Snowfire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “I never thought he’d do this to me. I never thought he’d accept Emory’s lies.”

  “After all this long silence, you still believed that Julian would help you?” I scoffed a little to rouse him.

  There was a break in his voice when he spoke. “I thought he was trying to find a way out that wouldn’t let me be blamed.” He turned toward me and I saw the hurt in his eyes. “It’s not like Julian. It’s not in character for him. Linda—are you telling me everything? Is there something else involved? Some risk to someone Julian wants to protect?”

  I wanted to put my hands out to him. The screen barrier was cruel. I wanted to hold him as I’d done when he was a little boy, but if I was to help him now, I had to be blunt and truthful at last.

  “I haven’t told you nearly everything. Julian says you made a play for Margot.”

  The utter disbelief was back in his eyes to reassure me. “A woman in a wheelchair?”

  There could be no doubting him. That was what I had said in another connection about Clay.

  “She seemed to have lost none of her appeal for Julian.”

  “That’s true,” Stuart agreed. “He never really looked at her as she was. Everyone else knew what she’d become. Other people have been injured as badly as she was, and they still had the courage to make lives for themselves. But not Margot. She only wanted to destroy. But only Julian and Adria could be fooled by her. Linda, she tried to get at him through me—but I wasn’t having any. Julian was my friend, my patron, everything. I tried not to let him see the disgust I felt toward her. But that’s all I felt.”

  “Did you feel disgust strongly enough to push that chair?” I asked quietly. There were things he had not told me, as I was beginning to realize, and I had to shock him into telling me more. “Did you fix that guardrail so it would break and throw her into the ravine?”

  He looked at me and I saw honest shock in his eyes. “Guardrail—what are you talking about?”

  “It was deliberately damaged, weakened ahead of time.”

  “But you know I’d never do a thing like that, Linda.”

  I knew and I couldn’t bear the look in his eyes. I fiddled with my purse on the counter before me.

  “No one can turn me against you,” I promised him, “but I can’t fight with my hands tied behind my back. I have to know more than I do. At Graystones they tell me bits and pieces that I can’t put together. Emory knows who I am, and so does Clay. So far neither of them has spoken out to Julian—and I don’t know why. Eventually, I need to go to your lawyer with something definite. I’ve stayed away from him since coming here because I have nothing that will help.”

  He watched me and I knew that for the first time he was frightened. For the first time he could see the walls closing in forever, and the armor of his own innocence no longer protecting him. I had the feeling that he guessed why Emory and Clay were saying nothing, but that he didn’t mean to tell me. A light was breaking through the fog for me.

  “Stuart, who are you trying to protect?”

  He looked away across the small bare room and I knew that if I had touched a sensitive nerve, he did not mean to answer me. I was aware of nearby voices, was for a moment aware of the anguish of others, and then my own swept back. I went on, trying to numb my own feelings because I knew I must hurt him more.

  “Emory says that when he came around the house and met you running from it, when he caught you and held on, you cried out that you didn’t mean to do it. He said those were your words. He told me so himself.”

  Stuart shook his head in disbelief, but he had been touched at last by hopelessness. “I never said anything of the kind. I said, ‘What’s the matter—what do you think I’ve done?’ He couldn’t have misunderstood me. For some reason he wanted a scapegoat. I never liked him, even when he was teaching me on the slopes. And he didn’t like me. In the beginning it was only his word against mine, and it didn’t get him anywhere. Linda, what about Emory? What is he hiding?”

  “If he didn’t like Margot, maybe he—” I began.

  “It could be. Linda, you’ve got to find out!”

  “I’m trying,” I told him. “But now Emory has found something more to tell the police.”

  “More lies,” Stuart said. Suddenly he pressed both hands against the mesh. “Linda, you’ve got to get me out of this. I’ve got to talk to Julian, convince him. When will I be out on bail? You said that sometimes Julian believes I pushed that chair—what does he think the rest of the time?”

  “That Adria pushed it,” I said limply.

  His hands dropped from the mesh, and he stared at me in astonishment. “Adria! But that’s impossible. She was crazy about her mother. Margot could do no wrong as far as Adria was concerned, even though Margot used her at every turn.”

  “It appears they had some sort of quarrel. No one knows what about. There’s a possibility that Adria lost her temper momentarily and behaved wildly, as a child does. Perhaps wanting to hurt, but not being truly aware of the consequences.”

  Stuart shook his head dazedly. “Not that little girl. Never.”

  “She seems to like you,” I told him. “And so does Shan, for that matter. At least Shan has come to your defense with Julian.”

  This seemed to surprise him even more. “I never paid much attention to Shan. She’s pretty offbeat. I don’t go much for flower children.”

  “I expect snow bunnies are more your type,” I said dryly.

  He flashed me his old smile, so filled with teasing affection that it was as if we were back on a safe, normal plane and I felt a catch in my throat. “They must be missing me, Linda—those bunnies. When am I to get back to them?”

  “Perhaps when you tell me who you think really pushed that chair.”

  The brief moment of being himself in the old way faded. He sat silent for a little while, and when he spoke his voice was low, toneless.

  “Perhaps the person who supposedly found her dead. I doubt that anyone inside that house touched the chair. If Adria gave it a push and it rolled a little way, perhaps someone else saw and helped it along. Someone outside who could easily run up the ramp. Perhaps that’s why Margot screamed so wildly—because she saw what was coming.” He shook his head as though to shake away the disturbing memory of that scream. “I can still hear her. I heard her as I was going out the front door. I never liked her, but I can remember that scream.”

  “Are you talking about Emory?” I asked in surprise. “It was Emory who found her. But then why wouldn’t you say so before this? There’s be no reason why you’d protect Emory.”

  “No,” he said, his tone still lifeless—like the look in his eyes. A look that twisted at my heart. “No, there’d be no reason why I would protect Emory.”

  He seemed to have gone off into some country where I couldn’t follow. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “If you think it was Emory—” I began, but he cut in on me quickly.

  “What possible proof have I that Emory ever touched that chair? There’s nothing to hold back from you—there’s nothing I know. I was on the other side of the house when it happened. If I tried to speculate, they’d laugh at me. They’d think I wanted to get back at Emory. Wouldn’t they? Even though he could have pushed the chair, then come to cut me off.”

  I could only nod, feeling as helpless as he. There was no way in which to turn, and my visiting time was nearly up. But I had to ask him about one more thing. I hadn’t taken off my coat, and I reached inside to pull out the Ullr medallion on its silver chain. I held it up for Stuart to see.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked him.

  A look came into his eyes that I remembered from his little boy years. He had always looked like that when he was about to lie to me.

  “Wait!” I said. “Whatever you’re going to tell me—don’t. Just tell me the truth, Stuart.”

  The cocky grin came slowly back, appealing and confident. “I never could fool you, could I? How did you know?”
/>   “I wore it when I went skiing with Julian and Adria. Julian saw it. I think he recognized it, but wasn’t sure.”

  “Did he look at the back of the medallion?”

  I turned it over so that the small bearded figure of Ullr was hidden, and only the sign that warned skiers of a difficult slope was visible. “Yes. For some reason it seemed to reassure him.”

  “Good,” Stuart said. “Though I never thought when I gave it to you that you’d ever be around any of the McCabes.”

  “Did Margot give it to you?”

  He nodded, still trying to be cocky. “Julian gave it to her. But it dated back to her skiing days, and she didn’t want to keep it. There was an inscription on the back with Margot’s name and Julian’s. She had me take it to a jeweler in Philly and have that warning diamond etched over the names and filled in, so they couldn’t be seen. When I brought it back to her she gave it to me. For some reason she was trying hard to make a hit with me.”

  I remembered Shan’s words—that Margot had made a play for Stuart.

  “So then you gave it to me?” I said bitterly.

  “I wore it a couple of times in a race for luck. But it gave me the creeps. I thought it would become you, and you’d never know its history, so it wouldn’t bother you. It’s a beautiful thing.”

  There was no reason to feel hurt. I couldn’t doubt the pleasure he’d taken in a gift for me that he couldn’t have afforded if he’d had it made himself. And if I never knew it had belonged to Margot first, I’d never have been hurt. His logic was simple.

  “Linda,” he said, coaxing me, “don’t look like that. You know I’d give you beautiful gifts if I could. And I will someday.” His face sobered. “If I ever get out of this.”

  There was no use in chiding him. I stood up, wishing I could kiss him good-by, but barred from doing so. I knew how trapped he felt, and how the desperation which had held off for so long in the face of his natural optimism had now swooped down to possess him.

  “Linda,” he said, “go after Emory. He’s the key—the answer. Get it out of him.”

  I couldn’t have asked for a more disturbing assignment, but I told him I’d do what I could. Then I left the building and walked to where my car was parked. The snow was coming down more heavily now.

  Once I was behind the wheel, I took off the silver chain and slipped it into my purse. I knew I would never wear it again. As I drove back toward Graystones, I felt oddly sad. Not sad and frightened for all the real reasons that beset me. But wistfully sad because Julian’s wife had given his gift away to another man, and because my brother had in turn given it to me.

  As I drove along the interstate highway with the windshield wipers pushing at the snow, I remembered a time when Stuart was seven and he had brought me a turtle which another child had given him. He’d brought it to me because he loved me and wanted me to have something he treasured. And of course we had shared the turtle. This was hardly the same—yet there was something of that loved little boy in the gesture. As I drove along I forgave him. But I did not forgive Margot McCabe. Something of my wistful sorrow was for Julian too.

  IX

  That afternoon Adria helped me to settle into my room at Graystones. It was small, but pleasant, and located at the farthest end of the house from the big master bedroom. There was an empty room between mine and Shan’s, and a bathroom at the end of the hall. One window looked out over slanting kitchen roofs to the side garden, the other faced upon those stark beeches across the ravine with its stream. The room was country-like in its atmosphere, furnished in maple and chintz. I had liked my room at the lodge better, in spite of its being a public establishment. Perhaps houses had auras, as well as people, and there was an aura to Graystones I did not like. My first sensitive reaction to the place had been borne out.

  At least Adria seemed to have recovered from the effects of Shan’s fall, and she did not mention the cat on the stairs again. She welcomed me to the house with an eagerness over this break in the routine, and insisted on showing me my room, and staying with me while I unpacked. I was happy over the change in her and somewhat encouraged. Perhaps I would be good for her, after all.

  Shan too had recovered, and while she didn’t exactly welcome me to Graystones, she flitted about in her misty way, not really focusing on what went on around her, listening—as it often seemed—to her own voices. Now and then she looked through the open door of my room, where Adria was watching me unpack, and then drifted off again.

  Adria was curious, questioning. “Why are you coming to stay here at the house, instead of at the lodge, Linda? None of the hostesses from the lodge have ever moved into our house before.”

  I had already been thinking of that question, and I’d agreed to Julian’s suggestion to use the excuse of tutoring. I explained this to her now, and asked her about her schoolbooks. She didn’t question my role as a teacher, and ran off to fetch them for me.

  We spent some time looking over her books, and she seemed to have no objection to giving two or three hours a day over to schoolwork, apparently liking my interest and attention. I asked if she had any young friends in the neighborhood, and she shook her head.

  “There’s nobody around here. And I don’t want to see the kids from school. I told my father I wouldn’t go back there.”

  “But why not? Haven’t you any special friends? Someone you’d like to invite in to play with you?”

  Again her dark head moved negatively. “Not any more. I haven’t any friends. Except you. Are you my friend?”

  “I hope so,” I said. “But you need playmates of your own age to run about with outdoors. I’m sure we can arrange something. I can drive over to pick up any friends you’d like to see and bring them here. Perhaps you’d like to have a party some weekend when the other children are out of school?”

  I could sense her sudden tensing, her rejection of such a plan. “No—no, I don’t want to see any of them! They’re all—horrible!”

  I couldn’t let this pass. “Horrible in what way?”

  She ran to look out my window at the dead beeches, not answering.

  “Everyone needs friends,” I said gently.

  “I don’t. They—they want to talk about Margot. They—ask me questions.”

  I tried to reassure her. “All that has probably died down by now. They’ll tire of the questions quickly.”

  “They whisper behind my back. And I can feel them looking at me.”

  She was too young to be so tested and tormented. Perhaps it would be better for her to stay out of school until all this was resolved. All the more reason why it must be resolved before Stuart ever came to trial.

  She came back to peer into my face intently, disconcertingly, and I asked what was the matter.

  “Your eyes are such a deep brown, Linda. Not like ours. I mean Julian and me. Does it feel different to have brown eyes?”

  I laughed in relief. “I don’t think so. Though I don’t know how blue eyes feel.”

  She turned to the window, dismissing the subject of eyes, and her thought moved to a distant time. “I wish I could have seen those trees out there when they were on fire. Wouldn’t it have been exciting, Linda? It was at night, you know. My grandfather thought somebody set the fire on purpose. Maybe somebody who meant to burn up the house. But it only caught the trees. My father was a little boy when it happened, and he says the flames shot so high they hid the mountain.”

  “A fire isn’t pleasant or exciting, Adria. I—once lived in a house that burned down.”

  She looked at me round-eyed. “Tell me about it.”

  “Some other time, perhaps.”

  Her attention returned to the beeches. “My father said the flames roared like the wind in a blizzard.” Her thoughts veered again. “Do you think there’s a blizzard coming now, Linda?”

  I let the matter of friends and fire go for a moment, and went to stand beside her at the window. The dead gray of the beeches was softened by the curtain of falling snow. Flower bed
s were turning slowly into irregular mounds of white, and evergreen branches had frosted to their tips with a growing burden of snow that made them droop toward the ground. Black boulders in the stream were crested with white, and the path of the water had narrowed as ice spread out from the banks. Only the bare beeches held no coating as the wind blew the snow from their bony arms. Behind them the mountain was blotted out by lowering snow clouds.

  “I haven’t heard a weather report,” I said. “But this looks as though it might last. I think the wind’s rising.” Through the glass I could hear the whine of it, and now and then gusts flung snow like sand against the panes.

  Adria looked up at me, her eyes suddenly dancing. “Shan hates storms, but I love them. She hates the wind, but I think it’s exciting when it howls around the tower. When I go up to the tower room in a storm, it feels as though I were right outside in the middle of it. Do you know what my mother used to say?”

  I shook my head uneasily.

  “She used to say I was a storm baby. I was born during a terrible snowstorm. My father barely got her to the hospital in time. So Margot said it was natural for me to feel the way I do about storms—I mean sort of excited and—and happy. Sometimes I feel as though I just have to go outside where I can be a part of what’s happening. But my father says that’s dangerous.”

  “It very well could be,” I agreed. “But would you like to go outside for a little while now—before it gets too bad?”

  She was obviously delighted. “Could we really? Of course we’d stay just around here.”

  “Put your things on,” I said, getting into her spirit of adventure. “Then we’ll go tell your father and Shan, so they’ll know where we are.”

  “Not Shan. Please! She’s awfully afraid of storms. She pulls the draperies in her room and hides herself in bed. Of course it’s not bad enough for that now, but she’d say no. Let’s just ask Dad. You can persuade him.”

  We got into ski clothes and boots and tramped downstairs. Julian was at his desk in the library, busy with his work. While the actual management of the tree farm was in other hands, he kept a rein on directing the operation.