Enemy in the House

by Mignon G. Eberhart

  It was a hot morning, the sun blazing down upon the green island with its jagged line of blue mountains rearing up into the sky. The harbor was packed with shipping. British flags, as well as flags of every neutral nation, were bright against the sky, cargo was being loaded and unloaded, rowboats plied busily back and forth, weaving in and out, it was all lively, busy and crowded. A great East Indiaman, mysteriously far off her usual run, was anchored near them and as Amity looked back she saw a rat making an intent way along a rope. In the same second someone said, “Niece—” She turned to see Grappit at her elbow, his lantern jaw pale, his eyes burning from under the brim of a wide straw hat.

  Amity felt no sense of surprise whatever. Perhaps she had known, in her heart, he would not give up easily. Aunt Grappit and Neville were doubtless there, also. He wore a baggy, white linen suit instead of his usual, dignified broadcloth or velvet. And then she saw the wide, ostentatious band of black on one sleeve and knew what it meant.

  Distantly, it seemed to her, she heard China’s dismayed little squeal, like a rabbit caught in a trap. She heard Charles’ exclamation. “Mr. Grappit! Sir, we didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I daresay,” Grappit said. “China, my dear sister—niece, I fear I have bad news for you. Not that it was unexpected.”

  Amity wished the sun were not so hot; she wished its reflections on the sea would not dance so dizzily. She said, “When was it?”

  “Six months ago. It was sudden. The doctors called it Jamaica fever or perhaps a coup de soleil. James was always a man of full habit. I deeply regret being obliged to greet you with such sad news. But then I feared for some time that he was dead.”

  Charles said gravely, “The ladies must get out of the sun. Have you a carriage?” He addressed Grappit but his eyes caught Amity’s in a queer, long look, as if—why, Amity thought, as if he wishes to warn me of some danger.

  Warn her? For a second it only puzzled her. Then she remembered in a rush; they had tacitly agreed, she and Charles, that if murder lay behind them in America, Grappit might conceivably have had a motive for murder. But they had also agreed that it was in America, too far away to touch them here, in Jamaica.

  They had been wrong then; Grappit was here. Madam Grappit and Neville were here. China and Charles—all of them. Charles’ look then said, “Take care.”

  Grappit was replying, “I have a boat to take us to Kingston harbor—shorter. Fourteen miles by road but only two by sea. A carriage is waiting there. I fear it’s not commodious enough for so many of you. I expected only Amity.”

  “I—I came, too,” China said in a small voice. She was always impressed by Aunt Grappit’s fine lady ways and always a little terrified of Grappit’s authority.

  Charles said, “I’ll hire a carriage in Kingston and fellow you.”

  “Who is this?” Grappit asked abruptly, staring at Hester.

  Hester replied, lowering her eyelashes, and very, very respectfully, “I am the nursemaid, sir.”

  Her composure was so great that for just a second Grappit seemed a little discomposed. He frowned. “Well, you, whatever your name is, Mr. Charles will see to you and the boy. Come, niece, China—”

  Amity felt as if she were walking in a hot, confusing nightmare. They made their way through the throng of laborers, boxes of cargo, officials, merchants, to a rowboat, manned by two men in enormous straw hats and blue and white striped pantaloons. Once they were packed in the boat with their boxes following in another boat, the sun beat down remorselessly and reflected itself in dancing lights from the water.

  Jamey twisted and wriggled and saw everything but there was little other talk and when they reached the wharf at Kingston harbor Grappit, unperturbed by the stupefying heat, led “them quickly to a carriage.

  “Take a curricle,” he told Charles. “Lighter than a carriage. You’ll find one for hire over here, just behind those fruit stalls.” His bony hand pointed to open stalls laden with red, yellow, purple and green fruits and vegetables. Charles, Hester and Jamey disappeared as Amity and China settled themselves in the open carriage, grateful for the shade of its fringed canopy.

  She only half listened as Grappit talked. She was only half aware of the vine-covered doorways and glaring white walls of the town which they left behind as the carriage wound along a road which very soon began to climb. There was color everywhere, brilliant flowers, red and pink and yellow, in lush variety, scarcely less brilliant green foliage. Coconut trees clattered in whispers above their heads and stood out stiffly against the brilliant blue sky. A coachman in a wide straw hat and purple shirt drove. Beyond the sprawling town and the sea, the mountains rose nearer, in a jagged blue line against the sky.

  “The Blue Mountains,” Grappit said, with a wave of his bony hand—had it taken a gun and shot Lawyer Benfit?—and took up the subject of her father’s death again. “You will wish to know of his burial. A clergyman came from Punt Town; it’s a village not far from Mallam Penn. He was interred in the family lot at Mallam Penn.” China had contrived to find a lacy handkerchief which she held to her eyes.

  A cooler breeze sifted from the mountains and touched Amity’s hot face. She told herself that she really must put aside doubts which were in truth only doubts. She really must put aside an ugly notion that the Grappits had followed her to Jamaica, and gathered with the sinister persistence of buzzards. Charles had said there was no proof. She forced herself to turn to Grappit and speak politely. “When did you come? How did you get here so soon?”

  “A British ship, a brig, sailed from Savannah to Port Royal on the thirtieth of December and her captain very graciously brought us as passengers.”

  “A British—”

  Grappit’s eyes glistened. “Our fleet attacked Savannah on the twenty-eighth. The rebels ran like rats. Savannah is now back in British possession.”

  Amity’s throat tightened. “Simon—what of Simon?”

  “Unless he ran with the rest of his breed, he is taken prisoner—or possibly killed.”

  “He wouldn’t have run like a rat! None of them would have run—”

  “You talk like a rebel, niece. You should be thankful for our victory.”

  Our victory! Yes, but what of Simon? She leaned on the arm of the carriage away from Grappit, hating even the touch of his heavy linen sleeve. She might never hear from Simon again and might never know what had happened. No! She would not, she would not believe that!

  The carriage swayed and the harness of the horses jingled. The road turned and twisted amid great trees. They climbed a steep and narrow road, through lush, glossy green foliage. Great ferns fringed it closely. There were flowers somewhere, so fragrant and cloyingly sweet that the scent rose above the smells of carriage leather and horses. Presently a rushing sound, a roar arose and surged about them in a wild crescendo, all but drowning the creak of the carriage and the clop-clop of the horses’ hoofs. The carriage swerved onto a narrow road which clung to the side of a cliff. Below them a river dashed full force, hurling itself along a rocky canyon.

  China took her handkerchief from her eyes, gave it one look, squealed and covered her eyes again.

  “It’s quite safe,” Grappit said, shouting above the wild tumult of the river. “Although the day we arrived and made this journey, a kittereen was dashed to pieces at the curve above us. I daresay the man was driving too fast, or his horse took fright.”

  “What happened to the man?” China asked faintly from behind her lacy handkerchief.

  “There, there,” Grappit said soothingly, “it is no matter.”

  They emerged from the gorge. Once at a curve Amity looked back and thought she saw behind and below them another vehicle crawling along the road that clung to the cliff.

  “I understand the storm was a bad one,” Grappit said. “We got a little of it but by then its force was spent. Our ship was better—much faster than yours.”

  “How did you know when to meet me, Uncle?” Amity asked.

  “I didn’t know.
But I naturally assumed you would arrive soon—unless your ship had gone down in the storm. I had—ah—a little business in Spanish Town. This morning I was told that a ship flying the Dutch flag was coming into Port Royal. I went to meet her because there was a bare possibility that you might be on the boat. Shipping these days has its oddities. I daresay she was not a Dutch boat at all.”

  China began, “The captain told them he picked us up at sea, after the storm, that is—”

  “I see. Yes. So the Southern Cross is an American privateer or, more likely, a smuggler? Out of Savannah, I take it. Well, well, as I say, war has its odd means of continuing trade. Illegal, of course. Still it goes on. The storm was a bad one. Surprising. I am informed that this is not the hurricane season. The houses here are not built for the most part to withstand storms. Unwise certainly. Spanish Town, of course, which is now the seat of government, has buildings made of stone. And the house at Mallam Penn—ridiculous word, penn, it means plantation—the house is stone, not unattractive, but it needs repairs. I’ll see to that at once.”

  You will, will you, Amity thought. For the first time it struck her that now, in law, Mallam Penn and her father’s estate in America belonged to her—no, not to her, to Simon.

  She must establish it then before Grappit, somehow, got his greedy hands upon it. (If he had murdered two men for the purpose of somehow deflecting her father’s property to his own possession, there was nothing that would stop him. No, no, there was no proof!) Well, then it ought to be simple to establish her own claims and Jamey’s.

  Of course, no British court would permit Mallam Penn to go to the possession of a rebel or his wife. But China could claim Mallam Penn for herself and Jamey. Simon, an officer in the Continental Army, must now claim the estate in America. Simon was alive and safe somewhere; she would not permit herself any doubt about that.

  Grappit returned to the subject of the battered little Southern Cross. “The captain of the smuggler you took passage on must be a wily man. Papers, log, crew lists—a double set of everything, one to convince port officials of Dutch ownership, another true one. It’s a shocking thing, the amount of smuggling that goes on between American ports and British ports of the Sugar Islands. But then it’s only a matter of time before this so-called war is ended and the rebels brought to heel.”

  Amity stirred at that. “They are our countrymen, Uncle.”

  “Traitors,” he said smugly. “Rebels.”

  It was growing dusk when they arrived at Mallam Penn.

  Charles, Jamey and the nurse, in the lighter curricle, were by then close behind them.

  There were yellow stone gateposts, laden with creeping vines. The neat driveway was covered with small shells which crunched beneath the wheels of the carriage. There were trees, heavy shrubbery, and more brilliant flowers. A cloying odor lay over the whole land. China sniffed and wrinkled her nose. Grappit said, “It’s the vats of boiling sugar. There is also a small distillery. They call it the stillhouse. You did not know that Mallam Penn is a sugar plantation?”

  “Sugar!” China exclaimed. “I vow it sickens me.”

  The house came into view, amid great clumps of green shrubs. It was pale yellow stone, weatherbeaten but solid, a low house built in what Amity later learned was the West Indian custom. There was a veranda in front of the house; a curving flight of steps led up to it. There appeared to be a ground floor, below the veranda; she had a glimpse of a wide, closed door which opened, as she later learned, upon storerooms. The main and lived-in story of the house spread out in two wings.

  There were jalousies, painted a fading green, along the windows. A tall chimney rose up against the now brilliantly red and purple sky. There were vines, flowering with red and yellow and pink; she had never seen such riotous colors. Servants ran out to meet them; they too were a blur of brilliant red and yellow skirts and turbans, white shirts, candy-striped trousers. Someone held the horses; someone let down the steps; men ran to take the baggage and airily adjust the small trunks and boxes on their heads.

  A woman with a yellow turban, gold earrings and a motherly, beaming face, hoisted Jamey down.

  China gave her skirts a shake like a ruffled kitten and took Charles’ arm. “I swear I’m as stiff as an old horse. That’s a shocking bad road.”

  As they went up the curving flight of steps Aunt Grappit’s voice, raised to a high and petulant pitch, shrilled out from the open door. “Neville, you must wear heavier boots! Only yesterday there was that scorpion on the veranda.”

  “Scorpions, too!” China said. “I vow this is a monstrous dangerous place!”

  5

  NEVILLE FLUNG THE DOOR wider, came running out and then stopped to stare. His delicate face was vacuous with surprise; his carefully cultivated man-of-the-world indifference cracked like a fragile shell. “Why—why—” he stuttered, gaped at the whole cortege of boxes, servants, Jamey, China, the nursemaid, Charles, pulled himself together and said, “This is a surprise! Cousin,” he said kissing China’s hand. “Cousin,” he repeated and kissed Amity’s cheek.

  Neville was both charming and handsome. He was slim and delicately made; his hair curled romantically and was frosted with perfumed powder. His eyes were a wide pellucid blue, lacking the feverish intensity of his father’s. China’s face lost its half-frightened, half-miserable pout and Amity’s heart warmed at his welcome.

  Neville bowed to Charles with a great flourish and Charles returned the bow with an even greater flourish. The two men did not like each other. Charles scorned Neville’s airy, foppish ways and Neville thought Charles a damnably dull fellow and said so to Amity. With a graceful gesture Neville held the door wide for their entrance. “Don’t dawdle,” his mother’s voice rasped from inside the house. “You’ll let in all the bugs in Christendom. Not that this is any place for a Christian.”

  It sounded so perfectly natural, so exactly like her aunt that for the moment at least Amity’s terrible doubts were completely put to rout. Aunt Grappit couldn’t have murdered or connived at murder. It was a preposterous idea. It seemed funny, in a contrary way, that Aunt Grappit’s normal and disagreeable voice should go so far to dissolve a specter of murder. All the same, suddenly, Amity felt more natural herself, less strained and wary.

  She glanced back. Jamey seemed to have taken to the smiling, motherly woman in the yellow turban. He trotted along meekly at her side. Hester marched ahead of them, as cool as a duchess but shooting inquisitive glances everywhere just the same.

  “China!” Aunt Grappit’s voice rose nasally. “We didn’t expect you! Or Jamey! Or Mr. Carey!”

  She brushed Amity’s cheek perfunctorily with her own enameled face so Amity caught only a passing whiff of orrisroot. “There are cockroaches,” Aunt Grappit said, “as big as your hand. They fly, too. Mr. Grappit, will you have the goodness to close the door!”

  There were actually two doors; one of wood, weathered and heavy; another jalousied and reinforced against the flying kingdom by a draggled strip of gauze.

  A wide hall, or lounge, went straight through the house from front to back. It was intersected by two passages, leading apparently to the two wings of the house. Amity had a vague glimpse of oddments of furniture, a mahogany chest, an enormous English clock, cane chairs and French settees cushioned in faded damask. The floor was bare except for a cane matting. The whole place was dusky with twilight. “We must have candles,” Grappit said.

  “They’ll draw insects,” Aunt Grappit objected, but Neville clapped his hands. There was confusion in the back of the hall as the servants ran here and there, disposing of baggage. From the bustling melee a maid came running and in a moment candles flared up everywhere. “I’ll show you to your chambers,” Aunt Grappit said.

  China gave the floor a searching look, found no insect life, lowered the wide skirts she had clutched up and stiffened. “Thank you, Aunt. Perhaps I’d better look over the house before I select my own chamber.”

  Amity’s lips twitched. So China, too, felt
that the Grappits were taking too much authority upon themselves.

  But Madam Grappit shrewdly knew her power over China. Instantly she became a fine lady of fashion. “Lud, child,” she said, through her high nose, “they are all the same. However, I’ve had one of them cleaned—what these lazy servants call cleaning—for Amity. You’d better take that one, China. Amity can have her father’s room. I daresay it has been dusted, at least. Come this way.” She swished ahead of them, turning into the corridor which led along the left, east wing of the house, holding her skirts with affected daintiness.

  She was dressed as for a fashionable rout or assembly, in yellow silk, its wide skirt opening over an orange, embroidered petticoat. Not for Aunt Grappit were the tiny aprons and coquettish caps which many ladies affected for home wear, possibly not so much for domestic needs as because they were coquettish and charming. Her red-gray hair was elaborately dressed and powdered. Her full, rather florid face was enameled white, her waist laced in with tight stays. She wore orange slippers with fashionable red heels. She looked very hot and very uncomfortable.

  She showed China into a vast square bedroom, where maids were bustling about, and China accepted it with only a pouted request that a room near her be made neat for Jamey and his nurse.

  “Nurse?” Aunt Grappit flung up her nose like a startled horse, took a quizzing glass which hung on a long, jeweled chain and stared through it at Hester, who had quietly followed them.

  “What’s your name, wench?”

  “Hester—ma’am.” She did not lower her eyes; she failed to curtsy. In the wavering candlelight her face looked a little hard.

  Aunt Grappit snorted. “Mind your manners, Hester,” she said sharply and turned to the two maids who were scurrying about cheerfully but rather aimlessly. “Tidy up the room next to this one. Hurry along, now. Bring in a trundle bed—God knows whether there is one or not—but bring in a small bed for the boy. Amity, this corner room was your father’s.”

  Amity closed the door behind her and looked around. It was also a big, square room, lighted dimly by a candle in a tarnished silver candlestick.