The House at Sandalwood

by Virginia Coffman

  Claire Cameron stood there interestedly reading labels on the various medicines in the glass cabinet. She did not turn around as I came in behind her. In her gloved left hand was one of my initialed lo-ball glasses in which one ice cube wandered alone in what appeared to be a full glass of Scotch, if I knew Claire. She waved the glass toward the medicine cabinet, took a long swallow and remarked thickly, “Not a decent stock at all, at all. But you always were Little Miss N-Namby-Pamby. Don’t you ever get headaches?”

  Except for the dainty, though now soiled, white lace gloves, there was little left of the girl I had first seen when she was engaged to Wayne. Her soft, pretty face had swollen alarmingly in the years since. When I remembered the beautiful, petulant young bride with topaz-colored hair and the fantastically tiny waistline in her New Look wedding gown, I was sickened with pity. She had become a thirty-year-old woman with flabby features and badly bleached thinning hair. She looked ten years older than her true age. And yet, pity wasn’t what she needed. She had been unfaithful to Wayne even before he left for Korea. She had never been disciplined in her free, wealthy childhood, and found marriage an impossible constriction. Still, remembering that young bride of long ago, who had impressed me, a gawky teen-ager, I felt sick now at what remained.

  I said, “There is aspirin right under your hand. Claire ... how about going out to see Deirdre before you finish that drink?”

  “Later. Ac-Actually why I came.”

  I began to brighten. Maybe I’d gotten cynical about her. Maybe she did care about her daughter after all.

  “She will be so excited! You haven’t seen her yet? Come along and we’ll—”

  “Hold it! H-hold it! Now, look, Goody-Two-Shoes,” she waved the drink. The sticky contents splashed over my head and I stepped back, trying not to let her annoy me.

  “I’m looking,” I said. “What is it?”

  Her eyes had once been rather like Deirdre’s, large and bright, with an illusion of innocence. Now, bloodshot and squeezed into that puffy face, they were painful to look at and I shifted my own attention, reaching for the glass door of the cabinet and starting to close it. She reached in front of me abruptly.

  “Where’s your God-damned aspirin or whatever?”

  She had already dropped the plastic bottle of sleeping capsules prescribed for me a year before after a bad cold and cough. I had used only the first two capsules before recovering. I picked up the container as she felt for the aspirin bottle. I tried to replace the capsule container but she was in the way and I set it down on the wash basin.

  “Claire, how are you? Is everything all right? What are your plans?”

  “Be all right, if things go the way I’ve got in mind. This time it’s love, baby. The real thing. His old man is the Guatemalan consul on one of those corny little islands in the Caribbean. Only thing is, we need a little something to set us up. Pablo is gorgeous. You couldn’t imagine! But his old man is one of those bastards who keeps squealing that Pablo’s got to start pulling his own weight. And Pablo’s not the type. No way! Long and short of it is, we’re broke.”

  I knew her income from a trust set up by Wayne came to several thousand dollars a month and was intended to include Deirdre’s support, which it didn’t. Otherwise, the balance of Wayne’s estate was set aside for Deirdre when she reached her eighteenth birthday. During her last two visits, she had persisted in the complaint: “I’m broke.” Before I could ask the obvious question, she cut in sharply, “How long’d you expect me to take it from that precious baron? Who’d have thought a real live baron would take a belt buckle to me? Beat me up once too often. So I had to get rid of him. Paid him off. Loused up my allowance for the next year. Now I’m dead—flat broke.”

  Claire knew quite well Wayne’s money had been his own. He had been a corporation lawyer, and his estate was far different from mine. He had earned every cent of it himself. I inherited our parents’ home and a comfortable income from annuities. I had trained as a secretary and worked part-time for Wayne’s partners; so I asked Claire somewhat dryly, “How much do you need?”

  “Fifty thousand. That’ll give us a cushion. Pablo’s old man is sure to pop off one of these days. He’s past seventy. And with my monthly noble stipend, we can make out.”

  When talking about money Claire seldom seemed drunk. I stared at her. I never had been able to believe what I heard when I talked with Claire. “For heaven’s sake, where would I find fifty thousand dollars?”

  I must have raised my voice because she sounded awfully loud when she answered me.

  “Who’s kidding whom? I know Wayney-boy’s family had it stashed away. And it better be coming around, because I need it bad.”

  “Impossible.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Well, you’d better make it possible. Because that’s what it’ll cost you to keep my daughter here.” The implication was too foul even for Claire. I could only laugh.

  “What are you trying to do? Sell Deirdre to me?”

  She threw her head back, gulped down a couple of aspirins with the dubious aid of her glass of Scotch. She almost dropped the glass. I reached for it, thought of throwing out the contents, then gave it back to her. She pushed by me, walking uncertainly through the dressing room and into my bedroom.

  “Sell my kid?” she asked finally, her pale eyebrows arched. “Don’t count on that argument. I can be pretty convincing as the grieved war widow who finally got up enough courage to take her child back. But I do feel the kid would be happier with little old you for the next year or so. Just through the awkward age, you might say. Along about eighteen, she will be at an age when I can handle her better.” She grinned. “But meanwhile, if I get my money, she can stay here. Believe me, I need that money. Pablo is an expensive luxury, but worth every penny. Now, what about it?”

  “Forget it!”

  She bit her drying lower lip. “Okay. Then Deirdre goes with me. Now. Today.”

  “She won’t,” I said more calmly than I felt. But there would be no end of blackmail if I gave in now. Besides, I didn’t have fifty thousand dollars and doubted if I could raise it. She was bluffing—she had to be. I put down panic firmly. “Claire, if you could just come back to the States—only for a little while—and not...”

  “Drink? Not see my Pablo? You’ve got to be kidding. I’ll take Deirdre with me. She’ll learn soon enough how to live like her mother. It won’t take long.”

  The more she talked the more sickening the prospect became. Deirdre was young, romantic. She could easily be attracted by the sordid life her mother offered. And such a life might kill a girl with Deirdre’s medical history. But I dared not refuse to let Claire make the offer. I had called her bluff. It all depended on Deirdre.

  “Suppose I get Deirdre and we’ll find out whether you can do this thing,” I told Claire, my voice shaking when I wanted it to be chill and confident.

  She shrugged. “I’ll be waiting.”

  I had hoped when I called her bluff she might give up, but she was playing it just as cool, and I had to carry on. In the hall doorway I heard her drop her glass on the bedroom carpet and curse volubly. I swung around, unable to hold onto my falsely calm veneer. “You’d better watch those playful little habits of yours or you’ll wind up dead.”

  “Miss Lollypops doesn’t approve of alcohol? Miss Lollypops wants the world dry-cleaned. You wait until I get hold of Deirdre ... my kid. She’ll be like me in six months.”

  “Shut up! Or someone will silence you permanently, and I’m just the girl to do it,” I yelled back at her and hurried down the stairs.

  There were still three or four youngsters at the buffet, and for a minute I thought of retreating, going down the back stairs to avoid them, but I was too ashamed of my own cowardice in trying such a trick and went on past them deliberately. I did wonder how much they had heard, but unless I was badly mistaken, they would hear an even better show when Claire tried to persuade Deirdre to go off with her and share that jolly life with “Pablo.”
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br />   I crossed the terrace, looking over the low stucco wall once to see Deirdre. She had moved away from the pool-side. I went down the steps. Several of the party were still in the pool. The big, multicolored balloon sailed over the head of a pretty, dark-haired girl who screamed at missing the shot. I caught the ball, and hurled it back, calling, “Anyone seen Deirdre?”

  One of the boys bounded high in the water, waving vaguely toward the walk around the side of the house. I thanked him, turned and started back. The narrow, brick-walled walk was empty and I wondered if Deirdre was out in front of the house in one of the guest cars and cycles parked along the semicircular drive. Two boys were leaving with one of the girls. We all exchanged breezy goodbyes. I looked at several cars, failed to find Deirdre, and went back into the house. No one had seen Deirdre around the buffet or among those dancing to the hi-fi in the next room. I went the full length of the house to the back stairs and finally went up.

  The bedroom door was closed. As I entered the room I heard sounds of weeping—horrible, heartbreaking noises that sent me in on the run.

  “What is it? Deirdre? Claire!”

  Deirdre was kneeling on the floor at the far side of the bed. She was crying, openly and childlike, without covering her face. I couldn’t see Claire. I found myself moving in slow motion around the foot of the bed, and didn’t understand my own reluctance to go further. Deirdre hadn’t indicated that she heard me come in, and she kept sobbing, catching her breath, crying again. Claire’s body lay in an S position on the floor in front of her.

  “What happened? Did she pass out? I knew she’d been drinking too much.”

  Deirdre did not answer me. I took up Claire’s hand, then shook her, doing all the unreasoning things people do when they don’t know whether someone is alive or dead. Then I heard Claire’s shallow breathing. It did not sound like the heavy snoring of a drunkard.

  “Deirdre, call Dr. Lowell, quickly!”

  The girl did not move. I looked up. “Deirdre!”

  She stared at me with her vision blurred by tears. Her fist was clenched. More and more worried, I reached for her hand. She pulled away. I forced her fingers open. A pharmacist’s capsule container rolled to the floor. I watched the little plastic bottle as it kept rolling. It came to a stop against Claire Cameron’s bare leg. The container was empty. I stared at it. It was my own prescription, the old one whose pentobarbital contents I had only used twice. They were far too strong for me. Finally, I got up enough courage to ask, “What happened, Deirdre? Tell me. What went on here?”

  Deirdre shook her head. She sniffed and blinked and looked at her empty hand. I touched Claire again. Without knowing much about death, I felt sure my sister-in-law was in a very serious state. How long ago I had left her I couldn’t say. Not half an hour, but the woman had time enough to take the capsules—possibly by accident, mistaking them for aspirin—and time enough for them to threaten her life since she had swallowed several on top of all the liquor.

  Deirdre was still in that terrible stupor. I got up.

  “Deirdre, dry your eyes and get out of here. Go down the back stairs and out in front. And say nothing. I’ll call the doctor. You weren’t here. You didn’t see her. You understand?” She made no sign of agreement but clearly understood me and got to her feet. She startled me then by rushing out of the room, and as I dialed my bedside phone, I heard her clattering down the back stairs. I called and explained to the doctor who had treated Deirdre and me for the past year.

  “Please hurry! Please! I can’t bring her around. If she took them all on top of the liquor ...”

  He broke off the connection in order to call emergency while I was further shaken by my fiancé, John Eastman calling to me from the doorway.

  “Good God, Judy! What have you done to her?”

  I was shocked then. The pain at his suspicions came later. Claire Cameron died in the ambulance without ever recovering consciousness.

  My fiancé was only the first to utter his instinctive suspicion. My original argument, with Claire, when I had threatened that someone might do away with her, was remembered by all those witnesses downstairs at the buffet. My motives were obvious. Thwarted mother love, they said.

  Deirdre seemed to have blanked out the entire episode with her mother in my room that day. And that was for the best, under the circumstances. During the days before my own arrest, I talked to Deirdre several times and discovered also that she knew nothing. She began to speak again but I learned no more except that she had come in and found her mother lying there “sleeping.”

  “And the capsule bottle?”

  Deirdre remembered nothing of the capsule bottle. After several conversations, I did not pursue the matter, and I dared not put her in the hands of the district attorney’s office.

  Shortly after my trial began, Deirdre was found wandering through the parched Hollywood Hills and came down with pneumonia. Day after day I sat in that hot, stuffy courtroom with its high windows, wondering if Deirdre would die and I would be locked up for life. The most telling evidence against me was the quarrel between Claire and me overheard by the children at the buffet, my fingerprints on Claire’s whiskey glass when she nearly dropped it, the fact that my own sleeping capsules were used, and of course, my presumed motive.

  Afterward, I was terrified to have Deirdre brought to see me for fear she would remember more about that day, and we would have to go through the whole business again and possibly ruin Deirdre’s young life. She was made a ward of the courts, sent to an exclusive young ladies’ school back East, and I never saw her again, although we corresponded in a desultory way.

  I had thought when I was paroled through Stephen Giles’s influence that I might banish those years and that terrible day of Deirdre’s birthday party, but in the humid, flower-scented Hawaiian night I knew that day had never really gone. It might remain with us as long as Deirdre and I lived. But would it remain between us?

  Eleven

  I banished memories at last and slept, to wake up early, from long habit. Public institutions possess at least one superb quality—they teach the inmate to arise punctually. I knew we would be leaving soon after morning coffee but hadn’t expected my coffee to be served to me by my hostess. Deirdre pushed my door open with her knee and then, having closed the door with her hip, came in with a tray bearing the glass Silex, which threatened at any moment to slip off. She had also jammed the tray with cup, saucer, sugar, and cream. I leaped out of bed to grab at and help balance the tray.

  Deirdre was in a giggling state of excitement. It is curious, perhaps, that her giggle was not generally annoying. There was a musical quality about it, and I had seen her husband smile fondly while she was in the midst of her fits of giggles. That morning her hair was done again in Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, with a green ribbon that was a perfect complement to her large eyes. She wore a raw-silk dress, sleeveless, with a deep cleavage, and the pleated skirt was a trifle longer than a miniskirt. It was a modified silhouette of a 1920s style made popular this year by a Hollywood movie star. I thought it charming and youthful but a mistake for a girl who should have been trying to impress her husband with her maturity.

  Then I had an idea. With Michiko Nagata’s help I could persuade Deirdre to buy some clothes that would be a trifle more adult. This might help to persuade Stephen that she was grown-up.

  Deirdre settled down in the chair opposite me as I drank my coffee at the little table near the window. I hadn’t washed or showered yet, but I could see that I had to give in to her whims or turn off those sunny smiles and the endearing enthusiasm.

  “I did it myself,” she announced proudly. “Went down and tiptoed around. It would have been ghastly if Mr. Yee had popped in. He’d have murdered me with those eyes. A real spook. Although,” she added honestly, “he’s wonderful at his job.”

  “I know what you mean. People like that often are. It’s the arrogance of ability.”

  “The what of what?”

  Her brief picture of
Michiko Nagata’s uncle had brought back memories of former acquaintances. “I knew a woman once who’d been the driver for a gang of criminals. Among other things. And the thing we noticed was her unbelievable arrogance. She used to treat us like inferior beings because her crimes were greater than those of her companions.”

  “But—she was just a driver!” Deirdre murmured, confused, yet interested.

  I wished I hadn’t mentioned the memory. The woman was actually the brains of her criminal gang and having been paroled, she immediately rejoined her gang and was responsible for the murder of three innocent bystanders in a Riverside bank. I did not tell Deirdre, however.

  “I guess she liked to boast.”

  Deirdre scoffed. “What an idiot!” She sat there watching me, making me feel extraordinarily uncomfortable, even self-conscious. I was wearing one of the nylon chiffon nightgowns and matching peignoirs I had splurged on in Los Angeles before leaving for the airport. Deirdre said finally, “Would I look like that in an outfit like yours?”

  I laughed. “Much better. A dozen years better, dear. Why don’t we get you some in Honolulu?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I’d get cold at night.”

  “That is one of the great advantages of having a husband who loves you,” I reminded her.

  She was still thinking this over when I went to shower and dress. By the time I returned to take a dress from the closet, Deirdre was there before me.

  “Here’s a perfect dress for you, wise old auntie. It’s going to be just right with the green I’m wearing.”