He was unable to restrain a sob.
“Adelaide,” he murmured. “Please. Forgive me.”
He leaned against the fireplace for several minutes, lost in the agony of his remembrance and his guilt.
Then he straightened, teeth clenched, and switched off the light above the portrait.
Stepping over a pace, he reached up to one of the fireplace stones the Sheriff had examined visually, even touched.
He began to push on the stone.
Then he drew back his hand and turned to me.
He regarded me for several moments before walking over.
“It isn’t right that you should see this, Padre,” he said. “I’ve shocked you enough.”
He began to push my wheelchair toward the entry hall.
My God, I thought, after all this, are you going to withhold the goddam punch line?
I wonder if I made a noise of protest, some faint sound which indicated the angry frustration I felt.
I’ll never know.
All I do know is that Max stopped pushing me and gazed down at me, obviously thinking.
Tell me what is going on! pleaded my mind.
Did he pick up the plea telepathically? Who knows.
But he did change his mind.
“No,” he said. “Shock or no shock, you have a right to know what’s going on. It’s only just, considering everything.”
Was that a smile? It was extremely faint, and yet I could have sworn …
“Besides,” he said, “I really want you to see the effect.”
He turned my wheelchair toward the picture window.
Son, I thought, aren’t you going to tell me why you wanted Sheriff Plum to think that Brian was Cassandra?
Not so. He left me sitting there as he returned to the fireplace. To that particular stone.
Which he pushed in all the way now.
I felt myself tighten (or did I?) as I heard a sound of machinery by the window overlooking the lake.
My God, I thought. Blast my unseeing eyes. I’ve been a blind old fool. Taken in! And me The Great Delacorte before he was!
Houdini performed the trick with much success. He called it The Country Girl.
It involved the impossible disappearance of a small girl sitting at a table near a window.
In Max’s version of the effect, what appeared to be a window view of the gazebo by the lake wasn’t that at all.
It was, in fact, a reflected view, created by double-sided mirrors in an addition built onto TMR.
For now, as the apparatus functioned, the view was altering, the gazebo and the lake disappearing from sight.
To be replaced by a freezer area approximately four feet wide and three feet deep, its height that of the window.
Inside the freezer area, suspended from a rope around her chest, was Cassandra Delacorte.
Her features stiff and white in death.
chapter 25
It was, of course, coincidence that, precisely at the moment Cassandra’s corpse appeared to me, a roar of thunder cannonaded in the sky and lightning turned the awful sight into a tableau of blinding whiteness.
Max was unable to resist toasting the sky.
“Good timing!” he cried.
Outside, a torrent of rain began to fall, so heavy that it was, immediately, a curtain of descending water.
Max regarded the corpse of his wife.
There was no sense of triumph or of pleasure in his look.
“So,” he said. “It worked.”
It did not require the intellect of a Rhodes scholar to know what he meant.
With the help of Brian’s talent at impersonating his sister, they had successfully fooled Harry.
And, more important, the Sheriff.
With all the tricks and counter-tricks occurring, Plum completely missed the main illusion of them all. (I missed it, too.)
The person he’d assumed to be Cassandra Delacorte wasn’t her at all.
Max drained his glass of brandy and set down the glass.
He returned to me and placed a hand on my shoulder.
I know I shuddered then, for he felt it.
“I’m sorry, Father,” he said. “Don’t think I’m unaware of what I’ve done. I know that I’ve committed murder. Perhaps the motivation wasn’t strong enough.”
His voice hardened.
“I thought it was, though,” he said.
He exhaled heavily.
“Now the final phase begins,” he told me.
“The conclusion of the trick.
“I’ll continue with the act. Not in Las Vegas, but in various other locations, jobs I’ll arrange for myself. Las Vegas is too conspicuous. But lesser whereabouts will be in order.
“Where Brian’s continued imitation of his sister will go unnoticed.
“The falling-out with Harry was, of course, essential.
“If Harry was around, he’d inevitably see through the pretense.
“Now he won’t.”
“And,” he went on, “Sheriff Plum ‘keeping an eye’ on me is equally essential.
“His value consists of the fact that he will, at the same time, be keeping an eye on the person he believes to be Cassandra, a witness to her ongoing existence.”
And I thought he’d lost focus, the chilling idea came. How wrong I’d been. The discovery did nothing but dismay me further.
Did I wince as my son chuckled? I wanted to.
“Brother Brian’s going to be a busy boy from now on,” he said. “His ‘gofer’ days are over.” He rubbed his eyes; he must have felt drained. “A busy boy, but not a happy one,” he said.
He knelt beside my wheelchair.
“Not that he deserves to be happy,” he said. “He has a lot of paying back to do for all those forged checks.”
So that’s it, I thought. That’s his hold on Brian.
Max hissed scornfully.
“He was never very bright, was he?” he said.
“You know what I have in my safe, Padre? A contract signed by Brian.
“An agreement to assist me in the killing of his sister.”
I closed my eyes to shut it all away. I couldn’t bear these dreadful moments.
Max didn’t notice.
“I had to insist on it, of course,” he said.
He made a sound of dark amusement.
“After all,” he went on, “could I trust the word of a man who’d help murder his own sister?”
Oh, God, Max, God. I wanted to weep.
Max made an odd sound, and I opened my eyes to look at him
He was blinking his eyes. He closed them hard, then opened them again.
“I should have eaten something today,” he said. “That much brandy on an empty stomach isn’t good. But then, I have no appetite for food.
“Only for revenge,” he finished.
Now he saw the look on my face; I guess I wasn’t totally without expression.
“I know you think it was horrific what I did. It is. I admit it.
“But you never had this kind of motivation in your life.
“This kind of betrayal.”
His right hand jerked up as though he meant to strike Cassandra, even dead.
“You don’t know what she did to me,” he said.
“Made me think that it was because of illness that my eyesight was failing, my hearing failing, my hand dexterity failing, my ability to concentrate on stage failing.
“Even my ability to perform in bed,” he finished in a low, venom-ridden voice.
His breath was quickening, his teeth on edge.
“Illness,” he said. “That’s what she had me believing.
“When all the time it was her.
“Slowly poisoning me.”
I stared at him in sickened dread. Not that he could see it, but I felt it.
Poisoning him?
Max shuddered with rage.
“She thought she could do it indefinitely,” he said. “That I’d never find out.
&nbs
p; “A soupçon of arsenic in my tea each day. A smidgen of it in my soup, my wine, my salad dressing.
“Just enough to keep me functioning, but weak enough so she could get control of the act. Dispose of my resistance without actually becoming a murderess.”
He shouted at her suddenly, making me twitch.
“That’s what you planned, wasn’t it?” he said. “You stupid bitch! You’d have to have a live-in pharmacist to manage that! You were killing me, pure and simple!”
He shuddered again. “Control,” he murmured. “Control.”
The keystone of our professional and personal life.
How many times had I drummed The Delacorte Motto into his head?
“Do you understand now why I did it, Padre?” he asked, his voice controlled now.
I understand but can’t condone, I thought. You could have told the authorities. Poisoning is still a punishable crime.
But that was overlooking pride, and pride’s need for revenge.
And, being honest with myself, I could not say that, had the same thing been done to me in every respect, I would not have murdered for revenge also.
Like Adelaide, my Cara was an angel.
Had I been married to Cassandra, though …
I was taken from my darkened fantasy by Max’s voice.
“Well, now you know,” he said. “I regret, more than I can say, that you may have lost respect for me. But I do not regret the elimination of this adulterous, covetous, murderous bitch.”
Pushing to his feet, he walked to the fieldstone wall and pushed in the stone.
The machinery hummed, the freezer area began to close.
As it did, he glanced at it.
Stiffening with surprise, he started forward, then abruptly turned back and pushed in the stone again.
The machinery reversed itself; the freezer area began reopening.
Max moved over to it and stared at Cassandra.
What had he seen?
She hung motionless, her face a rigid, gray-white mask.
Max put on his glasses to look at her more closely.
What had he seen? My heartbeat slowly, heavily, was picking up momentum.
Max put his face closer to Cassandra’s.
An icy hand clamping hard over my pulsing heart.
And Max recoiling with a gasp of shock.
Cassandra’s right hand had twitched.
“No,” said Max. I doubt if he was aware of speaking as he stared at her.
The hand was still. Cassandra hung immobile.
No, I thought, my mind-voice like my son’s: incredulous, denying. It had only been a physical reaction. An involuntary muscle spasm caused by the contrast in temperatures between the room and the freezer.
It had to be.
Max swallowed dryly. Leaned in closer. Time stood still.
“If she isn’t dead yet,” he muttered.
He grimaced in fury.
“That idiot, Brian! If he’s bungled this!”
Outside, the storm was increasing now, the sound of rainfall like that of heavy wind. The room was sunless, filled with shadows. Turn on the light, said a voice in my mind. A voice I hadn’t heard for almost seventy years, that of a frightened boy.
Max was leaning in close. He had to know; I saw that. Closer and closer. He was very near the corpse’s face now.
A strangled gasp tore from his throat as Cassandra’s right hand, like a bloodless spider, jumped up, clutching at his jacket lapel.
I felt paralyzed by more than stroke effects now. I felt paralyzed with horror.
Max was slowly being drawn toward the corpse’s face. Closer.
Closer.
Hitchingly, Cassandra’s head raised up. No! a voice screamed in my mind.
Eyes staring, a gagging rattle in his throat, Max gaped at her.
The gray hand pulled him closer. Closer. Now his face was only inches from hers.
His breath choked off (with mine) as Cassandra’s bloodshot eyes sprang open.
For an instant, they were staring at each other (as I felt death by shock approaching).
Then, with a demented cry, Max yanked back, tearing free of the leprous hand.
He lost balance and staggered backward, crashing down with a cry of pain as his elbows struck the hardwood floor.
A frozen observer, I watched in terror.
Cassandra had begun to twitch, her mouth working like that of a fish out of water.
Max tried to stand, but couldn’t.
He pushed backward, staring at her.
Cassandra began to thrash against the rope like a frenzied animal.
Max watched, openmouthed, moans of impending madness pulsing in his throat.
The storm was increasing, thunder exploding in the sky, the darkened room sporadically illuminated as though blazing floodlights were being turned on, then off, lighting the hideous sight of Cassandra, eyes mad, pitching back and forth against the ropes.
Max tried again to stand. His legs would not support him.
Suddenly, he cried out, horrorstruck, as the rope pulled loose from one of the hooks and Cassandra’s body flung forward, toppling from the freezer area onto the floor in front of Max. He jerked back with a hollow cry.
He had to stand or lose his mind. Straining every muscle, he pushed up to his knees, then wavered to his feet.
He had barely made it when Cassandra, her face a stiffened, frost-caked mask, lurched clumsily to her feet and came at him.
Crying out again, Max twisted around and staggered toward the entry hall, barely able to move, his balance failing.
He reached the door and fell against it, turning the knob with a shaking hand.
The door was locked.
With a sob of mindless dread, he jerked around to face her.
She was walking toward him like a poorly controlled marionette, her movements jerky, her head flopping from side to side.
The storm was at its peak now, thunder crashing deafeningly, lightning bleaching the frozen whiteness of Cassandra’s face, her staring and unblinking eyes.
Shrieking with dread, Max lurched to his right to avoid her clutch, barely capable of movement.
He could go no more than several yards.
There, he collapsed to the floor, crying out in pain and horror.
He tried to stand, but couldn’t.
Glassy-eyed, he lay on his back as Cassandra moved at him, expressionless and staring.
Max had trouble breathing. He made choking noises in his throat as he gaped up at the hideous figure looming over him.
With the last of his strength, he summoned forth a shriek of maddened fright, then lay there mutely, staring up at Cassandra, beyond response.
She stopped and looked down at him.
Thunder detonated. The room was blanched by lightning.
Then the hall door was unlocked, and Cassandra entered.
chapter 26
You’ve read the phrase: His brain reeled, haven’t you? It’s a literal description, friends.
My brain reeled. The world had been upended. I could not think, only stare. Blankly.
As she’d come in, Cassandra had said (to Cassandra!), “That’s enough.”
And the corpse had looked around.
“That’s it?” she said. “You didn’t give me much time.”
“There was enough,” said living Cassandra.
“For you, maybe,” responded corpse Cassandra.
And pulled off her wig.
Brian in white makeup.
Max, unable to move, stared up at Brian.
As Cassandra exploded at her brother.
“What the hell was the idea of leaving me unconscious on the floor like that?” she demanded.
My brain mumbled What? Hadn’t that been Brian made up as Cassandra?
Brian had exploded back at his sister.
“What the hell else could I do?” he cried. “Obviously, he put too much drug in that dart. I tried to bring you around, but I couldn’t!
> “And there was no time!” he ranted on. “I had to hide Harry in the cellar underneath the burial-case apparatus! Put that rubber mask over his head! Telephone the Sheriff! Make sure you were ready! Get into makeup and your clothes again! Be ready to be hanging in that goddam freezer! I hardly had all afternoon, did I?”
She did not relent.
“I thought Harry was really dead!” she raged.
“Why?” He looked confused. “You knew Max’s plan! I told you every bit of it!”
“Well, I didn’t know that!” she responded. “I thought—”
He cut her off, twisting around to look at me. “Can’t we take him out of here?” he asked.
“Forget him!” she snarled. “He’s a cabbage!”
“He’s a helpless old man!” Brian cried.
“Wrong!” she said. “He’s a goddam encumbrance, and I can’t wait to get him out of here!”
(Merci, Cassandra. Stay as sweet as you are.)
“Jesus God,” she muttered angrily. “I had to go through that whole fucking charade thinking all the time that Harry was really dead.”
Her voice was loud again.
“It threw me off completely!” she stormed. “It was a nightmare! I did everything wrong! If it hadn’t been for Max’s failing eyesight and hearing—”
Brian scowled.
“What the hell’s the difference?” he said. “All’s well that ends well, right?” His tone was bitter.
Cassandra regarded him tensely, then managed to control her temper.
With a forced smile, she moved to him and kissed him several times on the lips, her hands on his cheeks.
They were not sisterly kisses.
Which, doubling my bafflement, added (in a moment’s time) an entirely new dimension to the lay of the land (if I may so refer to my daughter-in-law).
“Fool,” she said to him in a chiding voice.
She slapped him lightly on the cheek.
“Now put him in the freezer, then get out of here.”
He blew out a surrendering breath.
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured sadly.
Cassandra frowned at him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Everything is peachy.”
“You’re not going to fall apart on me now, are you?” she asked. She gave him a Cassandra look.
“No, I’m not,” he murmured.