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Papa’s eyes narrowed as he tried to guess who was telling the truth. “All right, both of you tell different tales.” He sniffled and wiped away his tears, shrugged and turned so he couldn’t see Billie. “I know for a fact that Vera is a liar, and I also know that Audrina would do anything to protect Sylvia. Regardless of how Billie died … I cannot bear to look at Sylvia now. I am going to have her put away so she can never harm anyone else.”
“No!” I screamed, pulling Sylvia into my arms and holding her protectively. “If you put Sylvia away, then send me with her! Whatever happened, it was an accident.”
His hard eyes became slits. “Then Sylvia was not with you all the time?”
Something came to me then and lifted a burden from my heart. “Papa, Sylvia would never go near Billie. She refused to let Billie touch her, and never would she willingly touch Billie, even to get her cart. Her way was to sneak Billie’s cart from her when Billie wasn’t looking.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Papa, looking at Sylvia with loathing. “I only hope for your sake that the police will. Two deaths from falls down the same stairs is going to be rather difficult to explain.”
It was Papa who called the police, and by the time they arrived, we’d all gained some control of our emotions. With Billie photographed a dozen times first, the police ambulance drove her away.
Pacing before the ornate fireplace covered by tooled leather, Papa made a formidable, impressive opponent for the detective who came with the same two policemen who’d investigated my aunt’s death. He told his story straight.
Then it was Vera’s turn. I marveled at how protective she was of Sylvia, never mentioning the shouts or the screams she’d heard. “I was taking a bath, shampooing, doing my nails, and when I came out I heard my cousin down in the foyer crying. When I went down, I saw Mrs. Lowe at the bottom of the steps.”
“Wait a minute, miss. You are not Mrs. Lowe’s sister?”
“We were raised as sisters in this house, but we are really first cousins.”
Papa scowled darkly but at the same time seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
It was then my turn to repeat what I knew. I weighed each word I said carefully, doing my utmost to shield Sylvia, who crouched in a distant corner with her head hanging so low her long hair completely concealed her face. She seemed like a small puppy cowering in the corner after misbehaving.
“My mother-in-law had a way of lowering herself down the stairs one step at a time. As she went, she’d take the cart with her, putting it on the next lower step first. She went up the stairs in the same way. Her arms were very strong. She had a splinter in one finger. She must have put too much weight on that hand and lost her balance and fell. I can’t be positive, for I wasn’t there. I had taken my sister Sylvia down to the river with me.”
“The two of you stayed together all the time?”
“Yes, sir, all the time.”
“And when the two of you came back, you found your mother-in-law dead on the floor?”
“No, sir. Soon after we came in the door, before I had the chance to light the lamps, I heard her falling down, and the cart, too.”
Vera was watching the younger policeman, about thirty, who kept staring at her. Oh, my God! She was flirting with him, crossing and uncrossing her legs, fiddling with the neckline of her half-open robe. The older policeman didn’t seem nearly as interested but rather disgusted. “Then that means, Miss Whitefern,” he said quietly, “that you were the only one in the house when Mrs. Lowe, senior, fell.”
“I was taking a bath,” repeated Vera, throwing me a hard glare. “I sunbathed this morning, and that made me feel hot and sticky. I came inside to wash my hair, and, as I always do, I soaked and did my nails. Did my toenails, too,” she said. She thrust forth her expertly manicured nails. Her gleaming toenails peeked through her sandals. “If I had struggled with Mrs. Lowe, I would have smeared my nail polish.”
“How long does it take for nail polish to dry?”
He asked me this, not Vera.
“It all depends.” I tried to remember. “One coat dries in a hurry, but the more coats you use the longer it takes to dry. I try to be careful with my nails for at least thirty minutes after the last coat.”
“Exactly!” said Vera, looking at me gratefully. “And if you know anything at all about nails you can see I put on five coats, counting the base coat and the top sealing coat.”
The policemen seemed lost in the complexity of feminine toiletry.
In the end, it was decided our front stairs were highly dangerous to everyone, especially after they were examined and a loose place in the carpeting was found. “Easily that could have tripped her up,” said the younger officer.
I stared down at the red carpeting, trying to remember how that could have happened when our house had been refurbished from top to bottom and new carpet had been laid on the stairs. How could a woman with no legs trip, anyway? Unless somehow she’d started to move her hand and it had snagged beneath the loose place, or her clothes had caught on something … or a prism was flashed in her eyes to blind her. But the hall had been dark after the sun went away.
Maybe we all looked too grief-stricken to be murderers, or Papa had strings he pulled, for again another death at Whitefern was called accidental.
I was uneasy in Sylvia’s presence now. She hadn’t liked Aunt Ellsbeth, either. I began to watch her covertly, again realizing, but with more impact, that Sylvia resented anyone who might be a threat to her place in my heart. It was in her eyes, in her every reaction, that I was the only one who mattered in her life, and to me she was going to cling. I had done that to her myself—with a little urging from Papa.
The day of Billie’s funeral I was deathly sick with the worst cold of my life. Feverish and depressed, I lay on my bed as Vera tended me, seeming happy to show off her professional skills. Tossing and turning, burning with fever, I hardly heard her when she spoke of how handsome Arden had become. “Of course, he was always good-looking, but when he was a boy I thought him weak. He seems to have taken on a little of Papa’s strength and personality … have you noticed?”
What she said was true. Arden was as ambivalent about my father as I was; he loathed him and admired him. And, bit by bit, he was picking up Papa’s mannerisms, his walk, his firm, resolute way of talking.
