Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) Page 23

  When she had shed her dinner dress and wrapped herself in her dressing gown, she went to the window. She settled into the window seat, pulling back the curtains so she could gaze out, past the winter-dry skeleton of the camellia, into the shifting mist that hid the park and the water tower from her view. Frank should be back at Mrs. Volger’s by now. She wondered if it was possible for him to feel as lonely as she did.

  More likely, she thought, he was eager to return to Sand Point and his airplane, to rise above the trees and the lakes and the houses, to fly off over the mountaintops to the warm California valley full of other men just like him—aviators, engineers, soldiers. He couldn’t know how she hungered for him. Should she have told him? Was that what women did? Or did they instinctively, as she was doing, hold something back to protect that small, tender spot in the heart where love resided?

  And why, oh why, was Frank carrying Elizabeth’s letter in his pocket?

  She let the curtain fall, rose from the window seat, and crossed the room to her bed. As she extinguished the lamp and pulled the comforter up over her shoulders, she reflected that she was like two different women living in one body. She couldn’t imagine not being a physician. She couldn’t abandon the passion and dedication that had always ruled her life. But she was also a woman in love, in the manner of romantic stories, the most old-fashioned stories of all. That woman couldn’t bear the idea of life without Frank. She longed to find a way to merge both those women into one.

  For some reason that line of thought brought her back to Allison. She released her worry over what would happen between her and Frank and fell asleep worrying about what was wrong between Allison and her mother.

  She had been asleep for perhaps an hour when she woke to shouting in one of the rooms down the hall. In that first, heavy sleep of the night, she wasn’t sure what she was hearing. Accustomed to responding instantly to the telephone or to her alarm clock, she was out of bed and into her dressing gown almost before she realized she was on her feet. She threw open her door just in time to see Allison, her hair mussed and her cheeks flaming, charge out of her bedroom and down the stairs. The front door banged open, and an icy draft swept into the house and up the staircase.

  Margot the physician knew better than to run in an emergency, but she strode so swiftly down the corridor it was almost a run. The door to Allison’s room stood open, and inside, huddled on the floor, wailing like a cornered cat, was Aunt Adelaide. She bent forward from the waist, her legs crumpled beneath her. Her dun hair tumbled every which way, with hairpins spilling onto her shoulders.

  Margot reached her. “Aunt Adelaide, what’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

  The face Adelaide turned up to her was a mask of bitterness. Her carefully painted eyebrows were smudged, and tears made rivulets through the powder on her cheeks. She sobbed, open-mouthed, and Margot thought she was very near a fit of hysterics. “My arm!” she cried. “That little bitch broke my arm!”

  Margot would have said she was long past being shocked by anything she saw or heard, but somehow, hearing her aunt apply such a vicious phrase to her own daughter made her pull back in disgust. Adelaide, still weeping, pleaded with her. “Aren’t you going to help me? You’re a doctor! Help me!”

  She was braced, shaking, on her right hand. Margot could see, even from where she stood, that her left arm was indeed broken. She didn’t need to palpate the forearm to know that it was fractured, both the radius and the ulna clearly deformed, and the left hand flopping, useless, over her thigh.

  A voice from the doorway said, “What’s happened? Where’s Miss Allison?”

  Margot glanced over her shoulder and saw Ruby, wide-eyed with alarm. She wore a thick chenille robe that fell to her toes, and her hair was braided for the night. “Ruby, there’s been an accident. Allison ran out the front door. Could you get your shoes and see if you can find her? I’m going to get Mrs. Benedict up on the bed.”

  At this Adelaide wailed louder, and Margot repressed an impulse to slap her. She inched around her to lift her up, one hand under her good arm and the other, gingerly, under the opposite armpit. This caused Adelaide to screech that she was killing her, that her arm was shattered, and other complaints Margot didn’t bother to try to understand. Ruby had run for her shoes. Uncle Henry appeared in the doorway, at least five minutes after he should have, in Margot’s opinion.

  “Uncle Henry,” she said in a flat voice. “We’ll need the motorcar. Could you go to the garage and tell Blake?”

  She was settling Adelaide, whose sobs were subsiding into a steady, irritating whimper, onto the edge of Allison’s bed. Adelaide was still in her dinner dress, and she had torn the hem of it. She looked down at her legs and moaned something about having laddered her stockings, but Margot ignored this. Loena appeared, and Margot said, “Loena, good girl. Stay with Mrs. Benedict while I change, will you? We’re going to the hospital.”

  Loena’s eyes were as wide as Ruby’s, but she looked more excited than alarmed. “Yes, Miss Margot,” she said. She crossed the room and stood beside the bed, but Margot noticed she didn’t stand close enough to touch Adelaide. “Oh, gosh,” she exclaimed, gazing down at Aunt Adelaide’s arm. “That must hurt like blazes!”

  Adelaide groaned. Margot was on her way out of the room, saying, “I’m sure it does, Loena. Just keep Mrs. Benedict from falling off the bed, will you?”

  “Yes, miss. Gosh!”

  Margot was used to dressing quickly. In moments she had on a skirt, sweater, stockings, and shoes. She ran a comb through her hair without bothering to look in the mirror, and went back down the corridor. She encountered Dick in the doorway of Allison’s room. He was frowning, obviously reluctant to go in. He turned with an expression of relief when he heard her step on the hard carpet. “Margot, what’s happened?”

  “I’m not sure yet, Dick, but I’m going to have to take Aunt Adelaide to the hospital. Her arm needs setting, and I can’t do it here. Uncle Henry’s gone to call Blake.”

  “Ramona’s awake, of course—I’m sure everyone is!—but I told her she shouldn’t get up.”

  “That’s right. There’s nothing she could do. Blake and I will manage. I expect Father and Mother are up now, too, and everyone else.”

  He nodded and was gone in an instant. Glad, she thought, to get away from Adelaide’s whining. She wished she could. She said, “Loena, I’ll take over now. Could you go to Mrs. Adelaide’s room and find her coat?”

  She had been right about everyone being awake. The only person missing, as she maneuvered Adelaide down the corridor and onto the staircase, was her mother. Even Ramona had given up trying to sleep. She stood at the bottom of the staircase, wrapped in powder-pink flannel and wearing knitted slippers. As Margot shepherded Adelaide down the stairs, Ramona said, “The Essex is waiting in front, Margot. I saw it from my window.”

  “Good. Thanks, Ramona.”

  “Here’s Hattie. I’ll ask her to make some cocoa, calm everyone down.”

  Margot cast her sister-in-law a look of admiration. Ramona behaved as if handling a frantic household were just what she had been born for.

  Loena, Leona, and a surprised-looking Thelma were gathered in the hall, hugging themselves against the chill. Hattie stepped forward to meet Ruby just coming in. “Did you find Miss Allison? Oh, that poor child!”

  Ruby shook her head. “I don’t know what to do now.”

  Margot and Adelaide had just reached the foot of the stairs. Margot said, “Get dressed, Ruby, and keep looking. Ask Mr. Dick to help you.” Adelaide cried out as Margot draped her mink coat over her shoulders, but Margot said only, “You need your coat. It’s cold outside.”

  Henry was searching the dining room and the two parlors for Allison, but with no success. They all stood in the hall, a shocked audience in dressing gowns and overcoats, as Margot and Adelaide, who was moaning steadily, moved out the front door, across the porch, and down the steps to the gate.

  Dickson followed them. He said, “Shall I go
with you, daughter?”

  “Thanks, Father. Blake and I can manage. I’ll take Aunt Adelaide to the accident room. We should be back in an hour or two.”

  Blake held the car door and assisted Margot to seat Adelaide, then went around to the driving seat. Margot, as she climbed in herself, said, “Father, Allison is outside somewhere, all alone.”

  “I’ll call the police,” her father said.

  Uncle Henry said, from the porch, “No! No police.” Dick, standing beside him, gave him an odd glance.

  Dickson scowled but didn’t comment. He closed the automobile door and was back through the gate and up the walk before Blake pulled away from the curb. Margot sat on Adelaide’s right side, and did her best to ignore her aunt’s groans and gasps. She spent the fifteen-minute drive calculating how much codeine phosphate she dared inject into a woman who probably weighed no more than ninety pounds.

  His patience had paid off. His instincts must be as sharp as they ever were, which was pretty damned sharp. In the face of a dearth of other things to take pride in, that bolstered his resolve and strengthened his self-respect.

  After a revolting dinner at the Compass Center—greasy soup and a roll so stale it could cost a man a couple of teeth—he had felt the tug of his obsession, that intuitive call to come here again, to stand in the cold fog. He had lost count of how many nights he had spent this way, wrapped in his hand-me-down coat, charity scarf obscuring his face, gaze fixed on the windows and doors of Benedict Hall. Waiting. Waiting for his chance.

  At first he thought he might have made a mistake. It seemed like any other night, except for having to endure watching Margot and her one-armed cowboy on the front porch. They could at least have had the decency to go to the back if they were going to carry on that way, but Margot had never had the slightest sense of propriety, or even a modicum of consideration for the family name. It had been tempting to follow Parrish down the street, but that wouldn’t serve his purpose at all.

  Instead, he lounged against the cold bricks of the tower and waited. He didn’t know what he was waiting for, exactly, but he had a feeling, and despite the chill of the December night, it energized him, kept him rooted there, watching.

  His reward came an hour after Parrish left and Margot went indoors. Someone, someone whose voice he didn’t recognize, set up a god-awful caterwauling. It caused lights to flick on in nearby houses and doors to slam at Benedict Hall. He knew what a cry of pain sounded like, of course. He had plenty of experience with pain. These shrieks were caused by pain, but intensified, he was certain, by outrage and resentment. Something dramatic had happened in Benedict Hall, something that had set the house by its ears.

  Whatever it was, it was precisely what he had been waiting for. It propelled the young cousin straight out of the house. Pretty little Allison, hatless, coatless, running as if pursued by the devil, flew out the front door, leaving it open to the cold. She dashed down the walk and out the gate, leaving that standing open as well. Hair askew, flimsy dress rippling around her, she barreled across the road.

  Straight into his waiting arms.

  CHAPTER 19

  The radiographs confirmed for Margot what she had already observed, but there was more. Aunt Adelaide’s arm was fractured, the two bones of the forearm snapped cleanly in two. Margot also saw, studying the image, that Adelaide Benedict’s bones were shockingly fragile, a condition that could only show on the radiograph if it were already far advanced. It would have taken very little strength to break them.

  Adelaide, even after being given a hypodermic, wept and complained throughout the setting of her arm and the application of plaster of Paris. She rolled her head to and fro on her pillow, and the nurses in the accident room raised their eyebrows at one another.

  “Dr. Benedict, do you have other orders?” The night nurse stood close beside the bed, keeping watch that Adelaide’s antics didn’t cause her to slide right off the edge.

  “Yes,” Margot said wearily. “She’d better have a sedative. Four ccs of valerian tincture, Nurse. I’ll stay with the patient while you prepare it.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  Margot bent over the bed. She was tempted to just strap the woman down and leave her, but she forced herself to speak kindly. “Aunt Adelaide. Your arm is set now, and you’ve had a good dose of codeine phosphate. You shouldn’t be in pain.”

  “She broke my arm,” Adelaide whimpered. “She threw the spoon at me, and then she broke my arm!”

  “Spoon?”

  “Yes, the spoon! I gave her one just for herself, but she won’t use it, and she—she—”

  Margot said, “Never mind, Aunt Adelaide. Never mind that now. Here’s the nurse, and she’s going to give you something to help you relax. I’m going to telephone to Benedict Hall to see if Allison is all right.”

  “She has this filthy pamphlet on her dressing table, this obscene thing, and she said—”

  “All right, Adelaide,” Margot said, feeling her temper fray to the breaking point. “I’m the one who gave Allison the pamphlet. There’s no need to be angry at her about that.”

  Adelaide glared around the accident room as if looking for someone who would listen to her complaint. “She broke my arm,” she cried in her piercing voice. “My own daughter! My arm!”

  Margot took a slow breath through her nostrils and stepped back from the bed. The nurse gave her a questioning look, and Margot nodded, not trusting her voice. When Adelaide had swallowed the valerian tincture, grimacing at the bitter taste, she lay back on her pillow, seeming a bit calmer already. Margot didn’t trust this sudden change, and she motioned to the nurse to resume her position on the other side of the bed.

  “Aunt Adelaide,” she said. Adelaide stared at the ceiling, her thin lips pressed so tightly together they almost disappeared. “Aunt Adelaide, the X-ray of your arm shows your bones are very weak. The condition is called osteoporosis, and it may have come about because you’re so thin. If Allison even bumped your arm, the bones could have broken.”

  “She didn’t bump me,” Adelaide grated. “She threw the spoon at me. I picked it up, and told her to use it, and she pushed me! She broke my arm!”

  “What was she supposed to do with the spoon?”

  The valerian began its work, and Adelaide’s eyelids trembled and drooped. “She’s getting fat,” she said. “I let her come to Seattle—”

  Margot’s resolve evaporated. “You forced her to come to Seattle, Aunt Adelaide. She didn’t want to.”

  Adelaide spoke with her eyes closed. “She had to. Everyone’s talking about her. She’s ruined.”

  “Why?” When there was no answer, Margot spoke more sharply. “Adelaide, why is Allison ruined?”

  “Naked,” Adelaide mumbled. “She was naked. God only knows what else . . . Everyone’s talking.”

  The nurse put a hand to her mouth to hide her smile. When it was clear Adelaide had fallen asleep, Margot said, “I didn’t understand a word of that, did you?”

  The nurse dropped her hand and bent to smooth the pillow beneath Adelaide’s head. “It may not mean anything, Doctor. She won’t remember saying it, either.”

  Adelaide’s sleeping face looked pitiful, the layers of cosmetics like a film of dust settled across her gaunt features. Automatically, Margot took a clean washcloth from a nearby basin and began to wipe away the rouge and powder. The nurse held out her hand to relieve her of the cloth. “Let me do that, Doctor.”

  “Thank you. I think I’d better admit her. It would be hard to get her home in this condition, and I’d like to bring in our family physician, ask him to do a thorough examination.”

  The nurse nodded, dropped the cosmetic-stained washcloth into the basin, and set off across the accident room to call for a gurney. Margot stood where she was, gazing down at Adelaide. Her aunt’s slight body barely made a silhouette beneath the brown hospital blanket, and her face, in repose and free of paint, more resembled that of a starving child than an ill-tempered middle-aged woman. “
What’s going on with you?” Margot whispered. “Why are you all so unhappy?”

  Adelaide exhaled a long, relaxed sigh, and slept on.

  Allison gasped a lungful of foggy air. She wanted only to escape, to flee from her mother’s accusing shrieks, to evade Ruby’s restraining hands. She didn’t stop to close the door or to latch the gate. The mist enveloped her and softened the raised voices from the house. She dashed headlong into the street and across it without so much as a glance left or right.

  The cold air shocked her out of her incipient hysterics, but one of the Louis heels of her evening shoes caught on the far curb. She lost her balance, stumbled, and began to fall, throwing out her hands to catch herself on the concrete of the sidewalk.

  What her hands encountered was the bulk and heat of a man’s body, swathed in some stiff, slippery fabric. Her hands gripped the material without meaning to. Her face, propelled by the momentum of her fall, collided with his chest.

  Strong arms encircled her before she could push herself back. Hard hands gripped her close, as if in an embrace, but it wasn’t one of safety or of desire. The moment she felt the encircling pressure of his arms, she knew there was danger. He squeezed her against him and blew sour breath down the back of her neck.

  He hissed, “At last!” in a hoarse voice that made her blood—so recently running high and hot—turn instantly to ice.

  Her tears of fury cooled swiftly in the night air. She choked, “Let me go! Sir, please!” She beat at his shoulder with her hands and tried to scrabble away with her feet. The heel she had tripped on broke off and dangled precariously from her shoe.

  His laugh was more a growl than a sound of amusement. He loosened his grip, but kept hold of her wrist with one hard hand.

  Allison drew back as far as she could and stared at him. This new threat jumbled in her fevered brain with what had just happened in Benedict Hall.