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“Yes it was,” Betsy said. There was a sadness in her eyes, a loneliness that seemed to bring the room down to her level of gloom. A respectful quiet followed… .
… until the scream.
A blood curdling cry pierced the quiet calm in the study.
The four women jerked. Then Robin and Leslie immediately bolted to the back of the house, to the kitchen.
Remy had a kitchen knife in her hand, as if trying to reenact the failed moment in the upstairs bedroom the day before. Martha for the second time in two days found herself about to be the victim in a murder, the glazed over eyes of a crazy woman staring into hers.
Strange the strength of madwomen with knifes, Robin thought as she struggled to pull Remy away from Martha. What a stupid thing to think, she’d decide afterward, but Remy’s strength was suddenly far beyond what anyone would have thought. She had her lover pinned to a kitchen counter, her smaller form leaning against the heavier Martha with a zealot’s madness propelling her.
“You’re supposed to be dead! Dead! Do you hear!” she screamed at her frightened lover. “You run off screwing around with that bitch, you loved her, didn’t you? You said you loved me! But you lied, you lied to me, you bitch!” Remy tried to bury the knife in Martha’s chest, as Martha struggled for her life, barely able hold off the slowly sinking weapon.
Robin pulled at Remy’s back, expecting Leslie behind her to have the knife in hand.
“You bitch, you lying bitch!” Remy screamed. She lunged again.
She was sobbing, her words garbled by her rage. Yet her strength was finally vanishing as her body collapsed back against Robin, when the detective gave her one sharp determined tug. The knife dropped to the kitchen counter, without having to be pried from her hands. And Leslie instantly retrieved it, taking it as far from Remy as she could.
“I brought her here,” the woman sobbed. “I knew who she was from the moment she arrived.” Regaining a degree of clarity, she looked up at Martha one last time, f
or one last verbal knife to throw at the object of her passion. “I knew she was Eve. I knew she hadn’t died. I suspected it all along when I got the letters. I may have been insane then, but there were things about Eve you could never forget, even if you only met her once.” Remy’s eyes were still filled with hate. “It was Eve all right, and she was going to kill you, just the way she did Felicia, and I was happy about it. I wanted her to.”
Martha hid her head, not wanting to look at Remy’s twisted face. Robin pulled Remy away from the kitchen, more babbling, hurtful denunciations would be pointless. She led the dazed woman into the hallway, to the foyer, where she and Leslie would keep her calm. Jane had 911 on the phone, and Betsy comforted the shocked Martha. For the second time in two days, Martha had been rescued, and a houseful of women were left stunned. Hopefully this was the end at last, but an eerie silence followed, no one ready to let down their guard.
An hour later Leslie and Robin watched the red lights of the ambulance disappear down the driveway of Roman Hill.
“So, this was your gnawing intuition,” Leslie remarked.
“She was sadly unstable, I feel very sorry for her,” Robin said, shaking her head. “Amazing, bringing a madwoman into this house to match her own madness.”
“She’ll go back to Brightwood, or wherever she belongs, certainly not among the sane,” Leslie speculated.
“I feel sorry for Martha, did you see her in there, she looked horrible.”
“She’ll survive, she’s the kind that does,” Leslie said. “If Jane’s smart she’ll put Martha in charge of the renovations of the estate, and have some top notch showplace by the time it’s done.”
“I’m still not sure about the Bed and Breakfast idea,” Robin said.
“I think you’re right, but knowing Jane, maybe she’ll open a new club? It would be perfect for that don’t you think?” Leslie said. “I suppose if you can forget what happened here.”
“Sure and you’ll be her first slave?” Robin said.
Leslie was startled by the suggestion. “I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” she answered. “I hardly know the woman?”
“Really?” Robin replied, a devilish smirk on her normally soft face.
Leslie didn’t answer. She took a deep breath instead and gave her partner a pat on the arm. “At least this time you did a better job, a lot more efficient subduing Remy,” Leslie complimented her.
“Thanks, I’m glad I redeemed myself.”
Leslie and Robin stared around the grounds of Roman Hill. The quiet that had been here so many times was pervading the place again. The house still threatening to fall into the earth, the gardens as wild as ever. It was a place they would never forget. They watched as Betsy climbed into a taxi that had just arrived. She waved to them, but was too distraught to do more. They’d see her soon; but right now, she wanted to be as far away from the place as possible. They didn’t blame her.
“You know, I feel sometimes like I fly in and out of people’s lives at crucial moments like these, and then they’re left to pick up all the messy pieces and I don’t have to be accountable for it,” Leslie said.
“I’ve never heard you talk that way,” Robin said, looking at her partner with a degree of concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine, I just need to shake the effects of these two days off my feet, if you know what I mean,” Leslie said.
