Night of the Candles (17 page)

Equally damning was the fact that she had betrayed a confidence, the knowledge of Amelia’s pregnancy. Unless the woman had brought the bottle upstairs herself and concocted this whole implausible tale, she was consumed with guilt, remorse — and yes, fear over the death of Amelia.

Why? Was it because she knew that she had been derelict in her duties? Or was there some deeper reason?

Suppose that someone in this house, knowing of Marta’s weakness, had placed the bottle in her room the night of Amelia’s death? Suppose that someone had then gone to Amelia’s room, poured out the fatal dose of laudanum, and given it to her cousin — a woman beset by pain who was used to accepting medicine without question? Had she realized in her last seconds of life that she had been given a poisonous overdose? Had she then called for her nurse in vain? But again, why? There had to be a reason.

Reasons were not hard to discover. She thought of what she had seen, of Sophia’s entering Jason’s room. How long had that affair been going on? Could it have begun before Amelia’s death? Sophia admitted that she had loved Jason for years. It would be human nature, under the circumstances, for Sophia to covet Amelia’s place. Or alternately, if Jason had preferred Sophia, it would have been plausible for him to speed his wife’s death.

Still, why would it have been necessary? If Amelia was dying they had only to wait a few weeks or months. But in a few months Amelia would have had a child.

Did that fact, then, put a new face on the situation? Was it possible that her murderer had not wanted to risk the possibility of an heir?

Why should that have mattered? Amelia herself had nothing to inherit, nothing other than the collar of Harmonia. The child would have been Jason’s heir, but since Jason was in perfectly good health, why would that have mattered? Unless, of course, Sophia had preferred her own child to inherit Monteigne.

What if Amelia’s illness had been a sham? What if she had not been dying? It need not necessarily be a deliberate charade. In spite of Sophia’s caustic comments, it might have been that the pain was real enough but without physical cause. That the fatal illness had been only in her mind.

Amanda shook her head. Amelia’s pregnancy was a complication. It hardly seemed possible that Jason would kill his unborn child or engage in a plot to have someone else do so. There were two others who lived in the house, Theo and Carl. But try as she might she could find no reason for suspecting them. No, it came back, always, to Sophia.

She sat up in bed to fluff her pillows, then lay back down again, a frown between her eyes. It was odd, but she found that her most dominant feeling was anger. It was all so sordid. Such a thing should never have happened.

She fell asleep toward morning. She was struggling, being pulled farther and farther into the smothering depths of a nightmare when suddenly she was awakened. She lay rigid in her bed, listening, until at last she recognized the sound that penetrated her dreams. It was the mournful howling of a dog. It was Cerberus baying at the moon, the harvest moon that sailed, round and full, glowing beyond the curtains at her window.

In that dark hour when the mind flows freely, unhampered by the inhibitions of the day, Amanda thought of Medea, in mythology, the wife of Jason, the wayfarer. Medea, who, on discovering that her husband wanted another woman, had killed her own children to spite him.

It was later, toward dawn, when she woke again. The howling of the dog had stopped, everything was still with that silence which fills the soulless time between the last of the night and the first of the morning, the last of the hunting owl’s time and the first of the crowing rooster’s. What, in this time of quiet had awakened her then? She could not say, but as she lay there a sense of terrible urgency communicated itself to her. She had to get up, to leave the darkened room. She did not know why or where she was going, she only knew she must obey the impulse. She had an impression of wasted time that must be recovered at once, before it was too late.

She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her dressing gown, fumbling in the dark. She could not find the belt and so great had grown her distress that she left it, only holding her dressing gown closed across her chest.

There was no one in the hall when she opened the door. No sound betrayed any other wakeful presence in the night. But a draft swirling about her ankles drew her attention to the double doors that opened out onto the upper gallery. They stood ajar, one of the panels swaying gently in the soft breeze.

Without hesitation she walked toward them. For a moment she thought the long open space of the gallery was empty, then a shadow moved in the darkness to the left down where the chinaberry pushed its branches through the railing. She went toward that movement, guided by the sureness of a need.

She stopped a few feet away and spoke in a soft, inconsequential voice. “Good morning, Theo.”

He leaned against the end column, his head turned to watch her approach. “You are up early,” he replied.

“Something woke me.” She managed to suffuse her voice with the disgruntled sound of someone drawn reluctantly from the covers.

“Go back to bed then. No one expects you to get up to greet the dawn.”

She shook her head, staring beyond him into the gray blackness. “I can never go back to sleep once I’m awake, not at this time of morning.”

“Sorry, if I’m the cause.”

“I didn’t have the best of nights so it doesn’t matter. I really don’t know what roused me.” But even as she made the easy rejoinder she grew unsure. It seemed that Theo might be the cause. Something about his stance there in the dimness of the gallery, as well as her own actions, made her uneasy. It was not fear, a physical fear for herself. It was the strangeness of the impulse that gripped her combined with an apprehension for the man who was so studiously avoiding her eyes.

“Did you hear Cerberus then?” he asked.

“Yes, I did. It’s an eerie sound, a dog howling in the night.”

“Blood-chilling. You should have heard him after Amelia died. We thought he would grieve himself to death. Instead, he simply destroyed whatever heart he might have had, became mean. It’s strange, isn’t it, the instincts of animals?”

She agreed and he went on. “They aren’t as infallible as we have been led to believe though. Look at Cerberus yesterday afternoon. He was fooled, wasn’t he? He was so sure you were Amelia he was almost comical when he discovered his mistake.”

“I … I’m sorry. I can’t seem to remember what happened. Marta thinks it’s because of the blow to my head. I can’t understand it. I feel fine except for being a little weak.”

“That’s a shame. It was a revelation to me. I would never have dreamed it could happen.”

Amanda could feel him staring at her, waiting for her to bring forth some explanation. She managed a laugh. “You make me sorry I missed it. But I don’t know why people expect animals and children to be oracles of wisdom. They have less to go on than we do. Have you never seen a perfect crook, like a gypsy tinker, being fawned on by your favorite hound and followed by a parade of youngsters?”

He smiled in agreement. “And it’s usually the most shiftless, do-nothing hand on the place who has the best watchdog.”

“I wonder what set Cerberus off last night?” Amanda pursued the subject more to ward off silence than from curiosity.

“Who knows? The moon, your presence … if dogs have memories … or maybe just something in the atmosphere. There are times when I feel like throwing back my head and howling myself. Can you understand that?”

Did he expect an answer? She could not tell, but she pretended that he was making a wry jest by smiling at him with a touch of compassion.

“Pay no attention to me. It’s just the time of night. Depressing. Marta tells me this is the time when most people die. Having made it through the dark watch of midnight they cannot quite find the strength to face the morning. I often think of Amelia at this hour.”

Amanda looked up to meet his eyes, dark, unreadable hollows in the shadows with no trace of their normal light color. A constriction of pain and sadness rose in her throat. “Is this the hour she died?”

“I think it must have been,” he replied quietly, and in the silence turned away to brace his hands on the railing and stare out toward the imperceptibly lightening horizon outlined by a serrated edge of trees.

As he leaned forward something heavy slipped from the pocket of his riding coat. It fell to the floor with a clatter that raised dull echoes around them. Theo stooped immediately to retrieve it, but not before Amanda recognized the shape of a pistol.

Her eyes widened as she saw the furtive gesture of concealment, broken off, that Theo made. Still her voice when she spoke held only self-reproach. “You were going hunting and I stopped you! You should have told me, not let me go prattling on, keeping you from the woods.”

Slowly he returned the pistol to his pocket. “It doesn’t matter,” he said at last with an effort at his usual gallantry, “I was by no means sure that I really wanted to go. One of those good ideas that seemed not so good on closer inspection. I would much rather stay here and talk to a lovely lady.”

“I’m afraid I will be dull company.”

“Then you will exactly match my mood. Shall we compare our melancholia?”

Amanda searched his face. Was she going demented or had self-destruction been on Theo’s mind? Could a man still leaning in that direction joke of his melancholia? Now the tension was gone, only the calmness of composure lit his blue eyes. If Theo had contemplated going hunting for death, he had abandoned the quest. A small soundless sigh of relief left her before she smiled. “I think I would rather hear about Monteigne before the war, and of you and Sophia and Jason, if you don’t mind.”

They talked for a time, slow, desultory conversation, memories mainly. Theo seemed to know a great deal about her childhood, gleaned from Amelia, she supposed. Somehow they returned again and again to the things she and her cousin had done together in the days before they had gone away to school, the days when they had been inseparable, dependent on each other for the companionship of childhood in that elderly household of their grandparents.

When one of the long periods of quiet descended, after enough time had passed that she would not seem to be anxious to leave his company, Amanda made her excuses. It had struck her that this tryst at daybreak might have an odd appearance, especially to Nathaniel, and she did not care to put herself in the position of having to make explanations that could only sound like feeble excuses. She was that uncertain of her reasons for joining Theo.

But when she entered her room a few minutes later, she had the feeling that she and Theo were not the only ones abroad. The tatting Marta had left on the chair had been unraveled and strewn over the floor, the doors of the armoire stood open, and the clothes inside hung askew as though someone had been fingering them. Amanda’s trunk, against one wall, was open, its lid thrown back, and the contents tumbled about, while curious fingers had surely tampered with her reticule lying on the removable top drawer.

Taking up her petit point bag she opened it, expecting to find herself poorer, but no, she was enriched. Enriched by a half dozen polished stones and one bright brass button.

She held them in the palm of her hand for a time, then she returned them to the bag. A thoughtful frown on her face, she began to set the room to rights. She was becoming more involved with the people at Monteigne than she had expected. Involvement brought its rewards, but it also carried its penalties … and its debts.

The morning dawned finally, bright and clear with more than a hint of warmth in the swiftly rising sun. With the coming of day Amanda found that the events of the night had a quality of unreality. Her instinctive reasoning seemed improbable in the extreme, if not impossible.

She was a practical person and practical people are apt to look for normal, ordinary solutions to their problems, but despite her misgivings it seemed that the normal answer to the problem of Amelia’s death no longer applied.

She was confused, and though she did not consciously admit to remembering the handkerchief left tied like a signal to her bedpost or the hairpins left in her petticoat pocket, they were there at the back of her mind. With them was the knowledge of the complicated emotional involvements between the people in the house and her dead cousin.

Suicide or murder? She did not know. She only knew there was a great deal about the matter that needed explaining and she would not be able to rest until she had uncovered the last detail. Practicality, and perhaps even decency, rejected the idea of delving into an affair that might cast an unpleasant light on her cousin’s character and the character of the man she had married, but for the sake of the health of her own mind, a mind playing with the idea of possessing spirits and presentiments of death, she must look deeper into her cousin’s death. She must step warily, allowing no one to influence her judgment for good or ill. And she must act quickly. She would be only a little longer at Monteigne, a short time in which to learn enough to still the frantic voice of doubt that clamored in her mind.

She came to this decision in the early morning. At the breakfast table she was given her first chance to put her decision into effect when Jason, with friendly hospitality, asked her what she would like to do for the day.

She looked up from her plate somewhat coldly as she said, “I would like to visit Amelia’s grave.”

The room seemed to grow abruptly still, but no one argued with her. It was not such an unusual request after all. Visiting the cemetery was a duty performed by all relatives, especially the females, and a drive to the cemetery and back was considered a nice outing for a fine Sunday afternoon. It was not Sunday, but since no one expected her to linger much longer at Monteigne, it did not seem too much to ask.

For all her determination, when the time came to set out on the excursion, Amanda was aware of a deep reluctance to leave the house. She refused to acknowledge it, however, even to herself. It was late afternoon. The sun still shone with a pale, lemon-colored light, and a fitful wind blew the clouds around the horizon.