Poinciana

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  The song on the tape came to an end, and the recorder turned itself off. The big room, with its Coromandel screen darkened now in the gloom, seemed more forbidding than ever. Once this library had been the courtroom to which Ross brought those who displeased him, and from which he issued his judgments and punishments. I had stood for arraignment here. Now it was only an empty shell of a room, yet I had chosen it to flee to in order to judge myself.

  Behind me, someone opened the door and tiptoed in. “Mrs. Logan? Are you here?” The voice was Myra Ritter’s.

  “I’m here,” I said, and she came to stand before me.

  For once she was formally dressed in a dark frock, suitable for the occasion, though I’d seen plenty of floral prints at both church and cemetery. Myra had heard the radio early the morning of Ross’s death, and she had wasted no time in coming to Poinciana and making herself useful. If I sometimes had the faint impression that she was part of the audience at a dramatic and entertaining play for which she had a box seat, I could forgive her that. So what if she was interested and involved with all that happened at Poinciana, when she had no great life of her own? This was a vicarious thrill for her, and I suspected that her one regret was that she hadn’t been present when it had happened.

  She had run errands, given advice, whether asked for or not, answered hundreds of telephone calls with skill and diplomacy, and served us all tea when our spirits faltered. Even Mrs. Broderick, shocked almost to the point of tears—but not quite—had found her useful.

  Now Myra dropped into a chair opposite mine and kicked off her high-heeled shoes, sighing with relief. “Back to flats tomorrow,” she said. “How are you feeling? Is there anything I can get you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Thank you for all you’ve done, Myra. I just wanted to escape from everyone for a little while. Are the guests thinning out by this time?”

  “Mostly. They’ve been asking for you to pay their courtesies before leaving, but you’re supposed to collapse in private grief now, so that lets you off the hook. Though I’m not sure how many in this house have done any grieving. I mean besides you and Mrs. Karl, of course.”

  She lay back in her chair and wiggled her toes, sighing again with pleasure.

  There was no need to answer her, and pretty soon she would go away. Or else she would come around to the real purpose behind this visit.

  “I found out something pretty shocking today,” she said at last.

  I thought I was past all surprises, and I said nothing. Gossip was not something I wanted to encourage in Jarrett’s secretary. Though it was hard to discourage in the face of her open enjoyment in other people’s affairs.

  “Did you know that Brett Inness isn’t Mrs. Karl’s real mother?” she asked.

  That brought me up in my chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mrs. Karl was having a row with her mother this afternoon after the funeral. Mr. Karl and I were there and we stepped out of the room because it was getting embarrassing. He was upset, and that’s when he told me.”

  “He told you what?”

  She shrugged. “He can get pretty emotional and Russian at times, and he blurted out that Mrs. Karl isn’t Miss Inness’s natural daughter. I wasn’t to tell anyone—and of course I won’t. The newspapers would love this.”

  “So why are you telling me?”

  Again the shrug. My question didn’t seem to disturb her. “You’re family. Maybe I’d like to keep my job here. Maybe I can be useful at times, and it’s not Mrs. Karl now who can get me fired.”

  At least she was direct and down-to-earth. I suspected that she was quite ready to tell me more of whatever she had picked up, but I didn’t want it to come from her. What she had revealed might furnish a strong clue to Gretchen’s behavior, and I would need to think about it.

  “Mr. Karl was right,” I said. “There are things that shouldn’t be talked about. It’s more important now than ever, since almost anything can be blown out of proportion.”

  Reluctantly, she wiggled her toes for a last time and put on her pumps. “You can count on me. If the time comes when you need a social secretary, you might consider me,” she said, and slipped out of the room as quietly as she had entered.

  After a moment I roused myself to follow. I didn’t know what to do with the information that had been given me, except to bleed a little for Gretchen. An adoptive mother could be as loved and loving as a natural one, if she behaved like a mother. But I wondered if Brett ever had.

  Upstairs, I stood before the long mirror that hung on my bathroom door. “What am I to do?” I asked the woman in the glass. She had no more idea of the answer than I did, and she looked as helpless and ineffectual as I felt.

  With an effort, I straightened my shoulders. I could remember that strengthening moment only a few days ago when I had made a stand against the things that beset me. But now I knew less than ever what to struggle against, or what I really wanted—except to get away from Poinciana. Everything here threatened me, and if there had been animosity toward me before, it must be a hundredfold greater now. With Gretchen as the source?

  Aimlessly, I went outside to stand at one of the arches of the loggia. In the fading light, Jarrett Nichols walked among leaning palm trees. As he approached the house, he raised his head to see me standing there above him. At once he came to the foot of the steps.

  “May I come up?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. The words sounded ungracious, but I seemed to have no desires left in one direction or another.

  He climbed the steps and drew up a chair for me, then dropped into one beside it.

  “You carried it off very well today,” he told me.

  “No—I only sleepwalked. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time.”

  “Then your performance deserves all the more credit. You’re tired now. A night’s sleep will help.”

  He was tired again too. I could hear it in his voice. Much more strain and responsibility had rested on him than on the rest of us, and I wished I knew how to thank him properly. But, for all his sympathetic words, something in him that seemed forbidding held me off.

  There were a hundred questions I needed to ask, but this wasn’t the time and I had no heart for them, any more than he was likely to have heart for the answers. Anyway, there was just one question everything boiled down to: What am I to do? I had asked it of him before, and it was still too futile to be repeated. I thought dully of Myra and her disturbing news.

  “I’ve just learned that Brett Inness isn’t Gretchen’s real mother,” I said.

  Jarrett was silent for a moment, looking no more or less somber than before. “Who told you that?”

  “Your secretary. Vasily apparently spilled this out to Myra at a time when he was upset because Brett and Gretchen were quarreling. She could hardly wait to come and tell me, though I don’t think she was being malicious about it.”

  “I’ll speak to Myra. That was pretty idiotic of Vasily.”

  “Have you always known?”

  “Not until I’d been with Ross for a couple of years. It’s hardly common knowledge.”

  “Why hasn’t it come out?”

  “That’s a long story. I suppose you might as well know—though I’m not sure it serves any good purpose now. I understand that Gretchen’s real mother was a young woman who worked here. A girl whom Ross took a fancy to while he was married to Brett. Neither of his wives had given him a child, and he wanted a son. So when he knew the girl was going to have a baby, he made secret arrangements. Brett had no choice. He sent her away, and then brought her back with the child when the time was right. Unfortunately for him, it was a daughter. Brett had to accept her, while the real mother was sent to some distant state with a sizable payoff if she would never return. She hasn’t been heard from since. Allegra knew, but no one else until I was told.”

  “Has Gretchen always known?”

  Jarrett shook his head. “I think she should have been told early, s
o that she could grow up with the facts. But she was fifteen when Brett lost her temper one day and told her the truth—rather scornfully. She couldn’t even offer Gretchen the solace of having been deliberately chosen, as most adopted children are. And it was never enough that Ross was her real father. I suppose Gretchen had spent her childhood trying to win Brett’s affection, never understanding why she was rejected. Oddly enough, after she knew, Gretchen and Brett became better friends, and they could plot together against Ross when it suited them.”

  When it came to rejection by a mother, I had more in common with Ross’s daughter than I’d dreamed, I thought wearily. Even though I’d been the child of both my parents, Ysobel and Brett had felt alike about their daughters. Yet while this might have given us a basis for some understanding at least—by willing Poinciana to me, Ross had made Gretchen my mortal enemy. I turned away from so painful a subject.

  “How is Allegra?” I asked.

  “She’s magnificent. It’s good to see her taking a stand with Coxie and telling her what to do for a change. Just the same, she’s frailer than she believes, and all this has been a strain for her.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll find out whether she wants to move back into the house.”

  He brightened a little as he stood up. “I’d hoped you would do that. You’ll be here to look out for her now. I suppose I should offer you my formal resignation in the next few days.”

  My alarm was complete and so shattering that it astonished me. He smiled as he put out a steadying hand.

  “Hey—don’t look like that! Your ship isn’t sinking. Of course I want to stay. I need to stay. But I had to give you the chance to make a choice.”

  “There isn’t any choice. I’m the one who has to think about leaving.”

  His hand tightened on my arm and he pulled me up from my chair almost roughly. “Not yet, Sharon. There’s a lot you need to do before you go running away.”

  He could still make me angry. There was at least that much emotion left in me. I pulled away from his hand, no longer shaky.

  “I will decide what I want to do,” I said.

  “That’s the spirit! It’s time you started telling a few of us off. Sleep well—tomorrow is a day of battle.”

  He grinned at me wickedly and went down the steps to the lawn. I was still feeling outraged, but my anger died as I watched him walk off toward his cottage. There was that new weariness in the set of his shoulders, in the slowness of movements that were usually brisk and assured.

  These last days must have been terrible for him. I thought of the note that linked the wife he’d loved with the man he had served so long and loyally. How had he lived with this ambivalence toward Ross and kept his sanity? Jarrett was never a man to be pitied, yet there was a welling up in me of sorrow for him as I went back to my room. A sorrow I could do nothing about, because he, of all people, would accept sympathy from no one.

  I didn’t want to go to bed. Sleep was something far away, for all my weariness. I longed for some distraction to occupy my too active mind. As I sat there, I could not control the pictures that insisted on unrolling. Sharpest of all was my memory of Ross slumped across his desk, with all the vitality that had been so much a part of him gone forever. I could weep for him now. Weep for him, not as my husband, but as a man who had suffered and been struck down in a moment of shock and anger. In a sense, he had been destroyed by a few typed words on paper. All of this, however, was more than I could face right now.

  In the end, I was left with just one thought in my mind—one phrase that played itself over and over. The words Jarrett had spoken before he left.

  Tomorrow is a day of battle.

  Since when must I become a warrior? Since when must I stand and fight? Yet I knew that tomorrow this would have to be done, and that sooner or later, I had better put on my armor.

  Chapter 13

  The battle began early in the morning, when Gretchen sent for me right after breakfast.

  She waited in the Japanese room, and Vasily was with her. The moment I went through the door I knew by her look and manner that she considered herself the rightful mistress of Poinciana. A few mere facts of law would change nothing in the mind of Ross’s daughter. Her purpose was clear and uncomplicated—to drive me out. Once all the workings of the law had been performed and the will probated, the house would revert to her if I decided to move away. I couldn’t help but feel that this would be a greater justice than Ross had done in leaving it to me.

  Except for Vasily. He was still the question mark that Jarrett had raised. Was I willing to have it all wind up in his hands? As Gretchen’s husband, his influence would be very strong. While I had no wish to see him parted from his wife, as Ross had been so determined to have happen, there were still uncertainties that troubled me. His past was a little too checkered, to say the least. It might be easier for me to turn Poinciana over to Gretchen and leave at once, but I still had an obligation to Ross, and perhaps even to Gretchen herself, that I couldn’t sidestep. Even though Gretchen wanted me gone, and would do what she could to make life at Poinciana uncomfortable for me, I must stay for now. Later, perhaps I could let her have it, and get away.

  When I walked in, Vasily was standing at a tall window, where morning sun streamed in to light his fair hair. Gretchen sat at the desk that had been Allegra’s, tapping irritably on its surface with a pencil.

  “Good morning,” I said, including them both.

  Vasily sprang to fetch me a chair, placing it on the other side of the desk from his wife.

  “You look more rested,” he said. “You’ve slept well?”

  That didn’t bear talking about, and I gave my attention to Gretchen. She scowled at me with no greeting.

  “What have you done with my father’s manuscript?” she demanded, going straight into her attack.

  Such a challenge was the last thing I expected. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do. He always kept everything right here in this desk. The manuscript and the photographs I did for his book were always here, and they’re not now. Neither are Dad’s receipts and vouchers that he kept on every item he purchased for the collection. Only the record book that you started is here. So what have you done with the rest?”

  Her small face, with its pointed chin, and its frame of dark hair, looked more pugnacious than ever this morning, and I didn’t know how to deal with her attack. I hadn’t thought about the netsuke since Ross’s death.

  “I haven’t been in this room for days,” I told her. “I haven’t even thought about the collection, or about Ross’s manuscript.”

  “Of course you’re lying,” she said. “Why?”

  Vasily made a small, placating sound, but she waved him aside.

  “I’m not very good at lying,” I said evenly. “Surely these things will turn up. Your father must have put them somewhere else himself. In one of his safes, perhaps?”

  She ran both hands through the mop of short, straight hair. “Don’t talk nonsense! I’ve already searched and they’re not anywhere. They make a big package, along with the pages he’d done and my glossy prints. So they should be found easily. But why would you want to hide them?”

  “I haven’t hidden anything. If you want me to help you look, I will.”

  Perhaps something in my face, in my tone of voice, began to get through to her, and for the first time she looked faintly shaken in her conviction.

  “Then why are these things gone? Who would take them?”

  I could only shake my head. The whole thing seemed unimportant in the face of all else that was wrong at the moment.

  “Why is it so urgent to find the manuscript right now?” I asked.

  “It’s urgent because I want to work on it. It’s something I can do for my father. It’s the only thing I can do for him. I could have done the cataloguing. I know all about his collection. I’ve worked with him, making those photographs, and he’s told me about every item in this room. Now the book mus
t be finished and published under his name, as he wished.”

  I could recognize and understand her intense need to be close to her father and preserve his work. In a sense, she could keep him alive by throwing herself into this project. In a situation where nothing could be done, she could find consolation in performing a task closely connected with her father. While I was still in London, I had helped to instigate the publishing of a new collection of Ysobel’s songs—that would have pleased both her and Ian—and Ross had thrown himself into helping me. I realized now that we’d been doing exactly what Gretchen was trying to do now. And I would help her all I could, if only she would let me.

  “This is a fine idea,” I said. “Of course it should be carried out, and you’re the one to do it. Perhaps we can look through his office and his bedroom and see if we can find where he put the package.”

  “I’ve looked,” she said.

  This was a dead end for the moment, and I let it go. I had come downstairs armed with something else that must now be dealt with.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” I went on. “There was one item that was held back from the police after Ross’s death. It’s something that might have so upset your father that it could have brought on his attack. Jarrett felt that it should not be given out because of all the ramifications.”

  I placed before her the note typed on Poinciana stationery and signed with one of the little faces she had adopted as her signature.

  She read the few lines, and a flush came into her face. “You’d better explain,” she said.

  “I thought you might be able to explain. Jarrett found this in your father’s possession when he reached his office that night in response to Ross’s call and found him dead.”

  Vasily had come to stand behind Gretchen’s chair, and he read the note over her shoulder. “What is this? What does it mean?”

  “I think,” I told them carefully, “it means that someone was threatening him. Perhaps with blackmail, or for vengeance. Perhaps to frighten him into taking some action, or not taking some action. Someone knew, or pretended to know, something that would have caused the loss of Jarrett’s services if he was told.”