Night of the Candles (23 page)

“Exactly what you thought, he heard of the accident and came to see how I fared.”

“You were a long time talking.”

“If you had joined us, you would know exactly what kept the conversation going,” Amanda said with an edge in her voice.

“Amelia, I expect. Why not? She made such an affecting penitent.”

Amanda’s fingers curled into fists as she curbed her revulsion. “What did she have to repent?”

“Greed,” Sophia answered and gave a sudden sharp laugh.

Above them the stairs creaked.

“If Herr Jason were in the house you would not say such things,” Marta said, holding tightly to the rail as she descended. “It is you who are the greedy one, wanting for yourself all that my liebchen had.”

“Drunken old fool!” Sophia said. “Why don’t you go back to your bottle? You can hide in it from everything unpleasant, such as dying patients and nightriders. What did you think last night with your crying and screaming, that they had come to mete out the punishment you so richly deserve?”

“Don’t say such things,” Marta said, paling as she glanced around them.

“Why not, if they are true?”

“There are many truths which are better left unspoken. They cannot harm the dead but may hurt the living.”

“Such as?” The sneer was plain in Sophia’s tone.

“Such as the fact that Herr Jason feels nothing but pity for you. Madame Amelia knew this, that is why she was never jealous. She said you were alike, you and her, both loving a man who could give only pity in return. The woman he would love, she said, would have to be stronger and purer in heart than either of you.”

“I don’t believe it!” Sophia exclaimed.

“Because you are a fool wishing for something you will never have,” the nurse replied, her pronouncements given more weight by the owllike solemnity of her manner. If she had been drinking, it was only enough to give her courage and a certain facility with words.

“Why, you maudlin cow. I’ll see you whipped out of the state before I’ll let you talk to me like that!” Sophia stamped her foot, beside herself with rage.

“That may be,” the nurse said, nodding with a faraway look in her eyes. “But I would be careful. They might look for others to punish.”

With immense dignity, Marta descended the remaining stairs and turned toward the hallway and the direction of the kitchen. Sophia stared after her, a brooding look on her face, a look tinged also by something like fear.

Jason returned to the house perhaps an hour before the noon meal. The dust of the fields clung to his clothes and powdered the brim of his hat. He was regaled by Theo with the story of Carl’s near attack on Amanda while he was still sluicing his arms and face clean in the pan of water provided on the back gallery.

With the doors of the house thrown open, Amanda, who had descended to the parlor with her novel, could not help overhearing. She winced a little at the curt tone Jason used to cut across Theo’s diatribe against Carl, and though she heard Jason mention her name, she stayed where she was. It was a quarter of an hour later when he sought her out. He had used the time to change and seemed to have repaired his temper along with his appearance.

“I understand you have had a busy morning,” he said as he came toward her.

Amanda put her book aside. Though she did not mean to smile, she found her lips curving as he came toward her. “My own fault, I’m afraid,” she said ruefully.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Nonetheless, it’s true.”

“Perhaps you will allow me to judge for myself,” he said, holding out his hand to help her to her feet. “Come into my study where we will not be disturbed, and you can tell me all about it.”

Amanda had known this moment must come. To the others, when they asked why Carl had turned on her, she had said merely that he had shown her the necklace and became upset when she tried to take it from him. Such an explanation would not do for Jason. He must know the full reason for Carl’s action, because if the evidence she gave suggested that he had attacked her without real provocation, then there was a stern streak in the owner of Monteigne which might cause him to cast off that poor derelict. She did not want that on her conscience.

On the other hand, she felt an overwhelming need to give Jason himself the benefit of the doubt. The night before, when Jason had faced the nightriders, she could have sworn the tension and danger in the air was real. How could that be if Jason had arranged the midnight visit? He was the obvious suspect, the landowner, former Confederate soldier, who was having to fight for his very existence against a hostile republican government. Still, wasn’t that very vulnerability to suspicion reason enough for him to hold himself aloof from such clandestine activities?

There were two other men in the house. Two others with reason to encourage a visit from the nightriders. Theo, with his support of the group, was the perfect choice. He had been incensed with Nathaniel for his stand against them. What could be more in order than an attempt on his part to give Nathaniel a scare, at the same time encouraging him to think twice before taking an opposing political stand. The other possibility was Nathaniel himself. Considering his aspirations and his views on how they could be gained, martyrdom at the hands of the nightriders would be a convenient thing. If he could be made to appear a victim without any real danger or inconvenience to himself, then it could not but help his cause. The common people who were frightened by the excesses of the nightriders would look to him for leadership, while at the same time, to be their target could not hurt his cause with those currently in power in the carpetbagger government.

When the study door had closed behind them and she faced Jason across the oak table which served him as a desk, she found it harder than she had thought possible to make her explanations. The expression on his face was grim when she had finished.

“So,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Carl gave you no answer to your question?”

“No. I’m not sure whether he did not know who it was and was trying to placate me, or whether he did, but preferred not to say. He was obviously trying to distract my attention by giving me the necklace.”

“I should have guessed Carl picked it up,” Jason said. “He likes pretty, bright-colored things. He collects them like a magpie, and with little more understanding of their worth or the complications of ownership.”

Amanda said, “When I saw the necklace I was so surprised I practically accused him of stealing it.”

“And he became violent.”

Amanda nodded. “He snatched it back and began to shout that I was not his Madame Amelia. He said something else, something about her grave, and the box that was still there. Father Metoyer seemed to think it was Carl who disturbed Amelia’s grave. I am almost certain he is right.”

“I never doubted it,” Jason said, “or the reason for it.”

“And yet, you went after Carl with the others that day at the cemetery?”

“For his protection. Theo is not always accountable where Carl is concerned.”

Amanda was forced to agree. “And after all the upset, I’m still no wiser as to who the nightrider may be.”

If what she had told Jason increased his knowledge, if he guessed, or knew, who rode from Monteigne, he did not intend to tell her. “No,” he said, his green gaze steady as he stared at her across the table. “And that being so, I am honored that you have confided in me.”

Amanda looked away, staring at the Sheraton bookcase against one wall. It was filled with leather-bound volumes and yellowing farm periodicals. The glass doors, which closed them in, were smudged and powdered with dust. There was a brass Athenian owl on one of the shelves, and beneath it, a handwoven Indian basket of black and natural cane. She was aware of Jason’s eyes on her averted face. The soft rustle as he took up a sheet of foolscap and tossed it down again was loud in the silence.

“Amanda…”

He said her name in the firm voice of one who has made a difficult decision, then he stopped.

“Yes?” she said after a moment.

He stood up and moved to lean against the desk, standing over her where she sat in the armchair.

“There is something you must know, but I find I don’t know how to start, how to tell you.” He made a small, helpless gesture.

“About Amelia?”

“Yes.”

“You … you don’t have to tell me,” she forestalled him as he started again to speak. “Marta already has.”

“Marta?”

“She told me that there was something peculiar about her death. Isn’t that what you were going to say?”

“Something like that,” he agreed, and yet Amanda had the impression that he was surprised.

More in response to the expression on his face than to any prompting, she quickly told him all that Marta had said to her in her drunken stupor.

While she spoke Jason kept his head down, and his arms crossed over his chest. There was a white line about his mouth when he looked up.

“Marta came to me a few days ago and told me about the old woman. She was a bedridden patient who had been ill for years. She lived alone, had no close relatives other than a nephew who, six months or so before her death, hired Marta to look after her. When the old woman died suddenly one day, Marta claimed the cause was heart failure. The nephew charged her with negligence. The doctor in the case upheld Marta’s diagnosis, but he claimed that he found the old woman in such circumstances that he could not absolve Marta of the charge against her. Marta claimed that her patient had been in the midst of a deliberate portrayal of austerity designed to persuade her nephew to increase the amount of money he was paying to support her. The nephew could not admit this possibility without looking as if he was a skinflint, of course, and so he gave out hints that Marta had been stealing from her helpless patient. How Amelia heard the tale, I don’t know. She just came bringing Marta home one day, another of her strays mistreated by the world. The tale Marta told me is substantially the same as the one Amelia gave out when she established the woman here.”

“A terrible story. It is almost enough to explain why Marta drinks.”

“Yes, if it’s true, and I have no reason to doubt it. But I did not know of the drinking. Marta forgot to mention that in her confession. And I certainly never knew she was not with Amelia when she died. In fact, Marta went to great pains to make me believe she never left Amelia’s side that whole night through. She swore, on that basis, that other than herself I was the last one to see Amelia alive.”

Amanda frowned. “Marta could hardly be sure of that if she was lying in drunken sleep in her room. No doubt she said it to excuse herself, because she knew she had failed in her duty.”

“That is possible,” he answered, but there was a look of such fierce concentration on his face that Amanda had the impression his thoughts were concerned with something entirely different.

Jason had returned his gaze to his booted feet. Amanda, studying the damp waves of his hair, the sun-bronzed planes of his face, and the strength of his fingers as they gripped his arms, sensed the disturbance he felt. She wanted to help him but knew herself to be powerless. That feeling was not unknown to her. In some mysterious way, it was connected with what had occurred in the early hours of the night before; obscured by the dangers of the visit from the nightriders, it had been almost forgotten. Now it came back to her in fragments of memory that brought the quickening of excitement to her veins.

Amanda cleared her throat. “About last night…”

“Yes”? He glanced up, the expression in his green eyes wary.

“Earlier last night, before the riders came, we were in the hall, you and Sophia, and I. Could you tell me what … what happened? I know that sounds odd, but I can’t remember. I … I think I must have been sleepwalking!” She brought the last words out in a rush, and felt the relief that they were said wash over her.

“You are sure you can’t remember?”

She shook her head. “It is a frightening thing. I know I have been walking and talking, but I can’t remember where I’ve been or what I’ve said … and deep inside I have this feeling of … of guilt.”

He gazed at her a few seconds, then said carefully, “Last night you came to my room.”

“What?” She got to her feet slowly.

“You knocked on my door and said that you had something to tell me.”

He paused expectantly, and she shook her head again. “I couldn’t have.”

“You insisted that you were Amelia, but you were shocked when I told you that I was responsible for your final, lethal measure of medicine.”

Disbelief gripped her, making her mute. For a moment there seemed to be an echo in her head, as if she had heard that pronouncement before, then the feeling was gone, and she was left with a stricken look in her gray eyes.

It was a long time before she could speak, but he did not move or look away. “Are you trying to say you killed Amelia?”

“I have lived for three months with the knowledge that I must have.”

“How? Tell me.”

“It was a night like so many others. Amelia was feverishly gay, trying to hide her fear of death and the pain that lived inside her. She held court from her bed until she became overwrought, railing hysterically against fate, life, our marriage, me, everything. Marta calmed her down, finally, but we were all exhausted. Then in the middle of the night she began to cry, the most helpless, hopeless weeping I have ever heard. It haunts me still.” He paused a brief moment, then went on. “I went to her. Her face was wet with tears and her hair in tangles from her twisting and turning. Her drowned violet eyes begged for relief. Marta … she was deathly tired, at her wit’s end. She had given Amelia her laudanum only an hour and a half before and was afraid to give her more. We waited nearly another forty-five minutes, then I saw she could not endure the pain much longer without going mad. I took up the bottle, measured the dose, and watched her drink it down. She slept finally. In the morning she was dead.”

“Was the dose more than … more than usual?”

“I didn’t think so at the time, but it must have been. It was late, I was half out of my mind with the sound of her screams and moans, and I must admit, I had been drinking to deaden the knowledge that Amelia was dying and I could do nothing. Dozens of times before, when she would wake in the night screaming, I had felt the urge to help her toward a painless release. Where does the thought end and the deed begin?”