There was a special warmth in his voice when he spoke of his youngest daughter that I hadn’t heard before.
“Yet it’s Iris Derek wants to marry,” I said.
“Of course. She’s remote and beautiful and tantalizing. He could have Fern’s love easily, and he probably knows it. She’s out there in the open, to be read in a moment. Perhaps for Derek, Iris is the ultimate treasure ship in deep water, never to be fully explored—always just eluding him.”
I had thought something of the sort myself. “Are you for this marriage?”
“Poppy was terribly against it because she thought him too old for Iris—and something of a wild man.”
“That isn’t what I asked,” I said.
“Derek’s an old friend. I admire him. Maybe because he’s always done the things I only play at and write about. I think he’ll be good for Iris.”
“I have the feeling that Iris doesn’t want me here.”
“It’s possible. Your coming may seem like a threat to both girls. You have to recognize that.”
“Why should I be a threat to anyone?”
He didn’t answer, and his look made me uneasy again. He was like deep water too, and never easily read. There could be reefs around Clifton York. If he were a conniving man would he try to use his oldest daughter—me—against the two younger ones? If there were something he wanted from them?
“Remember,” I said, “I’m not a catalyst. And I’m not a pawn either, in any game you’re playing. Are you playing a game?”
He wasn’t smiling now. “If I am, it could be a deadly one. Perhaps a life or death game—just as Poppy may have been playing.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I can’t explain, Laurel. Not now. But perhaps you can do something for me while you’re here.”
I waited, promising nothing. I needed answers myself.
With an effort he seemed to summon inner resources and went on. “Poppy was worried in the days before she died. Frightened. I tried to find out what was the matter, but she wouldn’t tell me. Yet what happened in the orchid house couldn’t have been anything but a terrible accident. So why do I keep feeling that she was terrified about something, and that there might have been a connection between her terror and her death?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just watch, Laurel. And listen to all of them. Pick up anything you can, even if it’s something you don’t understand. Find me something to go on. But don’t tell anyone I asked you.”
This was a course I’d already chosen to follow, so nothing had changed, and as father and daughter we were no closer than before.
“I suppose I can try,” I said doubtfully.
I didn’t believe this was all he wanted of me. There was something more. And until what he held back came clear, I could side with no one. Of one thing I was certain. The fear I’d sensed in him earlier was still there, though I had no idea whether it was for himself or someone else. He was a far more troubled man than I’d expected to find. And more real than all my fantasies.
The telephone rang just then, and he picked it up. “Yes, Marcus … she’s here. Do you want to talk to her?” He held out the phone and I took it.
“Hello, Marcus.”
“Hello, Laurel.” I knew the deep tones of his voice, and I liked the sound. Marcus wasn’t to be easily read either, but at least there was no miasma around him of the sort I’d sensed in this house.
“I won’t ask how things are going,” he went on. “That’s probably too complicated to answer. Are you willing to get up early tomorrow morning—to see the sunrise?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I’d like that.”
“Fine. We won’t wake the others. Just come downstairs at six o’clock and open the door for me. I’ll be on the porch.” He rang off in his usual abrupt way, and I replaced the phone.
“We’re going to look at the sunrise tomorrow morning,” I said.
My father seemed oddly uncertain, and I studied him for a moment. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t? Marcus is your friend, isn’t he? Why can’t you turn to him about whatever’s worrying you?”
He shook his head vehemently. “Marcus is too close, too involved with all of us. You’re the newcomer who can see us more objectively. Marcus’s view may be different from mine, so hold off and don’t let him influence you too much.”
“It seems to me that I am becoming involved, whether I like it or not,” I said.
“But in a different way.” Again his sigh came from some unhappy depth. “When Poppy died …” He broke off and closed his eyes for a moment.
I could sense his pain. It wasn’t fair—when he was hurting other people.
“What am I supposed to call you?” I asked. “‘Father’ doesn’t come easily, and I expect you have to grow up with ‘Dad.’”
“The girls call me Cliff. It was Poppy’s notion that we should all be chummy and good friends, so they grew up that way. I’m not sure it worked.”
“I’ll call you what they do,” I said. “Good night, Cliff.”
He was standing at the window again, and he said, “Good night,” over his shoulder, not looking at me.
I closed the door softly and once more started upstairs. My meeting with him had been thoroughly disquieting, and it had put a burden on me that I didn’t want to accept. At least I’d made him no promises.
As I walked down the hall to my room, I heard someone on the attic stairs behind me, and when I turned Alida Burch came running down. Without noticing me in the shadows of the hall, she hurried to the lower stairs and disappeared from view. Working late, I supposed, and wondered why the woman disturbed me so.
The moment I opened the door of my room I saw that someone had intruded again. The photograph with the orchid mask had been returned to its hook on the wall, and I could only wonder why someone had borrowed it in the first place. The row of flowers seemed to stare brightly, mocking me, and I saw at once what had been done to the missing picture. A narrow piece of black tape had been pasted on the glass in such a way that the eyes behind the mask were hidden.
What sort of trick was this? Certainly, it seemed malicious. I had noticed no one around, except for Alida on the attic stairs. But I’d been with my father long enough so that the picture could easily have been rehung in that time. What I wanted to know was who had done this, and why.
I rapped on Fern’s door, and when I had no answer I went out on the rear porch and looked into the garden. The panels of the orchid house glowed with light, so someone was there.
I ran down the back stairs and crossed the lighted area of the garden. The night air was gentle on my face—still a surprise. I tapped on the door, and when there was no answer, I opened it and walked in. Lights burned in the work area, and Iris sat on a high stool at the potting bench, absorbed in an orchid that resembled a white moth.
“May I come in?” I asked.
“Oh—Laurel? Yes, of course. I just need to finish this.”
She had changed to jeans and a light sweater—no longer the elegant figure I’d seen earlier, though these jeans would wear a designer’s name, I was sure.
“I don’t suppose you know much about orchids?” The question required no answer. “Most people don’t, though you’d be amazed how many orchid fanciers there are. Right now I’m gathering pollen to fertilize another flower,” she added, instructing me.
What I had to say could wait, and I watched as she used a toothpick to transfer a sticky bit of pollen from the anther of the plant to the stigma of another. Then she drew out more pollen and placed it delicately in a gelatin capsule.
“I’m doing the job insects and bees do in nature,” she explained. “Orchid pollen’s too solid to be carried by the wind. Most orchids are bisexual, but they can’t be fertilized by their own pollen.”
I hadn’t heard Iris talk this much since I’d met her, and I wondered if she were trying to distract me, perhaps less sure than she looked under that cool exterior.<
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“I’ll refrigerate this and finish tomorrow,” she went on. “Poppy used to do all of this herself. It made her happy when she could breed beautiful new hybrids. Fern and I helped her even when we were small. So now we have to take over altogether.”
I was still marking time, waiting for the right moment. “What do you do with all these orchids?”
“That’s the trouble. We just enjoy them and give them to friends. But I’d like to see this turned into a real business. That’s what I’m working toward now. Of course we don’t have a big enough place here. We’d need an orchid range somewhere else, with more shade houses and a big greenhouse. It will mean hiring a full-time grower—and that will upset Fern. She’d like everything to stay just as it was when Poppy was alive.”
Her voice seemed to grow colder as she spoke. Because she suppressed her own feelings? Because she disliked her sister so much? Iris had everything going for her, yet her bitterness was clear. Against what—whom? At least for the moment she seemed less antagonistic toward me, and I realized that orchids were a good part of her world too, just as they were of Fern’s, but with a different perspective.
“I saw the lights on, so I came down to find someone to talk to,” I told her.
Iris carried several capsules to a small refrigerator and placed them in a dish inside. “All right—what about?”
There was no warmth in her, no interest, but I continued. “This afternoon when I was out, someone came into my room and took one of those orchid photographs from the wall. The one with the mask.”
“Fern may have wanted the picture for some reason,” Iris said. “Perhaps she meant to tell you later. What’s troubling you, Laurel?”
“It wasn’t Fern. At least, she didn’t take it down. The photograph was removed when I was in here talking with Fern this afternoon. Then a few minutes ago, when I came upstairs, I found that it had been returned to the wall just as it was before—except that a strip of black tape had been pasted on the glass to cover the eyes in the mask.”
Iris had begun to work with a splendid tiger orchid—a creamy bloom with garnet striping—preparing to move it to a larger pot. “Perhaps someone wanted to upset you. Perhaps whoever it was has succeeded.”
“Why should anyone want to upset me?”
Iris didn’t look at me, her hands busy with the transplanting. “We’re none of us sure just why you’ve come here, or what you want.”
I had no answer for her, and I moved on along the walkway, stopping to look at a row of orchids that were entirely blue or violet shades.
Iris seemed indifferent to what I’d told her, and she went on informing me. “Those are some of our current breeders. Especially fine studs we’re using to cross with other species.”
Impatience swept through me. I didn’t really care about some silly trick with the picture. It wasn’t this lush world of orchids that interested me most, either. What I wanted to know was what might be troubling my father, and what I might learn that could help him—and help me. Perhaps, whether I liked it or not, I was already committed.
“When I saw Cliff a little while ago,” I said, “he told me about how your mother died. I’m terribly sorry.”
Still holding the pot with its tiger-striped orchid, Iris stared at me, the veneer of coolness gone, her hostility palpable. “Poppy was found right there where you’re standing. Look at those boards under your feet, Laurel—you can still see the stain of my mother’s blood.”
It was as though I’d opened some chink in the armor Iris wore, so that emotion had suddenly spewed out at me with words intended to shock.
I felt forced to look down. Some effort had been made to scrub away the brown stain on the walk, but I could see the dark, spreading mark as though it flowed freshly. I could almost see blood on the orchids as Cliff had described them. In that instant Poppy was more real to me in the visualization of her death than she’d seemed in that idealized portrait with her two small daughters. A life had seeped away on these boards beneath my feet, and now I could feel the shock and pain my father must have suffered, and the full horror for Poppy’s daughters. More than ever, this seemed a haunted place.
Iris went on as if compelled. “By the time Alida found her, it was all over. If only I’d been home, she might have been saved!”
“Please,” I said, “I didn’t mean to distress you. It’s just that Cliff seems so—so worried about something, and I’d like to understand.”
She went on as though she hadn’t heard me. “Marcus drove me to a flower show at the Garden Club that afternoon, and Fern was checking information for Cliff at the library. When Alida came downstairs to look for Poppy, she found the door jammed and had no answer to her calls. So she forced the door and came in. Poppy was already dead. They couldn’t revive her. Derek had just stopped by the house, and they sent him to the library to bring Fern home. Alida lost her friend, Cliff lost his wife, and Fern and I our mother.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she blinked them away furiously. “Now you walk in and think you can take Cliff over! When we’d never even heard of your existence for all these years!”
This was another count against my father—that he’d never told his daughters about their older half sister.
Iris’s explosive anger alarmed me, and I moved toward the door. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I wouldn’t have come to Key West if I’d understood—”
She made an effort to control herself, though the orchid trembled in her hands. “You’re not wanted here. If someone moved a picture in your room, perhaps that’s what they were trying to tell you. Just go away and don’t interfere with us. Not even Cliff really wants you here. It was Marcus’s crazy idea.”
There was no answer I could give her, but as I moved toward the door, she stopped me.
“Of course Cliff is upset and suffering! He could have saved Poppy. Her death was needless. He should have saved her! Do you think there’s anything you can do about that? He doesn’t need another daughter. Half the time he doesn’t know that Fern and I exist. Most of his emotions go into his novels! That’s where his heart lies! He’s never had anything left over for us. Any more than he had for our mother. It was worst of all for her. And then—” Iris broke off abruptly, staring past me at the door, and the pot slipped from her shaking hands to shatter and spill its contents on the slate walk.
We’d neither of us heard Fern come in, but when I looked around and saw her standing in the doorway, her white face framed in tawny hair no longer pinned on top of her head, I knew she had frightened her sister. She clutched a wide scarf of primrose lace about her shoulders as she rushed to the orchid, which was lying bruised in the midst of the pot shards and planting material.
Iris put one hand on a shelf to steady herself. “Oh, God!” she said. “For just a second I thought you were Poppy. That’s her scarf you’re wearing.”
Fern gave her attention to the broken pot. “Look what you’ve done, Iris! Oh, my poor darling!” Kneeling on the walk, she scooped up the plant, nestling its roots in her hands. “Give me another pot, will you? Quickly, Iris!”
Iris handed her an earthenware pot from a stack nearby and then brought a bucket of fresh potting material. Without a word she helped Fern replant the orchid in pulverized bark. When Fern was satisfied, she stood up, brushing earth from her yellow dress. Her hair fell about her shoulders in a shining mass—hair as golden in this light as the pollen of the orchids.
“They’re really very strong, you know,” Fern said, as if to reassure me as she placed the pot on a shelf. “They can recuperate quickly, and they’re surprisingly resistant to all sorts of pests and diseases. They look fragile, but they’re stronger than most plants. And they live a long time too. Just the same, they have feelings and they shouldn’t be treated like this. You’re not careful enough, Iris. Maybe you should stay out of the orchid house and leave it to me!”
“The orchids don’t belong to you, so don’t talk nonsense.” Iris was her cool self again. “You do look a mess, Fern.
You’d better go upstairs and take a bath.”
“So you can upset Laurel some more?” Fern demanded. “Oh, I heard all the things you were saying. Cruel things. Come along, Laurel honey—she doesn’t want us here. But my orchids will wait for me. They won’t even grow for her.”
She grasped my hand and pulled me toward the door. I looked back apologetically at Iris. She was studying the replanted orchid, but I doubt if she saw it just then. Outside in the garden, Fern linked an arm in mine, and we moved across the bricked area together.
“Don’t mind Iris,” she said. “She’s not like me. She holds her feelings back too much. Then when she lets go everything bursts out. Afterwards, she’s sorry and ashamed. You’ll see. We’ll just let her alone for a while to recover. She’s not a happy person, my sister. What would you like to do now, Laurel?”
“Just go to bed,” I said wearily. Iris’s outburst had been frightening in its ferocity, and Fern’s words didn’t reassure me. When I was small, I’d wished for a sister. Now I’d found two—and could take no joy in either relationship. Iris disliked me and Fern worried me. The only event I’d begun to look forward to was seeing Marcus in the morning. He might be the one person who could help me. This time I hoped he would open up.
Fern came with me upstairs and glanced into my room as I opened the door. She saw the mask photograph in its place on the wall, saw the black tape, and ran quickly to stand before the picture.
“Who did this?” she cried.
“I haven’t any idea.”
She stood for a moment studying the row of orchid faces thoughtfully. Then she reached up and peeled the tape off the middle picture.
“There! That’s better. Now she can see you again. Just don’t dream about them tonight, Laurel. Sometimes I do. Dream of orchids, I mean. Awful dreams. In the daytime I love orchids, but at night they can turn carnivorous. Sometimes I think they’re going to destroy me, the way they did Poppy.” Her eyes were enormous—haunted.
Dream of Orchids Page 8
