ring down the final curtain.
Her Uncle Will had not outgrown his childish prejudices, but had reinforced them, if anything. He still hated her father, and he still cursed her mother for the marriage she'd made. It followed, too, that he hated her, Gwyn, as much or more than anyone, looked on her as a line of tainted blood in the Barnaby family. No wonder, then, that he could set up a plan to drive her mad, with little or no worry to his conscience.
When Ben and Penny returned to the manor, she'd be waiting for them, and she would confront them with everything that she knew and suspected, see if they filled in the last couple of holes for her. Then, she would pack and put her things in the car. If Will and Elaine had gotten home by then, she'd give them a brief but pungent going-away speech to let them know what she thought of them. If they were still out, she would go away without so much as a goodbye.
She supposed she could press charges against them, but she didn't want all the hassle that would involve. She had survived them. That was sufficient.
She went carefully down the attic steps, out through the closet and into Ben Groves' room. There, she turned on all of the lights, as she intended to turn on others throughout the great house. So far as she could see, there was no good reason to maintain secrecy as to her whereabouts. The lights would draw Ben and his wife back to the manor much faster; and the sooner she had an opportunity to talk with them, to tell them what she knew, the better.
She stepped into the hall, illuminated by the yellow wash of lamplight that spilled out of the room behind her, and she was brought up short as Ben shouted at her from no more than ten steps down the hall.
“You! Stop!”
She whirled and shone the flashlight into his face, momentarily blinding him.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“What are you doing here?”
“You appear healthy for a dead man,” she said.
He stopped, unable to find a response.
She said, “I know all about you.”
Behind Ben, Penny moaned softly.
“The show's over,” Gwyn said.
“You had no right to go snooping,” Ben said.
She laughed at him and said, “Look who has suddenly turned into a moralist!”
He took another step toward her, his expression more menacing than subdued.
Quickly, backing against the door frame and keeping the beam of the flashlight centered on Groves' face, she said, “I know enough to have both of you tossed into jail, if I want to see that. I know that you're actors, that you were hired by my uncle to make me think that I'm losing my mind.”
“Ben, let's get out of here,” Penny said.
“Shut up,” he told her.
“Ben—”
“
Gwyn said, “I know that the whole thing was a set-up in order to put me over the edge and get me declared incompetent by a court. Uncle Will needs money, and my inheritance runs past ten million dollars. When I turn twenty-one, in a few months, I should take over its management; but if I'm committed to a mental hospital, someone will have to be appointed guardian and manager of the estate. Who else but Uncle Will?”
“Ben?” Penny called.
He ignored her altogether now, and he took another couple of steps toward Gwyn. His expression was not at all that of a chastened man, but full of bitterness and a dark determination.
“It's over with, don't you understand?” she asked.
“You can't hurt us if you're dead,” Ben Groves said. He was very nearly on top of her now.
“You wouldn't hurt me.”
“Wouldn't I?”
“Ben, don't do it, please don't,” Penny said, following after him, pleading.
Gwyn said, “Don't you see that if you kill me, you'd just be making things worse for yourself? You'd be liable for murder, then, not merely for conspiracy to drive me mad, or to defraud me or whatever. Besides, my death wouldn't help you at all.” She was amazed at her own intense calm, the way the words spilled out of her as if she were just talking about the weather and not about her life, which hung in the balance. She said, “My estate would be tied up in court for years. If the state didn't take every last penny of it, and if by some far-out chance Uncle Will ended up with the leftovers, inheritance taxes would have reduced it by more than half, by as much as sixty percent.”
“So what?” Groves asked. “As far as I'm concerned, five million is as good as ten.”
Beginning to see that he might not be bluffing, that he might mean the threat, she said, “You stay away from me, do you hear? I'm warning you!”
He laughed, his face an ugly mask in the beam of the flashlight. He might be acting, trying to frighten her again, but she did not think that he was.
“Ben, what are you going to do?” Penny asked, sounding all alone and desperate.
“He's going to kill me,” Gwyn said. She realized that the wife was a potential ally now. “He's going to get you both sent to prison.”
“Ben—”
As much to himself as to his wife, Ben Groves said, “If she was to fall down the stairs and break her neck, no one would have to know that it was murder.” As he spoke, he did not remove his eyes from Gwyn, and he took another step in her direction; in a few moments, he would be close enough to grab hold of her… He said, “It would be a nice, clean accident, a very sad thing to have happened, but something that could be in no way construed as an accident. I could even say that she'd been screaming about seeing a ghost and being visited by her dead sister just before she fell, and then all of this charade we've been through wouldn't go unrewarded. Dr. Cotter could testify that she'd had some hallucinations; since he's not in on this, he'd make a very good, very reliable, very convincing witness. There'd be no risk to us…”
“Don't touch me,” Gwyn said.
“You can't hurt her,” Penny said. She had been willing to drive the girl mad. However, the idea of spilling blood repulsed her. Madness was a quiet illness, an invisible one that could be forgotten in short order by those who had caused it; a broken neck, on the other hand, was the kind of thing nightmares were made of.
“Stop him, Penny,” Gwyn said.
“Stay out of this, Penny!” Groves said.
“You'll go to prison, both of you, no matter who throws me down the steps,” Gwyn warned.
In that instant, Groves leaped forward, grabbed her, and pulled her out into the hall.
The flashlight slipped out of her hand as, too late, she realized it might have made a good weapon to use against him. It dropped to the floor and rolled lazily against the far wall, making no noise at all on the carpet, but casting huge and eerie shadows all around them, making this the haunted house they'd tried to convince her that it was.
Gwyn felt his hands go for her throat.
She tucked her chin down.
He forced her head up and got a grip on her neck, just the same.
She wrestled furiously, trying to break free, but she found that he was even stronger than he looked, all muscles that were more than a match for her, even with her special strength that fear gave her.
She kicked his shins, hard.
He growled, and his face was contorted with pain; but he did not let go of her, nor did his grasp slacken.
“Ben, don't hurt her!”
His hands clutched her with a more brutal determination than Penny's hands had shown when the actress had been playing Ginny's ghost earlier in the evening. Gwyn felt dizzy and nauseous, and she didn't know how soon she would black out and be at his mercy.
