Read Online The Late Clara Beame by Taylor Caldwell - Free Book Online

had been her room. Laura awakened abruptly, sat up and looked around in confusion.
    “The help is going to quit, drifts or no drifts, if you add invalidism to the problems of this house,” Alice told her disagreeably. “Here’s your breakfast.”
    Laura shivered in her silk nightgown, hugging herself, and Alice took an afghan from the chaise longue and threw it over her shoulders. Laura murmured her thanks. It was very cold in the room.
    Alice sat down and lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you drink your chocolate while it’s still warm? You never liked the stuff. You just drank it to please dear old Aunt Clara.”
    Laura’s mouth trembled. “Alice, please,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t ever seem to make you understand. I did try to please Aunt Clara. Because she loved me. I had no one. So, when Aunt Clara showed she really wanted me — I was so grateful I’d have killed myself for her if she’d wanted it.”
    Abruptly Alice changed the subject. “Why were you screaming bloody murder last night?”
    “I — I had a terrible dream.” Laura did not elaborate.
    “There is something I want to ask you.” Again the change of subject was abrupt. “And I want an answer.” Alice’s voice was almost threatening.
    Laura’s dark eyes regarded the other woman intently.
    “Yes?”
    “What were you doing in Sam’s room the night he died?”
    Laura sat up suddenly, her mouth open.
    “Answer me,” Alice demanded. “You remember. You and I shared Sam’s room and mine, with the twin beds, because there was a bathroom off it. Sam slept in the spare room, and Hank and David had the two sofas in our living room. Sam had a cold.” Alice went on quickly. “His colds usually turned into bronchitis, and so about four in the morning I decided to take him some cough medicine. I saw that his door was open, and when I went in you were picking up a glass from the floor near his bed. You looked — stealthy. That’s all I can call it, Laura! That’s why I ran back to my own room and watched you, while you took the glass to the bathroom down the hall.”
    Laura seemed stunned.
    Alice stood up, caught Laura’s shoulder, and shook it.
    “And that’s why the police couldn’t find the glass, or any glass in the bedrooms, which had Sam’s fingerprints on it! You washed the glass in the second bathroom, Laura! Why? You’ve got to tell me. That’s why the police kept coming back again and again, driving us mad!”
    Suddenly Laura’s face turned crimson. “Why didn’t you ask me before? It’s so simple.”
    “Is it, Laura? Tell me how simple it all was!”
    Laura’s hands began to twist the fringe of the afghan. “You make it sound so — . Well, I woke up in the night, and it was dark. We had only been in your apartment in Chicago once before. I wanted a drink of water, and I couldn’t find the bathroom! I’d stumbled around the bedroom for a couple of minutes, before I found the door to the hall. I’d forgotten that Hank and David were sleeping in the living room. I honestly thought Henry was in that other bedroom. Remember? We left the boys arguing about who’d sleep in the bedroom! I — I simply assumed that it was Henry.”
    She knew how important it was to convince Alice, but her voice faltered. “I wanted to see — if Henry was — all right. It was the first time we’d ever slept apart. I still thought it was Henry in the bed, then my foot hit against the glass. There was a little light from the street. I bent down to pick up the glass and saw the back of Sam’s head on the pillow and his red hair. So I went out of the room to the bathroom down the hall, remembered that Sam had a cold, and washed the glass out with soap and hot water before I used it.”
    She looked up at the silent, white-faced Alice. “What in God’s name,” she cried wildly, “have you been thinking all this time! What?”
    “The glass was on the floor, as if it had been dropped?”
    “Yes!”
    “There was no sign of