Lasher

Thirty-nine

WHEN HE LOOKED up, he saw through the iron fence that the main house was now full of light. Lights were on all through the upstairs and downstairs. He thought perhaps he saw someone pass a doorway in the upper hall. Seemed it was Eugenia. Poor old soul. She must have heard it. Maybe she saw the bodies. Just a shadow behind the privacy lattice. He wasn’t sure. They were much too far away for him to hear them.

He put the shovel back into the shed, just as the rain came down heavily and with the lovely smell that the rain always brings.

There was a crack of thunder, and one of those jagged rips of white lightning, and then the big drops began to splash on his head, his face, his hands.

He unlocked the gate and went to the faucet by the pool. He slipped off his sweater and washed his arms and his face and his chest. The pain was still there, like something biting him, and he noticed he had little feeling in his left hand. He could close it, however. He could grip. Then he looked back at the dark oak. He could make nothing out of the darkness beneath it, the deep dark of the entire yard now beneath the rainy sky.

The rain washed Lasher’s blood from the flags where Lasher had died.

It fell hard and steady, washing them clean until nothing was left to mark the spot at all.

He stood there watching, getting soaked and wishing he could smoke a cigarette but knowing the rain would put it out. Through the dining room window, he could see a hazy image of Aaron still sitting at the table, as if he had never moved, and the tall dark figure of Yuri, standing about, almost idly. And then the figure of someone else he did not know.

All of them in the house. Well, it was bound to happen. Someone was bound to come. Beatrice, Mona, someone…

Only after all that blood was washed away did he walk over the spot, and go around to the front door of the house.

There were two police cars parked there, end to end, with their lights flashing, and a gathering of men, including Ryan and young Pierce at the gate. Mona was there in a sweatshirt and jeans. He felt like crying when he saw her.

My God, why don’t they arrest me? he wondered. Why didn’t they come out into the yard? God, how long have they been here? How long did it take me to dig the grave?

All this seemed vague in his mind.

He noted-there was no ambulance, but that didn’t mean anything. Perhaps his wife had died upstairs, and they had already taken her away. Got to go to her, he thought, whatever happens, I’m not being dragged out of here until I kiss her good-bye.

He walked towards the front steps.

Ryan started speaking to him the moment he saw him.

“Michael, thank God you’re back. Something really inexcusable happened. It was all a misunderstanding. Happened right after you left. And I promise you, it will not happen again.”

“What is that?” asked Michael.

Mona stared at him, her face impassive and undeniably beautiful in a lovely youthful way. Her eyes were so green. It was amazing to him. He thought about what Lasher had said-about jewels.

“A complete mixup with the guards and the nurses,” said Ryan. “Everybody, unaccountably, went home. Even Henri was told to go home. Aaron was the only one here and he was asleep.”

Mona made a little negative gesture to him, and lifted one of her soft, babyfied little hands. Pretty Mona.

“Rowan is all right?” Michael asked. He could not now remember what Ryan had been saying, only that he’d known, by Ryan’s manner, that Rowan wasn’t dead.

“Yes, she’s fine,” said Ryan. “She was apparently alone in the house for a while, however, and the door was unlocked. Someone apparently told the guards they weren’t needed anymore. Apparently it was a priest from the parish church, but we haven’t been able to find the man. We will. Whatever, the nurses were actually told that Rowan was…was…”

“But Rowan’s OK.”

“The point is nothing was disturbed. Eugenia was in her room the whole time too, lot of good it did. But nothing happened. Mona and Yuri came and they found the place deserted. They woke up Aaron. They called me.”

“I see,” said Michael.

“We didn’t know where you were. Then Aaron remembered that you’d gone off for a long walk. I got here as soon as I could. No harm done as far as I can tell. Of course those people have been fired. These are all new people.”

“Yeah, I understand,” said Michael with a little nod.

They went up the steps and into the front hall. Everything looked as it should, the red carpet going up the stairway. The oriental rug before the door. A few natural scuff marks here and there as always on the waxed wood.

He looked at Mona, who was standing back away from her uncle. The jeans could not have been any tighter. In fact, the whole history of fashion might have been different in the twentieth century, Michael thought, if denim hadn’t been such a tough fabric, if it hadn’t had such a capacity to stretch to a woman’s little hips like that.

“Nothing was disturbed,” said Ryan. “Nothing was missing. We haven’t searched the whole house yet but…”

“I’ll do it,” said Michael. “It’s OK.”

“I’ve doubled the guards,” said Ryan, “and doubled the shift of nurses. No one leaves this property without express permission of a member of the family. You have to be able to know you can take a walk and come back and Rowan is all right.”

“Yeah,” said Michael. “I should go up and see Rowan.”

Rowan wore a fresh gown of white silk. It had long sleeves and narrow cuffs. She was as she had been when he left her-same gentle wondering expression, hands folded before her, on a fresh cover of embroidered linen with a lovely trimming of blue ribbon at the edge. The room smelled clean, and full of the scent of the blessed candles, and a huge vase of yellow flowers that stood on the table where the nurses were accustomed to write.

“Pretty flowers,” said Michael.

“Yes, Bea got them,” said Pierce. “Whenever anything happens, Bea just gets flowers. But I don’t think Rowan had the slightest inkling ever that anything was amiss.”

“No, no inkling,” said Michael.

Ryan continued to apologize, continued to aver that this would never happen again. Hamilton Mayfair stepped out of the shadows and gave a little nod of greeting and then vanished as softly and soundlessly as he had appeared.

Beatrice came into the room with a soft jingling noise, perhaps of bracelets, Michael didn’t know. Michael felt her kiss before he saw her, and caught her jasmine perfume. It made him think of the garden in summer. Summer. That wasn’t so very far away. The bedroom was shadowy as always with the candles and only one small lamp. Beatrice put her arms around him and held him tight.

“Oh, darling,” she said, “you’re soaking wet.”

Michael nodded. “That’s true.”

“Now don’t be upset,” said Bea, scoldingly, “everything turned out just fine. Mona and Yuri took care of everything. We were determined to have everything straightened out before you came back.”

“That was kind of you,” said Michael.

“You’re exhausted,” said Mona. “You need to rest.”

“Now, come, you must get out of these wet clothes,” said Beatrice. “You’re going to be chilled. Are your things in the front room?”

He nodded.

“I’ll help you,” said Mona.

“Aaron. Where is Aaron?” asked Michael.

“Oh, he’s just fine,” said Beatrice. She turned and flashed a brilliant smile at him. “Don’t you worry about Aaron. He’s in the dining room having his tea. He snapped right into action when Mona and Yuri woke him up. He’s fine. Just fine. Now I’m going downstairs to get you something hot to drink. Please let Mona help you. Get out of those clothes now.”

She cast a long look up and down at him, and he looked down and saw the dark splatters ail over his sweater and pants. The clothes were so wet and so dark you couldn’t tell the difference between the blood and the water. But when the clothes dried, you could.

Mona opened the door of the front bedroom and he followed her inside. There was the wedding bed with its white canopy. More flowers. Yellow roses. The draperies of the front windows were opened, and the street light shone in the wandering branches of the oaks. Like a treehouse, this bedroom, Michael thought.

Mona started to help him with his sweater. “You know what? These clothes are so old, I’m going to do you a real favor. I’m going to burn them. Does this fireplace work?”

He nodded.

“What did you do with the bodies of the two men?”

“Shhh. Don’t talk so loud,” she said with an immediate sense of immense drama. “Yuri and I took care of that. Don’t ask again.”

She pulled down his zipper.

“You know I killed it,” he said.

She nodded. “Right. I wish I could have seen it. Just one time! You know, had a really good look at him!”

“No, you didn’t want to see it, and don’t ever go looking for it, don’t ever ask me where I disposed of it, or…”

She didn’t answer him. Her face seemed still, determined, beyond his influence, beyond his tenderness or his concern. Her own unique mixture of innocence and knowledge baffled him as surely now as it had ever done. She seemed unmarked in her freshness, her beauty, yet deep within some dangerous chamber of her own thoughts.

“You feel cheated?” he whispered.

Still she didn’t answer. She’d never looked so mature-so knowing, so much the woman. And so much the mystery-the simple mystery of another being, alien to us by simple nature and separateness-one among many whom we will never fully possess or know or comprehend.

He reached into his pocket. He held out the muddy emerald, and he heard her gasp before he looked up again and saw the amazement in her face.

“Take this away with you,” he said under his breath. “This is yours now. Take it. And don’t ever, ever turn around and look over your shoulder. Don’t ever try to understand.”

Again, she was grave and silent, absorbing his words, but giving no hint of her own true response. Perhaps her expression was respectful; perhaps it was merely remote.

She closed her hand over the emerald as though to conceal it utterly. She pressed her closed hand into the bundle of his soiled clothes.

“Go bathe now,” she said calmly. “Go rest. But first-the pants, and the socks and shoes. Let me get rid of them too.”