Columbella

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Watching me warily over his shoulder, he slipped something into a pocket before he rose to face me, looking in this small place a far bigger man than he had on the beach.

  19

  Where sunlight struck through the branches of the mango tree Steve’s hair seemed like bright gold, and his face had the smooth, unlined look of a boy, but he was not a boy and I did not like the warning in his eyes. It was as if he said openly, “Take care. Mind your own business.”

  I had no intention of minding my own business. In spite of the fact that the nameless fear I’d experienced on my way to this place now had a real object, I had to stand my ground—even to bluff, if necessary. I had to know what it was he had found in the underbrush of the clearing.

  I held out my hand. “Give it to me. Whatever it is, you’d better give it to me.”

  He tried to recover his easy manner, but his eyes retained their warning and I distrusted him increasingly.

  “It isn’t anything much, Miss Jessica-Jessica,” he mocked. “Though maybe you’d like to come and take whatever it is away from me?”

  “I won’t need to do that,” I said. “Because if you don’t give it to me, you must account for it to Mr. Drew. I don’t think you want that.”

  “You’re a spunky sort, aren’t you?” he said, ignoring my reference to King. “Always turning up in places where you don’t belong. There was a time when I thought you might stand up to Cathy once too often.”

  “Instead of which it was she who tormented someone once too often? Is that it?”

  For an instant I thought he would reach for me in anger. Then he relaxed with the semblance of a grin, dug into his pocket, and held up his hand. In his fingers dangled a broken length of chain from which Catherine’s columbella hung by its central loop of gold. I snatched chain and shell from him and he made no effort to take them back, but stood smiling at me—a smile without friendliness or amusement in it.

  “Did you come here to look for this?” I asked.

  “Not that in particular,” he said. “But I got the idea I might find something if I looked around here a bit more carefully. That broken chain tells a lot, doesn’t it? It bears out what Leila said to her father down at Magens Bay this morning.”

  It was becoming clear that this young man might prove dangerous to King, and I said nothing.

  “The chain must have snapped when Catherine fought for her life. Don’t you think that’s possible?” he went on. “And in that case you know who it was she had to fight. You know better than anyone else.”

  I had to answer him boldly then. “If you’re thinking of Kingdon Drew, you’re completely wrong. He has told us all exactly what happened that night—and it wasn’t he who flung Catherine down the catchment.”

  “Leila saw him,” Steve said triumphantly. “She told me so.”

  He was altogether too pleased with himself, too sure of himself, and I wondered how much he had to hide of his own activities that night. How well might it serve him to have King suspected of causing Catherine’s death? He had been an adoring follower of a comet, yes, but there had been times when I’d heard him speak sharply, warningly to her. His motive in coming here to search was not altogether open and clear.

  “I’ll take this back to the house,” I said, slipping the columbella into the side pocket of my skirt.

  He stood watching me with that bright, dangerous look and I knew very well that it would not take much more provocation for him to take the columbella from me. Though it cost me an effort I turned my back on him with a pretense of calm and started along the path to the terrace. I walked boldly, letting twigs crackle beneath my feet—walked a few yards until the turn of the path took me out of his sight. Then I stopped and retraced my steps softly until I could glimpse the clearing through thick growth that hid me from him.

  Steve was nowhere in sight I stepped into the open and saw that he had gone over the new railing King had put up, and dropped to the top of the catchment. I ran to the railing and saw that he was climbing down, catlike in his sneakers, moving quickly toward the two humps of black rock that protruded a third of the way down the catchment.

  What he was looking for I did not know, but I didn’t want to let him out of my sight. I had to know what he was doing and why he was here. He had given up the columbella too lightly for it to be of much importance. There was something else he searched for and I wanted to know what it was.

  I found the pathway that led out of the clearing in the opposite direction from the house—the path King had taken along the hillside the night Catherine had died—and ran along it, seeking for a way down the hill. There was an opening a little way along onto a steeper path. I took it, slipping and sliding until I was out upon the open hillside.

  Steve had reached the humps of rock on the catchment and he seemed to be searching all around them, but as far as I could tell he had found nothing. He had not seen me yet and I left the path and started down through rough guinea grass that covered the hillside, scrambling and slipping until I was even with the foot of the catchment. If he had the idea that something was still to be found, it might very well lie at the bottom.

  The slope was not as steep at the place where the catchment would pour its burden of water into a mesh-covered gutter stretching across the foot. Here I found I could easily climb upon the stones and by walking carefully I could follow the edge of the gutter.

  Above, still two thirds of the way up, Steve had seen me and propped himself against a protruding rock to watch what I was doing. I fixed my attention on the stretch of wire mesh. Debris—stones, leaves, twigs—had washed down to be caught there, and I kicked at the rubbish with the toe of one shoe as I made my way along.

  A sound high above told me that Steve was coming down, and I hurried, kicking out repeatedly with my foot. Suddenly my toe struck something hard that rolled and clattered. I bent to see what I had kicked and there was no mistaking the object. Dwarfed though it was by this huge expanse of rock, the look and shape of the black and white murex shell were unmistakable.

  I picked it from the wire mesh and glanced upward. Steve had nearly reached the bottom ledge and was edging purposefully toward me along the base of the catchment, his fair head bright in the sun, his eyes sharp with intent. I knew at once that it was this shell he searched for and that he meant to have it, if he had to take it from me. Below the catchment the grassy hillside dropped to the edge of the road that zigzagged toward the houses of Charlotte Amalie and the pavement stretched empty of cars or help—my only line of escape. A wind had begun to blow, dispersing the hot, calm air, and I felt the pressure of it against my body as I jumped to the grass and let myself go hurtling down the steep bank toward the road, the shell held tightly in my hands. There were sounds behind me. Steve had leaped from the catchment in pursuit, and now I ran in terror. Without any doubt, I knew the truth—Steve was a desperate man. This shell meant something to him—though what I could not guess.

  From the slant of the upper zigzag I heard the sound of a car coming down and I dashed out upon the pavement where it must pass. Just as I reached the road Steve caught me and whirled me about. I screamed and struck out at him with the shell in my hand. He dodged the blow and sprang back, suddenly wary of the mailed thing I held.

  “So you’d try that?” he said, and it was not until later that I puzzled over his words.

  The shell was of no use to me now, because I could not again take him by surprise, but it had given me a moment’s respite. I ran up the road toward the descending car. It braked to a halt, barely missing me as the driver swung the wheel.

  Alex Stair leaned out to regard me in surprise. “Are you all right? What’s happened to frighten you?”

  “Steve!” I cried, clinging to the car door with one hand and clutching the shell with the other.

  Steve had halted at the edge of the road and when I looked around I saw he was jaunty again, and l
aughing.

  Able to get no sense from me, Alex spoke to him. “What’s so funny? Why is she frightened?”

  Steve sauntered toward the car and I pulled open the door and got in beside Alex.

  “I think she’s gone nuts,” Steve said, but though his usual smile was in place, his eyes were still wary. “All I did was come down to see what she’d found on the catchment and she took off screeching and running. Maybe you can make out what’s the matter with her.”

  The unicorn mask was in place—he was all the bantering, casual young man—and I did not trust him at all, or know how to convince Alex that a few moments ago Steve had been someone very different.

  “Just take me back to the house, please,” I said to Alex. “I don’t want to talk to him. No matter what he says, he meant to frighten me—maybe even to hurt me.”

  Alex regarded Steve with cool dislike, and I wondered if the old rivalry still rankled between these two because of Catherine. He did not speak to Steve again, but turned the car around on the pavement and started uphill toward Hampden House. When I looked behind, Steve was climbing the hillside in a diagonal that led away from the catchment and the house.

  “You came just in time,” I said, still out of breath.

  Alex spoke a bit grimly. “So I gather. The hurricane warnings are getting worse and I want to get downtown while I can and see that the shop is boarded up. Everything stops when there’s a hurricane threat. But I’ll take you back to the house first. Do you care to tell me what all that to-do with Steve was about?”

  I held up the murex. “I found this at the foot of the catchment. Steve meant to take it away from me.”

  “Why would he want the thing?”

  “I don’t know.” I could not tell him what was in my mind.

  Alex said nothing more until we reached the driveway of Hampden House. Then, when I would have left the car, he reached out to take the big shell from my hands. Slowly he turned it about, tapping away bits of leaf and earth that clung to the spiky surface and were caught inside the shell. For the first time I saw the damage that had been done when the shell had bounced the length of the catchment from the top where Catherine must have held it in her hands. Several black spines were broken, and I could see a crack running toward the flared tail. The tail itself was damaged and the tiny pink nose of the shell had been split off in its bounding fall.

  Alex shook his head as though he saw only the damage done to what had been a fine shell specimen.

  “What a shame,” he said carelessly, and gave the murex back, his face expressionless, though his lips had a tight set in their fringe of beard.

  I watched him, suddenly interested in his reaction. “Leila has been looking for this shell. She has the notion that it might have been used to strike Catherine with.”

  Alex grimaced. “That’s on a par with the pictures she’s been drawing. I suggest you forget the idea and keep the shell out of Leila’s sight. If you like, I’ll dispose of it for you. It has no value any more.”

  “I’ll keep it for now,” I told him and got out of the car, leaving him to return down the hill.

  As I neared the steps a figure darted out from behind a hedge and Mike O’Neill came toward me.

  “Have you seen Steve?” He sounded anxious. “I can’t find him anywhere.”

  “He was down on the hillside near the catchment,” I told him, wondering at the boy’s evident anxiety. “The last I saw, he was leaving in that direction.” I pointed.

  “Thanks,” he said and started around the house. Just as I reached the door he turned back. “I got Leila home all right,” he assured me. “I got her away from Steve.”

  We understood each other very well. “Thank you,” I said, and went inside.

  Back in my room I set the murex upon my bureau. By its broken chain I drew the columbella from my pocket and placed it beside the larger shell. Then I lay down on my bed to close my eyes, trying to figure something out.

  When the luncheon gong sounded I did not stir. I wanted nothing to eat. I was conscious mainly of time running out, bringing us all inexorably to the moment when King would go to the police and all would be taken out of our hands. There must be something—something!—that would put off that moment.

  But only the hurricane offered a chance of postponement. I reached out to turn on my radio. The voice was quietly insistent, warning St. Thomas to get ready for gale-force winds. Hopefully, rampaging Katy would pass well to the south of St. Croix, and thus even farther from St. Thomas, but we must be prepared. Guadeloupe was already on a hurricane alert and real trouble was expected there. “Hurricane watch” had been changed to “Hurricane warning” for the Virgin Islands, since the storm was picking up speed and the course might veer at any time. It looked as though we might be hit by the edge of the storm earlier than had been expected. Sirens would be sounded shortly to warn all islanders to prepare for the worst—though “Take cover” was still scheduled for afternoon.

  I must have lain on the bed with my thoughts turning in futile circles for an hour or more. The house was anything but quiet. Loud hangings and poundings told me that hurricane shutters were going up downstairs. In the big hotels, I knew that the help would be pasting miles of adhesive-paper strips over the great areas of sheer glass, crisscrossing each window to prevent a scattering of glass if the wind blew it in. This putting up and taking down of shutters occurred five or six times during the season and the whole island would be buzzing with hurricane talk and preparations. Warning flags would be up and the waterfront would tie itself down and pray. Undoubtedly the streets were emptying by now, and those hotels on high ground would be turning themselves into emergency centers—just in case. Aunt Janet had told me all of this. But here on our mountaintop we were, as always, isolated from the town—and it seemed a different world. One more exposed and vulnerable than the town itself.

  Thinking about hurricanes was getting me nowhere. I rose and picked up the murex shell to have another look at it. The moment I took it in my hand the experiment was irresistible. When I had struck out at Steve earlier I had simply grasped the shell around its spikes, which had given me no great hold on it. Now I slipped my fingers deep into the white hollow that was as smooth to my touch and as slick as the inside of a china cup. There was plenty of room and my four fingers slipped into it easily, except where some tiny excrescence rubbed against my middle finger. With my fingers curled within the shell, gripping it, my hand became a mailed fist. In spite of broken and blunted spikes, the thing was like the knobbed head of a mace, and as dangerous. If used as a weapon it could inflict a crushing, murderous blow. Struck with such a weapon, Catherine would have gone backward through the railing without being able to save herself. A single blow could have stunned her, perhaps killed her. But never, never would Kingdon Drew have struck out with such a thing. It would be completely out of character for him. But even as I reassured myself I remembered that I, who was hardly a vicious woman, had struck unthinkingly at Steve with this same shell—meaning only to ward him off. And he had leaped away from me the moment I’d raised it, however clumsily. He had said, “So you’d try that?”—as though he knew very well what it might accomplish.

  I drew my fingers in distaste from the ugly thing, and the bit of shell or rock that clung to the interior came away and skittered across the floor to lose itself in some crack.

  Outdoors the wind had begun to howl over our mountain ridge and I could feel the house shudder against the buffeting. Yet the sun still shone, for all the encroaching haze, and since my doors had not yet been barricaded, light glared in from the gallery to strike a dazzle from something in the straw rug at my feet. Since it was easier to think about spots of sunlight than to solve impossible problems, I gave the glint my attention. Some bit of glass seemed to be embedded in the rug, caught in the deep, lacy pattern of straw.

  This must be the stone I had just dislodged from inside the
shell when I drew out my hand. Curiosity grew. From a bureau drawer I brought a nail file and knelt to pry a twinkling piece of green glass out of the rug. It came loose easily and I stood up with the small, hard fragment on my palm, my attention thoroughly caught. This was no glass. It was exquisite, perfectly faceted—a green gem stone that looked as though it must once have belonged in a ring. It was undoubtedly an emerald.

  As I turned it over I saw something grayish stuck to the surface, something rough to my touch as I ran my finger over the spot—like a speck of household cement. I picked up the shell and curved a finger into the deeply convoluted lip. Yes, there was still a faintly rough place well within the hidden curve and when I picked at it with a fingernail, specks of dry cement came away. The small green stone I held in my hand must have been cemented to the hidden interior of the shell. By Edith, I wondered, working in the seclusion of her workroom? Or by Catherine herself—since she had taken such an interest in the finding and transporting of shells? If there was one jewel in the shell, could there be others? Remembrance of that talk of jewel thieves around the Caribbean, talk I had heard ever since coming here, flashed through my mind.

  The murex had a deep, hidden interior, and I could find nothing more until I probed with a curved pair of tweezers. At the first pinch they brought away a speck of cotton, and I thrust them in more deeply, deaf now to the pounding that went on around the house, to the buffeting of the wind outdoors.

  In the depths of the shell the tweezers took something in their grasp and I brought out a small rolled twist of dirty white cotton. Picking it away, I found that I held twin diamond earrings in my fingers. These were tiny things, set with fine gold wire and intended for pierced ears.

  I was excited now, and on my way to something important, but I needed help on the objects I had found. I had to know whether they could be identified by someone in the house.

  Catching up both the murex and the columbella, hiding the emerald and the earrings in my other hand, I went to rap on Leila’s door. For a moment there was silence; then she came to open it a crack and peer out at me.