Spindrift

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Christy!” he called, and suddenly I was afraid. I didn’t want to be alone with him out there.

  I ran down the steps and let the fog swallow me. When I looked back I couldn’t see him, and he didn’t call me again. In moments Spindrift was invisible and I couldn’t see Redstones either, but I knew its direction. The iron curlicues on its fence brought me up short, damp and cold beneath my hands. I followed the tall black spears and found the gate open.

  The fog was so thick in pockets around the house that I dared not run, but I found my way along the weed-grown driveway until the house loomed suddenly before me, its peaked roofs wreathed in fog. I stumbled up the steps and through the unlocked front door to the clammy cold of the front hallway. Here mist penetrated in thin wisps, and that single suit of armor with its open visor seemed to leer at me, reminding me of other armor and another, desperate time.

  From upstairs came the slamming of a window that told me Bruce was still there. I called to him up the stairwell, and he came at once to the banister, looking down at me.

  “Christy! What are you doing here?”

  “I had to see you again before you left. Bruce, I’m afraid of them both. Theo and Joel. I’m afraid to go home with them. Theo’s changed and she’s talking wildly. Will you take me with you when you leave?”

  “Are you going to leave Peter behind?” Bruce started down the stairs.

  “No. I’ll go back for him, if you’ll wait for me. Perhaps you can take us to that apartment you found in New York?”

  “Of course, if that’s what you wish. What’s happened, Christy?”

  “Theo is afraid of Joel for some reason, and she was almost threatening with me just now.”

  Bruce came down beside me and put his hands on my shoulders, quieting me.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. Let’s sit here on the stairs and talk a little. Then I’ll finish closing Redstones and we’ll pick up our things, get Peter and be on our way to New York.”

  I couldn’t feel altogether easy, even though Bruce was with me. “Joel’s walking around out there in the fog. What if he comes here?”

  Bruce laughed. “I don’t think you’re really afraid of Joel, and I’m not either.”

  He pulled me down on the steps beside him and his arm was around me, holding me close. Yet the old numbness was upon me and it frightened me that suddenly I could feel nothing.

  “Listen to me, Christy,” he said. “When I leave Spindrift today, I’m through with the Morelands. I’m going away. Will you come with me?”

  “I’ll come with you to New York,” I said. “But I’ll have Peter and I want to keep him. I can’t come to you to stay until everything is worked out.”

  “Peter and I get along fine,” Bruce said. “I’ve always wanted a son. We’ll have him with us in the end.”

  I huddled close to his warmth, clinging to safety in a sort of desperation, wishing I wasn’t numb to everything but fear.

  “I’d like Peter to grow up like you,” I said. “Like Adam. You are like Adam, you know.” Once I’d promised myself to make no more comparisons—yet here I was doing it again. With, of course, the wrong result.

  I had annoyed him, and he took his arm from around me. “No, Christy. There’s been enough of that. I’m not in the least like Adam. If that’s the image you’re harboring, it won’t do. You’re wrong, and I don’t want that sort of love. You’ve got to love me because I’m myself—Bruce Parry. Not because you think I resemble someone else.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have said that. But just the same, there is a resemblance and I value it. You have Adam’s courage and his integrity.”

  “Integrity? Are you so sure about Adam?”

  I remembered the things Joel had said, but I didn’t want to hear them again from Bruce. Nevertheless, he went on.

  “Do you think Adam was wholly blind to what was happening on the paper? Any more than Ferris was blind? Or I? I let you think I was, but it wasn’t true. And now I want everything out in the open and honest between us. That’s the way love has to be. We all saw men being destroyed, and we were selfish enough, fearful enough for our own jobs, so that we closed our eyes. All but Joel. Hal had to keep the whole thing away from him because he knew Joel would never keep still. Theo knew that too. Knows it now. That’s why she’s afraid. Not even she could have kept Joel quiet, once he had an inkling of what was going on. She suspects that Joel will fight this through in his own mind and blow everything sky high. That’s another reason I want to be away.”

  When I tried to protest, he quieted me with a hand on my arm and continued.

  “Those faked letters obtained from supposedly unimpeachable sources, the photographs retouched, faked—all these were so Hal could wield the power he wanted to wield. Anyone who stood against Hal Moreland was wrong and had to be stopped, destroyed. And I helped him, Christy, I helped. I’m not proud of it, but I did.”

  I couldn’t bear the things he was saying. In his effort to be honest with me he was running himself down without mercy.

  “No!” I said. “If you helped it was because you were caught in some way I don’t understand. And Adam—he would never have gone along with all that.”

  “But he did, Christy. He did until the day when he began to realize what Theo Moreland meant to do to you. Even then she was bent on breaking up your marriage and taking Peter away from you. She could never forgive you for being Adam’s daughter. When he realized that, he threw his own safety to the winds. Maybe his integrity was a bit tarnished around the edges, but it was never as bad as the stories Theo cooked up after he died, about his dealing with the underworld and all that.”

  “I knew those things weren’t true,” I said.

  “No, they weren’t. But some of the things he did earlier were true enough. At least his love for you was never tarnished, Christy. You’ve got to understand all this. You’ve got to love people as they are, not because of some dimwitted ideal you like to hold onto.”

  His words hurt me. I wanted him to be my ideal, just as Adam had been. I couldn’t accept what he was telling me.

  “How much do you love me, Christy? How well could you love me if you knew all about me?”

  There was a passionate plea in his voice and I had to respond to it. I had to fight down all doubt and escape this terrible numbness.

  “We’ll forget all about this,” I said. “This wasn’t what you wanted to do, I know, and—”

  “Stop it, Christy!” he cried. “That’s not the kind of love I want. I want a woman who would give up everything for me, no matter what I am. Love me at all costs. If necessary, give up her son for me. I thought you were a woman after my own heart—determined, courageous, a little ruthless. I’d always thought you were wasted on Joel.”

  I was silent, frightened. This was my future life that was being laid bare and threatened.

  “Let me tell you something more,” he went on, relentless now. “You’ll remember that Adam and Fiona quarreled seriously the night he died? That was because he told her what he was going to do. She felt tied to Theo, tied to Adam’s comfortable job. She couldn’t bear it. When he left her she went straight to Theo and told her that he planned to expose what Hal had done. Theo sent for me. She told me to stop him.”

  “No,” I whispered. “No!” It seemed to be the only word I knew.

  “Yes, Christy. Oh, I didn’t mean to kill him. I only went up to the Tower Room to talk to him, threaten him with a few unpleasant things that might happen if he went ahead. But he had a gun and he waved it at me. We struggled and you know what happened. The gun turned in on him—and that was that. It was an accident, but I had to get out of there, and I did. Not even Theo knew for sure what had happened. She didn’t dare question me because she was really to blame. I never told anyone. But she knew I had gone there.”

  I could hardly breathe. It seemed as though my heart had constricted so that it would never beat again. I did not recognize my own strained voice when I spoke.

&n
bsp; “What about Fiona? She was up in the Tower Room that night, wasn’t she? I found her earring. She must have seen you go in when she left. Did you kill Fiona too?”

  “Christy, Christy, be reasonable! I had to stop her. What else could I do? I knew Theo would never talk because I had only to say that she had ordered me to kill Adam. Fiona loved me once. But she was afraid of me. For those two reasons she kept silent. But I knew she was getting near the cracking point. She was ready to tell you everything. And I didn’t want that. If it had to be done, I wanted to do it myself.”

  “Then it was you in Zenia’s sitting room—with the scarf?”

  “Darling, I’m sorry about that, but I had to have those pages. I’d searched, but all I found was Ferris’s gun in a drawer. When you sat down to read I had to stop you because I knew my name would be there. That scarf hung over the arm of a chair, so I picked it up. I didn’t mean to hurt you—just to take those pages and get away.”

  His monstrous, reasoning words seemed to run on and on in my ears. Like a cold and fearsome river, drowning everything. Yet the ultimate shock quieted me. Now I must know everything.

  “Was it you who wore my father’s jacket that night?”

  His smile was rueful. “It was Theo’s idea to frighten you after she’d drugged your drinks. But I saw other possibilities. I wanted to get you downstairs alone with me—where we could talk and I could make a beginning with you.”

  Strangely, I could reason too. “But your raincoat was wet, as though you’d just come in from outdoors.”

  “I planned that. I left it outside in the rain and while you were busy trying to hide from me, I took off the jacket and put on the coat. But none of this matters now. All that matters is whether I can be sure of you, Christy. Will you still come to me when you can?”

  I shrank away from him on the stairs, sick with horror. It was all too terrible to be believed. Bruce was the man I had imagined myself in love with. But the shrinking of my body told me the truth—and told it to him as well.

  There was nothing I could say. I rose from the stairs carefully and slowly. I went down the few steps to the hall and moved toward the front door. It was as if by moving gently, quietly, I could make my escape.

  He let me reach the door before he stopped me, his hand like a band of steel on my arm. “No, Christy. You can’t go out there. Not now.”

  I turned and looked up into his face. He seemed the same as always, and his eyes were not unkind, but I knew the truth about him now. It was for this that I had deceived myself so recklessly, so foolishly. I had only loathing for myself, and beneath the loathing the beginnings of pure terror. Now it was going to be my turn.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Christy.” He drew me suddenly to him and kissed me roughly on the mouth. “Do you think I could touch a hair on your head? You won’t be hurt if you do as I say. I want to give you a chance.”

  I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I could only wait for him to go on. How black his eyes were—with depths beyond the surface kindness.

  “Come,” he said, and he began to propel me toward the rear of the house.

  My thoughts tumbled wildly, seeking for a way of escape, but his hand was cruelly tight on my arm and I could only move in the direction he chose.

  When we came to the basement stairs, I knew without any doubt what he meant to do. I knew what was going to happen to me, and for a moment my knees weakened and I clung to him.

  “No, Bruce—please!” I whispered.

  He peeled my clutching fingers away, not ungently. “I’m sorry, Christy. It’s the one place I can leave you safely. The hatch door is heavy. Once I’ve closed it you’ll not be able to open it from underneath. Not on that rickety ladder.”

  I thought of the damp stone walls of the vault, the chill, the darkness. I thought of that suit of armor which had kept its terrible secret for all those years. I could go mad down there. And when would they find me? They would think I’d run off with Bruce and would probably never look in that place for me at all.

  Behind, Bruce gave me a little push. “Go down the stairs, Christy. I don’t want to carry you.”

  I started down the basement stairs ahead of him, free for the moment because he no longer clasped my arm. Yet nevertheless trapped and helpless. There was only one goal toward which he would lead me—the armor room at the far end of the basement, and the vault that opened in its floor. I was to know a worse imprisonment than my son had known. Bruce too believed I was trapped. But he didn’t know this basement as I knew it, and he didn’t know that I might fight for my life. There was no numbness now. I had come painfully alive.

  I left the fifth step with a flying leap and landed on the stone floor. Then I ducked behind the first large object in that shadowy place. I shoved over a ladder in Bruce’s path, disappeared behind the furniture, ran toward the far wall where a window still stood open. The packing case that had helped me before was still below it, and while Bruce sought me among the shadows, I climbed up to the window and scrambled through to roll on the ground beyond.

  Fog was thick around the house, and fog could save me. I ran in the direction of the fence where the mist was dense, and clambered up over the spears, dropping to the other side. I could already hear Bruce climbing out of the basement, but he would expect me to go to the gate. A small gift of time had been loaned to me.

  Spindrift was visible where the mists had blown thin, but I dared not run for the house. I had no friends there. Toward the ocean billows puffed and rolled like smoke, hiding everything. In moments I was lost in damp, choking vapor and stumbling along the Cliff Walk. I had no sense of direction now and I couldn’t even see the rocks above the ocean. Somewhere along here there had been erosion and the path was gone. Unable to see, I might be dropped into the ocean at any step. I didn’t know where I was going—only that I must go, that I must put distance between me and this man who was my mortal enemy.

  When a black figure loomed suddenly ahead of me in the mist, I clapped my hands to my mouth to stifle a scream. But it was Joel, and I stood staring at him, trying to find my voice.

  “Bruce!” I gasped. “Out there! I know everything that happened, and he—he was going to—”

  “Hush,” Joel said, and I broke off.

  There had been a sound. Someone else was following the Cliff Walk, stumbling over the broken places, coming this way. Bruce had heard us.

  Joel caught my hand and pulled me along over uncertain ground until there were rocks beneath my feet and I was following him down a steep path. Fog thinned ahead of us momentarily and I saw the outline of the boatshed below. Joel drew me roughly down the path until he could enter the shed ahead of me, pull me in behind him.

  “Get into the boat,” he told me. “Hurry.”

  I didn’t hesitate, but dropped down into the cockpit, while Joel went to slip the rope. I knew what he meant to do. He would take the boat out into the fog. On the water we would be out of Bruce’s reach and there would be nothing Bruce could do. But I knew too what it would cost Joel to do this—to go out there in the fog, venturing our lives. Yet now I wasn’t afraid. I had the feeling that he would bring us back safely.

  Then it was already too late. While Joel worked at untying the rope, Bruce walked into the shed. He glanced at me in the boat and then stood watching Joel.

  “Leave that alone,” he said.

  Joel looked around, and once more I measured the difference between the two men, measured it with my heart breaking. Joel was lithe but slight, lacking in weight beside Bruce’s powerful hulk. When it came to brawn, Bruce could defeat him. Brute force would always win. Joel let the rope go and straightened, watching Bruce from the far end of the slip. The water that he feared lay immediately behind him.

  I looked around the boat, around the shed for any sort of weapon—but there was nothing in view. Not so much as a wrench. I reached for the dock, to climb out where I could stand beside Joel, but he spoke to me sharply.

  “Stay down,” he
said.

  Bruce smiled at us gently as though he found our actions amusing. “This is really too bad, isn’t it, Christy? You had your chance, you know. But now it’s gone.” He took a step toward Joel.

  “Stay where you are,” Joel said, and there was an unexpected ring of authority in his voice.

  Bruce paused, mildly astonished. “You aren’t exactly in a position to call the tune, are you?” he said.

  I almost ceased to breathe. Bruce had only to rash Joel to put him into the water. Then it would be my turn.

  “You’d better do some thinking this time,” Joel went on. “If you leave now, maybe you can get away. Maybe you can even get off the island. I saw your car in the driveway, ready to go.”

  “And leave you two to sound the alarm?” Bruce said. “I’ve had enough of this. You’re both going to have an accident. An unfortunate boating accident in the fog.”

  He started toward Joel and I clung to the dock helplessly, the boat moving under my feet. Then I saw that Bruce had halted in his advance and was staring at Joel—staring at the small but deadly-looking gun Joel suddenly held in his hand.

  “I know how to use this,” Joel said. “And you needn’t think I’ll hesitate. My father taught me to shoot quite well, you know.”

  Bruce looked down at me in the boat, measuring distance, I was sure. I think if he could have used me against Joel, he would have. But I was out of reach.

  “You’d better take my first offer,” Joel said. “Leave now and get as far as you can.”

  The weapon in Joel’s hand did not waver, and the black muzzle pointed directly at Bruce. Yet I could hardly believe it when Bruce gave up. He scowled at us both, and without making any more speeches he wheeled about and went out of the shed. We could hear him climbing up the path, and in a few moments he was gone and there was silence.