Somehow, in some twisted plot only he could concoct, Preston had taken Allison, and he intended Margot to come after her. There was no mistaking the message.

Margot rose to her feet. She would have to go, and go alone. Allison was in more danger than any of them had suspected.

 

Jars and bottles in mysterious shapes and colors crowded the shelves in the back room of Margot’s clinic. The air held that undefinable tang of medicine, a smell that called up memories of icy stethoscopes, nasty-tasting thermometers, gleaming steel needles poised to puncture tender flesh. Without Margot there, so brisk and efficient and calm, the clinic seemed to Allison a place of horrors, of tortures half-imagined. The inner door to the examining rooms was locked, and though Preston had made short work of the lock on the back door, he didn’t bother with the second one.

It had been a long, frigid walk through the foggy darkness. Preston knew every street, every alley. He knew just how to dodge the policemen who walked the streets, flashing their Daylo searchlights into the shadows, looking for the missing girl. Half a dozen times he had covered her mouth with his loathsome hand, dragged her away from the dancing beams of light, forcing her to crouch behind garbage bins, huddle beneath stacks of firewood, hide behind piled shipping cartons. He had given her the coat again when he returned to the water tower, but she suspected that was more to disguise her than for her comfort. He made her walk fast, despite her broken heel, and by the time they reached the clinic, her back ached from walking on uneven shoes. Her arm stung from his ruthless grip on it. The straight razor had disappeared, but she was sure he had it in his pocket, within easy reach. She felt light-headed with hunger, having not eaten more than a few bites of anything in two days, and that didn’t help. She couldn’t think clearly enough to devise a means of escape.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, when he had finally released her. “The nurse will be here in the morning.”

“Don’t fret yourself,” he said shortly. “It will all be over by then.”

“What will be over?”

He didn’t answer.

The long hike had taxed him, too, she could tell. He was sweating, though she had the overcoat and he was dressed only in a shapeless sweater and some sort of high-collared shirt. He found the storeroom light and switched it on, making her blink against the sudden brilliance. When her eyes adjusted she saw that he kept the muffler raised around his scarred face. Above it, his eyes glittered as if with fever.

Or madness. He was insane. What person in his right mind would sneak into Benedict Hall and out again, then bring her all the way downtown to Margot’s clinic?

He said, “Give me my coat. It’s warm enough in here.”

She took it off and handed it to him. He put it on, though beads of perspiration dripped down his forehead.

Allison kicked off her uneven shoes and leaned against the wall, rubbing her bare arms against the chill of the room. “What am I doing here, Cousin Preston?”

“It’s not about you,” he grated.

“You didn’t need to haul me down here, then!” She glared at him. “I
hate
people trying to control me!”

“Trying? I didn’t try, cuz. I
did
control you.”

“Give me one chance, and I’ll be gone,” she said, and pointed to the door. “You broke the lock.”

In answer, he pulled the razor from his pocket and brandished it. He had folded the blade away, but she had seen how easily it opened. She understood very well how wickedly sharp it was. Looking at it, she put a hand to her head, where a thick patch of hair was now missing. He said, “Don’t fret, cuz. It will grow back. It was necessary.”

She could tell he meant to speak lightly, but his shredded voice spoiled the effect. She remembered the way he had seemed at her deb party, sophisticated, wry, clever. Good-looking and confident. She dropped her hand and folded her arms around herself. “I don’t see the point of any of this.”

“There’s a point,” he rasped. “And when she gets here, you’ll see.”

“When she gets here? Who?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped. “Who do you think?”

“Cousin Margot? If you wanted to see her, you could have just waited at Benedict Hall! This is crazy—”

He was standing near the door, but now he spun to face her. “I’m not crazy!” he shouted.

“I didn’t say
you
were—”

In three swift steps he had crossed the room. He gripped her throat with one hand, choking off her words. He hissed, “Goddammit, I’m warning you, little cuz. You’re not the one I want, but I wouldn’t hesitate. You don’t know me, and you don’t know what I’ve done, or what I can do, but believe me, you wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t like it at all.”

Tears of pain sprang to her eyes. She could breathe—just—but she couldn’t speak. It was all so bizarre, the whole evening, her mother screaming, Preston dragging her all over Seattle, now nearly strangling her. This couldn’t be happening. She was imagining it. It was a nightmare. If she could only breathe, surely she would wake up and find herself tucked up in her bed.

“Stop tempting me.” He opened his fingers, releasing her. He took a step back as she clutched at her throat and sucked in noisy breaths.

He spoke faster and faster, his voice so raw it must hurt. He waved the razor in front of her face. “Little idiot. I’ve seen you, dangling after the great Dr. Benedict.” His burned throat whistled when he drew breath. “You have no idea what she’s like. You think she’s the great healer, kind and clever and all that nonsense? She’s fooled you. You’re as blind as the rest of them!”

He began to play with the razor, opening it, closing it, opening it again, testing the blade with his thumb, turning this way and that as if he were looking for something. The sour odor of him increased, filling the small space. Allison’s skin prickled with goose bumps, and the room seemed to contract around the two of them. She backed toward the inner door to the clinic, wondering if there was some way to get it open, to lock herself in some other room or escape through a window.

“Don’t even think it!” he shouted. He opened the razor and slashed the air with it, once, twice. Allison’s heart fluttered, and she felt as if there weren’t enough air in the storeroom to sustain them both. She wished with all her heart she had eaten Hattie’s overbaked salmon tonight. This battle was real, not the artificial one she and her mother had been fighting for so long. She needed strength. It had been a long, cold, taxing night, and she was nearly at the end of what she had.

She braced herself against the inner door, her hands behind her. Her voice sounded thin to her, but she had to ask. “What do you want me to do?”

“Shut up!” he shrieked, in a voice that made her bones shiver. “I want you to shut up!”

That, at least, she could do. She pressed her lips together. She let her spinning head drop back against the wood, telling herself she didn’t dare faint. If he came for her, if he lost the last shreds of control he had, she had to try to protect herself.

From beneath her lowered eyelids, she watched the erratic sweep of the straight razor as Preston, muttering to himself, tugging at the muffler over his face, paced the room. Every time he came near her, her stomach tightened and her heart thudded, but she kept herself upright. It was tempting to slide down, to sit on the floor, to rest, but the glitter in his bloodshot eyes convinced her she didn’t dare.

 

When Margot, in stocking feet, crept down the main staircase, she saw by the light under the kitchen door that Blake was still there. She debated furiously with herself.

It would be much faster to go in the Essex. Blake would be deeply upset if she didn’t tell him what she had found, and what she had to do. But could she keep him safe? His heart still wasn’t as strong as she would like it to be, and the dragging of his right leg worried her.

On the other hand, when he realized she hadn’t returned, he would come looking. He would guess where she had gone, and follow, unless she lugged the chunk of concrete with her, and took the lock of Allison’s hair as well.

Trust, she thought. There was no one in the world she trusted more than Blake. Except perhaps Frank, but he wasn’t here.

She glanced to her right, where the small parlor was still dark, and from which she could hear her father’s heavy breathing as he slept on. The rest of the house, from the servants’ attic bedroom down to Hattie’s, behind the kitchen, was silent, sleeping. Waiting.

She descended the staircase, and turned left, toward the kitchen.

When she opened the swinging door, she found Blake leaning against the counter, a mug of coffee in his hand. He straightened when he saw her face. “What is it?” he asked in a low voice.