Brett closed the book. “Darling, those stairs would be hard for you. I’ve always hated them myself.”
“Nonsense! Everyone used to complain about them. Because they are steep and make people dizzy. They are very easy stairs, really. You just put one foot after another very carefully and pull yourself up by the iron rail. I never had any trouble.”
“But, darling, you’re not as strong as you were then,” Brett reminded her.
I had said nothing, and no one greeted me. Now Allegra gave me a rather wicked look, and lowered one eyelid in a wink that made the years fall away. I had a feeling that she would need to be watched very carefully today or she might indeed try to climb those stairs to the belvedere.
“There’s something you wanted?” Brett asked, making it clear that I intruded, and that she had no intention of recognizing me as mistress of Poinciana.
I went closer to the bed, speaking to Allegra. “I wanted you to know that I’m moving into this wing today, Mrs. Logan. I don’t want to stay off there by myself. Besides, if I’m closer to you, you can tell me more about the house.”
Her nod was lively, pleased. “Come visit me any time.”
I didn’t wait to see how Brett took this exchange, but returned to the corridor, skirted a bed that had been moved out of what was to be my sitting room, and found my way downstairs to the office wing.
Myra apparently didn’t mind working overtime on Saturday, and she was at her desk typing briskly. She looked up and shook her head. “If you’re looking for Mr. Nichols, you can’t go in right now, Mrs. Logan. He has an appointment with a man who has just arrived from New York.”
I’d wanted to see Jarrett to tell him about Gretchen’s visit the night before, but that could wait. Moving idly, I went toward Ross’s door, and Myra stopped me again.
“Better not,” she said. “Mrs. Karl is in there and I think she’s having a bang-up fight with her husband. We’ll probably have to get a new coffee set. She was throwing the crockery around.” Clearly Myra was enjoying the whole scene.
Voices could be heard from beyond the heavy door, but no words came through. It was an awkward moment to have Brett follow me downstairs and walk in just as Ross’s door flew open and Gretchen came storming out. She saw us both, and stopped for a moment, wildly angry.
“Vasily is threatening to divorce me!” she cried. “Him! I’ll show him! I’m going to change my will as soon as I can!”
Brett put out a hand to stop her daughter, but Gretchen brushed blindly past. We followed her to the door and looked out. Halfway down the hall, she pulled open the door that led to the tower stairs, and I heard her clattering up the circular treads on her way to the upper rooms. Vasily came out of Ross’s office, looking oddly helpless and white-faced.
“Those damned netsuke!” he said. “I gave them back to her, but she wasn’t satisfied. She’s gone a little crazy.”
“You did have the two missing ones, then?” I asked, surprised that he would admit it. “You had them that time in the tower?”
“Yes, yes—what does it matter? I returned them to her, didn’t I? So why must she ask so many questions? Why did she have to go searching among her father’s papers?”
“Searching for what?”
He was recovering himself and growing calmer. “My wife has decided to check up on me—as her father was doing. Instead of taking my word, she has decided to find out everything he thought he had uncovered about me.”
I became aware of Myra, listening eagerly as usual.
“Let’s not talk here,” I said. “Come across the hall.”
He was too excited to pay attention. “I’ve taken enough from her! I told her to divorce me and have done with it! I tried to make everything clear to her when we married—but it wasn’t enough. So I will move out now!”
If Vasily walked out on Gretchen, she would lose everything she most valued—no matter what she was saying now in anger. Even if Vasily had taken the netsuke, it didn’t matter in the face of his wife’s unstable condition. I dreaded to think what might happen to her if he left her at this time.
“Just wait a while,” I said. “You know she’ll cool off when she stops to think.”
He seemed to see me for the first time, and a faint smile returned to erase the anger. “You are a good person, Sharon, and you are also very naïve,” he said, and went toward the door. He didn’t speak to Brett, but she blocked his way.
“Sharon’s right,” Brett told him. “Give Gretchen time to come out of it. Maybe I can talk to her. She’s gone up to the belvedere now. That’s always been her refuge, just the way it used to be Allegra’s. When she conies down, she’ll feel better. So don’t go running out on her, Vasily. After all, you’ve got a lot to lose if you do.”
I watched them both intently, and I saw the strange look of understanding that passed between them. It was a look that made me think of their meeting in the beach tunnel, when I’d surprised them.
Vasily was already shaking his head. “It’s too late. This time it’s too late. I’ve had more than I can take—and perhaps she has too. So let her do her worst.”
Brett started to speak, but he brushed past us both and disappeared down the hall. She looked after him soberly and I wondered what dark thoughts she was thinking. As always, she seemed an enigma. But I had no wish to stay and discuss what had happened with her, so I left the office and found my way outside to where a sheltered courtyard offered protection from the rain.
Wrought-iron chairs were grouped around a table, and I pulled one out, and sat down beneath the overhang. This little court was another of the curious indentations that Allegra had built into the house. Because of them, all the upstairs rooms had windows that opened upon the outdoors. Near where I sat, a strange twisted tree that Ross had called a gumbo-limbo shook its wet leaves as a breeze stirred them. I lifted my head, breathing the fresh scent of the rain.
The scene in the office had shaken me badly. Gretchen seemed intent upon destroying her own happiness. Or had Ross been right from the beginning, and had all possibility for happiness ended on the day when she’d married Vasily Karl? Strangely, there were times when I almost liked him. I didn’t trust him, and I thought it might be characteristic if he had taken the netsuke. Yet there was something oddly likable about him—even while he was following his own devious bent. In a way, I could understand how he had captivated Gretchen. I could also imagine him doing quite dastardly things in a most charming and disarming way. As though to say, “You see—I know it is wrong, but obviously I cannot help myself.”
I remembered his saying that I should close Poinciana up while the will was being settled, and go away. Probably that would not negate my ownership. Certainly Ross hadn’t meant that I couldn’t take a trip or a vacation, or stir out of the house. As long as I was in residence legally, I could go away and come back. If there really was a divorce—though I couldn’t see Gretchen letting it go that far, unless she had driven Vasily away for good this time—then it would be safe to let Gretchen inherit Poinciana. But if they made up again, Vasily might receive all of it should anything happen to Gretchen. Ross hadn’t wanted that, and I didn’t believe it was wise myself. Not unless the time came when I could be more sure of him. If he had taken the netsuke to sell, this hardly improved my opinion of him.
Besides, this wouldn’t have been the first time. Again I wondered about the Lautrec paintings. Had it really been Ross who had removed them?
No, even though I might like Vasily at times, I didn’t trust him for a moment.
Beyond the dry nook where I sat, rain sounded on the tiles of the courtyard, and I listened to its soothing rhythm. Always, I felt more peaceful when I was outside the house. How long I sat there, I don’t know, but suddenly the morning was pierced by a thin, high scream. A chilling sound of terror, followed almost at once by a shattering crash. I came to my feet, tense and listening. The morning was still except for the rain.
I ran out upon wet grass, to where I could look
back at the house. The scream had come from the direction of the tower, and I stood for a moment staring up at the circling windows of the belvedere, and at the balcony that ran around the top. Nothing moved, and all the windows I could see were closed.
Running again, I rounded the end of a wing, and came out on the other side of the tower. Now I could see the glass door that gave onto the gallery. It stood open, and a portion of the rail had broken through, with a piece hanging down. My throat closed with fear as I rushed across the grass.
Gretchen lay face down upon the paving stones at the base of the tower—lay in the one place where the tower stood away from the house, with no tiled roofs below. There had been nothing to break her fall.
She lay still, chillingly still, with rain beating around and over her, her arms outflung. Before I could reach her, others came running. One or two men first, and then a frightened maid. Jarrett was next, rushing out a nearby door, and it was Jarrett who knelt beside her.
In that dreadful suspended moment, while we stood around them, waiting, I was intensely aware of unimportant details. One of the girls, already soaked by the rain, was crying in choked sobs. The loose bit of balcony rail flapped in the wind, and the poinciana tree shed its bright petals as rain beat them into the earth. One of Gretchen’s hands was curled about some small object that she must have clutched at the moment of her fall.
Jarrett looked up and spoke to one of the men. “Call for an ambulance. Hurry!”
He saw me among the others and shook his head, his face grim. “There’s only a feather of pulse. Get me something to cover her with.” A servant went back to the house.
As he touched her sad, broken body, something tiny rolled from her hand, and I bent to catch it. I felt a compulsion to stop for an instant to look up at the tower. It seemed to me that something moved up there. Not at the balcony level, but in the room below. It was no more than a flash, an impression at a window. Then I rushed inside and began to call for Vasily or Brett—or for someone to go and find them. From the direction of the boulevard came the screaming of an ambulance siren.
I opened my wet hand and stared at the tiny object that I had caught from Gretchen’s fingers as she opened them. It was a netsuke—the small carving of the Sleeping Mermaid that was Allegra’s favorite of all the collection.
Chapter 18
When the others drove to the hospital, following the ambulance, Jarrett asked me not to come.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “Stay at Poinciana and hold things together. Be with Allegra if she needs you.”
I told no one about the little mermaid. Its presence frightened me. When I was alone I took it out and examined it carefully. It was just as I remembered—a mermaid sweetly asleep in pale pink coral, her tail curled neatly around her body—but it told me nothing. Or everything? Had Allegra indeed gone to her tower rooms? And if she had—? I put the puzzle away from me. Allegra had loved her granddaughter dearly. As she had once loved her son?
For the rest of that gloomy day, while I awaited word from the hospital, I did what I could. Though my clothes were still damp, I put off changing them, and talked to Mrs. Broderick. Badly shaken as she was, she called the staff together and informed them of what had happened.
Since Jarrett no longer needed her, Myra went home in an upset state, muttering that the house was accursed.
Then, when I’d put it off long enough, I climbed the stairs to talk to Allegra, uncertain as to whether I should explain at once what had happened, or if it might be better to wait for certainty later. Mostly, I tried to keep myself from thinking, from believing, from facing what had happened. More than anything else, I was afraid to question the presence of the mermaid in Gretchen’s hand.
The door to Allegra’s bedroom was open and I went in, to find that her bed was tousled and Allegra gone. Coxie sat placidly knitting in the next room. Nothing of what had happened had touched that remote wing, where sounds from the rest of the house were inaudible and the tower far away.
“Mrs. Logan is asleep,” Coxie said as I looked in at her.
“She’s not asleep. She’s not there at all,” I told her.
The nurse took the news calmly. “Well, don’t worry. She likes to wander around the house when the spirit moves her. Do you want me to search for her?”
“I’ll do it myself,” I told her, and hurried off.
I knew where I would look first, reluctant as I was to go there. I remembered what Allegra had said about climbing to the tower. With all my heart, I hoped she had not been there when Gretchen fell, but I had to make sure those rooms were empty, and that nothing had happened to Allegra.
Along the corridor that led to the belvedere, I met Susan and saw that she was crying. “My mother’s just phoned the hospital and talked to Mr. Nichols. He says there’s very little hope.”
I patted her shoulder and went on toward the tower stairs.
After the first sick shock of Gretchen’s terrible fall, I had seemed to exist in a suspended state, where nothing about me had reality. There were duties that must be performed, and I would do them. My mind seemed to tick off what was necessary. It wasn’t possible to face the fact that Gretchen might at this very moment be breathing out her young life. Numbness was a blessing. I could act without thinking or feeling.
As I climbed the iron treads I remembered Allegra’s words—that the stairs were easy enough to mount. One set one’s feet carefully on the wedged steps and clung to the rail. I went round and round to the top and stood looking about me. The little studio room seemed undisturbed. The two pictures of Ross hung in their usual place on the wall, and I was glad he couldn’t know what had happened to his daughter.
Rain slanted through the open glass door and I went to look outside. The loose piece of railing still flapped in the wind, and there was an opening wide enough for anyone to fall through. Reality hit me like a blow to the pit of my stomach. Gretchen had stood exactly here. Had the rail broken when she leaned on it—or had she thrown herself against it, meaning to break through?
Yet she had screamed as she fell.
How awful, how terrible, to experience those seconds of falling—to be alive, with the ground rising—and then not to be. I felt so ill that I had to go inside and sit down for a little while. I must return to that safe state of being numb and not thinking. I mustn’t let my imagination go. Yet the fearful record was ready to play itself over and over in my mind. I prayed a little—but without hope. Even though I had only glimpsed her face, I knew.
How different deaths could be. My mother’s and father’s—too horrible to be borne. Ross’s had been shocking and sudden. But none of them had been terrible in the same way as this. Ross had lived a long, full life, and death could never destroy what he’d had and what he’d been. My parents had lived happily and successfully for many years. But Gretchen’s life was still beginning. And she had been unhappy for so much of it. All those pages of years might never be written for her now, and I couldn’t bear to think about that. Or of the fact that I hadn’t tried hard enough to befriend her. This was familiar too—the blame one took upon oneself when someone close died.
Nevertheless, I held back my tears, afraid to let them come. If I cried now, I would be crying for too much recent loss, for too much pain, and I might not be able to stop. I must still find Allegra.
Returning to the stairs, I circled them to the room below and looked into it. One glance was enough to shock me. I walked into the small square area where Allegra had liked to rest, and looked about. The armoire where her ball gowns were kept was open, and dress after dress had been taken out and spread across shrouded chairs and over the couch, where Allegra had once napped. The room was a froth of satin and lace and rainbow colors strewn everywhere. No damage had been done to any of them, as far as I could see. It was as though they had been laid out for display. Perhaps in order to make a choice?
Now, with dread, I knew the answer to the faint movement I’d seen at a window of the tower. Alleg
ra herself had been here, looking at her old gowns, perhaps savoring memories connected with each one, living her old life again. She must have brought the mermaid here, to give her once more a glimpse of her home, the sea, as she used to say. Gretchen must have found her grandmother here and taken the mermaid from her. After that—what? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I was afraid to know.
I was certain of only one thing. I must find Allegra at once, and these gowns suggested where I might look.
I ran outside through the rain to the closed door of those stairs I had first explored, and which led down from the loggia to the ballroom. This was a place I hadn’t cared to visit again, but now I ran down curving tiled steps in the gloom, and opened the door at the bottom. Brilliance dazzled me.
All the chandeliers were lit, and she was there—beautiful, resplendent in chiffon the color of primroses, her white hair pinned carelessly on top of her head, her arms raised as she danced with an imaginary partner. The dance, obviously, was an old-fashioned waltz, and she moved to an echo of music I couldn’t hear, swaying gracefully as she turned—forever young and untouched by the years that stretched behind her, as they might never do now for her granddaughter.
Though she must have seen my approach, she gave no sign of recognition, her eyes raised dreamily to a partner only she could see, her beautiful, lined face filled with love. Of course. She was dancing again with her Charlie.
I knew myself for the intruder I was. What was I to do—rush up and say, “No, no, you mustn’t wear yourself out like this”? Was I to cry out that calamity had once more fallen on Poinciana, and this was no time for dancing? Or ask if she had seen Gretchen in the tower? Of course I did none of these. I went to sit on one of the small gilt chairs that edged the room. I sat very still and watched and thought of nothing but the present moment.
So beautifully did she dance that I could almost see her partner, almost hear the lilting three-quarter pulse of the music. In my imagination I could people the room with couples moving beneath great chandeliers that set gold leaf shining across the coffered ceiling. All this she had created out of her own will and imagination, and I would not stop Allegra Logan from dancing.
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