Chapter Forty-One
Patricia stared at Audra, stunned.
Audra stared back, her cool exterior beginning to crack open, revealing something dark and frightening and full of a lifetime of deeply suppressed rage. “It’s true,” she said. “She may have lost the paternity suit, but my mother kept all the files, the paperwork, everything.”
“But our plan,” Patricia said in disbelief. “Everything we’ve been working for—the inheritance, the house…”
“Poor Patricia,” Audra said to her lover in a low, dangerous voice.
“You assumed you would be mistress of the manor, the village matriarch, everyone kowtowing to you the way they have for years. They might even pretend to accept your little lesbian girlfriend, at least in your presence; behind your back, they’d still exclude her the way they do anyone not in their generations-old circle.
” She shook her head. “No. No way, Patty. That’s not why I’m here.
I’m through being invisible, done being on the outside. I’m here for what’s mine.”
The mask was off, Willow realized. This was Audra, the real Audra—not the unobtrusive assistant who had served quietly on the sidelines, ignored in years of fatal miscalculation. She could see the horror begin to bloom on Patricia’s face as understanding grew.
But Willow managed to keep her voice even, conversational, almost admiring. “How did you find your way to England? Is that where you picked up the accent? And how did you manage to become his fourth wife’s assistant?”
Audra was still smiling, clearly enjoying this.
She said, the accent dropping off like a discarded scarf, “Oh, the Brit thing was totally fake; that was backstory. I’m good at accents.
After my mom died, I disappeared for a little while, changed my name …
Once Patty and I worked out our plan, I shadowed old Talbot like a hawk; when he got his hip replaced, I found out where he was getting his physical therapy. Naomi was his therapist.”
Audra walked as she spoke, looking acquisitively at the photos and art lining the library walls, as though wondering what they might be worth.
“It was easy to become friends with her—at first, I just meant to use her to get information about him, but then she started dating him. When he proposed, she knew she was in over her head, the first kid in her trashy Jersey family to make it through college marrying this rich upper-crust guy. So I helped her plan the wedding, and then she hired me as her assistant.” She straightened out a photo on one of the shelves, an image of the Misses Drummond at a younger age.
Patricia’s aristocratic face was beginning to crumble as she began to understand she was not in charge of things; she had never been. This had been Audra’s game from the start. Patricia was another of her pawns, maneuvered into place to get Audra what she wanted. Willow almost felt sorry for her.
Almost. Because something else had clicked. The Talbots and their staff hadn’t come to Little North this spring until after Effie had died; Audra couldn’t have been responsible for all the murders.
From where she sat, Willow could see into the sitting room. She saw Effie’s chair, rocking again, one veined and wrinkled hand closing over the armrest. She saw the now-familiar couch pillow in its place on the floor.
Effie stood slowly and bent to pick it up, as she had earlier, but this time she stopped, holding it, staring at the pillow as though she had never seen it before.
Willow damped down a quick surge of hope; Effie was back.
Patricia is the weak link, a voice in Willow’s mind whispered.
And you’re beginning to understand. She said to Patricia, “So your job was to clear the way, to out-research Effie and Sue and make sure there were no other Camerons ready to come out of the woodwork. And you bought up all the copies of Widow’s Walk so no one would recognize the story.
But then there was Effie. Maybe she got suspicious; maybe she was taking too long to die on her own. Maybe you got impatient.”
Patricia was as still as marble; beyond her, in the front room, Effie’s face first reflected puzzlement, then memory, as though rereading a passage of an old story she had forgotten. The old woman’s face turned toward Patricia.
Willow saw Effie’s expression change, darken, and knew she remembered. How she’d died. And who had done it.
“What happened that day?” Willow asked in the same level voice, feeling anger rising as she witnessed Effie’s shock at revisiting the horrific memory of how her long life had ended.
“Was it as easy as you thought it would be to press that pillow down on her face, feel her struggling, hold her down till she stopped?”
Patricia’s face had grown paler as Willow spoke, and something like regret—remorse, even—began to grow there. Her head jerked back and forth in choppy denial. “No, it wasn’t like that. I never meant to—I didn’t want anything like that, I only wanted to talk to her, but…”
“Wonderful,” Willow said with a sarcastic twist of her lip.
“That makes all the difference, of course, and I’m sure that’s a great comfort to her now.
” She studied Patricia, noting her jerky movements and the shrill tinge to her voice.
This memory was about more than guilt; this was terror.
Willow continued, “And I can’t help wondering—they say the house is haunted, you know.
I imagine it wasn’t too happy about what you’d done.
What happened next? Did it just … let you go? ”
Patricia was trembling hard now, practically vibrating in her fear as Effie walked slowly into the library and came to a stop right behind her.
This version of Effie was dark, misty, as though incompletely drawn by a slow-working sketch artist, pulling what little light there was in the foyer into itself and setting the wall sconces flickering.
Audra stood several yards away as Willow spoke; she had been watching the front room as well, and her expression had shifted to one of growing trepidation. Willow smiled at Audra—a bitter smile, full of dark anticipation. “Ah. You can see her too, can’t you?”
Patricia’s voice was rising in panic. “See who? What are you talking about?” Her head whipped back and forth in panic from one to the other. “Tell me, tell me right now this minute—what are you looking at?”
In a careful voice, Audra said, “Patty … I think you should stay right where you are. Don’t move. Don’t turn around. Stay there.”
“That’s probably for the best,” Willow said calmly, nodding. She turned her gaze back to Patricia. “I’m told the ghosts of Cameron House often manifest to those with whom they have a particular bond or link. And, Mrs. Ramsey, I would definitely say you fall into that category.”
Patricia’s lips trembled, as though ready to burst into tears.
But she clenched her teeth and said with a firmness she clearly did not feel, “I don’t believe in ghosts.
It’s not real. None of it is real. Besides, she knows I didn’t want to hurt her; she knows—” And she defiantly turned to face what was behind her.
A flash of lightning hit so close that all three of them felt the surge of pressure and a tingling in their extremities. One of the sconce bulbs exploded outward as a violent whip of thunder shook the house; the power died, and the foyer was left in near darkness.
Except for Effie Cameron, suddenly large and luminous and terrifying, inches from Patricia’s face.
This was not the kindly old woman Willow had seen in photos or watched holding her nephew’s hand at Sue’s memorial.
This was Effie as she would have appeared after death, face slack and eyes staring—and worse.
In the space of a few seconds, the old woman’s face fell into an image of decay and decomposition, a corpse months under the ground.
Patricia screamed. Frozen in place, face-to-face with the horror she had created, she could only scream.
Close to Willow’s ear, a familiar voice, Effie’s voice, whispered, “Now! Go find what you need; we’ll hold things here as long as we can. Run!”
Willow understood; she eased backward into the darkness of the library, past the portraits, past the fireplace, found her way to the little wrought iron stairway in the corner, and sprinted up to the second level.
Patricia Ramsey stood face-to-face with the specter of the woman she had killed—a furiously swirling glow, indistinct except for the eyes, Effie’s eyes, sharp and bright.
Patricia could see her own reflection in them, unable to move or think, frozen in terror.
She felt the gun slip out of nerveless fingers and heard it thud to the floor. She realized she was still screaming.
Patricia was dimly aware of Audra standing next to her, murmuring into one ear, “Patty, Patty, please, it’s okay—I’m here. Turn away, stop screaming, for the love of God, please stop; it’s only a ghost, it can’t hurt you…”
But it was the voice in her other ear that held her fast, fed her fear and her shame and guilt. You pretended to be her friend, it whispered. You visited her in her old age, brought her meals, gained her trust …
She tried to turn her head toward it but found herself still paralyzed, her eyes focused on the shadow of Effie’s decaying body before her.
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 …