Part 26 (1/2)

I moved toward her without trying to be quiet, and she heard me. Her head came up from her arms, and she stared at me, startled, her eyes swollen, her face wet with tears. I had never before seen her in a state of distress, with all the hospital 287.

starch gone out of her. It seemed a little unreal that she could v, eep like other women.

”Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

”Just go away!” she said. ”I thought I could be alone here.” And she sat staring at me with an anger that must be all the stronger because it was I who had caught her in this weak moment.

I crossed the bare, splintery floor, where the church congregation had once sat in their rows, pulled another chair toward the table, and sat down.

”Perhaps this is a good time to talk,” I said, and remembered that I had said this to her once before.

She pulled a wad of tissue from a box on the table and dried her eyes, blew her nose, offering nothing.

I went on. ”Perhaps this is as good a time as any to ask why j ou left that wreath on my door, with its cruel note about my father.”

Her tears had ceased to flow. ”I don't know what you're talking about.”

”Let's not play games,” I said. ”Who else at Morgan House v ould retrieve one of Belle's funeral wreaths and hang it on my doork.n.o.b? With a card which hinted that my father would ne^er sleep in peace.”

She seemed to be considering this. ”I should think it would be someone who wanted to frighten you away from Jasper and Morgan House.”

”I believe that too. You left it there, didn't you? You disliked me from the moment that I arrived, though I don't understand why. Why did you so want me to leave?”

”I didn't want that!” She was emphatic. ”Not in the beginning. I thought the old woman needed you.”

Her words were hard to believe. ”Then why the wreath? Who else-”

288.

”Perhaps that's what someone wanted you to think. So I would be the one you'd blame.”

”You mean it wasn't you?”

”Of course it wasn't. Not that I might not think that sort of thing a good trick-if I wanted to start frightening you. But I never did. I never liked you, but I didn't do that”

She sounded as though she was telling the truth. > ”But then who-” I began.

”Take your.pick. You've got this whole enormous metropolis to choose from. n.o.body around here ever locks a door at night, so whoever waiiie.d to could walk into that house. Perhaps someone acting on instruction. Perhaps someone you don't even know.”

I was trying to digest this. Her manner, her earnestness almost convinced me. Besides, I rather suspected that she would admit it easily enough if she had been guilty. I began to feel a new uneasiness. Being sure it was Gail had enabled me to dismiss the trick as something of no consequence-the act of a malicious woman. If someone else was behind it, there could be a more ominous implication.

”Maybe you can cry a little now,” she said. ”I've got a whole box of tissues with me.”

I wasn't ready to let her off altogether.

”Have you any plans?” I asked her. ”What will you do now?”

”Plans? Oh sure, I'm full of plans!”

”Why did you drug my grandmother?”

She stood up, rocking the small table, looking scornful again, and no longer tearful. ”I didn't! You don't need to believe me, but I didn't drug her. I do have some professional ethics.”

It was difficult to believe in her ethics, professional or otherwise. ”Then who could possibly have-”

”Why don't you try asking Caleb?”

I.

”That's absurd. It's not the sort of thing a man like that would do.”

”Isn't it? When he was pretty sure you would blame me? It must have seemed a good way to scare you off. And the drugging would postpone her making a new will. After all, he's the one who would have most benefited in the old will. Then, eventually, when she was gone, he could make a further profit by selling out to Mark Ingram. Only you came along to spoil everything.”

This was the first time she had ever been open with me, yet all her old antagonism was still there, and” I didn't know whether anything she said could be believed.

Her look changed suddenly as she stared past me, and I turned to see Caleb standing in the doorway, regarding us in chilly disapproval. Perhaps he would think this meeting between Gail and me conspiratorial. Perhaps that was what he would want to think.

”Well,” he said, ”this is surprising. I didn't know you two were such good friends.”

I sat at the table waiting, trying to see Caleb Hawes in the further light Gail had shed on him. He came toward us doubtfully, as though finding us here together had disturbed him. As perhaps it would if any of the things she had told me were true.

”Your grandmother saw the light from her room, Laurie, and she sent me to find out who was here. Even though she doesn't own the church anymore, she feels a proprietary interest, since her parents built it.”

”I saw the light too,” I told him. ”And when I came in Gail was sitting here crying. She tells me that she never left that wreath on my door, and that she didn't drug my grandmother.”

He came across the room. ”You can believe very little of what Miss Cullen says.”

290.

”Any more than I can believe what you say!” Gail picked up her box of tissues and walked past him out of the church.

I looked up at the round window above the altar s.p.a.ce, its colors hardly visible in the dim light from the lantern. ”Perhaps this is a place for the truth. Perhaps that's the game Gail and I were playing just now. Maybe not all the truth, but perhaps little trickles of it. It is true that you were to inherit most of Persis Morgan's wealth. That's no secret now.”

”I was one of the few close friends she had left. Until you came here, she didn't expect to leave anything to you.”

There was so much cold venom in the words that I began to feel uncomfortable with him here in this place. Perhaps the things Gail had told me explained a great deal.

Uncharacteristically, he moved quickly, suddenly, and came to sit at the table in the chair Gail had left.

”There's no need for us to be antagonistic,” he said. ”There are worse enemies than we need to make of each other.”

”I've never wanted to be anyone's enemy.”

”I know. I'll admit that I've disapproved of you and resented your coming. But now we have a common foe to face.”

”Mark Ingram?”

”Partly. But I've always had a feeling that someone else was pulling hidden strings. Someone whose very name makes your grandmother cringe.”

There was one name that made me cringe too.