Sarah's Baby (9 page)

“Proceed.” She might have been a High Court judge.

Sarah sat back, smiling. Whoever said “proceed” anymore? She enjoyed Harriet's little formalities, the way she said “phwish” when she disagreed with something, even the way she corrected her ex-pupils' grammar, even when those pupils were all grown up. Today at the wake, Sarah had overheard her say, “Not if I
was,
Michael. If I
were.
Remember your subjunctives.” This in a quiet aside. Michael Hammond was the deputy mayor.

“Your arthritis a little worse?” Sarah asked as Harriet resumed her seat. “What has Joe prescribed?”

Harriet told her. Sarah nodded. “Try Grandma's old remedy, as well. Cod-liver oil. It'll relieve the inflammation.”

Harriet held up her hands, all her fingers knotted, with the exception of the ring finger of her right hand, which was perfectly normal. “I'm ready to try anything. Even snake oil.”

“In fact, snake oil could help. There's evidence that snake venom has something to offer. I've never seen an Aborigine with arthritis.”

“Neither have I, now that you mention it,” Harriet said in some wonderment, trying to curl up her fingers. “Someone has to learn their secrets before it's too late. As I recall, you were quite a one for doing your own investigations when you were a child.”

“I must've wanted to study medicine even then. That or science.”

“You could have done anything you wanted to,” Harriet said.

“Spoken by my great supporter.” Sarah's eyes fell to Harriet's hands again. “Curious that ring finger is perfectly straight. Could it possibly be because you've always worn your mother's rings on that finger? Gold and diamonds? The ancients believed gold and precious stones had great curative powers.”

“Good gracious!” Harriet hooted. “I've never thought of that. I have my dear father's broad gold wedding band. I'll pop that on a finger to see if it gets results. Another medical breakthrough. I want to keep playing my viola for as long as I can. I love it. Love it. You should come to our concerts. That man, Evan Thompson! Goodness, he's interesting. I play much better when he's around.”

Sarah laughed. “I don't think I've met him. Is he a big man, dark, with a handsome, sculpted head?”

“Beethoven in a frenzy!” Harriet rolled her eyes.

“Kyall waved to a man who looked like that when we were driving out of town this afternoon.”

“That would be Evan.” There was a sparkle in Harriet's gray eyes. “All the eligible young women in town are feeling the need to offer him comfort. Some of them are acting downright silly about it, too. The little Renshaw girl presses her nose to the glass when the poor man goes in to have his hair cut.”

“He's not married?”

Harriet paused. “He
was
married, I'm sure, but he says nothing about himself. When he came here, he told us he felt drained and in need of peace. That was the extent of any personal revelation. He has a great desire for privacy. I'm amazed Alex was able to persuade him to join our group.”

“How did he know this Evan played the cello?”

“I'm going to take the credit for that,” Harriet said. “Actually, he met up with me late one afternoon. He carried my viola home. Isn't that lovely? The truth is, I still get a kick out of an attractive man. Anyway, we got to talking about music. He's so knowledgeable that I asked him straight out if he played an instrument, and he said as a matter of fact he'd studied the cello for many years, though he'd never intended it as a profession. I could've asked him what work he did, but I sensed he didn't want to confide further. Some deep despair there.” Again Harriet rolled her eyes, slightly magnified by her stylish spectacles. “Despair cloaked by a standoffish, brooding manner. A damaged man, if you want my opinion.”

“You'd be the woman to recognize that,” Sarah said soberly.

“So, what are you going to tell me, Sarah?” Harriet looked across the table at her favorite ex-pupil. Sadness lent an ethereal quality to Sarah's beauty, which normally wasn't there. She was too thin, but her body was so graceful, her skin so good, it masked the fact to a degree. “Of course it's about Kyall,” she prompted as Sarah seemed to have difficulty starting.

Sarah's voice was low and quiet. “This is about Joe.”

“He's dying, isn't he?” Harriet sighed deeply. “Hell to get old. Nothing to recommend it.”

Sarah stared at her. “He told you?”

Harriet snorted. “He didn't have to. I've got eyes. I've got ears. I hear how he's been talking—as though he'll be going away on a journey.”

“Poor Joe,” Sarah said mournfully. “When he told me, it was like another little twist of the knife.”

There was a steeliness in Harriet's gaze. “How in the world he succumbed to Ruth McQueen, I'll never know. That woman is evil. Lord, she's even scared the hell out of
me, but that was in the early days when I thought she could order me out of town. Joe's so good.” She shook her head. “It was sex of course.”

“It must have been brilliant.”

“Brilliant sex will do it every time.”

Sarah couldn't help agreeing. “Joe asked me if I'd take over from him at the hospital,” she said. “Begged me, really. He apparently believes I'd be able to step into his shoes.

Harriet seemed totally unsurprised. “Well, then… How do you feel yourself?”

Sarah glanced at a wooden statue of Tangaroa, supreme god of Polynesia who was missing a leg, then back at Harriet. “I realize part of me wants, even needs, to do it. I was uprooted from this town where I'd spent all my life.”

“You were under pressure, Sarah.” Harriet hesitated to say more. Sarah was looking quite fragile in the wake of her mother's death.

“I knew I'd never be able to face Kyall again without falling back under his spell. I thought I'd learned my lesson.”

“What lesson? Gracious me, Sarah! I feel such an empathy for you both. You're not adolescents any longer. Both of you are free to make big decisions. You love him, don't you?”

“Do you have to ask?” Sarah said wryly.

“Then Kyall is the only person you have to care about,” Harriet said strongly. “If it comes to choosing between you and the women of his family, Kyall will choose you. Isn't that sufficient?”

“It should be, but I'm very worried what might happen if I settle here. You know, and I know, that Ruth McQueen is capable of just about anything. She has many people in her employ. People prepared to do all sorts of jobs for her.”

Harriet barked a laugh. “One wonders what sort of job Molly Fairweather did for her. There was definitely some connection. Ruth owned the house Miss Fairweather supposedly bought, though how the deal was negotiated no one knows. After Miss Fairweather died, the house went back to Ruth. Curious, isn't it?” Harriet asked with some irony.

Despite everything that weighed on her, Sarah had to laugh. “According to Joe, Ruth had her killed. I know she's bad, but not that bad.”

“She's pretty damn bad, in my opinion. I shouldn't say this, but I will. What if Mad Molly blackmailed Ruth?”

Sarah lost what little color she had. “About what?”

Harriet saw her expression and tried to inject humor. “I've been reading too many murder mysteries. Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. It was a very odd business, all the same.” Harriet was aware that Sarah was listening closely. “Joe told you she died of snakebite. Joe arrived too late to administer the antivenin.”

“I know. And I know the house. Old colonial set on high stumps. Desert taipans don't normally climb steps, though I'm sure they could make their way up if they were after prey.”

“The prey, as it turned out, was poor Molly.” Harriet's eyebrows executed a little dance. “Mad Molly. She was reclusive, but according to a whole gang of children, she used to hold long conversations with herself in the garden. Apparently it would go on for hours until she petered out or she heard them and ran at them wild-eyed and pelting gravel. Needless to say, the children thought she was insane.”

“Maybe they were right. She certainly was deeply disturbed.”

“Who isn't these days?” Harriet demanded. “It's my
view, and I'm sure it's yours, too, that something was weighing on her mind.”

“Did you ever talk with her?”

Harriet nodded. “Once. As I recall, it was all about biology. She didn't sound mad when she was speaking to me. It was an intelligent conversation. Her voice remained composed.”

“Was she an attractive woman?”

Harriet considered, then offered drolly. “Her size was a problem. Big woman. A serial overeater. Let herself go, although she was supposed to have a bad back. Personally I don't think she did.” Harriet paused, eyes narrowed. “And I suppose we'll have to forget the face. Yes, let's forget the face. For the strangest reason, and I don't mean to be unkind here—after all, poor Molly is dead—she put me in mind of a vulture.”

“God, Harriet!” Sarah shivered.

“Something about the stoop of the head and the forward thrust of the shoulders.”

Nothing for a moment. Then Sarah recalled, a long time back, waking dazedly to see a big spooky bird hovering over her. A bird that ever so slowly turned into a woman. The white cap on her head was illuminated by the low light. She bit her lip hard, tasting copper in her mouth. Thank God Harriet was staring at the ceiling, still absorbed in her reflections.

“Curious thing, imagination,” Harriet murmured, returning her gaze to Sarah. “You're very pale, my dear,” she said in concern. “And why wouldn't you be, with everything's that's happened,” she chided herself. “Would you like coffee? Blast!” Harriet shot up. Her cat, Clara—black-and-white and named after Clara Schumann, brilliant pianist and wife of the famous German composer—was sinking her claws into Harriet's flowing kaftan and hence into
her leg. “Get down, Clara!” she ordered sternly. “You've been fed.” Harriet looked at Sarah. “If we're talking mad I'll have to put Clara in a cat asylum. It's almost come to that. She's taken to hiding behind the curtains and jumping out at me the minute I walk in. I have to wrench her off. And the leaps! Nijinski would have killed for them. Now, coffee. I've whipped up an interesting passion-fruit tart with toffeed mango. An injection of sugar won't hurt you any.”

At the wall of cupboards Harriet turned back, her expression so kind and understanding it lifted Sarah's troubled spirits. “You can't very well make this decision in a hurry, Sarah. I know that. But I think it might help you—and, in fact, the whole town—if you did come back. You're a young woman with a difficult past. One that doesn't seem to be resolved. In a sense, neither you nor Kyall has moved on. Both of you deserve the chance to set things right. Who cares if it's a decision that drives Ruth McQueen into a frenzy?”

Who indeed?

 

A
DAY LATER
, after a sleepless night spent trying to confront her problems, Sarah took a drive to the town's outskirts to look at the old colonial once occupied by Molly Fairweather. The house had always intrigued her—the locals claimed it was haunted—but Harriet's talk of Mad Molly and her gruesome end had profoundly unsettled her. For reasons she didn't quite understand, she wanted to visit the place. It had been built in the late 1870s by a colonial architect, Robert Sinclair, part owner of Mygunyah Station, a sheep property on Wunnamurra's northwest border. The Sinclair family had lived there for some years until their eldest daughter, Estelle, a pretty blond girl of twelve, disappeared without trace after disobeying her parents' edict
that she not ride unaccompanied in the bush. Like the McQueens' Fiona, young Estelle Sinclair had returned as a ghost. She was said to appear in the small white gazebo erected in the front garden, visible to certain psychically deft passers-by. Just another bit of folklore, Sarah supposed, although the substantial house, its most striking feature a tower section above the entrance hall, had an undeniably melancholy air. Collective wisdom held that the girl had been the victim of someone who knew her, who'd followed her into the bush and then assaulted and murdered her. Whatever the tragic circumstances, the family had packed up and returned to Adelaide, brokenhearted and furious that a local man of low intelligence—very likely innocent—hadn't been lynched.

To Sarah's surprise, the house was open—at least the front door was, as were two of the dark green shuttered French doors giving out onto the wide veranda with its very ornate timber and wrought-iron detailing. Sarah opened the gate and shut it carefully behind her, eyes drawn irresistibly to the old gazebo. The latticework was woven with a hectically blossoming yellow allamanda, which threatened to pull it down.

No sign of the ghostly Estelle. All was quiet. Too quiet. No birdsong, just this eerie air of abandonment even though the grounds were well maintained. Then, as she walked through the garden toward the house, Sarah felt a decided tug on her body and a moment after, a strange surge of vertigo. God! What was that? She shook her head in an effort to clear it. It had to be all the grief she was experiencing, along with the powerful emotions generated by Kyall.

The house almost seemed to be waiting for her. She put one foot in front of the other slowly, as if she was walking into a danger zone. Life was full of unusual experiences
one couldn't explain. But in this case, she could. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her except grief. Grief could make one more sensitive to everything. The brain did funny things, sometimes assembling all sorts of variables into…well, ghosts.

Sarah mounted the flight of stone steps, looking toward the open door with its colored fanlight. She stared at the timber boards, wondering how the taipan got access to the house. Taipans, Australia's largest and most-feared venomous snakes, among the deadliest in the world, could be found in a variety of places from the tropical rain forests of North Queensland and Arnhem Land and the Northern Territory to the arid deserts of the interior. Like most people of the town, Sarah had come close to a few in her time. But on every occasion she'd been out in desert country, the snakes all but invisible against the colorations of the desert, coiled up in clumps of golden spinifex or amid rough-textured rocks. As far as she knew, there had never been a fatality in the town from a taipan bite.