Chapter 2
I wish Emma wouldn't amuse herself with her cousin, Maggie thought. I don't worry about Duncan. He's only getting what he deserves. Andrea will be the one hurt if she finds out.
Andrea had lodged her in the guest house, a small green cottage across the terrace at the other side of the house. She had a week of rest and recuperation, away from the hustle and bustle of the world. The Howe estate sat amid misty blue hills and quiet pine woods. Wide verandahs with majestic columns, long windows, boxed paths through the flower gardens and a laid back Southern ambiance graced the manor.
Andrea was a perfect hostess, but now Maggie had to face the reality that her vacation was coming to an end. She hated to leave the tranquility of the remote estate, but a guest ought to have sense enough to know when to leave. Besides, she had a book to finish and the mountains of Colorado were calling her.
Bradford, Andrea's younger brother, returned that afternoon, followed shortly by Duncan Crane and his wife Emma. The house itself had not changed physically, but the arrival of the other guests drastically changed the atmosphere.
A voice beyond the green velvet curtains called impatiently, "Emma! Emma!"
Maggie curled her arms around her knees and sat quietly. Idiot, she thought as Bradford's voice rang through the house. Can't you see what you're doing to your sister? Your infatuation with Emma is going to cause trouble one of these days. Probably sooner than later.
She could see him without looking-his red hair, lithe young body and impatient, thin face. For untold generations, the Howe men had been red-haired, gallant, quick-tempered, reckless, abysmally stupid and selfish. And Bradford had accepted the mold without question.
Dinner had been an unpleasant affair, and Maggie had to endure at least another hour before she could take her leave gracefully and retire to the guest cottage. The dinner conversation floated back into her memory. They had been talking of duck hunting-a safe enough topic, one would think, in the north Georgia hill country.
The talk had veered-through Emma-to a stableman one of the Howes shot and killed. It happened a long time ago, had been all but forgotten, and had nothing to do with the present generation of Howes. Andrea turned white and said hurriedly it had been a dreadful accident. Bradford laughed and said the Howes always shot first and inquired afterwards. He went on to say that he always kept a loaded revolver in the top drawer of the buffet.
"Emma?" Bradford said as he yanked back the drapes. His flushed face fell when he discovered Maggie in the window seat in her pretty lace gown. "Oh," he said. "I thought you were Emma."
The others trailed from the hall into the living room. Maggie thought how the atmosphere suddenly seemed tense and unpleasant!
Bradford turned away and vanished. Tyson Smithfield strolled across the room with Andrea on his arm. He looked at Maggie and smiled affably.
"Maggie Hart," he said. "Watching the moonlight, quietly planning murder." He shook his head and turned to Andrea. "I simply don't believe you, Andrea. If this young woman writes anything, which I doubt, it's gentle little poems about roses and moonlight."
Andrea smiled faintly and joined them.
George, his black face shining, brought in a large, solid silver tray with the coffee service. Duncan Crane appeared in the doorway, dark and bulky and hot-looking in his dinner coat. He lingered a moment to glance along the hall and then came into the room.
"If Maggie writes poetry, it is her secret," Andrea said lightly. "You are quite wrong, Tyson." The large amethyst ring she wore flashed with purple light as she took a fragile old cup and began to pour from the tall silver coffee pot. "She writes murders," she said. "Lovely, grisly ones, with sensible solutions. Sugar, Tyson? I've forgotten."
"One. But isn't that for Miss Maggie?" Tyson said with a bland smile.
He had arrived late to discuss business with Andrea, and had not had time to dress for dinner. He was a gray man, given to dressing in gray.
"Coffee, Duncan?" asked Andrea. She handled the delicate china with a deft touch.
Duncan Crane stirred, turned his heavy dark face toward the hall again, saw no one, and took the coffee from Andrea's lovely hand. Andrea avoided looking directly into his face. Maggie had noticed that Andrea frequently avoided looking at him. She wondered why.
"Sensible solutions," Tyson mused thoughtfully. "Do murders have sensible solutions?"
His question hung in the air. Andrea did not reply, and Duncan did not appear to hear it.
Maggie said, "They must have. After all, people don't murder just to murder."
"Just for the fun of it, you mean?" said Tyson, tasting his coffee. "No, I suppose not. Well, at any rate, it's nice to know your interest in murder is not a practical one."
He probably thinks he's making light and pleasant conversation, Maggie thought. Strange that he doesn't notice that the word murder falls like a heavy stone in this room.
She started to wrench the conversation to another channel when Emma and Bradford entered from the hall. Bradford was laughing and Emma was smiling. He held her hand, swinging it as if to suggest a kind of coarse camaraderie. Duncan watched them with a scowl. Except for Bradford's laugh, a heavy pall of silence hung over the room.
They've probably been in the garden again, Maggie said to herself. Isn't screwing Duncan's wife nearly in his presence bad enough? Does he have to rub the man's nose in it?
Emma's eyelids were starkly white and heavy over shallow, dark eyes. Her straight black hair was parted in the middle and pulled severely backward to a knot on her rather fat white neck. Her mouth was deeply crimson.
She had been christened Emma, for Emma Bovary, by a romantic mother, and tried to live up to the name ever since.
Or down, Maggie thought tersely. She wished she could take Bradford by his large, outstanding ears and shake him.
Emma turned toward a chair and Maggie saw grass stains on the back of her dress. Duncan also saw the stain across his wife's buttocks. He couldn't miss it. Everyone in the room saw it.
"Coffee, Emma?" said Andrea
Maggie set her cup down carefully and said, "Andrea, darling, will you excuse me, please? I have some writing to do."
"Of course." Andrea hesitated. "I'll go along with you to the cottage."
"Don't let us keep you, Andrea," said Emma lazily.
Andrea turned to Tyson and neatly forestalled a motion on his part to accompany her and Maggie.
"I won't be long, Tyson," she said firmly. "When I come back, we'll talk."
A clear little picture etched itself on Maggie's mind. The long, lovely room with the mellow little areas of light under lamps here and there. Emma Crane's yellow satin gown-with a big green splotch across her broad ass. Bradford Howe's red head and slim body. Duncan Crane, a heavy, silent figure, watching them broodingly. Tyson Smithfield, neat and gray and affable. Andrea with her gleaming red head held high on her slender neck, walking lightly and gracefully amid soft mauve chiffons. Halfway across the room, she paused to accept a cigarette from Tyson. She bent to the small flare of a lighter he held for her, and the amethyst on her finger caught the flickering light and shone.
Maggie and Andrea had crossed the flagstone verandah and turned toward the cottage. Their slippered feet made no sound in the velvet grass. The sweet fragrance of the flowers hung heavy in the cool night air.
"I forgot how cool the summer nights are," Maggie said.
"Our little hills don't compare to your Colorado mountains, but our altitude here does make a difference." Andrea paused and looked toward the lily pond in the distance. "Did you hear the bullfrog last night?" she asked. "He seems to have taken a permanent residence in the lily pond. I don't know what to do about him. Bradford says he'll shoot him, but I don't want that. He is a nuisance, of course, bellowing away half the night. But after all, he's only doing what bullfrogs do."
"Andrea," said Maggie, trying not to be abrupt," I must go soon. I have work to do.. . . "
Andrea stopped at the gap in the laurel hedge and turned to face Maggie. "I understand, honey," she said gently. "I didn't expect the Cranes. In fact, I never expected to see Emma again."
A sound checked Maggie's reply, an unexpectedly eerie sound like a wail. It rose and swelled amid the moonlit hills. Maggie gasped.
"The dogs howling at the moon again," Andrea said.
"They are not exactly cheerful. It emphasizes.. . . " Maggie checked herself, on the verge of saying that it emphasized their isolation.
Andrea turned in at the path. It was darker there, and her cigarette made a tiny red glow. "If Emma drops another cigarette into a flower, I'll kill her," she said quietly.
"What?"
"I said I'll kill her," said Andrea. "I won't, of course. But she.. .oh, you've seen how things are, Maggie. You can't have failed to see. She took Duncan, years ago. Now, she's playing her dirty little games with Bradford."
Maggie was thankful that she couldn't see Andrea's face. She mumbled something about infatuation and Bradford's youth.
"He's twenty-one," said Andrea. "No younger than I was when Duncan.. .when Duncan and I were to be married. That was why Emma was here-to be a guest at the wedding and all the parties." They walked on for a few quite steps, then she added, "They ran away together the day before the wedding."
"Can't you send them away?"
"Bradford would follow."
"I don't know what Tyson's relationship is, but maybe he could talk to Bradford."
"Bradford wouldn't listen. Opposition makes him stubborn. Besides, he doesn't like Tyson. He's borrowed too much money from him. And Duncan, for that matter."
It wasn't like Andrea to be bitter. One of the dogs howled again and the others joined the eerie chorus. Maggie shivered.
"You're cold," Andrea said. "Run along inside. Thanks for listening. And.. .I think you'd better go, honey. I meant to keep you for comfort. But.. . . "
"No, I'll stay a while longer. I didn't know.. . . "
"Don't be nervous about being alone. The dogs would know if a stranger set foot on the place. Good night."
Andrea startled-shocked?-Maggie by kissing her lightly on the lips, then was gone.
Maggie put on a long white T-shirt, with cats on the front, her standard sleepwear. She had a half-dozen of the shirts that she wore only in bed.
The snug, warm, tranquil guest cottage unsettled rather than calmed her. Watching
Bradford and the girl fuck in the bushes reminded her how long it had been since she'd fucked. She got in bed and picked up her book. A mystery, of course. She liked to see how other authors handled her area of expertise.
She often wished for more sex in the books she read. She didn't know where to buy those books. In the matter of writing and touting and selling books, she was wise to the ways of the world. In personal matters, she felt she still had so much to learn.
She derived only fleeting satisfaction from the fact that she became drowsy reading a rival author's book. She put down the book and turned off the light.