AMANDA MORELY HAD A FLASH OF FEAR WHEN SHE WENT INTO HER AUNT’S EMPTY DARKENED HOUSE, UNREASONING FEAR BECAUSE SHE DID NOT SUSPECT THAT BELOW HER, IN A SECRET ROOM, ELLIE PEALE’S KILLER WAS PACING WITH ANGRY IMPATIENCE. IN FACT NEITHER AMANDA NOR HER AUNT, WHO HAD BEEN RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL THAT AFTERNOON WITH A DISABLING STROKE, HAD KNOWN THE CLEVERLY CONCEALED BOMB SHELTER EXISTED. ONLY HARVEY SWEET, PETTY CRIMINAL AND PART-TIME HANDYMAN, REMEMBERED IT WAS THERE, THE PERFECT HIDING PLACE FOR THE KILLER, HIS HALF BROTHER CLAUDE.
THE INEXPLICABLE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELLIE PEALE, A YOUNG SUPERMARKET CLERK, WAS WIDELY FEATURED IN THE NEWS. EVEN IF THE GIRL’S BODY WERE NOT FOUND, IT WOULD BE PRUDENT FOR HER MURDERER TO GET OUT OF ALBUQUERQUE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. IF ALL WENT AS HARVEY HAD ARRANGED, CLAUDE WOULD LEAVE THE SHELTER THAT NIGHT AND BE IN ANOTHER STATE BY MORNING. THEN AMANDA APPEARED, CUTTING OFF HIS ESCAPE. BECAUSE SHE WAS TAKING CARE OF A FRIEND’S TWO-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, SHE COULD NOT BE LURED FROM THE HOUSE. SOMEHOW THE FORMIDABLE BROTHERS WOULD HAVE TO PREVENT HER FROM WRECKING THEIR PLANS. BUT AMANDA, PREOCCUPIED WITH THE CRISES IN HER OWN LIFE, WAS BLIND TO THE SIGNS OF DANGER.
THE MENACE WITHIN IS A SPELLBINDING NOVEL OF LOVE AND FEAR, OF THE TERRIFYING EXPERIENCES OF A YOUNG WOMAN AND OF THE PEOPLE WHO IN VARIOUS UNEXPECTED WAYS ARE CONCERNED WITH HER DESPERATE SITUATION.
Copyright © 1979 by Ursula Curtiss
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Curtiss, Ursula Reilly.
The menace within.
I. Title.
PZ3.C94875Me [PS3503.U915] 813’.5‘4 78–13361
ISBN 0-396–07620–3
For my sister, Mary McMullen
Chapter 1
No doubt because of her function here, the nurse on duty at the intensive-care unit desk had somewhat the appearance of a bulldog adorned with lipstick and glasses. “Are you a relative?”
Amanda Morley had often wondered about the real usefulness of such a question, but in this atmosphere she only said obediently, “Yes. I’m Mrs. Balsam’s niece.”
The nurse made a decisive tick on a list in front of her, presumably so as to exclude any other would-be visitors, and tipped her white-capped head indicatively. “Room six twelve, at the end of the corridor.”
Apart from a policeman sitting on a straight chair outside a closed door midway along, there was none of the emergency atmosphere—doctors clustered in consultation, plasma-laden trolleys being pushed at speed —that Amanda had somehow expected in this part of the hospital, with the busy brilliance of the intensive-care unit behind her. Still, she tiptoed on the glossy black-and-white tile, gazing steadfastly ahead of her because somewhere nearby, surely visible if she looked, someone was crying quietly.
Mixed with her own anxiety was a cowardly streak of dread, even though the doctor had warned her. She arranged her face consciously, trying for an expression of fond but brisk concern—nothing to be really alarmed about here—and tapped lightly on the partially open door of 612 and went in.
It was a small room, scarcely more than a generous cubicle, filled with an indefinable aura which, if liquefied and bottled, would be labeled “Crisis.” Amanda didn’t know what measures had been taken nearly three hours earlier, when her aunt had been rushed here by ambulance; now, there was some kind of sinister apparatus under the bed and, at its head, a stand holding intravenous solution. The nurse who was checking its control, blocking the patient from view, turned at Amanda’s entrance.
“Hi,” she said brightly and at normal pitch. “Isn’t it cold out? And that wind. I was just telling Mrs. Balsam she isn’t missing a thing in the way of weather.”
She was young, but obviously knew what she was about; without winking or grimacing she had struck the note. She turned back to the bed. “Comfortable now? I’ll leave you alone with your company for a little while, okay?”
Rhetorical questions, because since her sudden stroke Jane Balsam had been unable to speak.
The nurse departed. Amanda walked the few steps to the bed, bent and kissed her aunt’s cheek, said as she unbuttoned her coat, “Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish.”
It was a talisman kind of phrase—as a family, the Morleys had tended to avert tears by a near levity which frequently shocked other people—and the unparalyzed left corner of Mrs. Balsam’s mouth tried to acknowledge it. Her eyes could not.
Amanda sat down and began to talk matter-of-factly. She would have been here earlier if she’d known, but of course Dr. Simms didn’t have her office number and hadn’t been able to reach her until she got home. “So I didn’t stop to pick up nightgowns and cologne and things. I’ll bring those in the morning.”
The doctor had prepared her for the stony downpulling of the right side of her aunt’s face, and even the look of intense fear. She’s very frightened about her condition, and with good reason, I’m afraid. She’s sixty-seven, and I’ve been after her about her blood pressure for years. Of course, twelve hours or twenty-four may give us an entirely different picture. Reassure her, if you can. That’ll do more than anything else at this stage.”
Reassure her—struck down, unable to communicate: the vocal and witty aunt, her father’s eldest sister, with whom she had spent her final growing-up years after her own parents had been killed in a sailing accident on a vacation with friends in California. Gerald Balsam had been alive then; he had been dead for a year now.
It was astonishingly hard to maintain what was, in effect, a monologue; reflective little silences were comfortable only when the other person could break them at will. The December wind, icily cold as the nurse had said, pressed against the window in its stingy folds of institutional beige. Even with her coat off Amanda was uncomfortably warm. It crossed her mind that many people discharged from overheated hospitals in winter must fall instantly prey to pneumonia.
But that would scarcely do as
