Family Vault (14 page)

“Maybe Uncle Jem told her,” Sarah suggested, “not to be malicious but because he’d think it amusing that you were turning into a stagedoor Johnny.”

“No doubt a lot of people thought it was funny, and there’s always someone ready to spread gossip. Mother could lip read after a fashion then, and people used to write her notes on a pad she always carried. Anyway, there it was. I suppose Ruby might have dropped in for a friendly chat about being bought off, and Mother lost her temper, but considering Mother’s general modus operandi, as you so wisely pointed out, and the fact that she’d got the servants out of the house, I’m inclined to believe she’d planned everything in advance.

“She knew her eyesight was going. Once she was blind as well as deaf, she’d need me to take care of her. I don’t suppose you or I could possibly begin to comprehend the anger and frustration she must have been suffering then. Finding out that I was being lured away from her by the kind of woman she’d consider hardly fit to live in any case might have been just one blow too many.”

“I can understand that,” said Sarah. “It would be hard to judge her actions by rational standards.”

“Oh, she was rational enough, though she might not have been altogether sane. She’d got hold of the key to that old family vault and informed me that was where we’d hide the body. I tried to tell her we could never do it without being seen, but she wouldn’t pay any attention, and I realized she meant exactly what she said about not arguing. I had my choice of calling the police and perhaps landing us both on Death Row, or taking the desperate chance that her scheme might work.”

“But how could it? How did you ever manage without being caught?”

“The reason I went home in the first place was that I’d been to a party here on the Hill and it was too late to go back to the dorm. It was about two o’clock Sunday morning. The weather was nasty, pitch-dark with a cold drizzle. Nobody was on the street downtown. We were both wearing black clothes. We pulled our collars up around our faces and carried Ruby wrapped in an old black tarpaulin that used to be kept in the cellar for hauling coal. When we got to the cemetery, we hung the tarpaulin over a low branch that used to grow right over the vault, making a sort of tent that we could work inside of. From even a few feet away the black canvas simply melted into the shadows.”

“That’s incredible!”

“I know, but it worked. We had one of those little pencil flashlights with us. Mother shielded the lock with her coat and I got the vault open. Then we shoved Ruby in as best we could—she’d begun to stiffen, by then—and walled up the vault. Mother had that all reasoned out. It was just after the family had been through that historical site business, and she was afraid some city official would take a notion to inspect the vault. She claimed that if a wall was there, they wouldn’t have the right to tear it down without permission, which we’d refuse to give. I don’t know if we’d have got away with it.”

“But you did, for thirty years.”

“Yes. Sarah. Sometimes I even managed not to think about it for weeks on end. Then something would bring it to mind and it would be every bit as ghastly as before.”

“Poor darling! You must have been terrified while you were in that tent.”

“I was, but Mother was perfectly cool. She stayed there most of the time by herself, laying the wall by touch while I ran back and forth through the alleyways fetching armloads of bricks under my coat. We’d brought the leftovers up from Ireson’s, thinking we’d do something or other with them here, I forget what. As to why she laid such a fancy pattern, we’d been working on the Secret Garden wall for so long that I suppose she instinctively followed the method she knew best. The opening isn’t very large, as you know, and the whole job took only an hour or so, but I think I must have aged ten years before we got that tarpaulin back in the cellar.”

“Did you ever talk about it at all?”

“Not one word. The closest we ever came was some years later when Mother said something about building another wall at the summer place, and I said I’d rather not. Naturally I had to endure a good deal of needling from the crowd about being ditched by my flashy girl friend. When Ruby disappeared so abruptly, the general assumption was that she’d run off with some more interesting man. I think the worst of all was having to show my face at Danny Rate’s the following night and act surprised that Ruby wasn’t around.”

“Oh, Alexander!” Sarah rubbed her cheek against his hand. “It’s a wonder you didn’t go clean out of your mind.”

“Perhaps I did. I don’t know, Sarah. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite real since then. I realized at the time we were married how bitterly unfair it was to saddle you with half a husband, but what else could I do?”

“What do you mean?” she cried. “Alexander, why did you marry me?”

He sighed, like an embarrassed parent faced with having to explain the facts of life. “I’ve always known you’d ask me that some day. If you want the unvarnished truth, I married you because Mother forced me to.”

“No! You couldn’t!”

“My darling, please don’t look at me like that. Let me at least tell you how it happened.”

Sarah wet her stiff lips. “Go ahead.”

“It was the money,” he began. “Father had left Mother as executor of the estate, which was a very large one. She should have more than plenty to last her lifetime, but she has nothing. Don’t ask me what she did with it. I haven’t the faintest idea. All I know is that within ten years’ time after she took over the handling of the estate, we began to be hard up. I tried to get her to explain why, but she wouldn’t. I begged her to unload this white elephant of a house and some of the land at Ireson’s Landing. She refused. I offered to sell some of the family jewels. She said they were hers for her lifetime and wouldn’t let me so much as look at them. The box was and still is in her name, and I’d have to get a court order to open it, which I’ve never been able to bring myself to do. Instead, I’ve been trying for twenty years to make her see reason, and you know how far I’ve got.”

He wiped his forehead. “Then Walter made that appalling will appointing me your trustee and, like a fool, I told her. You know the terms. I’m to give you whatever allowance I see fit out of the interest until your twenty seventh birthday, when the principal reverts to you. If you should die before assuming control of your estate, everything comes to me. It was a hideous position to be put in. I begged Walter to choose somebody else, but he said I cared more about you than any of the others, and God knows that’s true enough. At least having to look after you gave me an incentive to stay alive a while longer. I’d been about ready to call it quits.”

“You mustn’t say that!”

“Sarah, please grant me the luxury of being totally honest for once in my life.”

“I’m sorry, Alexander. Go on.”

“Well, as soon as she heard what Walter had done, Mother decided you and I should marry so that we could all three live off your income. I wouldn’t hear of it, not because I didn’t want you, but because I felt you deserved a better fate than a man twice your age, saddled with a hideous burden of guilt and responsibility, who couldn’t even support you. Furthermore, Walter was still hale and hearty and not all that much older than I. I told Mother her plan was out of the question, there wasn’t going to be any income in the first place because Walter would no doubt outlive me. With that, she said I’d better marry you anyway and make your father give us an allowance, or something would happen to Walter.”

He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “Mother was completely blind by that time, quite helpless to plan any more murders, or so I thought. One month to the day after that conversation, you asked me to be one of your father’s pallbearers.”

“But his death was an accident! He ate a bad mushroom that he’d gathered himself by mistake.”

“Sarah, darling, Walter Kelling was a past president of the Mycological Society. He’d been gathering and eating wild mushrooms since he was a boy. His eyesight and his judgment were as sound as they’d ever been. I don’t know where the amanita came from, but I’ll never believe he picked it himself.”

“That was the weekend you drove Beth and me up to Maine,” Sarah said slowly. “Aunt Marguerite was supposed to come and stay with Aunt Caroline, but she came down with hives and Father said he’d go in her place.”

“That’s the story Mother told, at any rate. I shouldn’t be surprised if Aunt Marguerite was never invited. She also told the doctor Walter had picked the mushrooms and cooked them himself. Of course she was believed because everyone knew Walter did that sort of thing, and it was so obvious that a woman in Mother’s condition couldn’t have had anything to do with them. Don’t ask me how she managed to get a bad one and slip it past him. I began to wonder if she might be possessed of some uncanny power. I knew she ought to be locked up, but there wasn’t a shred of evidence against her. I couldn’t tell the police she’d already done two other murders because they’d arrest me as an accessory, and you’d be left with nobody to look after you.”

“It never occurred to you that I might be able to look after myself?”

“No, never. I had to believe that you needed me. Oh, my darling, I had to have something!”

A
LEXANDER WIPED HIS EYES
and blew his nose. “Sorry I made a fool of myself, breaking down like that.”

“It’s a pity you didn’t do it sooner,” Sarah mumbled into his hair. She had his head in her arms, cradled against her breast. “So you only married me to keep me from getting killed.”

“I married you because I adore you, Sadiebelle, and always did and always will. It’s only that I wouldn’t have forced myself on you—”

“Forced yourself on me? You idiotic man! I suppose you tied me hand and foot, and dragged me screaming to the altar?”

That got a smile out of him. “No, I will say you came willingly enough, but you were so young and you’d lost your father so recently. I thought it was because you felt you were—”

“Getting another one? I did welcome the prospect of having somebody to rely on, but I’d never have married you for that. Has it never occurred to you that I might be even goofier about you than you are about me?”

“How could you be? My darling girl, you are my whole life.”

“Then it’s high time you started living with me instead of your nightmares,” she told him. “From now on, you’re to stop treating me as if I were nine years old and young for my age. I’m your wife. Whatever happens, we’ll share it equally. I don’t believe your mother has any secret powers. I don’t think she’s that much smarter than we are, and I think it’s high time we stopped letting her rule the roost. What we ought to do is go to court and have you appointed her legal guardian or whatever it was that Dolph did when Great-uncle Frederick got so batty. Between her double handicap and the fact that she’s thrown away a fortune without being able to say where it went, you wouldn’t have a speck of trouble convincing a judge that she’s not fit to handle large responsibilities.”

“Sarah, can you imagine how she’d react?”

“Who says we have to tell her, and how’s she going to find out if we don’t? If she ever did find out, what could she do about it?”

“She’d think of something. It’s a terrible risk, Sarah.”

“From what you’ve been telling me, it’s a risk being anywhere near her. She hasn’t tried anything on either one of us yet, and she’s had every opportunity.”

“That’s only because we’ve let her have her own way in everything. Why do you think I let her lead me around by the nose as I do? It’s so that she’ll leave you alone.”

“She’ll leave me alone,” said Sarah grimly. “Alexander, I am simply not afraid of Aunt Caroline.”

“I’d feel safer if you were.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’d sink right back into the same old rut. I’m not going to stand for that, my love. We have plenty of good years ahead of us, and it’s high time we quit dragging on from one day to the next as we’ve been doing. Promise me you’ll at least give some thought to that guardianship.”

“Yes, darling. I’ll talk to the lawyers about it next week.”

“Good. Now, my next bright idea is, how would you feel about getting out of this house for a few days and having a chance to pull yourself together?”

“Where should we go?”

“I suppose the sensible place would be Ireson’s Landing. We could walk the land and make up our minds about what part we want to sell off so that you’d have some capital of your own and wouldn’t have a fit of the guilties every time you spent a nickel of mine.”

“You’re not wasting any time, are you, Sadiebelle?”

“Not if I can help it. Please understand me, Alexander, I’m not criticizing anything you’ve done. I’m sure I shouldn’t have handled things as well as you did, and I’d certainly never have had the fortitude to stick it out all these years. I don’t care why you married me, I think you’re the most wonderful husband a woman could have. Now come up to bed and start acting like one for a change.”

I
T FELT STRANGE TO WAKE
up and feel her husband’s body beside hers. Sarah opened her eyes and met his. She and Alexander exchanged delighted smiles.

“How do you feel this morning, dearest?”

“Much better, thank you, Sadiebelle. I was just thinking I ought to get up and phone Lomax about turning on the water and starting a couple of fires. It’s going to be cold out there, you know.”

She snuggled closer. “We’ll manage to keep each other warm somehow.”

He laughed, a merry chuckle she hadn’t heard in years. “I shouldn’t be surprised, Sadiebelle.”

“Stop calling me baby names, I’m a big girl now.”

“You’re a wanton hussy, and we’ll never get anywhere if you keep trying to seduce me.”

“Trying? I thought I was succeeding.”

“Baggage!”

Alexander was behaving in a thoroughly husbandly manner when Caroline Kelling came stamping up the stairs.

“Alexander, where are you? Didn’t you hear me calling?”

“The voice of the turtle is head in the land,” Sarah murmured. “Let’s hide under the covers.”

Sighing, her husband sat up and swung his long legs out of the bed. “No, I’d better go. Nothing’s been changed simply by our talking about it. You will remember that, my dearest?”