Legacy Of Terror

this suburb was a small town then, so that everyone knew of her-had escaped her temper. Her neighbors found her impossible to get along with, like decent people. She was a snob-and worse.”
    “It's the worse that ended in that Christmas Eve horror,” Syd said. He performed the same staged shudder and sipped at his drink.
    Shiela continued, “Dennis was ten years old, then. His brother, Gordon, was seven. Two little children, unaware of what evil lay within their own house.” She shook her head, in apparent sympathy for the little children, then went on. “Lee and Amelia had two other children then, the twins. Their names were Lana and Laura. Two darling little girls, about ten months old.”
    Elaine thought she knew exactly what was coming.
    She didn't want to hear it
    Yet she made no attempt to stop Shiela's tale, mesmerized by the intense heat, the chatter of the birds, the humidity that was like a blanket, and the droning story of deep, lasting horror that this envious, sun-browned but unhappy woman was unfolding for her perusal.
    Shiela said, “She was alone in the house with the twins when her mind snapped.”
    The birds swooped overhead.
    The birds cawed to each other.
    The sun burned down hard, like the crimsoned coil of an oven burner.
    Shiela said, “Lee was away with the boys, Christmas shopping. Jerry and Bess had the day off and were at Bess' sister's house in Mount Carmel. Paul didn't live with them then. I think he was teaching at some university in Texas-it was his fifth or sixth job. He was fired shortly after that. He never has been able to hold onto anything, that one. Anyway, Amelia was at home with Lana and Laura, by themselves.”
    Oppressive heat.
    The birds.
    The ice in her glass had melted.
    Leave, she told herself.
    But she had to know.
    “Anyone could have seen that the woman was not right,” Syd put in. “Anyone with common sense would have known better than to leave her at home, alone, with those two defenseless babies.”
    Shiela cast a let-me-tell-the-story glance at her husband, and he closed his mouth over the rim of his glass.
    She said, “Jacob was downtown, seeing to the restaurants' store of goods for the holiday dinners they expected to serve. He got home at a little after five in the afternoon, and he found her-and what she'd done.”
    Shiela took a drink.
    Tell it, Elaine subvocally urged the woman. She disliked the way Shiela was drawing it out for the best effect. The story of any tragedy should be told quickly, simply, to carry the least pain with it.
    “She had taken a-taken a knife to the twins where they lay in their cribs,” Shiela said. She finished her drink. “She had slashed at them over and over, until there was little left of them.”
    Uncontrollably, unconsciously, Elaine bent forward in her chair, as if giving way to some pain in her stomach.
    “She had murdered them,” Shiela said. “And she tried to murder Jacob Matherly when he came upon her where she knelt in the blood by the cribs. He was cut badly in the shoulder, but wrested the knife out of her grasp. She ran, then, and tripped on the carpeting at the end of the stairs. She fell the length of them to the ground floor. When Jacob found her, she was quite dead.”

Chapter 6
    When Elaine returned to the Matherly house, she looked in on Jacob and found the old man asleep, resting comfortably by the look of him, taking a late-afternoon nap to prepare him for the rigors of suppertime and the long evening ahead. In sleep, the stroke-affected half of his countenance was far less imposing and ugly than it appeared when he was awake. She did not interrupt his sleep, but closed the door quietly and walked down the hall to her own bedroom.
    She locked her door.
    She undressed and showered, letting the hot water pour over her for long, long, exquisite minutes. She did not know which of the two things she was trying to wash from herself: the Bradshaws' envy and the hatred of the Matherly household which they so clearly, even fanatically, evidenced-or the gruesome account of the Christmas Eve murder of the Matherly twins. She felt numbed, terribly old and maybe paralyzed as Jacob was. She neglected the soap, neglected everything as the steaming water cascaded over her and drove out some of the evil that seemed to have seeped into her.
    She slipped into her pajamas and flopped upon the bed, drew the sheets up to her chin. She found that the ordeal of the afternoon had thoroughly exhausted her. She had done little but go for a