"Phyllis A. Whitney - The Glass Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Whitney Phyllis A)

The dark eyebrows raised a fraction mare. "Maybe you're right. Though no one has ever put it just that w ay to me before."
Strangely, I began to feel more comfortable with him, more relaxed, sitting here in this kitchen. He hadn't ridiculed my words, but seemed to respect them. And my idiot heart had stopped its wild thumping. I would be able to get used to Trevor again. After all, I was long accustomed to watching from a distance, and I'd never expected anything closer. I was safe because even if he might have suspected a crush, he'd never dreamed of how deeply I felt. Now he was married and had a son, and I could resist him safely.
Silence grew between us as we sipped coffee, and into that silence the memory of David began to emerge from the shadows where we had been mutely holding him. Once long ago I "had
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thought that David's long-fingered hands were like Trevor's. Now, as Trevor turned the mug in his fingers, I thought how like his hands were to David's, and my resistance grew. This man was David's brother, and that should be enough to put me on guard. I wasn't sixteen now, and I didn't know the man he might have become.
"I want to hear about what happened," I said into the waiting stillness. "I want to know everything about David's death."
There was a change in my voice, and again I sensed withdrawal and a chilling of the atmosphere between us. Trevor had indeed changed. He had always been generous to David, offering friendship and affection, even when David rejected him. But now the mere mention of his brother's name seemed to make him stiffen.
"Let's leave it for tomorrow," he said. "You must be tired from your trip and the drive. Talking will be painful, and if we talk now you may not sleep."
"A little while ago I stopped at Belle Isle," I told him.
The sound his mug made as he thumped it down on the cherry wood table broke the quiet of the room, but he did not speak. In the fireplace charred wood fell into embers and I stared at blackened ashes, shivering, remembering. When Trevor bent above the hearth and poked at the fire, putting on another log, I knew he was waiting for me to continue.
"I saw the Belle Isle sign," I said. "I had to follow that road. I couldn't help myself. When I reached the house I got out of my car and went close enough-to see-" I broke off and closed my eyes.
Behind me Trevor moved restlessly about the room, offering no sympathy, no comforting words.
I made an effort to go on. "Your watchman found me. He spoke to me and helped me back to the car. I don't think what had happened to David really hit me until then. I suppose I've been numb with shock. Now I'm beginning to feel. I'm trying to accept the awful way he died. If you'll tell me about it, perhaps that will help."
"All right," Trevor said abruptly. He pulled a straight chair across the hearth from me. "Perhaps it's better if you know exactly what happened. How much did David tell you about our affairs down here?"
"Not very much. He wasn't very good at writing letters." Not until that last one, I thought. But I didn't want to mention that letter yet.
"Belle Isle was a dream I had," Trevor went on. "It still is. I don't mean to be defeated because of all that has happened. I won't go into the ramifications now, but it was coming along well. Some of the houses were finished and people were interested. I was encouraged by the way everything was shaping up. I've been completely in charge, and there has been some resentment over that-another long story. I have four years to make it work And two are gone already. A few months ago fires began to be set in the place. One was in a completed house down by the lake, and three were on the near side. The first was only a small fire, and we caught it in time." He appeared to hesitate, as though remembering something disturbing, then went on. "We thought it might have been started by-children. The later fires did more damage, and were more expertly set.
"The police couldn't find out anything in the beginning, and I thought of David. We've been in touch now and then over the years, as you may know, and he was the best man in the country for the job. So I asked him to come. I didn't know whether he would agree or not. I was even a little surprised when he turned up."
"He stayed much longer than he usually does on an investigation," I put in.
Trevor too had been staring into the fire as he talked, but now he turned his head and looked at me sharply. His expression startled me, and with sudden clarity I recognized that here was a man in whom a shattering anger was being suppressed. Yet in the time when I had known him, Trevor had never been an angry man,
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"Yes, David stayed," he told me shortly, the words clipped, the anger barely hidden.
"Something's wrong, isn't it?" I said. "Something's terribly wrong. Something besides the fires."
He held back whatever rage had seethed to the surface and forced himself to speak quietly. "David stayed. He appeared to be onto something. But he wouldn't tell anyone until he was sure. This last fire wasn't like the others. This time an explosive was used."
"The watchman said you were there soon after it happened."
"I was. David had told me he had a feeling that one particular house would go next. The fires were always set in one that was nearly finished. So he was going down to spend the night there. I offered to come with him, but he said that with two of us it would be harder to hide. And he was fully confident that he could handle anything that came up."
Yes-that was David. How well I remembered his swaggering confidence-a confidence that had not always been justified, until recently.
Trevor continued. "I was uneasy that night, and I kept a watch here at our house. I heard the explosion from our deck and I saw the flames. As soon as I'd called the fire department I drove down. The house was an inferno, with blown-out bits of debris burning all around. David was in there and I knew there was no way to save him. We tried, but the heat was too fierce and we couldn't investigate properly until the flames were out and the smoke had cleared a bit. I was with them when the police and the firemen found-what was left of him."
I listened, sickened, my eyes never leaving Trevor's face. I saw him tighten one fist and ram it hard against the palm of the other hand. After a long silence he seemed to remember me.
"I'm sorry to be brutal. But since you wanted the truth, it had to be told the way it happened. The sheriff has found out nothing except that a trap must have been prepared. The house was probably set to blow up and burn. But what sprang the trap and who
was supposed to walk into it, there's no way to tell. Probably David-because he was getting close to something dangerous. Perhaps even me, because there are those who don't like what I'm doing at Belle Isle."
"It was meant for David," I said.
Trevor had started pacing the room and he stopped at my chair looking down at me. "Why do you say that?"
"David wrote me a letter. He said that if anything happened to him here I could be sure it was not an accident."
"I'd like to see that letter."
I shook my head, knowing that I could never show it to anyone, least of all to Trevor. There had been too much spite in David's words against me, even to the point of threatening me if I tried to break up our marriage.
"There was nothing else he wrote me that would help," 1 said. "Only that if something happened to him it would not be an accident."
He let the matter go, seeming to suppress the inner anger that had driven him close to an outburst. I didn't know him anymore, I thought in sad relief. He had become a stranger-stronger, harder, more determined and impatient, just as I was a stranger to him as David's wife. Now I could dispell an old mirage.
"I'll show you your room," he said abruptly. "Dinner will be at eight tonight. Usually we follow local custom and dine earlier, but Lori is away, and this is Lu-Ellen's day off. It's hard to find household help these days, and Lu-Ellen is a recently acquired treasure. So we don't interfere with her plans. But tonight we're on our own."
I stood up, willing enough to be alone for a time. Only the innocuous was safe to talk about now.
"I'm looking forward to seeing you: house tomorrow by daylight," I told him. "I couldn't see it very well as I came in, but you're obviously near the very top of the mountain."
"Right," he said. "It's a house everyone can see for mfles around."
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There was a ring of pride in his voice, and I couldn't help my words. "King of the Castle?"
"There's no king and no castle. But the mountains know the house is here." He sounded curt, putting me in my place.
I regretted my flip remark. It was the sort of thing I had learned to use with David-defensively. But Trevor would never be king of any castle. He was more like a soaring eagle, and only an eyrie high on a cliff would be right for him.
"It has the feeling of a big house," I said, "judging by the spaciousness of this kitchen."
"It's middling, I suppose. Not all that many rooms. This ground level is the top floor. The house drops down the mountain from here and spreads out."
I carried my mug to the shining stainless-steel sink and ran water into it. Above were countless cabinets built of handsome mountain birch, with double windows in the center that looked out upon a last fading streak of color in the sky.
The sound behind us was hardly more than a whisper. I turned to look toward the doorway at the far end of the room just as a woman in a wheelchair came into view. The hallway down which she had rolled was uncarpeted, so her rubber-tired wheels moved easily onto the bare wood floor of the kitchen. She sat looking at me with a curious, almost challenging stare.
Trevor smiled at her. "Nona," he said, "this is Karen Hallam, David's wife." And to me: "This is my aunt, Miss Nona Andrews."