The Stone Bull

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  The buggy is hitched to nothing, the shafts and moldering reins go nowhere. I fancy that this room of old carriages, opening off a harness room, still carries the smell of sweat from the horses that once drew them. I could disappear forever if I chose, I think whimsically. Who would miss me, since I’m not Ariel?

  I have already wandered through the museum parts of the Red Barn, but it is also a fabulous place of underground rooms and passages, of echoing tunnels from one section to another, and now that I have found this retreat I sit here and try to order my thoughts, try to decide what I must do. Is there any saving action that can be taken—or must I simply run away? Perhaps say good-bye to no one, never see any of them again.

  “Oh, Ariel!” I whisper her name aloud and echoing whispers rush back upon me. But there is another name in my mind and one blocks the other, so that even my pain is confused and its source uncertain.

  How innocently I began my adventure in this place. When I found that I must postpone my meeting with Magnus, I wandered down through the grounds, past formal gardens where I glimpsed Naomi working again. When I saw her, I turned aside and took a branching path that led me to the great quadrangle of the Red Barn. A doorway into the wing marked Museum invited me, and I discovered that there was a great deal to see. Few guests moved among the exhibits just then, and the curator was talking to one of them. I went on from room to room idly, until I found a closed door with a sign that read Employees Only. Since I was not a guest, I opened it upon stairs that I descended to the underground level.

  Here, I gathered, everything that was old and no longer in use was brought to be stored. It seemed as though nothing had ever been thrown away. In the harness room every imaginable type of harness hardware hung upon the walls. There were hames and bridles, bits and chains, all on wall hooks, and festooned with cobwebs. From the harness room a tunnel-like passageway opened, and when I followed it I found stairs that led me back to the ground floor, ending in a long room of many stalls. These open boxes went up one side of the room and down the other—and I counted to a hundred and twenty. What a stable Laurel had once had! There was still a faint odor of horses lingering, of leather and of dust over everything. Light came in through high small windows above each stall, but the stables were now elsewhere, and this was a room left over from the past.

  My steps echoed as I walked bare boards and as I wandered I fancied an echo to my steps. Once I stopped and listened, but all was quiet about me, eerily still in this place where restless hoofs had once stomped, where there had been whinnying and the chomping of oats. I walked again, and again footsteps walked with me. Yet when I whirled about, no one was in sight. When I called out to know who was there, no answer came to me.

  The feeling of being watched and followed was unpleasant and I returned to the stairs and fled underground again, since I knew no other way back to the main part of the barn and the public museum. However, there seemed to be more than one tunnel, and when I’d run the length of enclosed space, I came out in a dark room where discarded objects stood about. I could identify an old anvil and broken farm machinery—the whole room a dead end of disuse. Now the footsteps began again, sounding openly and coming closer, following my path through the tunnel. There were no windows here, only traces of daylight that filtered in from the tunnel, and I struck some iron object, and was reminded of the ankle I had hurt yesterday. It hadn’t bothered me till I’d bumped it.

  For a moment I stood still in that dark and dusty place, rubbing my ankle and listening. My follower was making no effort now to conceal the sound of steps echoing hollowly on wood, and when I turned I could see him silhouetted against the door through which I’d come. Suddenly a light clicked on overhead as the man at the entrance to the tunnel reached for a switch. I stood blinking in the glare from a naked bulb that swung above me, and saw Loring Grant regarding me curiously.

  “Are you lost?” he asked, a faintly derisive note in his voice.

  “I suppose I am,” I said. “Why were you following me?”

  “Did I frighten you? I’m sorry. I saw you heading into the old part of the barn, and while I didn’t want to spoil your exploration, some of these rooms are no longer safe, and I thought I’d follow and make sure you didn’t get hurt.”

  My voice had a tendency to quiver in reaction, and I steadied it by an effort. “What could hurt me down here? And why didn’t you answer when I called?”

  He answered my first question, but not the second. “Broken floors. Things that fall. We’d have sent someone along with you if we’d known you were coming here.”

  “I didn’t know it myself.”

  “If you’ve seen enough, perhaps I can show you a pleasanter area upstairs. Then we might talk a bit, Jenny.”

  I wasn’t sure what he wanted to talk about, or whether I wanted to listen. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he had wanted me to feel uneasy, perhaps a little frightened. However, I brushed away clinging cobwebs and followed him back through tunnels and rooms and up stairs until we reached a large display space on the second floor.

  Here light flooded in through windows at both ends, and I saw that various exhibits were ranged down each side of the long room, with a wide passage left between. This must be the room over the stables below. From the ceiling hung a huge American flag, and Loring came to stand beside me as I looked up at it.

  “There are forty-five stars,” he told me. “That flag was in use here at Laurel in 1896, when Utah came in, until 1907, when Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state.”

  But we weren’t here merely to look at exhibits, and he led the way past an old Model-T Ford and a two-horse treadmill to where a bench near a window allowed us to sit in a band of sunlight. I felt a continued unease in this man’s company, and in spite of his explanation of why he followed me, I distrusted his motives. He wasn’t the first person at Laurel I would have chosen to talk to, but I suspected that whether I liked it or not, something was now going to be brought into the open. It had been Loring who had wanted to talk to me earlier, and Irene had stopped him.

  “Irene tells me that you were very much disturbed about something last night,” he began.

  “I don’t think I want to discuss it,” I said.

  “Naomi has talked to you, hasn’t she?”

  I turned my head and looked into eyes that had a flat sheen, as though they were made of metal, and I was aware once more of a barely suppressed vitality in this man. There was no use pretending any longer that I didn’t know the truth.

  “She told me that my sister Ariel used to come here.”

  “Yes. There’s been no way to muzzle Naomi. Brendon warned us all that you weren’t to be told, though I was convinced that it could not be kept from you indefinitely.”

  “Why didn’t he tell me from the first that you all knew my sister?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to take that up with Brendon. That’s not what I want to talk with you about, however. Irene has told me that last night you were asking about Floris Devin—about her death.”

  I was silent. Floris didn’t matter to me now. Not when Brendon’s full duplicity was coming into the open. Sooner or later I mut know and face why he had kept this monstrous secret from me, and the thought left no room for concern about Floris.

  “You had better know,” Loring went on, “that your sister caused the death of Magnus’ wife.”

  His words shocked me back from my preoccupation with Brendon, and I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh—not that it was deliberate. At least, we hope it wasn’t. Ariel was standing on that big boulder above the Lair—the one that fell. Somehow she dislodged it and sent it crashing down—and Floris was killed. Irene didn’t want you to know, but I feel there has been enough concealment. Sooner or later someone would tell you, so it’s better to hear it impartially from me. Ariel left for New York the next day. We thought it best to send her home. None of us wanted an exploding story in the press—least of all, Ariel.”

  “Don
’t the police know?”

  “Not a word, as far as she was concerned. Since it was an accident, there seemed no point in involving Ariel, and we simply sent her away. There was no need to tell the police and make all the headlines. We all agreed on that.”

  All this was in May, I thought—early May, when Floris had died. And Ariel had taken those pills the last week in May. Yet she had told Mother nothing. Told me nothing. Or had she tried to tell me? There had been a jumbled outpouring that I hadn’t understood and couldn’t remember afterward.

  “Of course there have been whispers of suspicion,” Loring said quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ariel was involved with Magnus, you know. During her last visit here she stayed with Magnus and Floris in their cabin. Floris was making threats against her, but Ariel only laughed at her.”

  I could imagine that laughter—gay, sparkling, without any sensitivity for those she might hurt. Yet whatever she had been, my sister was no murderer.

  “She would never have sent that rock tumbling on purpose,” I said.

  “That’s what we all told ourselves.”

  “Told?”

  “Can we help having doubts? There’s proof that someone prepared that boulder so it would fall. It needed only a little rocking to send it tumbling into the chasm.”

  “What proof?”

  He smiled at me most gently, but his eyes had a cold gleam. “Since it is evidence that was—shall we say—held back from the police, it’s better not to go into it now. Brendon will deal with these new inquiries—whatever they are, and it will be best if you know as little as possible.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything to know, as far as Ariel is concerned,” I told him with conviction. “But if there are whispers, as you say, then they ought to be stopped.”

  “Just how would you do that?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about it.”

  He reached out and took my hand in his. “Don’t, Jenny. Don’t think about it at all.”

  His hand was cool, the flesh dry, and I drew my own away. “Thank you for telling me,” I said stiffly and stood up. “Of course I’ll want to think a lot about what you’ve told me. I’ll want to know a great deal more. If there is any suspicion that Ariel Vaughn was deliberately behind that woman’s death, then it will have to be disproved.”

  He repeated his earlier question, “How will you manage that?”

  “I don’t know. But I will. I owe that to my sister.”

  “Why are you so sure of her innocence?”

  I stared at him for a moment, not speaking. Then I walked away from him down the long room, seeing nothing of the exhibits on either side. He didn’t follow. I had the frightening feeling that I wanted to hide, that I must get away alone, where no one would find me. Some place where I could face my own thoughts and no one could watch me.

  When I was sure Loring hadn’t followed me, I fled back to the barn’s labyrinths. Watchful now of broken floors and falling dangers, I groped my way to this creaking, leathery haven of an old buggy. Here I can sit undisturbed and try to find order in chaos.

  Undisturbed except for my own tormenting thoughts. Magnus in love with Ariel? I could believe that. I knew very well the attraction she exerted toward men. In this case, with Floris standing between Ariel and a man she wanted, as she so obviously must have done, my sister would have had no scruples—none whatever! And yet—murder? No, not Ariel. I must somehow still my own terror at the thought.

  After a time I left that dark, musty room and found my way back to the outdoors and sunlight. With the sun on my face, I felt a little more courageous. And then, though still deeply concerned, I began to feel a new, unexpected relief. Because now, explanations for Brendon’s actions were coming to mind, and I could find ways to excuse him for his silence.

  Of course he hadn’t wanted me to know that Ariel was having an affair with Magnus. He’d said he didn’t care for ballet, so perhaps he had never liked Ariel himself and hadn’t wanted to tell me that the day I’d met him in the lobby. Probably he meant to tell me everything eventually, but he had known even then that the fact of her being here wasn’t important to us. He had been right. It wasn’t.

  I could be glad now that I hadn’t exploded last night, hadn’t hurled foolish accusations at him. Everything was going to be all right between Brendon and me. But I had spoken the truth in what I’d said to Loring about Ariel. I owed her something. I owed my own guilty conscience something, and I would not rest until such whispering about my sister was silenced. For the first time I wondered who it was that whispered. That was a question I should have asked Loring.

  When I followed a walk in the direction of the hotel, I saw that Naomi was no longer working in the nearby gardens, so I turned onto a cross path that allowed me to wander among the great beds of autumn flowers, red and gold and orange, and spiced with barberry and rosehips and bittersweet. A wide spread of lawn ran up the hill to where climbing pink hydrangeas made a wall of bloom, the blossoms only slightly tarnished by nipping frost. There was another gazebo there, and I climbed up to it across the grass and sat on a bench where I could look out toward towers that from here seemed clustered together and more than ever like a glimpse of Camelot.

  Had Ariel been troubled by guilt because of the rock she’d unwittingly dislodged so that it had crashed down to kill her lover’s wife? Was this why she had taken those pills? It didn’t seem characteristic. Self-guilt was not a common indulgence with my sister. More than ever now, I knew that I would have to see Magnus. Whether he liked it or not, I would have to talk to him about my sister Ariel.

  As I sat on the bench in this high vantage point, I saw Keir’s truck following the road that wound below me, and again Magnus was with him. The truck turned uphill, away from the hotel on the road to High Tower, and I knew they were going back to the cabin. By the time I walked up there, perhaps Keir would have left, dropping Magnus off, and his son would be alone.

  For the second time that day, I braced myself for a confrontation with Magnus, but was glad now that I had waited. I could go to this meeting with him knowing far more than I had known earlier this morning. And I could go with a lighter heart as well. It was not, after all, Brendon who had loved my sister, and the knowledge gave a lift to my steps as I started up the mountain.

  6

  My climb was not clear to High Tower this time, as I was following the more moderate rise of the carriage road, watching for the branch that would lead through the woods to the cabin.

  There was no urgency in me, now that I was on my way. Once I left the road, climbing past a clump of goldenrod to reach a shadowed spot where grape ferns grew, their leafy fronds turning bronze as the season changed. Earlier the spore cases would have been yellow-green. What treasure these woods would hold for me when I had time to go plant hunting. If only Brendon would come with me. It appeared that I was to see much less of him than I’d expected.

  This road bypassed the clearing where the bull stood frozen in his eternal charge, and when I came to the path that would have led to him, I walked on, refusing to be deterred. My fierce stone friend must wait for another visit, however much I wanted to see him again.

  Long before I reached the cabin, I heard the ringing sound of mallet on steel, telling me that Magnus must be working this morning. When I had last been here, my attention had focused upon Magnus himself and his treatment of me, and I hadn’t studied the house particularly. Now, when I came into the cleared space around it, I saw how well the split logs of the walls and the wood shingling of the roof suited their surroundings. This was a forest cabin—it belonged here. No curling smoke rose from the fieldstone chimney, and as I neared the source, the ringing sounds of a mallet grew louder, coming from beyond the cabin. I walked around its far end and stood looking at the scene before me.

  This morning Magnus wore no shirt in the warm sun, and his chest with its fuzz of red hair, his brown arm raised to lift a wooden mallet, seemed mas
sive—like the mountain rock itself. His open-air workshop was littered with stones of all shapes and sizes—some of them chips he had hammered or drilled away. On a sturdy table stood a huge stone face that reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Easter Island carvings, except that this bore the individual stamp of Magnus Devin’s own imagination. The stone he was working on, however, was not a sculpture. It was obviously the shape and size of a headstone, and I remembered that carving tombstones had once been Magnus’ work. Beyond him stood a protected shelter that held his tools and some of the machinery he used for moving huge blocks.

  He didn’t hear my approach because of the noise he was making with mallet on steel chisel, and I picked my way among the bits and pieces of chipped rock and came to stand in front of him, where he could hardly fail to see me. Yet for a few moments longer he paid me no attention, but worked on, shaping the rough slab of granite. When his last stroke satisfied him, he dropped mallet and chisel to a workbench, removed the goggles that protected his eyes and straightened to stare at me. His red hair and red beard seemed afire in the morning sun, and the deep green of his eyes challenged me in some way that made me uncomfortable.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  He nodded without greeting. “I’ve been expecting you. You had to come back, didn’t you?”

  “Why would you think that?” I countered.

  “Because when you knew the truth, you would have to come. Because you’re her sister. There’s been a loss of innocence since yesterday, hasn’t there? The innocence of ignorance.”

  There seemed a brutality in his words that shocked me, though I knew instinctively that this was not a man who would step prettily away from dangerous topics. Yet if I rushed at him with questions, he might very well shut me out and return to his deafening work. So I stood before him, waiting in silence.