Suffer the Children Read Free Page A

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 obviouswho 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