Legacy Of Terror

that, again, the old man was fighting against the acceptance of the truth. He wavered between rationality and an almost absurd degree of head-in-the-sand ecscapism. Right now, he was playing his ostrich role.
    She decided that it would be useless to tell him about the nightlight bulb having been unscrewed. And he would probably flatly refuse to accept her story about the man who was trying to pry open her door with the blade of a knife. He didn't want to believe, and therefore, he would not She would have to wait for Lee Matherly and tell him everything. He would know what to do. He would, most likely, call Captain Rand at once.
    “Well,” Elaine said, “I think I'll see if Bess has anything to serve a late breakfaster.”
    “You run along,” he said. “I'll be just fine.”
    “I'll check in on you after lunch.”
    As she opened the door, he leaned forward in his chair, folding the paper haphazardly against his lap. “Lock the door, please.”
    She turned and faced him, wondering if his facade of cheerfulness was about to break down. “Why?”
    “I'd feel better.”
    “Why?”
    The old man looked pained, as if he were confronted with a child he loved, but a child intent on being nasty with him. His face was drawn tight, holding back a flood of emotions. His eyes were filled to brimming with a sadness that had been nurtured for a long, long time, a sadness that had become as deep as his soul. He clearly could not bear to offer her another reason. And if he were forced to tell the truth, to explain the nature of the fears he wished to deny, he would break down and he would cry-and he might very well suffer another attack of his crippling illness.
    She felt that she was his friend, which meant she could not permit the tears. And as his nurse, she could not permit the attack of angina.
    “All right,” she said.
    She closed the door and locked it, tested the knob, then hurried down the steps and along the narrow first floor corridor toward the kitchen.
    As she pushed open the kitchen door, Bess wailed as if she had been struck; a short, sharp wail of pain.

Chapter 12
    For the first time in many years, Bess was both at a loss for words and incapable of functioning. Usually, the white-haired, jolly woman was vivacious and talkative, abustle with the chores of her position as if she were a wind-up machine that could not stop until its mainspring wound loose again. Now, however, her ruddy complexion had turned a gray ash, sickly and defeated, and her almost nervous abundance of energy had drained from her and left her wilted, sagging.
    “I can't believe it,” she said to Elaine, though she seemed mostly to be speaking to the wall in front of her.
    “It's all right now,” Elaine said. “It's over with now; there isn't anything you can do.”
    “I should have known,” Bess said, accepting the glass of water the nurse gave her but not bothering to sip of it. “He was missing this morning. I said to Jerry, I said, he wouldn't have gone out before we got up and fixed his breakfast, now would he. And if he'd gone out sometime during the night, he should have come back. Unless something happened to him.” She shuddered uncontrollably and blinked tears from her eyes. “And something did, didn't it?”
    Elaine had often handled situations where children needed comfort at the death of parents or where parents were deeply grieved by the loss of a child. That was hospital duty that every nurse learned to cope with, though she might not like it much. But this was the first time she had run across grief over a dead pet, a black and tan mixed- breed cat.
    “Bobo was with us for eight years-until last night,” Bess said. “He has a little hatchway in our front door that he can use to go in and out whenever he feels like it. With all this going on with the Matherlys, though, I should have locked his hatch. I should have.”
    “You couldn't have known,” Elaine said, taking the old woman's hand and patting it. “No one could expect you to-”
    “I should have,” Bess said. “I should have known. After Miss Tamlin, I should have been careful even with Bobo.” She looked up at Elaine with very clear, blue eyes and said, “Bobo was a skitterish cat. He wouldn't have gone to anyone unless he knew them. You know what that means, Miss?”
    “You think someone in this house killed him?”
    Bess looked very sober, and her eyes were lined with fear. “In a manner of speaking, Miss. In a manner of speaking, it was someone from this house that did it.”
    Elaine