Cruel as the Grave (21 page)

Desperately though she tried, Maggie couldn't block Claudine’s words from her mind. Her mind leaped back and forth from question to question. Other people besides Lavinia had disliked Magnolia, if Claudine was to be believed, and Maggie had to admit now that Lavinia had had no more compelling motive to murder her sister than had other members of the household. Or had she?

Restless, Maggie wiggled around in the bed, never getting quite comfortable. She spent a miserable night, occasionally dozing for a brief spell, but always coming out of the doze before it turned into restful sleep. She gave up as the dawn began to penetrate into her room. Glancing at the clock, she saw with dull eyes that it was barely six o’clock. Pushing aside the bed covers, she decided she might as well get up and get dressed. The idea of an early morning walk appealed to her. Just getting out of the house for a little while would be refreshing.

Dressed in jeans, jersey, and tennis shoes, Maggie left her room and headed for the staircase. “I hope I can get out the front door without setting off an alarm,” she muttered to herself in the eerie, early-morning silence of the vast house. The hall was dimly lighted, but the light grew stronger as she approached the stairs. The sun coming through the large glass panels on either side of the front door would offer more than enough light for her to make her way down the stairs.

At the head of the staircase she jerked to a stop. The rising sun had indeed illuminated the stairs. Soft, glowing light poured in upon a scene which Maggie desperately wished were a bad dream. Moving carefully and quickly down the stairs, she stopped to kneel beside a nightgown-clad figure lying near the bottom. The lifeless head lay at a drunken angle on the bottom step.

Lavinia Culpeper was dead.

Chapter Fifteen

The blood pounded blindingly in her head as she stooped over Lavinia’s lifeless body, and for a moment Maggie feared she would faint. She sat down on the stairs next to the body and put her head between her knees. Her feelings of panic began to subside, and she lifted her head again, praying—vainly, she knew—that there would be no dead body in view.

Hastily Maggie averted her gaze from the eye which glared at her, even in death. Shaky, she stood up and moved down the stairs and around the body. Somewhat disoriented, she couldn’t think what to do next. “Phone,” she muttered aloud. There was a phone in the entertainment room.

Underneath the phone she found a list of house extension numbers similar to the one in her bedroom. Scanning the list, she found Adrian’s number and punched in the two digits, not stopping to analyze why she was turning to him, rather than to her father in this moment of crisis. The phone buzzed three times in her ear, then he answered with a gruff “hello.”

“Adrian,” Maggie said, her throat so dry she had to struggle to form the words. “Lavinia’s dead.”

“What the hell?” Adrian squawked into her ear. “Where are you?”

“She’s at the bottom of the front stairs. Can you come?”

“Of course! Be right there.” The phone clicked in Maggie’s ear.

She wanted to wait for Adrian where she was, but she chided herself for being foolish. She had nothing to fear from a dead body. Still, once she neared the stairs, she stayed to one side, where she wouldn’t have to look at Lavinia’s body.

Though the interval seemed much longer to Maggie, barely a minute passed before Adrian joined her. He came from somewhere behind her, and not down the stairs, so his room must be, she thought inconsequentially, in the back of the house. His hair rumpled, he was dressed in jeans and an old jersey which sported an Ivy League logo.

He knelt beside the body and felt for a pulse on the side of the neck. Getting no response, he stood up and walked back to where Maggie stood, around the corner of the stairs. The grim expression on his face frightened her a little. “This is insane!” he muttered.

Maggie nodded, and Adrian pulled her into his arms. But as she stood there, his arms around her, hers around him, she heard Claudine’s voice in her head. Awkwardly, Maggie pulled away, not looking at him.

“I’d better call the police,” he said, watching her in puzzlement. “Will you be okay?” Silently, she nodded. He moved toward the entertainment room, and she followed, unwilling to remain alone with the body. She waited nearby while he called the police.

After a brief conversation Adrian replaced the receiver in its cradle. “They’ll have someone here in a few minutes, and they’ll notify Latham also.”

Maggie shivered. “I hope no one else wakes up for a while. I wouldn’t want anybody else to walk into it the way I did.”

“Lavinia was usually the only one up this time of the morning.” Adrian shook his head. “She got up every morning at five-thirty. I think she liked to have the house to herself in the morning. I’m not usually up until six-thirty, and nobody else makes it down before seven-thirty or eight most mornings.” He made a move in her direction, but she stepped back, casually, and he stopped in his tracks.

“So,” Maggie said, forcing herself not to give in to the slightly hurt look on his face, “everyone knew she was always up early, and that this would be the perfect time to push her down the stairs without waking anybody else.”

“We don’t know that she was pushed,” Adrian pointed out gently. “Maybe she fell.” His voice trailed off as he observed the skeptical look on her face.

“An accident would be just too much of a coincidence right now, don’t you think?”

“You’re right. I guess,” Adrian conceded. “You need something warm to drink. Let’s go to the kitchen, and I’ll make you some hot chocolate, or coffee, or whatever you want.”

“Thanks,” Maggie replied. “That sounds like a good idea.” She followed him out of the room, seeing his shoulders slumped. She wanted nothing more than to reach out to him, to pull him close for comfort, for both their sakes, but Claudine’s poison had done its work.

Miserably, she trod down the hall behind him. She tried not to gape at the sight of the kitchen, which was three times the size of her own kitchen in Houston. Adrian seated her at a small table on one side of the room while he rummaged in the pantry for the instant hot chocolate mix, since Maggie expressed a preference for it rather than coffee.

The mix found and the water put on to boil, Adrian was about to sit down with her when a bell rang somewhere nearby. “Front door,” he explained, then insisted that she remain to fix her chocolate while he admitted the police.

Left in the solitude of the kitchen, decorated in cheerful yellow and pristine white, Maggie began to feel some distance from her grisly discovery. Once she left the warm confines of the kitchen, the oppressive feeling of fear would return, but for now she was determined to enjoy her few minutes of calm.

The water was boiling, and she stirred the powdered chocolate into a mug of the steaming liquid. The warmth of the mug comforted her, and she blew into it, taking a tentative taste. For a few precious minutes she sipped at her drink, letting the warmth spread through her body. Then Adrian appeared in the kitchen doorway and motioned for Maggie to follow him.

She caught up with him in the hallway. “Latham is on his way,” he told her. “The officer who’s in charge at the moment wants us to wake everyone and ask them to come down to the kitchen by the back stairs. Latham wants to question everyone as soon as possible.” He led her to the back stairs, which she had not known existed.

Emerging from the staircase on the second floor, Maggie paused for a moment to get her bearings, then realized that they were at the opposite end of the long hallway from her bedroom.

“I’ll wake Harold and your father,” Adrian said. “Why don’t you wake Ernie first, and ask her to help you with the others?” He pointed out Ernie’s bedroom. Maggie nodded and he left her.

Ernie answered Maggie’s knock promptly, unlocking the door to admit her young cousin. Maggie tried not to goggle at the elaborate silk kimono Ernie was wearing, but the garishly bright colors distracted her momentarily. Then, collecting her thoughts, she launched into a brief explanation, and Ernie, much to Maggie’s relief, didn’t waste time with needless questions. She offered to waken Retty and Claudine, while Maggie went to rouse Helena and Sylvia, Ernie having pointed out where the latter’s room was.

Some fifteen minutes later, the family had gathered in the kitchen. Shock, distress, distaste—these were some of the emotions Maggie identified in faces as she observed her family members. But no real sign of grief anywhere. Retty seemed to be taking it hardest of all. Her skin was chalky white, and Maggie feared she would collapse at any moment. Sylvia sat next to her grandmother at the kitchen table, gently rubbing one of the old woman’s hands in her own and urging her to drink the hot chocolate Maggie had provided. With trembling hands Retty lifted the cup to her lips and drank while her eyes darted around the room.

Gerard stood over the burbling coffeemaker. Maggie reached an arm around his waist. “Are you okay?” she asked.

He smiled grimly. “I should be asking you that. I’m still in such a daze I haven’t even stopped to think how you’re feeling.” He returned her hug, so strongly that Maggie had to pull slightly away from him. As she looked into his face, she saw tears in his eyes.

“Lavinia could be a great aggravation,” he whispered, “but she didn’t deserve that.” He drew a shaky breath. “When I was a child, she’d play games with me for hours on end. Later on, we grew apart, but I’ve never forgotten how much I loved her when I was small.”

Maggie felt tears prick at her eyelids. Thus far she had managed to avoid thinking about Lavinia’s death in personal terms, but now that someone was demonstrating actual grief at the woman’s death, the sadness of the situation touched her. To die with so little regret expressed at one’s passing was very sad indeed.

Arthur Latham chose that moment to appear, and the first person he wanted to question, naturally, was the one who had discovered the body. Maggie followed him out of the kitchen, casting a shy glance back at Adrian, who smiled uncertainly at her.

Latham had chosen Henry McLendon’s study again as his base of operation. He motioned Maggie into a chair and, with no preliminaries, asked her to describe the events of the morning.

“Well,” she began slowly, “I didn’t sleep very much last night, so when I could see that the sun was coming up, I thought I might as well get up and get dressed. I glanced at the clock and it was just a minute or two past six. It took me only a couple of minutes to get dressed, and then I headed for the stairs. I was going to go out for a walk around the house—anywhere, so long as it was out.” She drew a deep and steadying breath. “When I reached the top of the stairs I looked down, and there was a body lying sprawled across the steps near the bottom of the staircase. For a moment I was so shocked I couldn’t focus, and I didn’t realize who it was—except that it was a woman—until I got closer.”

Latham nodded as Maggie paused. She clasped her hands together in her lap and continued. “I knelt down beside... her, and I could tell that she was dead, her head was at such a strange angle. Then I thought I was going to faint, so I sat down beside... beside the body and put my head between my knees. When the dizziness passed I got up and tried to think what to do next. The only thing I could think of was ‘phone,’ so I went into the entertainment room and called Adrian. He came and looked at the body, then we went back to the phone to call the police. After that, we waited in the kitchen until some of your men arrived. Adrian said that Lavinia was usually the only one up this early, so we just left everything the way we found it... er... her till the police got here.”

“You didn’t hear anything? Nothing—a scream, say—woke you up?” Latham asked.

“No,” Maggie replied. “That’s the strangest thing about it all. I wasn’t sleeping very soundly. But my room is quite a way down the hall from the staircase. Even if she had screamed, I might not have heard anything.”

“You’re probably right. Well, we certainly do appreciate your presence of mind for not disturbing anything,” Latham responded. “Although I know it would have been a terrible shock for anyone else to come along and stumble across what you yourself did.” He stood up. “I think that will do for now, Miss McLendon. We may ask you to sign a statement later, of course.”

Maggie remained seated, and Latham eyed her curiously. “If you don’t mind, sir, I have a question.”

Frowning, he sat down. “Okay, but there’s no guarantee I can—or will—answer it.”

She nodded impatiently. “Of course. My question is this— is there any way that Lavinia’s death was nothing but an accident?” She herself didn’t believe it, but she wanted to hear an expert opinion.

Latham watched her for a moment before answering. “There’s always a chance in a situation like this, but from what I saw I think an accident was highly unlikely.”

“Why?”

Latham shrugged. “The gown she’s wearing is only ankle length, so I doubt she tripped over it. Ditto for the short housecoat she’s wearing. Her slippers have the kind of soles that don’t slip too easily on any surface. Now, she could have lost her balance somehow. I know she suffered from high blood pressure, and maybe she suffered a stroke at the top of the stairs.” He shrugged again. “That’s a distinct possibility, and we won’t know for sure until the coroner takes a look at everything. But it just doesn’t look like an accident to me. Satisfied?”

Maggie ignored the ironic tone of his question. “Do you think she was murdered?” she asked.

Latham clearly didn’t quite know what to make of her insistent questioning. With exasperation in his voice, he replied, “It’s a distinct possibility, I’d say, since one murder has already taken place in this very house. Do you think it was murder?”

Uncomfortably she nodded. The moment she had been anticipating had come. “Yes,” she responded flatly, “I do.”

“And why, pray tell?” Latham was rapidly losing patience with her, but Maggie's answer quelled his unrest.

“Because my grandmother was murdered in the same way twenty-five years ago.”

“What?” Latham nearly leaped out of his chair. “I think you have a little explaining to do.” He settled back in his chair to listen.