Death and the Maiden

by Q. Patrick

  Nor of how they had met Ivor.

  Ivor to marry Elaine Chiltern—Maud’s daughter, Kay’s only niece.

  Ivor was not going to marry Elaine.

  Whatever happened, at whatever sacrifice, she was going to see that this impossible, shocking marriage never took place.

  A chain of colored porters was hurrying the baggage on shore; the passenger gangplank swayed out to the dock; tourists, cheerful and laughing, were pouring out into the shadowy half-light of the customs’ shed.

  As Kay looked down at the bright, animated scene she thought of Rosemary Drake’s diary, that little green leather book securely packed in her suitcase, that terrible revelation which Ivor’s young wife had sent her just before her tragic death. The thought of Rosemary’s diary brought her strength. Surely, when Maud and Gilbert Chiltern read it, they would have to see the truth about Ivor. They would have to stop their daughter’s wedding then.

  Below in the crowd on the wharf, a young man with tousled, sun-bleached hair was pushing his way to the railing. Kay saw him and waved.

  “Terry…!”

  Within a few minutes she was on the dock and Terry Chiltern, absurdly large in scanty shorts and a blue open-necked polo shirt, was hugging her to him like a young, affectionate bear.

  “Kay, darling, it’s grand to see you.”

  Laughing, Kay disentangled herself and looked at this twenty-year-old boy who, though only eight years younger than she, was ridiculously her nephew. In a way she could see mirrored in Terry’s face all the eventful things that had happened to the Chilterns during the last twelve months when she had been parted from them by the rigorous demands of her dress-designing job with a Hollywood studio. The final collapse of Gilbert Chiltern’s never very dependable income and the tragic paralytic stroke which had permanently invalided him, had left their mark on his son. There was the same frank, mobile face, the same tall, rangy body. But it had filled out into a man’s body with broad shoulders and thick-set muscles.

  “Well,” he said amusedly, “do I pass muster?”

  “With flying colors. One attractive, dangerous, not-too-young nephew.”

  “And one attractive, dangerous, much-too-young aunt.” Terry slid his arm around her waist. “Let’s cope with the customs. Elaine’s waiting at transportation. She’s dying to see you.”

  Indifferent to appraising feminine glances, Terry drew her through the crowd of tourists to a corner marked W. In a successfully short time he had disarmed a customs’ official into passing her baggage unopened and had corralled a porter.

  He came back to her, grinning. “Let’s get out of this dump.” Suddenly the grin went. “I guess you want the latest bulletin on the family romance. The glamorous bridegroom’s having a last fling in New York, but he’ll be back tomorrow. The wedding’s set for Tuesday. You better brush up on your bouquet-holding technique because you’re slated for maid of honor.”

  As he spoke Kay glanced at him anxiously. But she was almost certain from his face that he knew nothing of her own relationship with Ivor. Then Ivor for some tortuous reason of his own had not told the Chilterns of the episode which she herself had always been so careful to keep from them.

  They had reached the dazzling sunshine of Front Street now and were threading their way past parked bicycles and buggies with white-coated drivers and calm, blinkered horses wearing rakish straw hats. Kay saw the ridiculous red-painted toy they called a train, squatting at the roadside.

  This was Ivor’s Bermuda, just as she remembered it—bright, leisurely, remote from the world.

  And the sight of it swung back the floodgates of memory. Sunshine on white coral streets … Ivor’s little brown speedboat rushing like a comet through the sky-blue waters … the taste of salt spray on her lips … Ivor’s delirious, crazy love-making….

  Suddenly it seemed incredible that she was here in Bermuda with Terry; that he should be talking about Ivor’s wedding to Elaine. And she, Kay Winyard, a maid of honor!

  The porter lumbered ahead with the baggage on a truck. Terry guided Kay along the crowded sidewalk toward the cement public dock.

  “The boat’s here,” he said, “complete with Elaine and boatman.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone to the expense of hiring a boat for me.”

  “Hiring a boat! My dear bourgeois aunt, didn’t you know? We’re not just marrying Ivor. We’re marrying a cruiser, a speedboat, a sailboat, two punts, everything but a submarine.”

  “So it’s Ivor’s boat.” Kay stopped and stared at him, understanding suddenly dawning. “You mean you’re staying at—at Ivor’s house?”

  “Of course.” Terry stopped too. His young face was twisted in a smile that had no humor in it. “How else do you suppose the penniless Chilterns could spend four luxurious months in Bermuda?”

  His voice was rasping with an undercurrent of bitterness that was utterly unlike the Terry she had known. It made Kay wonder. Just as the news he had told her made her wonder—and be afraid. She should have realized that the family could never have moved to Bermuda without financial aid from somewhere. But that Maud Chiltern should have accepted all this from Ivor! Maud who had always been so stubbornly independent.

  They reached the dock. Ahead, moored to a bollard, lay a luxurious black cabin cruiser. The porter was swinging her baggage on board to a blunt-faced young boatman with a crew haircut. Standing watching them, her dark hair hanging almost to her shoulders, was a slim girl in an oyster-white playsuit with a green scarf loosely knotted around her throat.

  “Kay, darling!” Elaine Chiltern hurried to them and kissed Kay lightly on the cheek. “This is heaven.”

  The past year had done something even more sensational to Elaine than to her brother. At nineteen, this girl, with her boy’s figure, her long-lashed green eyes, and her delicate profile, was breath-takingly lovely.

  It was no wonder Ivor wanted her, Kay thought. Ivor, who always wanted perfection and who inevitably destroyed it.

  Elaine pulled her affectionately into the boat and along the deck toward the cockpit. As she passed the boatman she said stiffly: “We’ll go right home, Don. You can come back later and pick up my things from the customs.”

  Terry was already ensconced forward, perched on the cabin. He had picked up a beribboned Cuban guitar and was strumming it softly.

  “I composed a little number to greet you, Kay.”

  In a low, sweet baritone he started to sing:

  Return to Bermuda,

  Return to the scene,

  Bring love and bring happiness

  Where heartbreak has been.

  As that lilting, unconsciously ironical song mingled with the warm air, the sleek cruiser nosed away from the dock and headed out into the lagoon blueness of the Great Sound. Elaine dropped down at Kay’s side and, drawing up her slim legs, clasped her hands around her knees.

  It was only then that Kay noticed on her finger the large flawless emerald engagement ring. The sight of it made her suddenly aware of the biting reality of the situation. For it was the same stone that Ivor had given to her, Kay Winyard, on that crazy moonlight night when she had promised to be his wife. The some stone that she had thrown hysterically at his feet that other night in the playhouse when she had learned the whole brutal saga of Rosemary and had finally seen through the fascinating sham of Ivor into the devious, twisted mind that lay behind.

  Around her the translucent water glided by and the bright strip of shore line with its pattern of white houses, pink oleanders, and dark strong cedars. But she was only dimly conscious of them. Too vividly her mind conjured up pictures of Ivor with Elaine; Ivor’s kisses on that young mouth; Ivor’s fingers caressing that honey-smooth skin.

  What chance had Elaine against Ivor’s glamour? How could she, any more than poor, hero-worshiping Rosemary, detect the intricate pattern of calculated cruelty which was there for those who could see?

  Elaine’s voice sounded, mingling with the soft sweetness of Terry’s song.

&n
bsp; “… my wedding dress, all my trousseau have arrived on the boat. Isn’t it exciting?”

  Her wedding dress…!

  At last, after they were through the bridge and making for the farthest curve of a narrow, humpy peninsula, Hurricane House reared up from a screen of cedar and tamarisk with its cool-white façade and cool-lemon shutters.

  Terry said: “There’s the house.”

  Kay was watching it, remembering every little detail of the white chimneyed roof, the green lawns, the wooden dock thrusting out like a fist into the water.

  As the cruiser swung left, making for the dock, a canoe slid out from behind a clump of mangrove. In it, indolently working the paddle, was a girl in a lavender and green Hawaiian swimming suit, a cloud of vivid chestnut hair loose around her shoulders.

  “Hi, Simon. Wait for me.”

  Terry’s smile was vivid. Jumping up, he kicked away his shoes and stripped off the blue polo shirt. For a second he stood poised on the edge of the deck, his naked torso gleaming like a statue in the sunlight. Then he dived overboard, cutting through the smooth water as cleanly as a knife.

  Kay asked: “Who’s the girl, Elaine?”

  “Oh, she’s just Simon Morley. From New York. She’s staying in the house across the bay.”

  Elaine’s mouth had hardened and her green eyes, watching her brother, held a queer, intent expression. She did not speak again until the boat eased to the dock. Then quickly, before the boatman could help her, she jumped up onto the little wooden platform. Offering a hand, she pulled Kay up too.

  In an odd tight voice she said: “Don, you can go back to Hamilton and pick up those things at the customs for me.”

  The boatman who had been attaching the painter to the dock turned abruptly and stared at her.

  “You better give me some money,” he said. “Or has Mr. Drake paid for the duty as well as the wedding dress?”

  The unmistakable undercurrent of insolence came as a jolt to Kay. She stared at Ivor’s boatman. At a first glance she had thought him one of the ugliest young men she had ever seen. He looked rather like a blond gorilla with his square head under the crew haircut, his stocky body, and his muscular arms. He was gazing at Elaine, half angrily, half contemptuously.

  “Well, do you expect me to pay the duty?”

  All the color had drained from Elaine’s lips. Suddenly, with fingers that trembled, she snapped open her white pocketbook, pulled out some dollar bills, and flung them down on the dock.

  Her dark hair swirling around her shoulders, she spun round and ran blindly away up the shaded tamarisk walk toward the house.

  The boatman vaulted onto the wooden platform, calmly picked up the money, and thrust it into his trouser pocket. He looked at Kay.

  “Nice-mannered girl!” he grunted. “No one introduced me, by the way, I’m Don Baird, the boatman, suitably quartered in the slave cottage.” He nodded toward a little white cottage half hidden in the cedars and grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m quite respectable to meet socially. Third year law at Columbia. This is just a summer job.” The grin went and his blue eyes were quizzical. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Kay felt rather dizzy and didn’t know quite what to say. “Remember you?”

  “I remember you. I recognized you the moment I saw you. You’re not the type of girl a man forgets.” He was watching her appraisingly now. “Three years ago I spent the summer with Rosemary and her people in the house across the bay where Simon Morley lives now. That’s how I got this job. Knew all the channels.”

  Dimly apprehensive, Kay remembered back to a seventeen-year-old boy with a homely face and an infectious grin who used to tag around after Rosemary and fish for white grunts off Ivor’s pier.

  “You! The boy with the fishing line and the red sailboat.”

  “That’s it.” He smiled, his teeth gleaming whiter than coral in the blinding sunlight. “The funny-looking kid with the red sailboat. I guess I had funny ideas too. Often on moonlight nights way back in those days when Ivor Drake was a bachelor, I used to sail by here wishing I was rich and handsome like him. Sometimes there were parties with women in expensive dresses and guitars playing so you could hear them singing over the water; and sometimes I saw him alone with a beautiful girl I supposed he was going to marry.”

  He paused. “A beautiful girl who turns out crazily to be the aunt of another beautiful girl he wants to marry.”

  Kay did not move. Her eyes could not look away from that odd, rugged face which had so much strength in it. So he knows, she told herself. And panic stirred with the thought: If he knows, then there’ll be others here who knows—about Ivor and me.

  As if reading her thoughts, he said: “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell the Chilterns. But I’ve got to find out why you’ve come back. What do you want?”

  “What difference does it make to you?”

  The smile drained from his face, leaving it hard, his lips tight and pale. “You can’t want that—that swine for yourself again. You saw through him, didn’t you? You’re about the only woman that ever has. But you can’t want him to marry Elaine either. Have you come here to stop the wedding?”

  It was fantastic that Ivor Drake’s boatman should be talking to her this way. But reason seemed utterly remote then.

  She blurted: “I—I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I haven’t decided.”

  “But you’ve got to decide. Elaine’s your niece; she’s part of you. You can’t let her be another Rosemary.”

  “What—what do you know about Rosemary?”

  “I know exactly what Ivor did to her when you were here, before he married her. And I know he killed her after you walked out on him and she was fool enough to marry him.” He gave a husky laugh. “They tried to pretend it was an accident; that she fell out of that hotel window by mistake. You know that’s a lie. You know she jumped; that she deliberately killed herself because she couldn’t live through the hell of being married to Ivor Drake any longer.”

  His square figure seemed to absorb every inch of her vision, blotting out the tamarisks and the sunlit sheet of the bay. How could he know that? How could anyone but she, who had read that little green leather diary, know the dreadful truth about Rosemary?

  “Do you want that to happen to Elaine? You’ve got to tell me. Because, if you don’t stop that wedding, I’m going to. I’m going to stop it even if I have to kill someone.”

  The warm boards of the dock seemed to shift under Kay’s feet. Then suddenly Don Baird swung away from her and walked off.

  It was only then that she saw Terry and the girl in the Hawaiian swimming suit. They were standing on the edge of the dock, and from their expressions it was obvious they had heard. With her mass of red-gold hair and extraordinarily changing blue eyes, Simon Morley was recklessly, exotically attractive. She was staring straight at the boatman, one scarlet-nailed finger running jerkily around a heavy silver slave bracelet on her wrist.

  For a long, vibrant moment Don Baird stared back at them.

  Then very distinctly he said: “You needn’t look so darned shocked. I know exactly how both of you feel about Ivor Drake. If I don’t give him what’s coming to him, it’ll simply be because one of you gets in first.”

  CHAPTER 2

  That moment, as the four of them stood there staring at each other, was unbearably tense. Then, just when Kay felt the silence must explode like a bomb, a quiet voice behind them said: “Kay, dear. This is so very, very nice.”

  She turned to see the serene figure of Maud Chiltern standing on the tamarisk-fringed threshold of the dock. Her sister moved toward her and brushed her cheek with cool lips.

  “You can’t imagine how delighted we are, Kay. And you’re looking lovelier than ever.” Her level gray eyes, which, with their steeply curved brows, always gave her an expression of gentle curiosity, moved to the others. “Good morning, Simon. We’re expecting you to lunch. Don, you’ll take Miss Winyard’s bags up to the house, won’t you? Terry, dear, you r
eally should try to remember not to go swimming in your shorts.”

  In that one moment Maud Chiltern had dispelled the thundercloud of emotion and reduced them all to a plane of charming, thoughtless children who had to be taken care of. Maud invariably had that effect, even on Kay, whom, fifteen years younger, she had always treated more as a daughter than a sister.

  Now, as Don Baird strode ahead with the suitcases, Maud led Kay up the shady path to the house.

  “Gilbert’s looking forward to seeing you, dear. He had to go in to the hospital with his nurse for a weekly checkup, but he’ll be back after lunch. Poor Gilbert, Dr. Thorne doesn’t hold out much hope for his ever walking again. And you know how active he’s always been. But he’s so brave and Ivor’s been wonderful, bringing over a sort of distant relation of his from the States, who’s a trained nurse, to take care of him.”

  As they reached the wide flagged terrace with its bright tubs of camellias and sago palms, memories of Ivor came rushing back to Kay. It seemed incredible that Maud of all people should be presiding here in this of all houses, talking about Ivor as if he were a tenderhearted philanthropist.

  They passed through the luxurious living room, up steep cedarwood stairs, and down a corridor to a sunlit raftered room where Don had already stacked Kay’s bags at the foot of a four-poster bed.

  Maud kissed her again impulsively. “I won’t stay and gossip because I want you to hurry. Lunch is almost ready.”

  It was strange, rather frightening how returning to this house affected Kay. Before she arrived she had been so determined on her plan, so eager to talk to Maud and shatter as quickly as possible the treacherous fools’ paradise in which the Chilterns were living. But as lunch slipped by in Ivor’s flowery patio, and as later the afternoon unrolled lazily on the little coral beach hidden beyond the dock, she felt her strength of purpose ebbing away.

  It was almost dinnertime before the spell weakened. The children had melted away, Elaine into the house, Terry and Simon to go aquaplaning from the speedboat. Kay was left alone with Maud for the first time, lying back on cool-green porch chairs, gazing across the lawn with its vivid clumps of hibiscus toward the coral island two hundred yards off-shore.