Legacy Of Terror

answers are better,” Jacob said.
    It was one of her own axioms too, but she did not see that it applied to this. She told him as much. “It is far more complicated to ever imagine that one of the people in this house did it. None of them are capable of such a thing!”
    “Several are,” he said.
    She was suddenly angered by his pessimism and paranoia. The events of the night had broken down her defenses to the point where she could forget her training and speak rather harshly to him. “I don't see how you can say that about your own people!”
    “It isn't easy,” he agreed. “Elaine, I grieve terribly at the thought of it, but I cannot let emotion overrule what I know.”
    “You can't know. Did you see who did it?” “No.”
    “Then-”
    He said, “One cannot evade the truth for very long. Life makes certain that it comes home again and again. And if you choose to ignore it, it only hurts you worse in the end. I've been expecting this for a decade and a half.”
    “Neither Dennis nor Gordon-and not Paul, for that matter-is capable of murder. And, certainly, none of them is capable of such an awful, bloody murder like this.” She corrected herself, superstitiously. Celia Tamlin was not yet dead; it wasn't right to speak of her like that. Thus far, the crime was only intended murder.
    “It is all part of their legacy, Elaine.” Jacob had managed to pull himself up against the headboard, sitting as straight as he could manage, rigid as iron, the feather pillows jammed down between the headboard and the mattress.
    “Legacy?”
    “The Honneker legacy, the one I tried to tell you about earlier in the day.”
    “I don't understand,” she said.
    And that was true. And, being true, it frightened her, because she was accustomed to understanding things. Confusion and doubt were always to be cast out as quickly as possible.
    “Madness,” Jacob Matherly said. “Their mother's grandfather, their own great-grandfather, went out of his mind when he was only thirty-four and was thereafter institutionalized for the remainder of his life. And, more recently, their mother was affected.”
    “Lee's wife?”
    “Amelia,” he affirmed.
    “You can't mean that she was mad,” Elaine said. But she knew quite well what he meant.
    “Oh, yes,” Jacob said. “Mad. Very mad. She was a beautiful woman, tall and stately with a face like a goddess. Lee thought that her flights of fancy and her sometimes hot temperament were intriguing, spice to her otherwise steady personality. At first, he thought that. Later, he learned they were symptoms of a deeper and more dangerous malady.”
    “Are you all right?” she asked. His color was bad, and he was trembling.
    “I'm fine,” he croaked. But he had begun, ever so silently, to weep, tears glistening on his leathery cheeks…

Chapter 4
    Although grief-stricken by the memory of that long-ago tragedy, Jacob Matherly did not seem in danger of becoming overexcited by it as he had earlier in the day. She felt there was little chance that he would aggravate his angina, and she decided to let him go on with it, in his good time, until she had-at last, at last! -heard the story of Christmas Eve, the story which seemed to bind this entire household under a black and unbreakable spell.
    Just when he was beginning to find an end to the store of tears in himself, just when Elaine thought that he might now continue and unburden himself, thereby enlightening her, a knock came at the door. She answered it, reluctantly, and found Jerry standing there, like a bird in human clothes, sharp and frail, quivering slightly.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “The police,” Jerry said.
    She supposed they had had to be called, though she had never given it a thought until now.
    “They would like to talk with you, downstairs,” Jerry said.
    “I don't know anything about it,” she said.
    “They're talking to everyone.”
    She sighed. “Very well. I'll put Mr. Matherly back to bed and be down in a few moments.”
    Jerry nodded and hurried down the corridor towards the stairs, his spindly legs like the legs of a crab or insect
    “I guess you heard,” she said, closing the door and turning back to old Jacob Matherly.
    The tears were gone altogether, and his stony composure had taken over once more. He said, “If they want to talk to me, they'll have to come up here.”
    “We'll fix it so that you don't have to talk to them,” she said. She got another sedative from the medicine chest, poured a glass of cold water from the ice-filled pitcher next to his