Baptism in Blood(87)
“Oh, yes. I knew her, and I know Dinah and Stelle. At least I recognize them. They might have been in the living room. They weren’t in the study.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“But they also weren’t in the clearing when you got to it.”
“Nobody was in the clearing. The place was a mess. I don’t know how I can explain it to you when you didn’t see it. This was a major hurricane we were dealing with here.”
“I know that. But Stelle Cary told me yesterday that they were in the clearing for the whole of the storm. That they were trapped there by the storm.”
“Well, they weren’t there when we got there, that’s all I know. But maybe it’s not as much of a contradiction as it seems.”
“How not?”
“Well, by the time we actually made our way up there, the storm had started to die down. Maybe Dinah and Stelle and Carol left just as we were making our way up.”
“Wouldn’t they have had to come down by the same path?”
“It would have been simpler,” David admitted, “but they might not have been able to find the path. It would have been hard to find anything in all that chaos.”
“That still leaves the problem of the baby,” Gregor pointed out. “If Stelle and Carol and Dinah did what Ginny Marsh is accusing them of doing, then fine. They were there. They killed the baby. The body of the baby was there. But if they didn’t kill the baby, then you have to ask how and when the body was put in the clearing, and by whom.”
“I thought you had already decided by whom. I thought you were one of the people who believed it was Ginny who did it.”
“Ginny may have done it, but if the sequence of events is the way we’ve just worked it out, she didn’t put the baby’s body in the clearing. She didn’t have the baby with her when you found her.”
“No,” David said. “No, she didn’t.”
“Was she out of your sight for any significant period after that?”
“She wasn’t out of my sight at all,” David answered. “I was hanging on to her with both hands. I didn’t know what was going on. I was scared to death.”
“I don’t blame you,” Gregor said. “But you see my point here. There’s a little glitch in the evidence. Looked at this way, it seems much more likely that Stelle and Dinah and Carol did just what Ginny Marsh says they did, at least insofar as they are supposed to have killed the baby. I think we can rule the devil worship nonsense out. Just a nice Baptist girl misinterpreting the bizarre.”
“I don’t think Dinah and Stelle and Carol killed that baby,” David said. “Especially not Carol. You have no idea how besotted she was by babies.”
“A lot of child murderers are besotted by babies, but I’ll give you a plausible scenario. Dinah and Stelle and Carol decided to worship the goddess with a good old human sacrifice, the way she’s been worshipped through most of history. So they got hold of the baby, and they killed it, and then Carol Littleton couldn’t handle the guilt. And now Carol Littleton is dead.”
“Do you really believe that, Gregor? That they’re practicing blood sacrifice up at the camp?”
“No. I just said the scenario was plausible, more plausible right now than anything else.”
“You ought to tell the whole thing to Ginny’s defense lawyer. Maybe it would get her out of—protective custody.”
Gregor stood up and drained the last of his coffee.
“I’ve got to go into town,” he said. “I’m not very interested in talking to Ginny Marsh’s defense lawyer, but I am interested in talking to Clayton Hall. Are you going to be around later this afternoon?”
“I’m going to be right in my office, typing away.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll come back for lunch and tell you what I’ve found. You ought to get up earlier in the morning. It’s better for your health.”
“You’re the one with the paunch, Gregor. Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out.”
Gregor made his way down the spiral staircase again, moving slowly to make sure he wouldn’t fall. It had always seemed shameful to him that he had so little sense of balance. Someone who had been in the positions he had been in ought to be more sure on his feet.
Five
1
IT TOOK ROSE MACNEILL almost all day to get herself to go up the hill to the camp—on her own this time, not in a crowd, not because of an emergency. Actually, Rose used to go up there all the time when she was a little girl. That was in the days when the camp was not a camp but Bonaventura House, and open to the public like a museum. In high school, Rose and her girlfriends liked to go look at the furniture and the wallpaper. It was much better there than in the pictures in the decorating magazines, richer and more magnificent. Rose could just imagine herself sweeping down the big central staircase in a floor-length ball gown with a tiara of diamonds on her head. Waiting at the bottom would be hundreds of people, in ball gowns, too, walking carefully under heavy loads of jewelry, and the men in tuxedos. Rose knew girls who dreamed only of growing up to be the kind of housewife who was married to a doctor. They imagined themselves giving barbecue parties on broad back patios on lawns that brushed the territory of the eighteenth hole. They pictured themselves in smart little suits from Neiman-Marcus and Lord & Taylor. Rose was more ambitious than that. She wanted to sweep through galleries of mirrors in Balenciaga and Cartier pearls.