One More Funeral
One more death, one more funeral. No one in Old Gate was surprised. October had become November, frigid with rare early snow that fell on our hats and coats as we stood by Press’s open grave. I had considered making the service private, but everyone in town would have come anyway. Afterwards, they filed up our drive in their cars and trucks, led by the sheriff’s cruiser, ready for their fill of funeral meats. Only there was no Terrance, stiff and formal and alarming to strangers in the way of church bishops and Boris Karloff, to greet them and serve them sweetened iced tea. After he and Press and the other man took me into the theater, I didn’t see him again. He hadn’t been in costume, and I was certain he wasn’t one of the partygoers. After Press’s body was taken away, I discovered he’d slipped away from Bliss House like a thief in the night. His room was empty of every belonging, the surfaces thick with undisturbed layers of dust that might have been there for decades.
No one ever tried to find him. No one cared. I asked Marlene, who had slept two rooms away from him and worked beside him for over ten years, if she knew where he might have gone. There was a moment—not even a second long—when she seemed not to know who I was talking about. She blinked.
“Did you ever see him eat?” she asked. Puzzled, I told her that I hadn’t. “Every time he sat down, it was as though he was afraid he would never have another meal. I’ve never seen the like in a grown man. Then he would do his dishes and get on with his job. I hope that wherever he’s gone, there’s someone to feed him.” That single, astonishing thing was all she had to say about him.
She stayed with us for another year, until she married a man from her church who owned the butcher shop in town. I couldn’t blame her for anything Press had done, or what she had believed of him. She seemed unaffected by the strange things that happened in the house. I envied her that.
“No sherry, no Scotch,” I told her as we made plans for the funeral. “It will just make people stay longer.”
But after the guests began to arrive I changed my mind, and had her put out sherry, Scotch, and other liquor as well. If anyone thought it was suspiciously like a celebration rather than a wake, I didn’t care. Bliss House had been a place of sadness for too long. It was time to open the house up and let other influences in. We had all had enough of Press and his dark hand over our lives.
I had Michael back. (Later that terrible night, I had found him safely asleep at the orchardkeeper’s house, with a confused and upset Shelley.) Nonie had returned with my father, though he remained ensconced in a chair in the library during the funeral service, his casted leg resting on an ottoman. I had turned the library into a temporary bedroom so he didn’t have to use the stairs.
Bliss House was mine, as much as it could belong to anybody.
“He’s dead.” Hugh Walters had gently lifted the half-mask from Press’s face and closed his eyes. It was a peculiar thing to do, given that he was a policeman and Press was a victim, but it sent a signal that he knew Press’s death couldn’t be handled as a regular crime. Hugh’s pleasant face looked bewildered. I had liked him, and almost felt sorry for him until I remembered how many crimes he must have covered up for Press. How he had stood by like the others while I lay drugged and exposed.
J.C. spoke from halfway across the room, where she stood against a wall, her hands pressed behind her as though she were ready to launch herself into one of the windows opposite. Her voice was now clear, despite the injuries to her face.
“Obviously, he had a terrible accident.”
Rachel, who was clinging to Jack, gasped.
“That’s insane. She killed him.” She pointed at me. “She’s got a goddamn knife. Look at her!”
I looked down. The jeweled peacock knife was in my right hand. Both the blade and my hand were covered with blood. A later glance at one of the tall, elaborately framed mirrors standing against the walls would reveal that my tunic sweater and bare legs were also bloody.
“You bitch!”
Jack held Rachel by the arms while she screamed unrepeatable profanities at me.
It was the roses I remembered. Not the knife. I knew that I was somehow responsible for the blood covering my husband and my own body. Had the roses been my own delusion? Certainly the shaking of the house had not. It had driven everyone else from the room and out of the house. Both the pocket door to the hall and the door to the outer stairway stood open—one to the distant light of the chandelier, the other to the night.
It certainly hadn’t been I who had propelled him across the room.
“That’s not what I saw,” J.C. said, calmly. “I saw him fall off the stage, drunk, onto one of the tools the workmen left behind.”