We went outside to the rear deck and looked over thrashing shrubbery. The wind had an ugly whine to it now. Steve was nowhere in sight. I bent to pick up the gems that lay beside the sandbox.
“Let’s go back to the house,” I said. “We’d better take this box with us. It’s something to show Captain Osborn.”
“Show him?” King said.
I met his eyes unhappily. “That’s what I came here to tell you. Leila has phoned him to come up to the house.”
Mike said, “Poor kid—she’s going to hate herself.”
King braced his shoulders, as if to recover from a blow. “I’d like to have handled this myself. Come along—we’d better get going. Too bad Steve got away. We might have used him.”
“I can tell you some of it,” Mike offered quickly. “I’ve been getting suspicious, and lately I’ve followed Steve around. He got away from me today when I took Leila to her grandmother. But I’ve been putting things together.”
King locked up the house and we went out to his car. It had begun to rain and the wind was howling over the mountain ridge in a steady gale. King drove slowly, hardly able to see for the downpour, and as we crawled along Mike told us what little he had put together. He had kept still because of his brother, and because he did not have enough information to go on. Besides, after Catherine’s death he had expected everything to stop. But Steve had been determined to salvage the last batch of gems Catherine had apparently brought home from San Juan.
King kept his hands tightly on the wheel and his knuckles had whitened. “So that’s how she was getting money,” he said.
Mike nodded angrily. “I wasn’t sure until lately. I guess she found it easy enough to pick up jewels belonging to her wealthy friends when she visited swank hotels away from St. Thomas. Since everybody thought the Hampden wealth was behind her, she could get away with it. Even when it came to bringing the stuff through customs—who was going to search every inch of her luggage? I guess wherever there are rich, careless women, there are thieves operating—so professionals got blamed. She even managed to make it look as though she’d been robbed herself a few times. I heard her laughing about it with Steve a few weeks ago.”
The diamond earrings, I thought. No wonder Catherine had not wanted them found to give her away.
“Then she must have used Caprice for a hiding place for whatever she took,” King said, swinging the wheel to miss a burro that had stumbled across the road in wind and rain.
“In those boxes of sand,” I said, and remembered something else. “There was a tool kit in Catherine’s bedroom closet at Caprice. I suppose they took the stuff there and broke it up into separate stones so it couldn’t be identified. But then what?”
Mike shook his head. “I don’t know. I think the shells had something to do with it.”
“I’m sure they did,” I said, and told them about the emerald I’d found cemented into the murex, and about the earrings Catherine had hidden in the same shell.
“That’s a strange thing,” King pondered. “Catherine brought that shell outdoors while I was on the terrace that night. Why? Who did she mean to show it to?”
Alex? I wondered. Leila had said she went out there first to meet Alex.
We had reached the house and King turned into the driveway. A police car was already pulled up before the door. The worst had happened.
Mike got out at once and dashed through the rain to the front door, while King held me beside him for a moment.
“This may be the showdown,” he said. “Take care of yourself, darling. And stay out of it if you can.”
I kissed him a little desperately and stepped into wind and driving rain. King came around the car and took my arm to brace me against the cold pelting as we ran to the shelter of the house.
The door stood open upon the storm, to reduce the pressure indoors, though from this angle no rain came in. As we stepped into the room, stepped out of wild sound into a hush, I knew I would never forget the very look and quiet of the scene that greeted us. So high were the ceilings, so distant the roof, that the roaring noises of the storm were far away, and by contrast to the out-of-doors the room seemed as still as the eye of a hurricane. All the strain and ferment within was in our hearts.
The long main hall was shadowy with candlelight, its myriad flames burning high and still behind the protection of glass. Across the far end of the room the terrace had vanished and draperies were drawn across to hide the blank wall of hurricane shutters. Black draperies, they were, with clusters of scarlet flamboyant flaring across them to make a scenic backdrop for the room.
Maud Hampden sat regally against the cushions of a sofa, with Captain Osborn in a chair nearby. His expression as he leaned toward her seemed gentle, his manner considerate. Leila was nowhere to be seen.
As we came in out of the storm the captain rose and bowed as courteously as if this were no more than a social call. Maud watched him, her face set in a tragic mask, then rose a little stiffly and came to meet King. He hurried to her and put his arms about her, held her affectionately for a moment. She would not accept his support for long, however, but rested her hands on his arms and looked sorrowfully into his face.
“Our little girl has taken a foolish and reckless step,” Maud said. “But perhaps it is best to postpone no longer. If we talk to Captain Osborn now, we can finish this thing as soon as possible.”
“I am ready to listen to whatever you may tell me,” the captain said in his quiet, formal manner.
“I’m sorry my daughter got to you first,” King said. “I have waited only because she has been through a time of shock and distress. Now I would like her present while I tell you whatever I know about the night her mother died.”
Maud looked up at him in pleading. “No, King—please. She will suffer enough as it is in her own self-reproach, without having her hear what must be said.”
King shook his head gently. “We’ve tried to protect her too long, Maud dear. She isn’t the child we’ve thought her. Jessica, will you bring Leila here, please?”
He was right, I knew. Whatever the outcome, Leila must now be present so that she could learn all the circumstances that surrounded her mother’s death, and bear as well the consequences of her own hasty action. I went toward the stairs and saw Mike O’Neill standing near the door where we had forgotten him.
“Go sit down,” I said. “You’re a part of this now. Perhaps you can help Leila a little.”
He gave me a grateful look and found a chair well away from the others.
As I started up the stairs Alex came abruptly out of his study and I paused in surprise with my hand on the bannister. Never had I seen the man with his emotions out of hand before. He looked angry and at the same time like a man seeking escape, a man fleeing an accuser.
Before he had taken three steps, his wife was on his heels, and she, clearly, had gone to pieces.
“It was your fault! Always your fault!” she shrilled at him. “How could I stop when I knew what the outcome would be?”
Maud spoke without raising her voice, but her tone penetrated both distant storm sounds and Edith’s frantic tone, arresting her daughter.
“Edith! Come here and sit down at once. There is no use trying to blame Alex or anyone else for your own weakness. The captain must hear everything you have to tell him. This is the time to prove you have a spine.”
Edith crumpled into the place beside her mother, giving no evidence of anything resembling Maud Hampden’s spine. Alex uttered a sound that seemed a total rejection of his wife and strode to the terrace end of the room, where he stood with the black and scarlet draperies behind him. Maud’s look followed him, as challenging and accusing as Edith’s, in spite of her words. King watched all three in bewilderment.
I dared wait no longer, but fled upstairs to Leila’s room. The door was closed and no sound reached me from inside, except the
noises of the storm. I tapped and called her name, but there was no answer.
“Your father wants you to come downstairs,” I said more loudly.
Without warning the door was pulled open in my face and all the crashing fury of this storm that was only a hurricane’s edge seemed to rush toward me out of that small room. Leila’s gallery door had been shuttered, but the rain was beating across it as though it played on a drum and the room danced with shadow as air stirred the candle stubs burning in shallow glasses.
“I’ll come in a moment,” she said above the noise, and turned back to her dressing table.
She had put on a straight sheath dress that had been a favorite of Catherine’s—a shining white printed frivolously with green palm fronds. As the girl stood before the glass she picked something up, fastening its clasp about her neck before she turned. I saw that she wore the columbella on its golden chain. The break in the links had been mended with a tiny gold pin, and the shell gleamed in the candlelight, lifting on her breast with the quickness of her breathing. The evoking of everything that was Catherine was deliberate and clear.
This was no time for play acting, and I had to be brutal. “Don’t go downstairs looking like that. You will hurt everyone, including yourself.”
She had brushed her bangs back from her forehead, combing her hair in a more sophisticated style that made her look older. Strain had set her face into angles I had never seen before, so that all the roundness of young girlhood seemed to have been wiped away.
“No one cares anything about Cathy except me!” she cried, her voice too thin, too silvery high, too much like Catherine’s. “I am going downstairs like this. I’m going to make them remember!”
Again I tried. “Do you know that the police captain is here and your grandmother has been talking to him? Your father wants to tell him what he can, and he wants you to be there to listen.”
Her lips moved in a smile that was faintly malicious, and her eyes were sly in that way I hated to see.
“We’ll both be there to listen,” she said, and touched the shell on her breast. “Columbella and I!”
She went past me into the hall, and I had to hurry as she ran lightly, almost triumphantly, down the stairs.
The men rose as we appeared. There was shock in the look King turned upon his daughter. Edith sobbed aloud too dramatically and covered her face with her hands. Though he could not have understood all we felt, the captain lowered his eyes discreetly. Alex turned away to stir the black and scarlet draperies as if he wanted to look out upon the storm-ridden terrace. Beyond him the thick hangings muffled the drumbeat of rain upon the barricades that blocked his view.
It was Maud who spoke, silencing anything Leila might have been about to say.
“It would have been wiser to consult me before you acted, Granddaughter. Since you did not, you will now sit down and be quiet while we try to work out what remains to be done. You’ve proved yourself a child today.”
As quickly as that was Leila stripped of her pretending, and I saw her crumple into the young girl she really was, so that neither dress nor columbella suited her. Maud’s strong words had been needed to return her to reality.
Mike brought the girl a chair, placing it where she could sit in a kindly area of shadow. I found my old place near the now hidden door to the terrace—where I had sat that night watching the start of this tragedy.
King began to tell Maud and the captain of what Catherine and Steve had been doing, but Maud stopped him at once.
“Edith has confided in me,” she said quietly. “I think we must hear what she has to say before we come to other matters.”
Edith sat with her head bowed, still weeping into her cupped hands. Alex, recovering from a fury that had held him silent, whipped cold words across the room toward his wife’s bowed head.
“I would like to be given some of this confidence myself! Perhaps my wife will explain exactly how she happens to consider so many matters my fault?”
Edith raised her shattered face and stared resentfully at her husband. “It was your fault because you were willing to play Catherine’s game! I knew how you felt about her, but she never really wanted you. She wanted no one but King—and because she’d lost him she had to destroy him. But she knew she could call you her way with a flick of her fingers and she knew—as I did—that you’d be weak enough to follow. Oh, you’d take sharp little revenges on her with words at times, but you’d have danced to her tune if she’d have had you. So I had to do what she wanted in order to keep her away from you. She needed me for the cover behind which she could send the jewels she stole into the States, where she could get good prices for them.”
I glanced at Leila, sitting well back in the shadow on the opposite side of the room, and saw that Mike had reached out to hold her hand, though I doubt if she knew he had touched her. All her attention was riveted on Edith and the story she was telling. Alex listened too, his mask once more in place, his eyes so chill that I feared for Edith, whatever the outcome.
She did not look at her husband as she stumbled on. “It was Catherine’s idea to hide the gems in shells she and Steve collected for Alex. They didn’t have to be live shells, or valuable shells—any shells would do if the aperture was large enough. They kept a supply of them at Caprice for immediate use. They would hide the gems in a box of sand in Catherine’s bedroom—where no one would ever look. Then, when they were ready, they’d bring them here with a few shells strewn about on top to fool everyone. It was up to me to sift the sand and find the jewels. Then I’d cement each gem to the inside of a shell and ship the collection off to Catherine’s contact in the States—a man who posed as a legitimate shell buyer. I didn’t take anything for what I did. All I wanted was to have my sister stay away from Alex. Of course Steve would do anything for her, but he was looking out for himself too, and she had to share with him. After—after what happened on the catchment, he wanted what jewels were left for himself. I didn’t want to touch them, but he told me he’d go to the police if I didn’t give them to him. Especially that valuable emerald that had disappeared. I know now that Catherine took it herself—though she tried to make me think Miss Abbott found it in the sand and hid it in her room.”
Leila made a choked sound and snatched her hand away from Mike. “I don’t believe what you’re saying! It’s all lies. Cathy wasn’t a thief—or Steve either!”
Mike took back the hand she had snatched from him. “Hush now. It’s all true and you’ve got to face it. We caught Steve this afternoon with the rest of the jewels. You’ll have to toughen up, kid, and find out what’s real and important—and what isn’t.”
Leila made a soft moaning sound and pulled away from him, repudiating him, repudiating us all. Her fingers played nervously with the columbella on her breast.
King spoke to Mike. “Come here and tell the captain what you know. It’s a piece of the same picture.”
Captain Osborn nodded. “Yes—it all appears to be the same picture. It seems that there was reason for Mrs. Drew to be in trouble with many people. But in the end all roads must lead to the one who did indeed strike her in the face with a large shell, so that she fell backward down the catchment.”
King contradicted him at once. “That’s not what happened!”
“No?” There was a slightly steely ring behind the courtesy now. “But Mrs. Hampden tells me she believes this is what happened.”
I could feel pain constricting my heart again, so that it was difficult to breathe. In my mind was that chill vision Leila had planted there—of fins circling, circling, drawing always closer to the lone swimmer who would eventually be torn to bits and devoured by the predators. It was dreadful to stand helplessly by, treading water, unable to effect a rescue.
At King’s bidding Mike left his chair and went dejectedly to explain to the captain what he knew of his brother’s actions. He told how he had searched for Steve unti
l he found him at the redwood house, though he had not been in time to prevent the attack upon Kingdon Drew, or the threat to me.
Listening there in that well-enclosed room, we were nevertheless a part of the storm with each high gust that slapped the building, flinging rain against panes and shutters in what had grown to a steady, muffled pounding. Once a snapped branch struck hard against the hurricane barrier on the terrace side with a boom like a jungle drum, and Edith gasped in fright.
Leila spoke into the sudden hush that followed, her voice high and tense. “Can you hear it? Can you hear the water pouring down the catchment, just the way it did—that night!”
We all turned uneasily in her direction, but it was Maud who silenced the note of rising hysteria in her granddaughter’s voice.
“There was very little water rushing down the catchment that night. There were a few showers but it didn’t rain the way it’s raining now. I know because I was there in the clearing.”
No one moved or spoke, though she held the attention of every one of us.
“I was there,” she repeated quietly. “I saw exactly what happened. I know the truth about the shell.”
Shock was almost tangible in the room, though not, I thought, for all of us. I swallowed hard and stole a glance at the others—at Edith’s terrified look. At Alex, alert and on guard. At King, puzzled and alarmed. At Mike watching Leila, and at Leila, sitting on the edge of her chair, staring at her grandmother.
Captain Osborn’s manner was no less mild than before as he spoke. “In that case it is time for you to tell us whatever you may know, Mrs. Hampden.”
Maud Hampden nodded at him. “Yes, Captain, it is time for me to tell you what I know.”
21
I think we hardly breathed, for fear of what we might hear, yet also for fear of missing a word. I think not one of us shifted our gaze from Maud Hampden’s face as the old lady commenced her story with quiet dignity—though the sense of horror grew among us.
“Edith had already come to me with the truth about the gem stealing,” Maud began. “Of course I made her understand that it must stop—at once, and without scandal. She repeated my orders to Catherine, and Catherine used the weapon she held over her sister. She tried to see Alex alone in Edith’s workroom while everyone was busy preparing for the buffet supper. But Jessica was there that afternoon, so she proposed another rendezvous—to meet him in the clearing after the party. She warned Edith that she was going to expose her actions to Alex and tell him everything. Catherine had no fear that he would give her away, since Alex would want no exposure of his wife or any scandal that would reflect on the family. When Edith knew what her sister planned, she came to me, and it was I who went to the clearing to wait for Catherine. Apparently Alex changed his mind and did not keep the rendezvous after all.”
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