Son of the Endless Night, page 10
Rich thought about Windross. His skin still itched from the rash of frustration and humiliation he'd suffered in the burned-out wing of the Post Road Inn. He had decided it was useless to try to get information from Windross, who had everything to hide at this point; any attempt to do so would land him in the Chadbury jail, possibly initiating a legal hassle he could do without. Nor would that help Polly.
When he emerged from the coffee shop the sun was vanishing in a thick overcast and a biting wind was on the rise, scouring the village with loose particles of snow. More snow seemed to be on the way from the west. He retraced the route to the T-cross and began systematically to explore all the back roads within a ten-mile radius. There were a lot of them, and many houses set well back in the countryside, marked only by the roadside presence of frequently anonymous mailboxes. Numerous driveways were impassable to his low-slung Porsche. He had to leave the car as close to the side of the road as he could and slog on foot to the doorways.
No. No. Don't know her. Never heard of any Cordways. Not around here. Sorry.
Deep snow on the ground, flurries in the air, dreary woodlots, the tang of woodsmoke on the wind, the skies by three o'clock almost to treetop level and blackening. Because of the numbing cold there were no loose dogs in these backwoods. His only blessing. More pallid faces and suspicious appraisals behind steamed-up storm windows, faces gathered around a wood-burning stove in an isolated general store. Postmasters and mistresses shaking their heads.
And finally:
"I did hear of some Cordways over to Ripington Four Corners. But come to think of it, they spelled it with a u and an e on the end. Courdewaye. That help you?"
Seventeen miles to Ripington Four Corners. Snow coming down in the early dusk. The post office again, a white frame structure across from the Congregational Church. They'd closed for the day. There was a light on in the mailroom in back, a hunched figure moving deliberately behind the opaque glass in the door. By insistent knocking Rich raised a clerk, a rheumy octogenarian wearing a soiled blue government-issue apron. He let Rich in only after a careful examination of Rich's Register press credentials.
"Courdewayes? Yes, sir. Courdewayes lived here for, I'd say a hundred and fifty years."
"Inez Cordway," Rich said eagerly. "Do you know where I can find her?"
"Lived here, is what I said. Haven't been any Courdewayes around for, oh, it's been since right after the war."
"Which war?"
"War Two," the old man said, lighting a tacky-looking briar pipe.
Rich carefully described Inez Cordway. The clerk listened with an occasional solemn nod, blue smoke around his head.
"About what age would you say?"
"Mid-forties."
"Uh-huh. Sounds to me like Matt Courdewaye's youngest, Leslie. But nobody could be that well-preserved. She was twenty-two, twenty-three years old when the war ended. So we're talking about a woman of sixty-some, if she was alive."
"What do you mean?"
"That's a question mark. You see, Leslie ran off with a war hero, name of Dunstan, Major Michael Dunstan, right after he returned home from the European theater. That was, I recollect, in the fall of 1945. She took him away from his wife and three small children, and off they went. There was a mighty big scandal. Her family, they were the last of the Courdewayes, disowned Leslie; then bad luck just seemed to happen to all of them. Matt was run over in the road that winter, and his wife died of cancer Maundy Thursday of the following year. The others, Leslie's brothers and sisters, moved away one after the other. And you might guess Leslie and her war hero didn't live happily ever after. He was gone off in the head from the fightin'; battle fatigue they called it. Treated her badly, couldn't hold a steady job. They hopped around the country, wound up south of the border. Down Mexico way. Things really went .to pot there. If you know what I mean."
"Not really."
"Pot. Isn't that what you young people call it? Mary-ju-wanna."
"Oh— sure."
"Leslie and Michael fell in with a bad group of people in Mexico. All of them goin' to hell in a handbasket. Crazed by narcotics and orgies. Seems that Leslie had a couple of children along the way, but she wasn't much of a mother. A case of total neglect. And her husband's mental condition went from bad to worse. She must have been unbalanced herself. What I hear happened, she took his service revolver and shot him and both of the youngsters in the head, then poured gasoline over them and set them all on fire."
"Good Lord."
"Nothin' heard from Leslie since. I expect she died down there in some hovel, sellin' her body to live, needles every day. That's the end of her sad story, but I guess there's a point to it. Can't be Leslie Courdewaye you're lookin' for."
"No, I'm sure it isn't. But it may be some other member of the family— you said several of them moved away."
"Far as I know, none of the Courdewayes have been back for even a single day."
"Where did they live?"
"Cutler Road. You turn right at the fire station, about two and three-quarter miles on to the house. Brick. Three big chimneys. House sits back from the road below a knoll so that about all you can see, winter or summer, is the tops of the chimneys."
"Is the house abandoned?"
The old clerk snorted. "Fine property like that? The Gannaways bought it in '49. New York people. His son uses the house now, every summer and sometimes durin' the holidays."
"But the house is empty now."
A nod. "Avery Myatt looks after the place. He'd have told me if he was expectin' them to come up from the city."
"Well— I guess I have the wrong Courdewayes."
"Appears to be."
Rich got back into his snow-covered Porsche and followed the postal clerk's directions to the house that Courdewayes had built and lived in for generations. Even though he'd been warned about the low visibility of the homestead, he nearly missed the chimneys in the deepening dark and heavy snow.
He was forced to continue on for another quarter of a mile before finding a place to turn around; then he returned at a crawl behind a bulky snowplow. The driveway of the Courdewaye place angled uphill through a rock wall and a wooden gate locked open by drifts. The drive was steep but packed down; it looked as if several cars had driven in or out during the afternoon, one as recently as ten minutes ago: the treadmarks were only a little blurred by the new fall of snow.
Rich idled in front of the driveway, cautious, for no reason he could readily define, about following any recent arrivals to the house. The story he'd heard from the gossipy clerk had stuck in his mind.
She took his service revolver and shot him and both of the youngsters in the head.
Logically there could be no connection between the benighted Leslie Courdewaye and the woman who had confronted him in the bar last night, but his daylong search for her had left him tired and on edge. What if he had finally tracked her down? Her warning to him had been explicit: Don't interfere. He didn't believe Inez Cordway's bullshit explanation of Polly's travail, not for a moment, but obviously the woman was deadly serious, possibly demented and therefore a danger to both Polly and himself. And of course there were others potentially as dangerous: Cordway's followers. Rich knew he had no reason to go to the police at this point— assuming she was in the house— but it wouldn't pay to recklessly show up at the front door demanding to see her.
He needed to find a place for his Porsche where it wouldn't block someone's driveway or be half-buried by the plows on the state road. After hunting for a quarter of an hour he parked the car close to the side wall of a gas station-market that had closed. It was at least half a mile from the Courdewaye house and there was nowhere to walk but in the slippery road. Fortunately only a few cars came along.
Most of the drivers stopped to offer him a ride. One did not, and he was forced to leap into the snow above his knees at the side of the road to keep from being hit. The car was a late-model Oldsmobile, with several passengers. He thought at least two of them looked back. He was wearing a knit seaman's cap pulled low over his ears, and the lower part of his face was muffled in a wool scarf, but not knowing who they might be, he kept his face averted.
Rich barely noticed the cold, the difficult footing. He was awash in adrenaline, having convinced himself that, with every step, he was getting closer to Polly Windross. The coincidence of names, the evidence of activity at a house that normally was closed in winter: this had to be Inez Cordway's— and Polly's— hideaway.
His suspicions were heightened as he approached the house along the rutted drive. A few mullioned windows were faintly alight, two chimneys were smoking, and several cars, including the Olds that had missed him by inches on the road, were pulled up in front. The Courdewaye house was atypical for the region: it was an expensive brick-and-slate reproduction of an eighteenth-century English manor, large enough to have twenty rooms. There were walled gardens, the outlines of which were barely discernible in snow, a frozen pond behind the house, huge birches and copper beeches in stately clumps on the grounds.
Two detached buildings mimicked the style of the main house. One was a guest cottage, the other a garage.
No concealment was possible, but in the snow and the dark he doubted if anyone watching casually from the windows of the house could see him coming. Nevertheless he followed the left-hand bend of the drive toward the garage and away from the front door.
When he reached the garage he brushed snow from a pane of glass in the door and peered inside between cupped hands. When his eyes adjusted to the blackness he could make out the fifties-fantasy, rocketlike tail assembly of the old Cadillac.
This confirmation of the end of his quest left Rich feeling more grim than elated. The hard part was about to begin, and he was less sure of himself than he had been earlier. The house had looked formidable, barring easy entry, and it was obvious that Inez Cordway had a lot of company.
"As long as you're here," the woman said behind him, "you may as well come in and have supper with us."
20
Rich whirled in shock. Inez Cordway was standing only a few feet from him, the wind whipping her long dark skirt and the loose cowl of the cable-knit coat sweater she was wearing. Just to her right stood a large dog with the narrow frame and curved back of a wolfhound, although in coloring he was either dark brown or black. In spite of a coat as thick as a woolly mammoth's the dog was shuddering. Its slanted yellow eyes, fixed on Rich, were pale but alight, like burning tallow.
"I— I've been— "
"You have spent most of your day looking for me," she said resignedly. "Yes, I know all about that. You're a tenacious sort. That's to your credit. But you don't listen very well. Perhaps you should have trusted my judgment."
"Is Polly here?" Rich demanded.
"Yes. She is."
"Well— s-show her to me."
"Suppose you come inside. We can't talk if we're freezing. Hugo!"
The shaggy hound turned eagerly back to the house. Inez Cordway waited until Rich fell into step behind her. Her hands were in the pockets of the coat sweater. Despite the wind and the snow Rich smelled her pungent, tropical perfume.
"Miserable weather," she said, with a faint pucker of distaste. "One becomes accustomed to it, if one must. I was born in this house. But it's been many years since I lived in Vermont."
"You don't live here now?"
"Mexico."
His misgivings crystallized as dread, sharp as bits of glass flooding the chambers of the heart.
"Then you're— "
"I was Leslie Courdewaye. That was a lifetime ago."
He thought he saw a smile within the cowl, a saturnine gleam of gold. "What have you heard about me in town?"
"The postal clerk— "
"Jud Sweeny. That old fool. But they're all fools here. I assure you, I never shot my husband. We were devoted to each other, to the life we found in Paracuaro."
"What about your ch-children, are they— "
"They died years ago, of natural causes. Do you never run out of questions?" But she said it good-humoredly.
Rich's teeth were chattering; he felt frail in the full bore of the storm, a cage of bones.
"Wh-why did you c-come back to Vermont?"
"I was chosen," she said cryptically, as they reached a side door of the brick house, a small porch roofed in copper, latticework covered in creeper vine on two sides. From inside the house Rich heard voices, a burst of male laughter, and music: something symphonic, a riotous tarantella from a popular opera, but his brain was as numb as his face, he couldn't recall which opera. The quivering dog edged in between them and disappeared through a pet port before Inez could open the door.
"It ssss-sounds like a celebration," Rich said.
"Not at all. We have nothing to celebrate. Nor do we have a reason to mourn. Yet."
Inside there was, unexpectedly, candlelight, the lovely aroma of a feast in the making that had Rich's mouth watering in seconds. They had entered the house by way of a small mudroom off the kitchen. The dog shoved his way through a swinging door and Rich had a glimpse of bright copper and stainless steel, island work areas surfaced in hard maple, cooks and maids hard at work in an amiable clatter and wisps of steam. He saw a golden roast pig with a baked apple in its mouth, fruit pies lined up to cool. His apprehension was vulnerable to this homely bustle. No danger here.
Inez Cordway sat down on a bench to pull off her boots. The dog was sent out of the kitchen and whined at her; she rubbed behind his ears and looked up helplessly at Rich.
"Could you give me a hand?"
Rich helped her off with the boots. She stood unexpectedly short in her black-stocking-covered feet. Rich stamped off most of the snow from his own boots.
"This way. Hugo, stay."
Rich followed her up a short flight of steps to the butler's pantry, where an elderly man in a pinstriped vest was decanting wine, again by candlelight.
"Doesn't the electricity work?"
"Of course it works. I like candles."
The long dining room table was set for sixteen guests. The china looked old and expensive, the tablecloth was aged ivory lace, an immense feat of hand needlework. Inez paused to finger the material.
"Spanish,", she said to Rich. "From the royal household of Aragon in the sixteenth century."
"When can I see Polly?"
Inez tilted her head, darkly disapproving of his impatience. The scar low on her right cheek was an ever-present ghostly smile.
"Polly is sleeping. She needs her rest. The ordeal has nearly worn her out. She's just a child, you know."
"Ordeal? God, you don't mean she's been beaten again!"
"Beaten?" Inez said, as if the conversation had taken a turn she couldn't follow.
"She was cut!" Hostility flared in Rich's face as he stared at the woman. Her self-righteous attitude— she needs her rest. But Inez had been with Polly; if she hadn't actually administered the whipping herself, she was just as guilty as the rest of them. "The cuts bled— they were infected. Did you get her a doctor?"
Inez took a step toward Rich, thrusting her face close to his.
"You must not be confused." Her tone was low, firm. Rich's face reddened more, but he felt a tingle of fear. "What you think you saw, heard, touched, in fact did not exist. It was only an illusion. The real Polly Windross is here. And I assure you, no one has beaten her."
The surge of blood to Rich's head was making him dizzy and ill. He had to sort out her words one at a time hoping to make sense of them. He thought of Polly and decided Inez was either lying or insane.
"Show her to me!"
"You may not give me orders in my house."
She touched him lightly, stiff fingers against his breastbone; the weight of her authority, irresistible, seemed centered there. Rich leaned against a high-backed chair. He licked his parched lips. The clear image he had of Polly in her bondage melted at the edges, blurred as if the flame of a candle had burned through the center of his vision. His tongue was numb with cold, uncertainty. Her gaze was unrelenting, pinning him in place like a moth on the crimson velvet of the chair.
"I— I'm sorry. ... I can't. . . I j-just don't know what to make of all this."
Inez became less rigid; she stood back, her eyes softening, little crinkles at the corners.
"Of course not. You came for enlightenment. And you will have it, at the proper time."
"I only want to help Polly," Rich insisted.
Inez swelled with a sigh and turned away. "I doubt that you can." She hesitated, then took him by the elbow. "Come with me anyway. Meet the others. Have something to drink, and relax. Then we can decide."
Rich accompanied her from the dining room, down a hall past a graceful spiral staircase to the den, where the music was, and a leaping fire that illuminated some vaguely familiar faces. Inez smiled grandly at their entrance, presenting him.
"I would like for all of you to meet Richard Devon."
A sudden silence that, for some reason, unnerved him. He received curious, if not penetrating, glances. Then Rich made the rounds with Inez, shaking hands. He remembered only a few of the names he heard. Jim Seaclare. Andrew Tyding. Rose Benidorm. But his nerves were anesthetized by their ordinariness: some of them, he was sure, had been a part of the exorcism conducted in the burned-out wing of the inn. The friends of Inez Cordway were in their forties and fifties. No one was conspicuously fat or thin, handsome or ugly. The men were a little gray, the women plumping up at the chinline. Everyone had a drink and some of the guests had a nice glow on. He was properly greeted, then largely forgotten.
Rich was offered a glass of red wine by a maid who was wearing a little starched cap and a black and white uniform with a lot of frills. Inez had left him momentarily to chat with another couple. The wine was dry and too redolent of earth, not fruit, a disappointing bouquet. A cabinet clock against the wall opposite him was chiming: it was seven thirty. Already. He felt a poignant wrench, a sense of dislocation at the disappearance of the day. Rich stared into the flames of the hearth, just now able to control the chills that had racked him, feeling the warmth of the house beginning to seep into his bones. The glow of two dozen tapers placed around the paneled room was easy on his smarting eyes.
