Columbella
Page 32
When I went out upon the rain-drenched terrace I found Leila and King there ahead of me. I was still dazed by what had happened. Events had moved almost faster than time, and it would take a little while to accept and understand.
King spoke to me and I went to join them. Leila stood near him, with one hand through the crook of his arm, as if she needed to stay very close to him. Her other hand was clasped upon something she held in her fingers.
Her face brightened in welcome when she saw me. “I want you to hear too, Jessica. I want to tell you both what Gran said to me, though her words were very strange.”
She was silent for a moment, doubtful.
“Tell us now,” said King gently.
Leila faced us with a certain young-womanly dignity that became her. “First Gran said, Thank you darling.’ Then she had to fight for her breath before she could manage the rest I could just make out her words. She said, ‘Now you owe me your life.’ I’m not sure what she meant by that.”
King answered her soberly. “It’s your future life you owe her, honey. What you do from now on. How you grow. How you work things out so you don’t let her down. But not just because of her. She would never mean that. It’s what we all owe ourselves that matters most. Not selfishly—but to do a little better with whatever we started out with.”
Leila nodded solemnly and opened her fingers. I saw the gleam of the columbella shell upon her palm. Then she drew back her arm and hurled the shell away from her high into the air so that it sailed in a far, gleaming arc, to fall at last into brush and guinea grass on the hillside below the terrace wall. She was crying when she turned back to us, but these were not little-girl tears. This was a woman’s suffering, and she would rise to it.
“That’s for Gran,” she said. “My first payment. But maybe I owe a lot of people my life. You, Dad. And—Jessica.”
She turned to me and I pressed her hands in both of mine and let her go. She ran up the steps and into the house, out of our sight.
King drew me to him, his cheek against my hair. The barriers would be pushed back now. We would be patient and wait.
When he went into the house in response to Captain Osborn’s call, I stood alone for a while, looking out over the hillside where a small gilded shell had fallen out of sight. If Maud knew, she would be pleased. How gratefully she would accept that large payment from Leila of a shell tossed upon a hillside.
Perhaps someday a stranger would come upon it lying there. By that time sun and rain would have worn away the gilt and it would be no more than a small, creamy-white sea-shell. The finder would never guess the story of what lay behind a shell fallen on a hillside far away from any beach. It would tell him nothing, for the voices were silent now—my own as well as Leila’s—and it was better for us not to remember too often a woman who danced in a red dress with a golden columbella on her breast.
Acknowledgments
When I collect background material for a book in a place which is new to me, I usually turn first to the local public library for help. This was especially true in the Virgin Islands. Blanche Souffront and June Lindquist of the St. Thomas Library not only assisted me by putting books on island history at my disposal, but also provided a number of introductions which enabled me to meet local residents. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for aid so generously given.
I am particularly grateful to Joanne Reese, a young page at the library, who was my friend and companion on trips around the island.
Others to whom I owe my gratitude are Donald and Emily Plante, who were most understanding of a writer’s problems, and generous with introductions and assistance. Howard Blaine of the Department of Commerce saw to it that I toured St. Thomas more than once. Mrs. Joseph Green invited me into beautiful Louisenhoj House—which set my imagination to “building” a fictional house of my own on a hilltop above Charlotte Amalie.
The graceful oval room in the plantation house of “Whim,” in St. Croix, helped me to build my own “Caprice.” And when I later found a handful of Caribbean columbellas and a black and white murex shell at Seashells Unlimited in New York, I brought them home and let them haunt me for a while until I was launched in my story of a woman bent on destruction—who liked to call herself “Columbella.”
A BIOGRAPHY OF PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY
Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”
Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.
Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.
In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).
After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chicago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.
In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.
Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.
Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement
award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.
Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.
A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.
Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).
Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.
Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.
Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia, at the time.
Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.
Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.
Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.
Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.
Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.
Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.
Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.
Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.
Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.
Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.
Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in Virgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1966 by Phyllis A. Whitney
Cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-5040-4385-4
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY
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