Suffer the Children Read online

  He tooted his horn as he passed the old farmer, but didn’t wave. He didn’t have to, for the farmer, intent on what he was doing, didn’t look up from his field.

  But Ray knew that the next time he saw him in town, the old man would touch the brim of his hat and say, “Nice to see you the other day, Ray.” That, too, was the way things were done in Port Arbello.

  A mile out of town the Conger’s Point Road made the left turn that would take it partway out to the Point before it cut back inland on its way south. Ray supposed that this, too, was something new, though the road had been extended far beyond Conger’s Point long before he was born. But in the old days, the really old days, it had probably ended at the Congers’ front door, a direct pipeline from the heart of the town to the residence of its leading citizens.

  The Conger family, though not the founders of Port Arbello, had been at the top of the sodal heap there for so long that it was now a tenet of faith with the people that not much could go on in Port Arbello without the approval of the Congers. It was also a tenet of faith that the Congers were rich. Not as rich, perhaps, as the Rockefellers and the Carnegies, but close enough so that, to Port Arbello, it didn’t make any difference. They still remembered the days when the railroad had built a special spur into Port Arbello to accommodate the needs of the Admiral’s private car. They still remembered the days when the staff at Conger’s Point was twice the size of the Conger family (which, until recently, had never been small). They assumed that the Congers, being people of taste and sensitivity, had let the staff go not because they could no longer afford them, but because large staffs had come to be considered ostentatious.

  Ray Norton, who lived on the Point Road himself, and had grown up with Jack Conger’s father, knew better. Ray had been of an age that fell between Conger generations, and felt himself privileged to be on warm social terms with two generations of Congers, even though the older one was now dead. Ray had been seventeen years younger than Jack Conger’s father, andwas fifteen years older than Jack. That, plus the fact that he was a neighbor and the chief of police, had put him in a position of being close to power. He enjoyed that position. And he was careful not to undermine it by talking about what he knew of the Congers.

  He pulled the car off the road and into the Congers’ driveway. You could see the house even before you turned into the drive. Indeed, you could see it from the moment the road passed the end of the forest that flourished along the north bank of the Point, and began flanking the field that separated the house from the woods. But Ray was always careful not to look at the house until he had reached the end of the driveway. From there, he could absorb it, could enjoy the grandeur with which it sat at the end of its lane, its full veranda staring austerely through the double row of ancient oaks that lined the drive. It was a saltbox, nearly two hundred years old, but its simple square lines seemed to fit with the bleakness of the lonely point on which it stood. It had a pride to it, as if it were challenging the sea to reach up and sweep it away. So far, the sea had not met the challenge, and Ray Norton doubted that it ever would.

  He parked the car and crossed the porch to the great oaken door. As always, he was tempted to raise the antique brass door knocker and let it crash against its plate to cause the resounding boom in the house that always brought visions of times past into his head. But, as always, he resisted the impulse and pressed the button that would sound the door chimes in the main hall within.

  “Newfangled gimcrack,” he muttered to himself, parodying his New England background.

  Rose Conger opened the door herself, and her face broke into a pleased smile at the sight of Ray Norton.

  “Ray! If you’re looking for Jack, you’re in the wrong place. He really does work these days, you know.”

  “I’ll get to him later,” Ray said. “Right now I need to talk to you. Have you got any coffee on?”

  Rose stepped back to let him in.

  “I don’t, but I’m sure Mrs. Goodrich does. If anything ever happens to her, I don’t know what well all do. Is this a social visit, or are we talking seriously? It makes a difference, you know. When this place was built, they had separate rooms for all kinds of conversations. Take your pick.”

  “How about the back study? I always liked that room. But only when a fire’s lit.”

  Rose smiled. “It’s laid, but it’s not lit. Let’s go fix that. Why don’t you get the fire started while I find Mrs. Goodrich?” Without waiting for an answer, she started toward the back of the house, but turned toward the kitchen, leaving Ray to continue into the back study.

  He lit the fire, then seated himself in the old leather wing chair just to the right of the fireplace. He glanced around the room, and realized how comfortable he was here. Often he wished the house were his.

  When Rose Conger joined him, Ray was staring at the picture above the mantel.

  “That’s new, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Only for us,” Rose replied. “I haven’t any idea how old it is. We found it in the attic a year ago, but just got around to having it cleaned last month.” She shuddered slightly. “Have you any idea how much it costs to have a portrait cleaned?”

  “I don’t have any ancestors worth cleaning. Who was she?”

  “I haven’t the vaguest idea. From the way she’s dressed, I’d say the portrait must be just about ninety years old. We can’t figure out who she was. There’s no one in any of the family albums who looks like that, or who might have looked like that when she was young.”

  “Ray looked at the picture carefully.” Well, it’s obvious who she looks like. She looks like Elizabeth.

  Rose nodded her head. “She does, doesn’t she? She definitely has Elizabeth’s eyes, and the hair seems to be the same color, too. But she looks like she’s two or three years younger than Elizabeth.”

  They looked at the portrait together, and were still staring at it when Mrs. Goodrich appeared with their coffee.

  “How children were expected to play dressed like that,” she said, following their eyes to the painting, “absolutely beats me. No wonder there were so many servants around here. It’d take one girl all week just to wash that child’s clothes. And with no machines.” She shook her head. “All I can say is, I’m glad times have changed.” She set the coffee down, nodded to Ray, and left the room.

  “And if she had her way,” Rose said as she poured the coffee, “she’d have Elizabeth and Sarah dressed that way all the time. And she’d keep the clothes clean, even if she had to beat them on a rock to do it Times may change, but not Mrs. Goodrich.”

  Ray grinned. “I know. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she hasn’t changed at all since I was a kid. I always wondered if there was ever a Mr. Goodrich.”

  “Who knows?” Rose shrugged. “One simply doesn’t ask Mrs. Goodrich such questions.” She settled down on the sofa opposite Ray and sipped the coffee. “So what brings you out here in the middle of the day? Run out of crooks in Port Arbello?”

  “I wish we had. Have you heard about Anne Forager?”

  “Anne? Has something happened to her?”

  “We don’t know. Her mother called us this morning, very early. Apparently Anne came in late last night, long after she should have been home, and she was a mess. Her dress was torn, she was covered with mud, and she had a few scratches.”

  Rose paled. “Good God, Ray, what happened to her?”

  “So far, we aren’t sure. She says she was on her way home from school and that something happened to her. But she won’t say what She keeps saying that she doesn’t remember. That all she remembers is that she was walking home from school, and then she was walking toward town along the Point Road, covered with mud.”

  “What time was that?”

  “She got home around eleven.”

  “My God, Ray, and you mean her parents didn’t call you? I mean, Anne Forager can’t be more than seven or eight years old—”

  “She’s nine.”

  “All right, so she’
s nine! You can bet that if Sarah or even Elizabeth were missing that late at night, you’d have already been out looking for her for two or three hours.”

  “That’s you, Rose. But these people are different Around here, nobody thinks anything bad can happen. Marty and Marge just assumed that Anne was with some friend, and that was that Until she came home. Now we’re trying to find out what happened.”

  “Has a doctor seen her?”

  “She’s there now. I should find out what he has to say later this afternoon. What I need to know from you is if you were home yesterday afternoon.”

  “Not until five or five thirty. Why?”

  “I was hoping you might have seen something. Anne says she walked back to town from here, or very close to here. From the mud, it looks like she must have been near the embankment.”

  “Or the quarry.”

  Ray’s eyebrows rose. “Of course. The quarry. I’d forgotten all about it.”

  “I wish I could,” Rose said. “I wish I could fill it in. Someone’s going to get killed out there someday, and I don’t care what Jack says, it’s going to be our fault.”

  “Oh, come on, Rose. That old quarry has been there forever and nobody’s ever come to grief there yet Besides, the fishing is the best in town. Fill that old quarry in and half the kids in Port Arbello would be on your back.”

  “We could consider building them a swimming pool and letting them do their fishing in the stream,” Rose said acidly. “I don’t think anyone realizes how dangerous that place is.”

  “Well, be that as it may, we don’t know where Anne was. She could have been at the quarry, she could have been on the embankment, or she could have been anywhere else. We won’t know until she starts talking.”

  “If she starts talking …” Rose mused, wondering immediately if it had been wise to voice the thought She glanced at Ray and saw compassion in his eyes. Well, they were old friends, and he had long been aware of the Congers’ private torments.

  “If?” Ray inquired gently.

  Rose shrugged. “She may not, you know. If something happened to her, something she doesn’t want to remember, she might simply block it out of her mind.”

  “Unless the doctor determines she’s been raped,” Ray said, “I can’t imagine what it could be. And, frankly, I just don’t think she’s been raped. Not here. Not in Port Arbello.”

  Rose smiled thinly. “Things like that do happen a lot more often than anyone hears about.”

  Ray shook his head doubtfully. “If you want my opinion, I think Anne stayed out a lot later than she was supposed to, and has thought up a nice story to get herself out of the punishment she deserves. If she were my child …”

  “Which she’s not,” Rose pointed out.

  Ray chuckled. “No, she isn’t, is she? But I am thechief of police, and I have a job to do. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Rose smiled. “Let me call Elizabeth. Maybe she’ll know something you don’t.”

  She went to the door of the study and called her daughter. She was pouring them both a second cup of coffee when Elizabeth Conger came into the room.

  She was about thirteen, but had none of the awkwardness of most children of that age. Ray noted that the resemblance to the old portrait was remarkable indeed. The same eyes, the same silky blond hair, and, if the hair had been combed differently to flow freely over her shoulders, the same features. Elizabeth wore a ponytail, with bangs in front, the blond hair almost blending into the pale skin that was set off by her incredible sky-blue eyes.

  Behind Elizabeth another child, Sarah, hovered silently. Two years younger than Elizabeth, Sarah provided an odd contrast to the older girl. She was dark, and her eyes seemed to sink deeply inside her, as if she lived in another world. Her hair was cropped short, and was as dark as Elizabeth’s was blond. And, while Elizabeth was dressed in a neatly pressed mini-skirt and ruffled blouse, Sarah wore blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.

  Elizabeth came into the room and smiled at Ray.

  “Hello, Mr. Norton. Did you finally catch up with Mother? She’s been overparking again. If you want to take her now, I can have Mrs. Goodrich pack a bag for her.” She sat down, enjoying the laughter of her mother and the police chief.

  “Sorry, Elizabeth,” Rose said. “He can’t prove a thing.” Then her voice took on a serious tone, and Elizabeth’s smile faded as she was asked if she had seen Anne Forager near the house the previous afternoon. She thought carefully before she answered. When she finally spoke, there was a maturity in her voice that belied her age.

  “I don’t think so. The last I remember seeing Anne yesterday, she was walking toward Fulton Street, by herself. It looked like she was going home.”

  Ray nodded. “That’s what Anne says, too. She was walking along Fulton Street, and then she doesn’t remember a thing until she was out this way.”

  “This way?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Anne says she doesn’t know what happened. But she says she walked home along the Point Road about eleven.”

  “Then that lets me out,” Elizabeth said. “I go to bed at nine every night.”

  “Well, then,” Rose said, standing up. “I guess that’s that. I’m sorry, Ray, but it doesn’t look like we can help you. Your trip’s been wasted.”

  Ray, too, rose, and all four of them walked together the length of the hall. Ray waited while Elizabeth led her sister up the stairs, then looked at Rose. There was concern in his eyes, and Rose was able to anticipate his question.

  “I think she’s getting better, Ray. I really do. She still doesn’t talk, but she seems a little more animated than she did a year ago.” Then some of the brightness left her voice. “Of course, I may be kidding myself. The school says that they don’t think anything’s changed, that she’s the same as ever. But, on the other hand, Elizabeth seems to think she’s better. And God knows, Sarah spends more time with Elizabeth than with any of the rest of us. I don’t know what I’d do without her. I really don’t.”

  They said their good-byes, and Rose stood on the porch and watched as Ray drove down to the Point Road. Then she turned and stared speculatively across the field to the woods that hid the embankment from her view. Finally she turned back to the house, and went upstairs to find her children.

  * * *

  They were in the playroom, and the door stood open. Rose stayed silently in the hall for a moment, watching as Elizabeth patiently built a tower, then rebuilt it after Sarah knocked it down. Rose once more was impressed with Elizabeth’s patience with her strange younger sister.

  Elizabeth looked up as her mother came into the room, and smiled.

  “One of these days the tower is going to stand,” she said. “And on that day I’m going to tell Sarah that it’s time for a new toy. Until then, I build and she knocks over.” Elizabeth immediately noticed the pain in her mother’s face, and tried to reassure her. “I don’t mind, Mother. I’d rather have her knock them over than not do anything at all.”

  Rose relaxed, but only a little. In her mind she blessed Elizabeth once more. Aloud she said, “Elizabeth, you don’t go near the embankment or the woods, do you?”

  “Of course not, Mother,” Elizabeth said, not looking up from the new construction she was building for Sarah. “You’ve already told me how dangerous it is. Why would I want to go there?”

  She put the last block in place, and watched as Sarah’s arm came out to knock it over.

  2

  Jack Conger reached instinctively to adjust the mirror as he turned off the Point Road into the long driveway. He was a fraction of a second too late, and the glint of the setting sun caught him in the eyes just before it moved off his face to settle in a harmless rectangle in his lap. He blinked reflexively, and once more cursed his ancestor who had so conscientiously laid this road out on its perfect east-west axis. New England neatness, he thought. God, they were all so—he groped for the right word, then made his choice as he looked down the driveway a
t his home—severe. That was it, all right. They were severe. An absolutely straight drive leading to an absolutely plain house. He wondered just which of his forebears had had the temerity to break the line of the house with the wide porch. The porch, he had always felt, didn’t really fit the house, though without it the house would have been totally lacking in any kind of warmth. Jack parked the car in front of the converted carriage house, now the garage, and went around the corner of the house to go in the front door. The Congers, he had been taught since birth, always used the front door. The side door was for children, and the rear for servants and merchants. Jack knew it was silly, but habit was habit, and besides, it was about the last of the old traditions that he could still keep up. The squire to the end, he thought as he closed the front door behind him.

  No butler waited to take his coat, and no maidscurried out of lus study as he entered it He supposed, wryly, that he could pull the old bell cord and ask Mrs. Goodrich to bring him a drink, but he knew he would only be told once more that “grown men can mix their own drinks. Things aren’t the way they used to be, you know.” Then dinner would be slightly burned, just to remind him that he’d overstepped his bounds. He mixed his drink himself.

  He had settled himself in front of the fireplace, and was weighing the pros and cons of stoking up the fire when he heard his wife’s footstep in the hall.

  “Rose?” he called, almost as if he hoped it wasn’t. “Is that you?”

  Rose came into the room, crossed the floor to her husband, and gave him one of those kisses usually classified as a peck. She sniffed at his glass.

  “Is there another one of those?”

  Jack’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “So early?”