The Winter People

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Whatever he did,” she said to me, “it wasn’t as himself.”

  “At the end he was himself. What he did at the end was by his own choice.”

  Nomi shook her head vigorously as she walked beside me. “Never! Glynis had to repay him for her death. Somehow I always knew she would.”

  “Keith said—” I began, but again Nomi shook her head in denial.

  “Keith never knew. He was only guessing. I knew. I was there near the rocks. I saw it happen.”

  As we approached the house she told me, speaking in a curious monotone, as though all emotion had been drained from her. On the day when Glynis had died Nomi had gone for a walk around the lake, and her return lap had brought her to a place below High Rocks where she saw Glen come down from the high path and go to his sister struggling in the water.

  “He was wild with anger,” Nomi said. “Keith had just told him what had happened about the alabaster head, and then Keith had left him and gone home. Both twins had dangerous tempers when they were enraged. That alabaster meant more to Glen than anything else at that moment, and his sister had spoiled everything for him because she was jealous of his work. He might have let you off to some extent because what you did was an accident. What she did was deliberate destruction, using Keith as her weapon so she could swear to Glen later that she had never touched the head. When he saw her in the water he went down to her in a rage and began to tell her off. I heard the whole thing. I saw it. She screamed to him to help her, and he would not. Instead, he untied the scarf I’d given you from about the stump and pulled it from her hand. I’m not sure he really meant her to die. Sometimes I think he believed her invulnerable and only expected her to struggle harder, have a greater fright, before she got free.

  “At any rate, he left her there and went off carrying the scarf. I went after him. You had stopped below us and gone back when you heard him shout, so we were able to hurry along the upper path and reach home before you did, with your slower movements. Glen was in his studio again by the time you got home. I followed him, but I didn’t go near him. Not then.”

  “And the scarf?” I spoke the words numbly.

  “I don’t know. I thought he might have put it among Glynis’s things, but we didn’t find it there. I suppose he hid it where Keith found it.”

  “I knew Glen was afraid,” I said. “But I didn’t understand why. It was only his conscience that was frightening him.”

  Nomi shook her head with conviction. “No—it was Glynis. It was Glynis, using the entry of fear that he gave her, convincing him that everything that had happened was your fault.”

  I had nothing more to say. It would do no good. They were all a little mad—the winter people of High Towers.

  “Poor Colton,” I said, remembering him for the first time. “To lose his daughter and then his son, within a month’s time.”

  We had reached the house and Nomi went up the steps ahead of me. “Colton will survive,” she said dryly. “He will survive because he has himself. He’s already talking about closing High Towers and selling everything on this side to Pandora. But I have myself too—so I too will survive. Never trust anyone, Dina. Never open yourself to love.”

  I felt only pity for her rigidity. Her course was not for me.

  We went into the house together. A doctor was telephoned and then Nomi went to Colton’s room to break the news to him.

  When Keith and Trent brought Glen back through the woods by means of an improvised stretcher of tree branches, he was taken into Nomi’s sitting room. Jezebel remained by the fire, placidly washing her face, unperturbed. Glynis had gone from our midst for good.

  I got Keith out of that room as quickly as I was able. He looked white-faced and ready to crack up completely.

  “I killed him,” he told me. “It was my fault.”

  We stood in the hallway, speaking softly in the dim light. I did not want to take him into the drawing room where the twins’ picture hung.

  “No, Keith,” I said. “You woke him up. You made him stop being Glynis. But his own guilt was too much for him, and he couldn’t live with it any more. It had to happen that way, I suppose. If you hadn’t come to my aid, I would have been lying at the foot of the cliff by this time. You saved my life.”

  His smile surprised me. It was uncertain, but warming. It asked my friendship and forgiveness. I put a hand lightly on his shoulder and took it quickly away. I dared no further caress at the moment.

  Trent came out to us from Nomi’s sitting room and there was praise for his son in his look. “We’ll go home now,” he said. “The three of us. I’ve told Nomi you’re leaving, Bernardina, and she understands. Go pack a few things and we’ll wait for you.”

  He must have talked to Keith while I ran upstairs because the boy looked less sick-at-heart when I came down. Father and son had drawn closer in the last hour than they had been for a long while. We went down through the woods together and across the frozen lake to the stone house. There Pandora, prepared by phone, waited for us with a hot, strengthening breakfast, and a fire roaring in one of the big fireplaces that had once served an inn.

  High Towers was left behind, but the shadows cast by the house and by Gray Rocks would last for a long time. They lay heavily across my spirit, though Trent would not let me be. He stood for reality in a world that had crumbled around me.

  After breakfast he took me into the big living room where the lighted Christmas tree made a symbol of happier times to come. He wasted no time on words, but drew a big chair before the fire and sat in it, pulling me into his arms. He held me there with my head on his shoulder and it was as it had been that long ago rainy afternoon in California. Only this time there was no wistful, make-believe about it. I was no longer sixteen, but a woman.

  “Bernardina,” Trent said. “Don’t fight me any longer. It’s time to forget the past and begin living now as the woman you’ve become.”

  I pressed my head against his shoulder and gave myself into his loving hands.

  A Biography of Phyllis A. Whitney

  Phyllis Ayame Whitney (1903–2008) was a prolific author of seventy-six adult and children’s novels. Over fifty million copies of her books were sold worldwide during the course of her sixty-year writing career, establishing her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century. Whitney’s dedication to the craft and quality of writing earned her three lifetime achievement awards and the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”

  Whitney was born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, to American parents, Mary Lillian (Lilly) Mandeville and Charles (Charlie) Whitney. Charles worked for an American shipping line. When Whitney was a child, her family moved to Manila in the Philippines, and eventually settled in Hankow, China.

  Whitney began writing stories as a teenager but focused most of her artistic attention on her other passion: dance. When her father passed away in China in 1918, Whitney and her mother took a ten-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to America, and they settled in Berkley, California. Later they moved to San Antonio, Texas. Lilly continued to be an avid supporter of Whitney’s dancing, creating beautiful costumes for her performances. While in high school, her mother passed away, and Whitney moved in with her aunt in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from high school in 1924, Whitney turned her attention to writing, nabbing her first major publication in the Chicago Daily News. She made a small income from writing stories at the start of her career, and would eventually go on to publish around one hundred short stories in pulp magazines by the 1930s.

  In 1925, Whitney married George A. Garner, and nine years later gave birth to their daughter, Georgia. During this time, she also worked in the children’s room in the Chicago Public Library (1942–1946) and at the Philadelphia Inquirer (1947–1948).

  After the release of her first novel, A Place for Ann (1941), a career story for girls, Whitney turned her eye toward publishing full-time, taking a job as the children’s book editor at the Chic
ago Sun-Times and releasing three more novels in the next three years, including A Star for Ginny. She also began teaching juvenile fiction writing courses at Northwestern University. Whitney began her career writing young adult novels and first found success in the adult market with the 1943 publication of Red Is for Murder, also known by the alternative title The Red Carnelian.

  In 1946, Whitney moved to Staten Island, New York, and taught juvenile fiction writing at New York University. She divorced in 1948 and married her second husband, Lovell F. Jahnke, in 1950. They lived on Staten Island for twenty years before relocating to Northern New Jersey. Whitney traveled around the world, visiting every single setting of her novels, with the exception of Newport, Rhode Island, due to a health emergency. She would exhaustively research the land, culture, and history, making it a custom to write from the viewpoint of an American visiting these exotic locations for the first time. She imbued the cultural, physical, and emotional facets of each country to transport her readers to places they’ve never been.

  Whitney wrote one to two books a year with grand commercial success, and by the mid-1960s, she had published thirty-seven novels. She had reached international acclaim, leading Time magazine to hail her as “one of the best genre writers.” Her work was especially popular in Britain and throughout Europe.

  Whitney won the Edgar Award for Mystery of the Haunted Pool (1961) and Mystery of the Hidden Hand (1964), and was shortlisted three more times for Secret of the Tiger’s Eye (1962), Secret of the Missing Footprint (1971), and Mystery of the Scowling Boy (1974). She received three lifetime achievement awards: the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985, the Agatha in 1989, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995.

  Whitney continued writing throughout the rest of her life, still traveling to the locations for each of her novels until she was ninety-four years old. She released her final novel, the touching and thrilling Amethyst Dreams, in 1997. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104. She left behind a vibrant catalog of seventy-six titles that continue to inspire, setting an unparalleled precedent for mystery writing.

  A young Whitney playing with her doll in Japan.

  Whitney with her family in Japan, where they lived for approximately six years. From left: Lillian (Lilly) Whitney, Charles (Charlie) Whitney, Phyllis Whitney, and Philip (Whitney’s half-brother).

  Thirteen-year-old Whitney dancing in the Philippines.

  Twenty-one-year-old Whitney at her graduation from McKinley High School in 1924.

  Whitney worked at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Illinois, in 1933. She was pregnant with her daughter, Georgia, at the time.

  Frederick Nelson Litten, Whitney’s mentor in writing and teaching, in Chicago, 1935.

  Whitney’s first publicity photo for A Place for Ann, 1941.

  Whitney, forty-eight, in her first study in Fort Hill Circle at her Staten Island house, where she lived with second husband Lovell Jahnke, 1951.

  Whitney at sixty-nine years old with Jahnke in their home in Hope, New Jersey, 1972. Behind them hangs a Japanese embroidery made by Whitney’s mother.

  Whitney at seventy-one years of age with Pat Myer, her long time editor, and Mable Houvenagle, her sister-in-law, at her house on Chapel Ave in Brookhaven, Long Island, New York, 1974. After her husband died in 1973, she lived close to her daughter, Georgia, on Long Island.

  Whitney at eighty-one years old on a helicopter ride over Maui, Hawaii, to research the backdrop for her novel Silversword, 1984.

  Whitney giving her acceptance speech for her Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1985.

  Whitney rode in a hot-air balloon in 1988 to use the experience for her novel Rainbow in the Mist.

  Whitney ascending in the hot-air balloon, 1988.

  Whitney in her study in Virginia in 1996 at ninety-three years old, looking over her “Awards Corner,” which included three Edgars, the Agatha, and the Society of Midland Authors Award.

  Whitney at ninety-six years old with her family in her house in Virgina, 1999. From left: Michael Jahnke (grandson), Georgia Pearson (daughter), Matthew Celentano (great-grandson), Whitney, and Danny Celentano (great-grandson).

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1969 by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4697-8

  This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10038

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  PHYLLIS A. WHITNEY

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