Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Something flickered in King’s eyes—some stirring of waxy interest. “What does she care about that shell now?”

  “Perhaps it’s only a distraction,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll look around a little.”

  Without answering he went back to his work. It was as if we meant nothing to each other, as if that day in St. Croix had been only a dream. Perhaps that was the truth of the matter, and Catherine’s death was the only reality—that and the fact that Leila believed her father had killed Catherine.

  The very vigor of his pounding seemed to give him a release in action that he needed. I watched for a moment, lost in the futility of trying to reach this man I loved. Then I began to look about the clearing, idly poking into brush that had grown up around the base of the big mango tree. I stared at the ground, scuffing at it with my feet, finding nothing, not really expecting to. It was not Leila I thought of now, or her quest for a shell, but of the man behind me and how to break through the wall he had set up against me. Not so that I could assert myself with him, but because I must find a way to help, and I could not help while he held me off.

  He spoke to me suddenly, a little roughly, without turning around. “When are you planning to leave?”

  “I’m not planning anything right now,” I said, “either to leave or to stay.”

  “I want you away from here as soon as you can pack,” he told me, and returned to his pounding.

  The shade of the great mango tree lay all about me, shielding me from brilliant sunlight. I looked up into its high, full branches, where irregular green ovals of fruit hung so plentifully. Through them, here and there, I could glimpse the blue skies of St. Thomas.

  “Once in this very place,” I said, “you told me that I did too much running away. You were right. Now I’m learning not to run.”

  “There’s a time when it’s better to run for your life,” he said. “For the sake of your own safety and future.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I demanded, but he only stared at me for a moment without speaking, and then went back to his work.

  “Anyway,” I said mildly, “I don’t have to decide right now.”

  I had already decided, but I would offer no more fuel to his anger. Whether he had accepted the fact or not, I knew very well that I was part of whatever tragedy had overtaken him, and here I would stay until I was forced to leave.

  He gave the last nail a powerful stroke of the hammer—as if he struck out at more than a nail. “Has Leila said anything more to you this morning?”

  I knew what he meant and I held nothing back. I told him what Leila had said, what she believed. He listened, his eyes upon the distant mound of Hassel Island where another bare catchment scarred the hillside. When I had finished he drew a deep breath and released it slowly.

  “Everything she has told you is true,” he agreed. “I was angry enough to kill. When we stood talking on the terrace, I told Catherine that I meant to send Leila home without waiting any longer. I meant to get her out of her mother’s hands, no matter what. She laughed at me. She said in that case she would follow wherever Leila went and stay close to her. Then she taunted me about you, and told me how much trouble she would make if you stayed here. When she went off into the woods I tried to give myself time to cool off. But there was more that needed to be said. She’s trapped me on every hand for years, and bound me to her emptiness simply because the outcome could be tragic for Leila no matter what action I might take. Last night I meant to smash through and be damned to her.”

  He pounded one fist into the palm of the other hand.

  “Well?” he said. “Do you want to hear more?”

  I was suddenly afraid. I no longer wanted to hear, but I stood in the cool shade of the mango and listened, watching him in love and dread from my place of shadow.

  “When I saw her standing here in the clearing last night, the words I meant to speak went out of my mind. I wanted nothing except to punish her. I wanted to hurt her physically as she could so easily be hurt. But I don’t think I meant to kill her. I still had some control over myself and when the feel of her shoulders in my hands got too much for me, I flung her away and got out through the other side of the woods. I climbed to the road and walked to a spot where I could be quiet and think—and come to my senses.”

  I crossed my hands before my body and held myself tightly, as I had done that day at Caprice after my encounter with Catherine. Held myself because there in the hot morning I was once more shivering.

  King dropped his hammer to the ground. “I didn’t come here merely to put up a new railing—though that had to be done. I came to see if I could reconstruct what happened. When I stand here remembering, everything I felt last night comes washing through me all over again. I can feel the rough cloth of that beach robe she wore under my hands. I can smell her perfume just as I did last night—and lights begin to explode in my head.”

  I was sharply aware of the burning thing that consumed him, tearing him apart.

  “She’s gone,” I said. “You have to find the truth about what happened, King. You didn’t mean to kill her—you don’t know that you did.”

  “You haven’t heard me out. I shook her, I could feel the bones of her shoulders in my hands. I knew I was near to killing her. So I flung her away from me. Standing here thinking back, the whole thing is sharp enough in my mind. I flung her against that railing, and I flung her hard.”

  “But if you didn’t intend what happened—if you didn’t hear her fall—”

  “It was raining hard and I took off as if the devil were after me. I wouldn’t have heard an elephant go down that hillside. I never thought about the railing or the cliff. I only wanted to get away so I wouldn’t harm her seriously. Which is an ironic joke on me, when you stop to think of it. That’s why I was stunned when I came back last night.”

  “But you don’t know!” I cried. “You don’t know for sure. What if there was someone else in the clearing?”

  He shook his head at me unhappily. “There was no time for anyone else to get there. You’ve told me that Leila saw me shaking her before I flung her away from me. She tore right back to the house, and you met her and ran down here at once. How long do you think that took?”

  “Three or four minutes.” I had to admit the truth.

  “And the police think Catherine must have been dead only a little while by the time Alex climbed down the catchment after you raised the alarm. So we’ve got to face reality. Everyone was back at the house—Alex in his study, Maud in bed, Edith somewhere about the house. So who could have been here in three or four minutes’ time without being seen by you or Leila? Or by me, for that matter?”

  I didn’t want to face what he called reality. I meant to blind myself to it with every means in my possession and move in just one direction—to disprove what he was saying.

  “You’d better talk to Maud,” I suggested.

  “I have,” he said. “I’ve told her exactly what I’ve told you. Her main concern now is to save Leila from further ugliness. The police would charge me at once with Catherine’s death and Maud wants to put that off.”

  “I think she’s right,” I said staunchly. “Even if Leila believes the worst now, it isn’t as bad as vicious publicity would make it—the dredging up of things that might mark her forever. Now there’s at least a chance of persuading Leila that you didn’t intend what happened. While Catherine was alive you had no trouble deciding that Leila counted for a great deal more than her mother did. Why isn’t that still true?”

  “Maud made that pretty graphic,” he said grimly. “A fine, wrongheaded, female approach to morality! Women always care more about those they love than they do about abstract principles.”

  I had to admit that in my present state of mind this was true. There was a good deal of what Maud felt in my own reaction. What happened to King and Leila, who were essentially g
ood and decent, mattered to me, and I cared very little about avenging the death of a woman who was basically evil. Reason had nothing to do with this. All my emotions were up in arms in defense of those I loved. Wrongheaded or not, I was on Maud’s side. I tried again.

  “What if you really weren’t responsible—not even accidentally? What if you’re so deeply surrounded by trees that you can’t see the woods?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t reach for feeble straws.”

  I frowned, still impatient with his stubbornness. I had been a feeble straw myself, and now—for the moment at least—I was standing up pretty well.

  “What if there’s someone else in the picture? Someone who would love to see you blame yourself for what you had no hand in?”

  “You’re suggesting that some other person came here and pushed Catherine down that catchment last night?”

  “Why not? What if she met someone after you left?”

  He shook his head. “Catherine would have struggled, fought, screamed. You would have heard her.”

  “Perhaps not, if it was someone she knew and wasn’t afraid of.”

  He shook his head wearily and I had to give up, hardly convinced by my own words.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked.

  “I promised Maud that I’d give Leila a few days to recover from the shock of Catherine’s death. But I made no promise not to act soon. The longer I wait, the worse it will be for me.”

  “There’s got to be something—some way out.” I was the stubborn one now.

  His eyes grew kind as he looked at me. “But there isn’t any way out. Catherine managed to tie me up in barbed wire while she was alive, and she’s done it again in death.”

  He picked up the hammer he had dropped and turned his back on me to pound in another nail where no nail was needed. Clearly he wanted me gone with my foolish chatter and questionable morality. I walked out into hot sunlight and turned toward the path.

  Behind me King spoke. “About that murex shell—I remember Catherine holding it in her hands when we were having an argument earlier on the terrace. I didn’t think much about it at the time because she always indulged herself in play-acting fantasies. Later on I didn’t notice. It was dark in the woods. I suppose she must have dropped it on the ground. Though it would be big enough to see if it were still around. Unless, of course, somebody kicked it into the underbrush during all the coming and going last night. Anyway, it can hardly matter now.”

  He had been momentarily puzzled, but had apparently explained everything to his own satisfaction—though not to mine.

  I stared at him. “Tell me something else. When you saw her earlier on the terrace, was she wearing that gilded columbella shell on a chain around her neck?”

  “I suppose so. Yes—I remember it. The moon was out then and I saw the thing shining.”

  “But when they brought her up to the house the locket was gone. So there are two things she must have lost here in this place. Why haven’t they been found?”

  Once more he tired of my questions. “What does it matter?”

  I spoke in a rush. “What if there was a struggle? What if someone—”

  “You never let go, do you?” he said. “Run along now. At least you’ve got something to think about, what with strugglings and mysterious assailants.”

  There was no use fighting him. Walking as slowly as I could I followed the windings of the path toward the terrace. His gibes had not upset me or turned me from my blind course. It was true that he had lost sight of the woods because of his own particular trees. But I was in another part of the forest and the trees I saw were different ones. If what had come into my mind led anywhere at all—then there might very well be a third, shadowy figure yet to be revealed. Someone who had acted against Catherine for a private reason. But if this was possible, it brought to mind a new and alarming element, for this would be a person who was still alive, someone willing to do further violence.

  When I emerged from the grove Leila was sitting on the wall waiting for me. Beneath the flamboyant tree lay a circular shadow of red petals, and I turned my back on them, not wanting to remember the wet scarlet of a dress and a life snuffed out. Or to think about a ghost who held in her misty hands a power to destroy that was almost as great as it had been in life.

  “You took long enough,” Leila said. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “No murex shell, no columbella.”

  “Then you didn’t look hard enough. They’ve got to be there.”

  “Why don’t you look yourself?”

  “I told you—I don’t want to see my father. And anyway, I can’t bear to go down there.”

  “Why are you so anxious to find that shell?”

  She shrugged evasively, not looking at me. “I just want it.”

  I had the feeling that I was getting close to something important. “It’s more than that, I think. You’d better tell me.”

  She flashed me a scornful look. “Cathy said it had—powers. She could hear voices when she listened to it. If I could find it perhaps they’d talk to me now—tell me what I want to know.”

  “That’s pretty silly,” I said. “And I think you know it. What’s the real reason?”

  For a moment longer she hesitated—and then gave in. “Maybe you’ll be sorry you asked, but if you must know, it’s because I want to see whether that shell could have been used as a—a weapon.”

  I stared at her, waiting.

  “Cathy showed me one time how it would make a dangerous weapon if you slipped your hand inside it. And when they found her, there was that great gash on her forehead.”

  “Because she fell face downward onto the catchment,” I said quickly.

  “There was a bruise on the back of her head too—a fracture.” Leila’s voice began to rise. “So she could have been struck with the shell and fallen backward through the railing. That’s why I have to know where the shell is. Perhaps my father hid it somewhere so the police wouldn’t find it.”

  She jumped up from the wall and I put both hands on her shoulders and sat her down again—hard. There was rising hysteria here and it had to be stopped.

  “Listen to me! As far as your father is concerned, this is what happened,” I said, and told her exactly what he had told me, holding nothing back yet trying to make her understand the big question that remained—the chance that he was not responsible, even accidentally, for her mother’s death.

  She heard me through quietly enough, and when I finished she thrust my hands from her shoulders. As far as I could see I had made little impression. Her eyes were as sly and suspicious as her mother’s might have been.

  “You had a lovely visit with my father, didn’t you? I suppose you think you’ve worked everything so as to keep him out of trouble? I suppose you think everything will be easy for the two of you from now on?”

  I managed a deep breath before I spoke. “What I think is that it doesn’t become you to be cruel and malicious.”

  A faint, betraying flush touched her cheeks and told me my words had gone home. Yet she did not retreat from her stand.

  “All I have to do is go to Captain Osborn. All I have to do is find that shell and show it to him—and the person who killed my mother will be caught and punished.” She pushed past me to run across the terrace and up the steps into the house.

  I stood for a few moments longer staring out over hillside and town and harbor. On the water far below a long white cruiser was making its way toward the piers at the foot of Flag Hill. The wind was blowing this way and a faint strain of band music reached me. Down there aboard a ship were travelers, perhaps putting into St. Thomas for the first time, bent on gaiety, with no notion of the evil that could lurk in even so lovely a spot.

  I turned my back on the sound, wondering if I would ever again feel as carefree as that, and went slow
ly into the house. There I found myself on the edge of a group that centered around the weeping maid, Noreen.

  17

  Maud and Edith sat together on a sofa, Maud weary and frail-looking, Edith a bit yellow and once more tense. Slightly aloof from what appeared to be a domestic crisis, Alex leaned against a stair post observing the scene with pale, attentive eyes. Leila had thrown herself into a chair to watch what was going on and her cheeks were still flushed, her breathing quick.

  “As if we didn’t have enough to occupy us right now!” Edith wailed. “Do be a good girl, Noreen, and don’t worry us with such nonsense.”

  Maud Hampden put a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Hush. Let the girl talk. We can’t have the servants getting stirred up any more than they already are. Though I do think, Noreen, that your imagination is working overtime. No one else has seen jumbies around the house.”

  The girl dabbed at her eyes, speaking so quickly that I could understand very little.

  “Nothing is going to hurt you,” Maud said when the torrent stopped. “I’m sure Mrs. Drew’s spirit has not appeared on the terrace since her death. You’ve let those who are ignorant fill you with this jumbie talk, Noreen. If you think anything is wrong, come and tell me at once and we’ll talk about it together. However, if you go stirring the others up, I’ll have to send you home to Guadeloupe.”

  The girl managed a shaky smile. As she went off toward the kitchen she threw me a look askance, remembering, perhaps, that I was the one who’d had a broom placed upside down beside my door.

  When Noreen had gone, Alex disappeared into his study and Maud pulled herself to her feet. Edith sat where she was, her hands in her lap. The earlier elation I had sensed in her—as though realization of her sister’s death had brought her some emotional release—had passed, and she looked stricken and uncertain. When Maud spoke to her she started and put a hand to her lips.