Cruel as the Grave (15 page)

“Good idea,” Helena laughed. “I’ll see y’all downstairs in a few minutes.”

The mood of the family at lunch reflected the air of repressed tension that filled the room whenever they were all together. The cook was the only person in the house to have remained relatively unaffected by Henry McLendon’s death. The food, as bounteous in quality as it was in quantity, Maggie found difficult to resist, although the waistband of her skirt informed her that she needed to eat lightly for a day or so if she wanted to appear clothed before the family. She refused a second helping of the delicious array of vegetables the cook had provided and firmly told herself that she could have only half a slice of the amaretto cheesecake.

The dearth of conversation at the table relieved Maggie of the necessity of trying to talk to Adrian, seated once more beside her. She glanced at Lavinia from time to time and was not encouraged by her great-aunt’s forbidding expression as she munched her food. Lavinia had remained aloof ever since Maggie and Gerard had arrived the day before, and Maggie was nervous about approaching the woman who obviously had little interest in either her nephew or her great-niece.

After half an hour of subdued silence, broken only by occasional requests for the passing of a dish, the family members began pushing back their chairs. Maggie dabbed at her mouth with her napkin, steeling herself to approach Lavinia, who at that moment was also getting up from the table. As Maggie followed her great-aunt toward the door, she noticed Helena and Ernie moving toward their own objects of interrogation. Helena grasped Harold by the arm, while Ernie put a comforting arm around Retty’s shoulders. Retty seemed grateful for the attention, because she actually looked her age for the first time since Maggie had known her. The death of her twin brother had affected her strongly, perhaps more so than it had affected anyone else in the family.

Maggie caught up with Lavinia in the hall outside the dining room. “Lavinia,” she called. The older woman, her impatience ill-concealed, stopped and turned to look at Maggie.

“Yes, what is it?” she asked when Maggie failed to continue.

“I was wondering,” Maggie started, “whether you might feel like talking a little this afternoon. I mean,” she hurried on, “you and I haven’t had much chance to talk since my father and I arrived, and I’d like to, if you feel like it.” Awkwardly she ground to a halt and waited for her great-aunt to respond.

For a long moment Lavinia regarded the young woman with an impassive face. Maggie feared that Lavinia would turn her down flatly, but to her great relief, Lavinia nodded.

“I generally rest a while in the afternoon,” she said, her voice tart, “but I suppose this once it wouldn’t hurt to talk instead.” She turned toward the stairs, leaving a slightly flustered Maggie to follow.

Lavinia’s bedroom was at the far end of the same wing of the house in which Helena’s room was located. After glancing around Lavinia’s room, Maggie had some appreciation for why Lavinia had metaphorically wrinkled her nose at Helena’s room. Maggie could not place the period of the furniture, but everything was antique. The effect was somehow what she conceived of as Victorian, with ruffled lace skirts covering the legs of the chairs and tables, and shelf upon shelf of knickknacks and photographs in expensive-looking frames. Maggie felt sorry for the housemaid who had to dust Lavinia’s room.

Waving an imperious hand, Lavinia pointed Maggie toward a large chair covered in beautifully detailed fabric, while Lavinia herself reclined on a chaise lounge covered in luxurious rose velvet.

What on earth am I going to say to her?
Maggie thought as she settled into the comfortable chair.

Lavinia solved her dilemma for her. “What do you really want?”

Startled—yet somewhat relieved—by her aunt’s directness, Maggie formed a reply. “I’d like to know more about you and my grandmother’s family.” She couldn’t come right out and say,
I want to know whether you had anything to do with the deaths of my grandparents,
despite Lavinia’s own directness.

“So you want a potted history of the illustrious Culpeper family?” Lavinia mused sarcastically. “Well, that shouldn’t take long. The Mississippi branch of the Culpepers, originally from Virginia, of course, were quite the Southern aristocrats. The Culpepers were wealthy and cultured when the McLendons began building the basis of a small business empire. After the war”—here Maggie knew Lavinia was talking about the Civil War—“the Culpepers struggled to hold on to their various plantations while the McLendons just got richer.”

Eyebrows arched sardonically, Lavinia continued the history which both she and Maggie knew that Maggie hadn’t really wanted to hear, at least not at the moment.

“The Culpepers became successively more impoverished, to the point where you could actually call them bourgeois.” Lavinia’s tone indicated what she thought of this label. “Fortunately for Magnolia and me, our father was one of the few Culpepers graced with anything approaching financial acumen, so we never had to do without the basics. We just didn’t get a lot of the frills.” She waved her hand around the room. “Nothing quite like this style, that’s for sure. Magnolia married well, just as she did everything else.” Lavinia raised one mocking eyebrow. “What else would you like to know?”

Lavinia had, in all her years of practice, elevated bitchiness to an art form. Or so Maggie thought in annoyance. No wonder Helena and Ernie disliked her so heartily. How was she ever going to find out anything if the woman persisted in toying with her?

Maggie decided to take the offensive. “And you never married?” Her tone was sufficiently commiserating to be insulting, and with some satisfaction she saw that she had scored. Lavinia’s head stiffened.

“You do have claws after all,” she commented, much to Maggie’s surprise. Lavinia sat up a little straighter on her chaise. “There’s more of Magnolia in you, then, than just the looks. She’d be proud of you.” For once, Lavinia’s voice had lost its almost-permanent sneer, and she laughed. “They used to call her the ‘Iron Magnolia’ at school, and nobody knew it better than I. You should have had to grow up in the shadow of a sister like her.”

Maggie felt a brief flash of sympathy for her great-aunt. She sensed that, for the moment at least, the woman was speaking from honest emotion, and Maggie respected it as such. Whatever damage had been done to the relationship between the sisters so physically alike, Maggie could only imagine, but it had left a lasting mark for the worse upon Lavinia’s personality.

“I’m not going to sit here,” Lavinia continued, “and give you a long list of all the wonderful things about your grandmother.” She smiled ironically. “You wouldn’t believe me if I did, but then neither would you believe me if I started telling you about all the things we fought over for nearly forty years. I daresay most of them would sound pretty stupid, even to me now, but at the time they all seemed serious. Your grandmother and I never got along very well, and you could say the same for the family she married into. They accepted me only because I was her sister, and because they felt sorry for me for not having anything—any money or a family of my own.”

Whew!
Maggie thought. I guess I couldn’t ask for more honesty than that. Yet, even as she thought this, she couldn’t resist acknowledging the idea that Lavinia was once again toying with her. Just why, she couldn’t say.

“What were you doing the day my grandmother died?” Maggie asked, hoping to startle Lavinia into an answer.

She succeeded to a small degree, because Lavinia’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and her face paled. But when she spoke, she had mastered her surprise—fear, Maggie speculated—at the inquiry.

Coolly Lavinia replied, “Minding my own business, of course.” She smiled at the involuntary expression of annoyance which contorted Maggie’s face. “I believe I spent most of the morning writing letters. I did spend about half an hour with Magnolia that morning. Claudine, who was always a thoughtful child, and I took turns reading to her while she was stuck in bed like that. I came downstairs for a while after that, and as well as I can remember I was sitting outside on the back terrace enjoying the sunshine when one of the housemaids came to tell me about Magnolia’s terrible accident.”

Well,
Maggie thought,
I suppose that's that.
She rose from her chair, intending to thank Lavinia for talking to her. Lavinia forestalled her.

“Before you go,” she said, “you might want to have a look at a few of my pictures.” She waved her hand toward a nearby table.

Her curiosity piqued, Maggie stepped forward to take a closer look. The largest frame, which drew her immediate attention, contained a family grouping. She picked out her grandmother from among the five people. Judging from the clothes, the picture must have been taken in the mid-1940s. Magnolia looked about twenty-five, Lavinia and the boy seated beside her about fifteen years younger. Their parents, stiff smiles assumed only for the sake of the camera, looked uncomfortable as they stared into the lens. Lavinia and Magnolia looked much like their father, the boy favoring their mother.
There was something oddly familiar about the boy,
Maggie thought. Where had she seen his face before?

Holding out the picture toward Lavinia, she pointed at the boy. “Who is this?”

Lavinia smiled. “That’s my twin brother, Lawrence. He was the black sheep of the Culpeper family—wine, women, etcetera. He had more charm than he ever knew what to do with—that was his problem. He died in a car accident about twenty years ago,” she finished.

“Oh,” was all Maggie could manage to respond. She looked again at the boy in the portrait, trying to remember where she had seen his face. Then it dawned on her. “He looks like Claudine!”

Lavinia laughed in genuine amusement. “You mean there’s one family skeleton that Helena hasn’t rattled at you yet?”

“What do you mean?” Maggie asked, startled, placing the picture back on the table with care.

Lavinia laughed. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a McLendon family secret—it belongs to the Culpepers. I’m surprised Helena hasn’t told you already, since I’m sure she told you everything she could think of about the McLendons.” She stretched back in her chaise. “Claudine is a Culpeper by blood. My brother never could keep his hands off a pretty woman, especially one captive under his father’s roof. Just one of many such outcomes, I’m afraid.” She laughed again. “And Magnolia, of course, had to play Lady Bountiful and give the woman a job, so the child could grow up in a good home.”

Trying to conceal her astonishment at Lavinia’s disclosure, Maggie looked at the picture again. “I’ve not seen a picture of Claudine’s mother, of course, but she certainly took after her father,” she commented mildly.

“No,” Lavinia replied, and the oddness of her tone made Maggie turn swiftly to look at her. “Claudine didn’t take after her father very much. She looks more like my mother when she was young.”

“Well,” Maggie said, her tone brisk, “thanks for forgoing your nap time to talk. It’s been interesting.” She moved toward the door.

“And, I trust, instructive.” Lavinia had regained her composure, waving a languid hand in dismissal.

And that, I suppose,
Maggie told herself once she was out in the hall,
is what forty or fifty years of bitterness will do to you.
Instead of the annoyance she might have felt with her great-aunt, Maggie felt only pity. But she could understand the exasperation Helena and Ernestine felt toward the woman. After all, they’d had to spend a lot more time with her.

Maggie reached the quiet of her room, grateful for a brief respite. After a few minutes in the bathroom, she went out to stand on the balcony, staring out across the vast expanse of lawn behind the house. Over to the left, she caught the glint of sun off water, and by leaning forward over the rail and craning her neck, she could see a swimming pool near the opposite corner of the house. The early afternoon sun beat down upon her, and, heavy with humidity, the air around her clung to her skin. The pool looked more and more attractive.

Maggie went back inside her room, pulling the French doors shut behind her. The cool dimness of the room refreshed her. Jackson, she decided, could easily compete with Houston in the matter of summertime temperatures.

Time to move on in her quest for information. Out in the hall, she knocked on her father’s door but received no answer. The hallway was eerily quiet as she made her way with hastening steps to the stairs. She hurried down to the first floor, her heels clicking on the marble steps. The drawing room was vacant, so Maggie next went to the entertainment room. She opened the door and walked in.

Claudine had her hand on Adrian’s arm. “But why not?” Her tone was petulant.

“I said ‘no,’ and I meant it.” Adrian, in turn, was exasperated. “Why can’t you get it through your head—”

At that point both had realized another person was in the room. Maggie stood, rooted to the floor in embarrassment. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I have the wrong room.”

“I’ll say!” Claudine said, her voice sharp with annoyance. She glared at Maggie, then brushed past her on the way out of the room.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, not knowing what to do or say. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m looking for my father.”

Adrian offered a strained smile. “Try the library, two doors down.”

Muttering her thanks, Maggie ducked out of the room and moved down the hallway to the door Adrian had indicated.
Wonder what all that was about?
she mused.
Looked like something personal. Oh, well, none of my business.

Putting aside thoughts of Adrian and Claudine’s odd behavior, Maggie stopped to stare once she had opened the door. This room was twice the size of her bedroom upstairs, and every wall was lined with bookshelves. Comfortable leather chairs with companion reading lamps were scattered around the room with a couple of desks mixed in. There were also a few low bookshelves standing away from the walls.

Seated in one of the leather chairs, Gerard looked up from his book and smiled a strained welcome to his daughter. He closed his book on one finger as he watched Maggie roam around the room, taking in the spectacle of some fifteen thousand books.