Legacy Of Terror

“When you're a nurse and you've had to study medicine and biology and chemistry, and when you've read lightly in the other sciences, it just isn't possible to believe in things like that any more.” She wanted to say more, but she restrained her impulse to lecture.
    She realized now that she should have expected something like this from the moment that she had seen the nature of their library. This was not the first couple she had ever met who professed a sincere belief in the occult, in supernatural goings on, curses and hexeroi and ghosts. At one time, she had gotten angry and had tried to argue the superstitious out of their silly beliefs, but now she understood that such a task was Herculean, all but impossible. After all, not everyone looked upon the world quite so sensibly as she did. She would always have to tolerate the most fanciful of philosophies in other people-but she did not have to like it. And she did not. Usually, when she saw that scenes like this were inevitable in any relationship with other people, she excused herself. The discovery of the dead cat and all the previous tension of the Matherly house, however, had dulled her perceptions a bit.
    “We've educated ourselves, too,” Bess said defensively, though Elaine had not meant to imply that they were poorly educated. Even the best educated and the most intelligent people became involved in occultism, searching for some reassurance they apparently did not find in their daily lives or in their regular church attendance.
    “We haven't delved into the sciences which you mentioned-medicine and biology and such,” Jerry said. “But we have read and studied the sciences of the occult.”
    “They're hardly sciences, though,” Elaine said.
    “Some think they are.”
    Elaine did not answer, and she felt much better for having held hen tongue. She liked both of these old people and did not wish to become involved in some petty and bitter argument about something so silly as the existence of demons and witches and-ghosts.
    But Jerry was not satisfied. He said, “Perhaps if you heard about the Christmas Eve murders, you'd believe in ghosts after all.”
    “I've heard about them.”
    “From whom?” Bess asked. “Jake?”
    “Yes. And the Bradshaws.”
    “Neither of them would tell it all,” Jerry said to his wife.
    “Course not,” Bess agreed.
    Jerry said, “They wouldn't have told you about the knife.”
    “I heard that, all the terrible details,” Elaine said.
    “But did the Bradshaws or Jake tell you that the knife Amelia used was never found?”
    Elaine recalled the story as Jacob Matherly had told it. Amelia had killed the twins and then had stabbed him. She had fled the room and had broken her neck on the stairs while fleeing from-whatever a mad woman might imagine was chasing her. The knife should have been found alongside her or somewhere between the nursery where she wounded Jacob and the spot where they had found he body.
    “A mystery, isn't it?” Bess asked.
    She seemed to have recovered from her grief for Bobo, and she leaned forward in her chair, her eyes bright and her lips curved in a gentle smile.
    “She hid it somewhere,” Elaine offered.
    “Why would a madwoman take the time to hide a knife when her guilt was plain enough without it?”
    “Why would a madwoman do anything?” she replied to Bess by way of another question. “She had lost all her reason, remember. She was not behaving logically. You can't try to reason what she did and why.”
    “What you say may be so,” Jerry offered. His voice was breathy with expectancy which Elaine found unsettling. “But, then, why didn't a search turn up the knife?”
    “Who searched for it?”
    “The police.”
    Bess said, “They gave us all a hard time for a while when they couldn't find the knife. Especially Jake, poor man.”
    “Why especially Jake?” Elaine asked.
    “Fools!” Jerry said, shaking his head at the very thought of the police.
    “The police had some notion or other that Jake might have-might have taken the knife to the children, pushed Amelia down the steps and then cut himself to make it look like he'd been attacked.” Bess clucked her tongue. “You know Jake. Could he ever have done a deed as black as all that?”
    “No,” she said. “I can't see how.”
    “Cops finally learned about Amelia's grandfather being in a place for the insane, and they quit poking around.”
    Elaine felt a bit dizzy. She wanted a breath of fresh air and some light-neither of which this tightly sealed, dimly lighted room could