Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  “He’ll have to be put out of his misery,” she said in a broken voice, “but I don’t know how to do it.”

  “Do you have a gun in the house?” Malcolm asked.

  She shook her head.

  “We’ll bundle him in a towel then and take him back to Bob’s. I don’t want you staying here now anyway. He’ll have something kind to put him out with.”

  Horatio moaned all the way to the other house, and when Bob, still dressed, answered the door he gave one look at the two of them with the bloody bundle they carried and drew them inside.

  Malcolm explained hurriedly what had happened, and Bob got his bag while Evvie boiled up water for tea. He filled a hypodermic needle with a clear solution from a bottle and quickly injected the cat as he lay on the bloody towel on Elisabeth’s lap. He gave a final meow and a little shudder, and relaxed. She wept unashamedly until she felt a prick on her own arm, followed almost immediately by a feeling of calm, and everything began to seem very distant, as if she were watching a scene in a play.

  “I want her to stay here tonight,” Bob said to Malcolm.

  “She’s in shock, and I’ll have to give her something to make her sleep.”

  They went on talking, but she stopped listening. She was in a half-world where there was no pain, no sorrow, but no love either and no hope. Unmoving, she watched them take the poor mutilated body from her lap and bear him off toward the back of the house. Then she was burning her tongue on the hot tea Evvie held for her.

  “Wouldn’t some brandy help?” Malcolm was asking.

  “These pills will do better. Evvie, get her undressed and into bed before we have to carry her in.”

  That was the last she remembered until she woke in the morning. At first she couldn’t think where she was, for the room was completely unfamiliar. Then the events of the previous night crashed about her brain, and she gave a little involuntary cry of anguish. The bedroom door, which had been slightly ajar, opened and Malcolm stuck his head in.

  “I persuaded them to let me sleep on the couch. I’ve got to go to the library before long, but first I’ll bring you some fresh clothes, if there are any they missed. I don’t want you going home today.”

  A sudden resolve made her say, “Please, Malcolm, would you leave me some money? I’ll pay you back tomorrow. I — I want to replace a few things. Could you give me fifty dollars?”

  “Of course I can.” He smiled. “I’ve even got that much with me. Only promise me you won’t go home.”

  “All right, I promise. I’m in no hurry to see the house the way it is anyway. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

  “That’s my girl. If you get bored, come by the library. You may find it easier to have something to do.”

  Dear Malcolm, she thought as she lay back in bed. What would she have done without him? Here was yet another hurt to bear, that Gideon would never be there when she needed him, that she could not even tell him about this, though she wanted nothing so much as to bury her face in his chest and weep out her rage and sorrow in his arms.

  After a breakfast she was forced to choke down because Evvie told her that Bob had said not to let her out of the house until she was able to eat, she walked to the library. Malcolm looked glad to see her.

  “You’re a different girl this morning, I’m happy to see,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied slowly, “I am a different girl, aren’t I? I came for the money. I’d go to the bank myself, only it’s way over on the other side of town and I have so much to do. Just until tomorrow, Malcolm.”

  “Of course,” he said, looking concerned. “Here. Here is a hundred. Use what you want of it.”

  “I’ll come in this afternoon around two or three. I’d like you to walk home with me this evening if you would.”

  “Do you think you ought to sleep there again? There must be some madman loose in the neighborhood. I’ve paid one of the town watchmen to look out especially for your street and house.”

  “What good would that do, Malcolm? Though I thank you for the thought. All anyone would have to do would be to wait until he’d passed.”

  He shrugged. “Well, it was worth trying anyway.”

  She spent hours tramping about with a large carpet bag into which she stowed her purchases. The most difficult one was the one she felt was the most important, and she had a time of it talking the clerk into selling it to her. She returned to the library at last, tired and lunchless, the heavy bag pulling at her arm.

  “Whatever have you been up to?” Malcolm asked.

  “Oh, buying this and that,” she replied carelessly. “Thank heavens it’s cool in here.”

  He peered at her closely, but her face was an expressionless mask. “I don’t want you staying there anymore,” he announced suddenly. “You’ll have to move. The next time it could be you.”

  “No,” she said grimly, “I’ll not move. By Saturday they’ll need a battering ram to get in, and for now, I hope they do return when I’m there.” She reached into the carpet bag and drew out a long-barreled Colt pistol.

  “Good God, Beth, what are you doing with that? You’ll shoot yourself or something.” Malcolm was appalled.

  “Oh no I won’t,” she announced with satisfaction. “Tom taught me to shoot. I’d kill the bastards in a minute.”

  There was nothing Malcolm could say to dissuade her, though they spent the rest of the afternoon in fruitless argument. As they walked toward the house, Malcolm still remonstrating, though rather hopelessly now, she found herself dreading the mess she would have to clean up even to sleep there. Perhaps she should have slept at Bob and Evvie’s again tonight after all. She would have to go out for dinner; maybe she could persuade Malcolm to join her. She hated eating out by herself and especially loathed the kind of genteel tearooms that were the only places a lady alone could properly dine.

  She drew a deep breath as Malcolm took the key from her and turned it in the lock. The late-June twilight was only just beginning to fall, and she could see quite clearly across the hall into the parlor. For a moment she wondered if she had dreamed last night, for everything looked much as usual except that her mind registered the absence of the chess set. Struck dumb, she entered the room and looked around, now noting that many of the shells were missing, there were far fewer books, and a smell of turpentine still hung in the air. Also, everything looked much neater and tidier than she usually kept it. Without a word, she walked down the hallway to the bedroom, which was also in order. Inside the wardrobe hung the clothes as usual. The bed was made up. In the kitchen everything was in its place with a fresh block of ice in the icebox, along with a cold roast goose, plums, grapes, and apples, a jar of milk, a pie, and a bottle of white wine. A loaf of bread resided in the bread-box. She turned and looked at Malcolm, who was grinning broadly.

  “However did you manage it?” she asked.

  “Well, I happen to have a friend — Jim Hart, though he’s known as James at his place of work — who is the head butler at Mrs. Tibbet’s town house. Mrs. Tibbet is at the moment in her son’s seaside house, as she will be all summer, and there is this houseful of servants with nothing to do … Anyway, I explained to him what had happened and said I’d be willing to pay, which he wouldn’t hear of. So you see, it isn’t really my doing at all, except for the food.”

  Elisabeth put her arms around him and held him tightly, her head on his chest. “Malcolm, Malcolm, how can I ever thank you?” She raised her face to look up into his. “You certainly do have a lot of friends, don’t you? Doctors, head butlers …

  “Doesn’t everybody?” He smiled, trying to make light of her gratitude.

  “No, everyone doesn’t. I don’t. Gideon doesn’t.”

  “Don’t be foolish. You and Tom used to know lots of people.”

  “Ah, but after he died, they didn’t want to know me. There’s nothing more awkward socially than freshly widowed ladies — they’re like specters at the feast. I got rather used to being alone, so there you are. I don’t t
hink Gideon ever had time for friends.”

  “What about this Poulson you’ve been telling me about, the one who’s got the Andromeda?”

  “He’s a business friend. Perhaps that’s why Gideon and I are so involved with each other,” she mused. “We need each other desperately after being alone for so long.”

  Malcolm raised her chin and looked into her eyes. “You’re not alone, Beth. Remember that. When you need me, I’ll always be here for you.”

  “You will, won’t you, Malcolm?” she said fondly, then turned away. “Let’s eat, shall we? I didn’t have any lunch and I’m starved.”

  “What are these iron bars doing on the windows?” Gideon asked when he next came.

  “Oh, someone broke in one day when I was at work,” she answered him carelessly. “They didn’t take much, but I didn’t want it to happen again.”

  “But that’s terrible!” he protested. “You ought to move, I tell you. Obscene notes, robbers, and I’ve seen how you’re being snubbed by everyone who lives around here.”

  “I don’t want to move now,” she said grimly. “I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of thinking they’d driven us out.”

  “Say, where’s Horatio? He always greets us at the door.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He — he died.”

  “Died? But he was a young cat —” He saw her tears and took her in his arms. “I’m so sorry, love. What happened to him?”

  “He must have had a weak heart. I found him lying here on the windowsill as if he’d gone to sleep.” Would that he had really died that way, she thought despairingly. She couldn’t help it, she began to weep.

  The next day Gideon excused himself from sailing with her, pleading business. When she brought the boat in, he was waiting for her at the boathouse. She dropped the jib and mainsheet and crawled forward to throw the line to him as the Spray ghosted in. He caught the line, snubbed it quickly, and held her hard against him as she stepped off the boat onto the catwalk.

  “Poor love, you’ve had a bad time, haven’t you? Oh, God, I wish I’d been here. There would have been something I could have done.”

  She stiffened. “Who told you? Malcolm?”

  “I nearly had to beat it out of him. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She ignored that. “He shouldn’t have,” she insisted. “He had no right.”

  “Look at me, Elisabeth. Did you really think I wouldn’t know anything was wrong? Dammit, I love you. Of course I knew something terrible had happened.”

  Even before he unlocked the door she heard the frantic mewing. As they entered, there coming down the hallway with a humorous rolling gait was an orange marmalade kitten protesting loudly at having been left alone. With a delighted cry she scooped him up and began to scratch his jaw and the side of his head, whereupon he broke into a loud purr and kneaded with his paws against her shoulder. “Oh, Gideon, he’s a love. Wherever did you get him?”

  “Well, Malcolm’s butler friend Jim Hart —”

  “How did you meet him?” she broke in, astonished.

  “Oh, I’ve had a long afternoon while you were lollygagging about on the bay,” he said, laughing. “It was easy enough to get out of Malcolm. I simply implied that I thought he’d left all the cleaning up to you, and Bob’s your uncle, out came the whole story. So I went around to see old James and thank him — he’s not so old, by the way — and he shows me this litter of kittens just ready to be weaned.” He reached out and stroked the purring kitten. “This little devil came right to me, so I took him. Hart sends his best regards and hopes that the job they did was satisfactory. He looked thoughtful then and said almost dreamily that he would indeed like one day to meet the vandals who did it. So would I, for that matter.”

  “We must both go tomorrow and thank him for everything, not the least for Pericles. I’m afraid we’ll never find the vandals, but I think if you’re interested we could probably catch the note writer.”

  His smile was not a nice one. “So you’ve had that to contend with, too. All right, what do you propose?”

  “I always get a note now that I find on the morning after you’ve left. I tried once to keep a lookout all night, but the culprit must have been watching my movements, because nothing happened. I wonder, though, what he’d do if we pretended to say goodbye as usual, only you came back that night and watched the house. Obviously whoever it is knows when you’re leaving, because we say goodbye early in the morning before I go off to work, and then you leave with your bag. The following morning I can always expect a little gift.”

  He sat down on the sofa, which hadn’t been improved by the turpentine scrubbing, and twiddled thoughtfully with a knight of the new chess set she had bought. “I could wait for dark, come in the back way, and hide under that climbing rose. Yes, it could be done all right.”

  That night they put off their lovemaking agonizingly until after dinner, the doing of the dishes, and most of a chess game. Gideon suddenly muttered a very impolite oath and swept the chess pieces to the floor. She returned his hungry kiss, and they made their often interrupted way to the bedroom, shedding clothes as they went and trailed by a fascinated Pericles.

  “Gideon?”

  “Um.”

  “Are you going to sleep?”

  “No.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  He turned on his stomach and looked at her. “I was thinking that if I loved you enough I would walk out and never come back. I’ve brought you so much pain, love. And then I was thinking of what it would be like if I didn’t have you, and how if we were apart for always I would shrivel up like one of those Egyptian mummies, and my heart would turn to dust and blow away on the first passing wind. Even at the price of your unhappiness I cannot will myself to let you go any more than I could will myself to stop breathing.”

  “I’m relieved. There was a time when I thought that the notes and that miserable mother of Laurie McFall’s and Mr. Moss and all the rest of them were going to be able to poison what we had. Then I thought about what they did to Horatio — and they all did it, for without the encouragement and connivance of all of them it would never have happened — and I got angry. I am going to beat them down if it’s the last thing I do. I think of my poor old tomcat and I honestly know what it is to want to kill someone. They shan’t destroy us, Gideon — I won’t have it!”

  The next morning they went through the pretense of their goodbye ritual, and Gideon walked off down the street with his bag, turning several times to look back and wave as he always did. She went to the library as always and shopped for food on the way home as always. That night she found that despite the circumstances she was very sleepy. She and Gideon had spent a good part of the night in activities other than sleeping, and she stifled a laugh as she thought of how difficult it would be for him to stay awake.

  She was wakened suddenly by a loud thump that she recognized as the front door opened so wide that it hit the wall. After groping for a moment, she found a lucifer and lit the lamp. She threw on a robe and made her way toward the front of the house, Pericles trotting in front of her. As she entered the parlor, she found Gideon struggling with one hand to light a lamp while with his hooks he held a thrashing figure that turned out to be a woman in a cape. As Elisabeth entered the room, both figures went still.

  “There must be some mistake,” Elisabeth ventured. “That’s Laurie McFall’s mother. It’s a man we’re looking for.”

  “It’s no mistake,” Gideon said grimly. He reached in his pocket and pulled out one of the familiar notes.

  Elisabeth looked at it and then at the woman, who jutted her chin defiantly, the color flaming in her cheeks.

  “Why, you and your husband don’t even get along,” Elisabeth said stupidly. “It couldn’t have mattered to you what we did.”

  “Filth!” the woman spat. “You’re nothing but filth! God will punish you, you’ll see!”

  “But what have we done to you?” Elisabeth persisted.

  “You’ve
transgressed. You’re doing evil and you must be stopped.”

  Gideon broke in. “I suppose these aren’t evil?” He made a face as he held out the latest drawing. “You know, we’ve kept them all,” he lied. “I’m sure your husband would be fascinated to know what you’ve been spreading about the neighborhood.”

  For the first time the woman looked frightened. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Oh, wouldn’t we?” he retorted triumphantly. “Not only your husband, but the rest of those holier-than-thous around here ought to see who’s calling the kettle black.” He stopped. “Including your daughter,” he added inexorably.

  Unexpectedly she sank to her knees and began to cry. “Please don’t,” she begged. “If George ever sees those, my life won’t be worth living.” No mention of Laurie, Elisabeth noted.

  “All right,” Gideon conceded, “but if we even trace so much as gossip to you, we’ll paper the neighborhood with your art work. Really, Mrs. McFall, I wouldn’t have said a woman was capable of drawings like these!”

  “God guided my hand,” she said, dry-eyed now. “I never could have done them myself.”

  “I doubt it was God,” Elisabeth said dryly, “but I can think of several other candidates.”

  In the end they let her go, unsure whether or not her promises were worth anything. “If she had known I’d burned them all,” Elisabeth said later, “we could have whistled for any promises. Even at that the blasted woman never admitted she was wrong.”

  Gideon put his hand on her shoulder. “She won’t be the last one, you know.”

  “I know.”

  That night they lay against each other but by tacit consent did not make love. Mrs. McFall had gotten to them that far, at least.

  The morning after Gideon left she woke up feeling dull and headachy. She nevertheless dressed and dragged herself to the library, where an adamant Malcolm sent her home again with many instructions about teas against fever and the like.