Read Online In the Still of the Night by Jill Churchill - Free Book Online

have ‘done’ for him. I could cook, clean, pluck chickens, fix engines, put up shingles. I could have been the perfect wife. And he agreed. He was aging, lonely. I thought he was in love with me. Maybe he was. He bought me a ring, found a nice little house near the school so I could go on teaching, and we set a date to marry.“
    “Where does the woman downstairs come into this?“
    “Between setting the date and getting married. She moved in next door to the little house I was fixing up. Anthony, being in poor health, couldn’t help, but he came and sat and watched. Lorna had a lot of free time on her hands and spent it vamping him.“
    “And he fell for it?“
    “Of course. I couldn’t really blame him. I was plain; she was beautiful and alluring. I was competent; she was charming. I was younger than he and she was of his generation. It’s not as much fun for a man to watch a woman hang a new window as it is to flirt with a charmer. I know that now. I was too stupid to see it then. Anyway, he broke off our engagement and married her. I think he felt as awful about it as I did, but he was enchanted with her. She’d magicked him.“
    “How did he die? What do you mean about her killing him?“
    “It was three years later. They were still living in ‘my’ wedding house. Anthony was failing. I’d see him in town in a wheelchair. But Lorna was apparently tired of being a nurse by then and took off for a nice long trip to Europe. She’d been widowed before and had tons of money. She didn’t even hire anyone to take care of him. If I’d known, I’d have been there for h—”
    Addie put her hands to her face and made a horrible sobbing noise. Lily gave her a pat on the shoulder and went to get Addie a glass of water from the bathroom while she pulled herself together.
    “Here, take this.”
    Addie sniffed and raised her head. “It’s all right, Lily. I’m all right. I did nothing wrong. Maybe Lorna did nothing wrong. He might have insisted he could get along by himself and refused to have help. It was the sort of thing he’d say. I don’t know. It’s not fair for me to blame her for his death. Just for her taking him away. And even that—well, if she could take him, so could someone else.“
    “Stop being so damned reasonable and fair,“ Lily said.
    Addie almost smiled. “But that’s what I am, Lily. Reasonable and fair. Stupid of me, I know. I hear automobile tires in your drive. Go see to your guests.”

    Lily found it hard to put Addie’s story out of her mind, but what could she do about what had happened to her mentor and dear friend? The man in question was long dead. She wouldn’t let Addie leave if she could help it. The only option was to ask Mrs. Ethridge to pack her things and go. Greed fought with loyalty. And plain old shyness came into it as well. She’d never imagined herself being able to say to a fairly respectable person, “Get out of our house.“ She wasn’t sure she could do it without bursting into tears or fainting.
    Meanwhile, Robert, with a big grin on his face, was showing Cecil Hoornart into the house. Mimi was on duty at the door. “You must be Professor Hoornart,“ she said. “Let me show you to your room, sir.”
    Cecil was a bit disconcerted. How did this aging platinum blonde guess who he was? He didn’t look, at the moment, the least like the sophisticated, well-groomed, intellectual Cecil Hoornart.
    Cecil looked, and feared he smelled, like a hobo. He was taken to a single room on the third floor. Quite a nice little room, he had to admit, with a lovely view of the Hudson River below the grounds behind the house.
    “Wouldcha like me to unpack for you?“ Mimi asked, as Lily had instructed her.
    “No, thank you,“ he said.
    “The bath’s at the end of the hall, sir. Has a little sign on it with a man. Miss Brewster says to tell everyone that the bedroom doors only lock from the inside, so if you have valuables, you can lock them in Mr. Prinney’s