Snowfire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  At least I was warm again by the time I heard cars on the drive, and heard Shan and Julian come into the house. I was still dressed, and I ran downstairs and followed them into the library.

  XIV

  Julian was pouring himself a drink when I walked into the room. Shan had flung herself into a chair and she was weeping openly, with tears running down her pale cheeks, her long fair hair over her shoulders, her Norwegian sweater inappropriately cheerful in its colorful design. They both saw me come in, but only Shan burst into words.

  “It’s your fault!” she wailed. “If you hadn’t come here so treacherously, none of this would have happened. Why didn’t you go away? We tried hard enough to get you to leave. Then there’d have been no accident. Emory would never have been out on the slopes tonight.”

  Julian’s voice cut coldly through her words. “There was no accident. Emory has skied that slope most of his life. He could do it in his sleep.”

  “Of course it was an accident!” Shan’s voice had gone shrill. “I saw it happen. And so did Clay. Emory was careless. He was angry about—about”—she flung out an accusing arm, pointing at me—“about her. He wasn’t careful as he should be.”

  Julian took a long draught from the glass in his hand. “Emory was too good a skier not to be careful. But we’ll say nothing about that for the moment. Let it seem an accident.”

  More secrets? I thought. Because Graystones must not be connected with another—murder? I glanced at Shan, weeping uncontrollably, and felt my flesh creep. What lay between her and Emory? What was the meaning of that scene I’d witnessed tonight at his cabin?

  “Before he went out this evening, Emory slashed the right rear tire on my car. I saw him do it.”

  Shan wept the harder, and Julian stared at me. But when he spoke he addressed himself to Shan.

  “Go to bed. You’re nearly out on your feet. And nothing more’s required of you until tomorrow. I want to talk to Linda for a moment.”

  She flung me a look of loathing and ran out of the room. Julian did not ask me to sit down.

  “Is Adria all right?” he asked.

  “Shan has turned her against me,” I said.

  “What else can you expect? The McCabes have never cared for deception. It’s something we never forgive.”

  I laughed my derision. “The McCabes are up to their necks in deception. Isn’t it time you had a look at that?”

  He stared into the depth of his glass. “I had a phone call tonight. There was no time to tell you earlier. Stuart is to be let out on bail tomorrow. Do you want to drive into town and bring him here?”

  For a moment I could hardly speak, my relief was so great. “Perhaps—perhaps he’ll never be tried now—now that Emory is dead.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that.” Julian’s voice was dry.

  “But at least you’ll let him come here? You’ll talk to him, try to find out the truth?”

  His look was skeptical. “I’ll hear him out, at least. He’s asked me to do that.”

  “Would you like me to leave?”

  He spoke curtly, remotely. “You’ll stay. For the moment. I’m not through with you yet. Go to bed now. And bring Stuart here in the morning.”

  I went out of the room feeling wounded and a little sick. Yet if I had not come to Graystones, if I hadn’t played out my masquerade, Julian would not be bringing Stuart home to his house. He would never have listened to him. As Clay had said, I’d been a catalyst. So I’d done some good in helping Stuart, after all. And nothing else mattered.

  I kept repeating that to myself as I climbed the drafty tower stairs and went down the hall to my room. Shan’s door was closed, Adria’s was still ajar. When I stopped to listen, I heard her soft breathing, and knew she was asleep. Fortunately she had not heard her father and her aunt come home.

  The night seemed endless. When I dropped off to sleep, it was I who dreamed. Ghostly faces moved through the mists of my restless sleep. Shan, Clay. The dead Emory. Adria. Stuart. But never Julian. It was as if I could not even summon him to me in my dreams.

  I was up early that Saturday morning and down for breakfast before anyone else. I didn’t know when the jail door would be opened, but I wanted to be there waiting—however long. When I went out to the car I found that the spare had been substituted for the slashed tire. Julian’s doing, undoubtedly, and I was grateful.

  The day was gray, but there was no snow, and the highways were clear, with no great amount of traffic.

  In town I found a parking place near the jail and went up the steps to ring the inconspicuous bell that would admit me. One of the guards let me in, and I found Stuart’s lawyer, Henry Bainbridge, already waiting. He rose from the hard bench in the hallway and shook hands with me—a small, balding man, with a fringe of sandy red hair. I was glad to see him alone, and I sat beside him on the bench.

  “You’ve heard about Emory Ault’s death?” I asked.

  “Yes. The news was on a local radio station.”

  “Will it mean that Stuart will be let off?”

  He blinked sandy lashes and looked away from me. “We don’t know yet. I’ve just had a copy of the letter that’s part of their evidence put into my hand. It’s—pretty bad, Miss Earle.”

  “You’d better tell me,” I said.

  He opened a briefcase and took out a sheet that had been Xeroxed and handed it to me. The letter was handwritten on Margot’s personal stationery. It was dated one week before her death. I read it to myself.

  Dear Emory:

  Thanks for staying around last night. Stuart has been threatening again to kill me. He is jealous of my every move, and he watches me constantly. I’ll have nothing to do with him, and he can’t bear it. If anything happens, Emory, the police should be told where to look.

  Yours,

  Margot

  I read the letter through and then handed it hastily back to Mr. Bainbridge, as though the feeling of it burned my fingers. I did not need to read it twice. The words would be with me forever.

  “Has Stuart seen this?” I asked.

  “Not yet. I want to show it to him this morning.”

  I was sorry Stuart had to see it. Somehow even in the copy it carried the taint of Margot’s twisted character. Whatever her purpose in writing that note, she had meant to make trouble for Stuart. Probably to revenge herself on him. Because he had rejected her.

  “There’s something wrong with it,” I said. “Something phony.”

  Mr. Bainbridge regarded me warily. “What do you mean?”

  I stiffened on the hard bench beside him. “You don’t believe Stuart actually pushed that chair, do you? Or prepared that break in the guardrail ahead of time so the chair would go through? He’s not capable of that.”

  “I’m here to defend your brother,” he said quietly. “But I’d like to know what you mean by phony.”

  “The whole thing is phony, of course! It’s made up out of whole cloth. If Margot had been afraid of anyone, she wouldn’t have gone to Emory, she’d have told Julian.”

  “I gather they hadn’t been too close lately. Perhaps—”

  “No. No matter how she felt, she’d have known he’d protect her. That’s why we have to find out why she wrote anything to Emory. And I think Shan McCabe knows.”

  “We’ve a lot to discuss. Can we go somewhere to talk before you take Stuart back to Graystones?”

  Before I had time to answer, a door at the far end of the hall opened, and beyond it I could see another door of chill gray steel with windows set into it—a door I had not seen until now, since Stuart had always been brought directly to the visitors’ room, where I had met him. Now the door to the cells opened and a guard brought him out to the office, where he went through the formality of checking out. In a few moments he had been released and joined us in the hallway.

  I slipped my hand through the crook of his arm and squeezed comfortingly. He tried to smile at me, but something had happened to his bright confidence. There was pain
in his eyes, and his healthy skier’s tan had paled.

  “Let’s go somewhere for coffee,” I said. “Mr. Bainbridge wants to talk to us, and he has something to show you.”

  We drove to a nearby diner, Stuart and I in my car, and Mr. Bainbridge in his. When I sat beside Stuart in a booth, with the lawyer across from us, and steaming hot cups of coffee on the table between, Stuart was shown the Xeroxed letter.

  He read it through twice and then looked from one to the other of us, plainly shocked. “But none of this is true! I never threatened her. I never tried to make love to her. It’s true that she made a play for me, but Julian was my friend, and I’d never have touched her—even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t. She was repulsive to me.”

  I knew every cadence of his voice, and I knew he was telling the truth.

  “Anyway, this is only circumstantial evidence,” I said. “They can’t convict a man with a warning letter. Any angry woman could write what she pleased. It isn’t real evidence.”

  “That’s true enough,” Mr. Bainbridge agreed, “and of course that’s what we’ll claim. But Emory Ault apparently had much more to say, and there are transcripts of all his evidence.”

  “With Emory dead—” I began, only to have Stuart echo my words.

  “Emory—dead?”

  Of course he couldn’t have known. “He was killed by a fall on Devil’s Drop last night.”

  Hope came into Stuart’s eyes. “I won’t pretend to be regretful. I never liked the old man, and he never liked me. As a skier, I was no substitute for Julian in his eyes and he resented the fact that I was good. Good enough so I didn’t need him very much. Anyway—doesn’t this change everything? If he was their main witness and he’s gone, won’t I be let off?”

  “We can’t tell yet.” Mr. Bainbridge sipped coffee gravely and seemed to consider. “As I say, they have transcripts of all his evidence. Whether this will be strong enough to use, I don’t know yet. There’s a possibility of the whole thing being called off. But we’d better not be too hopeful. We can’t count on it.”

  “Anyway, just calling it off isn’t good enough!” I cried. “Stuart has to be vindicated, exonerated. He can’t go through his life with a shadow like this hanging over him.”

  Neither man said anything, and I supposed they were both thinking that it was better to be let off than to risk life imprisonment. But that wasn’t for me.

  “There’s a murderer loose at Graystones,” I reminded them. “And you’re going to help me expose him, Stuart. I’d begun to think it was Emory. But now we have to look for the one who killed Emory on the mountain, as well as for the one who pushed Margot’s chair.”

  “Killed Emory!” Stuart cried. “What are you talking about?”

  “Julian said last night that it wasn’t an accident. Though that’s not the story he means to give out to the papers.”

  Both men gaped at me, and after a moment Stuart touched my hand gently. “Take it easy, Linda. This is hard to believe. But if it’s true, then you’d better get out of this area as fast as you can. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Enough has,” I said, and I filled them both in on some of the things that had been happening since I’d last seen Stuart.

  Mr. Bainbridge listened somewhat skeptically, and I suspected that he thought I was being hysterical. But he too urged that I leave Graystones as soon as possible.

  I shook my head stubbornly. “No. First we find out the truth. And perhaps Stuart can accomplish that better than I. My brother won’t be safe until the truth is known, whatever it is.”

  We parted shortly afterward, and Stuart took the wheel to drive us back to Graystones. He seemed to need the feeling of freedom that driving gave him after his confinement, but he always drove too fast, and I was glad when we reached the mountain and turned in at the Graystones’ drive.

  Clay was outdoors, still shoveling snow from around the lodge, and when he saw us, he hopped down from the snowplow and ran across to where Stuart had braked my car. He shook Stuart warmly by the hand and smiled at me.

  “I hope you’re out for good, Stuart. Linda’s been in a bad way worrying about you.”

  “I hope so too.” Stuart sounded more cheerful, now that the county seat was well behind him. “It’s good to see you, Clay.”

  He would have driven on, but I put my hand on his arm. “Wait a moment. Clay—you were on the slopes last night. What really happened? Shan said you were there and you both saw it.”

  He spoke to me across Stuart. “Yes. Emory was going down at a crazy speed. We were behind him, coming more slowly. About a third of the way down there’s a ridge on the right which isn’t dangerous, because skiers always turn below it. But he didn’t turn. He simply edged his skis a little uphill and went right out over the ridge. There’s a sheer drop beyond, straight down the mountain. When we crawled up to the ridge, we could see his body caught on a ledge far below. Ski Patrol had a bad time getting him out.”

  “But Julian said it wasn’t an accident—” I began. “He said—”

  “Of course it wasn’t an accident. Fast as he was going, I don’t think Emory ever lost control. He went up and over that ridge on purpose.”

  “You—you can’t mean—”

  “I’m afraid I do,” Clay said gently. “Emory Ault killed himself.”

  I heard the slow expelling of Stuart’s breath. “Then that’s it. I thought all along that with these lies he was manufacturing, Emory had something to hide. There’s our man. He must have gotten desperate, knowing I was coming out. But how we’re going to prove that he pushed that chair of Margot’s, I wouldn’t know.”

  “If there’s anything to that, you’d need a motive,” Clay said. “And I don’t see one.”

  “We’ll find it!” Stuart spoke with new confidence, as he started the car.

  For the rest of the way to the house, I sat beside him in silence, trying to assimilate this new information about Emory. If it was true, it opened dozens of new questions, and I wasn’t sure they would lead us to the answer I wanted.

  But now, as Graystones’ tower rose into view, Stuart came to life. Something of the old brightness returned and his eyes came alive with eagerness.

  “What a heap of stone!” he cried, and there was affection in his tone. “It’s a monstrous old place, but I think I’ve been happier there than anywhere else.” He threw me a quick apologetic look. “Don’t mind, Linda. It’s just that Julian and skiing and all that belong to Graystones, and there’ve been times lately when I wondered if I’d ever see it again.”

  When we’d parked the car and walked toward the front door, Julian was waiting for us. His greeting to Stuart was on the guarded side, but Stuart seemed not to notice. He had always trusted others readily, never believing that people might not like him, might hold him off, or distrust him. His exuberance over being “home,” as he called it, reached through Julian’s reserve, and in a few moments the two of them had settled before the library fire and were talking of old times. Tragedy was put aside for the moment—and so was I. With neither one paying any attention to me, I wandered out of the room and went upstairs to look for Adria.

  I met Shan on the way, and if she still felt loathing toward me, she concealed it. She said she and her brother were driving into town soon to make the final arrangements for Emory. So would I look out for Adria? The old man had no family, and of course Julian was taking care of everything.

  “Do you think he killed himself?” I asked directly.

  Her face began to work as though she might burst into tears, but she controlled herself and put on her vague, unfocused look that seemed to see through and beyond me.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said, and drifted past me down the stairs. At the bottom step she paused and looked back. “If your brother wants to stay, he can have his old room, next to yours. Julian has had his things put in there. Even his skis.” She did not sound either pleased or displeased—all that lack of focus was back, as if she
had drifted off into a world of her own that only she knew.

  I went up to the second floor and looked for Adria. She was in her room, reading again.

  “Where shall we have lessons today?” I asked. “Do you have a choice?”

  She shrugged indifferently. “Shan says Emory is dead. She says he fell on the mountain.”

  “That’s what happened. And do you know that my brother, Stuart, has come back to Graystones? I went to town and got him this morning.”

  “Why is my father letting him come back?”

  “Perhaps because your father knows Stuart hasn’t done anything he should be imprisoned for.”

  Adria thought about that for a moment. “Does he wear stripes, like on television?”

  “Of course not. He hasn’t even been tried, and perhaps he never will be. I don’t think anyone will prove that he has done anything wrong.”

  “Does that mean that even though he may have pushed my mother’s chair, he may still go free?”

  “You’ve got it entirely wrong, Adria.” I was beginning to lose my patience. “Perhaps you’d better ask your father to explain it to you. In the meantime, let’s get your books together and take them downstairs.”

  Her mood was contrary. “I’d rather stay here.”

  “All right. It doesn’t make any difference to me. Have you written the theme I asked you to write?”

  “About skiing? I’ve started it.”

  “Then suppose you get on with it now. But first, Adria—I’ve been reading a story by Clay Davidson, and it made me wonder about something. Can you tell me if there has been any special place where children in the McCabe family have liked to hide things? I mean some place which you might use even after you grew up. A place Shan might use?”

  She thought about that for a moment. “There’s the attic.”

  “That’s pretty big. Where in the attic?”

  “If I tell you, it won’t be a secret any more.”

  “Does it have to be a secret? What if there’s a treasure I’d like to hide? Couldn’t I use the same place?”

  I was winning her over, in spite of her determination to hold me at arm’s length. She smiled confidingly.