Page 68 of Murder Will Out
Another voice, from a little behind:President of the Ladies’ Club. Head of the church board of directors. Prominent citizen. You pretended to love this island, its people. But it was a lie, all of it a lie.
She was still screaming; she tried to scream louder, but the voices cut right through, every word clear as a bell, slicing into her mind, shredding her hold on sanity.The islanders will know. They will know what you are. They will know what you did…
Finally, Effie’s voice, slack and slurred, coming from the half-destroyed mouth in front of her, exhaling the dust of the graveyard onto Patricia:You killed me. You held me while I struggled, till I stopped breathing. You did it with your own hands. Murderer. Murderer.
The other voices took up the chant, the same chant she had heard the day she had taken up the pillow and held it down over the ancient and peaceful face.Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.She could almost see the misty figures around her, feel them pushing her, crowding her in, taking her oxygen, taking her breath.Murderer. Murderer.Some part of her welcomed the pressing sense of suffocation, as though she knew she would never stop screaming as long as there was air in her lungs…
“Patty!” Audra grabbed Patricia’s arm and jerked the terrified woman around to face her.
Patricia’s scream cut off, subsiding into harsh whimpers, and she stood facing Audra.
The Effie ghost was gone. But Patricia was still gasping, sobbing, her body shaking hard enough to hurt her teeth.
Audra tried to calm Patricia, to take her in her arms, but with the first touch of the young woman’s hand to her face, Patriciapushed her away, sickened at what Audra had done, what they had done together. She stepped back, shaking her head, a distant and glassy look in her eyes. “No, I can’t,” she breathed in a voice hoarse from screaming. “I can’t. I can’t do it; I can’t be part of this anymore. I’m out. Leave me alone.” With that, Patricia walked to the front door, weakly grappling with the heavy bolts and doorknob.
“Patty, stop,” Audra pleaded.
Patricia did not stop; she fought with the bolt, sweat-slicked fingers unable to gain purchase. “This isn’t what I wanted,” she said, her voice low and trembling, “none of it. I wanted the house, that’s all. And then maybe a little payback for Hank. But this?” She shuddered. “All this death, all the bodies, the blood, oh God, the fire—”
“They deserved it,” Audra spat. “Cheating bastards, all of them. Talbot, his bitch wife, your man-whore husband—”
Patricia whirled to face her. “Susan Davis didn’t deserve it,” she said, her voice suddenly deadly calm.
Audra froze; tension crackled in the space between the women as Audra faced down the accusation in Patricia’s eyes. Then, without another word, Patricia turned back to the door and resumed wrestling with the bolt.
Audra returned, just as calmly, “That’s a lot of righteousness coming from the one who suffocated an old woman in her rocking chair, don’t you think?”
Patricia recoiled at that; but just then, the heavy bolt released and slid back. Patricia threw the door open and stood on the threshold, letting the tempest of wind and rain, with its familiar touch of sea salt, swirl over and around her as though in some strange baptism.
“Patty,” Audra said, regret and warning in her voice, “Patty, you know I can’t let you go. Don’t make me stop you.”
But Patricia was no longer listening. Even through the storm, she could see the skies beginning to lighten; night was ending,and the sun would come up soon. Another flash of lightning illuminated the woman’s face: resolute and oddly tranquil. Patricia stood in the massive arched doorway looking out at the maelstrom, hearing the thunder of the surf, and found herself unafraid. This was, of course, her island.
She gave Audra one last long look and calmly stepped through the doorway.
The crack of the gunshot jerked Patricia out of her fog and shock, though she was only half-aware of what it signified. Her brain tried to tell her feet to keep moving, but they failed her, and she sagged, first to her knees, then falling sideways to the wooden boards of the wide porch.
My gun, Patricia realized; Audra must have picked it up from where she had dropped it.How foolish of me, Patricia thought in a strange and merciful detachment.How foolish to have not predicted this.
Then the pain came, bubbling up from somewhere in her midsection and spreading, hot and greedy and yet somehow distant and hardly real, no realer than the accusing ghostly voices she had heard, than the creak of Effie’s chair rocking back and forth, back and forth.
But it was so dark. So cold. That was real. And the pain—the pain, after all, was real too.
Audra stood in the foyer, gazing out at the woman who lay struggling for air in a spreading pool of blood. Patricia was fading fast, but for the moment, she was still aware, her face a rictus of pain and panic as she weakly reached out to Audra, hands covered in her own blood, as though begging for mercy. Then the hands descended slowly to the wooden boards, drooping heavily as consciousness departed. Patricia lay still.
Audra had no mercy to offer her. “Sorry, Patty,” she whispered, though she knew her former lover could no longer hear her. “It was always going to end this way, but I would have preferred tomake it a little gentler for you.” She raised the gun and aimed for Patricia’s heart; one more shot, just to be sure.
Before she could fire, the heavy door slammed shut, seemingly of its own accord.
Audra told herself it had been the wind.
She knew it hadn’t been.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Willow had made it to the top of the spiral staircase and to the hidden door in the corner of the library by the time Patricia stopped screaming; she was out into the hallway before the first gunshot sounded.
She could not escape through the front door; Audra and Patricia were there, and she would be seen before she set foot on the staircase. Had one of them shot the other? Was she dealing with one or two killers now? There was no safe way to know. And besides, she wasn’t here to escape; she needed to find what Sue knew.Get you to my lady’s chamber, the note had said, and she still hadn’t found what it wanted her to learn.The servant passageways, Willow realized.There will be a set of stairs somewhere else, if I can find them.
