We Five (37 page)

“You got it.”

Lyle hung up and went straight for his pickup. He drove over to the condominium complex. From the cab of his truck he could see the unit that interested him, but there were children playing in front.

Lyle waited. He finished his Big Mac. After a few minutes the kids were called home.

There was a young woman in a deck chair sunning herself next to the pool. Lyle waited until she went inside, until the pool and the area around it was empty.

Until there were no witnesses.

Then he got out of the cab. He went up to the door to which he'd been directed. He gave it a strong kick. It was a cheap door. It was a cheap, poorly built condo thrown up in a few weeks to house transient casino workers, and the door was no problem.

Lyle found Tom Katz sitting on the toilet taking a shit in one of the bathrooms.

Tom barely had a chance to look up from his
Sports Illustrated
when Lyle pulled the trigger, aiming for his head. Lyle's sister's rapist fell sideways against the wall, the broken streak of blood left on the drywall forming something like a red exclamation point above his head.

Lyle flushed the toilet with his gloved hand and walked out.

Maggie Barton had stopped talking. She lay in the bed which Miss Mobry had prepared for her. She lay quiet and still as Miss Mobry and her mother took turns placing wet compresses upon her head and speaking to her in soft, dulcet tones. “There's a good girl,” said Lucile Mobry. “You sleep, my dear.” Then, turning to Maggie's mother, who stood next to her, rubbing her hands one against the other with maternal unease, Miss Mobry said with whispered concern: “Not a wink? All through the night?”

Mrs. Barton nodded. Then she confided, “Each time I entered her room, I found her lying on her back and staring at the ceiling with open-eyed insensibility. A most frightening picture. And each time I spoke, I could extract not a single word from her in response.”

“Her eyes are closed now. Mayhap the cordial I administered will put her into a restful sleep from which she'll awaken feeling more herself. Will you stop here, Clara, or go off to reunite with your Mr. Osborne?”

“I wish I could bring him
hither
. He would know just what to do to help Maggie.”

“Clara, I doubt very much that Mr. Osborne's offices would be of benefit to our present purposes. I should think you'd prefer he stay away and not risk exposure to the police.”

Clara cast a fearful glance out the window. “They will catch him—most assuredly they will. I begged him to go to London, to Glasgow—anywhere he might lose himself in the throng and create a new name and a new life for himself. But he said he couldn't bear it were he never to see me again.”

“And is there anyone else he should miss?”

Clara resumed with a hint of irritation, “Well, of course it should be naturally assumed that he wouldn't wish to part with his daughter—to lose the chance to make amends for what he's done. Next to ruing the violent act itself, that should be his
greatest
regret.”

“My dear Clara, the time has come for me to withdraw endorsement of your blind allegiance to Mr. Osborne. A crime has been committed, and if the man is guilty of that crime—as we know he is—then he should be made to pay the price for it. You have clearly failed to learn the lesson
I
learnt long, long ago.”

Clara placed herself wearily into the chair next to the bed. “You are bent upon telling me your lesson. Be quick about it. I'm so very tired.”

“That there are few men upon this earth who do not bear the mark of Cain. And here I do not mean that unfortunate Mr. Pardlow who inexplicably killed himself, but Cain of the Bible who slew his brother. And here I do not mean all men are murderers—not in a literal sense—although most men
do
own a tendency to murder in the abstract that which is good, that which is beautiful, that which is noble, that which is innocent and should be held dear. It is man's nature—this dereliction. You have now loved two men, each of whom has borne the mark. I dare say if another comes your way, he will be similarly stained.”

“Upon my very soul, Lucile! All men are evil save your blessed brother who has been inoculated by God himself?” Clara shook her head with undisguised rancour. “And I thought the scriptures taught you always to seek
good
in others.”

“The
scriptures
, dear Clara, have taught me to beware the iniquity of men…a lesson those five girls did not learn from us as they were growing up. And as a result, take note of all the misfortune that has befallen them.” Lucile cast a tender glance at Maggie. “Poor, poor Maggie, falling in love with her very own brother. And Molly, giving her heart to a young man with only one purpose to his pursuit. And what has happened to Jane is all but unspeakable!”

Clara laughed ruefully. “Yet Ruth, who follows in the footsteps of her aunt, who will have truck with no man, succeeds owing to admirable forbearance. Pooh and pho, Lucile! How tidy is your view of that cursed gender and how wise it be to avoid all intercourse with its constituents!”

“Clara, I sought long ago a man who would love me and uplift me. Finding no such creature over the long course of time, I abandoned the search. Ruth has done better for herself by never having
looked.
”

In the next moment that very referent came into the little room where Maggie slept and where Maggie's mother and Ruth's aunt believed they had been speaking without audit. Yet Ruth had been standing just outside the chamber door and had heard all.

Her appearance drew startled gasps from the two older women. One side of Ruth's face was chafed to a state of rubicund rawness, beads of bright blood bubbling up in spots where the upper layer of skin had been fully abraded away. “Oh my dear!” cried Lucile, going to her adopted niece. “Pray tell us what has happened!”

Ruth spoke without emotion: “You say I have never sought a man to whom to affix my heart for reason of mistrusting and denigrating the whole species. That has never been true, my aunt. I did once meet a man who could be upheld as exemplar of his sex, but he is now dead and gone, perished by his own hand. And there
are
other men, I am certain, of whom much good can be said. It is merely the absence of propitious circumstance that has kept them from society with my sisters.”

“Speak to me, dear girl,” said Miss Mobry. “Was it one of
those
three who did this?”

“I must correct you, Auntie. ‘Those three' are now become ‘those two,' for I have just learnt from Holborne that Tom Catts is dead.”

“
Dead
?” Clara Barton had sprung up from her chair upon hearing the word.

“Someone has put a fatal bullet into him. I must go and find Jane to tell her. She should know that the man who has hurt her will never do so again. Would that it did not grieve her so to learn the identity of the one suspected of having done the deed.”

Now came a voice that had previously been silent. It derived from the bed. It recited a rhyme, paraphrased for a purpose:

“
Five little kittens, standing in a row.

See them bow to the little girls so.

They run to the left. They run to the right.

They stand and stretch in the bright sunlight.

Along comes a dog, looking for some fun.

Tom Cat is dead and can no longer run.”

Maggie opened her eyes. “I don't fancy the dog was looking for fun, though. I think he was seeking revenge.” Maggie rose up. The damp cloth fell away from her brow. Her eyes were sharp and there was the gleam of strong purpose in her gaze. “I wish to come with you, Ruth. I have an idea I wish to put to all of you: I'd like us to take Higgins to my uncle's cottage on the Isle of Anglesey in Wales and hide him there.”

Ruth went to the bed and took both of Maggie's hands into her own. “It has yet to be decided just
what
we shall do with Lyle, but I would like to say this withal: that your
willingness
to help her brother will be a great boon and comfort to our sister Jane.”

Miss Mobry shook her head. “Maggie Barton, I can scarcely believe it. That you should be willing to put your future liberty, perhaps even your very life, in jeopardy to assist a man who has had no match in all of Lancashire for ignominy of reputation!
Lyle Higgins
, who now enters himself into the chronicles of male moral malignancy through this culminant act of degeneracy: the premeditated, gelid-blooded slaughter of another human being—this is the man you wish to help? I must sit down. My legs are weak.”

Lucile Mobry dropped herself to the bed, where she sate in awkward repose, her head moving slowly back and forth like something mechanical that was retarding itself to a state of total motionlessness.

Clara Barton was shaking her head as well. “Maggie, you have made especial effort not to forgive Michael Osborne for defects of character, which you were always eager to catalogue with the most complacent glee. You refused to absolve him of his own act of violence, to pardon him for any of those failings which led him to it, refused to help
me
balm the pain that put him in such a bad way. And now you wake from your trance and are ready and willing to aid and abet and secrete
this other man
who has killed for no reason but the pure lust to kill!”

Maggie rose up in anger. “That is a foul and filthy falsehood! What Higgins did he did from love for his sister!”

Maggie's sudden outburst drew an equally sharp rejoinder from Clara, who could not hide the pain which brittled her words: “
And Michael Osborne did what
he
did from love for his
daughter
!
”

The room rang with the echo of Clara Barton's eruption. Maggie, her hands now free of Ruth's clasp, sought her mother's fingers to intertwine.

“Don't you see?” wept Clara. “How can you not see?”

And Maggie responded, her eyes brimming with fresh tears, “Yet I do, Mamma. Now I do.”

She bowed her head. When a moment later it uprose, Maggie fastened her filmy gaze upon the broken lineaments of her mother's anguish-darkened countenance. “Mamma, take Michael Osborne to Anglesey—to Uncle Whitman's cottage by the sea. Jane and I will do likewise with Lyle. We cannot go together, for it isn't safe that way, but we will all be there in three days' time. I know not what the future holds for any of us, but at least we shall face it with a commonality of strength and resolve.”

“And what of Molly?” asked Clara.

“It remains to be seen,” said Ruth, “if Molly Osborne can find it within her heart to forgive her father.”

Now Maggie looked at Lucile Mobry, who seemed a fading shadow in the room of staunch women. She said to her, “Every man is drowning, Miss Mobry—slowly, quickly, in one way or another; you are right. But it is our charge as women to throw out the lifeline. Some men will refuse our help. Others will try to pull us down with them. Still others will blame
us
for their foundering. But still we must take up the burden of their recovery and ultimate redemption. It is one of the reasons God has put us upon this spinning coil. This I now believe.” And then, as she betook herself from the bed, she said, “Mamma, my only regret in rising from this bed is losing the chance to have you attend
me
for a change. But I do fancy that from now on we will make it our business to take care of one another in equal measure. Come, Ruth. We haven't much time, and we must first see to your face.”

The two sisters started from the room. Miss Mobry called after her niece, “You never told me why this terrible thing was done to your lovely cheek.”

Ruth stopped and turned. “No, I never did. Nor will I describe what I did to
his
face in return. I will say only this: he looks far worse than
I
do.”

Herbert Mobry found the girl where he was told she would be, standing where the High Road communicated with the Factory Road, which led to the Tulleford Cotton Mill. On any given day this corner was traversed by well nigh every resident of the town for one purpose or another.

It was Jemma Spalding's purpose to stand upon a wooden poultry crate and broadcast in a raised and highly spirited voice that which she was convinced would in a very short time befall the planet: its sudden demise.

Or, to put it in more dramatic terms:
The Veritable End of the World.

Jemma's voice rang loud and clear to Mobry's ears as he approached. She sang out, “The end is nigh! Make right! Make right with the Lord!”

As Jemma came into view, someone else came into view as well. It was Molly Osborne, who stood next to her cousin, tugging at her sleeve and saying in quietly frantic tones, “You must desist, Jemma. What you are saying is absolute madness. And it is frightening the children.”

Herbert Mobry touched Molly's arm. She drew back with a start but then half-smiled to see that reinforcements—of a sort—had arrived. “Mr. Mobry,” she said, relaxing a bit in his presence, “I cannot do this alone. Look at her. She will not suspend. She will be arrested for disturbing the peace and inciting fear amongst the townspeople.”

Mobry swept his hand to take in the growing number who were gathering, as men and women frequently gather to lend eyes and ears to entertaining street-corner purveyors of spurious elixirs. “But who amongst our halfway intelligent fellow citizens should ever purchase such nonsense as this?”

Mr. Mobry's question was answered by Jemma herself: “It isn't nonsense, Mr. Mobry. Every word the gipsy said to me will come true. I know that now. For Madame Louisa has come to me in a dream.”

“And what did she say in this dream?”

Replied Jemma, her words delivered with adamant certitude, “That she now knows the very thing the cards have been predicting for over a fortnight. They tell of the end of the world—perhaps within a matter of days, perhaps within a matter of hours. This is what Madame Louisa says.”