And One to Die On(93)

Hannah Graham was following him, swinging the warming iron above her head and smashing it down over and over again, like a polo player in pursuit of the ball.





CHAPTER 5


1


SHE WASN’T TRYING TO catch him. Gregor saw that right away. She could run much faster than he could, even carrying that heavy iron instrument. She could have hit him at any time. The shaft of whatever it was was at least four feet long. When Kelly Pratt started to run up behind her to drive her off, she swung it around at him and nearly hit him in the gut. If she had connected, she would have broken his rib cage or his pelvis or caused the kind of internal damages that usually resulted from car wrecks. Kelly Pratt backed up and stopped. Cavender Marsh went higher on the stairs. Hannah Graham followed him, swinging the rod ahead of her, smashing the hard round end of it over and over again into the walls.

“What’s she doing?” Bennis asked in a whisper.

Gregor didn’t know when she’d come back from her latest run of Morse code signals, but here she was.

“She’s driving him,” Gregor told her. “Upstairs. I don’t know where.”

“Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”

This was a question about on a par with, Is the Pope Catholic? Gregor didn’t answer it. Cavender was almost to the second-floor landing now. Hannah was right behind him.

Gregor began to climb the darkened stairs, as quickly as he could without attracting the attention of Hannah Graham, or Cavender Marsh. He needn’t have been so cautious. They were paying no attention to him. Cavender Marsh was much too frightened. Hannah Graham was having much too good a time. When they were both on the landing, Cavender Marsh started to dart toward the family wing. Hannah Graham got around behind him and blocked his path. Cavender Marsh tried to make it to the guest wing. Hannah Graham stopped him there, too. She was very fast, when she wanted to be.

“What’s she trying to do?” Bennis demanded, coming up behind Gregor on the stairs.

Bennis was very fast when she wanted to be, too. “She’s forcing him up the stairs,” Gregor told her. “Watch.”

Cavender Marsh had to go on up the stairs, to the third floor or maybe beyond, because there was nowhere else to go. The problem was that the stairs were not a straight shot, rising from the second-floor landing in the same well. The stairs were at the back of the landing, tucked in next to the windows. Hannah Graham got there first and smashed the windows into pieces. Shards of glass sprayed into the shadows. Cavender started to back up and found his daughter behind him again. He bolted upward.

“He’s going to have a heart attack,” Bennis said.

“Maybe that’s what she’s after,” Kelly Pratt told her.

Gregor turned and saw that they were all there, Bennis and Kelly and Mathilda and Lydia and Geraldine, following him resolutely in spite of the fact that they didn’t know how they could possibly be of use. Gregor fixed his attention on Geraldine Dart.

“Where do those stairs go?” he asked her.

“To the second and third floors and to the attic. But the doors to the second and third floors are locked.”

“But not the one to the attic?”

“I don’t know,” Geraldine said.

They could all hear the banging of that metal thing on wood, and the sounds of cracking and splintering that always followed it. Cavender Marsh and Hannah Graham were proceeding upward.

“All right,” Gregor said. “You told us last night, early this morning, whenever it was. There’s another way up to the attic?”

“Yes, there is. There’s a staircase off a utility hall behind the library.”

“All right,” Gregor said again. “I want you to go there and go on up. Take Kelly Pratt with you.”

“I’m ready,” Kelly Pratt said.

“Just the two of them?” Bennis asked. “What about the rest of us?”

“Ms. Frazier and Ms. Acken are going to stay right here on the landing in case there’s another way back that Ms. Dart doesn’t know about. You and I are going up that staircase.”

“What are we going to do if there is another way back to this landing?” Mathilda Frazier asked. “What could we do? She could kill us with that thing.”

“We’ll be all right, dear,” Lydia Acken said stoutly. “We don’t have to put ourselves in danger. We just have to observe.”

Actually, they did not have to do anything. Gregor did not believe there was another way back to this landing. He did believe that these two were the weakest ones in the group, and that they needed to be kept out of trouble. He turned to Bennis.

“Are you ready?”