As we went down the corridor, Bruce touched my arm lightly. “It’s a bright morning—let’s go out to the pergola.”
I asked nothing more than to be with him quietly until my energy returned. Then I must decide what to do. I had been drifting long enough. I left him to pick up a jacket and met him again at a side door.
It was a warm morning for November and I raised my head to the renewal of sunshine as we stepped out the door on the other side of the house from Redstones. I was glad not to look at that structure now.
The pergola stretched its long white trellis in the direction of the sea, and there was that lounging greyhound in weathered stone at its entrance, its ears cocked alertly, its tail curved around the base of the pedestal. Peter had always loved the greyhound. When we’d come here when he was small he used to like to ride on its back. I gave the sun-warmed stone head a light pat as I passed it. There were so few pleasant memories Spindrift had for me.
Italian tiles paved the floor beneath vine-covered trellises, and dappled sunshine lay upon their terra cotta squares. A white bench invited us and I sat down on it, with Bruce beside me. For a time we stayed there in silence, drinking in the deceptive peace, letting warmth seep through our chill. There was no real peace and the chill went bone deep, but for a little while I was at ease. There were things I must talk about with Bruce, but they could wait a little.
When the silence grew long, I began to speak of faraway matters. “I haven’t had time to tell you, but I found a diary last night that belonged to Zenia Patton-Stuyvesant.”
Bruce was thinking of the present and for a moment it was as if he didn’t know who I was talking about. Then he said, “Zenia? A diary?”
I told him what I had read, even to the finding of the Longfellow poem. It was a distraction from the present, at least, and he heard me out. As I spoke I noted how worn he looked from lack of sleep. As with all of us, what had happened’ had taken its toll. But Zenia’s story could interest him, since he was her great-nephew.
“So that’s what happened. I’m afraid Spindrift has a grisly history.” Abruptly, he returned to the present. “Have you seen Theo this morning?”
“Yes. She came to my room. She looks pretty awful. I expect we all do.”
“She’ll have to face what’s happened now,” he said.
“She pretends not to know anything.”
“Of course. She’s got to put up a wall of protection at all costs.”
“Protection for whom? I can’t believe Theo would protect a murderer, even if exposure should mean telling the truth about Hal and what the paper was doing.”
He didn’t answer that, and my mind went woolgathering over my own words. Theo would never hesitate to turn Ferris over to the police if she believed him guilty, any more than she would hesitate to do the same thing with Bruce. There was only one person she would protect at all costs—her son. And not for a moment could I believe that Joel was capable of the crimes which had been committed.
Bruce was speaking quietly, and I forced myself to listen. “Perhaps it’s Theo who must be protected now. Whether she wants me to or not, I think I’ll stand by. I don’t want to leave her to Ferris any longer.”
I glanced at him quickly. “For any particular reason?”
“No. Only a sense of uneasiness.”
I could agree with that. Ferris was still a mystery to me. I had known him all my life, yet I had realized in this short time I’d been at Spindrift that I did not know him at all.
“Maybe we can persuade her to close Spindrift and let us all go back to town.”
“The police aren’t going to permit that for a while,” he reminded me. “Christy, have you talked to Joel yet?”
I didn’t want to tell him, but the time had come. “Yes. I talked to him yesterday. I let him know that I wanted to end our marriage. He said he wouldn’t oppose me, but that he and Theo would see that Peter stayed with him.” I could hear my voice, drained of emotion because I had gone numb again since Fiona’s death. In a little while I must wake up and start feeling, but for now any emotion at all seemed dangerous. There was no answer ahead and I was afraid to feel.
Bruce put an arm about me and drew me close. “Don’t think about it now, darling. We’ll work it out in time. You’ve had too much to endure since last New Year’s Eve.”
“Miss Crawford told me something just now that might make all the difference,” I said. “Fiona tried to leave a letter with her last night that she was to give me. Crawford wouldn’t take it, and Fiona never delivered it. She didn’t come to you with the letter, did she?”
Bruce shook his head. “I met her briefly in the hall last night, but she didn’t say anything about a letter.”
“Then unless she destroyed it, it must be around someplace.”
“If you’re right, we’d better find it. I’ll get back to the house and have a look.”
I was glad that he found the matter of the letter urgent, but somehow I had little hope that he would find it.
It was just as well that he moved away from me at that moment because a man appeared suddenly in the opening to our shelter, and while I stared in astonishment, he began to speak hurriedly.
“You’re Mrs. Christina Moreland, aren’t you? The younger Mrs. Moreland? And you found the body last night, didn’t you? Will you tell me—”
But Bruce was on his feet, tall and formidable. “Mrs. Theodora Moreland has promised you an interview. That’s enough.”
The reporter stayed where he was and I knew that our moments of privacy were over.
“Let’s go inside,” I said to Bruce.
“How did you get past the guards?” Bruce asked the man, and was met with a cocky grin.
As we fled back to the house past the end of the long veranda that fronted the ocean, I saw Ferris standing at the rail, and I paused.
“I want to talk to him. Go along to Theo, Bruce.”
The reporter had followed us, but Bruce turned to him again with a look in his eyes that must have decided him to choose the course of discretion, for he disappeared toward the front of the house. I gave Bruce a wry smile and went up the veranda steps.
If Ferris heard me coming down the long stretch, he gave no sign. His look was fixed upon some point far out on the sunny water, and as I walked toward him I had time to wonder if I was afraid of him. Yet how could I be? If he had been fond of Fiona, he could not have been the one to end her life. If he had been fond of her.
I went to stand beside him at the rail silently. He turned his head and gave me a brief glance and no greeting, then fixed his attention upon that distant spot again.
“Why did it happen?” I said softly. “Why Fiona?”
No muscle of his face moved, and he still did not speak.
“I cared more about her than I knew,” I went on. “She hasn’t been like herself for a long time.”
“No,” he said. The one word of agreement.
“Have the police any theory yet?”
He shook his head. “I’m not in their confidence. None of us is.”
“You know what she believed, don’t you?” I pressed. “She knew that Adam was murdered.”
“I don’t think she ever said that. Nor do I believe that he was.”
“You’re wrong, Ferris. She knew. She was going to tell me, but she didn’t get to it. Miss Crawford says she even wrote me a letter that I haven’t received. Perhaps if that letter is found—”
“If there is such a letter, it might be better if it’s never found,” he said evenly.
I stared at him. “Why do you say a thing like that?”
“Perhaps Fiona did know too much. She wouldn’t tell me what she knew, but she died because of it. Don’t look for that letter, Christy.”
So Ferris too did not believe in Fiona’s suicide. I remembered the question Theo had asked. Now was the time to put it to him.
“Theo says the light I saw at Redstones that night was because you were meeting Fiona over there.”
<
br /> For the first time he turned his head and looked at me, seemed to examine my face gravely and judiciously before he came to some conclusion.
“I can tell you about that now. Once, more than a year ago, Fiona and Adam went over there to explore. Adam remarked that it would be a wonderful place for the hiding of treasure. As you probably know, she and Adam had a furious disagreement before he died and during their argument he said he had written down a complete exposé about Hal and the Moreland papers in his log, and that he had hidden these pages in Newport for safekeeping. But he wouldn’t tell her where.
“He said he was going to blow everything into the open, and Fiona was afraid of what would happen if he did. A few days before he’d told me the same thing and I had an argument with him about it.”
“But in the end someone managed to stop him,” I said.
Ferris went on as though I had not spoken. “Afterwards, both Fiona and I wanted to find those pages, and she remembered what Adam had said about Redstones being a good hiding place. So we searched there together. And once I went over alone at night—the time you saw my light. Of course we found nothing. But I didn’t leave any candles behind over there. I didn’t mind leading a search of the place with you and Theo because I supposed nothing would be found. I was surprised when that candle turned up.”
“Joel left it there. He had more candles in that flight bag he’d put in a closet. He told me he wanted something to be found, so Theo couldn’t say I was imagining things.”
“I suspect he wanted more than that. Joel and Bruce were both curious about the light you’d seen and they started watching the place. So Fiona and I gave it up as a bad job. We didn’t want word of those log pages to get out.”
Never had Ferris Thornton talked to me so openly and I decided to push matters still further while he was in this expansive mood.
“Theo was using Fiona to play tricks on me when we first arrived, in order to frighten me. But she said she never put on Adam’s jacket to coax me downstairs. Was it you?”
“No, of course not,” Ferris said calmly.
“Was it you in Zenia’s study with the scarf?”
He looked out across the ocean again. “Fiona told me about that. She said you’d found the pages of the log and they were taken from you. But not by her. Or me.”
If he had done these things he wouldn’t tell me anyway. He had lied before, and he was on guard again. When he turned suddenly and grasped me by the arm I was thoroughly startled.
“Stop your searching, Christy. Stop it. If you keep on you may not like what you find. Let the police handle this. It’s not your job.”
I flared out at him. “The police were wonderful in Adam’s case, weren’t they? Putting it down to suicide!”
He moved away from me at the rail and his attention seemed fixed again upon some distant spot. I couldn’t bear his dry lawyer’s manner any longer. If he had loved Fiona, I supposed that he was grieving for her in his own way, but it wasn’t my way. Something had to be done—something, something!
And I was the one who had to do it. I was the only one left who cared, who wanted to do it.
I turned my back on the sunny day and went through a door into the gloom of Spindrift halls. The answer was here—here in this house—and perhaps I was closer than ever to finding it.
18
The days that followed seemed to move past in an undistinguishable haze. The outsiders who had come to Theo’s ball had all gone home. But those who belonged in the house had to stay.
For all my determination and desire to take some useful action, there seemed nothing I could do. For all that I had felt myself close to the truth, there was no handle I could take hold of. No new evidence of any kind had turned up. No one was discovered by the police to have any enmity toward Fiona, and while there was some doubt this time, they were coming to the conclusion that she must have killed herself. Adam’s death had left her grieving and unsettled, they said, and Theo did her best to further this conclusion. She wanted everything to quiet down, wanted the police to release us so we could all go back to New York—and she wanted to keep hidden whatever it was she knew or suspected.
The one positive thing I managed during this time was a talk with Peter about death, and about the reality of death as distinguished from death in the make-believe world of television. It was true that violent death happened in the real world, I told him, but it was never to be taken for granted casually as a proper pattern of life. Fiona was real, and Fiona had died, and we would grieve for her. She should not have died violently. This was never the answer to any problem and it was not a solution good people chose.
I don’t know how much of what I said got through to him, but at least I tried.
During this period I became aware of one thing that had not existed to the same degree before. Theodora Moreland was terrified. Someone was nearly always with her now—Bruce or Ferris or Joel—and sometimes she even tolerated my presence and company. But whomever she was with, the terror persisted.
Not until the day when the police finally withdrew and we were left free to go wherever we wished, did I discover who it was she feared.
Ferris had come to tell me that he was going to town and that Theodora wanted me in the library. The strain of the last weeks had left Ferris looking worn, and it seemed to me that he had aged greatly. But if, as Fiona had told me, he disliked Theo, he continued to serve her well—or was it that he was simply watching her? I didn’t know which.
The morning was cold and a heavy fog had rolled in from the sea. I put on navy wool pants and my red turtleneck sweater before I went downstairs to see Theo.
The library was, for me, a room stamped with Fiona’s presence. I remembered her pumpkin-yellow caftan, and I remembered her graceful movements wearing it. Once more a fire blazed in the grate and I could almost see Fiona sitting there on one of the oyster-white sofas. Would there have been anything I could have said or done that day which would have changed or prevented what happened later? I didn’t know. But I did cast a hasty glance at the balcony, and as far as I could see there was no one there.
Theodora Moreland stood beside one of the long windows looking out at the fog. She no longer neglected her dress, as she had done for a time after Fiona died, and the long jade green gown she wore became her, with her high-piled red hair that added to her height. Dangling jade earrings danced as she turned her head to look at me and then gave her attention once more to the side view from the house.
“What’s he doing out there?” she said.
I went to stand beside her and look out into the mist. At the entrance to the pergola Joel stood with his back to us.
“He has always loved the fog,” I said. “Once when we visited San Francisco he spent hours on the streets, just walking about in the fog. Peter loves fog too.”
“How can he bear it?” Theo murmured. “It was foggy the day Iris and Cabot died, and he’s always blamed himself for that.”
“What is it?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
She left the window and went to seat herself on a sofa near the fire and I saw that she was shivering.
“Come here, Christy,” she said, and her voice commanded me.
I went to sit beside her, grateful for the warmth of the fire, cold without knowing why. Her fingers were nervously busy, playing with her rings.
“I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m terribly afraid. Something awful is going to happen. I can’t hold it all back any longer. I’m going to be run over, annihilated. I’m going to be punished. I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean—” she broke off.
I said nothing. I didn’t want to stem this outpouring, wherever it might lead.
“He’s going on with it,” she continued. “There’s no way I can stop him.”
“Joel?” I breathed the word faintly, not believing.
She went on as though she hadn’t heard me. “I didn’t mean what happened. I didn’t mean him to go so far. Now I can’t stop the avalanche. It will be
safer if I can get back to New York. There’s danger here. Danger for you too, Christy. He’s begun to be afraid of you, afraid of what you know.”
“Adam was killed,” I said. “And so was Fiona. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes—yes! And now it’s too late to stop what’s been started. I didn’t mean this, Christy. I didn’t mean what happened.”
“And you’ve been protecting Joel?”
Before she could answer there was a knock on the door and Bruce came in.
“You wanted me, Theo?”
She recovered herself with an effort and reached into a pocket of her gown to draw out a ring of keys. “Ferris has gone to town for me. Will you go over and see that Redstones is locked up and all the windows are closed? I’m returning to New York this afternoon. The servants can close up this place. I never want to see it again.”
Bruce took the keys from her. “I’ll take care of it, of course.” He glanced at me questioningly, but I had no answer for him. I supposed I would go back to New York with Theo and Joel. Bruce had his own car. When would I see him again?
As soon as he had gone Theo jumped up and went to stand close to the fire, as though warmth would never return to her body, and the flames lit reddish lights in the green of her gown.
“Tell me what happened,” I said. “Tell me what really happened.”
She turned upon me with a suddenness that startled, her eyes alive with malice. “So that you can turn me over to the police? That’s what you’d like, isn’t it? Then you’d have Peter—when you don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve him at all!”
There was a violence in her that I had never sensed before, and I didn’t want to stay in the room with her a moment longer. I ran the length of the library and let myself out the door. If she was afraid of Joel, it was not because of anything he had done, but because of her own guilt.
I had to see Bruce again and I had to see him right away. Out on the veranda the fog rolled in billows, so that the rail was barely visible, I turned in the direction of Redstones, but as I followed the long veranda to the far steps, the mists thinned for a moment out on the lawn and I saw Joel walking there. My footsteps must have sounded on the bare planks because he turned and looked toward me and we could just make each other out through the veils of fog.
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