Must the Maiden Die (8 page)

As she crossed what had become a formal,
brick drive, she spotted a small reddish glow—from a cigar or
cigarette?—beside one of the Corinthian columns of the front porch,
but then it disappeared. She gradually began to notice that she
didn't smell lilacs and iris and lilies of the valley; the late
spring had caused them to bloom concurrently, thus steeping the
entire village of Seneca Falls in their perfume. No such scent was
present here, nor were there any blossoming shrubs or flower beds
around the house. Instead, thick evergreen yews crowded against the
foundation walls.

Then, coming from the darkness, a hand shot
out to seize her left arm in a vise-like grip.

Glynis braced her feet in an attempt, a
futile one, to wrench loose from her captor, and in doing so nearly
lost the paperweight. But when she managed to shakily lift the
lantern, its light caught the glint of a gold belt buckle, which
for no good reason she found reassuring. "Who's there? And please
release my arm."

The man let her go, but stood his ground.
"What are you doing here?"

Glynis could smell tobacco on his breath, he
was that close to her, but her fear began to lessen, and she asked,
"Are you the younger Mr. Brant?" This seemed a reasonable guess, as
the man's pale, clean-shaven face looked fairly youthful.

"Yes, I'm Erich Brant. I repeat, what are
you doing here?"

"I apologize for intruding, Mr. Brant. I'm
Glynis Try—"

"I know who you are," he interrupted, "but
that doesn't answer my question."

If he had recognized her, why did he seize
her so roughly? And since she could see a half-smoked cigarette
between the fingers of his left hand, he must have been on the
porch and seen her approaching. In any event, he deserved an
answer.

"Constable Stuart asked me to come," she
said. "He thought perhaps I might be of help. And I am sincerely
sorry about your father." She had almost forgotten the crystal
still clutched in her hand, and now, while her first impulse was to
give it to him, some instinct made her conceal it in the folds of
her skirt.

Erich Brant gave her a curt nod. "I should
probably apologize if I frightened you. I thought you were just
someone intent on gawking. I imagine we'll have plenty of that in
the next days."

Glynis silently agreed he might be right.
"I'm sure the constable will do what he can to prevent that," she
began, then stopped as a door slammed, and a figure hurtled from
the porch. She didn't see Zeph touch the ground more than once
before he stood beside them.

"Mr. Brant, I asked you to stay in the
house," Zeph said brusquely. There was irritation on his face, dark
as ebony wood beside the fair one of Erich Brant.

Erich's face also held irritation when he
said, "I came outside for a smoke, deputy. I assume I'm not a
prisoner in my own home?"

With the sound of horses now coming up the
drive, Zeph was spared the obvious answer: Because Erich Brant's
father had been murdered, the son was indeed a prisoner, at least
until Cullen Stuart had finished questioning him.

Moments later, the black Morgan, and a roan
mare that Glynis recognized as belonging to Abraham Levy, were
reined in beside the porch. Dr. Neva Cardoza-Levy's bobbed brown
hair, damp with perspiration, clung to her forehead and cheeks, and
though she looked tired, Glynis saw her dismount in her usual brisk
manner. This was remarkable in itself, for Neva had lived most of
her life in New York City and had never been astride a horse until
several years ago. But she had no patience, she'd said, with the
time and effort involved in readying a carriage, so had learned to
ride despite her intense distrust of horses, describing them as
"skittish equine dolts."

Cullen, in an aside to Glynis as he tied his
and Neva's reins to the hitching post, muttered, "Shouldn't have
taken me this long to get here. But the doc was already abed and
not eager about coming, to put it mildly."

"I wouldn't imagine so," Glynis said under
her breath. "And she's not the only one."

Cullen obviously chose to ignore this. And
Neva, with a quick glance sideways at Glynis that said she'd
overheard the exchange, nodded shortly to the others and headed for
the porch, carrying her black leather valise.

"Just a minute!" Erich Brant said to her
sharply, gesturing at the valise. "What are you planning to do with
that?"

Cullen started to say something, but Neva
cut him off with, "I don't know that I'll do anything with it, Mr.
Brant. But where I go, it goes!" Before Erich could further
protest, Neva turned on her heel and marched up the porch
steps.

"Doctor," Cullen called, "before you go
inside, there are some questions I want to put to Mr. Brant
here."

Neva paused on the porch and waited.

Glynis held out the crystal paperweight to
Cullen, telling him, "I found this back there at the edge of the
drive."

Glynis saw in his eyes the same incredulity
she had experienced.

Erich said, "That paperweight is my
father's— he brought it back from a business trip to Europe."

"Was it made by the Baccarat company?"
Glynis asked him, reasoning she should know as much as possible
about her serendipitous discovery.

When Erich shrugged, Cullen asked her, "You
found that along the drive?"

After Glynis nodded, Cullen gave her a
quizzical look, then motioned for her to go with Neva.

Erich immediately objected, "I think my
family's had about all the intrusion and questioning we can take
for one night, Stuart. Why can't this wait until morning?"

"Because your father's been murdered, Mr.
Brant," Cullen replied in a conversational tone, although Glynis
knew that the faint emphasis he'd put on
Mister
meant he was
becoming provoked. "Murder makes privacy next to
impossible—especially for your family."

There had been no overt note of irony in
Cullen's voice, but Glynis, growing steadily more uncomfortable,
had heard it there nonetheless and could only assume that Erich
Brant had heard it too. For a moment it seemed as if he would
refuse to cooperate, but then with a slight twitch of his
shoulders, he went up the steps to the porch and leaned against a
pillar, his arms crossed over his chest.

Cullen turned to Zeph, said something that
Glynis couldn't hear, and a minute later the deputy mounted the
Morgan and turned it toward the drive. As Zeph rode off, Cullen
started up the steps. Glynis stayed where she was, hoping to think
of some excuse to avoid going inside. The dark blue shingled
exterior of the house had been given cream-colored trim that should
have made it more hospitable looking. The heavy, elaborate dormers,
however, which had been constructed like brows over windows that
arched toward the roof line, had created the stare of a many-eyed
gargoyle. She tried to push aside as fanciful her sense of
foreboding, but her mind kept harking back to Macbeth's castle of
death.

As she looked up, a curtain suddenly fell
across an open upstairs window, and the light behind it—a light
not there some minutes before—was extinguished. The secretive
gesture chilled her, suggesting as it did that someone who
preferred not to be seen was furtively watching and listening.

"Are you coming?" Cullen said to her over
his shoulder.

"I guess I don't have much choice," she
answered. Still holding the heavy crystal paperweight, she
reluctantly climbed the porch steps.

The time at length arrives, when grief is
rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon
the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not
banished.

—Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein,
1818

When Glynis reached the top porch step,
Cullen motioned her on into the house. To refuse would mean arguing
with him in public, so she left him with Neva and Erich Brant,
passing beneath a fanlight window as she stepped over the
threshold. This brought her into a spacious foyer leading to a
massive, oak staircase and a first-floor corridor that resembled a
dark tunnel. What illumination there was in the foyer came from a
glass-globed lamp on a low table, its light too dusky for her to
pick out details in the framed daguerreotypes hung on the wall.
After she set down the crystal paperweight beside the lamp, its
facets reflected a warm golden glow. This provided small comfort,
for while moonlight as white as frost crept through a window at the
far end of the hallway, the darkness around her felt
oppressive.

The instruments of darkness tell us
truths,
quoth the hapless Banquo to Macbeth. Glynis decided
that if her memory sent her one more of these macabre passages, she
would leave here forthwith, regardless of Cullen.

The bare marble floor seemed to amplify the
click of her heels, distinctly announcing her coming to any who
might care to know. And perhaps someone did care, because ahead of
her Glynis saw the back of a hoop-skirted figure disappearing down
the corridor.

To her right was a castle-proportioned
dining room, the only thing in it clearly visible being a silver
tea service that shone resplendent on an extended mahogany table;
around it lurked the shadows of high-backed chairs, but Banquo's
ghost was mercifully absent. To her left was what must be the front
parlor. Glynis paused before entering it, and then, with strong
misgivings, went through an ornately framed archway. She stopped
short just inside the lamp lit room.

For a long moment she feared that she had
somehow stumbled back into the woods, for in every corner of the
parlor stood tall, thickly leaved rubber plants and long-fronded
ferns in brass tubs, these set amidst statuary of nude nymphs and
satyrs strategically draped with English ivy. Underfoot lay a
thick, floral-patterned carpet.

The wallpaper, what little of it wasn't
concealed by massive gilt-framed paintings of flowers, consisted
of dark green stripes alternated with thinner stripes of pink
roses. Overstuffed couches to either side of the marble fireplace
were upholstered in rose-patterned velvet, a number of plump chairs
were covered with yellow and pink floral-decorated damask, and over
the windows hung draperies of green velvet fringed and tasseled
with pink silk, looped back and held by brass sunflower medallions.
Numerous footstools bloomed with needlepoint chrysanthemums, throw
pillows with needlepoint poppies. A nest of small tables held
runners of crocheted daisies. Overhead, a candlelit brass
chandelier dripped with leaf-shaped crystal baubles, and under it
stood a round table draped with a damask cloth featuring pink and
white peonies.

The dizzying, overall effect, Glynis
thought, was much as if a deranged gardener had tried to compensate
inside the house for the absence of flowers outside. Admittedly,
the furnishings only accentuated what had been for some time a
popular decorating trend, but she couldn't help longing for her own
relatively Spartan bedroom. And as a clock buried somewhere in the
foliage chimed the hour of ten, she again reproached herself for
allowing Cullen to send her to this house in the first place.

Because of the cluttered furnishings, Glynis
took another long moment trying to sort out individual items; the
candle lighting made it difficult to tell if there was anyone else
in the room. Then the sound of a smothered cough brought her gaze
to a rosewood chair and the widow of Roland Brant. The woman sat
stiffly upright with a pink crocheted afghan over her knees, and
but for the black bodice of her gown, she might have been a
chameleon, so well did she blend into her garden surroundings.
Something stirred on the afghan, the cough apparently bringing to
life a white, long-haired cat curled at the woman's side, and which
Glynis had mistaken for a mohair pillow. The cat raised its head
briefly to blink copper eyes at its mistress and received for its
exertion a pat from a slightly palsied hand. It ignored Glynis
altogether.

Helga Brant, given her repeated illnesses,
should have appeared frail. But Glynis thought the woman in some
way, perhaps by her erect bearing, did not give the impression of
frailty, although she did look wafer-thin. Her complexion was the
yellowish white of old lace and her graying, ash-brown hair, swept
back into a chignon, was caught in a black-threaded net caul. She
lacked the rounded, hunched shoulders and slackened skin of the
chronically ill, yet it was commonly believed that Mrs. Brant was
a semi-invalid who seldom left the house. When she did venture out,
as for instance to visit Emma's dress shop, she was accompanied in
a four-passenger brougham coach by one or two of her servants.
Glynis recalled Emma once saying that Mrs. Brant seemed to have no
difficulty standing for the time it took a gown to be fitted or a
hem to be pinned.

The widow was now dressed in a high-necked,
somber black bombazine gown. As befitted mourning, it was black
unrelieved by so much as a trace of white lace at the sleeves or
throat, or by even the silver chain with its small sterling and
seed pearl cross that Glynis had seen her wearing at all other
times.

"Mrs. Brant, please accept my condolences,"
she said, crossing the room to extend her hand. "Constable Stuart
asked me to come in case there was something I might do for
you."

Her hand was taken in a surprisingly strong
grasp. The grasp instantly loosened as if Helga Brant had
momentarily forgotten, and then remembered, her ailing
condition.

The faded hazel eyes that looked up at
Glynis were dry, and when Mrs. Brant said, "That is kind of you,
Miss Tryon," her words carried more than the usual hint of a
German accent. "The servants are naturally rather unsettled," she
went on, "but I believe they might make tea if you would care for
some."