Shelter From the Storm - A Ghost Story for Christmas, Page 2
Barrymore Tebbs
– no bother at all,” Violet chirped. “You have no idea how thrilled we are to be blessed with your unexpected company. What will it be, Mr. Spradlin – tea or eggnog?”
“Tea will be nice.”
Miss Amanda disappeared into the dark room beyond, and when she returned she had a fifth of Evan Williams cradled in her arms. She stroked the neck of the bottle as tenderly as one would an infant’s cheek. “Something to warm the bones, Mr. Spradlin?”
“Thank you – not just yet.”
Violet poured a cup of tea and I sat down by the fire and sipped. It was Earl Gray, strong and hot. Violet handed me a delicate china plate with a red frosted gingerbread man. She clapped her hands when she saw my smile.
I nibbled at the cookie and sipped my tea. “Delicious.”
“Shall I play something on the piano?” said Violet.
“That would be lovely,” I said. Miss Amanda warned me with a sharp glance, but too late. Not only were the piano keys discordant, but the poor woman couldn’t carry a tune if she had a bucket with a lid on it. She attempted to sing “What Child Is This?” but the minor key got the best of her. I winced. Miss Amanda came to my rescue.
“Perhaps later, dear. I’m sure Mr. Spradlin would enjoy a bit of conversation instead of your caterwauling on that thing.
Violet sulked but obeyed her mother.
“Now then, Mr. Spradlin,” said Miss Amanda, “why don’t you tell us a little something about yourself.”
I took a sip of tea. “There’s not much to tell. I was born and raised in Kentucky but have made my home in Memphis these past ten years.”
“What business are you in?”
“I am a real estate broker.”
Violet bristled in her chair. “You must make a lot of money!”
I lowered my eyes. “I live comfortably.”
“What sort of car do you drive?”
“A brand new 1952 red and white Buick Roadmaster,” I said proudly.
Miss Amanda said, “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“It must be a newer model, Mama.”
“Would you like to see it? It’s stuck in a ditch at the end of your lane.”
“Perhaps in the morning we shall talk a walk out to see it.”
“Are you a married man?” asked Violet.
“Don’t pry, Violet. It’s not becoming of a lady.”
“As a matter of fact, I am engaged,” I said, although it was not entirely true. I’d had a number of girlfriends since leaving college. Girls are always attracted to a man with a flashy car and an expensive wardrobe. Girls these days are all about appearances and I had yet to find one I wanted to settle down and raise a family with.
“She must be a lovely girl,” said Violet, yet I saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face. Surely she had no interest in me. She was nearly twice my age! “Tell us more about this lucky young lady.”
I tugged at the collar of my shirt. Miss Amanda said, “If the man wants to relate the details of his personal life, I’m certain he will oblige us.”
“I was engaged once,” Violet said with a sigh, “to Hoyt Truitt. How my life would have been different if he had lived.”
“How different it would have been for all of us,” said her mother.
I set my teacup on the table beside my chair. “Hoyt is dead?”
Two sets of eyes turned their wet gaze upon me.
“I’m sorry. I thought you said you were expecting him.” You can imagine my confusion.
“We are expecting him, Mr. Spradlin,” said Miss Amanda. “We live in hope that one day we will hear a car coming up the drive and when we look out the window, Hoyt Truitt will come bounding onto the porch.”
I was at a loss for words. Miss Amanda gazed at her folded hands in her lap. Violet dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. A log cracked in the fireplace.
I took the bait. “How did he die?”
“He was the most handsome, loving man –” Violet began.
“He loved. Indeed he did,” said her mother.
“He loved me,” Violet insisted.
“He was engaged to you, but he loved another.”
“Don’t listen to her,” said Violet. “There were always wild rumors about Hoyt. There always are with men as handsome as he. Some women are so overcome with jealousy they will say anything to ruin another’s happiness.”
“And some women refuse to face the truth,” said Miss Amanda. “It’s true Hoyt was once engaged to my daughter, but she was not the one he loved.”
Violet lashed out at her mother. “He never loved you. He loved me, not you.”
Miss Amanda clucked her tongue, a mother hen disgusted with the naivety of her child. “You know nothing of love. It was a woman Hoyt wanted, not a simpering schoolgirl in pigtails. You were far too young – simply a plaything for his amusement.”
Was she speaking of her own daughter? Perhaps Miss Amanda was the one confused. The woman in the photograph with Hoyt Truitt was not much younger than the one who sat before me.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Violet. “She’s the jealous woman. She’s the one who bends the truth as she sees fit. She is a cruel old woman, bitter that her husband was taken from her too soon.”
“Stop it,” said Miss Amanda.
“It didn’t matter if it was Hoyt or any other boy I fancied. If she couldn’t be happy she was determined to prevent my happiness as well.”
I stirred uncomfortably in my chair. “Perhaps I should be going.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Spradlin. You’re not intimated by a playful spat between a mother and her child. She is a willful girl, and if she were any younger I should take her into the yard and make her choose a switch. Besides, where would you go – back into this dreadful night to sleep in your broken down car by the side of the road?” As if on cue, the wind shook the glass in the casements. Thunder boomed overhead.
Miss Amanda smiled again in an attempt to appease my discomfort. “Stay awhile and indulge a pair of haunted old women. Perhaps you would care for that bourbon now?”
This time I agreed. Miss Amanda inched forward. Her shaking hand filled my teacup to the brim with bourbon and I straight away drank half it down. When I looked up again she still hovered in front of me, her smile as wanton as a lecher’s leer.
She filled my cup once more and when she took her seat, she said, “You will forgive us, Mr. Spradlin, airing our dirty laundry so. Now that the secret’s out, perhaps you can find compassion in your heart for a lonely old woman and her daughter who have lived in mutual antipathy for many years. Yes, it’s true. I stole my daughter’s paramour, but Hoyt did not come to me against his will. Some men are drawn to women of a certain age, are they not? So it was with our young Hoyt, attracted to my daughter by the physical desire of youth, but drawn to me for the experience that only a woman of years could provide.”
Violet’s lower lip trembled. “Mama, you’re embarrassing Mr. Spradlin.”
“Mr. Spradlin is a worldly man. A man of his stripe is no stranger to carnal affairs.”
Miss Amanda’s gaze dared me to defy her, but I refused to dignify the comment with any reaction.
I said, “Have you no shame for breaking your daughter’s heart?”
Miss Amanda lifted her chin and snorted. “Girls like Violet live to have their hearts broken. They swoon at the picture show and lust after photographs in magazines. And the books she reads – you should see the trash she keeps on the shelves in her room! Torrid romances of the more Gothic sort, homely heroines pining for wounded heroes guarding terrible secrets of their own.”
“Hoyt had no secrets,” Violet protested.
“How she wishes that were the truth. Our golden boy could do no wrong in Violet’s eyes, even when we learned the awful truth.”
“There was no awful truth. Those people would say anything Mr. Paisley wanted.” Violet turned to me. “He paid them.”
“Whether they spoke the truth or not, they were there for us. Thei
r words kept you from the chair.” Miss Amanda looked at me. “Do you want to know the truth, Mr. Spradlin, the awful truth? My daughter killed him – shot him dead on Christmas Eve – killed the only thing she ever loved.”
The bourbon spun round inside my brain.
“I didn’t kill him,” Violet lashed out at her mother. “You did!”
“The gun was smoking in your hand,” Miss Amanda hurled back at her daughter. “There was powder on your fingers.”
“There was powder on yours as well.”
“Only because I was a fool and tried to pry the gun away from you.”
“She’s lying,” Violet pleaded with me. “She shot him because he was in love with me after all, in spite of her filthy intentions.”
“The gun was hers – Hoyt gave it to her, a delicate pearl-handled .45 – a gift for her fifty-seventh birthday.” Miss Amanda’s words were calm, precise – steadfast in the face of her daughter’s histrionics.
“Hoyt was a kind and loving man,” Violet went on, “but he was weak and helpless to resist her. He was ashamed of what he had done with her. He came to me on his knees, tearful for forgiveness.”
“The gun he gave you for your birthday – registered in your name.”
“That’s what she couldn’t bear, that she would lose her daughter and her lover in one fell swoop. If she couldn’t have him, no one could. So she shot him to keep him from loving anyone but her.”
“Look at her,” Miss Amanda said to me. “See how easily she comes unhinged. She’s desperate for someone – anyone – to believe her story. Hoyt was kind and loving, true. But he saw through her façade and saw her for the obsessive whore she is –”
“Mama!”
“That’s right, Mr. Spradlin. My daughter is a whore. You wish to judge me for indiscretions with my daughter’s sweetheart, a gentleman forty years my junior? What was I to do when he came seeking solace against the ravings of the mad – yes, mad – we knew she was mad from an early age. It’s a disease, isn’t it, when a girl can’t keep her clothing on and drops her panties for every boy she sees. I should have had her shut away in Longfield.”
I thought I would become sick.
“Stop it!” shrieked Violet. “Please, you mustn’t believe her. She’s the one who is mad. She’s the one who killed him! She did it! She did!”
A log cracked in the fireplace and I jumped, for my nerves had surely been set on edge. I was an innocent bystander drawn into this tangle of torrid tales. I didn’t know who to believe. Miss Amanda struck me as a vile old woman as much as Violet impressed me as someone with a tenuous grasp on reality. Each turned their face toward me as if awaiting judgment.
“Weren’t either of you arrested?”
“No one commits a crime, especially one of passion, and gets away with it. They knew as well as anyone that my daughter was mad. Her reputation long preceded her.”
“They arrested Mama first.”
“Only because you were in hysterics. No one understood a word that came out of your mouth. No one understands the ravings of a lunatic. But once they had spoken to me it was clear there was much more to the story.” Miss Amanda looked at her daughter with the utmost scorn. “And then they came for you.”
They were silent now, fighters in each corner of the ring, ready to come out swinging at the sound of the bell.
“Was there no trial?” I said. “No conviction?”
“There was an inquest…” Miss Amanda began.
“And..?”
“And that’s when the truth emerged. The truth that I knew all along, the truth my daughter still refuses to believe though it spared her from the chair.”
Violet’s shoulders sagged. I felt sorry for her – I felt sorry for them both, carrying out their days confined to this living hell with one another. The animosity between them was palpable. Hatred hung in the air like a wreath.
“Why don’t you tell him, dear? You know the truth. The more you say it, the more you can come to accept it.”
Violet’s hands fluttered helplessly in the air. “I can’t, Mama, I can’t.” Her voice was choked with tears.
“There was an inquest, of course. There had to be. Hoyt Truitt was dead. Each of us blamed the other. Both of us had powder on our hands. It would have been easy enough to say it was suicide, that we had both fought with him and grappled with the gun in vain attempts to tear it from his hands. There were three shots fired that night but only one bullet was found – the one lodged deep within Hoyt Truitt’s brain.
“At first they did not know who to believe, and would have charged us both. But Mr. Paisley, our attorney, was a brilliant man and produced not one but three witnesses to testify on behalf of Mr. Truitt’s character.”
Her pause was so melodramatic I expected the music of a radio play to trumpet from the corners of the room.
“The first was a Mrs. Alma Truitt from Clarksville, Tennessee – a nervous butterfly who wept like a baby on the stand. The second was a Mrs. Bonnie Truitt from Lexington – retired Sunday school teacher with the face of a mole. Now do you begin to see? Our precious lamb was already married – and those were just the ones Mr. Paisley could produce on short notice. Hoyt used his pretty boy charms to finagle his way into the lives of the wealthy and lonely.”
Violet’s chin sagged toward her breast. I had heard enough, but Miss Amanda leaned forward and dealt her final card.
“As if polygamy weren’t bad enough, Mr. Paisley also produced an elderly gentleman, the dapper southern sort in white seersucker suit and black string tie who took to the stand to tell a sordid tale of a different kind. It wasn’t just the ladies Hoyt mesmerized with his charms.”
I’d heard enough. My hand flew to my mouth. I tried to stand, but crumpled to the floor before either of the women could come to my aid.
“Now see what you’ve done, Mama. Not only have you terrified the poor man but now he’s soused.”
“I think we’d better get him upstairs to bed,” said Miss Amanda. “You’ll have to sleep in Hoyt’s room. You’re not afraid of ghosts, are you Mr. Spradlin?”
I attempted to say that I had never met any, but the words did not leave my mouth. Soused indeed – I don’t think I could have spoken another word if I tried.
We had a time of it, me staggering up unfamiliar stairs with the two of them supporting me beneath my arms. I could smell them – powder and bathwater, and underneath that sickening sweetness the sour smell reserved for rest homes and funeral parlors.
I flopped onto the bed in the guest room. The room spun beneath me like the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. If Hoyt Truitt’s ghost haunted this room, I was too inebriated to notice.
I slept like the dead and awoke to a cold, pale silence. I went to the window. The lawn and drive were blanketed in shimmering white. As I was still dressed, I went downstairs expecting to find my hostesses in the parlor amid a pile of torn wrapping paper.
They were nowhere in sight. Neither were the chairs on which we had sat, nor the Christmas tree, nor the upright piano in the corner. The wallpaper was dirty, cracked and peeling. The floor was begrimed with dust, and in one corner was a nest of rags with an awful stench as if some derelict had taken up residence in the house.
I found my coat on the floor in the hall. I buttoned it, and made my way swiftly down the lane. There was the Buick, a hulking red and white beast tilted sideways in the vast field of white. The snow had drifted up around the tires – there was still no hope of extricating the car by myself – and so I set off down the road, tromping through the snow until my socks and feet were miserably cold and wet.
I trudged along for what seemed like hours. My lungs ached from the exertion; my feet led weights pulling me down.
Eventually, I emerged onto the main highway. I turned right, trusting that I was headed in a northerly direction and that sooner or later a driver would happen by.
Many times I stopped to rest, bent over and wheezing to catch my breath. I would have given a
nything to sit down, but still I plunged onward.
I heard the vehicle before I saw it, for the whiteness of the snow had begun to blind me and I had been keeping my gaze steady on my next steps, mindful that I did not stumble on some unseen obstacle at my feet.
When the pick-up truck drew near, the man inside pushed open the passenger door and ordered me to jump up. “If I stop I won’t get ‘er going again.”
I hopped on the running board, climbed up onto the seat, and slammed the door. I rubbed my frozen hands together, grateful to be out of the cold.
The man was bundled in a leather bomber jacket, the flaps of a hunter’s hat pulled down over his ears. All I could see of his face was a bulbous nose and a scraggly white mustache which seemed to have entirely devoured his lips.
“Name’s Leroy,” he said and offered me his gloved hand. “I’m the Sheriff in these parts. What in tarnation are you doin’ tramplin’ through the snow on Christmas morning?”
I told him how I had lost my way in the dark, and how my car had become stranded in a ditch. “I was fortunate enough to have landed at the doorstep of two proper old Victorian ladies who kindly gave me shelter for the night.”
Sheriff Leroy coughed – a brutal smoker’s cough that wracked the whole of his upper body.
“You’re not from around these parts, are you?”
I explained that I was, but it had been years since I had been back this way
“You say you spent the night in the Baldwin house?” he said.
“Yes, that was their name.”
“And you spoke to them?”
“I said that I did. We talked for hours. Do you know them?”
“I reckon I do. Worst case of murder suicide in this county – some sort of lover’s triangle gone bad. One of them shot the fiancé, whether it was the daughter or the mother no one knows. Next thing you know the two of them took turns shootin’ each other.”
The sheriff’s voice seemed to come from the far end of a long tunnel.
“My Pa was the sheriff then. He said he’d never seen so much blood, and he’d seen plenty. But all that was a long time ago – must have happened well before you were born.”
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“Tea will be nice.”
Miss Amanda disappeared into the dark room beyond, and when she returned she had a fifth of Evan Williams cradled in her arms. She stroked the neck of the bottle as tenderly as one would an infant’s cheek. “Something to warm the bones, Mr. Spradlin?”
“Thank you – not just yet.”
Violet poured a cup of tea and I sat down by the fire and sipped. It was Earl Gray, strong and hot. Violet handed me a delicate china plate with a red frosted gingerbread man. She clapped her hands when she saw my smile.
I nibbled at the cookie and sipped my tea. “Delicious.”
“Shall I play something on the piano?” said Violet.
“That would be lovely,” I said. Miss Amanda warned me with a sharp glance, but too late. Not only were the piano keys discordant, but the poor woman couldn’t carry a tune if she had a bucket with a lid on it. She attempted to sing “What Child Is This?” but the minor key got the best of her. I winced. Miss Amanda came to my rescue.
“Perhaps later, dear. I’m sure Mr. Spradlin would enjoy a bit of conversation instead of your caterwauling on that thing.
Violet sulked but obeyed her mother.
“Now then, Mr. Spradlin,” said Miss Amanda, “why don’t you tell us a little something about yourself.”
I took a sip of tea. “There’s not much to tell. I was born and raised in Kentucky but have made my home in Memphis these past ten years.”
“What business are you in?”
“I am a real estate broker.”
Violet bristled in her chair. “You must make a lot of money!”
I lowered my eyes. “I live comfortably.”
“What sort of car do you drive?”
“A brand new 1952 red and white Buick Roadmaster,” I said proudly.
Miss Amanda said, “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“It must be a newer model, Mama.”
“Would you like to see it? It’s stuck in a ditch at the end of your lane.”
“Perhaps in the morning we shall talk a walk out to see it.”
“Are you a married man?” asked Violet.
“Don’t pry, Violet. It’s not becoming of a lady.”
“As a matter of fact, I am engaged,” I said, although it was not entirely true. I’d had a number of girlfriends since leaving college. Girls are always attracted to a man with a flashy car and an expensive wardrobe. Girls these days are all about appearances and I had yet to find one I wanted to settle down and raise a family with.
“She must be a lovely girl,” said Violet, yet I saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face. Surely she had no interest in me. She was nearly twice my age! “Tell us more about this lucky young lady.”
I tugged at the collar of my shirt. Miss Amanda said, “If the man wants to relate the details of his personal life, I’m certain he will oblige us.”
“I was engaged once,” Violet said with a sigh, “to Hoyt Truitt. How my life would have been different if he had lived.”
“How different it would have been for all of us,” said her mother.
I set my teacup on the table beside my chair. “Hoyt is dead?”
Two sets of eyes turned their wet gaze upon me.
“I’m sorry. I thought you said you were expecting him.” You can imagine my confusion.
“We are expecting him, Mr. Spradlin,” said Miss Amanda. “We live in hope that one day we will hear a car coming up the drive and when we look out the window, Hoyt Truitt will come bounding onto the porch.”
I was at a loss for words. Miss Amanda gazed at her folded hands in her lap. Violet dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. A log cracked in the fireplace.
I took the bait. “How did he die?”
“He was the most handsome, loving man –” Violet began.
“He loved. Indeed he did,” said her mother.
“He loved me,” Violet insisted.
“He was engaged to you, but he loved another.”
“Don’t listen to her,” said Violet. “There were always wild rumors about Hoyt. There always are with men as handsome as he. Some women are so overcome with jealousy they will say anything to ruin another’s happiness.”
“And some women refuse to face the truth,” said Miss Amanda. “It’s true Hoyt was once engaged to my daughter, but she was not the one he loved.”
Violet lashed out at her mother. “He never loved you. He loved me, not you.”
Miss Amanda clucked her tongue, a mother hen disgusted with the naivety of her child. “You know nothing of love. It was a woman Hoyt wanted, not a simpering schoolgirl in pigtails. You were far too young – simply a plaything for his amusement.”
Was she speaking of her own daughter? Perhaps Miss Amanda was the one confused. The woman in the photograph with Hoyt Truitt was not much younger than the one who sat before me.
“Don’t listen to her,” said Violet. “She’s the jealous woman. She’s the one who bends the truth as she sees fit. She is a cruel old woman, bitter that her husband was taken from her too soon.”
“Stop it,” said Miss Amanda.
“It didn’t matter if it was Hoyt or any other boy I fancied. If she couldn’t be happy she was determined to prevent my happiness as well.”
I stirred uncomfortably in my chair. “Perhaps I should be going.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Spradlin. You’re not intimated by a playful spat between a mother and her child. She is a willful girl, and if she were any younger I should take her into the yard and make her choose a switch. Besides, where would you go – back into this dreadful night to sleep in your broken down car by the side of the road?” As if on cue, the wind shook the glass in the casements. Thunder boomed overhead.
Miss Amanda smiled again in an attempt to appease my discomfort. “Stay awhile and indulge a pair of haunted old women. Perhaps you would care for that bourbon now?”
This time I agreed. Miss Amanda inched forward. Her shaking hand filled my teacup to the brim with bourbon and I straight away drank half it down. When I looked up again she still hovered in front of me, her smile as wanton as a lecher’s leer.
She filled my cup once more and when she took her seat, she said, “You will forgive us, Mr. Spradlin, airing our dirty laundry so. Now that the secret’s out, perhaps you can find compassion in your heart for a lonely old woman and her daughter who have lived in mutual antipathy for many years. Yes, it’s true. I stole my daughter’s paramour, but Hoyt did not come to me against his will. Some men are drawn to women of a certain age, are they not? So it was with our young Hoyt, attracted to my daughter by the physical desire of youth, but drawn to me for the experience that only a woman of years could provide.”
Violet’s lower lip trembled. “Mama, you’re embarrassing Mr. Spradlin.”
“Mr. Spradlin is a worldly man. A man of his stripe is no stranger to carnal affairs.”
Miss Amanda’s gaze dared me to defy her, but I refused to dignify the comment with any reaction.
I said, “Have you no shame for breaking your daughter’s heart?”
Miss Amanda lifted her chin and snorted. “Girls like Violet live to have their hearts broken. They swoon at the picture show and lust after photographs in magazines. And the books she reads – you should see the trash she keeps on the shelves in her room! Torrid romances of the more Gothic sort, homely heroines pining for wounded heroes guarding terrible secrets of their own.”
“Hoyt had no secrets,” Violet protested.
“How she wishes that were the truth. Our golden boy could do no wrong in Violet’s eyes, even when we learned the awful truth.”
“There was no awful truth. Those people would say anything Mr. Paisley wanted.” Violet turned to me. “He paid them.”
“Whether they spoke the truth or not, they were there for us. Thei
r words kept you from the chair.” Miss Amanda looked at me. “Do you want to know the truth, Mr. Spradlin, the awful truth? My daughter killed him – shot him dead on Christmas Eve – killed the only thing she ever loved.”
The bourbon spun round inside my brain.
“I didn’t kill him,” Violet lashed out at her mother. “You did!”
“The gun was smoking in your hand,” Miss Amanda hurled back at her daughter. “There was powder on your fingers.”
“There was powder on yours as well.”
“Only because I was a fool and tried to pry the gun away from you.”
“She’s lying,” Violet pleaded with me. “She shot him because he was in love with me after all, in spite of her filthy intentions.”
“The gun was hers – Hoyt gave it to her, a delicate pearl-handled .45 – a gift for her fifty-seventh birthday.” Miss Amanda’s words were calm, precise – steadfast in the face of her daughter’s histrionics.
“Hoyt was a kind and loving man,” Violet went on, “but he was weak and helpless to resist her. He was ashamed of what he had done with her. He came to me on his knees, tearful for forgiveness.”
“The gun he gave you for your birthday – registered in your name.”
“That’s what she couldn’t bear, that she would lose her daughter and her lover in one fell swoop. If she couldn’t have him, no one could. So she shot him to keep him from loving anyone but her.”
“Look at her,” Miss Amanda said to me. “See how easily she comes unhinged. She’s desperate for someone – anyone – to believe her story. Hoyt was kind and loving, true. But he saw through her façade and saw her for the obsessive whore she is –”
“Mama!”
“That’s right, Mr. Spradlin. My daughter is a whore. You wish to judge me for indiscretions with my daughter’s sweetheart, a gentleman forty years my junior? What was I to do when he came seeking solace against the ravings of the mad – yes, mad – we knew she was mad from an early age. It’s a disease, isn’t it, when a girl can’t keep her clothing on and drops her panties for every boy she sees. I should have had her shut away in Longfield.”
I thought I would become sick.
“Stop it!” shrieked Violet. “Please, you mustn’t believe her. She’s the one who is mad. She’s the one who killed him! She did it! She did!”
A log cracked in the fireplace and I jumped, for my nerves had surely been set on edge. I was an innocent bystander drawn into this tangle of torrid tales. I didn’t know who to believe. Miss Amanda struck me as a vile old woman as much as Violet impressed me as someone with a tenuous grasp on reality. Each turned their face toward me as if awaiting judgment.
“Weren’t either of you arrested?”
“No one commits a crime, especially one of passion, and gets away with it. They knew as well as anyone that my daughter was mad. Her reputation long preceded her.”
“They arrested Mama first.”
“Only because you were in hysterics. No one understood a word that came out of your mouth. No one understands the ravings of a lunatic. But once they had spoken to me it was clear there was much more to the story.” Miss Amanda looked at her daughter with the utmost scorn. “And then they came for you.”
They were silent now, fighters in each corner of the ring, ready to come out swinging at the sound of the bell.
“Was there no trial?” I said. “No conviction?”
“There was an inquest…” Miss Amanda began.
“And..?”
“And that’s when the truth emerged. The truth that I knew all along, the truth my daughter still refuses to believe though it spared her from the chair.”
Violet’s shoulders sagged. I felt sorry for her – I felt sorry for them both, carrying out their days confined to this living hell with one another. The animosity between them was palpable. Hatred hung in the air like a wreath.
“Why don’t you tell him, dear? You know the truth. The more you say it, the more you can come to accept it.”
Violet’s hands fluttered helplessly in the air. “I can’t, Mama, I can’t.” Her voice was choked with tears.
“There was an inquest, of course. There had to be. Hoyt Truitt was dead. Each of us blamed the other. Both of us had powder on our hands. It would have been easy enough to say it was suicide, that we had both fought with him and grappled with the gun in vain attempts to tear it from his hands. There were three shots fired that night but only one bullet was found – the one lodged deep within Hoyt Truitt’s brain.
“At first they did not know who to believe, and would have charged us both. But Mr. Paisley, our attorney, was a brilliant man and produced not one but three witnesses to testify on behalf of Mr. Truitt’s character.”
Her pause was so melodramatic I expected the music of a radio play to trumpet from the corners of the room.
“The first was a Mrs. Alma Truitt from Clarksville, Tennessee – a nervous butterfly who wept like a baby on the stand. The second was a Mrs. Bonnie Truitt from Lexington – retired Sunday school teacher with the face of a mole. Now do you begin to see? Our precious lamb was already married – and those were just the ones Mr. Paisley could produce on short notice. Hoyt used his pretty boy charms to finagle his way into the lives of the wealthy and lonely.”
Violet’s chin sagged toward her breast. I had heard enough, but Miss Amanda leaned forward and dealt her final card.
“As if polygamy weren’t bad enough, Mr. Paisley also produced an elderly gentleman, the dapper southern sort in white seersucker suit and black string tie who took to the stand to tell a sordid tale of a different kind. It wasn’t just the ladies Hoyt mesmerized with his charms.”
I’d heard enough. My hand flew to my mouth. I tried to stand, but crumpled to the floor before either of the women could come to my aid.
“Now see what you’ve done, Mama. Not only have you terrified the poor man but now he’s soused.”
“I think we’d better get him upstairs to bed,” said Miss Amanda. “You’ll have to sleep in Hoyt’s room. You’re not afraid of ghosts, are you Mr. Spradlin?”
I attempted to say that I had never met any, but the words did not leave my mouth. Soused indeed – I don’t think I could have spoken another word if I tried.
We had a time of it, me staggering up unfamiliar stairs with the two of them supporting me beneath my arms. I could smell them – powder and bathwater, and underneath that sickening sweetness the sour smell reserved for rest homes and funeral parlors.
I flopped onto the bed in the guest room. The room spun beneath me like the Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair. If Hoyt Truitt’s ghost haunted this room, I was too inebriated to notice.
I slept like the dead and awoke to a cold, pale silence. I went to the window. The lawn and drive were blanketed in shimmering white. As I was still dressed, I went downstairs expecting to find my hostesses in the parlor amid a pile of torn wrapping paper.
They were nowhere in sight. Neither were the chairs on which we had sat, nor the Christmas tree, nor the upright piano in the corner. The wallpaper was dirty, cracked and peeling. The floor was begrimed with dust, and in one corner was a nest of rags with an awful stench as if some derelict had taken up residence in the house.
I found my coat on the floor in the hall. I buttoned it, and made my way swiftly down the lane. There was the Buick, a hulking red and white beast tilted sideways in the vast field of white. The snow had drifted up around the tires – there was still no hope of extricating the car by myself – and so I set off down the road, tromping through the snow until my socks and feet were miserably cold and wet.
I trudged along for what seemed like hours. My lungs ached from the exertion; my feet led weights pulling me down.
Eventually, I emerged onto the main highway. I turned right, trusting that I was headed in a northerly direction and that sooner or later a driver would happen by.
Many times I stopped to rest, bent over and wheezing to catch my breath. I would have given a
nything to sit down, but still I plunged onward.
I heard the vehicle before I saw it, for the whiteness of the snow had begun to blind me and I had been keeping my gaze steady on my next steps, mindful that I did not stumble on some unseen obstacle at my feet.
When the pick-up truck drew near, the man inside pushed open the passenger door and ordered me to jump up. “If I stop I won’t get ‘er going again.”
I hopped on the running board, climbed up onto the seat, and slammed the door. I rubbed my frozen hands together, grateful to be out of the cold.
The man was bundled in a leather bomber jacket, the flaps of a hunter’s hat pulled down over his ears. All I could see of his face was a bulbous nose and a scraggly white mustache which seemed to have entirely devoured his lips.
“Name’s Leroy,” he said and offered me his gloved hand. “I’m the Sheriff in these parts. What in tarnation are you doin’ tramplin’ through the snow on Christmas morning?”
I told him how I had lost my way in the dark, and how my car had become stranded in a ditch. “I was fortunate enough to have landed at the doorstep of two proper old Victorian ladies who kindly gave me shelter for the night.”
Sheriff Leroy coughed – a brutal smoker’s cough that wracked the whole of his upper body.
“You’re not from around these parts, are you?”
I explained that I was, but it had been years since I had been back this way
“You say you spent the night in the Baldwin house?” he said.
“Yes, that was their name.”
“And you spoke to them?”
“I said that I did. We talked for hours. Do you know them?”
“I reckon I do. Worst case of murder suicide in this county – some sort of lover’s triangle gone bad. One of them shot the fiancé, whether it was the daughter or the mother no one knows. Next thing you know the two of them took turns shootin’ each other.”
The sheriff’s voice seemed to come from the far end of a long tunnel.
“My Pa was the sheriff then. He said he’d never seen so much blood, and he’d seen plenty. But all that was a long time ago – must have happened well before you were born.”
ALSO AVAILABLE
Night of the Pentagram
The Haunting at Blackwood Hall
The Fairies at Browning Grange
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Black Valentines
The Yellow Scarf
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