Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) (24 page)

She said, “Get your coat, will you, Blake? I’ll explain on the way.”

 

“You can stay with the car,” Margot said. She peered down Post Street, but it was too early—not quite seven—for any of the businesses to be open. The shifting fog hid doorways and windows. Only one light showed on the street, shimmering through the mist.

“I don’t want you going in there alone,” he answered.
Theah.
His accent had turned more Southern than she had heard in months.

“I know you don’t, but until we see what’s going on . . .” She opened the passenger door and climbed out of the Essex.

“I’m not going to argue, sweetheart. This is the way it’s going to be.”

Despite everything, despite the sleepless night and the blood-chilling anxiety that gripped her, hearing the old endearment from Blake’s lips gave her strength. She managed a wry smile across the top of the automobile, and she made no objection as he got out of the driver’s seat and walked around the front, leaning on his marble-headed cane. “You see the light?” she said.

“I do.”
Ah do.
He reached her, and side by side, they started around the building.

It made Margot’s blood rise to know that her clinic had been invaded, that someone—that
he,
who was supposed to be gone from her life—still held power over her. She was grateful for Blake’s bulk at her shoulder. Despite her brave words, this was not a confrontation to take on by herself. Blake understood that better than anyone.

He hadn’t argued with her interpretation of the artifacts lying in wait for her. He knew how devious her younger brother had always been. And evidently, though the idea was almost too bizarre to take in, still was. She had described the bit of concrete, the stone half buried in it, and the stomach-churning sight of a strand of Allison’s hair, deliberately laid out to show how long and thick it was. It was not possible that either had come to rest on her bed by accident.

Blake had said only, “Good Lord. He survived.”

“He screamed, that night in the fire,” she said in a shaking voice. “Both Thea and I heard it, a shriek I was sure meant he was dying. Burning to death.”

Blake was turning down Madison, driving as fast as he dared through the fog. He said, speaking a sentiment that hadn’t yet occurred to Margot, “Poor Mrs. Edith.”

“Oh, my God, Blake. I can’t imagine what this would do to her. How could he? How
could
he?”

Now, they approached the back door of her clinic. The lock was broken, the brand-new brass Schlage Frank had installed himself, to keep out the occasional tramp in search of alcohol. It had a glass doorknob on each side, a pretty carved thing Margot had taken pleasure in. The doorknob hung loose now, shiny with mist. The lock had been gouged out of the wood, splintering the door above and below it. The door was closed, but loosely, light showing through the broken lock and around the edges of the doorjamb. Margot paused on the step to gather herself before she put her hand on the slick glass knob. When she felt she was as prepared as she was going to be, she pulled on it. The door swung open, and she walked over the sill and into the nightmare.

 

Now that the moment was here, now that he had maneuvered her into position, exhilaration at having succeeded made his heart pound. He whirled when the door opened, alerted by the rush of cold air, and saw her in the doorway.

Margot. His lifelong enemy. In his grasp at last.

He sidestepped swiftly to seize Allison with a hard hand on her neck. She yelped in surprise and pain as he jerked her forward. He thrust her in front of him, but he hooked his arm around her throat, pressing her fair head against his shoulder. In his other hand he held up the straight razor so its blade glittered in the light. He found he was breathing too fast, the air rasping through his scarred throat. He forced himself to breathe deliberately. He didn’t want anything to spoil this moment or betray his excitement. It was almost over, all his pain and suffering and misery. It was almost over for both of them.

“Doc,” he said. He saw the jerk of her body as she heard his altered voice for the first time. He felt her alarm over the razor’s blade as clearly as if she had screamed, and that gave him pleasure. There had been no pleasure in his life for a very long time. “I see you got my little invitation.”

“Preston,” she said, spreading her hands in entreaty. “Why? Why did you let us all believe you were dead?”

“What do
you
care?” he demanded. Allison wriggled in his grasp, and he pressed the flat of the blade against her cheek to stop her. She emitted a tiny gasp, and froze. He rewarded her by lifting the blade away from her skin, but only slightly. He kept it high enough to be in her line of sight, and he felt by the tension in her body, pulled tight against him, that she knew it was there.

Margot said, “You’re hiding your face. Are you burned?”

“Trust you, doc,” he snarled, “to want the disgusting medical details before you even ask if our little cousin is all right!”

“I can see she’s all right,” Margot said. “I want her to stay that way.”

“Oh, good. Motivation!” He lifted the blade again and slid the flat of it down Allison’s cheek. It was probably cold. She shuddered, and he laughed. “I would hate to scar this pretty face,” he said, his eyes on Margot. “Wouldn’t you just hate to see that?”

“Of course,” she said. She took a step forward, into the room, and now he saw that Blake was behind her, on the outer step.

“Blake!” he cried. “I might have known the doc wouldn’t make a move without you!”

“What do you want, Preston?” Margot said. Her voice, that deep, mannish voice he had always hated, was as even as if he weren’t standing here with a razor blade held to her protégé’s cheek. “Tell me what you want, so we can get this over with. Let Allison go home to her parents.”

“God, Margot, I hate it when you tell me what to do.” He tried to purr the words, as he could have done once, but they came out as a growl.

Margot made a small, uncertain motion. “I’m not,” she said, and her voice trembled just a little. He wanted to hear it tremble more, wanted to see her shake with fear. He wanted her to beg him for mercy.

Then he could end it.

“I’m just asking,” Margot said. “I’m not telling. You wanted me here, and I came. You can let Allison go home with Blake, and you and I will—”

He felt rivulets of sweat running down his ribs inside the hand-me-down shirt. A wave of fury made him tighten his hold on Allison’s throat, her chin tucked tight into the crook of his elbow. She stumbled, losing her balance, but she didn’t make a sound.

She really was a tough little thing. And so pretty. He could have done things with a girl like that, seen her rise to the top of the social circle. She could have been a sister he could boast about, someone to be proud of.

Instead, he had been cursed with Margot, more man than woman, Margot with her hands always into the most disgusting things, the filthiest stuff, then coming home to Benedict Hall and sitting down at the dinner table, touching the flatware and the crystal and the napkins with those hands. . . .

“Preston,” she said now. “Let me see your face. Surely we can help you—”

With one swift motion, he tore the muffler off and threw it aside. Margot’s voice trailed off in what must be horror at the destruction of his face and neck. Behind her he heard Blake’s sudden, swiftly indrawn breath, but he ignored that. Blake wasn’t important.

He sneered at Margot with his stiff, scarred lips. “You think you can help me, doc? I think you’ve done enough already.”

“Oh, Preston,” she whispered. He saw pity in her face. He had grown to hate that look of pity, no matter whose face wore it. It was useless. It was offensive. She said, “You’ve suffered terribly.”

Allison, held tight in the crook of his arm, quivered against him. She was crying, he thought, but silently. Oddly, this gave him no joy. He rather liked her, and he admired her spirit. He loosened his hold on her neck, but he kept the razor blade close to her face to forestall any shenanigans.

He looked past Margot to the outside step, where Blake stood in a tense posture, leaning on his cane, ready—it seemed—to dash into the room if necessary. “Hello there, Blake,” he said. “Haven’t turned up your toes yet?”

“Mr. Preston,” Blake said heavily. “Won’t you let Miss Allison go? We can talk about what you—what you need.”

“Need? I need what I’ve always needed!”

Margot took another step forward. “Plastic surgery, Preston,” she said. “They’re doing amazing things these days, and I can help you find—”

“Stay where you are, doc! We’re doing this my way!” He pressed the blade against Allison’s cheek once again and felt another sob shake her small body.

“Doing what?” Margot asked. “What is it we’re doing, Preston?”

“Don’t take that doctor tone with me, Margot,” he grated. “It’s all over for you and me. It’s your fault I look like this, and it’s your fault our poor little cuz is in this fix.”

“That makes no sense,” Margot said and took another step.

He pressed the blade tighter, and a thin line of blood oozed from Allison’s tender cheek and dripped under his hand. “You want her to look like me?” he cried.

Margot froze. “Don’t!” Allison twisted backward, away from the razor.

“Stop it,” he hissed in her ear. “You’ll make it worse.”

Allison said, shakily but clearly, “It’s already worse, Cousin Preston.”

He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t do it. The tension in the storeroom was as thick as the fog outside, a miasma of sweat and fear and rage. Somewhere a clock ticked and ticked, maddeningly, scraping his nerves.

He had thought he would like this. Thought he would enjoy this moment when he had the power, and could force Margot to do what he wanted. He hadn’t expected to feel sympathy for Allison, hadn’t expected to see pity on Margot’s face. He needed the sapphire back, he thought. He needed Roxelana’s strength to do what had to be done. He wished he had it here, with him, but then Margot would never have understood, would never have come . . .

Damn it. It had to be done, with or without the stone. The time had come. The end for both of them.

He said, “I can’t take this life anymore, doc. Not this way.”

“I can understand that. It must be awful. But, Preston, if you’ll just let me—”

“Shut up!” His voice was too rough to have any power, but the razor had plenty. He pressed it against Allison’s little white neck, and she trembled against him like a leaf in the wind. “Just shut up, Margot! You’ve fooled everyone, all these years, but you can’t talk your way out of this one. I’m going, but I’m by God not going alone!”

Blake drew a swift, alarmed breath. “Preston, you don’t mean that.”

“Be quiet! I’m only letting you stay so you can take our little cousin home,” he snarled.

“Let her go then,” Blake said.

“In a moment. When I have what I want.”

Margot said, warily, “What
do
you want, Preston?”

He braced the razor under Allison’s chin and whispered, “What I’ve always wanted, Margot. You. Come here.”

C
HAPTER
22

Frank knew the moment he opened his eyes that there would be no flying today. The fog, unusually thick for Seattle, blanketed the streets and clung to the shrubberies and rooftops. Even the few lights on in the houses along Cherry Street were nearly suffocated by the mist.

He sat up swiftly and looked at the alarm clock beside his bed. It was only six thirty, but he didn’t think he could go back to sleep. He got out of bed, strapped on his prosthesis, and went into the bathroom to wash and brush his teeth. When he returned, he found himself at a loose end. He couldn’t fly, that was clear. He should probably go down to the Red Barn, call March Field from there to warn them of the delay. He could get some work done, check in with Mr. Boeing.

He dressed quickly in a freshly pressed shirt and trousers from his wardrobe. He put on one of his belted jackets, and then, anticipating the chill of the foggy morning, he shrugged into his overcoat.

The rustle of paper in his pocket reminded him. Slowly, he drew out the envelope, still sealed, bearing his name in Elizabeth’s careful handwriting. He gazed down at it, wondering what she would have to say. He couldn’t remember her face anymore, at least not all of it at once. He could dredge up the way her eyes looked, or her hair, or sometimes her mouth, but he could no longer put the pieces together.

The only face he could call to his mind was Margot’s. Margot in her white doctor’s coat. Margot smiling at him across the candlelit table at Benedict Hall. Margot in the darkness, her eyes gleaming up at him, full of affection.

Margot’s face when she realized he was carrying around a letter from Elizabeth.

“Damn, Cowboy,” he muttered. “Not fair to her.”

He would make it up to her. He would go down to the clinic, repair the flaw in the footings she had told him about. If it needed fresh concrete, or to be sanded down, he would figure it out. He could be waiting for her when she arrived.

Hurrying now, he trotted down the stairs and let himself out of the rooming house. He strode swiftly to the streetcar stop. He had time to get coffee at the diner, chat with Arnie for a few moments, then walk up Post Street to the clinic as soon as it was light enough to see the problem. He would surprise her, since she thought he was on his way back to March. He pictured himself smoothing the furrow from her forehead, bringing the smile back to her face. He would give her the damned letter, tell her to burn it. He would remind her—dredge up the words somehow to express the truth of his heart—that she was the only woman he cared about.

He hopped off the streetcar, saluting the operator as he did so, and strode up to Post Street through the fog. The shoe repairman and the barber hadn’t opened their doors yet, but the Italian grocer had lifted his awning and was setting out trays with braids of garlic, piles of onions, fat red potatoes. The door of the diner was open, its rooster doorstop wedged against the sidewalk. Frank was on his way there, thinking of coffee and eggs and bacon, when he spotted the Essex at the end of the street.

He glanced at his watch. It was just past seven. Surely Margot wouldn’t be at her clinic already.

No light shone from the reception room, or from the window of her office, which he had planned so carefully for the view of the bay. He paced faster, hurrying past the diner and on toward the clinic. A rectangle of light fell on the raw ground behind the storeroom, where eventually there would be a barrier of shrubs to separate the clinic from the alley behind. What was she doing there so early? Had there been a delivery? He could step in and help, he thought. Blake shouldn’t be doing that sort of work.

Frank moved up the sidewalk, then around to the back of the clinic. With a little jolt of alarm, he saw there was something wrong with the door. The glass knob, special ordered from Tweedy and Popp, hung loose, and the lock was broken, gouged out with some tool, a screwdriver or perhaps a chisel.

He called, in a low voice, “Margot? Blake?” There was no answer. Alarmed now, he leaped up the steps.

 

Margot knew what Preston was capable of. She had experienced the depth of his cruelty throughout her childhood, and she still bore the scars.

Only Blake had believed her then. Preston had been Edith’s golden-haired, blue-eyed darling. If he sometimes hurt his sister, it was always an accident. It was never intentional. All of those incidents were just a little boy’s antics. Only Blake knew how close Preston had come to doing real and permanent harm to Margot.

Margot’s belly trembled with dread, but she couldn’t see any choice. None of this was Allison’s fault, and the situation was beyond Blake’s ability to defuse.

She did as Preston told her. With her hands open by her sides, she walked toward him. “I’m coming,” she said.

“Closer.” He grinned, horribly. The scars were glazed, shiny with keloid tissue, and they filled her with sorrow. They were the perfect symbol for Preston’s twisted nature, the tortured thinking that had driven him all his life.

She came within an arm’s length of him, and stopped. “No farther,” she said in a low tone. “Not until you let her go.”

Behind her she felt Blake tense, as if ready to leap, but what could he do? That blade, that straight razor—even if it hadn’t been stropped, it could be deadly. It could slice through Allison’s flesh with even a halfhearted stroke. If Preston turned it on himself, it could sever an artery in a flash, requiring no strength at all. And if he turned it on her—as he so clearly meant to—

But she couldn’t think about that. She said, turning her head slightly to Blake, “Stay where you are. Nothing you can do.”

Preston laughed, a sound of pure horror. “Right-ho, doc! Nothing he can do. Or you, either.”

It seemed that his madness gave him energy. They were all exhausted, from tension, from sleeplessness, from fear, but Preston, with the sort of swift, brazen movement that had always made him dangerous, shoved Allison away from him and seized Margot’s wrist.

Allison stumbled forward and fell into Blake’s arms. At the same moment, Margot tried to wrench her wrist away from Preston’s hard hand, but he was ready. Without hesitating, as if this was the moment he’d been waiting for, he held her tight with one hand while with the other he lunged at her with the razor. He held nothing back. He poured all his strength into that vicious slashing motion, grunting with effort.

Margot threw up her free arm, palm out, more by instinct than by plan. She meant to deflect the blade before it reached her throat. In this, at least, she succeeded, but the blade sliced easily through the sleeve of her coat. In the grip of adrenaline, she didn’t feel the laceration, but she knew it was there, a deep cut on the inside of her forearm, where the precious, essential tendons ran down to her fingers. Blood sprang forth to stain her sleeve and drip like hot syrup over her skin.

She couldn’t help crying out. He had cut her before, when they were children. He had burned her, pinched her, pushed her when he had the chance, but in comparison with this, those events were minor. The straight razor blade was lethal. She knew what a blade like that could do to a person, and despite everything, it stunned her to think her brother would use it on her.

In the space of a heartbeat, Preston raised the blade again. This time, she knew with dread certainty, it was going to reach her throat. It was as if he knew precisely where to strike to achieve the swiftest, the surest destruction. It was as if he had studied—as she had—just where the carotid artery carried heart’s blood closest to the surface. If he reached that artery, she would be unconscious in thirty seconds. She would bleed out in under five minutes. Stress meant her blood pressure was high, and her blood could spray as far as six feet away, spattering everything in the room. Her tidy storeroom would be awash in it, the floor and the walls and the shelves—and Preston himself—splashed with it.

Time slowed to a crawl. Every instant became an eternity. There was noise behind her, Allison screaming, Blake shouting, the door banging. Margot didn’t try to sort out the sounds. She was fully occupied in trying to twist away from the descending blade. In the slow march of seconds, she assessed every action, and she understood she would be too slow. Grief filled her at the waste, the pointless tragedy of it. It was a moment of violence that would change lives forever.

Still, she tried. She threw her weight back and struggled to lift her bleeding arm. The razor fell with deadly speed, its silver blade already red with her blood. She observed it with crystal clarity, and acceptance shuddered through her. There was even a distant sense of relief at this inevitable outcome, this end to the specter that had haunted her all her life.

When something—a jar, perhaps a bottle—spun past her head to strike Preston full in his face, it knocked him off balance. The blade flashed past Margot’s eyes, missing her by centimeters. Preston roared a protest, wordless, harsh, as he scrambled to his feet again. He lifted the razor, but a hand—not her own, and not even human—snatched it from him as if it were no sharper, no more dangerous, than a silver butter knife from the dining table in Benedict Hall.

Preston howled with impotent fury. Frank—Frank!—threw the straight razor into a corner, where it clattered to the floor, well out of reach. Frank’s arm, his wonderful, nearly invincible Carnes arm, seized Preston in an irresistible grip of metal and leather. Time, for Margot, resumed its normal flow with a snap that took her breath away.

Blake joined Frank, and together they held Preston’s arms, even as he shrieked curses and fought to free himself. Allison appeared at Margot’s side, guiding her back with her small hands, exclaiming over the blood running over her hand to drip on the floor. She made Margot pull off her coat. She found a roll of gauze on a shelf, rolled up Margot’s sleeve, and began binding the cut with sure, swift movements.

The men who worked on Post Street—the Italian grocer, Arnie from the diner—crowded into the storeroom, drawn by Allison’s screams and Preston’s shouts, which went on unabated, and which made Margot wonder if his mind had broken at last. Soon there were policemen, and even an ambulance, which Margot knew she didn’t need, but which bore her away just the same, with Frank at her side.

She was the only person, in all the crowd that gathered to deal with the crisis, who hadn’t spoken a word. She would always know, after this day, what shock felt like to her patients. She knew the symptoms, of course—dry mouth, damp skin, tight chest. What she had never guessed was the emotional effect, the sense of disconnection, the impression of having stepped through a curtain into some other, alien world and knowing there might not be a way back. She had thought she knew all about dying, but this—this was something she had never imagined.

Nothing seemed real to her, not Frank’s warm hand on her shoulder, nor the gong of the ambulance, nor even the pain beginning to burn in her arm. The only thing that seemed real to her, at this moment, was the propinquity of death. She had been ready for it, albeit reluctantly. She had seen it coming. She had felt the curtain of shadow ready to fall, the profound mystery about to be revealed. It had been thwarted, for now. But it hovered nearby, for all of them, for everyone she knew and cared about.

She had not died today. No one in that room had died. But it could have happened. It could so easily have happened. How did people live with that knowledge?

 

Allison shivered with a violence she wouldn’t have believed possible. The warmth of the Essex’s heater hadn’t helped, and the blankets Ruby wrapped around her, as she huddled by the fire in the small parlor, didn’t help. Nothing eased her shaking until Uncle Dickson brought her a small glass of golden liquid and said, gruffly, “Drink up, Allison. Best medicine there is.”

She did, and he was right. The heat of the brandy ran like fire through her throat. She could trace its warmth down her chest and into her stomach. At last, hours after the awful scene in Margot’s clinic, she began to relax.

“Is she all right?” she had begged, over and over, of anyone who seemed to know what had happened to Cousin Margot. “Is it bad?”

It was, again, Uncle Dickson who soothed her fears, once she was calm enough to listen. He said, “My own physician is seeing to her. Don’t worry. Dr. Creedy says it’s a superficial laceration.”

“It’s my fault, Uncle Dickson.” Allison’s throat was so tight she could barely speak. “If I hadn’t run out like that—”

He patted her hand. “No, my dear,” he said. He looked so sad she felt sympathetic tears sting her eyes. “No, all of this is my fault, going back a very long way.”

Blake came in, carrying a tray with cups and a teapot. Uncle Dickson said, “Blake, I want you to go to bed. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.” Blake nodded, but the order didn’t stop him from setting the cups on the piecrust table and pouring out the tea. Ramona was there, in her pink flannel dressing gown, and Dick in a thick sweater and plus fours. Cousin Ramona had been crying. Cousin Dick had tried to comfort her, but he was white around the lips, and Allison saw that his hands, rubbing his wife’s shaking shoulders, trembled so that when he tried to pick up a teacup, it rattled violently against the saucer. She could only guess at their feelings. They had mourned Cousin Preston all this past year. Learning he was alive must be staggering. Incomprehensible.

Her father was fully dressed in his usual suit and vest. He paced beside the tall windows, sometimes glaring at Allison, other times peering in confusion out of the window. He had taken to scrubbing his head with nervous hands until his hair stood up like a rooster’s comb.

Blake said, “Mr. Dickson, Hattie would like to know what to do about luncheon.”

“Tell her we’ll have cold sandwiches, or soup if she has it. Whatever’s convenient.”

“She sent Leona up to see to Mrs. Edith.”

“Good. That’s good. Thank you, Blake.”