Part 8 (1/2)

”I don't know what you mean,” I said.

”I was thinking of the roundabout way in which Mark Ingram came to Jasper.”

”Gail!” There was a warning in Caleb's voice.

She chose to ignore it. ”Oh, it's open knowledge, and very strange, really. If Mr. Ingram hadn't happened somewhere along the line to run into Noah Armand, he would never have heard about this place. But once he knew about it, he couldn't wait to come up here to have a look. And then, later, when he could manage it-a year or so ago-he came back, with most of his negotiations completed. Mrs. Morgan let the rest of Jasper go out of her hands years ago, so he had no trouble buying it up, as well as most of Domino. Mrs. Morgan still owns a house there, and of course the mine. The coincidence of Ingram's meeting Noah Armand is interesting, isn't it? I've always wondered how it happened. If it hadn't been for that, Ingram would probably have gone somewhere else and wouldn't be here now to upset so many applecarts.”

Noah. Always Noah.

”Who told you all this?” Caleb asked, and his tone was so strange, so fraught with emotion, that I stared at him and saw how pale he had grown.

Gail seemed not to notice. ”Oh, I don't know,” she said airily. ”I guess it's pretty common knowledge. There's so little to do around here that I go over to the hotel sometimes when I'm off duty just to talk to someone. Or perhaps Mrs. Morgan told me. Sometimes she can run on and on, and I hardly listen.”

I spoke to Caleb. ”What was he like-my grandmother's second husband?”

He looked pale and upset. ”I'd prefer not to talk about him.”

”Then I'll ask my grandmother,” I said.

”No, don't.” He spoke quickly. ”All she wants is to forget that man ever came here, and that she made the mistake of marrying him.”

”But what was he like?”

Caleb considered reluctantly before he answered. ”Morose. Thin and dark. Good-looking, I suppose. Women always thought so. He was an opportunist for as long as I knew him.”

I hadn't thought Caleb Hawes capable of deep anger, but I could hear it now in his voice. I had roiled depths that he usually concealed.

”Why did Persis Morgan marry him?” I asked.

j A 104.

”I've always wondered what she saw in him. Her husband had died years before, and Noah knew his way around women. He was many years younger than Mrs. Morgan, and once he was here she couldn't see anyone else. She wouldn't listen to any of us. He'd been legally divorced-my father looked into that. Nothing we could say bothered your grandmother. All her life she's done as she pleased. So she married Noah Armand.”

”Was she happy with him?”

The anger was still there. ”I suppose so-for a while.”

”How did the marriage end? What happened to him?”

Caleb was silent for so long that I thought he might choose not to answer. Gail was waiting too, almost avidly.

”We don't really know what became of him,” he said at last. ”He simply-left. Suddenly. Just the way he came, and we never heard of him again.”

He wasn't telling me all of it, I knew, and I knew as well that it would be useless to probe further just now.

”It was probably a good thing that he left,” Gail said. ”I understand that your father never liked him, Laurie.”

”How can you possibly know that?” Caleb asked sharply.

Gail's look was innocently blank. ”It must have been Mrs. Morgan in one of her talkative moods. I heard it somewhere.”

”Was my father here very much after my grandmother remarried? He died when I was only two, and-”

Caleb started to speak, and then was silent.

”He died in this house, Laurie,” Gail said softly. ”Don't you even remember that?”

”How could I when I was so small?”

Caleb found his voice. ”Never mind all that! Gail, don't you think you'd better go upstairs to Mrs. Morgan now?”

”Yes, I plan to look in on her again. But when I told her we might go riding, she said to just go and leave her alone. You do want to ride up the valley this morning, don't you, Laurie?”

105.

”I'd like to very much, but I want to wait until Hillary comes. I want him to meet my grandmother.”

”You'd better make that later. She's not feeling well, and she doesn't want to see anyone. She said so. I'll run up and look in on her, and I'll ask when she wants to see you.”

”I'll go with you,” Caleb said. ”Will you excuse us, Laurie?”

There was a determination in his manner that stopped any objection Gail might have offered in her role as nurse, and they went upstairs together. They neither liked nor trusted each other, these two, and yet they sometimes seemed allied against me.

It was a relief to finish my breakfast alone and try to forget our thoroughly unpleasant conversation. When I left the table I went searching for a telephone. Perhaps I'd better phone Hillary and let him know we were planning an early ride. Now, after what had been said about Mark Ingram, I was all the more interested in seeing Domino. But I wanted Hillary with me on the ride up the valley. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with Gail Cullen. When we returned, there would be time enough for him to visit Persis Morgan.

Except for a clatter from the kitchen, the house seemed quiet as I stepped into the hall. Perhaps the telephone was out here. I wandered the length of the hall and found myself once more before the closed door to the rear parlor. Idly I tried the k.n.o.b, and this time it turned under my hand.

For just a moment I nearly panicked. Then I thrust back the feeling of fright and opened the door.

An odor of mothb.a.l.l.s and stale air greeted me, and the only light came from the doorway. When I reached along the wall and found a switch, the crystal chandelier came to life, shedding radiance over dark furniture, over heavy, closed draperies done in a red that was almost black. The carpet was worn in several places, and there were throw rugs here and there, covering spots that must have raveled through.

io6 I had been here before.

The recollection of a room that had seemed enormous to me as a child swept back, but now my perspective had changed. It wasn't all that large-not nearly so big as the front parlor.

From the walls dark pictures looked down, and I experienced a flash of recognition toward one in particular. It was a huge engraving-a scene from Hamlet-with a tragic young man in black doublet and hose, turning his back on a white-gowned, piteous Ophelia strewing flowers. I could almost recall the stirrings of imagination I had felt in studying the picture, the wondering I had done about these two tragic figures.

But on all else in the room I drew only a blank, a total lack of recall. Or was it that? Was there also an uneasiness in me, even though my conscious mind saw nothing it seemed to pick up and remember? Had a shade been drawn down sharply in my unconscious to keep me from seeing? To protect me from remembering? Was it all there underneath, waiting?

At least the room would remain safe enough as long as I could recall nothing more than a scene from Hamlet.

I moved about, touching a seash.e.l.l that I seemed to have admired-not really a memory. A spurt of dust stirred when I lifted it, and I could see that dust lay everywhere, thick on the tables, graying the satin and velvet upholstery, gathering in carved crevices of the furniture.

How utterly weird and Victorian! How fantastic to step into a room that must have been closed off for years, with everything in it left untouched. How could any sane person allow such a thing? Yet I had seen Persis Morgan, and for all her years, her faculties were obviously sharp enough. Only something so terrible that even the sane couldn't bear to face it must have happened in this room. Just as I had pulled down those shades in my mind, so Persis Morgan must have closed these doors and walked away, never to return.

Now I saw something else. Footsteps other than mine, larger io7 than mine, had marked the dust as someone had recently moved about the room. Objects had been s.h.i.+fted, repatterning the dust. Here and there its gray coating had obviously been disturbed, so that a box or vase stood in a smudged patch, not returned to place exactly. Someone had moved about this room even as I was doing-searching for what?

Above me a s.h.i.+mmer of cobwebs draped the chandelier and grew like gray lace in every corner. Or like a fungus. The neglect was extreme and totally unhealthy. It was as if the house harbored in this room a cancerous growth that would eventually reach through every outer crack and lend its contagion of disease to the house itself. Perhaps such contagion had already reached Persis Morgan upstairs. All this must have been left untouched, sealed away, because of her abhorrence of what had happened here-because she could never again face this room, and had shut it oft in an effort to wipe out its very existence.

Oddly enough, I began to feel a stirring of sympathy for her, as though terror shared made the beginning of a bond between us. Except that she knew the source of terror-and I didn't.