Butterfly Sunday (37 page)

THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2000

3:00 P.M.

Leona stood eyeing the white enameled perfection of the porch floor. Its narrow planks had been laid an eighth of an inch apart to allow air in and moisture out. It was a seemingly endless wraparound portico with a swirling Victorian railing that curved outward here and there to accommodate sitting areas furnished with white wicker sofas and chairs cushioned in narrow black-and-white stripes. A maid had just greeted her at the door and shown her to a conversation area that overlooked a rose garden divided into an intricate geometric pattern of low, dense boxwood hedge.

“Lovely, isn’t it?”

Her hair was gray, no doubt rinsed with silver. It lent strange glamour and dignity. Her clothes were different as well. Something harsh in her appearance was
softened. There was nothing lurid or lascivious about her ivory linen dress. She didn’t seem at all worldly or wanton here. It occurred to Leona for the first time that she must be at least fifteen years older than Averill.

“That’s African boxwood.…”

Helen paused as Leona’s eyes met hers directly for the first time.

“People always ask how we grow such dense, low hedge.”

“Are you a gardener?”

“Lately I’ve taken an interest.”

Helen offered her a seat. Their conversation ran the gamut of all the polite topics two women seeking to establish their mutual civility could cover. After a while the maid brought an elaborately prepared tea, which she served from a cart on ivory plates trimmed in black and gold and monogrammed with a “B” at the center. Leona was strangely ravenous. Helen identified the various pastries for her, as well as kiwi fruit, which Leona had neither seen nor imagined. Finally, when the maid had cleared their places and rolled the cart away, Helen’s mask of respectful affection became somewhat more intense.

“I believe you have some questions for me.”

“Well …”

Leona wasn’t prepared for the ordinary facts confronting her. Helen was a lonely, middle-aged woman whose best years had been spent living with a man who never touched her. It was the price she had paid for her daughter’s well-being. She had probably married Ransom with the same desperate feelings that guided or misguided Leona toward Averill. People gossiped about her agreement with Ransom. They said she had done it for a million dollars. Who would slice twenty years off her
life for a million or even ten million dollars? No, it was all over Helen’s face. She had paid a terrible price all her own. In the end she, like Leona, had lost her child by the very means she had chosen to protect her.

“I did love him, Leona,” Helen offered by way of accommodating Leona’s obvious discomfort. “It was created more by limited circumstances than Cupid, but I think Averill and I had a fair chance at a good life.”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I thought in time I might help Averill find himself.”

“Don’t say anything good about Averill Sayres to me.”

“I’m not defending the wrongs he did.…”

“You knew?”

Helen’s warmth disappeared. She glared at Leona with controlled contempt. In a moment, she stood. “So good to see you,” she said in that dismissive tone of false kindness people in Orpheus used when they wanted you to leave.

Leona didn’t get this at all. She had obviously insulted Helen, but how? Helen’s sudden aversion to her question was an answer. She must have known what Averill had done. Had she known he was planning to kill the baby? And did she know why? Now it occurred to Leona that Helen might be afraid of her culpability. In the eyes of the law she might be an accomplice.

“Helen, I don’t mean you any harm.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

Now Helen was the accuser. Or trying to put her off by acting like one.

“All I want is the truth.”

“Then you’ll have to tell some truth first, Leona.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You attempted one murder. It’s not so difficult for me to believe you were an accomplice to another.”

“What?”

“You got yourself hired to decorate the church.”

“I got myself …?”

“Hired! And who else was there when Soames did it?”

Had the border between real and unreal disappeared forever? She had come here to beg Helen Brisbane for any shred of information she might have about Tess. Now she was accused of helping Soames Churchill commit murder.

“Helen, you can’t think I knew—”

“I think Soames made excellent use of you.”

“If she did, it was all—”

“Easy! You made it all so damned easy for her!”

Helen was crying now, overwhelmed by sorrow. She looked so lost and helpless and vulnerable that Leona couldn’t hold on to her own moral indignation. Helen’s loss was too genuine. How could Leona stop the flood of empathy? People were connected by deeper forces than blood: frailty, mortality, incomprehensible loneliness and loss. How could she shield herself from that mutual, all-encompassing grief? Thank God, life would pass in a wink. Thank God, this terrible vulnerability they shared wouldn’t last forever. They seemed to be drawn into a vortex of dying things, of losing and aging and shrinking into inevitable nothing.

It was strange, the two women, embracing, feeling their unsuspected union of common haplessness. What would either gain by accusing the other? Then, slowly, the mundane, material, temporal, here and now, living and breathing world reclaimed them. They somehow
managed to regather their wits, wash their faces and settle down in the comfortable yellow silk parlor because the afternoon sun was weak by now and it was cool outside.

“Leona, you didn’t know …”

“Helen, I don’t really suspect …”

All the same, Leona saw it all much clearer now. She had been Soames’s conduit to Averill and her unwitting means of tracking his every move. She had also provided Soames access and a credible explanation for her presence in the church; she had indeed facilitated Rhea Anne’s murder. All of these things she wasted no time sharing with Helen, along with the fact that she regretted them very much.

“Leona, I have a favor to ask of you.…”

Would Leona provide testimony to help prove that Soames murdered Rhea Anne? Of course she would. She’d tell everything she knew.

“It might get embarrassing, Leona.”

“We’ll sit together in the courtroom.”

Then Leona asked Helen why she hadn’t gone to the authorities with her suspicions.

“Soames would have countered by accusing Averill of Henri Churchill’s murder.” There was more in Helen’s eyes. She was assessing Leona, waiting to see if she knew or at least suspected the rest.

“What is it, Helen?”

“We were also afraid for you.”

“For me?”

“She had a brilliant case against you.”

“Why wasn’t I a suspect?”

“Your connection wasn’t obvious.”

All Soames had to do was point it out. However, no one had accused her of anything, so she kept it in the
arsenal of damning evidence, true and false, that she maintained.

It was getting dark. Leona and Helen had drained each other. It was time to leave. Yet Leona hadn’t asked her about the baby. Had she and Averill ever discussed it? Did she know the truth? Would it serve any good to ask her about it? Or would it just hurt someone who had already been badly wounded?

“Helen, do you know anything about Averill I should know?”

Helen darkened. Leona had kept the question general on purpose. Her instincts told her there wasn’t much point in asking it.

“Yes, I do, Leona.”

“Please tell me.”

“I know how he felt.…”

“About what?”

“Every day, his existence, how it feels to struggle every waking moment …”

“With himself?”

“With the damage that only you see and no one can fix.”

“You mean his background?”

Helen let a small sigh escape. She seemed to be studying Leona, evaluating her honesty.

“I mean, Leona, that there are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who lose their innocence as young adults and the ones who are robbed of it as children.”

Helen could make all the moist-eyed pleas for sympathy she wanted. Leona would never feel sorry for Averill Sayres. She had to let it be. They were crossing the porch now.

“I read where it’s supposed to be a warm, dry summer,” Helen remarked, looking at the dark leaves tinged with the dying amber sun. They eyed each other one last time. Maybe it was because the twilight lent Helen an aura of lost beauty. Maybe it was inevitable. Before she realized it, Leona found herself asking the question.

“It was the baby—that’s why he married me?”

“Yes.”

“He knew all along what he was going to do.”

“Averill married you to help you and himself.”

“But the baby …”

“Soames wanted the baby. She blackmailed him into stealing it.”

Now the two women, each with missing pieces of the same puzzle, sat on the porch, oblivious to the dropping chill and the damp mist, and made a shared picture of their individual fragments.

They came all the way to that January night. Averill was supposed to drug Leona as soon as the infant came, and keep her sedated while Soames made off with it.

“Then why did he kill my baby?”

Helen turned ashen.

“Averill did everything in his power to protect your baby.”

“By strangling it?”

“Who told you that?”

The terrible implication of her unspoken answer was all the information Helen needed.

“Soames Churchill. You tried to murder Averill based on information you got from Soames Churchill.…”

Leona felt a freight train roaring in her chest. She
had an image in her head that she couldn’t keep of Averill grabbing her baby. Then everything was blood, snow and ice.

Helen’s hands were on her shoulders. She was driving her words into Leona’s head. This was the truth as she had heard it from Averill. There was no reason to doubt it.

Averill had never planned to conspire with Soames. Helen had gone to Memphis with Averill the week before the baby was born. They had drawn Leona’s money out of an account in Union Planters Bank. If things had gone as expected, Leona and her infant would have been safely settled into a life of their own within a week of its birth. The stillbirth and the phony grave were ploys meant to fool Soames. Averill had arranged a safe, temporary situation for the newborn infant. He would take it there right after it was born. Leona would be sedated and allowed to rest and recover as necessary. As soon as she was able, he would take her to collect the infant and explain everything.

Everything went wrong.

The snow and ice made the roads impassable. He couldn’t wait. Soames was checking for signs of Leona’s imminent delivery every few hours by then. He had to get the infant to safety that night. He was trying to shrink the distance to town by cutting downhill through the woods. It was dark. He was panicked. He was worried about the baby in his arms. Something happened. He tripped and fell. He hit his head and blacked out.

“So that’s how she died?”

“That’s as much as Averill ever told me.”

“So she’s buried there in the woods?”

“He went into shock. He didn’t know.”

“Lie to me, Helen! Please, lie to me! Tell me he said he buried her.”

“I can’t imagine he would have just left her there.”

“Not even in shock?”

“Not even in shock, honey.”

THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2000

9:00 P.M.

Father Timon switched out the porch light and moved through the downstairs rooms turning out lamps and sconces and overhead lights. Then he fixed himself a plate of leftovers, which he heated in the microwave and carried with relish upstairs to his bedroom, where he planned to stuff himself like a Poland China pig while he watched the evening rerun of
Law & Order.

God had other plans.

Darthula showed up at the back door. She was carrying an enormous bundle of rags, which he insisted that she leave on the porch.

“Heard about the murder?”

“Of course.”

She was standing in the doorway. She had replaced her soiled garments with a purple velvet robe. Her red
veil remained over her face. She looked like she was going to a costume party as his late mother. He didn’t laugh at that because he didn’t have the energy to explain.

“He was the devil hisself, Reverend Mister Averill.”

“Really?”

“Know who done it?”

“Who?”

“Miz Evil Thang.”

Father Timon didn’t follow.

“Miss Soame’ Churchill.”

“Why?”

“Crazy.”

“Has she been arrested?”

“No, nor will she ever be.”