The Turquoise Mask

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  It was not the dwarf who interested me, however, but her dog. The animal lay at her feet—silver gray, with its forepaws outstretched, its hound’s ears cocked and pointed.

  “Look at the dog!” I cried to Gavin. “Velázquez never painted a dog so clumsily.”

  Now that I was paying careful attention and not taking something for granted, other details sprang to view. The tiny hand of the dwarf, curled against her breast, the face itself, all were subtly wrong. The very texture of the master—never to be matched—was missing.

  “This was never painted by Velázquez,” Gavin agreed.

  “We’ve got to tell Juan!” I reached for the switch and turned off the light. When we’d locked the door, we hurried toward the house together.

  We found my grandfather in his study and he fixed me with a cold look as we burst in. “Was it you who took my keys, Amanda?”

  I placed them on the desk before him, but when Gavin would have spoken, I put a hand on his arm.

  “When you used to paint,” I said to Juan, “did you ever learn by copying old masters?”

  “Yes, of course. I visited museums in various countries, and I made many copies. It’s a good way to learn. When the Velázquez came into my hands, I made a copy of that. Probably it is still around somewhere, if you’d like to see it. Though I did the dog badly—I was never good at painting animals.”

  Gavin and I looked at each other. Clarita had heard us talking and she came upstairs to the study.

  “The Velázquez is missing from the collection,” Gavin said. “The picture that’s been hung in its place must be the one you painted long ago.”

  The old man did not move or speak. He sat frozen at his desk, his eyes fixed upon Gavin. Clarita made a soft, moaning sound and sank into a chair, though it seemed to me that she was watching her father warily.

  “Surely this is the time to bring in the police,” I said to Gavin.

  He shook his head. “There’d be a tremendous uproar and publicity. The painting might be taken away, if it was recovered.”

  “Exactly,” Juan said coldly. “Which I will not have. As long as I live it is mine. What happens later does not matter.”

  “Then how can you recover it?” I asked.

  “I will recover it. Where is Eleanor?”

  “We left her in Madrid,” Gavin said. “I got there in time to prevent her from tormenting Amanda.”

  Juan looked at me. “This is why I sent Gavin after you. I didn’t want her to do some reckless thing that might injure her.”

  “She might have injured me,” I said dryly.

  “Why did you go with her, then?”

  Clarita began to utter little sounds of distress, as though she wanted to prevent me from speaking, but I answered him without heeding her.

  “Eleanor wanted to show me something out there. Do you know that the house where my mother and Kirk used to meet is still there, and that a room in it is furnished?”

  “What are you talking about?” Juan’s fierce, dark gaze pinned me, demanded the truth from me, but before I could go on, Clarita broke in.

  “Please, please—it is nothing. I can explain everything.”

  Juan turned that dark look upon his eldest daughter. “You have had to do too much explaining today. Do you remember what I told Katy? Do you remember that my order was to have that house torn down, and everything in it destroyed?”

  For just an instant before Clarita bowed her head, I saw the look of malice she turned upon him, and I knew that if Juan had an enemy to fear, it was Clarita. But she answered meekly enough.

  “Yes, I remember. But my mother would not do it. Everything else of Doro’s had been destroyed or disposed of. Only this was left, and my mother wanted to keep it. Though Doro never went there after Kirk left Santa Fe.”

  “Then it is to be destroyed now,” Juan said. “I will not have that place left standing.”

  I broke in. “But, Aunt Clarita, she must have gone there at some time after he left. Because of this.”

  I opened my handbag and took out the bonnet of yellowed lace and dropped it on the table before Juan. As he stared at it blankly, Clarita gasped, and a strange thing happened. She left her chair, and it was as if she left her body, her former spirit. As I watched in astonishment and some dismay, she became the woman I had seen briefly at the dinner table—the woman who had worn claret velvet and comported herself with the arrogant confidence of a Cordova. Even in her habitual black, she seemed now to grow in stature—and in subtle menace.

  “No,” she said. “Doro never returned to Madrid.” She reached past me and picked up the bonnet, stood looking at it in her hands as though it fascinated her. Then she held it out to Juan. “Do you remember this, my father?”

  He stared at the small scrap of lace and satin with an air of dread, and he did not answer her. After a moment she went proudly out of the room, carrying the bonnet with her.

  Juan made no effort to stop her, and as she had grown, inexplicably, he seemed to shrink in his chair. The lines in his face grew more deeply etched. Paying no attention to either Gavin or me, he stood up and crossed the room to his long couch. I expected him to lie down upon it, but he did not. Feeling beneath the pillow, he reassured himself that something was there, and returned to his desk. I knew he had searched for the dagger.

  “My enemies gather,” he said dully. “Go now and leave me. I must think. When Eleanor returns, send her to me.”

  Though Gavin might have stayed to argue, he accepted the edict when I did, and we went down to the living room together.

  “What is happening?” I cried, and Gavin shook his head unhappily.

  “I don’t know, Amanda. Except perhaps about the painting.”

  “You know what’s happened to that?” I asked in surprise.

  “I can guess. But I’m not going to make any wild accusations. We’ll wait until Eleanor comes back from Madrid.”

  However, she did not return to the house for the rest of the day. Gavin went to the store, and my grandfather remained alone. As did Clarita in her room, without going near him. I wondered what had transpired when he had accused her of lying about being at that window.

  By midafternoon, I decided that I must talk to someone, and the logical person was once more Sylvia Stewart. Without telling anyone where I was going, I ran down through the patio and let myself into the next-door yard. Across the Stewart portal the living-room door stood open. I called out Sylvia’s name, but had no answer. Yet I could hear a light, clicking sound coming from Paul’s workroom.

  No matter what I was interrupting, I had to find Sylvia, and I stepped to the door and looked in. Paul was nowhere in sight, but his wife sat at the desk. The sound I’d heard was the idle tapping of a pencil as she drummed it on the desk, but she didn’t know I was there, so absorbed was she in the yellow second sheets before her. Her brown head was bowed over the manuscript, her lips slightly parted as she read with excitement.

  It was necessary to interrupt, and I spoke softly so as not to startle her. “Sylvia?”

  Nevertheless, the startling was extreme. She dropped her pencil and jerked around to face me, a bright flush rising in her cheeks as she stared at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I did call out when I came in the door from the portal, but you didn’t hear me.”

  Her dazed look told me she was still far away, though the flush in her cheeks indicated that guilt of some sort was surfacing.

  “I thought you were Paul!” she cried. “He’d have a fit if he knew I was reading his manuscript. But he got a phone call a little while ago and went out, so I took this chance.”

  “Is that his book about Southwest murders?” I asked.

  “Yes. And the chapter about the Cordovas is going to be all right.” For some reason she seemed tremendously relieved. “I was afraid he would stick too closely to the facts, but he’s fictionizing again. It will be all right.”

  When she turned back to the pages, I stepped close to her chair t
o look over her shoulder, but at once she flipped the sheets face down.

  “No, Amanda. I can’t let you read this unless Paul says so. It’s one thing to pry when I’m his wife, but something else when it comes to letting other people see.”

  She pushed away from the desk and turned off the typewriter lamp. “Let’s go where we can be comfortable. What’s been happening? You look thoroughly keyed up.”

  I couldn’t let the matter of Paul’s book go so easily. “If he fictionizes—when he’s dealing with facts—won’t he chance trouble from Juan Cordova?”

  “Perhaps not. He’s glamorizing Doro and making out Kirk a villain. I don’t think Juan will object to that.”

  While I trailed her back to the other room, she waved me into a chair and flung herself down on a couch with bright canary pillows tossed among the brown.

  “Can I get you something to drink, Amanda?”

  “Thanks, no. Why are you so relieved about Paul’s book? What did you think he’d write?”

  With an elaborate effort, she busied herself finding a pack of cigarettes, offering it to me, tapping one out for herself when I refused—all the while plainly marshaling what she would say to me.

  “After all, that whole affair is pretty thin ice, isn’t it?” she said. “If Paul were clumsy, he might crash us all through into freezing water.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing much. If it’s what you’re curious about, he isn’t making anything of that brainstorm you had about a third person appearing on the hillside. Though he is doing quite a thing about the frightened child and her loss of memory.”

  “I don’t like that,” I told her. “And perhaps that third person will come clear.”

  With a shrug, Sylvia blew smoke into the air. “I’m afraid he’s given up asking you. What’s wrong, Amanda? Has something happened to bring you here?”

  “I just wanted to talk. Sylvia, what do you know about a house the Cordovas own out in Madrid?”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at me. “Don’t tell me that place is back in the picture?”

  “Eleanor took me there today. She said my mother and your stepbrother used to meet there.”

  “That’s true enough. Fixing up the house and trying to keep it secret was one of Doro’s wilder fantasies. And Kirk had as wild a streak as she had, so he went right along with it. I warned him that there’d be an explosion if Juan Cordova ever found out. And of course there was. Doro was his darling and he loved Kirk like a son. But they were both too young, and he was a proper Spanish father. So he packed Kirk off to South America and put Doro into Katy’s care as though she were a nun. Which she certainly wasn’t.”

  “And then he ordered the house destroyed?”

  “Yes, he wanted all evidence of their affair wiped out.”

  Her nervous smoking made me even more edgy and I wished she would put down her cigarette. Ever since I’d first met Sylvia, I’d known that some deep worry was eating away inside her, and I still wanted to know what it was.

  “What do you believe?” I asked her. “Do you think it could have been Juan on that hillside, angry with Kirk because he’d come back to bother Doroteo?”

  “Maybe it was!” Sylvia pounced on my words so eagerly that I knew she didn’t believe in them. Why should she want me to go down a side road, unless there was something she wanted to hide?

  “You don’t believe that,” I contradicted. “Because Juan wouldn’t have minded their marrying if Doro hadn’t been so young. He was fond of Kirk, but wanted to give them both time to grow up and know their own minds. Katy urged that too. And they were right. Because she forgot about your stepbrother and fell in love with my father. But there’s more I wanted to talk about.”

  I hesitated, wondering whether to tell her about the whole dreadful episode with Eleanor. When I’d decided not to, I went on.

  “While I was poking around out in that house, I found an old baby bonnet my mother must have made for me. But when I brought it home and asked Clarita about it, she behaved strangely. She said Doro had never gone back to that place after Kirk left. So who took a bonnet of mine out there and left it?”

  Sylvia ground out her cigarette with another of her nervous gestures. “Clarita was lying. Doro did go back. She went back for one last time. Clarita was with her. But I won’t talk about that, so you needn’t ask me. Let it alone, Amanda.”

  How often she had said that to me—“Let it alone.” But I would never let it alone now, though I didn’t press her at the moment. There was another question I wanted to ask.

  “Sylvia, who was it that found Kirk’s body, and then my mother’s? Why has no one ever told me that?”

  She stared at me without answering, and I went on.

  “It was Paul, wasn’t it? He wasn’t with you on the road, as he let me think earlier. After he saw Clarita away from the house, he came along that path by himself—and found them both. It was he who raised the alarm, wasn’t it?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “You’re stalling,” I said. “I remember his being there.”

  The words seemed to echo through the room and dash themselves against the white painted walls, astonishing me as well as Sylvia.

  “You—remember?” Sylvia repeated softly.

  In strange confusion I tried to examine the thing that had just come to me. I seemed to see a man rushing about, calling people, trying to be helpful. He was a younger version of Paul.

  “I think I remember. Something is coming back to me.”

  “The third one in the struggle?” The words were almost a whisper.

  “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly I didn’t like the way she was looking at me—no longer in her half-jesting, easy manner, but with something inimical in her eyes. I stood up and moved toward the door.

  “Thanks for letting me talk, Sylvia. I’ll run along now.”

  She was not like Eleanor. In spite of the way she looked, she might have let me go without a word to stop me, but I stopped myself, pausing in the doorway.

  “Did you know,” I said, “that Juan’s Velázquez has been stolen? The painting of Doña Inés is gone from the collection. An old student painting of Juan’s has been put in its place.”

  The pallor that had replaced her earlier flush was alarming. She looked so sick and faint that I stepped back into the room.

  “Are you all right? Can I get you a drink of something?”

  But as I had always suspected, Sylvia was a woman of strength when she had to be strong. She sat erectly on the couch and stared at me without blinking.

  “I’m perfectly all right,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  I put her to no further strain, but went out the door onto the portal. When I turned and looked back, she was sitting exactly as I had left her, staring after me, and I knew she would do so until I was out of sight.

  The gate in the wall stood ajar, and I went through it and back to the house. I’d been given no answers to anything except the one fact that Paul Stewart had found Kirk’s body the day he had been shot.

  Eleanor had still not returned, and she did not appear during dinner or later in the evening. With Paul gone too, I wondered if they had met somewhere and were plotting together. Perhaps they were already busy trying to sell the Velázquez on some black market. If Eleanor had given him the keys, Paul could have spirited it out of its frame and made the substitution the day we were all out at the rancho. It seemed clear now that this must have been why Eleanor had wanted us away from the house, and why Paul had stayed home. But how was anything to be proved? Eleanor wanted money in her hands, and this could be a way to get it, as well as a daring escapade of the sort that would be to her liking. In a way, she was only taking what belonged to her, since she would inherit the painting anyway. But the injury to Juan Cordova was great—perhaps because he too suspected what had happened, as undoubtedly Gavin had. And Clarita? She knew Eleanor best of all, and I remembered her little performance of
shock, during which she had watched her father warily while she was moaning in distress.

  In any case, since that moment when she had picked up the bonnet she had become the woman who had worn claret red the night of Juan’s party. She had finally come out of her room, and she moved about the house with her head high—clearly in command. I heard her telling Juan that he’d had a difficult day and he had better go to bed early. A role of authority she would never have dared assume toward him earlier. I saw him again that evening, though only to tell him good night, and he seemed a weary and beaten man. For the first time I had a feeling of sympathy for him, but I would not insult him by showing it. As Clarita’s strength increased, his own faded.

  Gavin did not appear at all, and I had no idea where he was, or exactly how things stood between us. The climate of the house was uneasy, and all my early dread of it seemed to have returned, so that I moved quickly and kept an eye upon the shadows. Something must be done, and I must do it. But what? And what, if anything, did the sudden flash of memory I had had about Paul mean?

  I took some books up to bed and read for a while before I fell asleep around eleven o’clock. I’d placed a chair under the knob of my door, since I had no lock and key, and I knew that anyone who tried to enter would have to waken the house as well as me. So I could fall asleep without fearing an intruder.

  It was after one in the morning when a sound woke me. It had been distant—not at the door of my room. I left my bed and ran to remove the chair from beneath the doorknob. Was Juan abroad again? There was a sound from the living room, as though someone hurried through it. Going toward Juan’s room?

  I put on a robe and slippers and went softly down the stairs. Everything was quiet, and there was no sound from Juan’s room. Perhaps I had been wrong, but it might be better to rouse Clarita or Gavin, so we could investigate together.

  When the scream came from the direction of the balcony outside my grandfather’s room, it shattered all silence. That was Eleanor’s voice. After the first cry of fright, I could hear her screaming, “No, no!” hysterically.