House of Storm, page 9
But the thickness of those heavy shadows seemed to gather around her; not far away through the night murder had walked stealthily.
She took a long breath and started toward the steps, holding her long white skirt so she would not stumble, and then suddenly ran, her slippers quick and light upon the path.
That was fear! Suddenly, running between those thick hedges she remembered her uneasiness of that afternoon; she had been brushed then by fear and had denied it!
But there had been no reason for her fear; there was none now; murder had come to Middle Road, not to Beadon Gates.
Well, then, why she thought of fear? Premonition was not a reason; yet had the shadow of that already destined and dreadful thing already fallen on the island? Her slippers tapped the shells. Her flying skirt whispered against the walls of darkness.
Actually at that moment, and in all probability, she was perfectly safe. The dense shadows were tenantless, the thickets harmless, the foliage brushing softly against her shoulder was merely foliage. But her heart was pounding when she reached the veranda steps and the murmur of the waves grew louder. Lights streamed out blankly upon wicker chairs and cushions—all of them the same, nothing changed. She tried not to run across the veranda but Aurelia Beadon heard the scurry of her footsteps and opened the door.
Aurelia’s thick gray hair was in a great braid, over one shoulder, her massive figure was wrapped in a pongee robe, her full dark eyes anxious. “Nonie, my dear! I’ve been so worried! Come in, come in, child … Is she dead?”
“Yes, Aurelia, yes!”
“Jebe said shot.”
“Yes.”
“Accident of course!” Aurelia’s fine dark eyes plunged into her own and seemed to extract the truth and to deny it. “Nonie, surely it was an accident!” she cried in horror.
“They say murder.”
“Murder! Hermione—murder!”
She ought to have told Aurelia more carefully, Nonie thought, with quick compunction, seeing Aurelia’s ashy color.
Nonie put out her hand impulsively. “Aurelia, I’m sorry. You must have known Hermione well.”
For an instant Aurelia stared at her without seeing her. A long wave beat in upon the shore below and washed slowly out again. The lusters of the chandelier twinkled faintly. Then Aurelia seemed to come to herself with a sort of jerk. “Yes, yes, of course. I knew Hermione. I’ve known her for years. I … Nonie, do they know who killed her?”
“No.”
Aurelia’s eyes softened and seemed suddenly aware of her. “You poor child. It’s been a terrible thing. Jebe said you took Dick home. You must go to bed. I’ll give you some hot milk. I’m not going to ask any more questions now.”
But in the hall as Nonie started up the stairs Aurelia stopped her.
“Is there any evidence? Do they suspect anybody?”
Jim. But not because of evidence. “No,” Nonie said. “No.” There was another silence; the banister under Nonie’s hand felt sweaty and chill. The light from the luster-laden chandelier made unexpected hollows around Aurelia’s eyes and the gray sunken lines in her face. She said, finally, “Well, go on to your room, dear. I’ll get your milk.”
Her room was like a haven. The lights were on, the green and white tiles were clean and cool. The bed was turned down, the limp mosquito netting spread outward like a tent. The French windows were open to the languid, storm-weary night. Her white dressing gown lay over the bed, its cord dangling; her red mules stood below it. Again a sort of wonder touched Nonie; nothing in the room was different.
What were they doing at Hermione’s?
She slid out of her thin white dress, rain-soaked and crumpled around the hem. Her sandals were wet, her short dark hair was rain-damp. She was brushing it when Aurelia came, a tray with a thermos bottle and a glass in her hands.
She poured out steaming, frothy milk. “Don’t talk if you don’t feel like it.”
“I want to tell you. I want to tell you everything …” But not quite everything, not why Jim came back.
Sipping the hot milk, she told Aurelia the brief story and Aurelia listened thoughtfully, and at the end sat for a moment looking at Nonie. Finally she rose, went to the French windows and stood there thoughtfully too. A mosquito hummed in some high corner of the room; insects whirled and soared around the bed lamp; down in the garden a myriad small winged creatures of the night chirped and murmured drowsily. Aurelia said over her shoulder, at last, “Hermione was a very difficult woman; probably some workman she quarreled with shot her. It is a terrible thing but it can’t be undone now. I’m sorry it happened just before the wedding. I expect we’d better change some of the plans.”
Nonie caught so quick a breath that the hot milk choked her. She coughed until tears stood in her eyes. Aurelia smiled affectionately down at her. “You’re using your Sunday throat. That’s what they used to say when I was a child. Yes, we’ll have to change the plans. We can’t have a very gay party—we’ll not want that. Hermione … But we’ll have the ceremony in the church just the same. And then I think simply come back here for the wedding lunch.”
“Aurelia …” Nonie began and stopped. Oh, Aurelia, no; there’s to be no wedding. Everything has changed; more than you think; more than anyone dreams.
Aurelia said fondly: “The wedding must take place though on Wednesday as we planned it. My dear, I wonder if I’ve told you how happy it has made me. You’ve made Roy happy, too; he loves you dearly. You have changed his whole life for him. But you’ve changed my life, too.”
She put her hand suddenly, lightly on Nonie’s head and stroked back her hair. “It has seemed rather a waste up to now—my life, I mean. I’ve kept house for Roy. I’ve lived on in the Beadon house where I was born. But I’ve never married; Roy didn’t marry. I’d thought before now to see children in this house. Well, good night my dear. Try to forget as much as you can of this dreadful thing. Think of Roy and of your wedding. It’s only three days now, remember.”
She went to the thermos and poured more milk and brought it back to Nonie whose throat was suddenly dry and miserable. “Is there anything you want?”
Nonie shook her head. Aurelia went to the door. “I’ll sit up for Roy. This is a terrible thing but we’ll not let it or anything interfere with the wedding. Try to sleep. You must be a beautiful bride, you know.” She smiled again and said, “And a very happy wife, my dear,” and went away.
9
LATER, WITH THE MOSQUITO netting making a dim canopy around her and the buzz and hum of insects in the garden below making a soft little orchestra of sleep, she could not forget Aurelia’s words—a happy wife.
Roy’s happy wife; bringing to Beadon Gates the kind of life, full and happy and content, that Aurelia and Roy desired, that she Nonie had desired, that the rock-built, gracious old house begged for as occupancy. A fire lighted in an empty room, that was a happy and sound marriage. It was the marriage she had wanted—but not with Roy.
It was going to be almost as difficult to tell Aurelia that it was not to be, as to tell Roy.
The French doors were still open upon the velvet dark night and an increasing little cloud of moths were whirling and batting softly around the lamp on the bed table, their wavering shadows large upon the ceiling. She slid a cautious arm through the mosquito netting, turned off the light and slid it back again, tucking in the netting she had displaced. By morning they would all be gone, in a mysterious osmosis, attracted by other if less brilliant lights.
What were they doing at Middle Road? Jim’s home now, her home with him for all the years of their life!
But it was too poignant a glimpse into the future. With almost a superstitious awe she put it aside, locked it up in her heart to be taken out and looked at later—when it was safe to do so; when the things that had to be done, the hazards that had to be conquered, were all safely in the past.
Suppose Jim was charged with murder. Suppose he had to undergo a trial. Her mind raced on before she could stop its runaway course, and she thought: suppose even, at the very worst, he was found guilty.
She pulled up the wild and galloping fear as if it had check reins. But Jim’s safety came first.
Except she must tell Roy—and Aurelia—about the wedding. No wedding on Wednesday.
“I’ll send flowers to the church,” Lydia had said.
How strange it was that all those small things, arrangements, flowers, plans, people invited—a white dress fitted and finished and hanging on a scented hanger, could put themselves together like a resisting army, could assume the character of a millrace sweeping all before it!
She had not thought of Hermione’s death providing a possible excuse for postponement, until Aurelia had obviously considered and dismissed it. She wondered now whether or not that might actually serve as an excuse. The island was small; the circle of friends tight and little; there must be mourning for Hermione.
“I hated her,” Jim had said. And Dick, talking more than he’d have meant to talk, in a bitter self-revealing moment …“I fell in love a long time ago.…” And then “I hate you—but I’m still tied.”
Jim and Dick in their different ways, for different reasons. Were there other people who hated Hermione?
Hatred lead to murder. Hatreds, quarrels, violence. The attempted domination of one will upon another, the thwarting and damage to life of one being upon another … that was what made murder.
But the frankness and honesty of Jim’s hatred would not, in the ultimate regard of the police, in any way mitigate for him. Instead they would say, they could not help saying, here is a man who hated her and said so and was heard to say it.
That he was also her nephew; that he inherited property and a trust fund from her, that he would never have been permitted by Hermione to be anything but a puppet, pulled by strings held in her own hands so long as those hands had life and strength, all this would add to the sum of evidence against him. But the main digit, the heavy weight and balance was hatred.
Violence, passion, hatred. In a queer way self-defense.
So might Dick Fenby have murdered her, to save his own soul, too weak, too sapped of strength by Hermione herself, to save himself in any other way.
But in actual fact Dick could not have murdered her. There was always the sheerly physical question of opportunity when there was murder; and Dick had no opportunity to kill Hermione.
Again with a kind of shock Nonie realized that she was thinking in newspaper terms, in terms of reported trials, which up to then had been mere words and now took on the most important and significant of meanings. One was alibi, of course. And Dick Fenby had an alibi, for Dick was in the car beside her within touch and reach of her hand at the time that shot was fired. So Dick Fenby had not murdered Hermione, even to save himself from the slow and torturous murder that Hermione herself was inflicting.
Well, then, who had killed her?
A workman, cherishing some kind of grudge? What workman, out of probably hundreds who over the years of Hermione’s residence on Beadon Island could—and probably did—quarrel with her? That would be something for others, something for the police, the people who lived on the island, the people who had known and lived with Hermione all that time, to sort out, sift, finally identify.
Perhaps it was not a workman. Perhaps it was simply somebody else who hated Hermione. And who—like Dick, like Jim—might have struck in desperate deadly defense.
Somebody else. But there were not many people who knew her well enough to hate her. Murder implies a certain intimacy. Hatred implies a dreadful fellowship.
Time passed and the night grew darker and deeper and the tempo of the insect cacophony drowsier, but the events of the day—so many and so important and yet so swift—went in an unceasing whirl through Nonie’s mind. How could she have hoped to sleep! What were they doing at Middle Road?
She was still wide awake when at last a car came into the driveway. She heard the crunch of wheels, and saw the glancing rays of light from its headlamps flashing for an instant upon her balcony, outlining the French windows and the vine-hung balustrade for a second before the car passed on and came to a halt in the shell-paved oval.
She lay listening. She thought she heard voices. So Aurelia was still downstairs, still waiting for him. It was a long time, however, before she heard steps on the stairs. Roy, of course; his brisk, heavy steps were easily recognizable. And Aurelia, perhaps, and—she listened and thought, there’s someone else.
The police already? Seabury Jenkins? She sat up, the mosquito netting touching her face softly. There were voices now, half-whispered, half-murmured down the hall—and Roy’s heavy quick footsteps coming along it. He stopped outside her door and tapped lightly. “Nonie!”
“I’m awake.” She reached out, fumbling for the bed lamp.
“May I come in?”
“Yes, of course.” She found the light and snapped it on as Roy opened the door and came in.
“Are you all right, my dear?”
“Oh, yes, Roy. What has happened? What have they done?” Have they arrested Jim? Her thudding heart wanted to know.
Roy sighed and sat down wearily on the foot of the chaise longue near her. “Did you hear the car? I hoped it wouldn’t wake you.”
He looked tired; his face sagged with weariness; his dinner clothes, the white jacket and crimson cummerbund were strangely out of place just then; his coat was damp and wrinkled with a great streak of dirt across one sleeve.
“No, I was awake. I couldn’t sleep.”
“How could you!” He sighed again and took off his glasses and began to wipe them slowly with his handkerchief. “Well, there’s nothing more we can do now. It’s a bad business, no mistake.”
“Do they know who killed her?”
He shook his head. “We know no more than we did. We phoned Port Iles. Talked to the commissioner; he’ll be over in the morning himself, bringing the constabulary.” Roy gave another heavy sigh and replaced his glasses and smiled at her reassuringly. “Don’t worry about that, though. They’ll only ask you to tell what you saw, and it’s little enough. As a matter of fact, there’s a real storm working up. This rain tonight was only a little preliminary scuffle. The police commissioner is not likely to stay here at Beadon long. We’ve all got small boats hereabouts and nobody’s going to take chances with them. We know the islands and the sea too well for that.”
“What did the police commissioner say?”
“Well, he didn’t say anything much. He knew Hermy slightly, of course. He agreed that Jim and Seabury had had to move the body. He told us to get Doctor Riordan to look at it; he’s the medical examiner for the island—but you know that. I said we’d already got him, and then Riordan talked to him.”
“And it was murder?” She realized then that she’d been holding a small concealed hope that it would be, after all, suicide.
“Oh, yes. Couldn’t be anything else. Unfortunately. Riordan said she died instantly; that’s a blessing.”
“What else did they say?”
“Well, not very much. It was a bad connection—always is when it storms. Couldn’t hear very well. Mainly, they said to see the body—search the place—we’d already done that—for clues or for any sort of evidence. Dick talked too; and he’s in charge, of course. Dick’s all right; smart as anybody when he’s himself. They wanted to know if she’d been robbed. So far as we knew she hadn’t been. Wanted to know if anybody had threatened her.”
“Threatened! What did you say?”
“Dick was talking. He said ‘no.’ ”
There was a little silence. The soft night drone of the night outside the balcony seemed louder. There was a distant murmur of voices somewhere. Roy rubbed his forehead wearily and reached for a cigarette from the small crystal box on the bed table. “Do you mind?”
She shook her head and watched the small flame from his lighter touch his face to a ruddier color, reflect itself briefly in his glasses and his fine dark eyes. “Of course, the truth will come out. Her quarrel with Jim—everybody on the island probably knows that he left and why. And the fact that she came here and made a scene with Dick tonight.”
“She fired Dick.”
“Yes, but I don’t think she meant it. And in any case murdering her wouldn’t get Dick’s job back.”
“And in any case he has an alibi,” she said slowly. “He was here after she went home. He was with me in the car at the time when she must have been shot.”
He nodded almost absently. The mosquito netting between them was like a pale mist, like a veil. He said, “I’m sorry, too, that it happened just now, Nonie. So shortly before our wedding.”
But there is to be no wedding. Roy, Roy, I’m sorry. No marriage, no wedding … She didn’t say the words actually but they were there, on her tongue, ready. She thrust at the mosquito netting with fumbling hands. “Roy, I must tell you—I’ve got to tell you now …”
“Don’t push that netting loose, Nonie. You’ll be pestered all night with mosquitoes. That’s the curse of the tropics. Oh there you are, Jim.”
She looked up and Jim was standing in the doorway looking at her with his heart in his eyes.
10
AURELIA STOOD BEHIND HIM. Roy was rising. “I brought Jim back with me. He can’t stay at Middle Road—not as things are. Certainly not until the police get through with it. Dick has really no room for him in his shack. He didn’t want to come but I made him. Beadon Gates is the place for you, Jim, just now.”
Jim said nothing. Aurelia said nothing. Jim was tired, too—his hair disheveled, his face white.
Roy came to her and looked down, smiling. “Aurelia’s going to make us all go to bed. Good night, my dear. Happy dreams in spite of everything. None of this concerns you and me. Remember that and sleep.”
He leaned over and kissed her, lightly, through the netting. Jim, in the doorway, took a step forward but whatever he meant to say to Roy was forestalled by Roy himself, for he turned toward Jim and said: “Jim, I’m going to give you some advice. Don’t tell the police any more about your quarrel with Hermione than you have to. I mean—you told Seabury, and that’s all right because he and the police would be sure to learn about it in any case. And Dick already knew it. But threats …”
