The Seeing

Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Maud ran into the library, she saw that Eric was in the adjacent study at Dalworth’s desk, speaking into the telephone. Holding the candlestick high to guide her, she hurried to join him, seeing then the patronizing smile which usually accompanied his adoption of a successful charade.

“Please be good enough to tell Constable Riley I am most grateful,” he was saying. “My wife and I are leaving within an hour for Shannon. We’ll stop at your office on the way to collect our money. And, of course—” Eric smiled across the phone at Maud. “—we’ll leave something tangible as a gesture of our appreciation.”

After a pause, he added, “No, I don’t have an address in the States for them. Mr. Saxe and Mr. Stiff were casual acquaintances, you understand. I suggest you contact the American Embassy in Dublin for that information.”

Replacing the receiver, Eric said, “Benny Stiff’s pounds quite literally went up in smoke, but Tony’s wallet and its contents are intact and in good hands. That was Riley’s clerk I just spoke with. He bought my explanation without a quibble. I told the good man that Tony Saxe was acting as our agent, carrying a large sum of our cash to purchase certain real estate in England. I added, of course, that I had Mr. Saxe’s fully legal receipt for said monies, which we’ll just make out and sign before we leave for the village.”

“Eric, forget the money. We can’t—”

“Are you out of your mind? Maud, have you any concept of what twenty thousand pounds pays off on a fifty-to-one shot? We’re talking about a million pounds, Maud. Nothing else matters now.”

“Damn you, listen to me!”

“Maud, I’m warning you... I’m almost out of patience.”

“I talked to Jessica. She said she isn’t—”

“You idiot! I told you not to listen to her!”

Maud slammed her open hand down on the desk top. The sound was startlingly loud, echoing away to the corners of the murky room. “Shut up, Eric! Try to understand what I’m telling you. The child has changed before our eyes. She’s strong, so strong I’m afraid to touch her. She must know everything! She told me she isn’t frightened about what will happen to her tonight. She insists she has no reason to be. For God’s sake, don’t you understand what that means?”

“I’ll tell you what it means. It means she’s a fool and you’re a bigger fool.”

Eric signed his name to the bottom of the letter Maud had written to Jessica. Folding it into a neat square, he printed Jessica’s name on it in block capitals. Tucking it into his shirt pocket, he unlocked the gun cabinet with a key he had commandeered from old Flynn, and chose a small calibre Belgian handgun with silver filigree and inlaid ivory handgrips. Opening a drawer inside the cabinet, he selected a clip of appropriate ammunition and inserted it into the butt of the gun.

“Eric, please. Let’s clear out now...”

“You’re more than a fool, Maud. You’re gutless.”

“We still have time—”

Eric closed the door of the gun cabinet and locked it. When he turned the automatic in his hand, he swung it around to point it at a spot just above the third button of her light gray jacket. She looked uneasily at the gun barrel and then put a hand to her throat.

“Eric, please...” Her voice was almost lost in a sudden break of thunder. “Just listen to me.”

“No, goddamn it, you listen to me, Maud! This is my chance, the only one I’ve ever had and nothing’s going to stop me now. With you or without you, I’m going for it. You’ve let that little bitch upstairs talk you into a galloping case of nerves. She’s in her bedroom, trussed up like the Christmas goose, can’t move hand or foot. Our job now is to jam her into boots and riding clothes, lead her and her horse up the hills to the cliff.”

Eric turned the gun away from Maud, glanced at the play of candlelight along the barrel. “Imagine how Windkin will take off when I fire a few rounds from this beauty around its hooves.”

They stared at one another through the flaring candlelight and then Eric said matter-of-factly, “Well, luv. What’s it going to be? In or out? Play the cards I’ve dealt and we’ll be home free in a suite in London tomorrow morning, on the phone to room service for a hot breakfast and then off to see a Harley Street specialist.”

Maud nodded slowly. In a weary voice she said, “I’ll help you, Eric, but for God’s sake, let’s get it over with.”

She turned quickly then, holding the candlestick and glowing taper above her head. Eric followed her from the study into the library which was full of erratic shadows, some sent leaping by draft-stirred candles, others from the lightning that flashed through the heavy trees.

Eric pressed the sides of Jessica’s note, crimping them so that the letter would stand upright like a small tent. When they went through the arches of the library into the great hall, Eric strode to the table beside the main entrance, placing the letter prominently on the silver tray set out for calling cards.

Standing in the gloom beyond the circle of Maud’s candle, Eric wondered who would be the first to see the letter — the Constable perhaps, or the Bostwick woman, or Mr. Ryan; and who would put through the distressful telephone call to the child’s uncle and aunt at the Cumberland Hotel...

The house was fittingly silent at the moment, Eric thought, the stillness marred only by the sounds of the storm and the tapping of Maud’s high heels across the parquet floor.

As Eric turned, his mood poignant and reflective, Maud began screaming, the sounds beating like frantic flails against the carved walls and ceilings.

Eric wheeled around and saw Jessica Mallory standing motionless on the top landing of the great stairs, her face pale above her twill jacket, her dark hair brushed back, and the silken tips falling to her shoulders. There was a calm but almost hypnotic expression on her face. Her eyes were luminous and foreboding. The spectral concentration in her manner, a blend of energy and resignation to her visions, caused Eric’s breath to become suddenly ragged.

He braced himself but took an involuntary step backwards as Jessica started down the long stairs, placing each foot down neatly and precisely, as formally as a young lady descending to join her partner at a hunt ball.

With an effort, he cried out, “Talk now, Maud, and talk plain and fast. What are you and this little bitch up to?”

“God, don’t blame me, Eric. I didn’t free her!”

“Stop lying to me! Or you’ll take the same goddamn ride she’s heading for!”

Jessica continued down the stairs, stopping on the last step of the staircase, her eyes almost level with theirs.

“No, I’m not going riding tonight, Uncle Eric. I’m leaving you now. They’re waiting for me,” she said.

Eric smiled at her but there was no humor in his eyes or on his lips. His expression was ugly and bitter, the menace emphasized by the false smile. “Do you honestly think, Miss Crystal, that I’m going to step aside and let you walk out of here?”

“I’m not concerned or worried about anything you can say or do, Uncle Eric.”

“I told you! I told you, Eric!”

“Damn it, Maud, shut up now.” Eric said. With the unpleasant smile flaring like a rictus on his face, he took the small automatic from his pocket and said to Jessica, “Just focus your attention on this gun then.”

To his dismay, Eric heard a new and tentative tone in his voice, the gun gave him no sense of assurance, no familiar swell of authority or power. It would be different, he knew, if there was fear in those eyes, if she were begging and pleading with him to spare her life — but no, she had stepped down to the parquet floor and was walking without haste to the double doors as if she were not even aware of the steel threat in his hands, the muzzle pointed squarely at her slim spine.

“Stop, Jessica.”

She turned her back on them and pulled open the double doors that opened on the terraces and park of the estate. A gusting wind blew her hair out behind her and caused Maud’s candle to gutter and smoke, creating grotesque shadows on the walls and ceilings and up the empty, shining staircase.

“But I can damned well stop you!” Eric said, and trained the gun squarely and inexorably on her slender figure.

“No, Eric! Don’t!” Maud’s voice was a hoarse cry and the light from her candle glinted on the desperate tension in her eyes. With her free hand, she pointed insistently through the huge open doors.

Flashes of light streaked the darkness, yellow lances boring into the curtaining rain. “It’s too late, Eric!” she cried as the first cars of a small convoy turned off the Ballytone road into the driveway of Easter Hill.

Jessica started down the broad steps to the lower terraces, and Eric, features working emotionally, steadied his hands, slowly increasing the pressure on the trigger.

Maud shouted at him again, a wordless cry of anger, and threw the heavy candlestick and flaming taper into his face.

The brass base struck his shoulder and jarred him off balance, and his two shots, shatteringly loud in the confines of the hall, went through the open doors and spent themselves harmlessly in the crowns of distant trees.

The burning candle had struck Eric’s cheek. Arms flailing, he fell sprawling to the floor, the gun clattering from his hands. Scrambling to his feet, he reached for the automatic, his thoughts chaotic with panic and rage, unable to absorb the shocking fact that he’d lost, that he would never stand with cheering crowds and watch his horses charging on to victory. No winners’ circle, no smiling bank tellers, no silver trophies for Eric Boniface Mallory — not now or ever...

Slamming the big doors shut, he saw in the instant before they closed that several cars had pulled into the circular driveway where Jessica waited for them near the bronze sundial on the flagged terrace.

Eric sagged against the doors, his breathing shallow in the sudden silence.

Yes, Boniface had lost but it wasn’t, in truth, his fault. Everything he had wanted and worked for lay smashed in pieces around him, and there would soon be an even greater price to pay, the vulgar curiosity of jurymen, the humiliating contempt of a judge.

If only Maud hadn’t lied to him and betrayed him. Boniface had had the brains and nerve, the style and the imagination, to conceive and bring this off, the flash of courage in a pinch, yes, and the grace to savor the rewards.

She had been on the little bitch’s side all along, the two of them against Boniface.

With a smile in his voice, he called out, “Maud?”

He saw that the library was dark, and knew that Maud had pinched out the candles. Moving cautiously, he slipped through the arched doorway, freezing when he heard the delicate sound of glass breaking, falling in a tinkling cadence to the floor.

Not a window, he thought, the sound was too fragile. He knew then where she was — in the study adjoining the library. And he knew what she had shattered.

Crouching, Eric ran forward and dropped behind a fan-backed chair. He needed illumination now, to tell him where she was hiding. Raising his gun, he fired twice into the embers of the fireplace, the bullets slamming into the smouldering logs and bringing them alive, creating spurting bursts of flames in whose spreading glow he saw Maud’s dark figure run through the door from Dalworth’s study into the library.

Eric swung the gun and fired two shots at her. A scream burst from Maud’s lips. When she dropped from sight, he stood and walked deliberately toward the illumination thrown up by the glowing logs, so thoroughly avenged, so sensuously elated that he never even heard the next shot that sounded, and hardly felt the bullet that ripped into his body and sent him spinning to the carpeted floor.

With an hysterical moan, Maud stepped from behind draperies and ran through the dark library, stopping only to fling the ornate dueling pistol aside and to stare for an instant in horror at her husband’s carved and motionless features.

And then, heart pounding like a frantic drum, Maud ran on into the great hall and with clawing fingers unbolted the doors and flung them open, flinching as the wind and rain stung her face.

She saw cars parked on the gravel crescent, lights spearing the darkness, men and women climbing from them and running toward Jessica. A white bandage caught the light and she saw Kevin O’Dell with the others— The Irish groom, she thought, with another stab of betrayal. They had lied about that to her, O’Dell was all right, and Jessica had known it. On one car a blue light flashed and Maud saw there were officers standing near it in wet black slickers, carrying rifles.

Maud started down the rain-slick steps, calling plaintively to Jessica. “Please, please, help me! Jessica! Tell them it’s not time for me to die—”

Maud cried out to Jessica again, screaming the words now, begging her to listen, but the scene was suddenly like a nightmare, a dreadful, paralyzing dream filled with stark, uncaring people — no matter how much you begged them for help or pleaded for mercy, no kind hand reached out to unlock that terrible door...

Her sandal slipped, her ankle turned, and she fell to her hands and knees, gasping at the impact of the cold, stone steps. Pain streaked through her bruised hands. As tears started in her eyes, she saw that one of the figures below had turned a powerful flashlight on her, and all of them were waving and gesturing. She could see mouths opening and closing in white faces, but their words were lost in the winds.

Then Maud realized that they were not pointing to her at all, but toward something behind her in the darkness. When she turned and looked up the steps, Eric stood there in the double doors of the mansion, a dark wetness gleaming against his white shirt, his face twisted with agony, and his arm extended toward her, the candlelight in the hall reflecting in the wet pavement and on the silver filigree of the gun.

But after an instant that seemed stretched to an eternity, Eric Griffith staggered and fell forward to his knees, the hand holding the gun dropping slowly an inch at a time toward the ground. He was staring at her, she saw, his eyes bright points of malice in his white face.

After a straining instant, he shook his head wearily. When his eyelids began to close, Maud laughed with relief, the sound mingling with the driving rain, because she remembered then what Jessica had prophesized — had promised her — that Eric would die before her — and Maud’s laughter was an astonished accompaniment to the unfolding of that prophecy.

And what was the rest of it?... that he would somehow give her a release.

It was all coming true, she thought, as Eric fell forward on the wetly shining terrace, his gun-hand slamming against the flagstones in what seemed like a last gesture of frustration and defiance, the long fingers clenching in a gesture of fierce rigor mortis.

Maud heard the crack of the gun through a rill of thunder, but it wasn’t until she felt the wet stones against her cheek that she realized she had been shot, and she knew that because she was surprised in a hurt and childish fashion by the intensity of the pain.

As she began to lose consciousness, she lay very still, watching the blood from her wound mingle with the rain water on the steps of Easter Hill. Maud tried to laugh but that hurt too much. She pressed her lips tightly together and let the laughter surface only in her mind where it seemed to circle with the sound of excited, springtime birds.

What amused Maud so strangely in her last moments of awareness — Constable Riley was beside her then, hand gentle on her shoulder, she was aware of that, too — was the superb irony of Jessica’s second prediction, the prediction that Eric would somehow bring her freedom from the fear of death, which he had done (oh, yes... oh, yes) by freeing her from life itself...

Jessica stood alone, the flash of visions still gleaming in her eyes, her face illuminated by the sinister play of lightning above the trees. She stared back at the gray facade of Easter Hill and at the slack figures of Maud and Eric Griffith sprawled on the terrace below it.

Jessica’s lips began to move slowly as she said a fated farewell to the innocent child she had once been. And then she found herself speaking aloud, her eyes shining, her voice soft and clear.