Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I wondered aloud whether that was why Arthur had taken poison.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Bruce said. “That poisoning came much later, and no one was ever sure whether it was suicide, or whether someone else could have administered the dose. He had a good many enemies and there were always business acquaintances as well as friends coming in and out of Spindrift.”

  “I’ve never found the man in the portrait that hangs in the Tower Room especially sympathetic,” I said.

  “I imagine he had his problems. And now Spindrift has a new problem.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, quickly alert.

  “You,” Bruce said. “You seem to have turned the house upside down with this talk about a log of Adam’s.”

  “I only told Joel,” I said.

  “Who told his mother, who told the rest of us. So your plan to search the house isn’t much of a secret. But it’s certainly upsetting the beehive.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  Bruce dropped his voice to a lower tone. “Christy, be careful. That log of Adam’s could concern a lot of people. Some of them outside of Morelands. I wish Theo hadn’t talked so openly about your looking for the log. We can’t tell who may have outside connections that go back to a dangerous time.”

  “What do you mean?” I pressed him. “What dangerous time? What do you know about that log?”

  “I didn’t even know it existed until today. Fiona has kept still about it. But I can imagine some of the things Adam might have written in it.”

  “Then tell me what they were.”

  His look darkened. “No, Christy. You’re getting in over your head. Don’t stir up the sleeping beasts.”

  “Beasts who went to sleep when Adam died? Because they knew they were safe, once he was out of the way?”

  Bruce stared out over the harbor and I knew that whatever he might suspect, he was not going to tell me.

  Peter returned to the table, full of chatter about the docking of the boat, but while I was glad to see him come to life, my pleasure in this outing had vanished. Some dark knowledge underlay Bruce’s words, and he wasn’t going to reveal it to me.

  I wondered what he would make of Fiona’s hiding a pistol in Zenia’s desk. Was it a gun that belonged to her? Or was it one that belonged to someone else and that she feared might be used? Had she been hiding it so it wouldn’t be taken from her, hiding it for a quick recovery if she should want to use it? My thoughts whirled into a morass of speculation from which it was difficult to extract them. Yet out of some lingering loyalty to the woman who was my stepmother, I could not tell Bruce.

  However, there was still something I wanted to do before we returned to Spindrift. I opened my handbag and took out my father’s penknife.

  “Do you recognize this?” I asked Peter and set it down on the table before him.

  He did not touch the knife, but stared at it as though it frightened him. “It’s Grandpa’s knife.”

  “Yes. Would you like to have it?”

  He looked at me and his eyes filled with tears that he brushed away angrily. “You’re trying to make me cry!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with crying, Peter. I miss him too, and sometimes I cry.”

  Quietly Bruce got up from the table and walked to another window, leaving us alone for a little while, as we needed to be.

  “But Grandma Theo says I mustn’t cry over him,” Peter went on. “She—she says he was a w-worthless person and did a lot of wrong things and I’m not to cry about him!”

  There was no one but Bruce in the restaurant to see, and I left my place at the table and went to kneel beside Peter’s chair. For once he did not draw away when I put my arms about him.

  “You’re not to believe such things of your grandfather. He was a wonderful man and we must never forget that, or let anything make us believe any different. It’s all right to cry for him, darling. You can cry right now, if you like.”

  My son clung to me for the first time in nearly a year. He leaned his head against my shoulder and when I bent my own head I felt his wet cheek against mine. Down by the window Bruce glanced around at us, his look warmly sympathetic.

  When all the held-back tears had been shed, Peter pushed me gently away, and Bruce came back to the table to offer a big linen handkerchief. Peter took it and wiped his eyes, and swallowed with a last, gulping sob. I went back to my own place and he reached out to pick up the penknife.

  “Is it all right to keep this, Mother? I mean, Grandma Theo won’t like it.”

  “Grandpa Adam would want you to have it,” I said, chalking up one more mark against Theo. I looked at Bruce, still shaken by the emotion that had swept me when I’d held my son in my arms again. “I think we’d better go now, please.”

  He nodded and signaled for the check. When he had paid it, we walked back to where Bruce had parked his car. Somehow there was a greater closeness between the three of us than had existed before. The afternoon had been unexpectedly satisfying, and it had brought Peter closer to me. One of my purposes, at least, was beginning to show some results.

  We drove back to Spindrift by a somewhat different route and Bruce talked to Peter, in the seat between us, about what an interesting place Newport was. Some people, when they heard the name “Newport,” he said, thought only of the wealthy who had lived here and made themselves high society, or they thought of the current popular music festivals, or the yacht races for the America’s Cup. But Newport had been settled in the early 1600s and until the Revolution it had prospered and been a center of commerce. When the British had occupied the town they had confiscated and destroyed, so that much of Newport’s historical past had been wiped out. Fortunately, many of the old houses had been left standing, and eventually the city had returned to a position of influence and prosperity. Today there were more colonial houses in Newport than in any other city in the country, so there was a great and varied heritage to be preserved.

  In the telling, Bruce made the story come to life so that Peter’s eyes shone and when Bruce told him he would take him sometime to look at more of those old houses, Peter jumped at the suggestion.

  By the time we reached Spindrift, something of my earlier pleasure in our excursion had returned and I could thank Bruce warmly for making the trip so interesting for Peter—and for me. But if I had managed to draw a little closer to Peter by this time, I knew Bruce had wanted to discourage me from my present course and did not approve of my determination to follow it—as did no one else.

  He must have had some perception of what I was feeling because when he came around to open the car door and Peter had jumped out past us to run up the steps, forgetting to thank anyone, Bruce held my hand for a moment.

  “I’d like to see you safe, Christy,” he said. “It’s better not to stir up those beasts.”

  In an instant everything was spoiled and I snatched my hand away. “Who is it you’re trying to protect?”

  The sardonic look was back in his eyes. “Perhaps if I knew, I wouldn’t protect them.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Sometimes I’m not sure of anything,” he said, and he went around the car to the driver’s side.

  I didn’t wait for him to drive off, but ran up the steps in Peter’s wake. Something we had been moving toward had been blocked, and in a way I was relieved. This afternoon I had felt increasingly attracted to Bruce, and while I was glad of his help with Peter, I didn’t want that. I didn’t dare want it. Now I was all the more sure there was something to discover about Adam’s death, and all the more sure that I was going to discover it before very long. Nothing else mattered.

  Peter had disappeared and Fiona was waiting for me at the first-floor landing of the stairs. She no longer appeared to be sleepwalking, but her face, so much thinner than when my father had been alive, had a harried look about it.

  “Theo wants to see you,” she told me.

  “So you’re back in her good graces. What’s up now?”

 
; “I don’t think it’s anything special. She just wants to hear about your taking Peter to town.”

  I went up to the third floor with her and found Theo waiting for me in her sitting room, upright in a rose-striped chair. She still wore her citron-yellow robe, and the bruise on her forehead had been covered by a patch of bandage. If it had not been for that evidence, she would have looked none the worse for her fall.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked as she waved me toward a chair.

  Fiona followed me into the room and went back to her addressing of invitations, while Theo’s green eyes studied me as though something profound was to be learned through that penetrating gaze.

  “I’m feeling like anyone who has an enemy,” she said.

  So she was now going to admit to an attack upon herself. But she went on quickly.

  “That’s not what I want to talk about. How was your tea with Peter and Bruce?”

  How quickly she knew about everything that happened!

  “We had a very pleasant time,” I said, trying to sound as neutral as possible.

  “Peter enjoyed himself?”

  “I’m sure he did.”

  “You didn’t upset him then?”

  “Why should I upset him?”

  “Come, Christy dear, we know you’ve been ill and that there have been times when you’ve upset him very much.”

  “I’m not ill any longer.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that you are so sure about that—in spite of your seeing lights after dark, where there couldn’t be any lights, and roaming the corridors on strange errands in the middle of the night.”

  I had to resist her goading. She wanted to upset me, and I made myself answer quietly.

  “There was a light over at Redstones. We all saw the evidence of that candle. And when I have a sleepless night I often get up and walk about.”

  Fiona’s pen moved rapidly on the envelope she was addressing. I had the feeling that she was forcing herself not to stare at me, not to listen.

  “I’ve just talked to Miss Crawford,” Theo said. “She tells me Peter was terribly excited when he came in. I don’t think I like that.”

  “Small boys need healthy excitement once in a while. If they don’t find it in their everyday lives, they can get into mischief. Though I can’t say anything very exciting happened. One thing I did was to give him my father’s penknife. Adam would want him to have it.”

  She stiffened in her chair and I knew she detested the way I was standing up to her. She couldn’t know that she was having her old effect on me, and that I’d begun to tremble in the pit of my stomach.

  “What did he do when you gave him the knife?” she demanded.

  “He cried. We both cried.”

  “Hah!” It was a sound of triumph. “That sort of emotionalism isn’t good for him.”

  “I don’t agree,” I said. “It’s very good to let your feelings go now and then. Peter has needed a good cry. He felt better for it afterwards.”

  “Boys shouldn’t be encouraged to cry.” It was her typical pronouncement, and I began to get a little excited myself.

  “That’s nonsense! Tears can be healthy. Little boys cry as well as little girls. And so do men.”

  “Have you ever seen Joel cry?” she asked me.

  “I suppose you taught him not to. And perhaps that’s one of the things that’s the matter. He can’t ever let go and suffer openly. But when feelings have to be suppressed like that there can be a real explosion when they finally break out.”

  “You are a psychiatrist, I presume?”

  “As much as you are.” I knew I was being as snide as Theo, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  Fiona’s pen had ceased to move. I glanced at her and saw that she was regarding me with something like horror. Because if there was a Moreland Empire, Theo was the empress, and one did not argue with the ruler of the realm.

  But since I had gone this far, I might as well go all the way, and I continued. “When I have finished what I’ve come to Spindrift for, you might as well know that I mean to take Peter away. I’m grateful to you for helping Joel and me by looking after him while I was ill. But now I’m well again I’m ready to be his mother properly.”

  The purplish look came into Theo’s face and I tried to soften my tone.

  “I know Peter loves you very much as his grandmother, and we’ll want him to see you often. There needn’t be any change in his relationship with you. It’s just that Joel and I want to have our own say about raising him.”

  “‘We’?” Theo echoed my pronoun. “Is it really to be we? Joel tells me your marriage hasn’t gone well since you came back from the hospital.”

  “That’s between Joel and me,” I said flatly. “It’s for us to work out.”

  Theo put her hand to her head as though she had grown weary of our whole discussion. When she was unexpectedly silent, and Fiona’s pen began to move again, I found I couldn’t sit still any longer. The tremor in the pit of my stomach was quickening, and I left my chair abruptly to walk to a corner shelf where the carved figure of the little Japanese lady had been placed. I stared at her for a moment, as though I might gain from her my self-possession and the courage to stand up to Theodora Moreland.

  A sound behind me made me turn, and I felt a slight shock to discover both Theo and Fiona standing very close behind me.

  “Are you all right?” Theo said.

  “What do you mean? Of course I’m all right.”

  She and Fiona looked at each other.

  “You didn’t answer when I spoke to you,” Theo said, “and you started to sway. You must have gone completely blank for a moment or two.”

  “Blank? Of course I didn’t go blank. I was just looking at your little Japanese lady.”

  Theo nodded at Fiona. “It was one of her lapses. She used to have them at the hospital. I’d hoped she’d recovered from them.”

  “There wasn’t any lapse!” I cried. “I’ve been perfectly conscious every minute.”

  Theo regarded me sadly. “I know. That’s what you always say. But Fiona saw this too. Didn’t you, Fiona?”

  “Yes, of course,” Fiona said, but her eyes didn’t meet mine.

  I felt shaken enough to return to my chair. Theo told Fiona to get me some water, and then nodded to someone in the doorway. As I sipped, Ferris Thornton came into the room.

  “Theodora, you look flushed and upset,” he said and went to bend over her in concern.

  She pushed him away and sat down at her desk. “I’m not the one who is upset. It’s Christina we’re concerned about. She’s just had one of those forgetful spells she used to have at the hospital. If these are to return, Peter musn’t be trusted to her.”

  I made a sound of protest and spilled water from my glass. It was hard to speak because I was so shaken and disconcerted. I couldn’t tell for sure whether there had been some lapse of consciousness, or if this was simply one of Theo’s tricks, in which she was aided and abetted by Fiona.

  Ferris gave me his searching lawyer’s look that revealed very little, but he made no comment.

  Theo went on tartly. “If you’ve recovered, Christina, you can tell me what you meant by saying you had come to Spindrift for a purpose.”

  I’d always hated to be called “Christina,” which of course was why she was doing it. I tried to answer her quietly, tried to keep myself from trembling.

  “I think everyone knows what I want. I told Joel and he seems to have publicized it. If my father left his last log anywhere in this house, I’d like to find it. Or if someone else has found it, I want to see what he wrote in those pages.”

  Ferris coughed gently. “I doubt that there is any such log to be discovered at this late date. Or if there should be, I hope it will be destroyed unread at once.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why are you all so afraid of what my father might have recorded in the last days of his life?”

  Fiona had given up her pretense of working and she was staring at me a
s if hypnotized. Theo flung up her hand in a gesture of impatience, but Ferris spoke to me in that dry, even tone that was typically his.

  “Your father was involved in some pretty nefarious dealings before he died. Some of these came out in the papers, but not all. He was ready to do anything to get money for his gambling. Theodora could not go on supporting this, as Hal had done. Adam was at the end of his resources, and he knew it. So he turned to some blackguardly schemes that were about to blow up in his face. If he kept any record of what he was mixing into—which I doubt—it would be kinder to you to have that record destroyed without reading it.”

  I managed to speak into the waiting silence, knowing they were all watching me. “I don’t believe one word you’re saying! I never did believe those stories that someone invented for the police and the newspapers. All those lies about Adam having dealings with the underworld.”

  He regarded me almost sadly. “Have I ever lied to you, Christy?”

  I tried to see him in his old, loved role of the Uncle Ferris who had been good to a lonely little girl without a mother, but the picture had blurred. He belonged to the Morelands and I could no longer trust him. If he chose to lie to me he would.

  I stood up and moved toward the door. “If that’s all you want of me now, Theo—”

  “You may go,” she said shortly. “But we’ll talk about some of these plans of yours again. Perhaps you’d better go and lie down now, give yourself time to recover from what has just happened to you. All this emotionalism isn’t good for your state of health.”

  Ferris said, “I’d like to speak with you alone for a moment, Theodora.”

  She flicked her fingers in dismissal at Fiona, who followed me out the door. Just as Fiona closed it, we heard Ferris’s voice from inside the room. He spoke softly and not all the words were distinct, but I heard two of them—“gun” and “missing.” Then the door had shut and we were walking along the corridor together. If I had heard, Fiona had too, but she gave no sign as she moved along at my side, and I knew she was lost in her thoughts and sleepwalking again. She still wore the dark red caftan I’d seen her in earlier, and she moved beside me, drifting as though without direction.