Legacy Of Terror

asked, hoping the conversation would quickly extinguish itself in trivialities.
    “Yes,” he said. “And Bess will shout the roof down when she sees the dishes stacked here.” He chuckled and sipped the last of his coffee.
    She finished hers, too, and put her cup in the sink after she rinsed it out.
    He came up next to her, put his cup with hers, and said, “Would you like to come up to my studio and see the last few 'masterpieces' I've been working on so diligently?”
    No.
    But she said, “Well, I have things to do and-”
    “Come on,” he said. “Father's away on business in town. Gordon's gone with him. I don't have anyone to admire a miniature I just finished. And I am utterly lost without admirers.”
    “Your Uncle Paul seems to be your greatest admirer,” she said.
    “Yes, but he's gone as well. It's that day of the month when he collects his trust check from his portion of mother's estate. He'll have picked it up at the bank by now-but he won't be home till supper. He likes to celebrate the receipt of each check in one or another of his favorite bars.” He smiled as he said it, and she saw there was no anger or recrimination in his face or voice. He didn't seem to mind, at all, that his uncle was a drunkard.
    Then it occurred to her that, but for Jacob Matherly, they were alone in the house.
    And Jacob was a cripple, incapable of helping her If-
    If what?
    “Come on,” he said. “You've not been up to see my work yet, and it's high time you were.”
    He took her hand.
    His hand was warm, large, dry and firm. She did not know why she should have expected anything else, but when she felt his hand and found it was not cold, she was surprised.
    “I actually should look in on your grandfather and see-”
    “He'll be fine! Only for a few minutes,” he said, leading her from the kitchen, into the downstairs corridor.
    She did not see any way that she might gracefully refuse his invitation, and she did not want to make him angry. He was, after all, his father's favorite son. And he had Honneker blood…
    “I want an honest opinion,” he said, as they started up the stairs to the second floor.
    She did not reply. She could not reply, because her throat had constricted, and the ability to speak seemed to have left her.
    “I hate people who say they like everything. Uncle Paul is my best critic, because he's honest. He never fails to point out my failures and to criticize mistakes in my technique. He had a bit of art training himself- among many other things.”
    Elaine remembered Paul Honneker's honesty at the supper table that first night, when Celia had been expounding on her notions for a complete rebirth of the mansion. She wished she could be as truthful herself. She wished she could overcome her fear of Dennis and her reluctance to risk insulting him. If only she could say: “I am afraid of you. I don't want to go up there with you while we are alone in this house. Let me go!” If only… if only she could run.
    At the end of the second floor corridor, they opened a door and went up steep, narrow wooden steps to a second door which opened on the attic. They walked into a large room where Dennis Matherly slept and worked. The walls were intensely white and hung over with perhaps twenty of his paintings and drawings. The floor was polished hardwood and softened to the tread, on one half, by a tattered oriental rug. The ceiling was open-beamed and polished until it gleamed darkly. A skylight broke the wooden arches and shed sunlight on the large drafting table and swivel stool which occupied the center of the room. There was a great deal of other furniture, though it was all utilitarian. There was a bed, an easy chair, a desk and chair, bookshelves crammed full of art texts, four easels, a cabinet of supplies, a xerox machine, a mounted camera for photographic enlargement, and a small refrigerator where cold drinks might be kept.
    “Not much, but it's home for me,” he said.
    “I like it,” she said.
    She meant that. She had been prepared for a room full of plush and expensive furniture, deep pile carpeting, senseless knicknacks, a playboy's notion of what a working artist's studio was like. This was more the sort of place she could feel at ease in, utilitarian, sensible.
    “I'm glad you like it,” he said.
    He closed the door to the stairs so that they were, more than ever, completely alone.

Chapter 9
    Here at the very top of the mansion, the storm was nearer, and its fits of temper were more explosively loud than they