Legacy Of Terror

steaks, extra bread, extra potatoes.
    Shiela said, “How do you like your job?”
    “Fine,” Elaine said. “It's the first time I've really been on my own.”
    From there, the conversation drifted into harmless channels, light banter that Elaine found enjoyable, with but a few exceptions. She told them about nurse's training and about the orphanage. This last brought forth a gush of sympathy from them which she neither wanted nor respected. She had no use for sympathy. Life was what it was, and you only got bogged down if you began to lament what Fate had given you. She discovered that Syd Bradshaw had made his modest fortune through the motion picture industry; he owned a chain of full-sized and mini-theaters within the Pittsburgh area. This would have been a fascinating topic if the Bradshaws had not continued to lace their anecdotes with anti-Matherly epithets with which she could hardly sympathize, being a Matherly employee. It seemed that Syd was jealous of Lee Matherly's greater wealth. Heaven knew, he had more money than he could use himself. Still, he envied Lee the larger Matherly fortune. Both Syd and Shiela often referred to Lee's having been “born to wealth without having to work for a penny of it.” When Elaine ventured the suggestion that Lee had been successfully managing the family affairs for some years now, Syd said, “And who couldn't make money if he had a fortune to begin with. If you have money, you can make more, even if you have no talent for it.”
    The sun seemed to grow hotter, stiflingly warm, pouring down over Elaine like honey, burning honey.
    She was perspiring and itchy.
    The chair under her, a plastic-thatch lounge, seemed to have grown harder and more uncomfortable by the moment.
    When the summer birds swooped low overhead and called out to each, other, their voices seemed magnified by the heat, converted into banshee wails that set her teeth on edge.
    Eventually, she learned that Syd Bradshaw and Lee Matherly had been in the same high school class, had been to the same college. Bradshaw had come from a far less well-to-do family, and he felt that the entire purpose of his life was to “show-up” Lee Matherly, to prove the value of once having lived in poverty. He expounded the virtue of a poor childhood as loudly as he warned against the danger of eating foods too high in cholesterol. Because he had not made the fortune the Matherlys controlled and now knew that he never would, he was discontent. He could not enjoy his own achievements, his own wealth. Instead, he had to achieve his longed for dominance over the Matherlys by speaking against them and trying to lessen them in the eyes of others. It was all very sad-and silly. A childhood rivalry had ruined the adult life of Syd Bradshaw.
    “Tell me,” Shiela said, as Elaine was trying to think of some excuse to take leave of them, “doesn't it frighten you, living in the same house where Amelia Matherly once lived?”
    “Why should it?”
    Syd said, “You mean no one has told you?”
    “About Christmas Eve?” Shiela expanded.
    Her boredom and discontent with these people was sluiced away as if by a fresh rain. She said, “Jacob has hinted at some tragedy or other, but I don't know the full story.”
    “With this latest murder, you shouldn't be kept ignorant,” Shiela said. Her eyes sparkled now. She licked her lips, anxious to impart the story of the scandal. She had been infected with her husband's disease: incurable envy.
    “Did you live here then-fifteen years ago?” Elaine asked.
    “No,” Syd Bradshaw said. “We weren't born into a house like this. We had to work into it. Work! We've been here ten years now. I was not yet thirty-six when we contracted to have the house built.” He was proud of his early success.
    “Then how do you know about Christmas Eve and-”
    “Everyone in the city knew about it,” Shiela explained. “Maybe everyone in the state and country. It was big news!” She shuddered, but the expression came off as pre-planned and false.
    “Could you-tell me about it?” Elaine asked. She knew that the story would somehow throw a discreditable light upon the Matherly name, but she could not resist learning, at last, what had happened so long ago.
    “It was Amelia Matherly,” Shiela said. Her voice had dropped to a heavy whisper, as if she were speaking in the presence of the dead or within the walls of a cathedral. “No one ever thought she was normal. She was known for her drastic fits of temper. Not a merchant in town-and