The Blackstone Chronicles (18 page)

Coming to the steps, he hesitated for a moment, then climbed up to the broad porch. He gazed for a moment at the huge wooden panels before reaching out to the great bronze lever that would release the latch.

As Oliver’s fingers touched the ice cold metal, another wave of nausea seized him, and his hand jerked reflexively away as if the hardware had been red hot. His gorge rising, Oliver turned away once more and lurched back down the steps.

Falling to his knees, he retched into the snow, then, gasping for breath, got back to his feet and stumbled down the hill to his house. Unwilling to stay outside even long enough to unlock his front door, he went through the garage and into the laundry room, slamming the door behind him.

His heart pounding, Oliver leaned against the washing machine and tried to catch his breath. Slowly, the nausea in his belly eased and his breathing returned to normal, and even the stabbing pain in his head began to recede. When the telephone rang, he was able to make his way
into the kitchen and pick up the extension with trembling fingers.

“Oliver?” Lois Martin said. “Is that you?”

“I-it’s me,” Oliver managed.

“Thank God,” Lois breathed. “This is the third time I’ve called. If you hadn’t answered, I was going to come up there. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Oliver said, though even as he uttered the words, he knew they were a lie.

M
adeline Hartwick turned off the interstate and slowed her Cadillac to precisely seven miles an hour above the posted speed limit. Another twenty minutes and they would be safely back in Blackstone, despite Celeste’s insistence this morning that driving down to Boston today was insane. Madeline had been determined; they were both far too upset to sit at home all day, worrying over Jules’s unprovoked outburst, and waiting tensely for him to return home from the bank.

“We’ll go down to Boston, do some shopping, and have a nice lunch,” she’d informed Celeste no more than ten minutes after Jules had left the house. Celeste had objected, but Madeline prevailed, and by the time they began browsing the shops on Newbury Street, Madeline had already convinced herself that Jules’s crazy accusations had undoubtedly been brought on by the pressure he was under from the audit at the bank; when he got home, it would all have been forgotten. Nor had she killed anyone with the Cadillac as Celeste had so uncharitably insisted she was bound to do, given last night’s snowstorm.

Shifting in the seat to ease the tension that always built up in her when she drove on the interstate, Madeline breathed a sigh of contentment. “I don’t know about you,” she said, glancing at her daughter, “but I feel a lot better.”

Celeste—not nearly as sanguine about her father as her mother obviously was—rolled her eyes. “I’m not sure
why bankrupting Daddy makes you feel better,” she said. “And I certainly don’t see how it makes up for the awful things he said this morning.”

“It’s really very simple, dear,” her mother explained. “I vented my anger with my credit cards. Your father has atoned for what he said by buying me a perfectly lovely Valentino coat.”

“But he doesn’t know he bought it!” Celeste protested.

“He will when he gets the bill,” Madeline reminded her. “And by then he’ll feel so guilty about what he said that he won’t even blink at how much it cost.”

“But to have implied that you were having an affair—”

“Oh, pooh!” Madeline removed a hand from the steering wheel just long enough to brush her daughter’s words dismissively away. “When you think about it, it’s rather a compliment that he still thinks I’m attractive enough that someone would want to have an affair with me. Especially someone as young and handsome as Andrew!”

“Mother!”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Celeste—don’t be such a prude. By the time you and Andrew have been married as long as your father and I, you’ll understand that things are not always easy. If you don’t, you’ll already be divorced several times by the time you’re my age. There are lots of rough patches in any marriage, dear. You have to learn to deal with them without cutting and running.”

“But what Daddy said was unforgivable—” Celeste began.

But Madeline, having heard it all three times already today, didn’t let her finish. “Everything is forgivable, if you wish to forgive,” she cut in. “And I don’t wish to discuss it any further. Let’s just go home and see how your father is when he comes home from the bank today. All right?”

The sigh Celeste uttered was far more out of resignation than from contentment, but she decided to let the
argument go, at least for now. If her mother was determined not to see that something had gone seriously wrong with her father, there would be no talking her out of it. At least not right now. Lapsing into silence, she contented herself with gazing at the wintery scene outside the car. Maybe this weekend she and Andrew would drive over to Stowe and do some skiing. Assuming, of course, that she and Andrew were still together by the end of the week. If her father started spreading his horrible story around the bank, there was no telling what Andrew might do. But maybe her mother was right, and by now the whole terrible incident was over with.

A few minutes later, though, as they pulled into the driveway, Celeste saw the smoke curling up from the den’s chimney and glanced at the clock on the Cadillac’s dashboard. Just a little after four. What was her father doing at home? He never came home before six.

As the Cadillac pulled up under the porte cochere, Celeste saw the tracks in the snow that still marked the path Ed Becker had taken that morning. “Something’s wrong, Mother,” she said. She got out of the car, but instead of going to the trunk to help Madeline carry the packages in, she walked farther up the driveway until she could clearly see the path someone had beaten into the snow. “Mother, it looks like someone was trying to get into the house,” she called out.

“Well, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for it,” Madeline said a moment later as she stood next to her daughter, her arms laden with packages. “Perhaps your father—”

“Why would Daddy be trying to break into his own house?” Celeste asked. “Maybe we shouldn’t even go in! Maybe we should call the police—”

“Nonsense!” Madeline declared. “For heaven’s sake, child, we’d look like perfect fools. Besides, you yourself just pointed out the smoke coming from the fireplace in your father’s den. Unless the world has changed a great
deal more than I think it has, burglars do not build fires to keep them warm while they rifle your house! Bring the rest of the packages in from the car while I go see what’s been going on here.”

Ignoring Celeste’s protests, Madeline mounted the steps to the porch, then fumbled with her keys until she found the right one. “Jules?” she called out as she set her packages down on the table in the entry hall. “Jules, are you here?” When there was no answer, she crossed the foyer to the library and rapped sharply on the closed door to her husband’s den. “Jules? May I come in?” There was no answer. “Jules!”

A muffled voice came from the other side of the door. “Go away.”

Madeline’s hand closed on the doorknob and she tried to turn it.

Locked.

“Jules, I want to talk to you!”

When there was no response from inside the den, Madeline mounted the stairs, heading for her dressing room. She kept a spare set of keys to every door in the huge old house in the top drawer of her vanity. But when she came to her dressing room she stopped abruptly. The door was ajar. Beyond it, every drawer and every closet door stood open, and her lingerie had been scattered across the carpeted floor. The anger she’d so deliberately dissipated in the shops along Newbury Street came flooding back. Jules never came into her dressing room, just as she never went into his den. Today, though, he’d not only entered her sanctuary, but searched through her things! Surely he hadn’t actually expected to find proof of the affair he imagined she was having! It was ludicrous! Intolerable!

Ignoring the tangle of clothes on the floor, Madeline went to her vanity. Though it was clear that every drawer had been gone through, everything still seemed to be there, and she quickly found the ring of keys.

Celeste was just coming into the foyer when she got back to the foot of the stairs. Together the two women returned to the locked door to the den. Madeline once again knocked loudly on the mahogany panels, and when there was no reply, she began trying the keys on the ring until one fit. She heard the bolt click back and turned the knob once more. The door swung open.

Jules glowered at her from behind his desk. A nearly empty bottle of scotch sat at his elbow.

She crossed to the desk. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Jules,” she said softly. “But I do know that finishing that bottle won’t help.”

“You know what’s wrong, you tramp!”

As if acting under its own volition, Madeline’s hand flashed out and slapped her husband across the face, but even before the sting on her palm had died away, she regretted her action. “Oh, God, Jules, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“You’ve been wanting to do that for years, haven’t you?” Jules growled, his words slurring. “Do you think I haven’t known? Well, I know, Madeline. I know everything.”

Madeline bit her lower lip to keep her temper in check, then took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I can see there’s no point in talking to you right now. Dinner will be ready at seven. Come to the table or not, as you see fit.” Picking up the bottle of scotch and taking it with her, Madeline left the study, pulling the door closed behind her.

“What is it?” Celeste asked. “Mother, what’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t know,” Madeline replied. “But I think it’s time to call Dr. Margolis.”

The two women went back through the library to the foyer, where a telephone sat on a table near the base of the wide staircase. Picking up the receiver, Madeline
dialed Philip Margolis’s office. His nurse answered on the second ring.

“Nancy?” Madeline said. “It’s Madeline Hartwick. I would like to speak to Philip, please.”

“I’m afraid he’s in Concord, Mrs. Hartwick,” Nancy Conway told her. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Madeline hesitated. Though she’d known Nancy Conway for twenty years, and liked her, she was well aware that Nancy had never kept a secret in her life, and never passed on a story without embellishing it. If she even hinted at the things Jules was doing and saying, by tomorrow morning everyone in Blackstone would have heard that he’d lost his mind. Better to deal with Jules herself tonight, she decided, and talk directly to Philip Margolis in the morning. “I don’t think so, Nancy,” she said. “It’s nothing that can’t wait.”

A
s the symphony of chimes signifying the dinner hour echoed through the Hartwicks’ vast house, Madeline carried the last plate into the breakfast room, where she, Jules, and Celeste invariably ate when they were alone. Tonight, in a special effort to please her troubled husband, Madeline had covered the table with one of her best lace cloths, set out the sterling candelabra that had belonged to Jules’s mother—the same candelabra that could be seen in the portrait of her that they’d found in the attic, and which now hung in the library—and gotten out the Limoges china with the hunting pattern that had always been his favorite. Celeste had even found a dozen roses at the florist that perfectly matched the red of the burgundy Madeline had opened half an hour ago.

Madeline turned the outside lights on, transforming the dark landscape beyond the windows into a brilliantly sparkling winterscape. As she waited for her husband and daughter to join her, she decided that no matter how bad Jules’s mood had been today, the dinner she’d prepared, and the setting she created in which to serve it, couldn’t possibly fail to cheer him up. But when Celeste came into the room as the last of the clocks’ chimes died away, her father was not with her.

“Do you think he’ll come at all?” Celeste asked as she took her seat while her mother poured the wine.

“I don’t know,” Madeline replied, sounding far more calm than she felt.

“But—”

“But nothing,” Madeline cut in, perfectly matching the level of wine in the third Waterford goblet to that in the other two. “If he won’t tell us what’s wrong …” Her voice died away as she heard Jules’s footsteps coming through the dining room.