The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 7

The last wire jerked free from the panel next to the control unit. Jules Hartwick stepped back, breathing hard, staring at his handiwork, listening to the silence that had descended on the house.
What had they thought he’d do? How big a fool did they take him for? Even as he sat in his den all day, he’d been able to hear them. Hear them as clearly in his own mind as if they’d been in the room with him.
Talking about him.
Laughing at him.
Plotting against him.
But he’d outsmarted them. Now he was in control, and they had no one to talk to but each other.
Who had they been calling?
The traitor, Andrew Sterling?
The quack, Philip Margolis?
Or someone else?
There were so many of them out there.
Enemies.
They weren’t just in his home and in his Bank.
They were all over town. Watching him. Whispering about him.
And plotting. Always plotting.
How long had it been going on? How long had they all been able to fool him, making him think they were his friends? Well, it was all over now. Everything was crystal clear, and finally he was in control of his own life again. And it would stay that way.
Jules left the laundry room, careful not to turn off the lights, not to offer his enemies any darkness in which to hide. He moved through the basement, turning on every light until the warren of dusty rooms beneath the house was free from any shadows in which his enemies might lurk. Then, satisfied that no lights remained unlit, he went back up to the kitchen. There, too, he turned on every light, filling the room with a brilliant glow.
From the huge rack above the carving counter, he chose a knife with a ten-inch blade, honed to razor sharpness by years of perfect care. Its smooth haft, carved from ebony nearly a century earlier, fit perfectly in his hand, and as his fingers tightened on it he felt the strength of the hardwood seep from the weapon into his body. Fingering it now as he’d fingered the locket a few minutes earlier, he left the kitchen and moved through the butler’s pantry and into the dining room, still turning on every light he found, washing the house free of any dark corners in which his enemies might conceal themselves.
Moving as silently as a wraith, Jules Hartwick prowled the main floor of his house, banishing the darkness from its rooms as the locket he carried with him had banished reason from his mind.
Madeline and Celeste listened to the silence of the house.
When the phone had suddenly gone dead in Madeline’s hand while she was waiting for Philip Margolis’s answering service to come back on the line, she’d assumed that the connection had merely been lost by the service itself. But when she pressed the redial button and nothing happened, her impatience with the incompetence of the answering service gave way to fear. Surely she was wrong!
Jules was upset, but he wouldn’t cut the phone lines—would he?
She stabbed at the buttons that should have connected to one of the other lines that came into the house. None of the lights came on. There was a deadness to the silence in the receiver that told her the phones were no longer working at all. She slammed the handset back onto its cradle. Her thoughts darted first one way then another, like mice in a maze.
Raise the window and call for help?
She cringed at the mere thought of the kind of talk that would cause. If the problems at the bank were bad now, they’d be ten times worse by tomorrow, when everyone in town would know that Jules had gone—
She cut herself off, refusing to use the word “insane” even in the privacy of her own mind. Jules was under a strain—a severe strain—but he was not insane! Therefore, whatever had upset him could be dealt with. She could deal with it. Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she turned to Celeste. “Stay here,” she instructed her daughter. “I’m going downstairs to talk to your father.”
“Are you crazy?” Celeste asked. “Mother, he’s cut off the phones! You don’t know what he’ll do next.”
Madeline steeled herself against the fear that was creeping through her, knowing that if she gave in to it even for a moment she would lose her courage entirely. “Your father won’t hurt me,” she said. “We’ve been married for twenty-five years, and there’s never been a hint of violence in him. I don’t think he’s going to start now.” She started toward the door.
“I’m coming with you,” Celeste told her.
Madeline was tempted to argue, but as she remembered the look she’d seen in Jules’s eyes as he glared at her from the foot of the stairs, she changed her mind. Opening the door to Celeste’s bedroom, she stepped out into the hall.
The house was as silent as a tomb.
Unconsciously taking her daughter’s hand in her own, Madeline moved to the head of the stairs. She was just about to peer over the banister to the entry hall below when the silence was shattered by the gong of the grandfather clock striking the half hour. As both Madeline and Celeste jumped at the noise, all the other clocks in the house began sounding as well, the rooms resonating with a cacophony of chimes and bells.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over, and once more a shroud of silence dropped over them.
“Where is he?” Celeste whispered. “What’s he doing?”
Before Madeline could answer, Jules appeared at the bottom of the stairs. His hands behind his back, he glowered up at them.
“Stay here,” Madeline instructed Celeste firmly. “I’m going to try to talk to him. If anything happens, lock yourself in your room. You’ll be safe in there.”
“Mother, don’t,” Celeste pleaded, but Madeline was already starting slowly down the long flight of stairs, her eyes fixed on her husband.
Do not be afraid of him, she told herself. He won’t hurt you.
From her room in the house next door, Rebecca Morrison watched curiously as every window on the main floor of the Hartwicks’ house blossomed into light.
Were the Hartwicks going to have another party?
Surely not—no catering truck had arrived, nor had she seen any of the waiters Madeline always hired when she was having a big party. And it was already seven-thirty, long after the time the parties next door invariably began.
Yet she was certain that something unusual was happening, for except when the Hartwicks were having a party, the lights in the rooms they weren’t using were never left burning, any more than they were in her own house.
“Rebecca? What are you doing, child?”
Rebecca jumped at her aunt’s words and instantly dropped the curtain she’d been peeping through. As she turned to face her aunt, Martha Ward’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed in disapproval.
“Are you spying on the neighbors again, Rebecca?” Martha demanded.
“I was just looking,” Rebecca said. “And the oddest thing is happening, Aunt Martha. All the—”
“I do not wish to hear,” Martha interjected, her own words neatly cutting her niece’s short. “Nor do you need to watch. We shall go to the chapel and pray for your forgiveness.”
“But Aunt Martha,” Rebecca began again, “I think maybe—”
“Silence!” Martha Ward commanded. “I shall not be tainted with your sins, Rebecca. Come with me.”
Rebecca, with one last glance toward the curtained windows that looked out at the house next door, silently, obediently, followed her aunt to the chapel. As the Gregorian chants began to play, she knelt before the altar and the glowing candles whose heat and smoke seemed to draw the very air from the room. Her aunt began mumbling the prayers, and Rebecca tried to close her mind to whatever might be happening next door.
It’s none of my business, she told herself. I must remember that it is none of my business.
Madeline Hartwick came to the bottom of the stairs. Her husband’s eyes were still fixed on her, and in the brilliant light of the chandelier suspended from the ceiling of the great entry hall, she could see clearly the hatred emanating from them.
“Go back to your room, Celeste,” she said, once again steeling herself to betray none of the fear that was suddenly coursing through her. Whatever had happened to Jules—whatever madness had seized him—had worsened in just the few minutes she’d been away from him, and though she refused to betray her terror to him or to their daughter, she had to protect Celeste. “Lock your door. You’ll be safe there.”
For the smallest instant she was afraid Celeste was going to ignore her words, and when she saw Jules’s gaze flicker toward the stairs, she uttered a silent prayer.
Leave her alone! If your madness demands a victim, take me!
As if he’d heard her unspoken words, Jules’s eyes fixed once more on her. In the silence that followed, she heard Celeste’s door thud shut and, a second later, the hard click of the lock snapping into place. “What is it, Jules?” she asked softly. “What is it you want of me?”
Without warning, Jules’s left arm snaked out, spun her around, and clamped her against his chest. At the same instant, she saw the blade of the knife glimmering in the light of the chandelier, then felt cold steel caress her neck with a touch as light as a feather.
A deadly feather.
She froze, her nostrils flaring, every muscle in her body going rigid.
Then she felt Jules’s hot breath on her neck and smelled the whiskey he’d been drinking all through the day.
“I could kill you,” he whispered. “All I have to do is pull the knife across your throat. It would be easy, Madeline. And you deserve it, don’t you?”
When she made no reply, his grip on her tightened, and she felt the blade of the knife etch her skin. Her mind raced and she began speaking, the words boiling up out of some well of defense she hadn’t known she possessed. “Yes,” she heard herself saying. “I didn’t think you’d find out. I didn’t think you were smart enough. But I was wrong, Jules. I should have known I couldn’t fool you. I should have known you’d find out. And I’m sorry, Jules. I’m so very, very sorry.”
She began crying then, and let herself go limp in his violent embrace. Once again his grip on her tightened. He steered her across the entry hall, then through the parlor, the dining room, and the kitchen. Then they were at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. Madeline gazed down the steep flight at the concrete floor below.
“Lies!” she heard Jules whisper harshly in her ear. “All of it has been nothing but lies, without so much as a teaspoon of truth!” He released her, the knife dropping away from her throat as he hurled her away from him. Madeline reached out frantically, groping for the wall, the banister, anything that might stop her as she pitched forward.
There was nothing.
As she plunged headfirst down the stairs, the fear that had been rising within her broke through the dam of self-control she had struggled to hold intact. A scream of terror erupted from her throat, shattering the silence in the house, only to be cut off a second later as her head struck the concrete floor.
As Madeline’s body lay broken at the foot of the stairs, Jules—his right hand still clutching the knife—slowly descended to the basement.
In the Hartwick mansion at the top of Harvard Street, all that could be heard was an eerie quiet.
A silence as deep as the grave.