The Blackstone Chronicles - By John Saul Page 0,111

her wheelchair, emerged from the metal cage. Her eyes fixed balefully on Germaine and Rebecca, almost as if she was sorry they were waiting for her. Rolling the wheelchair across the enormous Oriental carpet that covered all but the edges of the entry hall’s walnut floor, Clara inspected the tray. Rebecca could almost feel her searching for something to complain about, and it took her only a moment to find it.

“The sugar bowl isn’t full,” she announced at the exact second she lifted its lid.

“I’m sorry, Miss Clara,” Rebecca said, her face reddening. Why hadn’t Germaine told her to fill it? “I’ll fill it right away.”

“You won’t,” Clara Wagner declared. “Germaine will do it while you set the tea table.”

Rebecca saw a vein in Germaine’s forehead throbbing, but she said nothing as Germaine picked the offending sugar bowl off the tray and retreated back toward the kitchen. Rebecca herself followed Clara Wagner as she led the way to the front parlor, where a tea table waited, which Rebecca had already set with three places. Clara eyed them suspiciously, but Rebecca had been careful to get each utensil straight. The damask napkins were folded perfectly. She held her breath as Clara’s eyes moved from the china to the jam pots to the butter dish, but those too seemed to meet her standards.

“You may set the tray down,” she decreed.

They waited in silence until Germaine arrived with the sugar bowl. Rebecca carefully fixed its level in her mind, determined not to make the same mistake again.

Germaine poured the first cup of tea and set it in front of her mother. “Why don’t you show Rebecca the handkerchief I gave you?” she asked, her eyes flicking toward Rebecca as if to see if the younger woman would contradict her.

She did give it to her mother, Rebecca reminded herself. Oliver gave it to me, but it was Germaine who gave it to Miss Clara. “Thank you,” she said as Germaine finally passed her a cup of tea. Then she turned to Clara. “I’d love to see the handkerchief.”

Clara Wagner’s hand moved automatically to the pocket into which she’d stuffed the handkerchief. “I didn’t bring it downstairs,” she said. “I don’t like it.”

The vein in Germaine’s forehead began throbbing again as she saw the lump in her mother’s pocket and instantly understood what it was. Still stinging from her humiliation over the sugar bowl, she glared at her mother. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you give it back to me?”

Clara’s eyes met her daughter’s. “I don’t have it,” she insisted.

“You do,” Germaine replied coldly. She reached over to take the handkerchief out of her mother’s pocket, but Clara’s fingers closed on her wrist. For a long moment mother and daughter glared at each other. “Are you going to call me a liar again, Mother?” Germaine asked.

Suddenly Clara’s hand released Germaine’s wrist and she pulled the handkerchief out of her pocket. “Very well,” she said, her voice rasping. “If you want it that badly, have it! Have it with my blessing!” Crushing the handkerchief into a wad, she hurled it in her daughter’s face.

Rebecca held her breath, bracing herself for the scene she was certain was about to ensue, but to her relief, Germaine didn’t respond to her mother’s fury. She merely retrieved the handkerchief from the floor where it had fallen, spread it flat on the table, then folded it carefully. She slipped it into the breast pocket of her blouse so the mirrored R showed perfectly. “There,” she said, her eyes fixing once more on Rebecca. “Isn’t it pretty?”

Without waiting for an answer, Germaine lifted the lid off the box of chocolates. To her horror, she found no candy inside. Instead of the array of chocolates she’d been expecting, she saw nothing but a pulsating mass of ants, gnats, and flies. Her eyes widened in terror as a cloud of insects swarmed up from the box, flying directly at her face. Screaming, Germaine leaped up from her chair, overturning it in her haste to escape the horde of insects still pouring from the open box. Instinctively, she lashed out at the teeming mass, trying to fend it off, and succeeded only in overturning the teapot. As scalding tea gushed across the table and into Clara’s lap, Germaine backed away from the table, but her terror only increased as she spotted the tangle of snakes writhing on the floor around her feet.

Another scream emerged from her throat, and she fled, sobbing and stumbling,