House of Storm, page 10
“I said I’d kill her if I stayed.”
“You didn’t mean it—but it’s the kind of thing the police will look for. Words that can be quoted to a jury. Only Nonie and I heard you. Neither of us will tell the police. But just don’t—” he went to Jim and put his hand on Jim’s shoulder—“just don’t tell it yourself!”
Aurelia said: “No more talking now. It’s very late. Come with me, Jim. I’ll show you your room.”
Jim shot a quick look at Nonie, which could say nothing. Roy said, “Aurelia’s right. Good night, Nonie.” He snapped out the table light and put his arm around Jim’s shoulders. Nonie could see them through the hazy netting, outlined against the light from the hall. Aurelia led the way, firmly, into the hall. Roy’s hand came out and closed the door.
Would Roy have welcomed Jim if he had known the truth?
She slept suddenly and deeply, with no dreams of a white house with two curving flights of steps leading to a lighted veranda—no dreams even of a motor boat cleaving through blue water and white spray.
Morning dawned very still, with a pearly, subtly threatening sky, the barometer falling, the police commissioner and two other men arriving by motor boat from Port Iles before dawn, and in time for early morning coffee, and the news of the murder already, by mysterious island grapevine, having traveled the length and the breadth of the island. One of the little colored maids woke Nonie.
It was still dark in the big room and the maid had turned on the light. She had in her hand a cup of the thick, hot and fragrant early coffee that was as much a part of the planter’s life, and routine as the early inspection of his crop, and her pretty face was alert and curious as a terrier’s. The cross suspended on a thin chain at her slim young neck swung as she lifted the mosquito netting. Her bright flounced calico skirt and white short-sleeved blouse rustled with excitement. She spoke, as did the other colored people on the island, a singularly pure English with broad a’s and clipped distinct consonants, learned and remembered from the first early planters out from England in the seventeen hundreds. She, like the others, could also fall into a jargon, an incomprehensible patois of their own, based remotely on the English tongue. She said now: “Good morning, Lady. Master said to wake you. The police are here.”
Lady, instead of Miss, instead of Madam, again was a part of the island tongue, part of the Caribbean phraseology. No, Lady, yes, Lady, thank you, Lady. Nonie had grown accustomed to it as she had to the early hours at which the planter’s day began. At sunrise the working day was already begun; the early cool hours must of necessity be utilized before noon poured down its steaming blanket of heat and sun. Usually, however, she slept later. She had joined Roy a few times for coffee before he went on his early tour of the plantation but as a rule she did not, so she was not so well accustomed to the eeriness of very early morning—the lingering gray and black shadows of the night, the stillness and the silence, the swathed dark sea, the stirring light toward the east. She roused, feeling as if she had not been asleep at all, staring at the colored girl. And then suddenly coming to her senses at the word police. Hermione! Jim!
She took the extended cup. The doors upon the balcony were only faintly lighter than at night.
“It must be very early.”
“Yes, Lady.”
She swallowed hot steaming coffee.
“Police? From Port Iles, you mean?”
“Yes, Lady. The commissioner of police. Two other men.”
“Where are they now?”
“On the veranda.”
“Did Mr. Beadon tell you to call me to see them?”
“Yes, Lady. Quickly, if you please. They wish to leave before the storm.”
“Tell Mr. Beadon I’ll be down at once.”
“Yes, Lady.” The bright calico skirt whirled out of the room, the door closed gently under the slender small hand. Nonie gulped the coffee, grateful for it and for the moment of respite it gave her. She finished it quickly, slid out from the entangling folds of mosquito netting, ducked her face in cold water, got quickly into shirt and slacks and slung a red sweater around her shoulders. She stopped again for an instant at the mirror, and thought swiftly as she did so of the day before, when she had stopped like that on her way downstairs to meet Jim, and had seen in her face a difference, a change that she knew even then ought not to have been there.
She must talk to Roy. Her heart gave a sort of lurch; this was another day. Wednesday was twenty-four hours nearer.
The face that looked back at her was troubled and pale; there were small black shadows under her eyes. She brushed back her hair quickly and ran downstairs. The lights were on in the great lustered chandelier and on the veranda, looking eerie and cold against the deep shadows beyond. The sea was barely touched with light and seemed very far away, lost in those intermingled shadows. There was a wet, cool fragrance of rain and growing things and sea.
As she reached the veranda door she paused. Men were seated around a table with the remains of an early breakfast upon it. Roy was there and Jim, and three strangers. One, a slight, wiry man with reddish hair and a deep red sunburn, was wearing khaki shorts and shirt; the other two were in uniform. The man with the red hair and red sunburn was smoking and appeared to be talking. Roy was facing him, listening, and Jim, his black head and straight nose and chin clear against the gray-black shadows beyond the railing seemed to be listening too, making circles on the tablecloth with his fork. She opened the door and Roy heard her and rose. As he moved Jim turned quickly, sprang to his feet, and came toward her.
“Nonie,” said Roy, “I’m sorry to get you up so early, my dear.” Jim stopped and Roy took her hand and led her toward the table. She looked at Jim and he was looking at her but she could discover nothing in his look as to how the interview was going, what had been said, what view the commissioner took of the murder. It was only a brief glance, uncommunicative, unsatisfactory. Jim looked white and tired and there was an air of tension which her arrival did not break. Then Roy was introducing her to the men at the table who, too, had risen.
“… Major Wells, the police commissioner for our district. Sergeant Morris, Sergeant Donegan. This is my fiancée, Major Wells; our wedding is to be this week.”
Major Wells gave her a sharp, shrewd glance from small very bright hazel eyes, and bowed. “Very happy, indeed,” he said. “I congratulate you, Mr. Beadon: I had heard of your approaching marriage. I am sorry that this unfortunate and shocking thing happened just now.”
“Hermione was our neighbor for many years,” Roy said.
“I hope it will not change your plans for the wedding,” Major Wells said politely, his bright, shrewd eyes on Nonie.
Roy replied, “Oh, no. It will be very quiet.” He turned to Nonie. “My dear, these gentlemen wish to hear about your trip to Middle Road last night. They haven’t much time. According to the weather warning we are in for a real storm and they’ve got to get back to Port Iles before the sea gets too rough.”
He pulled up a chair for her. Jebe pattered out in his straw slippers and put another cup of coffee on the table before her. How had it gone so far with Jim?
Major Wells began questioning her, politely and quickly. “I understand that you arrived only a few minutes after Mr. Shaw claims he heard the shot and found that his aunt had been murdered. Will you tell me what you saw and did?”
Claims. An invidious word, used in that way; a word that cast doubt, raised objections. She glanced at Jim again; he, too, had slid back into his chair and was sitting forward, one elbow on the table, smoking, his chin on his hand, his face enigmatic.
“Just tell them,” Roy said encouragingly. “It’s only for the record. I’ve already told them that Dick had had one over the eight and that you took him to Middle Road.”
“Tell the truth,” Jim had said the night before. She took a long breath and began. It was of course surprisingly short. She had driven up to the steps; she had found Hermione’s body on the steps. Jim had come to the door.
A wave washed in, its white top emerging surprisingly somehow from the black sea, its crash loud against the coral rocks below. Major Wells said, “Did you hear the sound of the shot?”
“No.” Was that a dangerous admission? Did it involve Jim? She saw that if she had heard the shot it would have substantiated Jim’s statement, and consequently the time of the murder. “I was in the car,” she added. “The noise of the engine was so loud, I don’t think I could have heard it.”
“You wouldn’t have more than started from Beadon Gates then,” Roy said. “Jim had had time to examine Hermione, and to make two telephone calls before you arrived.” He looked at Major Wells. “She couldn’t have heard it.”
“Did you see a gun anywhere?” Major Wells asked. “Anywhere at all?”
“No. That is” …“Tell the truth,” Jim had said. “There was only Jim’s gun. On the table in the hall.”
She held her breath for an instant, but then Major Wells nodded. He knew about Jim’s gun then, so that was all right. “Tell the truth,” Jim had said. Had they extracted the bullet that killed Hermione? Had they had time and tools and instruments to prove that it was not fired from Jim’s gun? Obviously not; the men had barely arrived.
“Did you see anyone about the place? Besides Mr. Shaw, I mean. Or anyone along the road or driveway?”
“No one.”
Major Wells’ eyes were like bright little daggers but showed no expression.
“Is there anything at all that you can think of that might be evidence?” he said after a pause.
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Roy said, “I don’t like to hurry you, Major, but the sea is rolling up.”
“I know, I know.” The commissioner rose, picking up the sun helmet that lay on a near-by table. “We’d better get over to Middle Road and take a look there. Are you ready, Shaw?” His manner, his voice changed subtly when he spoke to Jim. Nonie was aware of it instantly and, she thought, so were the others, for there was a kind of blankness, a rather chill curtain over their faces.
“The car is over here,” Roy said, and then turned to her. “My dear, I was sorry to have to send for you but they are rather hurried. This storm …”
She had to talk to him alone; obviously she could not just then. Yet it was with a sense of being swept willy-nilly along a strong current of events, that she saw him leave.
Jim had gone on ahead. Roy turned briskly away, towering above the wiry little police commissioner with his bare knobby knees and red hair. Their footsteps thudded across the porch; the car lights had been turned on and shone out making black and blue shadows of the shrubbery. The sky was dark and seemed to hang so near that it almost touched the house; the sea was only beginning to glisten away out toward the eastern horizon.
She sat down slowly at the lighted, littered table and Jim came back, running up the steps. “I said I’d forgotten my sun helmet,” he said. “Look here, darling, it’s all right. I’ll have to get through all this but it’s all right.”
She wanted to cling to him; she wanted to question; she wanted to reassure herself by his own strength. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“There was something about the way Major Wells spoke.”
He looked away from her quickly, out to the half-hidden, half-lighted sea. But he said as quickly: “He’ll have to question me, of course. But he won’t charge me with murder. And if he should …”
“Jim, tell me the truth. Have they arrested you? Are they going to arrest you?”
He looked back at her directly. “It’s their job to hold me for inquiry. They may even have to make a formal charge. But it’ll be all right. I promise you, darling. You must believe me. Now, then, about Roy and the wedding. I’ve got to stop that.”
“I haven’t told him. There’s been no time.”
“We’ll tell him together. I’ve got to go now, darling. Where’s my helmet? Oh, here.” He snatched it up from the chair. “Remember what I’ve told you.”
Remember not to worry. Remember things will be all right. Remember Jim could not be charged and tried—or convicted—for murder because he didn’t do it.
She watched him running across the veranda, his black head disappearing down the steps.
The car started. The sound of the engine died rapidly away down the drive, muffled by the thick encroaching hedges, put at last upon the public highway.
It was very quiet after they had gone; quiet and still dark, for dawn was slow in coming. She sat for awhile, drinking the hot coffee, watching the slow reluctant night creep inward from the sea, as if to take a refuge on the island. Aurelia obviously had slept late. Servants were about and there were lights at the kitchen end of the house but there was no sound for a long time except the stirring of the birds and the wash of the waves.
Perhaps she sat longer than she meant to, entangled by her thoughts, caught in the strange, nether world that was not day nor night. Later it seemed to her that she had been gradually aware of sounds of the waking plantation; of machinery starting somewhere in the distance, of the faraway rattle of wagons and sound of voices. Consciously she heard only the sound of the waves. She did remember noting their increased rhythm and the wider, more turbulent white tops that curled in and out along the shadowy coastline below.
The sea itself was glistening with light when she rose and walked across the veranda and down the steps; the land, however, was still submerged in gray and the shadows under the hedges were thick. Not a leaf stirred. A sign of storm? She thought that and went on along the white shell path between the thick wet hedges of hibiscus and tamarack, and great rustling clumps of bamboos. The coffee had thoroughly roused her, the coming storm plucked at her nerves; she’d take a turn in the garden and then go back to sleep. What were they doing now at Middle Road?
Would they arrest Jim?
The hedges made a dark and leafy tunnel. Her footsteps crunched softly upon the tiny white shells that paved the path. How frightened she had been the night before, running along that path, her flying skirts whispering of terror! Even now the soft crunch of the shell seemed to make a syncopated rhythm of her footsteps, like a soft pursuing echo, barely out of time.
The storm had strewn the path with torn leaves and broken branches. She stopped to pick up a fallen loop of bougainvillaea.
She stopped but the soft echo of her footsteps went on.
Only it was not an echo. Someone was walking with her, very lightly, very softly on the other side of the thick hedge.
11
ANOTHER WOMAN TOOK POSSESSION of Nonie’s body; another woman cried out in her heart, telling her what to do; she whirled and ran, scrambling and slipping in the shells, ran and ran as in a dream, making no progress, always with sliding shells and hedges on either hand, so high she could not see above them, so thick with foliage she could catch no glimpse of movement through them. She reached the steps. She ran past the empty lighted table, the chairs pushed this way and that, the flung-down napkins as the men had left them. She did not stop until she was inside the house, leaning against the massive table that ran along the maroon-colored wall, gasping for breath.
Jebe in the dining room heard her and came. Jebe, when she had told him someone was in the garden, someone was furtively walking with her on the other side of the hedge, shook his head and mumbled and ran to call Aurelia. Aurelia came at once, her face tired and lined, and sent Jebe to search the garden.
There was an air of indulgent skepticism about Jebe until then. It changed to reluctance when Aurelia ordered him to search the garden. However, he obeyed, taking Archie, the kitchen boy, with him.
Aurelia eyed her in a troubled way.
“Could you have imagined it, Nonie?”
“There was someone on the other side of the hedge.”
“Who could it have been?”
“I couldn’t see. The hedge is too thick.”
Aurelia waited a moment, and then went to the dining room and came back with coffee for herself. She sat down with a sigh opposite Nonie and looked out across the veranda. Dawn had come fully by then. Morning had come but there was no sun, only a pearly, subtly ominous light.
“Where is Roy? Where is Jim?”
“The police commissioner came from Port Iles. They’ve all gone to Middle Road.”
Aurelia sipped her coffee and huddled her robe around her.
“Nonie, are you sure you heard someone? You had a dreadful shock last night, of course. It would be natural for you to be nervous …”
“Someone was there.” But, by then, she was beginning to feel uncertain and ashamed of her flight. “It may have been only one of the boys. But there was something so”—she hunted for a word—“so stealthy about it. As if whoever it was didn’t want to be seen. As if …” As if he were stalking her, she thought; as if he were following her, walking so softly, so dangerously. She did not say that to Aurelia. It would sound silly, frightened, childish.
Aurelia frowned and sipped more coffee. “It must have been one of the servants.”
Nonie shoved her hands down tight into the pockets of her white slacks so Aurelia could not see them trembling.
Aurelia pushed back her heavy gray braid and sighed. “What did the police commissioner think of it all?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jim went with them to Middle Road, you said.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry Jim came back to the island last night. It puts him in a bad light.” Aurelia broke off to listen. Sounds of lifted voices, exclamations, running feet came from the back of the house.
“What’s that?” Aurelia cried and hurried toward the kitchen and Nonie followed.
A high babble of voices quieted at Aurelia’s approach. Jebe stood in the center of the little ring of maids and cook, and Archie—all of them looking at an object in Jebe’s hands. They had found no one in the garden. No one was there. But someone had been there, for Jebe and Archie had found a machete.
