Ashes to Ashes (36 page)

Rebecca forced down the lump in her throat, making her jaw ache like an abscessed tooth. She met Eric on the landing outside her room. “Find anything?” she asked in brittle tones.

He quailed at her ghastly expression and replied cautiously, “No, the lock hasn’t been touched.”

“Excuse me,” Rebecca returned, and fled into her bathroom. She allowed herself one long cry of agonized frustration, muffled in her bath towel. Then she splashed her face with cold water, massaged the back of her neck, and tried again, without success, to smile.

When she went back into the corridor, it was empty. The open door to her bedroom was on her right, the closed door to the piper’s gallery on her left… . The door was swinging slowly open. Her voice started to say “Eric?”, but nothing came out of her throat. The door was opening all by itself.

No, not all by itself. A sudden patter like rain on a tin roof was James’s boots. The door crashed open against the wall; the steps pounded through the opening and down the stairs. She’d never heard James in such a rush before. The ghosts were active today. No wonder, with the impending discovery of heirs. Rebecca waited until her heart started beating regularly again, and then walked into her room.

Eric was contemplating the portrait of Elspeth. Elspeth’s jewels decorated the treasure… . Stop it. Don’t think about it. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

“What? You mean Campbell or someone charging down the stairs like a water buffalo? Doesn’t he know to be careful on a spiral staircase?”

She walked around him and looked out the window. It was helpful, in a way, that he kept denying the supernatural. What a shame that old James hadn’t been able to be careful on the staircase.

Steve, she saw from her vantage point, was ambling across the lawn toward the shed. The westering sun was right in her eyes and she had to squint; through the lace of her lashes it seemed as if the many brown hues of grass, trees, and gravel fragmented into a mosaic beneath the blue of the sky.

Steve stood on the stone step of the shed rolling a cigarette. Tobacco? Rebecca wondered. He pulled a package of matches from his pocket, struck one, lit the cigarette and nudged open the door of the shed all at once.

Rebecca jolted upright. James had run down the stairs. The shed reeked of gasoline, gasoline stored in cracked old milk jugs. Steve’s hand shook the match. She shouted, “No, Steve, don’t!”

Steve, startled, glanced up instead of stepping inside. His hand completed the motion and the match fell. A sudden
whump
! and flame erupted from the doorway of the shed, engulfing him.

Eric bolted. Other footsteps pounded down the staircase. Rebecca realized her own feet were skimming the stone treads, the walls spinning by her. The landing and the Hall, the main staircase, the entry. Eric was racing across the lawn. Michael was three steps ahead of him, carrying his bedspread.

Steve was running, arms outstretched, his voice hung in a shrill scream, yellow flame licking greedily at his hair, his shirt, his pants. Michael brought him down with a clumsy but effective flying tackle and smothered him in the spread. Eric was on them both, rolling them across the grass. The grass was singeing, tendrils of smoke curling upward around the struggling mass of arms and legs. The shed emitted gouts of black smoke that blotted the sunlight and coagulated on the lawn.

“Sweet Jesus!” said Dorothy behind Rebecca.

Rebecca didn’t stop. “Call an ambulance! Call the fire department!” There’d been a freeze, they’d reeled in the hoses… . No, Michael had reattached one to wash his wellies.

Phil stood beside Dorothy, his face empurpled. “Steve,” he gasped. “Steve!”

Eric and Michael wrapped Steve in the heavy bedspread and beat on him. He fought back, screaming and coughing, like a giant caterpillar struggling in its chrysalis. Only his black boots showed, their heels hacking divots from the lawn.

The hose was still connected. Rebecca fumbled at the faucet and wrenched it open. Water spurted. Trembling, the water drops dancing madly, she sprayed the pile of bodies. The black hair matted on Eric’s brow and Michael’s red sweatshirt darkened into the crimson of blood.

Steve was no longer on fire, but flames were leaping from the doorway of the shed and crawling over the eaves toward the slates of the roof. Michael jumped up, snatched the hose from Rebecca’s hand, and trained it on the still untouched area of the wall. His hair was singed, she saw, his face pink, and both his hands were blistered.

Eric pulled the spread away from Steve’s head. Rebecca was actually grateful to hear the boy crying. He was alive. She didn’t look at his face. Phil came stumbling forward, arms outstretched, and fell wheezing to his knees beside Steve’s pathetically twitching form. Eric groped in the man’s pocket, produced an inhaler, helped him use it. Dorothy hurried from the doorway and began swathing Steve in wet towels.

The wind was ice cold. No, Rebecca realized, she was wet. She was standing in a puddle on the spiky grass. Her eyes burned and tears ran grittily down her cheeks. Michael advanced on the shed, containing the fire, his face set in deep lines around the whiteness of his clenched teeth. She reached toward him. He was hurt. He didn’t see her.

She gasped and started coughing. Her lungs turned themselves inside out and yet still she was smothering in smoke. Her hands and feet tingled. The battlements of Dun Iain reeled above her.

Steve was crying, the pitiful, high-pitched mewl of a hurt child. Eric growled, a long way away, “I knew the kid was a walking disaster area. Where in God’s name was he keeping that gasoline?”

With a long shuddering inhalation Rebecca answered mutely, in a gas can… . Her thought detonated, spewing images into her mind. The milk jugs had been empty. The gas can had been full, the lid on tight. The fire had not been an accident.

Steve’s crying was absorbed into the distant sound of sirens.

Rebecca took a deep breath. She was frequently taking deep breaths, as though she wore corsets like Elspeth and her lungs weren’t able to expand. Garden-variety stress, she thought. Maybe even hothouse-orchid stress. A few more weeks and she could go home.

Wherever home was. “Maybe I should move to Columbia,” she said. “Even though I’d miss teaching, it’d be easier to work on my dissertation there on the Missouri campus.”

“And make a clean break from Ray and Dover?” Jan replied. “Assuming he stays there.” She maneuvered the station wagon from its parking place, threaded her way out of the shopping center, and turned onto the street.

Rebecca sighed. “I’m surprised that finally making a complete break with him hurts so little. It’s simply a relief, one less thing to worry about.”

“Poor Ray. I remember when you thought he was Mr. Right.”

“There’s no such animal as Mr. Right.”

“Uh-huh,” Jan said sagely.

Rebecca made a face at her and turned to the window. Gray houses lined the gray street under a gray sky. Except for the red and white candy canes and gold tinsel affixed to the lampposts, Putnam was as colorless as an artist’s preliminary sketch. “At least with Ray gone we’ve eliminated one suspect. Not that he was a particularly viable suspect, I’ll admit. I was really embarrassed just calling Nancy in the departmental office at Dover to check on that phone message.”

“So someone did leave a message telling him to come here, that you wanted to get back together?”

“Nancy said it was a bad connection, but she doesn’t know my voice that well, anyway. Obviously it was our malefactor trying yet another way to get me out of Dun Iain. It’s frustrating that everyone around here appears so ordinary. If only someone would start playing with ball bearings or wearing a black hat, something to give us a hint.”

“Perfectly ordinary people can conceal all sorts of devious little quirks. Like my neighbor who was sweeping her driveway on Thanksgiving. She’s so afraid of germs she dips the phone receivers in Lysol, and then fusses at the telephone company because they won’t work.”

“You make these things up,” Rebecca accused her.

“Cross my Girl Scout cookies,” returned Jan.

The station wagon passed under the interstate and turned toward Dun Iain. Rebecca nodded toward the bags of groceries in the back. “Thanks for sacrificing your Mother’s Day Out to come shopping with me. I had to get away for a little while.”

“Keep looking over your shoulder?”

“You’d better believe it. But nothing’s happened since Steve’s so-called accident three weeks ago. It’s like waiting for a centipede to throw down a whole battery of shoes.”

“At least you’re letting poor Michael alone for a while.”

“Hey, he’s the only suspect who’s done anything suspicious!” Rebecca protested. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“Yours,” said Jan. “And don’t you forget it.”

“No, ma’am.” Good-natured, nonjudgmental Jan. Rebecca would’ve gone crazy without someone she could trust. And Peter, too; it was hard to believe she’d ever suspected him, even for a moment. Talk about paranoia.

“I’ve told myself over and over again,” Rebecca said, “that just because Michael has those clippings and that letter from John Forbes he’s not necessarily a thief or a terrorist. Maybe he had second thoughts and wrote to Colin to start the revolution without him. Maybe he’s up to something else entirely.” She sighed and pulled her coat more tightly around her. “No matter what else he is, he really is a historian for the National Museum. His superiors must’ve thought I was nuts, calling all the way across the Atlantic to ask about him.”

“And you still haven’t told Eric about the clippings and the letter?”

“No. It doesn’t seem fair to cause a confrontation on so little evidence. Not that Eric confronts. He slides.”

Jan’s brows rose, but all she said was, “Eric should understand better than anyone else the principle of innocent until proven guilty.”

“Proof,” said Rebecca. “That’s just it. Proof.”

The road was a strip of licorice between the gray fields on one side and the gray stone wall on the other. There was the graffiti-painted gap in the wall; Rebecca peered as it as they drove past. Tire marks. Well, the roadside was always crisscrossed with tire marks. If anyone had parked there and sneaked in to splash gasoline over the shed three weeks ago, those marks had long since been obliterated by rain, snow, and more cars.

“And what,” Jan asked, “does Michael think of your breathing down his neck waiting for him to prove something?”

“Not much. He stood there, every cannon loaded and run out, while I ransacked the place looking for something, anything he’d hidden. And then he let go with that blasted little smirk when I didn’t find a thing. Professionally I can’t fault him; cool competence all the way. It’s as if what he’s out to prove is that my suspicions are wrong. But if they’re wrong, why doesn’t he just say so?”

“Have you asked him?” Jan turned the car into the driveway.

“Not since the day I found the papers. Why bother? It’s no better than an armed truce around there as it is. Something has to give soon, or… .”

“Or what?” inquired Jan.

“I’d like to make something give.” In the last three weeks she and Michael had not only ignored the delicate subject of the papers, they’d never once acknowledged that delightful, disturbing moment of intimacy. If only she would wake up tomorrow and find it January third, Michael on his way back to Scotland and out of her life forever, she and Eric winging their way to the Caribbean for that casual, virtually meaningless fling… . Rebecca squirmed. Eric was fun to be with, no doubt about it. And yet she hoped he hadn’t put down any deposits on that cruise.

There was the castle, shouldering aside the grasping limbs of the trees. Its face was getting to be that of an old friend, the windows winking with puckish humor, the battlements edged with truculence.

Heather’s Datsun sat in the parking area. Dorothy had called in sick three times now— flu, she said— and of all the unlikely substitutes it was Heather who’d come after school to sweep and dust. In fact, there was the girl now, leaning against her broom like a soldier against his pike, eyeing the burned patch of grass and the blackened and boarded-up shed where Steve had been injured. She started at the sound of the engine and headed purposefully for her car.

Jan stopped her station wagon, got out, opened the rear gate. “Hello, Heather,” Rebecca said.

“Hi,” the girl returned, putting her cleaning implements away.

“How’s Steve?”

“A lot better. His dad’s going to bring him home from the burn unit in Columbus tomorrow. He says he doesn’t want to see me. Not because he’s going to need some work on his face, he’s embarrassed he lost his hair.”

“Better his hair than his life! Hang in there, Heather. He’ll need you, you’ll see.”

Heather slammed the trunk lid and looked up, her shoulders curled shyly, her gaze between her black-rimmed lashes earnest and direct. “Miss Reid, Mr. Pruitt says you saved Steve’s life, yelling at him and keeping him from stepping into the shed.”

“Not necessarily.” Rebecca’s neck crawled. James had tried to warn her of the impending fire, she was sure of that much. What bewildered her was the flash of clairvoyance that had led her to correctly interpret his message. Maybe living among the odd resonances of the house had driven her slightly mad. As it had James himself.

She seized a bag of groceries. Heather claimed another. Michael appeared at the far side of the lawn, attired in coat and wellies, and tramped forward to pick up the third. Rebecca went inside without waiting for him. Three weeks, and not once had they gone walking companionably together.

She was laying out the cat food when he came in, shed his coat, and revealed the T-shirt of the day. It was black, emblazoned with the legend, “I’m not stupid, I’m not expendable, and I’m not going”. A shame he hadn’t expressed that sentiment when he was offered this job.

“How’s the haircut holding up?” Jan asked him.

“Quite well.” Michael brushed self-consciously at his forehead. But, unlike Steve, he’d lost barely a quarter-inch of his hair. “Thank you kindly for trimmin’ it.”