My door was ajar a few inches.
I knew I’d closed it when I first came into the room, and that it had been shut all the time I was reading. However, an old door could be sprung on its hinges, so that it unlatched itself. It was nothing to be alarmed about.
Nothing had come into my room.
Nevertheless, I tilted a straight chair under the doorknob before I went back to bed—and lay awake again.
Perhaps something had come into the room. Perhaps the word “murder” had come in, bringing with it terrible connotations to hold sleep away.
It must have been sheer exhaustion that let me doze at last, and I slept heavily through the dawn.
The moment I awakened to find sunshine flowing in the windows, I remembered the wreath that had been hung on my doorknob, with its ominous message. I wondered again why my father should not rest in peace. What was I supposed to know? I decided not to mention the wreath to anyone. Not right away. If someone wanted to startle a response from me, I would offer nothing.
As soon as I had bathed and dressed, I went downstairs, and met Gail in the lower hall. This morning she wore Levi’s instead of her uniform, and a red plaid shirt. Her brown glossy hair was caught back with a red ribbon, and she looked vibrant and tanned and healthy. A nurse she might be, but I suspected that she took her duties lightly in this house.
Her greeting was sunny and cheerful. “Good morning. I hope you slept well.”
Did her words once more carry a sly question? “Wonderfully well,” I said. “The mountain air agrees with me.”
“Fine. You can have breakfast anytime you like.”
I told her I would take a quick walk around the house first and then join her.
Outside, I circled the house in the direction of the ranch buildings, where the valley opened out, and quickly found the spot beneath my bedroom window. No wreath lay upon the parched grass, though I found a few crumbled bits of dry leaf that must have broken off in its fall last night.
It had already been taken away, and that, too, seemed secretive and disturbing. I felt increasingly shaken by the realization that someone in this place meant me ill. Breathing deeply of the clean thin air, I gazed off toward the place where Old Desolate raised its head against a morning sky, trying to rid myself of this deep uneasiness. The sky was an amazing solid blue, with not a single cloud marking its expanse, and some remembered emotion from my childhood yearned again toward the mountain. I must go there. I must find some answer to my feeling about the mountain.
Down by the corral Jon Maddocks was currying a horse, and when he stopped for a moment and looked in my direction, I raised my hand in greeting. He nodded and went on with his work. Last night when I’d come in, Jon had been on the porch. Had he also been inside the house carrying a wreath? I shook the thought aside, not believing it for a moment. If there was disliking for me, it might stem from that direction, but it would be open and clearly stated. Somehow I knew that hurtful tricks would never be his way. For a moment I felt an urge to follow the road to the barn, so I could tell him what had happened. But I knew he wouldn’t welcome me, so I’d better not. There was a soreness in me because of Jon Maddocks’ treatment that wouldn’t go away, and perhaps later on I would go down to see Red, and return Jon’s sweater. Then perhaps I could talk to him again.
With an effort I shook off what was probably only sentimentality for the past and went inside.
Gail and Caleb were already at the dining room table. He rose to seat me, his manner grave and not particularly welcoming. This morning he still wore a proper business suit, but had added a gray turtleneck that gave him a slightly more dashing look. I felt again that this was a man who would be difficult to know, and that superficial judgments about him would not serve.
This morning, in spite of the intimidating gaze of the elk above the fireplace, the room was not as gloomy as it had seemed last night. Dark green draperies had been drawn back to allow daylight to blaze in, and though the table was still too vast in its expanse, breakfast was a cheerier meal. Edna brought my orange juice promptly, and I accepted a serving of bacon, eggs, and hashed brown potatoes done to a savory crisp. There was nothing wrong with my appetite. I ate, and wondered which one of them had hung the wreath on my door.
“You found Mr. Lange at the hotel?” Caleb asked.
“Yes, he was there,” I said. “We saw Mr. Ingram too.” I went on tentatively, “He has invited us to dinner with him this evening at the hotel.”
Gail nodded. “He phoned and asked if Caleb and I would join you. So of course we accepted.”
Caleb said, “There was no ‘of course’ about it. I’m not sure I want to accept, or that Laurie should go to dinner with Mark Ingram.”
Gail’s smile was tantalizing, and I could see that it angered him. Though he kept a tight control over anything he might feel, the betrayals were there in the tightening of his mouth, in the slight twitch of a facial muscle.
“We don’t need to tell Mrs. Morgan, do we?” Gail said. “There’s no point. She’s so easily upset these days.”
“I haven’t decided whether I will accept the invitation,” I told her.
Caleb picked that up quickly. “It’s probably inadvisable. Stay as far away from that man as you can, Laurie, or you may cause yourself trouble.”
“I rather like him.” Gail seemed to take pleasure in opposing Caleb. “He’s interesting and outrageous and powerful. Dangerous, too, I suspect. The problem with his leg doesn’t slow him a bit.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“I understand he wears a prosthesis for his right leg. That’s what the Durant woman at the hotel told me. He lost his leg in a tractor accident on his Kansas farm. It’s hard to imagine that man as a farmer, isn’t it? But I gather that’s what he’s been. And a wealthy one, at that. Once I heard him say that there’s more gold to come out of agriculture than from all the mines put together.”
She busied herself buttering a piece of toast, and then raised her eyes to mine, that same look in them that I didn’t like.
“It’s always interesting, isn’t it, the way life threads cross and intertwine in the most unexpected ways?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.
“I was thinking of the roundabout way in which Mark Ingram came to Jasper.”
“Gail!” There was a warning in Caleb’s voice.
She chose to ignore it. “Oh, it’s open knowledge, and very strange, really. If Mr. Ingram hadn’t happened somewhere along the line to run into Noah Armand, he would never have heard about this place. But once he knew about it, he couldn’t wait to come up here to have a look. And then, later, when he could manage it—a year or so ago—he came back, with most of his negotiations completed. Mrs. Morgan let the rest of Jasper go out of her hands years ago, so he had no trouble buying it up, as well as most of Domino. Mrs. Morgan still owns a house there, and of course the mine. The coincidence of Ingram’s meeting Noah Armand is interesting, isn’t it? I’ve always wondered how it happened. If it hadn’t been for that, Ingram would probably have gone somewhere else and wouldn’t be here now to upset so many applecarts.”
Noah. Always Noah.
“Who told you all this?” Caleb asked, and his tone was so strange, so fraught wih emotion, that I stared at him and saw how pale he had grown.
Gail seemed not to notice. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said airily. “I guess it’s pretty common knowledge. There’s so little to do around here that I go over to the hotel sometimes when I’m off duty just to talk to someone. Or perhaps Mrs. Morgan told me. Sometimes she can run on and on, and I hardly listen.”
I spoke to Caleb. “What was he like—my grandmother’s second husband?”
He looked pale and upset. “I’d prefer not to talk about him.”
“Then I’ll ask my grandmother,” I said.
“No, don’t.” He spoke quickly. “All she wants is to forget that man ever came here, and that she made the mistake of marrying him.�
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“But what was he like?”
Caleb considered reluctantly before he answered. “Morose. Thin and dark. Good-looking, I suppose. Women always thought so. He was an opportunist for as long as I knew him.”
I hadn’t thought Caleb Hawes capable of deep anger, but I could hear it now in his voice. I had roiled depths that he usually concealed.
“Why did Persis Morgan marry him?” I asked.
“I’ve always wondered what she saw in him. Her husband had died years before, and Noah knew his way around women. He was many years younger than Mrs. Morgan, and once he was here she couldn’t see anyone else. She wouldn’t listen to any of us. He’d been legally divorced—my father looked into that. Nothing we could say bothered your grandmother. All her life she’s done as she pleased. So she married Noah Armand.”
“Was she happy with him?”
The anger was still there. “I suppose so—for a while.”
“How did the marriage end? What happened to him?”
Caleb was silent for so long that I thought he might choose not to answer. Gail was waiting too, almost avidly.
“We don’t really know what became of him,” he said at last. “He simply—left. Suddenly. Just the way he came, and we never heard of him again.”
He wasn’t telling me all of it, I knew, and I knew as well that it would be useless to probe further just now.
“It was probably a good thing that he left,” Gail said. “I understand that your father never liked him, Laurie.”
“How can you possibly know that?” Caleb asked sharply.
Gail’s look was innocently blank. “It must have been Mrs. Morgan in one of her talkative moods. I heard it somewhere.”
“Was my father here very much after my grandmother remarried? He died when I was only two, and—”
Caleb started to speak, and then was silent.
“He died in this house, Laurie,” Gail said softly. “Don’t you even remember that?”
“How could I when I was so small?”
Caleb found his voice. “Never mind all that! Gail, don’t you think you’d better go upstairs to Mrs. Morgan now?”
“Yes, I plan to look in on her again. But when I told her we might go riding, she said to just go and leave her alone. You do want to ride up the valley this morning, don’t you, Laurie?”
“I’d like to very much, but I want to wait until Hillary comes. I want him to meet my grandmother.”
“You’d better make that later. She’s not feeling well, and she doesn’t want to see anyone. She said so. I’ll run up and look in on her, and I’ll ask when she wants to see you.”
“I’ll go with you,” Caleb said. “Will you excuse us, Laurie?”
There was a determination in his manner that stopped any objection Gail might have offered in her role as nurse, and they went upstairs together. They neither liked nor trusted each other, these two, and yet they sometimes seemed allied against me.
It was a relief to finish my breakfast alone and try to forget our thoroughly unpleasant conversation. When I left the table I went searching for a telephone. Perhaps I’d better phone Hillary and let him know we were planning an early ride. Now, after what had been said about Mark Ingram, I was all the more interested in seeing Domino. But I wanted Hillary with me on the ride up the valley. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with Gail Cullen. When we returned, there would be time enough for him to visit Persis Morgan.
Except for a clatter from the kitchen, the house seemed quiet as I stepped into the hall. Perhaps the telephone was out here. I wandered the length of the hall and found myself once more before the closed door to the rear parlor. Idly I tried the knob, and this time it turned under my hand.
For just a moment I nearly panicked. Then I thrust back the feeling of fright and opened the door.
An odor of mothballs and stale air greeted me, and the only light came from the doorway. When I reached along the wall and found a switch, the crystal chandelier came to life, shedding radiance over dark furniture, over heavy, closed draperies done in a red that was almost black. The carpet was worn in several places, and there were throw rugs here and there, covering spots that must have raveled through.
I had been here before.
The recollection of a room that had seemed enormous to me as a child swept back, but now my perspective had changed. It wasn’t all that large—not nearly so big as the front parlor.
From the walls dark pictures looked down, and I experienced a flash of recognition toward one in particular. It was a huge engraving—a scene from Hamlet—with a tragic young man in black doublet and hose, turning his back on a white-gowned, piteous Ophelia strewing flowers. I could almost recall the stirrings of imagination I had felt in studying the picture, the wondering I had done about these two tragic figures.
But on all else in the room I drew only a blank, a total lack of recall. Or was it that? Was there also an uneasiness in me, even though my conscious mind saw nothing it seemed to pick up and remember? Had a shade been drawn down sharply in my unconscious to keep me from seeing? To protect me from remembering? Was it all there underneath, waiting?
At least the room would remain safe enough as long as I could recall nothing more than a scene from Hamlet.
I moved about, touching a seashell that I seemed to have admired—not really a memory. A spurt of dust stirred when I lifted it, and I could see that dust lay everywhere, thick on the tables, graying the satin and velvet upholstery, gathering in carved crevices of the furniture.
How utterly weird and Victorian! How fantastic to step into a room that must have been closed off for years, with everything in it left untouched. How could any sane person allow such a thing? Yet I had seen Persis Morgan, and for all her years, her faculties were obviously sharp enough. Only something so terrible that even the sane couldn’t bear to face it must have happened in this room. Just as I had pulled down those shades in my mind, so Persis Morgan must have closed these doors and walked away, never to return.
Now I saw something else. Footsteps other than mine, larger than mine, had marked the dust as someone had recently moved about the room. Objects had been shifted, repatterning the dust. Here and there its gray coating had obviously been disturbed, so that a box or vase stood in a smudged patch, not returned to place exactly. Someone had moved about this room even as I was doing—searching for what?
Above me a shimmer of cobwebs draped the chandelier and grew like gray lace in every corner. Or like a fungus. The neglect was extreme and totally unhealthy. It was as if the house harbored in this room a cancerous growth that would eventually reach through every outer crack and lend its contagion of disease to the house itself. Perhaps such contagion had already reached Persis Morgan upstairs. All this must have been left untouched, sealed away, because of her abhorrence of what had happened here—because she could never again face this room, and had shut it off in an effort to wipe out its very existence.
Oddly enough, I began to feel a stirring of sympathy for her, as though terror shared made the beginning of a bond between us. Except that she knew the source of terror—and I didn’t.
I brushed at my arms as though cobwebs touched my skin. For a moment I thought of flinging aside dusty velvet draperies, throwing open the French windows to air and sunlight—but I didn’t dare. I remembered the funeral wreath hung on my door, and I was afraid.
Why shouldn’t my father rest in peace? What had those words meant?
Yet I couldn’t leave at once. A pedestal table, probably rosewood under the dust, held a large shallow box, mahogany-dark. Here again the dust had been disturbed, and there was a smudging of fingerprints over the surface. The box drew me and I touched its lid. It was as though I had touched hot metal, and almost of their own accord my fingers drew back.
This box I knew.
Once more the beating, tremulous feeling of dread began to spin inside me. It had started again—that movement toward danger that could be halted only if I almost stopped br
eathing, nearly stopped living—let everything go blankly away from me. Always at such times I had an instinctive dread that my heart might stop forever out of fear and this was the instant when everything would end. Yet there was no dazzle of light being struck from anything here except the dusty chandelier over my head. There was only this smudged box that almost seemed to pulse with a life of its own under my fingers.
The wave engulfed me, though I tried to fight it, tried to resist. I must get to Hillary. I must find him at once. In my present world only Hillary stood for health and confidence and an ability to face life as a whole person. Only he could help me. He must take me away from this place, help me to escape.
I ran into a hallway that seemed to stretch endlessly toward the front of the house and started down it. From the far end the sound of voices came to me—someone laughing. That was Hillary’s unmistakable laughter—a lovely, mesmerizing sound that could charm any audience. Eagerly I ran down the hall to the open door of the front parlor. And saw them there. Gail and Hillary standing before a window, talking together. They had clearly just met, yet Hillary’s charm was already working.
I stopped for a moment, my headlong rush halted, deflected. Slowly the spinning top in my head began to lose velocity.
Gail had tied a crimson scarf at the neck of her denim jacket, to match the ribbon that held back her hair, and she looked bright and interested. Hillary, who always wore the right, if slightly theatrical, clothes for any occasion, looked more like a dude in studded jacket and doeskin pants. All this registered superficially as the deep need in me fell away and left me standing alone. As always, he had met and captivated, and I knew I must allow him that. It was like breathing for Hillary.
Both of them heard me at the same moment and turned to look at me in surprise.
Gail said, “How dusty you are! But of course—you must have gone into the back parlor. I thought you might want to. I got the key and unlocked the room for you.”
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